From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Jun 1 06:30:56 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:30:56 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Doublespeak on North Korea Message-ID: <4A23CA00.3030602@ashisuto.co.jp> Who Will Stand Up to America and Israel? by Paul Craig Roberts CounterPunch (May 27 2009) "Obama Calls on World to 'Stand Up To' North Korea" read the headline. The United States, Obama said, was determined to protect "the peace and security of the world". Shades of doublespeak, doublethink, 1984. North Korea is a small place. China alone could snuff it out in a few minutes. Yet, the president of the US thinks that nothing less than the entire world is a match for North Korea. We are witnessing the Washington gangsters construct yet another threat like Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, John Walker Lindh, Hamdi, Padilla, Sami Al-Arian, Hamas, Mahkmoud Ahmadinejad, and the hapless detainees demonized by the US Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as "the 700 most dangerous terrorists on the face of the earth", who were tortured for six years at Gitmo only to be quietly released. Just another mistake, sorry. The military/security complex that rules America, together with the Israel Lobby and the financial banksters, needs a long list of dangerous enemies to keep the taxpayers' money flowing into its coffers. The Homeland Security lobby is dependent on endless threats to convince Americans that they must forego civil liberty in order to be safe and secure. The real question is who is going to stand up to the American and Israeli governments? Who is going to protect Americans' and Israelis' civil liberties, especially those of Israeli dissenters and Israel's Arab citizens? Who is going to protect Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Lebanese, Iranians, and Syrians from Americans and Israelis? Not Obama, and not the right-wing brownshirts that today rule Israel. Obama's notion that it takes the entire world to stand up to North Korea is mind-boggling, but this mind-boggling idea pales in comparison to Obama's guarantee that America will protect "the peace and security of the world". Is this the same America that bombed Serbia, including Chinese diplomatic offices and civilian passenger trains, and pried Kosovo loose from Serbia and gave it to a gang of Muslim drug lords, lending them NATO troops to protect their operation? Is this the same America that is responsible for approximately one million dead Iraqis, leaving orphans and widows everywhere and making refugees out of one-fifth of the Iraqi population? Is this the same America that blocked the rest of the world from condemning Israel for its murderous attack on Lebanese civilians in 2006 and on Gazans most recently, the same America that has covered up for Israel's theft of Palestine over the past sixty years, a theft that has produced four million Palestinian refugees driven by Israeli violence and terror from their homes and villages? Is this the same America that is conducting military exercises in former constituent parts of Russia and ringing Russia with missile bases? Is this the same America that has bombed Afghanistan into rubble with massive civilian casualties? Is this the same America that has started a horrific new war in Pakistan, a war that in its first few days has produced one million refugees? "The peace and security of the world"? Whose world? On his return from his consultation with Obama in Washington, the brownshirted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that it was Israel's responsibility to "eliminate" the "nuclear threat" from Iran. What nuclear threat? The US intelligence agencies are unanimous in their conclusion that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program since 2003. The inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency report that there is no sign of a nuclear weapons program in Iran. Who is Iran bombing? How many refugees is Iran sending fleeing for their lives? Who is North Korea bombing? The two great murderous, refugee-producing countries are the US and Israel. Between them, they have murdered and dislocated millions of people who were a threat to no one. No countries on earth rival the US and Israel for barbaric murderous violence. But Obama gives assurances that the US will protect "the peace and security of the world". And the brownshirt Netanyahu assures the world that Israel will save it from the "Iranian threat". Where is the media? Why aren't people laughing their heads off? _____ Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions (2008). He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts05272009.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 fentona at shaw.ca Mon Jun 1 09:27:17 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 08:27:17 -0700 Subject: [R-G] US military recruiting 'hacker soldiers' Message-ID: <983F0E4B-3B13-41E7-AAC7-DF945FB29C91@shaw.ca> http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=96621§ionid=3510203 US military recruiting 'hacker soldiers' Sun, 31 May 2009 18:48:14 GMT Font size : [Increase] [Normal] [Decrease] Military companies in the US are considering plans to employ cyber soldiers as the Pentagon moves to establish a cybercommand to manage future cyberwars. The concept of preparing fighting cyberattacks is set to overhaul the idea of war in the US with computer talents gradually joining old soldiers. Military giants including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are now busy with recruiting "hacker soldiers" to address the new demand for an unconventional cyberwar and in a way to blend the new capabilities into the nation's war planning. The computer nerds who were used to working in the Silicon Valley, now are recruited by the US military companies to prepare the country for a potential cyberwar. The US government officials claim they face thousands of cyberattacks by Chinese and Russian hackers and they must protect their sensitive networks against such attacks. Moscow and Beijing have dismissed the claims. ?Everybody's attacking everybody,? said Scott Chase, a 30-year-old computer engineer who helps run a Raytheon unit, New York Times reported on Sunday. As the recession forces more layoffs in the US, the new exotic job market seems to be promising for ?cyberninjas? who are recruited by military companies to block the cyberattacks and design countermeasures. Reports last month suggested that cyberspies successfully copied and took away several terabytes of sensitive data related to design and electronic systems of the costly F-35 Lightning II fighter. Daniel D. Allen, who oversees work on intelligence systems for Northrop Grumman, estimated that federal spending on computer security now totals USD 10 billion annually, including classified programs. That is just a fraction of the government's spending on weapons systems. But industry officials expect the figure to rise rapidly. RB/MMN From fentona at shaw.ca Mon Jun 1 09:28:48 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 08:28:48 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Akwesasne Is On High Alert As The Bridges Are Closed And Canadians Borders Services Abandoned Message-ID: <698A0D88-AE48-444F-96C9-2AE01D4DABEC@shaw.ca> http://letstalknativepride.blogspot.com/2009/06/akwesasne-is-on-high-alert-as-bridges.html Monday, June 1, 2009 Akwesasne Is On High Alert As The Bridges Are Closed And Canadians Borders Services Abandoned Midnight, June 1, 2009: As the deadline for new compliance standards imposed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Border Patrol and the Canadian Border Services was reached, an all out military style blockade has been established on the U.S. and Canadian sides of the international bridges that use Akwesasne's Cornwall Island to connect them. June 1st was the date for the new Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) to come into effect. The standards called for stiffer identification requirements including U.S. or Canadian passports or new enhanced ID cards with scannable and trackable RFID chips embedded in them. Canadian Border Services (CBS) also planned to used the deadline as the start of an upgraded arming and militarization of the customs and border facility located within the the territory of the Kanienkehaka, on Cornwall Island which is now eerily abandoned. These moves have been opposed by the Kanienkehaka with particular concern over weapons being brought into their community. Several demonstrations have occurred over the last several weeks specifically addressing the overwhelming opposition of the Kanienkehaka to the idea of a foreign armed force being based within their community. No dialogue or communications of any kind has been offered up to explain the blockade. DHS, as recently as last week expressed in a conference call for all Native communities on the U.S.-Canadian border that a "relaxing of the requirements" would be in affect for an "undetermined transitional period". When asked specifically about the Massena crossing, they offered no insight to a closing or blockade. The Kanienkehaka are presently asking everyone to use every means available to keep communications flowing and prepare to support this community as this apparent military action continues. Travel preparations from as many Native territories as possible on both sides of the "Imaginary Line" should be started as well as any actions that can be undertaken to show solidarity. At the time of this posting there was still no press presence or any international observation. The hope is that efforts to bring as much attention to these actions as possible can reach the highest international levels. Contact with the people of Akwesasne is critically important at this point and the flow of information is one of the best weapons against any abuses that occur. All media contacts and organizations should be brought on line to monitor the situation. Any developments will be posted as information is received. From fentona at shaw.ca Mon Jun 1 09:29:22 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 08:29:22 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Mohawk protest shuts Canada-U.S. border at Cornwall Message-ID: http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/643505 Mohawk protest shuts Canada-U.S. border at Cornwall June 01, 2009 THE CANADIAN PRESS CORNWALL, ONT. ? A U.S. border crossing in Cornwall, Ont., was closed just before midnight Sunday night in advance of an Akwesasne Mohawk protest. Canadian Border Services Agency workers left their posts on Cornwall Island, citing safety concerns. Reports say there are now about 400 Mohawks camped out near the building and they began cheering when news of the departure became known. They are opposed to border guards arming themselves with handguns. Travellers are being advised to use the Prescott or Dundee port of entry instead. There is no estimated time yet of when the Seaway International Bridge will re-open. From fentona at shaw.ca Mon Jun 1 10:08:53 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 09:08:53 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Costa-Gavras And The Z-To-Amen Of Political Cinema Message-ID: <20ED59C1-2EEB-427E-9425-E57C2575F668@shaw.ca> Costa-Gavras And The Z-To-Amen Of Political Cinema by Peter Byrne (Swans - June 1, 2009) Constantin Costa-Gavras is a long-jawed Greek, gaunt and gray now at seventy-six. In April he came along with seventeen of his films to Lecce in Italy and the Tenth Festival of European Cinema.* His face lit up with surprise and pleasure when a fan told him of the entry in Wikepedia for the Greek military junta of 1967-1974. The French poster for Costa-Gavras's 1969 film Z serves as illustration for the article. His take on the colonels and their coup d'?tat has apparently achieved wide acceptance. Cinema has, in a sense, made history. [...] http://www.swans.com/library/art15/pbyrne100.html From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 1 13:26:27 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 12:26:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The latest terrorist attack in the U.S. In-Reply-To: <437957193.5872111243800972230.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <186926269.6266601243884387915.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/31/abortion-doctor-george-tiller-killed The Guardian 3 1 M a y 2 0 0 9 Late-term abortion doctor shot dead inside US church A doctor who was one of the few in the US to continue carrying out late-term abortions was shot dead in a church today. George Tiller, 67, who had been picketed, bombed and shot in the arms in previous incidents, was killed at his church in Kansas, according to police sources. Tiller was a controversial man, whose clinic has been the site of protests for two decades. He was shot and wounded by a protester in 1993 and someone placed a bomb on the roof of the clinic in 1986, seriously damaging the building. Police spokesman Gordon Bassham would not confirm the victim's identity but said a 67-year-old "high-profile individual in the community" was shot and killed. He was shot at 10am in the lobby of Reformation Lutheran church in Wichita, police and city officials said. According to the reports a white man carrying a handgun shot the doctor and then fled in a blue Ford Taurus. "It's an unfortunate incident to happen on a Sunday morning," Wichita police ?captain Brent Allred told reporters. "These things should not occur at any time." The FBI and state police were called in to help search for the gunman, whose licence plate was registered to a home in a suburb of Kansas City, 200 miles away. The shooting came just two weeks after Barack Obama sought "common ground" over the divisive abortion debate in a ?controversial speech at one of America's leading Catholic universities. The president has attempted to defuse one of the most emotive issues in US public life by arguing that while abortion should remain legal, the government should do all it can to limit unwanted pregnancies. Tiller had been regularly targeted by abortion opponents who protested outside his clinic. Some 2,000 protesters were also arrested outside the clinic during summer-long demonstrations in 1991. He was acquitted in March on charges that he performed 19 illegal abortions in 2003. His lawyer described the prosecution as a witch-hunt. Tiller testified during the trial that he spent years under police protection after the FBI discovered an anti-abortion hit list in 1994 that named Tiller as the top target. The doctor also testified that he owns one of only three clinics in the US that perform late-term abortions, which are performed on foetuses that could survive outside the mother's womb. Late-term abortions are legal in Kansas if two independent doctors agree that the mother could suffer irreparable harm by giving birth. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 1 13:55:59 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 12:55:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Real News Network - Sri Lanka: '20, 000' civilians killed In-Reply-To: <642F94CE8BFD4CDA96B4416FAA4202EB@twubby.com> Message-ID: <1072494689.6279431243886159944.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> May 30, 2009 Sri Lanka: '20,000' civilians killed Twenty thousand civilians were killed in Sri Lanka's final push against Tamil Tigers, claims UN report http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3778 From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 1 14:21:22 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 13:21:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] SA study finds Israel practising apartheid, colonialism in Occupied Palestinian Territories In-Reply-To: <1676340244.6283981243886816502.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <484546855.6289431243887682616.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> RE-ENVISIONING ISRAEL/PALESTINE Conference, hosted by the HSRC on 13 & 14 June in The Townhouse, Cape Town South African academic study finds that Israel is practising apartheid and colonialism in the Occupied Palestinian Territories The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) has released a study indicating that Israel is practising both colonialism and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories. The study is being posted for public debate on the HSRC website: www.hsrc.ac.za/DG.phtml . The HSRC commissioned an international team of scholars and practitioners of international public law from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Israel and the West Bank to conduct the study. The resulting 300-page draft, titled Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel?s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law, represents 15 months of research and constitutes an exhaustive review of Israel?s practices in the OPT according to definitions of colonialism and apartheid provided by international law. The project was suggested originally by the January 2007 report by eminent South African jurist John Dugard, in his capacity as Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Rights Council, when he indicated that Israel practices had assumed characteristics of colonialism and apartheid. Regarding colonialism , the team found that Israel?s policy and practices violate the prohibition on colonialism which the international community developed in the 1960s in response to the great decolonisation struggles in Africa and Asia. Israel's policy is demonstrably to fragment the West Bank and annex part of it permanently to Israel, which is the hallmark of colonialism.Israel has appropriated land and water in the OPT, merged the Palestinian economy with Israel?s economy, and imposed a system of domination over Palestinians to ensure their subjugation to these measures. Through these measures, Israel has denied the indigenous population the right to self-determination and indicated clear intention to assume sovereignty over portions of its land and natural resources. Permanent annexation of territory in this fashion is the hallmark of colonialism. Regarding apartheid , the team found that Israel?s laws and policies in the OPT fit the definition of apartheid in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Israeli law conveys privileges to Jewish settlers and disadvantages Palestinians in the same territory on the basis of their respective identities, which function in this case as racialised identities in the sense provided by international law. Israel's practices are corollary to five of the six 'inhuman acts' listed by the Convention. A policy of apartheid is especially indicated by Israel's demarcation of geographic ?reserves? in the West Bank, to which Palestinian residence is confined and which Palestinians cannot leave without a permit. The system is very similar to the policy of ?Grand Apartheid? in apartheid South Africa, in which black South Africans were confined to black Homelands delineated by the South African government, while white South Africans enjoyed freedom of movement and full civil rights in the rest of the country. Quoting from the Executive Summary of the report, project leader Dr Virginia Tilley explained that the three pillars of apartheid in South Africa are all practised by Israel in the OPT. In South Africa, the first pillar was to demarcate the population of South Africa into racial groups, and to accord superior rights, privileges and services to the white racial group. The second pillar was to segregate the population into different geographic areas, which were allocated by law to different racial groups, and restrict passage by members of any group into the area allocated to other groups. And the third pillar was "a matrix of draconian ?security? laws and policies that were employed to suppress any opposition to the regime and to reinforce the system of racial domination, by providing for administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and assassination." The Report finds that Israeli practices in the OPT exhibit the same three 'pillars' of apartheid: The first pillar "derives from Israeli laws and policies that establish Jewish identity for purposes of law and afford a preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews over non-Jews". The second pillar is reflected in "Israel?s 'grand' policy to fragment the OPT [and] ensure that Palestinians remain confined to the reserves designated for them while Israeli Jews are prohibited from entering those reserves but enjoy freedom of movement throughout the rest of the Palestinian territory. This policy is evidenced by Israel?s extensive appropriation of Palestinian land, which continues to shrink the territorial space available to Palestinians; the hermetic closure and isolation of the Gaza Strip from the rest of the OPT; the deliberate severing of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank; and the appropriation and construction policies serving to carve up the West Bank into an intricate and well-serviced network of connected settlements for Jewish-Israelis and an archipelago of besieged and non-contiguous enclaves for Palestinians". The third pillar is "Israel's invocation of 'security' to validate sweeping restrictions on Palestinian freedom of opinion, expression, assembly, association and movement [to] mask a true underlying intent to suppress dissent to its system of domination and thereby maintain control over Palestinians as a group." The research team included scholars and international lawyers based at the HSRC, the School for Oriental and African Studies (London), the British Institute for International and Comparative Law, the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal (Durban), the Adalah/Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and al-Haq/West Bank Affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists. Consultation on the study?s theory and method was provided by eminent jurists from South Africa, Israel and Europe. The HSRC serves as the national social science council for South Africa. The Middle East Project of the HSRC is an independent two-year project to conduct analysis of Middle East politics relevant to South African foreign policy, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Government of South Africa. The analysis in this report is entirely independent of the views or foreign policy of the Government of South Africa and does not represent an official position of the HSRC. It is intended purely as a scholarly resource for the South African government and civil society and the concerned international community. For more information or interviews, contact: mep at hsrc.ac.za or +27-21-466-7924. http://www.hsrc.ac.za/Document-3230.phtml Democracy and Governance Programme Middle East Project EXECUTIVE SUMMARY May 2009 Cape Town, South Africa Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A re-assessment of Israel?s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law The M IDDLE E AST P ROJECT is housed in the Democracy and Governance Programme of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. This Executive Summary and the full study can be downloaded from the HSRC Democracy & Governance website ( www.hsrc.ac.za/DG.phtml) at no charge. Duplication of this publication for commercial purposes is prohibited. The Human Sciences Research Council was established in 1968 by an Act of the South African Parliament to conduct applied social science research in the public interest. It serves as the national social science council for South Africa. Website: www.hsrc.ac.za Inquiries should be addressed to: The Middle East Project Democracy and Governance Programme Human Sciences Research Council Private Bag X9182 Cape Town South Africa 8000 Email: mep at hsrc.ac.za Tel: +27-21-466-8070 Street Address: 10th floor Plein Park Building 69-83 Plein Street Cape Town South Africa 8001 Editor?s Note: This Executive Summary and the full version of this report are drafts on which comments are invited. The HSRC editorial team regrets any typographical errors resulting from desktop publishing. ? All rights reserved to the Human Sciences Research Council, Cape Town, May 2009. Contributors: Editor: Virginia Tilley, Coordinator, Middle East Project, and Chief Research Specialist, Democracy & Governance Programme, Human Sciences Research Council Administrative Support: Tania Fraser, HSRC Principal Contributors: Max du Plessis, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban) and Senior Research Associate, Institute for Security Studies Fatmeh El-Ajou, Lawyer, Adalah/Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Haifa) Victor Kattan, Teaching Fellow, Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, SOAS, University of London John Reynolds, Legal Researcher, Al-Haq (West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists) Rina Rosenberg, Esq. International Advocacy Director, Adalah/Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Haifa) Iain Scobbie, Sir Joseph Hotung Research Professor in Law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East, School of Law, SOAS, University of London Virginia Tilley, Chief Research Specialist, Democracy & Governance Programme, Human Sciences Research Council (Cape Town) Contributing Researchers: Adalah ? The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel: Rana Asali, Legal Fellow; Katie Hesketh, Publications Researcher; Belkis Wille, Research Fellow Al-Haq (West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists): Legal Research and Advocacy Department: Michelle Burgis; Gareth Gleed; Lisa Monaghan; Fadi Quran; Mays Warrad Godfrey Musila, at the time of research, at the South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights and International Law (Johannesburg), presently at the International Crime in Africa Programme, Institute for Security Studies (Pretoria) Consultation: John Dugard, Extraordinary Professor, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (The Hague) Hassan Jabareen, Lawyer and General Director, Adalah/Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel Daphna Golan, Director, Minerva Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, Hebrew University (Jerusalem) Jody Kollapen, CEO, South African Commission on Human Rights (Pretoria) Stephanie Koury, Research Fellow, Sir Joseph Hotung Programme on Law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East, SOAS, University of London Gilbert Marcus, Senior Counsel and Constitutional Lawyer (Johannesburg) Michael Sfard, Lawyer (Tel Aviv) Pieter A. Stemmet, Advocate and Senior State Law Advisor, Department of Foreign Affairs, Government of South Africa (Pretoria) Background Note: This study was commissioned and coordinated by the Middle East Project (MEP) of the Democracy and Governance Programme, a research programme of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. The genesis of this study was the suggestion made in January 2007 by Professor John Dugard, in his capacity as UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, that Israel?s military occupation displays elements of colonialism and apartheid. The Human Sciences Research Council commissioned this study to scrutinise Professor Dugard?s hypothesis from the perspective of international law. Over a period of 15 months, the team of scholars engaged in extensive research, discussion, and rounds of lively debate through seven drafts. The result is the consensus represented in this report, offered here for public discussion. Constructive criticism is welcomed, in order that shortcomings in this document may be addressed in a future edition. Although this study is essentially a legal document, observations from other disciplines are encouraged. The Executive Summary was presented for public discussion on 16 May 2009 at the School for Oriental and African Studies (London), at a public seminar co-hosted by the HSRC and the Sir Joseph Hotung Project in Law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East, based at the Law School of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The M IDDLE E AST P ROJECT is an independent two-year project of the HSRC, conducted from June 2007 through June 2009, to conduct analysis of Middle East politics relevant to South African foreign policy. Its funding was provided by the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Government of South Africa. The analysis in this report is entirely independent of the views or foreign policy of the Government of South Africa and does not represent an official position of the HSRC, nor should it be taken to represent the views of contributors listed here under ?Consultation?. It is intended purely as a scholarly resource for the Department of Foreign Affairs and the concerned international community. Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A. Introduction B. Legal Framework for this Study C. Legal Framework in the Occupied Palestinian Territories D. Findings on Colonialism E. Findings on Apartheid F. Implications and Recommendations A. Introduction The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa commissioned this study to test the hypothesis posed by Professor John Dugard in the report he presented to the UN Human Rights Council in January 2007, in his capacity as UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel (namely, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, hereafter OPT). Professor Dugard posed the question: Israel is clearly in military occupation of the OPT. At the same time, elements of the occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law. What are the legal consequences of a regime of prolonged occupation with features of colonialism and apartheid for the occupied people, the Occupying Power and third States? In order to consider these consequences, this study set out to examine legally the premises of Professor Dugard?s question: is Israel the occupant of the OPT, and, if so, do elements of its occupation of these territories amount to colonialism or apartheid? South Africa has an obvious interest in these questions given its bitter history of apartheid, which entailed the denial of self- determination to its majority population and, during its occupation of Namibia, the extension of apartheid to that territory which South Africa effectively sought to colonise. These unlawful practices must not be replicated elsewhere: other peoples must not suffer in the way the populations of South Africa and Namibia have suffered. To explore these issues, an international team of scholars was assembled. The aim of this project was to scrutinise the situation from the nonpartisan perspective of international law, rather than engage in political discourse and rhetoric. This study is the outcome of a fifteen- month collaborative process of intensive research, consultation, writing and review. It concludes and, it is to be hoped, persuasively argues and clearly demonstrates that Israel, since 1967, has been the belligerent Occupying Power in the OPT, and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid. Belligerent occupation in itself is not an unlawful situation: it is accepted as a possible consequence of armed conflict. At the same time, under the law of armed conflict (also known as international humanitarian law), occupation is intended to be only a temporary state of affairs. International law prohibits the unilateral annexation or permanent acquisition of territory as a result of the threat or use of force: should this occur, no State may recognise or support the resulting unlawful situation. In contrast to occupation, both colonialism and apartheid are always unlawful and indeed are considered to be particularly serious breaches of international law because they are fundamentally contrary to core values of the international legal order. Colonialism violates the principle of self-determination, which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has affirmed as ?one of the essential principles of contemporary international law?. All States have a duty to respect and promote self-determination. Apartheid is an aggravated case of racial discrimination, which is constituted according to the International Convention for the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973, hereafter ?Apartheid Convention?) by ?inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them?. The practice of apartheid, moreover, is an international crime. Professor Dugard in his report to the UN Human Rights Council in 2007 suggested that an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel?s conduct should be sought from the ICJ. This advisory opinion would complement the opinion that the ICJ delivered in 2004 on the Legal consequences of the construction of a wall in the occupied Palestinian territories (hereafter ?the Wall advisory opinion?). This course of legal action does not exhaust the options open to the international community, nor indeed the duties of third States and international organisations when they are apprised that another State is engaged in the practices of colonialism or apartheid. The scope of this study was determined by the question it poses: whether Israel?s practises in the OPT amount to colonialism or apartheid under international law. Hence Israel?s practices inside the Green Line (1949 Armistice Line) are not examined, except where they illuminate Israeli policies in the OPT. The history of the conflict before Israel?s occupation began in June 1967 as a result of the Six-Day War is also not addressed, except where this is necessary to clarify the application of international law to the OPT. Questions of individual criminal responsibility or culpability for the commission of acts which constitute apartheid are also beyond the scope of this study, which focuses instead on the question of the responsibility of States as a result of internationally wrongful acts. B. Legal Framework for this Study This study is based on fundamental concepts and principles of international law and draws on diverse branches of substantive international law, in particular the law regulating belligerent occupation which forms part of the law of armed conflict. Israel remains the belligerent occupant of the OPT as they are territories over which Israel does not possess sovereignty but only a temporary right of administration. Consequently, Israel must abide by the relevant rules of the law of armed conflict?principally the provisions of the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949?in its administration of the territories. The law of armed conflict is supplemented by international human rights law which also applies in occupied territory. The prohibitions on colonialism and apartheid are rooted principally in the field of international human rights law. Colonialism and apartheid both constitute serious violations of fundamental human rights. Colonialism has been consistently condemned by the international community because it prevents, and aims to prevent, a people from exercising freely its right to determine its own future through its own political institutions and in pursuit of its own economic policy. Although theoretical aspects of colonialism have increasingly been addressed in recent years in post- colonial and third world approaches to international law, the substantive aspects of colonialism have receded from international attention in recent decades following decolonisation in Africa and Asia over the course of the twentieth century. The main instrument of international law regarding colonialism, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (1960, hereafter ?the Declaration on Colonialism?), condemns ?colonialism in all its forms and manifestations?, which includes ?settler colonialism? such as was practiced, for example, in South Africa. Other laws and UN resolutions contribute to an understanding of colonialism, its threat to the enjoyment of human rights and the obligation of all states to ensure its abolition. This body of law and commentary establishes the basis for and the standard against which the review of Israel?s practices is undertaken in this study. Apartheid is an aggravated form of racial discrimination because it is a State-sanctioned regime of law and institutions that has ?the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them?. This definition is employed in the Apartheid Convention, which builds on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965, hereafter ?ICERD?). The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998, hereafter ?Rome Statute?) includes apartheid as a crime falling within the Court?s jurisdiction. While this study does not consider the criminal responsibility of individuals, the provisions of these three treaties were employed to develop a working definition of apartheid for the purpose of considering Israel?s State responsibility for practices that offend against the norm prohibiting apartheid. The rules of international law prohibiting colonialism and apartheid are peremptory: that is, they are rules ?accepted and recognised by the international community of States as a whole as [rules] from which no derogation is permitted?. Every State owes a legal duty to the international community as a whole not to engage in practices of colonialism or apartheid. Conversely, all States have an interest in ensuring that these rules are respected because they enshrine fundamental values of international public order. Faced with a violation of the prohibitions of colonialism and apartheid, all States have three duties: to co-operate to end the violation; not to recognise the illegal situation arising from it; and not to render aid or assistance to the State committing it. C. Legal Framework in the Occupied Palestinian Territories To examine Israeli practices for qualities of colonialism and apartheid one must first consider the wider framework of law in the OPT, including applicable international law and Israeli law. This framework is structured by three basic legal facts. First, the Palestinian people has the right to self-determination, with all the attendant consequences this entails under the relevant principles and instruments of international law. Second, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip remain under belligerent occupation. Israel?s arguments that the Palestinian territories are not ?occupied? in the sense of international law have been rejected by the international community. Israel does not possess sovereignty in these territories but only a temporary right of administration. As a conse- quence, Israel?s annexation of East Jerusalem has been dismissed as unlawful and is not recognised by the international community. The occupied status of the West Bank was confirmed by the ICJ in the Wall advisory opinion. Israel?s ?disengagement? from the Gaza Strip did not constitute the end of occupation because, despite the redeployment of its military ground forces from Gaza, it retains and exercises effective control over the territory. In all of the occupied Palestinian territories, Palestinians are therefore ?protected persons? under the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention: namely, they are persons who ?find themselves, in the case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals?. Third, the prolonged length of Israel?s occupation has not altered Israel?s obligations as an Occupying Power as set forth in the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Hague Regulations. Israel must therefore abide by the relevant rules of the law of armed conflict in its administration of the territories, as these are supplemented by international human rights law. In the light of this normative framework, Israel?s administration of the OPT systematically breaches the law of armed conflict, both by disregarding the prohibition imposed on an Occupying Power not to alter the laws in force in occupied territory and by enforcing a dual and discriminatory legal regime on Jewish and Palestinian residents of the OPT. Israel grants to Jewish residents of the settlements in the OPT the protections of Israeli domestic law and subjects them to the jurisdiction of Israeli civil courts. Palestinians living in the same territory are ruled under military law and subjected to the jurisdiction of military courts whose procedures violate international standards for the prosecution of justice. As a consequence of this bifurcated system, Jewish residents of the OPT enjoy freedom of movement, civil protections, and services denied to Palestinians, while Palestinians are simultaneously denied the protections accorded to protected persons by international humanitarian law. This dual system has gained the imprimatur of Israel?s High Court and constitutes a policy by the State of Israel to sustain two parallel societies in the OPT, one Jewish and the other Palestinian, and discriminate between these two groups by according them very different rights, protections, and life chances in the same territory. This system has entailed serious violations of the law of armed conflict, but, as this study demonstrates, it also involves violations of the international legal prohibitions of colonialism and apartheid. D. Findings on Colonialism Although international law provides no single decisive definition of colonialism, the terms of the Declaration on Colonialism indicate that a situation may be classified as colonial when the acts of a State have the cumulative outcome that it annexes or otherwise unlawfully retains control over territory and thus aims permanently to deny its indigenous population the exercise of its right to self-determination. Five issues, which are unlawful in themselves, taken together make it evident that Israel?s rule in the OPT has assumed such a colonial character: namely, violating the territorial integrity of occupied territory; depriving the population of occupied territory of the capacity for self-governance; integrating the economy of occupied territory into that of the occupant; breaching the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources in relation to the occupied territory; and denying the population of occupied territory the right freely to express, develop and practice its culture. Israel?s annexation of East Jerusalem is manifestly an act based on colonial intent. It is unlawful in itself, as annexation breaches the principle underpinning the law of occupation: that occupation is only a temporary situation that does not vest sovereignty in the Occupying Power. Annexation also breaches the legal prohibition on the acquisition of territory through the threat or use of force. This prohibition has peremptory status, as it is a corollary of the prohibition on the use of force in international relations enshrined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. Israel?s acquisition of territory in the West Bank also starkly illustrates this intent: the construction of Jewish-only settlements within contiguous blocs of land that Palestinians cannot enter; a connecting road system between the settlements and the settlements and cities within the Green Line, the use of which is denied to Palestinians; and a Wall that separates Jewish and Palestinian populations while also dividing Palestinian communities from each other, with passage between Palestinian areas controlled by Israel. By thus partitioning contiguous blocs of Palestinian areas into cantons, Israel has violated the territorial integrity of the OPT in violation of the Declaration on Colonialism. The physical control exercised over these areas is complemented by the administration that Israel exercises over the OPT, which prevents its protected population from freely exercising political authority over that territory. This determination is unaffected by the conclusion of the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian National Authority and Legislative Council. The devolution of power to these institutions has been only partial, and Israel retains ultimate control. By preventing the free expression of the Palestinian population?s political will, Israel has violated that population?s right to self-determination. The law of self-determination further requires a State in belligerent occupation of foreign territory to keep that territory separate from its own, in order to prevent its annexation, and also to keep their economies separate. Israel has subordinated the economy of the OPT to its own, depriving the population under occupation of the capacity to govern its economic affairs. In particular, the creation of a customs union between Israel and the OPT is a measure of prohibited annexation. By virtue of the structural economic measures it has imposed on the OPT, Israel has violated the Palestinian population?s right of economic self-determination and its duties as an Occupying Power. The economic dimension of self-determination is also expressed in the right of permanent sovereignty over natural resources, which entitles a people to dispose freely of the natural wealth and resources found within the limits of its national jurisdiction. Israel?s settlement policy and the construction of the bypass road network and the Wall have deprived the Palestinian population of the control and development of an estimated 38 percent of West Bank land. It has also implemented a water management and allocation system that favours Israel and Jewish settlers in the OPT to the detriment of the Palestinian population. Not only is this practice contrary to the lawful use of natural resources in time of occupation, which is limited to the needs of the occupying army, but it is also contrary to international water law as the allocation employed is both unjust and inequitable. Moreover, it is significant that the route of the Wall is similar to Israel?s ?red line? that delineates those areas of the West Bank from which Israel can withdraw without relinquishing its control over key water resources that are used to supply Israel and the settlements. Thus, by its treatment of the natural resources of the OPT, Israel has further breached the economic dimension of self-determination, as expressed in the right of permanent sovereignty over natural resources. Finally, self-determination also has a cultural component: a people entitled to exercise the right of self-determination has the right freely to develop and practice its culture. Israeli practices privilege the language and cultural referents of the occupier, while materially hampering the cultural development and expression of the Palestinian population. This last issue renders Israel?s denial of the right to self-determination in the OPT comprehensive. In his report, Professor Dugard suggested that elements of the occupation resembled colonialism. This study demonstrates that the implementation of a colonial policy by Israel has not been piecemeal but is systematic and comprehensive, as the exercise of the Palestinian population?s right to self-determination has been frustrated in all of its principal modes of expression. E. Findings on Apartheid The analysis of apartheid in this study encompasses three distinct issues: (1) the definition of apartheid; (2) the status of the prohibition of apartheid in international law; and (3) whether Israel?s practices in the OPT amount to a breach of that prohibition. Article 3 of ICERD prohibits the practice of apartheid as a particularly egregious form of discrimination, but it does not define the practice with precision. The Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute have developed the prohibition of apartheid in two ways: they criminalise certain apartheid-related acts and further elaborate the definition of apartheid. The Apartheid Convention criminalises ?inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them?. The Rome Statute criminalises inhumane acts committed in the context of, and to maintain, ?an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group.? Both focus on the systematic, institutionalised, and oppressive character of the discrimination involved and the purpose of domination that is entailed. This distinguishes the practice of apartheid from other forms of prohibited discrimination and from other contexts in which the listed crimes arise. The prohibition of apartheid has also assumed the status of customary international law and, further, is established as a peremptory rule of international law (a jus cogens norm) which entails obligations owed to the international community as a whole (obligations erga omnes). In drafting this study, it was necessary to develop a methodology to determine whether an instance of apartheid has developed outside southern Africa. This aspect of the study was organised according to the definition of apartheid contained in Article 2 of the Apartheid Convention, which cites six categories of ?inhuman acts? as comprising the ?crime of apartheid?. This list is intended to be illustrative and inclusive, rather than exhaustive or exclusive. Accordingly, a determination that apartheid exists does not require that all the listed acts are practiced: for example, Article 2(b) regarding the intended ?physical destruction? of a group did not apply generally to apartheid policy in South Africa. Practices not expressly enumerated may also be relevant, as Article 2 mentions ?similar policies and practices ? as practiced in southern Africa?. For the purposes of this study, it was therefore assumed that a positive finding of apartheid need not establish that all practices cited in Article 2 are present, or that those precise practices are present, but rather that ?policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination? combine to form an institutionalised system of racial discrimination that has not only the effect but the purpose of maintaining racial domination by one racial group over the other. Fundamental to the question of apartheid is determining whether the groups involved can be understood as ?racial groups?. This required first examining how racial discrimination is defined in ICERD and the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, which concluded that no scientific or impartial method exists for determining whether any group is a racial group and that the question rests on local perceptions. In the OPT, this study finds that ?Jewish? and ?Palestinian? identities are socially constructed in the OPT as groups distinguished by ancestry or descent as well as nationality, ethnicity, and religion. On this basis, the study concludes that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs can be considered ?racial groups? for the purposes of the definition of apartheid in international law. In examining Israel?s practices under the prism of the Apartheid Convention, this study also recalls the system of apartheid as it was practiced in South Africa because those practices illustrate the concerns and intentions of the drafters of the Apartheid Convention. It must be clear, however, that practices in South Africa are not the test or benchmark for a finding of apartheid elsewhere, as the principal instrument which provides this test lies in the terms of the Apartheid Convention itself. By examining Israel?s practices in the light of Article 2 of the Apartheid Convention, this study concludes that Israel has introduced a system of apartheid in the OPT. In regard to each ?inhuman act? listed in Article 2, the study has found the following: o Article 2(a) regarding the denial of the right to life and liberty of person is satisfied by Israeli measures to repress Palestinian dissent against the occupation and its system of domination. Israel's policies and practices include murder, in the form of extrajudicial killings; torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of detainees; a military court system that falls far short of international standards for fair trial; and arbitrary arrest and detention of Palestinians, including administrative detention imposed without charge or trial and lacking adequate judicial review. All of these practices are discriminatory in that Palestinians are subject to legal systems and courts which apply standards of evidence and procedure that are different from those applied to Jewish settlers living the OPT and that result in harsher penalties for Palestinians. o Article 2(b) regarding ?the deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part? is not satisfied, as Israel?s policies and practices in the OPT are not found to have the intent of causing the physical destruction of the Palestinian people. Policies of collective punishment that entail grave consequences for life and health, such as closures imposed on the Gaza Strip that limit or eliminate Palestinian access to essential health care and medicine, fuel, and adequate nutrition, and Israeli military attacks that inflict high civilian casualties, are serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law but do not meet the threshold required by this provision regarding the OPT as a whole. o Article 2(c) regarding measures calculated to prevent a racial group from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and to prevent the full devel- opment of a group through the denial of basic human rights and freedoms is satisfied on several counts: (i) Restrictions on the Palestinian right to freedom of movement are endemic in the West Bank, stemming from Israel's control of the OPT's checkpoints and crossings, impediments created by the Wall and its crossing points, a matrix of separate roads, and obstructive and all-encompassing permit and ID systems that apply solely to Palestinians. (ii) The right of Palestinians to choose their own place of residence within their territory is severely curtailed by systematic administrative restrictions on Palestinian residency and building in East Jerusalem, by discriminatory legislation that operates to prevent Palestinian spouses from living together on the basis of which part of the OPT they originate from, and by the strictures of the permit and ID systems. (iii) Palestinians are denied their right to leave and return to their country. Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 from the territory now inside Israel who are living in the OPT (approximately 1.8 million people including descendents) are not allowed to return to their former places of residence. Similarly, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced to surrounding states from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 have been prevented from returning to the OPT. Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 to surrounding states (approximately 4.5 million) are not allowed to return to either Israel or the OPT. Palestinian residents of the OPT must obtain Israeli permission to leave the territory. In the Gaza Strip, especially since 2006, this permission is almost completely denied, even for educational or medical purposes. Political activists and human rights defenders are often subject to arbitrary and undefined 'travel bans', while many Palestinians who travelled and lived abroad for business or personal reasons have had their residence IDs revoked and been prohibited from returning. (iv) Israel denies Palestinians in the OPT their right to a nationality by denying Palestinian refugees from inside the Green Line their right of return, residence, and citizenship in the State (Israel) governing the land of their birth. Israel?s policies in the OPT also effectively deny Palestinians their right to a nationality by obstructing the exercise of the Palestinian right to self-determination through the formation of a Palestinian State in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip. (v) Palestinians are restricted in their right to work, through Israeli policies that severely curtail Palestinian agriculture and industry in the OPT, restrict exports and imports, and impose pervasive obstacles to internal movement that impair access to agricultural land and travel for employment and business. Although formerly significant, Palestinian access to work inside Israel has been almost completely cut off in recent years by prevailing closure policies and is now negligible. Palestinian unemployment in the OPT as a whole has reached almost 50 percent. (vi) Palestinian trade unions exist but are not recognised by the Israeli government or by the Histadrut (the main Israeli trade union) and cannot effectively represent Palestinians working for Israeli employers and businesses. Although these workers are required to pay dues to the Histadrut, it does not represent their interests and concerns, and Palestinians have no voice in formulating Histadrut policies. Palestinian unions are also prohibited from functioning in Israeli settlements in the OPT where Palestinians work in construction and other sectors. (vii) The right of Palestinians to education is not impacted directly by Israeli policy, as Israel does not operate the school system in the OPT, but education is severely impeded by military rule. Israeli military actions have included extensive school closures, direct attacks on schools, severe restrictions on movement, and arrests and detention of teachers and students. Israel?s denial of exit permits has prevented hundreds of students in the Gaza Strip from continuing their education abroad. Discrimination in relation to education is striking in East Jerusalem. A segregated school system operates in the West Bank as Palestinians are not allowed to attend government-funded schools in Jewish settlements. (viii) The right of Palestinians to freedom of opinion and expression is greatly restricted through censorship laws enforced by the military authorities and endorsed by the High Court of Justice. Since 2001, the Israeli Government Press Office has greatly limited Palestinian press accreditation. Journalists are regularly restricted from entering the Gaza Strip and Palestinian journalists suffer from patterns of harassment, detention, confiscation of materials, and even killing. (ix) Palestinians? right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association is impeded through military orders. Military legislation bans public gatherings of ten or more persons without a permit from the Israeli military commander. Non-violent demonstrations are regularly suppressed by the Israeli army with live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets, tear gas, improper use of projectiles such as tear gas canisters, and arrests of participants. Most Palestinian political parties have been declared illegal and institutions associated with those parties, such as charities and cultural organisations, are regularly subjected to closure and attack. (x) The prevention of full development in the OPT and participation of Palestinians in political, economic, social and cultural life is most starkly demonstrated by the effects of Israel's ongoing siege and regular large-scale military attacks on the Gaza Strip. Although this is denied by Israel, the population of the Gaza Strip is experiencing an on-going severe humanitarian crisis. o Article 2(d), which relates to division of the population along racial lines, has three elements, two of which are satisfied: (i) Israel has divided the West Bank into reserves or cantons in which residence and entry is determined by each individual?s group identity. Entry by one group into the zone of the other group is prohibited without a permit. The Wall and its infrastructure of gates and permanent checkpoints suggest a policy permanently to divide the West Bank into racial cantons. Israeli government ministries, the World Zionist Organisation and other Jewish-national institutions operating as authorised agencies of the State plan, fund and implement construction of the West Bank settlements and their infrastructure for exclusively Jewish use. (ii) Article 2(d) is not satisfied regarding a prohibition on mixed marriages between Jews and Palestinians. The proscription of civil marriage in Israeli law and the authority of religious courts in matters of marriage and divorce, coupled with restrictions on where Jews and Palestinians can live in the OPT, present major practical obstacles to any potential mixed marriage but do not constitute a formal prohibition. (iii) Israel has extensively appropriated Palestinian land in the OPT for exclusively Jewish use. Private Palestinian land comprises about 30 percent of the land unlawfully appropriated for Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Presently, 38 percent of the West Bank is completely closed to Palestinian use, with significant restrictions on access to much of the rest of it. o Article 2(e) relating to the exploitation of labour is today not significantly satisfied, as Israel has raised barriers to Palestinian employment inside Israel since the 1990s and Palestinian labour is now used extensively only in the construction and services sectors of Jewish-Israeli settlements in the OPT. Otherwise, exploitation of labour has been replaced by practices that fall under Article 2(c) regarding the denial of the right to work. o Arrest, imprisonment, travel bans and the targeting of Palestinian parliamentarians, national political leaders and human rights defenders, as well as the closing down of related organisations by Israel, represent persecution for opposition to the system of Israeli domination in the OPT, within the meaning of Article 2(f). In sum, Israel appears clearly to be implementing and sustaining policies intended to maintain its domination over Palestinians in the OPT and to suppress opposition of any form to those policies. The comparative analyses of South African apartheid practices threaded throughout the analysis of apartheid in this report illuminates, rather than defines, the meaning of apartheid. Certainly differences are evident between apartheid as it was applied in South Africa and Israel?s policies and practices in the OPT. Nonetheless, the two systems can be defined by similar dominant features. A troika of legislation underpinned the South African apartheid regime and established its three principal features or pillars. The first pillar was formally to demarcate the population of South Africa into racial groups through the Population Registration Act (1950) and to accord superior rights, privileges and services to the white racial group: for example, through the Bantu Building Workers Act of 1951, the Bantu Education Act of 1953 and the Separate Amenities Act of 1953. This pillar consolidated earlier discriminatory laws into a pervasive system of institutionalised racial discrimination, which prevented the enjoyment of basic human rights by non-white South Africans based on their racial identity as established by the Population Registration Act. The second pillar was to segregate the population into different geographic areas, which were allocated by law to different racial groups, and restrict passage by members of any group into the area allocated to other groups, thus preventing any contact between groups that might ultimately compromise white supremacy. This strategy was defined by the Group Areas Act of 1950 and the Pass Laws?which included the Native Laws Amendment Act of 1952 and the Natives (Abolition of Passes and Co-ordination of Documents) Act of 1952?as well as the Natives (Urban Areas) Amendment Act 1955, the Bantu (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act 1945 and the Coloured Persons Communal Reserves Act 1961. This separation constituted the basis for the policy labelled ?grand apartheid? by its South African architects, which provided for the establishment of ?Homelands? or ?Bantustans? into which denationalised black South Africans were transferred and forced to reside, in order to allow the white minority to deny them the enjoyment of any political rights in, and preserve white supremacy over, the majority of the territory of South Africa. Although the Homelands were represented by the South African government as offering black South Africans the promise of complete independence in distinct nation-States, and thus satisfying their right to self- determination, the Homelands were not recognised by either the African National Congress or the international community and were condemned by UN resolutions as violations of both South Africa?s territorial integrity and of the right of the African people of South Africa as a whole to self-determination. Having divided the population into distinct racial groups, and dictated which groups could live and move where, South Africa?s apartheid policies were buttressed by a third pillar: a matrix of draconian ?security? laws and policies that were employed to suppress any opposition to the regime and reinforce the system of racial domination, by providing for administrative detention, torture, censorship, banning, and assassination. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 1 14:32:01 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 13:32:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] UK: UCU Congress supports Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel despite legal warning In-Reply-To: <35F76541181742B28F805DA8CE0F7521@twubby.com> Message-ID: <2063378017.6294741243888321422.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.labournet.net/ukunion/0905/bricup1.html UCU Congress supports Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel despite legal warning Report by BRICUP Published: 28/05/09 British Committee for Universities of Palestine 27th May 2009 Boycott campaign ?now reaching critical mass? say activists The University and College Union, representing approximately 120,000 teaching and related staff in colleges and universities in the UK, today passed a number of strongly-worded resolutions in support of the human rights of the Palestinian people and condemning Israeli atrocities in Gaza. The motions had been submitted by a range of bodies within the union. Motion 24, from the National Executive along with two branches in Further Education colleges, condemned the Israeli military attacks on Gaza and called on UCU to affiliate to the national twinning campaign; to organise events to mark the UN International Day of solidarity with the Palestinian People on 29th November; and to collect information on academics and students prevented from travelling to or from Palestine. Motion 25, from the Disabled Members? Standing Committee, pledged solidarity to Palestinians left injured by the Israeli assault in Gaza. Motion 26, from UCU Scotland, agreed to disseminate the report of the President of UCU Scotland, who had recently taken part in the STUC visit to Palestine. That visit had resulted in an endorsement of Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) by STUC Congress. The motion also welcomed the student campaign for disinvestment from arms companies such as BAe. Motion 27, from the Black Members? Standing Committee, called for ?recognition of the democratically elected Gaza government? and for Israel to be tried for human rights violations. All the above motions were carried overwhelmingly, as was Motion 28 from two regional committees of UCU. This motion demanded that the British government ban ?arms sales and economic support to Israel?, called for a ban on imports of all goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the OPT and demanded the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador. Controversially, Congress also voted overwhelmingly for an amendment to this motion which affirmed support ?for the Palestinian call for a boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign? despite a statement from the General Secretary that on legal advice this amendment would be treated as being ?void and of no effect? if carried. Motion 29 was brought by two branches at universities and one at an FE college. Tom Hickey, proposing the motion on behalf of a University of Brighton branch, stated that his branch wished to amend its own motion, changing the words ?Congress affirms support for the Palestinian call for a boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign? to ?Congress urges branches to discuss prior to Congress 2010 the Palestinian call for a boycott, disinvestment and sanctions campaign?. Hickey explained that this change was only being made in order to accommodate the current legal advice and prevent the motion from being ruled ?void? like motion 28. This was accepted by Congress, who voted to support both the amendment and the motion. The outcome is that UCU has voted to host a Trade Union conference in the Autumn to ?investigate the lawful implementation of the strategy, including an option of institutional boycotts?. Sue Blackwell, a BRICUP member who is on the National Executive Committee of UCU, commented, ?This was a smart piece of tactical voting by supporters of academic boycott of Israel and other forms of BDS. We made it quite clear that we support BDS in principle, whatever the law says about implementing it. There is nothing illegal in discussing boycott campaigns, and we will now be doing just that along with activists in other unions, including people from Scottish TUC who have just passed a BDS resolution at their Congress." Hickey suggested in his summing-up speech that the time had come for UCU to obtain a court ruling to settle the question once and for all and to put a stop to the legal threats to which the union has been subjected over the past few years. He expressed his ?extreme disappointment? with members of his own union who resorted to such threats instead of pursuing their arguments through the union?s internal democratic processes. BRICUP members will now be encouraging trade unionists to attend the forthcoming BDS conference in order to broaden the campaign. BRICUP?s fringe meeting before the start of Congress heard speeches from Ewa Jasiewicz (co-ordinator of the Free Gaza Movement), Samia al-Botmeh (BirZeit University, Palestine) and Prof. Haim Bresheeth of the University of East London. At the meeting, a statement was read out from a group of Israeli academics who were calling on international colleagues to boycott their institutions. ?We are now reaching critical mass?, said Blackwell. ?Boycotts, disinvestments and sanctions against Israel are breaking out everywhere, from South Africa to Norway and even within Israel itself. BRICUP is very proud to be playing a part in the growing campaign alongside our Palestinian brothers and sisters and their supporters worldwide.? Dr. Amjad Barham, President of the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, is attending UCU Congress as an official guest of the union. He will address Congress on Thursday. Notes for Editors 1. Please note: while we believe that the motions have been accurately summarised above, this press release represents the views of BRICUP and not of UCU. 2. The full text of all the motions, except for late motions and late amendments, can be read here on the UCU website: www.ucu.org.uk/circ/html/UCU180.html 3. The PACBI (Palestinian BDS campaign) press release is here: www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1017 4.The national Twinning campaign website is at: www.twinningwithpalestine.net/ The Free Gaza Movement website is at: http://www.freegaza.org/ http://www.labournet.net/ukunion/0905/pcspal1.html PCS backs consumer boycott, end arms sales and EU trade agreement - PGFTU address conference Report by Gaynelle Samuel Published: 28/05/09 To: PSC TUAC Dear Colleague, For the first time conference was filmed and two of the edited highlights to be viewed on the PCS website are Fathi Naser and Hana Joma's contributions, which you can see at: http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/pcs_international/ (see "related pages" box on the right hand side of the page. They receive a standing ovation. This was followed directly with international section, with the first motion on Palestine. The usual arguments for and against were voiced but in the end it was approx. 90% in favour of the motion [below]. Regards Gaynelle Samuel Policy Officer to the Deputy General Secretary PCS 160 Falcon Road London SW11 2LN t: 020 7801 2821 m: 07788 117 992 e: gaynelle at pcs.org.uk w: http://www.pcs.org.uk/ International A39 Conference deplores the Israeli military incursion into Gaza in December 2008 and the killing of over a thousand innocent civilians ? around 1,300 Palestinians, including 400 children and thirteen Israelis, including 3 civilians and the 4,000 more injured as a result of three weeks of attacks on Gaza. Trade unionists and other workers in Gaza?s vital public services have found themselves under attack and unable to undertake their jobs. Hospitals and schools have been destroyed or damaged, approximately half a million people are without access to running water, and 75% of Gaza is without electricity. Conference notes that: a) The Israeli Government ignored UN Security Council Resolution 1860 (2009) which called for ?an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.? b) The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, stated that Israeli military may have committed war crimes in Gaza. c) The United Nations Human Rights Council (12/01/2009) Resolution on the Grave Violations of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestine Territory called for an immediate ceasefire and condemned ?the massive violations of Human Rights of the Palestinian people and the systematic destruction of the Palestinian infrastructure.? Conference condemns any racist attacks on Jews and Muslims arising from Islamophobia or anti-Semitic activities ? but recognises that to criticise the actions of the State of Israel is not to be anti-Semitic. Conference is appalled that Israel?s blockade of Gaza has now continued for over eighteen months preventing vital supplies from reaching the people of Gaza and is still continuing despite the destruction of large numbers of homes, work places and agricultural crops. Conference noting that the International Committee of the Red Cross has accused Israel of failing to honour its obligation under international law to treat and evacuate injured civilians in Gaza, believes that the Israeli Government has acted and is acting in contravention of the IV Geneva Convention by imposing collective punishment on the people of Gaza. We agree that Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves against such aggression, but do not support the indiscriminate firing of missiles into Israeli territory. Conference condemns the statement of the Histadrut (the Israeli TUC) of 13th January 2009 which expressed support for the Israeli army attack on Gaza in a manner which was in accord with the position of the Government of Israel. Essential to the long-term solution for peace in the Middle East is organised workers resistance to war and terror and PCS pledges to continue to build links with both Palestinian and Israeli workers organisations on the ground, stressing the need to take collective action and recognise their common interests to build unity and peace. Conference welcomes the NEC statement following the invasion of Gaza. Conference therefore instructs the NEC to: ? Reaffirm existing union policy in support of the Palestinian people?s right to self determination with two independent states ? Israel and Palestine, an end to the illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, for the right of return of Palestinian refugees and for the immediate dismantling of the Apartheid Wall. ? Demand an end to Israel?s military attacks and to lift its siege of Gaza. ? Demand that the British government unequivocally condemns the Israeli military aggression and ends arms sales to Israel noting the sale of more than ?18.8 million worth of British arms to Israel in 2008, up from ?7.5 million in 2007. ? Call for the immediate suspension of the EU-Israel Agreement providing preferential trade facilities to Israel. ? Call on the TUC to condemn the Histadrut statement and to raise this matter in the appropriate national and international forums of the trade union movement to put pressure on them to withdraw this statement. ? Encourage our members to boycott goods, and especially agricultural produce, produced in the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. ? Campaign for the British trade union movement to support calls for a consumer boycott of Israeli goods from Palestinian trade union and civil organisations. ? Encourage branches to affiliate to and support activities of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and other relevant organisations to which PCS is affiliated that have local and regional groups. (covers E308-E326) NEC CLG Headquarters Make your vote count - make public services matter, stop the far right. European and local elections will be held on 4 June 2009. Make sure you are registered to vote and/or apply for a postal vote at www.aboutmyvote.com Spread the word - tell colleagues, family and friends More information at www.pcs.org.uk/myvc From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 1 14:34:32 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 13:34:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] We want Al Jazeera English! In-Reply-To: <3E2F47FE4E1D459DB5A256F505C69D4D@theresed8cc9e5> Message-ID: <1695278023.6296231243888472151.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> : Canada needs Al Jazeera! Broadcast Diversity We want Al Jazeera English! Al Jazeera English is being considered for airing in Canada by the CRTC, the federal broadcast regulator. Tell the CRTC to give its approval to list AJE as an "eligible" service so that Canadian cable and satellite companies can carry it. The CRTC has begun a 30-day consultation period when Canadians are being asked whether AJE should be allowed in Canada. Comments must be received by the CRTC no later than Monday , June 8. Al Jazeera English is renowned for its high journalistic standards; for its fearless, unembedded reporting, including in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; for giving a global voice to the South; for speaking truth to power; and for its diversity of voices from around the world. Tell the CRTC that you want to see Al Jazeera English in Canada. Send a letter to the following decision maker(s): CRTC Commissioners Below is the sample letter: Subject: Canada needs Al Jazeera! Dear [decision maker name automatically inserted here], I urge you to approve Al Jazeera English's application to broadcast in Canada. Canadians live in one of the world's most multicultural and diverse countries. It is important for Canadians to be able to get the diversity of perspectives AJE offers in its unique mix of international news, current affairs and documentaries. Al Jazeera English has 69 bureaus and already broadcasts in more than 100 countries. AJE has more than 1,200 highly experienced staff from nearly 50 nationalities including more than 45 ethnicities, making Al Jazeera English's newsroom the most diverse in the world. AJE offers balanced news coverage and has been widely credited for giving a global voice to the South. The Canadian audience is internationally minded and in this globalized age, people want news from all corners of the Earth. Al Jazeera English will open a Canadian news bureau if it is permitted to broadcast in Canada. This will make AJE the only international broadcas ter located in Canada making Canadian stories available to the world. Al Jazeera English is acclaimed for its diversity and quality in journalism. Canadians' communication rights, including the right to receive and impart information regardless of frontiers (Article 19 of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights), demand that the award-winning Al Jazeera English be approved for broadcasting in Canada. Thank you. Sincerely, Wendy Menghi cc: Campaign for Democratic Media Ethnic Channels Group Take Action! Instructions: Click here to take action on this issue Tell-A-Friend: Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this. Tell-a-Friend! What's At Stake: Al Jazeera English requires CRTC permission to be able to broadcast in Canada. If it wins CRTC approval, AJE will open a Canadian news bureau, making it the only international broadcaster telling our stories to the world. Al Jazeera English is acclaimed for its diversity and quality in journalism. Canadians have the right to receive and impart information regardless of frontiers (Article 19 of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights). Campaign Expiration Date: June 9, 2009 If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for Campaign for Democratic Media . This message was sent to wmenghi at shaw.ca . Visit your subscription management page to modify your email communication preferences or update your personal profile. To stop ALL email from Campaign for Democratic Media, click to remove yourself from our lists (or reply via email with "remove or unsubscribe" in the subject line). From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 1 14:54:31 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 13:54:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Prop. 13 and California's insolvency In-Reply-To: <913087910.6302761243889330611.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <733193930.6305191243889671375.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Washington Post May. 29, 2009 - | Page 15A Prop. 13 opened state's road to insolvency By Harold Meyerson To understand why the woes of California's economy threaten the nation's economy, we must understand the state's road to insolvency. The Age of Reagan did not commence with the Great Communicator's inauguration in 1981. For its real beginning, we need to go back to June 1978, when Californians went to the polls and enacted Proposition 13. By passing Howard Jarvis' malign initiative,California voters reduced the Golden State to baser metal. Under Republican Gov. Earl Warren and Democratic Gov. Pat Brown,California epitomized the postwar American dream. Its public schools, from kindergarten through Berkeley and UCLA, were the nation's finest; its roads and aqueducts the most efficient at moving cars and water ? the state's lifeblood ? to their destinations. All this was funded by some of the nation's highest taxes, which fell in good measure on the state's flourishing banks and corporations. Amid the inflation of the late 1970s, however, the California model began to crumple. As incomes and property values rose, Sacramento's tax revenue soared ? but the parsimonious Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, neither spent those funds nor rebated them. With the state sitting on a $5 billion surplus, frustrated Californians grumped to the polls and passed Proposition 13, which rolled back and limited property taxes ? effectively destroying the funding base of local governments and school districts, which thereafter depended largely on Sacramento for their revenue. Ranked fifth among the states in per-pupil spending during the 1950s and '60s,California sank to Mississippi-like levels ? the mid-40s in rank ? by the 1990s. Since 1978, state and local government in California has been funded more by taxes on personal income and sales. Bank and corporation taxes have been steadily reduced. In the current recession, with state unemployment at 11 percent, tax revenue has fallen off a cliff. But the problem with Proposition 13 wasn't merely that it reduced revenue. It also made it very difficult to increase revenue. Raising taxes now requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, though in 47 other states, a simple majority suffices. California has become overwhelmingly Democratic in the past two decades, but Republicans have managed to retain footholds ? representing just over one-third of the districts ? in both houses of the Legislature. The conservative backlash of 1978 also swept into the Legislature a proto-Reaganistic generation of Republicans, later dubbed "the Cavemen." Compared with today's GOP state legislators, though, the Cavemen look like Diderot's Encyclopedists. The current Republican crop has refused in good times as well as bad to raise business or other taxes. (Increasing the tobacco tax, for instance, has failed each of the past 14 times it has come up for a vote.) Abetted by little local Limbaughs who inflame Republican brains, they protest that the state already has the nation's highest taxes. In fact, California ranks 18th among the states in percentage of personal income paid to state government, and its presumably beleaguered wealthiest 1 percent, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, pay just 7.4 percent of their income to the state while the poorest pay 10.2 percent. But the myth of soak-the-rich high taxation persists among Republicans ?so much so that the GOP front-runner to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger in next year's gubernatorial election, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, is calling for cuts in business tax rates, even though the state is staring at a $24.3 billion deficit that it somehow has to close. In short order, unless the federal government steps in with a bridge loan, the state will throw 940,000 poor children off its health-care rolls and lay off tens of thousands of teachers. Because California is so much larger than any other state, and its unemployment rate is among the nation's highest, the collapse of its capacity to spend will counteract some of the effect of the federal stimulus and retard the nation's recovery ? much as its aerospace slump retarded the recovery of the mid-1990s. The Obama administration ignores California's plight at its own ? and the nation's ? peril. The nation's banks are stuck with so much bad paper from California mortgages gone awry that a huge contraction in state spending would make their assets even more toxic. In the short term, the only way to avoid a further downturn may be a federal loan to the state. A more permanent, homegrown solution to California's woes (and it may take a state constitutional convention to get it) would require the state to eliminate the two-thirds threshold for enacting taxes, to repeal Proposition 13's freeze on the value of commercial properties (some of which are still assessed at their 1978 levels) and to end the process of ballot-box budgeting through the initiative process, which is now more dominated by monied interests than the Legislature ever was. In Washington, the Age of Reagan may have shuddered to an inglorious end, but we also need action from state governments ? and Sacramento in particular ? to move us toward a more sustainable economic future. Harold Meyerson is editor-at-large of American Prospect and the L.A. Weekly. This article originally appeared in the Washington Post. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 1 15:16:06 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 2009 14:16:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] After Iraq, it's not just North Korea that wants a bomb In-Reply-To: <1110057947.6312291243890420453.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1062421883.6317231243890966894.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/27/north-korea-nuclear-weapons-us The Guardian 27 May 2009 After Iraq, it's not just North Korea that wants a bomb The nuclear weapons states are the main drivers of proliferation. Only radical disarmament can halt their spread. ?By Seumas Milne The big power denunciation of North Korea's nuclear weapons test on Monday could not have been more sweeping. Barack Obama called the Hiroshima-scale ?underground explosion a "blatant violation of international law", and pledged to "stand up" to North ?Korea - as if it were a military giant of the Pacific - while Korea's former imperial master Japan branded the bomb a "clear crime", and even its long-suffering ally China declared itself "resolutely opposed" to what had taken place. The protests were met with ?further North Korean missile tests, as UN ?security council members plotted tighter sanctions and South Korea signed up to a US programme to intercept ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction. Pyongyang had already said it would regard such a move as an act of war. So yesterday, nearly 60 years after the conflagration that made a charnel house of the Korean peninsula, North Korea said it was no longer bound by the armistice that ended it and warned that any attempt to search or seize its vessels would be met with a "powerful military strike". The hope must be that rhetorical inflation on both sides proves to be largely bluster, as in previous confrontations. Even the US doesn't believe North Korea poses any threat of aggression against the south, home to nearly 30,000 American troops and covered by its nuclear umbrella. But the idea, much canvassed in recent days, that there is something irrational in North Korea's attempt to acquire nuclear weapons is clearly absurd. This is, after all, a state that has been targeted for regime change by the US ever since the end of the cold war, included as one of the select group of three in George Bush's axis of evil in 2002, and whose Clinton administration guarantee of "no hostile intent" was explicitly withdrawn by his successor. In April 2003, North Korea drew the obvious conclusion from the US and British aggression against Iraq. The war showed, it commented at the time, "that to allow disarmament through inspections does not help avert a war, but rather sparks it". Only "a tremendous military deterrent force", it stated with unavoidable logic, could prevent attacks on states the world's only superpower was determined to bring to heel. The lesson could not be clearer. Of Bush's "axis" states, Iraq, which had no weapons of mass destruction, was invaded and occupied; North Korea, which already had some nuclear capacity, was left untouched and is most unlikely to be attacked in future; while Iran, which has yet to develop a nuclear capability, is still threatened with aggression by both the US and Israel. Of course, the Obama administration is a different kettle of fish from its ?predecessor; it had earlier floated renewed dialogue with North Korea and has made welcome noises about nuclear disarmament. Whether such talk was ever going to impress the cash-strapped dynastic autocracy in Pyongyang - which had had its fill of broken US commitments and the new belligerence from its southern neighbour - seems doubtful. In any case, having gone so far, it was surely inevitable the regime would want to rerun its half-cocked 2006 test to demonstrate its now unquestioned nuclear power status. Yet not only has America's heightened enthusiasm for invading other countries since the early 1990s created a powerful incentive for states in its firing line to acquire nuclear weapons for their own security. But all the main nuclear weapons states have, by their persistent failure to move towards serious disarmament, become the single greatest driver of nuclear proliferation. It's not just the breathtaking hypocrisy that underpins every western pronouncement about the "threat to world peace" posed by the "illegal weapons" of the johnny-come-latelys to the nuclear club. Or the double standards that underpin the nuclear indulgence of Israel, India and Pakistan - now increasing its stock of nuclear weapons, even as the country is rocked by civil war - while Iran and North Korea are sanctioned and embargoed for "breaking the rules". It's that the obligation of the nuclear weapons states under the non-proliferation treaty - and the only justification of their privileged status - is to negotiate "complete disarmament". Yet far from doing any such thing, both the US and Britain are investing in a new generation of nuclear weapons. Even the latest plans to agree new cuts in the US and Russian strategic arsenals would leave the two former superpower rivals in control of ?thousands of warheads, enough to wipe each other out, let alone the smaller fry of global conflict. So why North Korea, no longer even a signatory to the treaty and ?therefore not bound by its rules, or any other state seeking nuclear protection, should treat them as a reason to disarm is a mystery. Obama's dramatic plea for a "world without nuclear weapons" in Prague last month was qualified by the warning that such a goal would "not be reached quickly - perhaps not in my lifetime". But a lifetime is too long if the mass proliferation of nuclear weapons is to be halted. Earlier this month, ?Mohammed ElBaradei, the outgoing director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Guardian that without radical disarmament by the major powers, the number of nuclear weapons states would double in a few years, as "virtual weapons states" acquire the capability, but stopped just short of assembling a weapon, to "buy insurance against attack". This is what Iran is widely assumed to be doing, despite its denial of any interest in acquiring nuclear weapons. And the evidence is now growing that the US administration is heading towards harsher sanctions against Tehran rather than genuine negotiation, as two former US national security council staffers, Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, argued in the New York Times at the weekend. That was also the message Hillary Clinton sent to North Korea last month when she said talks with the regime were "implausible, if not impossible". In fact, they are desirable, if not essential. Obama has set out a positive agenda on the nuclear test ban treaty, arms cuts and control of fissile material. But if, instead of slapping more sanctions on Pyongyang, the US were to push for far broader negotiations aimed at achieving the long-overdue reunification of Korea, its denuclearisation and the withdrawal of all foreign troops - now that would be a historic contribution to peace. From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Jun 1 18:12:36 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:12:36 +1000 Subject: [R-G] =?windows-1252?q?What=92s_wrong_with_a_30-hour_work_week=3F?= =?windows-1252?q?_=7C_Links?= Message-ID: <4A246E74.1060401@greenleft.org.au> By *Don Fitz* May 30, 2009 -- With millions of jobs lost during the first part of 2009, who is calling for a shorter work week to spread the work around? Not the Republicans. Not even the Democrats. But why is there nary a peep from unions? In the US, the vehicle industry sets the pace for organised labour. The only discussion at the top levels of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) is how quickly the gains won during the last 50 years can be given back. Does the UAW have no memory of the 1930s and 1940s when a shorter work week was at centre of organising demands? Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1077 Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Jun 1 20:13:46 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:13:46 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Maybe We Should Take The North Koreans At Their Word Message-ID: <4A248ADA.3080905@ashisuto.co.jp> by Tad Daley Tikkun Magazine (May 28 2009) Editor's introduction It is hard to know how to react to the pious lecturing of the US media and government to North Korea. The US has thousands of nukes and has them positioned all around the world to enforce the will of the American empire. The US is the only country on earth that has ever used nuclear weapons in war. What exactly gives the US the moral right to be lecturing North Korea or even Iran on who should or should not have nuclear weapons - except our chutzpah and our military power? But why does the media also continually speak in this same language of offended righteousness, when it is the US, not North Korea, which has just caused the deaths of over a million Asians in Iraq, the displacement into refugee status of another three million, and many more who have been wounded? This is not to say that anyone at Tikkun or the NSP has the slightest sympathy for the regimes in North Korea or Iran - but neither do we have much sympathy for other regimes like those in Pakistan or Russia or Israel that have nuclear weapons already. Perhaps we might be more effective in preventing proliferation of these weapons were we to try the Strategy of Generosity instead of the strategy of domination. And yes, it is the strategy of domination if the US agrees to negotiations, but meanwhile proclaims 'we will not take ANY OPTION off the table' meaning we may use our own nuclear power to back up an assault on other countries if our negotiations don't give us what we are asking for! We've tried the domination strategy with Bush, and it didn't work. How about trying the Global Marshall Plan and the Generosity Strategy? - The Editor of Tikkun Maybe We Should Take The North Koreans At Their Word Pyongyang has consistently said that its nuclear weapons are intended to deter aggression. And, indeed, they do. by Tad Daley Shortly after North Korea exploded its second nuclear device in three years on Monday morning, it released a statement explaining why. "The republic has conducted another underground nuclear testing successfully in order to strengthen our defensive nuclear deterrence". {1} If the Obama Administration hopes to dissuade Pyongyang from the nuclear course it seems so hell bent on pursuing, Washington must understand just how adroitly nuclear arms do appear to serve North Korea's national security. In other words, perhaps we should recognize that they mean what they say. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Jun 2 05:40:57 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:40:57 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Entry for the President's Brainstorm Page Message-ID: <4A250FC9.9070100@ashisuto.co.jp> Take Back the Power to Create Money from the Private Banking Industry by Ellen Brown webofdebt.wordpress.com (May 28 2009) Today was the last day to submit entries to the President's Open Government Brainstorm page. I submitted the one below. The website has a place to vote ("Looks Promising!" "Not So Sure".) If you feel like voting, the link is here: http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/3648-4049 The Constitution states, "Congress shall have the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof". This power has been abdicated to private bankers. Today, 99.99% of our money is created by private banks when they make loans. This includes the Federal Reserve, a private banking corporation, which orders Federal Reserve Notes to be printed, and then lends them to the US government. Only coins are actually created by the government itself. Coins compose only about 1-10,000th of the M3 money supply, and Federal Reserve Notes compose about three percent of it. All of the rest is created by banks as loans, something they do by simply writing numbers into accounts. Congress could take back the power to create the national money supply by: (a) Nationalizing the Federal Reserve. (b) Reviving the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a government-owned lending facility used by Roosevelt to fund the New Deal. Rather than merely recycling borrowed money as Roosevelt did, however, the RFC could actually create credit on its books, in the same way that banks do it today, by fanning its capital base into many times that sum in loans. Assuming $300 billion is left of the TARP money approved by Congress last fall, this money could be deposited into the RFC and leveraged into $3 trillion in loans. That's based on a ten percent reserve requirement. If the money were counted as capital, at an eight percent capital requirement it could be leveraged into 12.5 times the original sum. That would be enough to fund not only President Obama's stimulus package but many other programs that are desperately short of funding now. Many references are available which will be furnished on request. See generally www.webofdebt.com/articles. http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/take-back-the-power-to-create-money-from-the-private-banking-industry/ 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 suzannedk at gmail.com Tue Jun 2 09:23:18 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 17:23:18 +0200 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Entry for the President's Brainstorm Page In-Reply-To: <4A250FC9.9070100@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <4A250FC9.9070100@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: Nothing was clear as to how to vote for anything. Lots of comments when searching for the vote ability. Never found. Transparent choices please. suzannedk at gmail.com On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 1:40 PM, Bill Totten wrote: > > Take Back the Power to Create Money from the Private Banking Industry > > by Ellen Brown > > webofdebt.wordpress.com (May 28 2009) > > Today was the last day to submit entries to the President's Open > Government Brainstorm page. I submitted the one below. The website has a > place to vote ("Looks Promising!" "Not So Sure".) If you feel like > voting, the link is here: http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/3648-4049 > > > The Constitution states, "Congress shall have the power to coin money > and regulate the value thereof". This power has been abdicated to > private bankers. Today, 99.99% of our money is created by private banks > when they make loans. This includes the Federal Reserve, a private > banking corporation, which orders Federal Reserve Notes to be printed, > and then lends them to the US government. Only coins are actually > created by the government itself. Coins compose only about 1-10,000th of > the M3 money supply, and Federal Reserve Notes compose about three > percent of it. All of the rest is created by banks as loans, something > they do by simply writing numbers into accounts. > > Congress could take back the power to create the national money supply by: > > (a) Nationalizing the Federal Reserve. > > (b) Reviving the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a government-owned > lending facility used by Roosevelt to fund the New Deal. Rather than > merely recycling borrowed money as Roosevelt did, however, the RFC could > actually create credit on its books, in the same way that banks do it > today, by fanning its capital base into many times that sum in loans. > Assuming $300 billion is left of the TARP money approved by Congress > last fall, this money could be deposited into the RFC and leveraged into > $3 trillion in loans. That's based on a ten percent reserve requirement. > If the money were counted as capital, at an eight percent capital > requirement it could be leveraged into 12.5 times the original sum. That > would be enough to fund not only President Obama's stimulus package but > many other programs that are desperately short of funding now. > > Many references are available which will be furnished on request. See > generally www.webofdebt.com/articles. > > > http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/take-back-the-power-to-create-money-from-the-private-banking-industry/ > > 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 fentona at shaw.ca Tue Jun 2 12:05:17 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 11:05:17 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Police call off blockade of Mohawks at Cornwall Message-ID: <5FF9F92F-3AF7-4C9B-875D-667A79738541@shaw.ca> http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2009/06/02/akwesasne-bridge.html Police call off blockade of Mohawks at Cornwall Canadian border post deemed 'too risky' to reopen Last Updated: Tuesday, June 2, 2009 | 12:19 PM ET Akwesasne Mohawks are once again being allowed to cross the Seaway International Bridge from Cornwall onto their territory, but the Canadian border post remains closed. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) shut down its post on the Mohawk territory that straddles Quebec, Ontario and the U.S. early Monday morning after Mohawk leaders warned they would not tolerate guns in their community. The border guards were scheduled to start carrying 9-mm handguns Monday morning under a new federal policy. Vehicle access to Akwesasne from Cornwall was blocked for 15 hours Monday after police set up a road block at the entrance to the Seaway bridge. However, after a series of negotiations between Mohawk leaders, Akwesasne police and Cornwall police, residents are again allowed to use the bridge. "The opening of the north span is very reassuring for those residents, [because] now they can travel to and from the city of Cornwall, which makes it easier for them to go get groceries and items that they need," said Brendan White of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne. The Canadian border-crossing post in Akwesasne is still closed. Ron Moran, the national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, said Tuesday it's too risky to allow officers to return. Moran said border agents were intimidated by some people in Akwesasne who were wearing scarves on their faces. He said he has no idea when the border will reopen. "I don't think there's any reason to start risking that level of potential injury or loss of life. So, as it stands, it's going to remain closed and that's to the detriment primarily of the people on the Akwesasne reserve. The Mohawks say armed border guards threaten their sovereignty and pose a threat to the community. But the CBSA points out U.S. guards working on the territory have carried guns for decades without any problems. From intnsred at golgotha.net Tue Jun 2 12:11:27 2009 From: intnsred at golgotha.net (Intense Red) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 14:11:27 -0400 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Entry for the President's Brainstorm Page In-Reply-To: References: <4A250FC9.9070100@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: <200906021411.28027.intnsred@golgotha.net> > Nothing was clear as to how to vote for anything. Lots of comments when > searching for the vote ability. Never found. Transparent choices please. (LOL) Transparent choices? What, do you really think they want honest opinions -- or just to go through the motions and let people blow off steam? There was a link, which led you to a page where you could vote up or down, providing you created an account and gave up your e-mail address. -- Fast fact: More than 2 million Americans are in prisons, 500,000 more than in communist China, which has a population of 1.3 billion people. The US leads the world in jailing people yet we still dare to call ourselves the "land of the free." From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 2 12:31:32 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 11:31:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Dignity for All: The Campaign for a Poverty-free Canada In-Reply-To: <1F922F03F6454F5BA0D9007F975FD800@twubby.com> Message-ID: <372686653.6592481243967492943.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Dignity for All: The Campaign for a Poverty-free Canada On Friday May 22 nd at the Canadian Social Forum in Calgary, Canada Without Poverty and Citizens for Public Justice , on behalf of a number of organizations and coalitions, were pleased to announce Dignity for All: The Campaign for a Poverty-free Canada . We were joined in this regard by four individuals who with their voices for dignity for all helped to represent the linguistic and cultural diversity of Canada ? Marvin Fox (Blackfoot); Debbie Frost (English), Claude Champagne (French) and Nicky Liao (Mandarin Chinese). Dignity for All is being waged with strong reference to the idea of poverty as a human rights violation, poverty elimination as a human rights obligation. In this regard the campaign is inspired by Louise Arbour, former Supreme Court of Canada justice and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. On the occasion of International Human Rights Day 2006, Ms. Arbour said that: ?Today, poverty prevails as the gravest human rights challenge in the world. Combating poverty, deprivation and exclusion is not a matter of charity, and it does not depend on how rich a country is. By tackling poverty as a matter of human rights obligation, the world will have a better chance of abolishing this scourge in our lifetime. Poverty eradication is an achievable goal.? Please visit www.dignityforall.ca to add your personal and/or your group?s endorsement of this new pan-Canadian campaign, and to receive or enquire about further information. Please also forward this message to your contacts. Lastly, we thank the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and Public Service Alliance of Canada for providing the initial financial support for Dignity for All ! For a poverty-free Canada, Rob Rainer Executive Director / Directeur executif CANADA WITHOUT POVERTY / CANADA SANS PAUVRET? 1210 - 1 rue Nicholas Street Ottawa, ON K1N 7B7 (613) 789-0096 (1-800-810-1076) rob at cwp-csp.ca www.cwp-csp.ca From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 2 12:29:55 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 11:29:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] (USA) The far-right's violent return In-Reply-To: <4D645A509A0A4FFF93B32ABFB3D74121@twubby.com> Message-ID: <846889845.6591281243967395414.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jun/02/dr-tiller-abortion-murder-extremists The Guardian 2 June 2009 The far-right's violent return The murder of George Tiller is an chilling reminder that the violent extremism of America's far-right hasn't gone away Michelle Goldberg When Barack Obama was elected president last year, pro-choice activists were elated, but there was an undercurrent of anxiety. In the past, the extremist fringe of the anti- abortion movement has responded to political disempowerment with violence . In 1993, not long after Bill Clinton was inaugurated, the United States saw its first murder of an abortion provider, when Dr David Gunn was shot outside his clinic in Pensacola, Florida. Five months later Dr George Tiller was shot in both arms. They kept coming: seven shootings that culminated in the 1998 murder of Dr Barnett Slepian in his suburban kitchen, felled by a sniper as he made soup. Even the bombing of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games turns out to have been motivated by fanatical opposition to abortion. When he was finally sentenced in 2005, perpetrator Eric Rudolph said in a written statement that the attack was meant "to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the word for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand." Then, during the Bush administration, the killings stopped. Many believed this was due to a triumph of law enforcement, but in the reproductive health field, people couldn't help but fear that maybe the violence had been halted because the anti-abortion movement was making progress by other means. That meant it could resurface. After the 2008 election, the National Abortion Federation , an organisation of abortion providers, sent out an alert asking members to be on guard. Clinic staff nationwide talked of beefing up their security. So when Dr Tiller was assassinated in church on Sunday morning, it was a hideous shock, but it was also, in some ways, predicted. This April, a leaked report from the Department of Homeland Security warned about a possible outbreak of right-wing violence. "Paralleling the current national climate, right-wing extremists during the 1990s exploited a variety of social issues and political themes to increase group visibility and recruit new members," the report said, mentioning opposition to gun control, free trade, abortion and same-sex marriage, as well as racial antagonism. Then, as now, there was a Democratic president regarded as illegitimate and amoral by many on the far right. There was economic upheaval and a proliferation of apocalyptic rhetoric about liberal tyranny and the need for patriotic individuals to stand up and take action. Conservatives howled in protest, complaining that the government was demonising their ideology. But the DHS was on to something. Experts who study the far right saw the rhetoric in various extremist movements ratcheting up. Brian Levin , director of the centre for the study of hate and extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, is a former cop who often consults with law enforcement. For the far right, he said, Obama's election signaled that "the country has now become the cesspool that they've been warning about. When people feel so disenfranchised, or an event has taken place that for an extremist is considered so pivotal, it makes sense that we look at what these extremists are saying, because someone is listening." Someone like Tiller's alleged killer, Scott Roeder , who was almost exactly the kind of person the DHS was warning about. His ideology, such as it was, appeared to combine an extreme paranoia about the federal government with an Old Testament fundamentalism and an obsessive focus on abortion. He had connections to the " sovereign citizen " movement, which rejects all government authority above the local level, and, according to Levin, is full of white supremacists. In the 1990s, police found bomb-making materials in Roeder's car, although he was only sentenced to probation, and eventually his conviction was overturned on a technicality. Right now there is no way to know why Roeder, like other similar figures, laid low during the Bush years. But it's chilling how quickly the febrile, frustrated milieu of the Obama-era right produced its first killer. We can pray he'll be the last. But we shouldn't count on it. Michelle Goldberg is the author of The Means of Reproduction : Sex, Power, and the Future of the World, published by Penguin. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 2 12:30:47 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 11:30:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <155451606.6591911243967447192.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.gregpalast.com/grand-theft-auto-how-stevie-the-rat-bankrupted-gm/ June 1, 2009 Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM by Greg Palast Screw the autoworkers. They may be crying about General Motors' bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won't spoil Jamie Dimon's day. Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders ? led by Morgan and Citibank ? expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6 billion. The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal. I smell a rat. Stevie the Rat, to be precise. Steven Rattner, Barack Obama's 'Car Czar' - the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning. When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit: fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what's left. That's the law. What workers don't lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name. But not this time. Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi. Here's the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replace by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM's stock - or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well ... just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock. Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada - $6 billion right now and in cash - from a company that can't pay for auto parts or worker eye exams. Preventive Detention for Pensions So what's wrong with seizing workers' pension fund money in a bankruptcy? The answer, Mr. Obama, Mr. Law Professor, is that it's illegal. In 1974, after a series of scandalous take-downs of pension and retirement funds during the Nixon era, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA says you can't seize workers' pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts. And that's because they are the same thing: workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits. The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no. Company executives must hold these retirement funds as "fiduciaries." Here's the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government's own web site under the heading, "Health Plans and Benefits." "The primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits." Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it's not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank's a little short. A plan's assets are for the plan's members only, not for Mr. Dimon nor Mr. Rubin. Yet, in effect, the Obama Administration is demanding that money for an elderly auto worker's spleen should be siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin can pimp out their ride. This is another "Guantanamo" moment for the Obama Administration - channeling Nixon to endorse the preventive detention of retiree health insurance. Filching GM's pension assets doesn't become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock. Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must "...act prudently and must diversify the plan's investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses." By "diversify" for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company's stock. This is dangerous business: The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds. House of Rubin Pensions are wiped away and two connected banks don't even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren't asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM? As Butch said to Sundance, who ARE these guys? You remember Morgan and Citi. These are the corporate Welfare Queens who've already sucked up over a third of a trillion dollars in aid from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Not coincidentally, Citi, the big winner, has paid over $100 million to Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary. Rubin was Obama's point-man in winning banks' endorsement and campaign donations (by far, his largest source of his corporate funding). With GM's last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan's Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank's "finest year ever." Which leaves us to ask the question: is the forced bankruptcy of GM, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers? And it's been a good year for Se?or Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner's youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler. "Owning" is a loose term. Cerberus "owned" Chrysler the way a cannibal "hosts" you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler - indeed, they were paid billions by Germany's Daimler Corporation to haul it away. Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler's bankrupt corpse on the US taxpayer. ("Cerberus," by the way, named itself after the Roman's mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates Hell. Subtle these guys are not.) While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner's personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars. This is Obama's working class hero. If you ran a business and played fast and loose with your workers' funds, you could land in prison. Stevie the Rat's plan is nothing less than Grand Theft Auto Pension. It doesn't make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car. ****** Economist and journalist Greg Palast, a former trade union contract negotiator, is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse. He is a GM bondholder and card-carrying member of United Automobile Workers Local 1981. Palast's latest reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now! are collected on the newly released DVD , "Palast Investigates: from 8-Mile to the Amazon - on the trail of the financial marauders." Watch the trailer here . From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 2 13:25:46 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 12:25:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Israel could learn from Sorry Day In-Reply-To: <619514480.6271971243885115230.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1168153105.6620641243970746064.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/israel-could-learn-from-sorry-day-20090528-boxg.html?page=-1 The Age May 29, 2009 Israel could learn from Sorry Day The Israeli attempt to require Palestinians to swear allegiance to Israel as "the state of the Jewish people" is comparable to threatening Australian Aborigines with forfeiting Australian citizenship unless they swear allegian to "White Australia". Yakov Rabkin THE Sorry Day marks an important change in public and official attitudes to the indigenous population in Australia. Years of activism have finally borne fruit. On a visit to the Australian Museum in Sydney I learned about an anti-discrimination bus ride to the north organised by Charles Perkins, an Aborigine, and Jim Spigelman, a Jew. There was a picture and a biography of Perkins in the museum but nothing, except the name, about Spigelman. Nor could museum staff tell me who he was. A Google search revealed he has become the Chief Justice and Lieutenant-Governor of NSW. This fact alone represents for me, a visitor from Canada, the acceptance and respect that struggle for equality has gained in Australia. It also confirms that Jews have taken active part in this kind of struggle all over the world, working for desegregation in the US or opposing apartheid in South Africa. They do so fighting for the rights of others while they themselves could have stayed in the comfort of their homes, quietly enjoying these rights that are no longer denied to them. This activism reflects the values of social justice that permeate the Jewish tradition. I was not surprised when, on a recent visit to the Koorie Heritage Trust in Melbourne, I was told that the main private supporter of the centre is a Jew. The Hebrew Bible mentions the prohibition to oppress a stranger 36 times, more than any other injunction, and often adds, "because you were slaves in the land of Egypt". On Sorry Day 2009, I shared the podium with Henry Reynolds, eminent scholar of Australia's colonial history, in a one-day symposium about the Promised Lands, organised at La Trobe University. There are interesting similarities between the British images of this country and the Zionist perceptions of Palestine during the respective periods of active colonisation. These similarities contrast with striking differences that characterise today's attitudes to this recent history in Australia and Israel. While this country, by instituting the Sorry Day, has acknowledged the many injustices inflicted on local inhabitants, the state of Israel and its society continue to deny any wrongdoing with respect to the Palestinians. Moreover, while Australians commemorated Sorry Day 2009, the Israeli parliament was debating a bill, proposed by the party of Israel's Foreign Minister, that would make it punishable by three years in prison to commemorate Nakba, the dispossession and expulsion of the local population that lie at the root of the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The proposed bill would also oblige those Palestinians who remained in their country and are now citizens of Israel to swear allegiance to the state of Israel as "the state of the Jewish people". This would compare with threatening the Aborigines with forfeiting Australian citizenship unless they recognised the principle of "White Australia". Israel's treatment of the country's Arab citizens has embarrassed Jews in Israel and other countries for many decades. Since Israel promotes itself as the representative of the Jews, and most Jewish leaders enthusiastically support this claim, the state of Israel is often associated with Jews everywhere. Some Jews outside Israel are thus put in a difficult situation of defending the morally indefensible, of bending their ethical standards to justify Israel's actions. Conceptual disparities between Israel and the Jewish communities around the world become more pronounced since the countries with sizeable Jewish communities have all adopted a liberal system of social and political values. It is quite common in Israel to talk in anti-liberal, anti-democratic terms; for example, there are open discussions about building Jewish neighbourhoods so Arab citizens do not outnumber their Jewish compatriots in Jerusalem or Galilee. Israeli official documents routinely identify the bearer as a Jew or a non-Jew. The principle of separate development of Jews is deeply ingrained in the Zionist structure of Israel. So is occupational discrimination, all of which is justified by the denomination of Israel as a state for the Jews. However, in the context of Western societies it would be inconceivable to practise ethnic or religious discrimination in such a manner. One could imagine an outcry a project of a public housing development designated solely for white Australians would cause. Israel's discriminatory practices, while often opposed by the country's Supreme Court, conflict with the liberal values that underpin the stability and welfare of Jewish communities around the world. It is only a matter of time before Jewish leaders, at least those who overtly identify with the state of Israel, will face the challenge of explaining their obvious double standard. Unconditional support for any state is a dangerous belief to hold. A few decades after the genocide Jews remember what happens when the raison d'etat becomes a transcendental principle that supersedes individual morality. It may be illusory and even dangerous to confuse the profane centrality of Israel with the sacred centrality of the land. It is also important to realise that the paths of Australia and Israel radically diverge when it comes to recognition of injustices that colonisation has brought to the indigenous population. The fact that there is no Sorry Day in Israel also explains the violence that continues to plague the Holy Land to this day. Yakov Rabkin, professor of history at the University of Montreal, is a visiting scholar at La Trobe University. His recent book is A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 2 13:27:04 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 12:27:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Salvador Option in Iraq In-Reply-To: <1687063797.5408881243553320727.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1263125006.6621161243970824823.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.newstatesman.com/200605080016 The New Statesman 8 May 2006 John Pilger detects the Salvador Option By John Pilger The lifts in the New York Hilton played CNN on a small screen you could not avoid watching. Iraq was top of the news; pronouncements about a "civil war" and "sectarian violence" were repeated incessantly. It was as if the US invasion had never happened and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians by the Americans was a surreal fiction. The Iraqis were mindless Arabs, haunted by religion, ethnic strife and the need to blow themselves up. Unctuous puppet politicians were paraded with no hint that their exercise yard was inside an American fortress. And when you left the lift, this followed you to your room, to the hotel gym, the airport, the next airport and the next country. Such is the power of America's corporate propaganda, which, as Edward Said pointed out in Culture and Imperialism , "penetrates electronically" with its equivalent of a party line. The party line changed the other day. For almost three years it was that al-Qaeda was the driving force behind the "insurgency", led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a bloodthirsty Jordanian who was clearly being groomed for the kind of infamy Saddam Hussein enjoys. It mattered not that al-Zarqawi had never been seen alive and that only a fraction of the "insurgents" followed al-Qaeda. For the Americans, Zarqawi's role was to distract attention from the thing that almost all Iraqis oppose: the brutal Anglo-American occupation of their country. Now that al-Zarqawi has been replaced by "sectarian violence" and "civil war", the big news is the attacks by Sunnis on Shia mosques and bazaars. The real news, which is not reported in the CNN "mainstream", is that the Salvador Option has been invoked in Iraq. This is the campaign of terror by death squads armed and trained by the US, which attack Sunnis and Shias alike. The goal is the incitement of a real civil war and the break-up of Iraq, the original war aim of Bush's administration. The ministry of the interior in Baghdad, which is run by the CIA, directs the principal death squads. Their members are not exclusively Shia, as the myth goes. The most brutal are the Sunni-led Special Police Commandos, headed by former senior officers in Saddam's Ba'ath Party. This unit was formed and trained by CIA "counter-insurgency" experts, including veterans of the CIA's terror operations in central America in the 1980s, notably El Salvador. In his new book, Empire's Workshop (Metropolitan Books), the American historian Greg Grandin describes the Salvador Option thus: "Once in office, [President] Reagan came down hard on central America, in effect letting his administration's most committed militarists set and execute policy. In El Salvador, they provided more than a million dollars a day to fund a lethal counter-insurgency campaign . . . All told, US allies in central America during Reagan's two terms killed over 300,000 people, tortured hundreds of thousands and drove millions into exile." Although the Reagan administration spawned the current Bushites, or "neo-cons", the pattern was set earlier. In Vietnam, death squads trained, armed and directed by the CIA murdered up to 50,000 people in Operation Phoenix. In the mid-1960s in Indonesia CIA officers compiled "death lists" for General Suharto's killing spree during his seizure of power. After the 2003 invasion, it was only a matter of time before this venerable "policy" was applied in Iraq. According to the investigative writer Max Fuller ( National Review Online), the key CIA manager of the interior ministry death squads "cut his teeth in Vietnam before moving on to direct the US military mission in El Salvador". Professor Grandin names another central America veteran whose job now is to "train a ruthless counter-insurgent force made up of ex-Ba'athist thugs". Another, says Fuller, is well-known for his "production of death lists". A secret militia run by the Americans is the Facilities Protection Service, which has been responsible for bombings. "The British and US Special Forces," concludes Fuller, "in conjunction with the [US-created] intelligence services at the Iraqi defence ministry, are fabricating insurgent bombings of Shias." On 16 March, Reuters reported the arrest of an American "security contractor" who was found with weapons and explosives in his car. Last year, two Britons disguised as Arabs were caught with a car full of weapons and explosives; British forces bulldozed the Basra prison to rescue them. The Boston Globe recently reported: "The FBI's counter-terrorism unit has launched a broad investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering that some of the vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the United States, according to senior government officials." As I say, all this has been tried before - just as the preparation of the American public for an atrocious attack on Iran is similar to the WMD fabrications in Iraq. If that attack comes, there will be no warning, no declaration of war, no truth. Imprisoned in the Hilton lift, staring at CNN, my fellow passengers could be excused for not making sense of the Middle East, or Latin America, or anywhere. They are isolated. Nothing is explained. Congress is silent. The Democrats are moribund. And the freest media on earth insult the public every day. As Voltaire put it: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 2 13:27:22 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 12:27:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] MoD admits use of controversial 'enhanced blast' weapons in Afghanistan In-Reply-To: <1460164915.6373181243897427230.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1435987689.6621331243970842199.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/28/british-pilots-afghanistan-thermobaric-weapons The Guardian 28 May 2009 MoD admits use of controversial 'enhanced blast' weapons in Afghanistan Richard Norton-Taylor British pilots in Afghanistan are firing an increasing number of "enhanced blast" thermobaric weapons, designed to kill everyone in buildings they strike, the Ministry of Defence has revealed. Since the start of this year more than 20 of the US-designed missiles, which have what is officially described as a "blast fragmentation warhead", have been fired by pilots of British Apache attack helicopters. A total of 20 were also fired last year after they were bought by the MoD from the Americans last May . The missiles are a variant of the AGM-114N Hellfire missile, described by the Pentagon as "designed to produce higher sustained blast pressure in multi-room structures. It adds: "The enhanced blast from the ? warhead is more effective against non-traditional targets; multi-room structures expected in military operations in urban terrain operations, caves, and fortified bunkers." The missile's warhead is made with a mixture of chemicals rather than a simple blast mechanism. "The thermobaric Hellfire missile can take out the first floor of a building without damaging the floors above, and is capable of reaching around corners," according to Global-Security.org, a US thinktank. It describes the effects of the missile as "formidable". Unlike conventional warheads, it produces a sustained pressure wave. US forces have deployed the missiles in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. Its wider use was disclosed by John Hutton , the defence secretary, in answer to a parliamentary answer from Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman. "Given the MoD's reluctance to admit they were even going to use these weapons, they now seem to be getting rather more trigger-happy," Harvey said yesterday . "If these controversial weapons are being fired on a weekly basis in Afghanistan, we need to know that they are being used according to strict rules of engagement. " Human rights groups have serious concerns about the effect of these weapons in populated areas, and their legality seems to be a grey area. The last thing we need in this counter-insurgency campaign is the allegation that civilians are dying at the hands of some kind of terror weapon. Parliament must be reassured these are a weapon of last resort." A UK defence official told the Guardian that the Hellfire missiles that British Apaches had been initially equipped with were lighter anti-tank weapons. They would simply make a "small hole" in a building and the enemy would run away unscathed, the official said. The new US-designed weapon was "particularly designed to take down structures and kill everyone in the buildings". The official said British pilots' rules of engagement were strict and everything a pilot sees from the cockpit is recorded. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 2 14:44:34 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 13:44:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Proud Hungarians must prepare for war against the Jews In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1165204498.6655471243975474268.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1089550.html Ha?aretz 02/06/2009 'Proud Hungarians must prepare for war against the Jews' By Yehuda Lahav "Given our current situation, anti-Semitism is not just our right, but it is the duty of every Hungarian homeland lover, and we must prepare for armed battle against the Jews." This quote appeared in a newsletter published by an organization calling itself "The trade union of Hungarian police officers prepared for action". Hungarian law allows police officers to organize in trade unions of their own. The union - by its own definition - aims to protect the professional interests of those unionized, and not to partake in political activity. However, the law does not prevent the union from distributing a newsletter, the content of which is at the discretion of its editor, and its editor alone. The editor of the "prepared for action" union, Judit Szima (who also serves as the secretary-general of the union) didn't see anything wrong with the content of the article quoted above. It is little wonder, given the fact that the union has signed a cooperation agreement with the radical right wing Hungarian party "Jobbik" (Movement for better Hungary) which backs and operates the extremist paramilitary movement "Hungarian Guard" and warns against the "gypsy crime" - in effect trying to terrorize Hungary's gypsy community, as well as its Jewish community or anyone else they don't like. Szima is the Jobbik candidate in the upcoming election for the European Union parliament, to be held June 7. She has been removed from her post in the police force ahead of the election, but continues to serve as the union's secretary general. The author of the article, which focuses on the duty of every Hungarian patriot to adopt anti-Semitism, did not stop at one. The following issue of the newsletter included another of his articles, in which he argued "I am in favor of peaceful solutions. But a peaceful solution could only be implemented if our Zionist government were to relocate to Tel Aviv, as it is them who are calling for war." "A crumbling country, torn apart by Hungarian-Gypsy civil war, could easily be claimed by the rich Jews," the article went on to say. "That is why we should expect a Hungarian-Gypsy civil war, fomented by Jews as they rub their hands together with pleasure." This article elicited an official complaint filed with the prosecution, arguing that it contained incitement against minority groups. The prosecution rejected the complaint, stating that it did not call for violence against Jews or Gypsies, but rather called to defend against these groups' probable attack. The "prepared for action" union affair is a testament to the state of racist incitement and anti-Semitism in Hungary. It has emerged that the union boasts more than 4,000 members, some 10 percent of the total number of police officers in Hungary. It is believed that in Budapest, the capital, the numbers are higher. This is not to say that all the union members harbor the same racist views held by its primary spokespeople and leaders - in most cases members join the union simply to protect their personal rights - but the Hungarian government and justice system can't, or won't, take action to separate the union's lawful protection of policemen's rights and its detestable political activities. For example, after the recent resignation of prime minister Ferenc Gyurcs?ny, one of the candidates for the post was Gyorgy Suranyi, formerly the governor of the Hungarian Central Bank, a brilliant economist, and (unfortunately) a Jew. The extreme right Hungarian Justice and Life party published on the front page of its newsletter a picture of Suranyi's face inside a yellow star of David (reminiscent of the yellow patch from the days of Fascism) with the following caption: "Suranyi is actually the candidate backed by the elderly [Israeli President] Shimon Peres. The takeover deal announced by the Israeli leader has now reached the stage in which a Jewish Hungarian prime minister is required. The deal has been in the works for many months." (The Forum referred to the unfortunate remark made by Peres recently, when he described the success of Israel's economy by saying "we are buying out Manhattan, Poland, Hungary...") One of the two main reasons for the Hungarian authorities' failure in the face of racism and anti-Semitism is the fact that there are many right-wing elements within the government, who secretly or outright support the racist views and refuse to battle their perpetrators seriously. The other reason is that during the regime change of the 90s, the lawmakers viewed freedom of speech and expression as an absolute priority, and to this day don't provide protection to the victims of the misuse of this freedom. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 2 16:45:19 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 15:45:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Obama's supporting the new Graham-Lieberman secrecy law! Message-ID: <280525321.6710391243982719244.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/01/photos/index.html Salon.com Monday June 1, 2009 Obama's support for the new Graham-Lieberman secrecy law What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people? Glenn Greenwald It was one thing when President Obama reversed himself last month by announcing that he would appeal the Second Circuit's ruling that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compelled disclosure of various photographs of detainee abuse sought by the ACLU. Agree or disagree with Obama's decision, at least the basic legal framework of transparency was being respected, since Obama's actions amounted to nothing more than a request that the Supreme Court review whether the mandates of FOIA actually required disclosure in this case. But now -- obviously anticipating that the Government is likely to lose in court again (.pdf) -- Obama wants Congress to change FOIA by retroactively narrowing its disclosure requirements, prevent a legal ruling by the courts , and vest himself with brand new secrecy powers under the law which, just as a factual matter, not even George Bush sought for himself. The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States." As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- with no review possible -- that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure . The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely. The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week. Just imagine if any other country did this. Imagine if a foreign government were accused of systematically torturing and otherwise brutally abusing detainees in its custody for years, and there was ample photographic evidence proving the extent and brutality of the abuse. Further imagine that the country's judiciary -- applying decades-old transparency laws -- ruled that the government was legally required to make that evidence public. But in response, that country's President demanded that those transparency laws be retroactively changed for no reason other than to explicitly empower him to keep the photographic evidence suppressed, and a compliant Congress then immediately passed a new law empowering the President to suppress that evidence. What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people? Read the language of the bill ; it doesn't even hide the fact that its only objective is to empower the President to conceal evidence of war crimes. That this exact scenario is now happening in the U.S. is all the more remarkable given that the President who is demanding these new suppression powers is the same one who repeatedly vowed "to make his administration the most open and transparent in history." After noting the tentative steps Obama has taken to increase transparency, the generally pro-Obama Washington Post Editorial Page today observed : "what makes the administration's support for the photographic records act so regrettable" is that "Mr. Obama runs the risk of taking two steps back in his quest for more open government." What makes all of this even worse is that it is part of a broader trend whereby the Government simply retroactively changes the law whenever it decides it does not want to abide by it. For decades, we had laws in place authorizing citizens to sue their telecommunication carriers if the telecoms allowed government spying on their communications in violation of the law, but when it was revealed that the telecoms did exactly this, the Congress simply changed the law retroactively so that it no longer applied . For decades, we had laws imposing civil and criminal liability on government officials who engaged in or authorized torture, but when it was revealed that our government did that, the Congress just retroactively changed the law to protect the torturers . And now that courts have ruled that our decades-old transparency law compels disclosure of this torture evidence, the Congress is just going to retroactively change the law -- again -- this time to empower the President to suppress that evidence anyway. Other than creating an illusion of transparency and accountability, what's the point of having laws that purport to restrict what the Government can do if political officials just retroactively waive those laws whenever they want? What's the point of having a FOIA law if the Government will simply pass a new law exempting itself from FOIA's mandates any time it loses in court and wants to conceal evidence anyway? And what conceivable rationale is there for limiting the President's new secrecy powers to post-9/11 photographs? Given that anything which reflects poorly on our Government can be said to endanger our troops and American citizens, why stop here? Why not just have a general power of suppression whereby the President can keep any evidence secret as long as his Defense Secretary decrees that its disclosure will "endanger" the troops? The debate over whether there is value in disclosing these specific photographs is entirely misplaced. That isn't how open government works. The burden isn't on citizens to prove that there is value in disclosure. Everything that government does is supposed to be transparent to the public unless there is a compelling reason for secrecy -- and the whole point of FOIA always has been that mere embarrassment, the mere fact that information reflects poorly on our government, isn't a legitimate ground for concealment. That's a critical principle for open government. This new law explicitly guts that principle. It institutionalizes the pernicious notion that secrecy is justified where disclosure would reflect badly on the Government and thus "endanger" American citizens and/or our troops. Combine all of this with the increasingly disturbing spectacle taking place in a California federal court in the Al-Haramain case -- where the Obama DOJ is on the verge of being sanctioned by a federal judge for defying the court's order to make available documents relating to Bush's illegal eavesdropping activities -- and the infatuation with excessive presidential secrecy, the linchpin of government abuse, appears alive and well in the new administration. Is there really anyone who wants to argue that defiance of a federal court's order and enacting a new law authorizing suppression of torture evidence -- the disclosure of which is compelled both by courts and FOIA -- are remotely consistent with anything Obama said he would do, or remotely consistent with what a healthy democratic government would do? -- Glenn Greenwald From intnsred at golgotha.net Tue Jun 2 17:10:02 2009 From: intnsred at golgotha.net (Intense Red) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 19:10:02 -0400 Subject: [R-G] (USA) The far-right's violent return In-Reply-To: <846889845.6591281243967395414.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> References: <846889845.6591281243967395414.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <200906021910.02654.intnsred@golgotha.net> On Tuesday 02 June 2009, Sid Shniad wrote: > The murder of George Tiller is an chilling reminder that the violent > extremism of America's far-right hasn't gone away From a strictly revolutionary standpoint, you've got to admire the right-wing in the US. Since Bush was put out of office, have the neo-cons backed off? Not in the least -- they're still in attack mode and are as uncompromising as ever. And Cheney's antics are playing well and he's successfully rewriting history. The population seems somewhat turned off by the religious right after 8 years of gov't funding and Bush's gospel act. But yet this one nut case goes out and shoots a doctor and it has fired up the anti-abortion movement and caused all of the corporate mass media to "debate" the issue in a "he said, she said" manner -- tons of free publicity with surprisingly little negative commentary. Uncompromising militancy like that has not been seen in the American left since the 1960s. Is it any wonder the American left is an afterthought? It pains me to say, but I predict that the US right-wing will make huge future electoral gains -- militancy on such a scale usually pays off. . Randy -- "My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I'm going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. Is that clear?" -- Singer Paul Robeson addressing the US Congress' House Un-American Activities Committee anti-communist witchhunt in 1956. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Jun 2 20:13:06 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:13:06 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Shattered and Shuttered Message-ID: <4A25DC32.20103@ashisuto.co.jp> Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (2005) www.kunstler.com (June 01 2009) The dollar was up to its armpits in quicksand, and oil prices had crept stealthily into the death-to-airlines range, and if, in the old slogan, what's good for General Motors really is good for the USA, then destiny was dealing a harsh lesson to The Land of the Free - while I made a drive on Thursday (in a Japanese rent-a-car) through the remotest ends of upstate New York State into the province of Ontario, Canada, to see what I could see. What I saw was pretty scary. You get into these far reaches of upstate New York and your senses report that you have entered something like an HP Lovecraft story {1}, where the sun comes up twenty minutes late, and the magnetic poles are not where they're supposed to be, and the few remaining denizens of the towns all have eleven fingers ... Even though I've seen plenty of desolation like it in other parts of the country - the back roads of Ohio, the Mississippi River towns of the upper Midwest, the morbid stretch of blue highway between Memphis and Little Rock - I've never encountered a landscape so shattered by the mere ravages of economic fate. The most striking feature is how all the things once so "modern", all the roadside business enterprises designed along "space age" motifs - the car dealerships with boomerang-shaped signs, the rocket-ship-style food huts, the schools that look like atomic power installations - all teeter now in sublime decrepitude. The reversal of spirit from childlike exuberance of the 1960s to the senile sclerosis of today said everything about where America is at. Much of what existed before the space age is not even there anymore, bulldozed decades ago in our haste to erase pre-drive-in living, as if it branded us a lower life-form than, say, our arch-enemy, the Soviets. I've wondered for many years what Modernism would be like when time finally passed it by, when it was no longer the sole thing it declared itself to be, up-to-date - and there it was smeared all over the landscape like so much road kill. The most horrifying part of the trip was the old city of Watertown, a short hop shy of the Canadian border. Named after the many falls located on the Black River, the city developed early in the 19th century as a manufacturing center. From years of generating industrial wealth, in the early 20th century the city was said to have more millionaires per capita than any other city in the nation. Residents of Watertown built a rich public and private architectural legacy. It is the smallest city to have a park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the celebrated landscape architect who created Central Park in New York City. - Wikipedia {2} All that industry is gone now, apparently, and all that's left of the town's economy is whatever it gets from nearby Fort Drum, the giant US Army installation. Nineteen year old soldiers-in-training are not so impressed by Olmsted parks and the civic embellishments dreamed up by timber magnates, bankers, and the owners of piano factories. The humanity visible on the downtown streets of Watertown looked like extras who wandered away from the latest Road Warrior location shoot - semi-hominid creatures with strange loping gaits, arresting hair-dos, and enough tattoos to qualify them for harpoon duty on Herman Melville's Pequod. You passed by groups of them on the streets and wanted to make sure the car's doors were locked. At the heart of the old town, everything possible had been done to erase the vestiges of pre-automobile living. I suppose this is because the first thing many young army recruits did until fairly recently was buy a car. If having to join the army (because there are so few other jobs) buys you a ticket to The American Dream, then getting a car is the consolation prize - even if you have to make four years of "easy monthly payments" on it. Very little of the town's physical history was left standing, and most of it stood in isolation, devoid of context, awaiting the next parade of the front-end-loaders. What was left of "the action" had shifted to a ghastly franchise strip along the Route 3 connector to I-81. This stretch of highway was clearly where all the money had gone since, say 1976, though mostly to the pavement itself and its heroic furnishings of signage, light poles, multiple turning lanes, and curb cuts. The buildings were little more than packing crates with a few plastic doo-dads stuck on. You had to wonder if all this stuff would ever see another iteration of repair and restoration. I doubt it. Burger King was doing some kind of promotion in its Watertown huts and the marquee in their several parking lots proclaimed - I swear to God - "Ask us about our Angry Burger". WTF? Is the rage of lumpen America so repressed now that it can only be expressed in menu items that turn people into hulking four-hundred-pound monsters? It was, I'm sad to say, a relief to cross the border out of my own country. Once you got off the main highway of Canada, 401, along the north side of Lake Ontario, the landscape presented a disturbing contrast to what you saw on the American side. Unlike the slovenly, failing farms of New York State, the farms of Ontario looked successful and prosperous. The barns did not tilt at weird angles and the roofs were intact. The farm houses were freshly painted and the grounds generally not strewn with the sort of dingy plastic effluvia Americans like to deploy around their dwellings to give the impression of plentitude. You wondered: how did all the IQ points below the Great Lakes somehow migrate over to the Canadian side? Had they invented some kind of quantum spirit vacuum, run perhaps on dark matter, that sucked all the vitality out of their neighbor-to-the-south? (If so, maybe Canada should take over our dreary duties in Central Asia.) All this was occurring against the background of General Motors looming bankruptcy, an epochal moment in US history, like losing a limb or a loved one. The US Government has decided to drive a Chevrolet off the cliff Thelma and Louise style. We were heading there anyway, so why not make the trip in air-conditioned comfort, with plenty of room for all the family members, and on-board video entertainment for the little ones. In fact, it may not be the bankruptcy of GM itself that will amaze and appall the other nations of the world, so much as the US government's pretense that the company can return to health in just a little while and pay back all the money that the citizenry has allowed to be sucked into its black hole of losses. My daddy bought Chevrolets in the 1950s, marvelously crazy-looking machines with winged tail-lights that handled like pontoon boats, broke down after 30,000 miles, and were tossed out every couple of years not on account of their mechanical failures so much as their obvious lack of up-to-the-minute styling. The post-war prosperity dazzled his generation with its democratic cornucopian bonanzas. The innocence of all that is truly lost now. There is a dark sense of things shifting out there now in a major way. The tectonics of history are taking us to a strange place. Maybe Mr Lovecraft had it right. Links: {1} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft {2} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watertown,_New_York _____ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/06/shattered-and-shuttered.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 intnsred at golgotha.net Tue Jun 2 20:34:12 2009 From: intnsred at golgotha.net (Intense Red) Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 22:34:12 -0400 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Shattered and Shuttered In-Reply-To: <4A25DC32.20103@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <4A25DC32.20103@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: <200906022234.12620.intnsred@golgotha.net> On Tuesday 02 June 2009, Bill Totten wrote: > Once you got off the main highway of Canada, 401, along the > north side of Lake Ontario, the landscape presented a disturbing > contrast to what you saw on the American side. Unlike the slovenly, > failing farms of New York State, the farms of Ontario looked successful > and prosperous. ?The barns did not tilt at weird angles and the roofs > were intact. ?The farm houses were freshly painted and ... This is sad. That is the exact same picture I see when I drive from northern NH/VT into Quebec. It is just a dramatic difference when you cross the border. -- Fast fact: Since 1984 the state of California has built 21 new prisons -- and 1 new college. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Jun 3 03:24:42 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:24:42 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt" Message-ID: <4A26415A.2090905@ashisuto.co.jp> Part One by Stephen Lendman Countercurrents.org (May 06 2009) This is the first of several articles on Ellen Brown's superb 2007 book titled "Web of Debt", now updated in a December 2008 third edition. It tells "the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free". Given today's global economic crisis, it's an appropriate time to review it and urge readers to digest the entire work, easily gotten through Amazon or Brown's webofdebt.com site. Her book is a remarkable achievement - in its scope, depth, and importance. In the forward, banker/developer Reed Simpson said: "I have been a banker for most of my career, and I can report that even most bankers (don't know) what goes on behind (top echelon) closed doors ... I am more familiar than most with the issues (Brown covered, and) still found it an eye-opener, a remarkable window into what is really going on ... (Although many banks follow high ethical practices), corruption is also rampant, (especially) in the large money center banks, in one of which I worked." "Credible evidence (reveals) a world (banking) power elite intent on gaining absolute control over the planet and its natural resources, including its subservient human (ones)". Money is their "lifeblood", and "fear (their) weapon". Ill-used, they can "enslave nations and ensure perpetual wars and bondage". Brown exposes the scheme and offers a solution. Debt Bondage What president Andrew Jackson called "a hydra-headed monster ..." entraps entire nations in debt. Financial commentator Hans Schicht listed how: -- by making concentrated wealth invisible; -- "exercising control through leverage(d) mergers, takeovers" or other holdings "annexed to loans"; and -- using a minimum of insider front-men to exercise "tight personal management and control". Powerful bankers want to rule the world by creating and controlling money, the very lifeblood of world economies without which commerce would cease. Professor Henry Liu calls the monetary system a "cruel hoax" in that (except for government issued coins) "there is virtually no 'real' money in the system, only debts" - to bankers "for money they created with accounting entries ... all done by a sleight of hand", only possible because governments empowered them to do it. The solution is simple but untaken. As the Constitution mandates, money-creation power must "be returned to the government and the people it represents". Imagine the possibilities: -- the federal debt could be eliminated, at least a more manageable amount before it mushroomed to stratospheric levels; -- federal income taxes could as well; entirely for low and middle income people and at least substantially overall; -- "social programs could be expanded ... without sparking runaway inflation"; and -- financial resources would be available to grow the nation economically and produce stable prosperity. It's not pie-in-the-sky. It happened successfully under Abraham Lincoln and early colonists. More on that below. Brown's book explains that: -- the Federal Reserve isn't federal; it's a private banking cartel owned by its major bank members in twelve Fed districts; -- except for coins, they "create" money called Federal Reserve notes, in violation of the Constitution under Article I, Section 8 that gives Congress alone the right "To coin (create) money (and) regulate the value thereof ..."; -- "tangible currency (coins and paper money comprise) less than three percent of the US money supply"; the rest is in computer entries for loans; -- money that banks lend is "new money" that didn't exist before; -- thirty percent of bank-created money "is invested for their own accounts"; -- banks once made productive loans for industrial development; today they're "a giant betting machine" using countless trillions for high-risk casino-type operations - through devices like derivatives and securitization scams; -- since Andrew Jackson's presidency (1829 - 1837), the federal debt hasn't been paid, only the interest - to private bankers and other owners of US obligations; -- the 16th Amendment authorized Congress to levy an income tax; it was done "to coerce (the public) to pay interest to the banks on the federal debt"; -- the amount has mushroomed to about $500 billion annually and keeps rising; -- creating money doesn't cause inflation; it's "caused by banks expanding the money supply with loans"; -- developing nations' inflation was caused "by global institutional speculators attacking local currencies and devaluing them on international markets"; -- it could happen in America or anywhere else just as easily; and -- escaping this trap is simple if Washington reclaims its money-issuing power; early colonists did it; so did Lincoln. As long as bankers control our money, we'll remain in a permanent "web of debt" and experience cycles of boom, bust, inflation, deflation, instability and crisis. Yet none of this has to be nor repeated and inevitable bubbles - created by design, not chance, to advantage empowered "moneychangers", much like today with its fallout causing global havoc. Prior to the Fed's creation, the House of Morgan was dominant in contrast to the early colonists' model. Operating out of Philadelphia, the nation's first capital, it favored state-issued and loaned out money, collecting the interest, and "return(ing) it to the provincial government" in lieu of taxes. Lincoln used the same system to finance the Civil War, after which he was assassinated and bankers reclaimed their money-issuing power. Wall Street's "silent coup (was) the passage of the (1913) Federal Reserve Act", the most destructive ever congressional legislation, thereafter extracting a huge toll amounting to permanent debt bondage with national wealth transference from the public to private bankers - with most people none the wiser. >From Gold to Federal Reserve Notes After the 1862 Legal Tender Act was rescinded (the so-called Greenback law letting the government issue its own money), new legislation replaced it empowering bankers by making all money again interest-bearing. Here's the problem. "As long as the money supply (is an interest-bearing) debt owed back to private bankers ... the nation's wealth (will) continue to be drained off into private vaults, leaving scarcity in its wake". Dollars should belong to everyone. Early colonists invented them as "a new form of paper currency backed by the 'full faith and credit' of the people". Today, a private banking cartel issues them by "turning debt into money and demanding" due interest be paid. Ever since, it's controlled the nation and public by entrapment in permanent debt bondage, and they do it through the Federal Reserve that's neither federal nor has reserves. It doesn't have money. It creates it with electronic entries, any amount at any time for any purpose, the main one being to enrich its owner banks. This body is a power unto itself, secretive, unaccountable, and independent of congressional oversight or control. It's a money-creating machine by turning debt into money, but only a small fraction of the total money supply. Individual commercial banks create most of it. A 1960s Chicago Fed booklet (called Modern Money Mechanics) explained how - through "fractional reserve" alchemy. It states: (Banks) do not really pay out loans from the money they receive as deposits. If they did this, no additional money would be created. What they do when they make loans is to accept promissory notes in exchange for credits to the borrowers' transaction accounts." Money is created by "building up" deposits in the form of loans. They, in turn, become deposits, not the reverse. "This unique attribute of banking" goes back centuries, the idea being that paper receipts could be issued and loaned out for the same gold (in those days) many times over, so long as enough gold was held in "reserve" so depositors had access to their money. "This sleight of hand (became known) as 'fractional reserve' banking", using money to create multiples more of it. As for credit market debt, William Hummel (on the web site Money: What It Is, How It Works) explains that banks create only about twenty percent of it. The rest is by other non-bank financial institutions, including finance companies, pension and mutual funds, insurance companies, and securities dealers. They "recycle pre-existing funds, either by borrowing at a low interest rate and lending at a higher (one) or by pooling (investor) money and lending it to borrowers". In other words, just like banks, "they borrow low and lend high, pocketing the 'spread' as their profit". But banks do more than borrow. They also "lend the deposits they acquire ... by crediting the borrower's account with a new deposit". Banks thus increase total bank deposits that grow the money supply. It amounts to a sleight of hand like "magically pull(ing) money out of an empty hat". The US "money supply is the federal debt and cannot exist without it. (To) keep money in the system, some major player has to incur substantial debt that never gets paid back; and this role is played by the federal government." It's why the nation's debt can't be repaid under a banker-controlled system. Today's size and debt service compounds the problem, around double the amount Brown cited, growing exponentially to unimaginable levels. Colonial Paper Money - Another Way Predating the Republic's Birth In 1691, three years before the Bank of England's creation, Massachusetts became "the first local government to issue its own paper money ..." in the form of a "bill of credit bond or IOU ... to pay tomorrow on a debt incurred today". This money "was backed by the full 'faith and credit' of the government". Other colonies then did the same, some as IOUs redeemable in gold or silver or as "legal tender" money to be legally accepted to pay debts. Cotton Mather, a famous New England minister, later redefined money - not as gold or silver, but as a credit: "the credit of the whole country". Benjamin Franklin so embraced the "new medium of exchange" that he's called "the father of paper money", then called "scrip". It made the colonies independent of British banks and let them "finance their local governments without" taxation. It was done in two ways, and most colonies used both: -- direct issue "bills of credit" or "treasury notes"; essentially government-backed IOUs to be repaid by future taxes, with no interest owed bankers or foreign lenders; "they were just credits issued and sent into the economy on goods and services"; and -- a system of generating "revenue in the form of interest by taking on the lending functions of banks; a government loan office called a 'land bank' (issued) paper money and (loaned) it to residents (usually farmers) at low interest rates ... the interest paid ... went into the public coffers, funding the government"; it was the preferred way to assure a stable currency rather than by issuing "bills of credit". Pennsylvania did it best. It's 1723-established loan office showed "it was possible for the government to issue new money (in lieu of) taxes without inflating prices". For over 25 years, it collected none at all. The loan office provided adequate revenue, supplemented by liquor import duties. Throughout the period, prices remained stable. Prior to this system, Pennsylvania lost "both business and residents (for) lack of available currency". With it, its population grew and commerce prospered. The "secret was in not issuing too much, and in recycling the money back to the government in the form of principal and interest on government-issued loans". Colony-based British merchants and financiers objected strongly to Parliament. Enough so that in 1751, King George II banned new paper money issuance to force colonists to borrow it from UK bankers. In 1764, Franklin petitioned Parliament to lift the ban. In London, Bank of England directors asked him to explain colonial prosperity at a time Britain experienced rampant unemployment and poverty. It's because Colonial Scrip was issued, he stated, "our own money" with no interest owed to anyone. He added: "You do not have too many workers, you have too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bears the endless burden of unrepayable debt and usury". With banks loaning money into the economy, more was "owed back in principle and interest than was lent in the original loans (so) there was never enough in circulation to pay interest and still keep workers fully employed". Unlike banks, government can both lend and spend money in circulation - enough to pay "interest due on the money it lent, (keep) the money supply in 'proper proportion' and (prevent) the 'impossible contract' problem (of having) more money owed back on loans than was created (from) the loans themselves". Franklin's efforts notwithstanding, the Bank of England got Parliament to pass a Currency Act making it illegal for the colonies to issue their own money. It turned prosperity into poverty because the money supply was halved with not enough to pay for goods and services. According to Franklin: "the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament" got colonists to hate the British enough to spark the Revolutionary War. "The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters (if) England (hadn't taken their money), which created unemployment and dissatisfaction". So much that outraged people again issued their own money in spite of the ban. As a result, they successfully financed a war against a major power - with almost no hard currency and no taxation. Thomas Paine called it the Revolution's "corner stone". However, British bankers responded by attacking its "competitor's currency", the Continental, driving down its value by flooding the colonies with counterfeit scrip. It was "battered but remained stable". Where Britain failed, speculators succeeded - "mostly northeastern bankers, stockbrokers and businessmen, who bought up the revolutionary currency at a fraction of its value after convincing people it would be worthless after the war". It had "to compete with states' paper notes and British bankers' gold and silver coins ... The problem might have been avoided by making the Continental the sole official currency, but the Continental Congress (didn't have) the power to enforce" such an order - with no courts, police or authority to collect taxes "to redeem the notes or contract the money supply". Having just rebelled against British taxation, colonists weren't about to let Congress tax them. Speculators took advantage and traded Continentals at discounts enough to make them worthless and give rise to the expression "not worth a Continental". How the Government Was Persuaded to Borrow Its Own Money John Adams once said: "there are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt". The latter method is stealth enough so people don't know what's happening and submit to their own bondage. Openly, nothing seems changed, yet a whole new system becomes master "in the form of debts and taxes" that people think are for their own good, not tribute to their captors. That's today's America writ large. After the Revolutionary War, "British bankers and their Wall Street vassals" pulled it off by acquiring a controlling interest in the new United States Bank. It discredited paper scrip through rampant Continental counterfeiting and so disillusioned the Founders that they omitted mentioning paper money in the Constitution. Congress was given power to "coin money (and) regulate the value thereof, (and) to borrow money on the credit of the United States ..." It left enough wiggle room for bankers to exploit to their advantage - but only because Congress and the president let them. Alexander Hamilton bears much blame, the nation's first Treasury Secretary and Tim Geithner of his day (1789 - 1795). He argued that America needed a monetary system independent of foreign control, and that required a federal central bank - to handle war debts and create a standard form of currency. In 1791, it was created, hailed at the time as a "brilliant solution to the nation's economic straits, one that disposed of an oppressive national debt, stabilized the economy, funded the government's budget, and created confidence in the new paper dollars ... It got the country up and running, but left the bank largely in private hands" - to be manipulated for private gain, much like today. Worse still, "the government ended up in debt for money it could have generated itself". Instead, it had to pay interest on its own money in lieu of creating it interest free. Today, Hamilton is acclaimed as a model Treasury Secretary. For Jefferson, he was a "diabolical schemer, a British stooge pursuing a political agenda for his own ends". He modeled the Bank of the United States on the Bank of England against which colonists rebelled. It so angered Jefferson that he told Washington he was a traitor. It fostered a bitter feud between them with Jefferson ultimately prevailing. Hamilton's Federalist Party disappeared after 1820 while Jefferson and Madison's Democratic-Republicans became the forerunner of today's Democrats after the party split into two factions, the Whigs no longer in existence and Jacksonians that by 1844 officially became the Democratic Party. Shamefully they veered far from Jacksonian and Jeffersonian principles. For his part, Hamilton wasn't entirely bad. He stabilized the new economy and got the country on its feet. He restored the nation's credit, established a national currency, and made it economically independent. However, his legacy has a dark side - a "privileged class of financial middlemen (henceforth able) to siphon off a perpetual tribute in the form of interest". He delivered money power into private hands, "subservient to an elite class of oligarchical financiers", the same Wall Street types today holding the entire nation hostage - in permanent debt bondage. >From Abundance to Debt Charging excessive interest is called "usury", but originally it meant charging anything for the use of money. The Christian Bible banned it, and the Catholic Church enforced anti-usury laws through the end of the Middle Ages. Old Testament scripture was more lenient, prohibiting it only between "brothers". Charging it to foreigners was allowed and encouraged, which is why Jews unfairly were called "moneychangers". They, like others, suffered greatly from money-lending schemes. For centuries, they were "persecuted for the profiteering of a few", then scapegoated to divert attention from the real offenders. Fiat money is legal tender by government decree - a simple tally representing units of value to be traded for goods and services. Paper money was invented in 9th century Mandarin China and successfully used to fund its long and prosperous empire. The same was true in medieval England. The tally system worked well for over five centuries before banker-controlled paper money began demanding payment in the form of interest. History portrays the Middle Ages as backward, impoverishing, and a form of economic enslavement only the Industrial Revolution changed. In fact, the era was entirely different, characterized by 19th century historian Thorold Rogers as a time when "a labourer could provide all the necessities for his family for a year by working fourteen weeks", leaving nearly nine discretionary months to work for himself, study, fish, travel, or do what he pleased, something today's overworked, over-stressed, underpaid workers can't imagine. Some attribute Middle Age prosperity to the absence of usurious lending. Instead of paying tribute in the form of interest, "people relied largely on interest-free tallies". They avoided depressions and inflation since the supply and demand for goods and services grew in proportion to each other, thus holding prices stable. "The tally system provided an organic form of money that expanded naturally as trade (did) and contracted (the same way) as taxes were paid". No bankers set interest rates or manipulated markets to their advantage. The tally system kept Britain stable and thriving until the mid-17th century, "when Oliver Cromwell (1599 - 1658) ... needed money to fund a revolt against the Tudor monarchy". The Moneylenders Take Over England In the 19th century, the Rothchild banking family's Nathan Rothchild said it well: "I care not what puppet (sits on) the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British empire, and I (when he ran the Bank of England) control the British money supply." Centuries early, moneylender power was absent. But after the 1666 Coinage Act, money-issuing authority, once the sole right of kings, was transferred into private hands. "Bankers now had the power to cause inflations and depressions at will by issuing or withholding their gold coins". King William III (1672 - 1702), a Dutch aristocrat, financed his war against France by borrowing 1.2 million pounds in gold in a secret transaction with moneylenders, the arrangement being a permanent loan on which debt would be serviced and its principle never repaid. It came with other strings as well: -- lenders got a charter to establish the Bank of England (in 1694) with monopoly power to issue banknotes as national paper currency; -- it created them out of nothing, with only a fraction of them as reserves; -- loans to the government were to be backed by government IOUs to serve as reserves for creating additional loans to private borrowers; and -- lenders could consolidate the national debt on their government loan to secure payment through people-extracted taxes. It was a prescription for huge profits and "substantial political leverage. The Bank's charter gave the force of law to the 'fractional reserve' banking scheme that put control of the country's money" in private hands. It let the Bank of England create money out of nothing and charge interest for loans to the government and others - the same practice central banks now employ. For the next century, banknotes and tallies circulated interchangeably even though they weren't a compatible means of exchange. Banker money expanded when "credit expanded and contracted when loans were canceled or 'called', producing cycles of 'tight' money and depression alternating with 'easy' money and inflation". In contrast, tallies were permanent, stable, fixed money, making banknotes look bad so they had to go. For another reason as well - because of King William's disputed throne and fear if he were deposed, moneylenders again might be banned. They used their influence to legalize banknotes as the money of the realm called "funded" debt with tallies referred to as "unfunded", what historians see as the beginning of a "Financial Revolution". In the end, "tallies met the same fate as witches - death by fire". They were money of the people competing with moneylending bankers. After 1834 monetary reform, "tally sticks went up in flames in a huge bonfire started in a House of Lords stove". Ironically, it got out of control and burned down Westminster Palace and both Houses of Parliament, symbolically ending "an equitable era of trade (by transferring power) from the government to the" central bank. Henceforth, private bankers kept government in debt, never demanding the return of principle, and profiting by extracting interest, a very lucrative system always paying off "like a slot machine" rigged to benefit its operators. It became the basis for modern central banking, lending its "own notes (printed paper money), which the government swaps for bonds (its promises to pay) and circulates as a national currency". Government debt is never repaid. It's continually rolled over and serviced, today with no gold in reserve to back it. Though gone, tallies left their mark. The word "stock" comes from the tally stick. Much of the original Bank of England stock was bought with these sticks. In addition, stock issuance began during the Middle Ages as a way to finance businesses when no interest-bearing loans were allowed. In America, "usury banks fought for control for two centuries before" getting it under the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. An issue that once "defined American politics", today is no longer a topic for debate. It's about time it was reopened. Jefferson and Jackson Sound the Alarm Moneylenders conquered Britain, then aimed to entrap America - by provoking "a series of wars. British financiers funded the opposition to the American War for Independence, the War of 1812, and both sides of the American Civil War". They caused inflation, heavy government debt, the chartering of the Bank of the United States to fund it, thus giving private interests the power to create money. Jefferson opposed the first US Bank, Jackson the second, and both for similar reasons: -- distrust of profiteers controlling the nation's money; and -- concern about the nation's banking system falling into foreign hands. Jefferson got Congress to refuse to renew the first US Bank charter in 1811 and learned on liquidation that two-thirds of its owners were foreigners, mostly English and Dutch and none more influential than the Rothschilds. Later, Madison signed a twenty-year charter. However, when Congress renewed it, Jackson vetoed it. The Powerful Rothschild Family The House of Rothschild was British in name only. In the mid-18th century, it was founded in Frankfort, Germany by Mayer Amschel Bauer, who changed his name to Rothschild, fathered ten children, and sent his five sons to open branch banks in major European capitals. Nathan was the most astute and went to London. "Over the course of the nineteenth century, NM Rothschild would become the biggest bank in the world, and the five brothers would come to control most of the foreign-loan business of Europe". Belatedly, Jefferson caught on to the scheme - that "private debt masquerading as paper money ... owed to bankers" placed the nation in bondage. In his words, "deliver(ing) itself bound hand and foot to bold and bankrupt adventurers and bankers ..." Jefferson's idea for a national bank was a wholly government-owned one issuing its own credit without having to borrow it from private interests. Jackson believed the same thing in calling the Bank of the United States "a hydra-headed monster". When the bank charter was renewed, he promptly vetoed it, yet understood that the battle was just beginning. "The hydra of corruption is only scotched, not dead", he said. He was right. The Bank's second president, Nicolas Biddle, retaliated "by sharply contracting the money supply. Old loans were called in and new ones refused. A financial panic ensued, followed by a deep economic depression." However, Biddle's victory was short-lived. In April 1834, the House rejected re-chartering the Bank, then January 1835 became Jackson's "finest hour". He did something never done before or since. He paid off the first installment of the national debt, then reduced it to zero and accumulated a surplus. In 1836, the Bank's charter expired. Biddle was arrested and charged with fraud. He was tried and acquitted but spent the rest of his life in litigation over what he'd done. "Jackson had beaten the Bank". Imagine today if Obama defeated the Fed and its Wall Street puppeteers instead of embracing them with limitless riches. Lincoln Foils the Bankers and Pays with His Life Like Jackson, Lincoln faced assassination attempts, before even being inaugurated. "He had to deal with treason, insurrection, and national bankruptcy" during his first days in office. Considering the powerful forces against him, his achievements were all the more remarkable: -- he built the world's largest army; -- "smashed the British-financed insurrection", -- took the first steps to abolish slavery; it became official on December 6 1865 when the 13th Amendment was ratified, eight months after Lincoln was assassinated; -- during and after his tenure, the country became "the greatest industrial giant" in the world; -- "the steel industry was launched; a continental railroad system was created; the Department of Agriculture was established; a new era of farm machinery and cheap tools was promoted"; -- the Land Grant College system established free higher education; -- the Homestead Act gave settlers ownership rights and encouraged new land development; -- government supported all branches of science; -- "standardization and mass production was promoted worldwide"; -- labor productivity increased by fifty to 75%; and -- still more was accomplished "with a Treasury that was completely broke and a Congress that hadn't been paid" as a result. It was because the government issued its own money. "National control was reestablished over banking, and the economy was jump-started with a 600 percent increase in government spending and cheap credit directed at production". Roosevelt did the same thing with borrowed money. Lincoln did it with United States Notes called Greenbacks. They financed the war, paid the troops, spurred the nation's growth, and did what hasn't been done since - let the government print its own money, free from banker-controlled debt slavery, the very system strangling us today the way Lincoln feared would happen. His advisor was Henry Carey, a man historian Vernon Parrington called "our first professional economist". Lincoln endorsed his prescription: -- "government regulation of banking and credit to deter speculation and encourage economic development"; -- its support for science, public education and national infrastructure development; -- "regulation of privately-held infrastructure to ensure it met the nation's needs"; -- government-sponsored railroads and "scientific and other aid to small farmers"; -- "taxation and tariffs to protect and promote productive domestic activity"; and -- "rejection of class wars, exploitation and slavery, physical or economic, in favor of a 'Harmony of Interests' between capital and labor". Leaders like Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln are sorely missed, but for Lincoln it was costly. He Loses the Battle with "the Masters of European Finance" German Chancellor Otto von Bismark (1815 - 1898) called them that in explaining how they engineered the "rupture between the North and the South" to use it to their advantage, then later wrote in 1876: "The Government and the nation escaped the plots of the foreign bankers. They understood at once that the United States would escape their grip. The death of Lincoln was resolved upon." The last Civil War battle ended on May 13 1865. Lincoln was assassinated on April 15. European bankers tried but failed to trap him "with usurious war loans", at 24 to 36% interest had he agreed. Using government-issued Greenbacks shut them out entirely, so they determined to fight back - eliminate the thorn, then get banker-friendly legislation passed, achieved through the National Bank Act reversing the Greenback Law. It was "only a compromise with bankers, (but) buried in the fine print", they got what they wanted. Although the Controller of the Currency got to issue new national banknotes, it was just a formality. In fact, the new law "authorized the bankers to issue and lend their own paper money". They "deposited" bonds with the Treasury, but owned them so "immediately got their money back in the form of their own banknotes". It was an exclusive franchise to control the nation's money forcing government back into debt bondage where it never had to be in the first place. A whole series of private banks were then chartered, all empowered to create money in lieu of debt free Greenbacks. One other president confronted bankers and paid dearly as well - James Garfield. In 1881, he charged: "Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce ... And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate". Garfield took office on March 4 1881. On July 2, he was shot. He survived the next two and half months, then died on September 19. It was a time of depression, mass unemployment, poverty, and starvation with no safety net protections. "The country was facing poverty amidst plenty", because bankers controlled money and kept too little of it in circulation - an avoidable problem if government printed its own. Gold vs Inflation - Debunking Common Fallacies The classical "quantity theory of money" holds that "too much money chasing too few goods" causes inflation, excess demand over supply forcing up prices. The counter argument is that if paper money is tied to gold, an inflation-free stable money supply will result. Another fallacy is that adding money (demand) raises prices only if supply remains fixed. In fact, if new money creates new goods and services, prices stay stable. For thousands of years, the Chinese kept prices of its products low in spite of their money supply being "flooded with the world's gold and silver, and now with the world's dollars ... to pay for China's cheap products". What's important is not what money consists of but who creates it. "Whether the medium of exchange (is) gold or paper or numbers in a ledger", when created by and owed to private lenders with interest, "more money would always be owed back than was created ... spiraling the economy into perpetual debt ... whether the money takes the form of gold or paper or accounting entries". Today's popularism is associated with the political left. However, 19th century Populists saw "a darker, more malevolent force ... private money power and the corporations it had spawned, which was threatening to take over the government unless the people intervened". Lincoln also feared it saying: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few and the Republic is destroyed." Today's America is the reality he feared. A tiny elite own the vast majority of the nation's wealth in the form of stocks, bonds, real estate, natural resources, business assets and other investments. In contrast, ninety percent of Americans have little or no net worth. Of all developed nations, concentrated wealth and inequality extremes are greatest here with powerful bankers sitting atop the pyramid, now more than ever with their new riches extracted from public tax dollars and Fed-created money. _____ A follow-up article will discuss how "bankers capture(d) the money machine". Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10 am US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman060509.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 realiteee1 at yahoo.com Wed Jun 3 06:53:43 2009 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 05:53:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Free Native American Leader, falsely incarcerated for 33 years :) Message-ID: <405580.58940.qm@web111514.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Please, especially now, your efforts in support of parole for Leonard Peltier, are greatly needed?? :) These Actions, on Change.org, the url?? :) free falsely jailed?? :) http://humanitarianrelief.change.org/actions/view/free_falsely_jailed ? Previous Actions, on Change.org, the url?? :) Act to Protect Leonard Peltier, severely beaten, institutionally abused, etc..?? :) http://humanitarianrelief.change.org/actions/view/act_to_protect_leonard_peltier_severely_beaten_institutionally_abused_etc ? Leonard Peltier's first full parole hearing was held in 1993, at which time his case was continued for a 15-year reconsideration. On Wednesday, it was announced (in Portland, OR) that Mr. Peltier has recently applied for and been granted a parole hearing. The hearing is scheduled for July 27, 2009. All supporters are encouraged to step up their efforts in support of parole for Leonard Peltier. Letters in Support of Parole It is really important that everyone write letters in support of Leonard's petition for parole. These letters can be quite simple and should cover the basic points important for parole decisions. A sample letter follows. Feel free to use it, but know that it's even better if you write one in your own words. Be courteous and concise. Get as many people to sign similar letters, as well. Carry a sheaf of spare letters with you. Get one signature per letter, that is, rather than using a petition format. Mail them to the Parole Commission, but also send copies to the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee (contact information below). Guidelines for General Supporters First, we ask that you sign the online at?? :) http://www.msplinks.com/http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/parole2008/. Next, draft correspondence to the U.S. Parole Commission. A sample letter follows. Sample Letter United States Parole Commission 5550 Friendship Boulevard Suite 420 Chevy Chase, MD 20815-7286 (Insert Date) Re: LEONARD PELTIER #89637-132 Dear Commissioners, Convicted in connection with the deaths on June 26, 1975, of Ronald Williams and Jack Coler, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Leonard Peltier remains imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. The court record in this case clearly shows that government prosecutors have long held that they do not know who killed Mr. Coler and Mr. Williams nor what role Leonard Peltier "may have" played in the tragic shoot-out. Further, in a decision filed by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on December 18, 2002, Mr. Peltier's sentences "were imposed in violation of [Peltier's] due process rights because they were based on information that was false due to government misconduct," and, according to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, in 2003: ".Much of the government's behavior at the Pine Ridge Reservation and its prosecution of Leonard Peltier is to be condemned. The government withheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed." Despite these admissions, Leonard Peltier has served over 33 years in prison. After careful consideration of the facts in Leonard Peltier's case, I have concluded that Leonard Peltier does not represent a risk to the public. First, Leonard Peltier has no prior convictions and has advocated for non-violence throughout his prison term. Furthermore, Leonard Peltier has been a model prisoner. He has received excellent evaluations from his work supervisors on a regular basis. He continues to mentor young Native prisoners, encouraging them to lead clean and sober lives. He has used his time productively, disciplining himself to be a talented painter and an expressive writer. Although Leonard Peltier maintains that he did not kill the agents, he has openly expressed remorse and sadness over their deaths. Most admirably, Mr. Peltier contributes regular support to those in need. He donates his paintings to charities including battered women's shelters, half way houses, alcohol and drug treatment programs, and Native American scholarship funds. He also coordinates an annual holiday gift drive for the children of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Leonard Peltier is widely recognized for his good deeds and in turn has won several awards including the North Star Frederick Douglas Award; Federation of Labour (Ontario, Canada) Humanist of the Year Award; Human Rights Commission of Spain International Human Rights Prize; and 2004 Silver Arrow Award for Lifetime Achievement. Mr. Peltier also has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize six times. Leonard Peltier is now over 60 years of age-a great-grandfather-and suffers from partial blindness, diabetes, a heart condition, and high blood pressure. I recognize the grave nature of the events of June 26, 1975, and I extend my deepest sympathy to the families of those who died that day. However, I find aspects of this case to also be of concern and I believe Leonard Peltier deserves to be reunited with his family and allowed to live the remaining years of his life in peace. I also believe that, rather than presenting a threat to the public, Mr. Peltier's release would help to heal a wound that has long impeded better relations between the federal government and American Indians. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely yours, Signature (Your Name) (Your Street Address) (Your City, State, and Zip Code) For Family and Friends As with any professional correspondence, your support letter should be on letterhead (if you have Microsoft Word or another similar program you can easily create professional-looking letterhead from a template). The letterhead should include all of your contact information including your name, address, phone number(s) and e-mail address if applicable. Describe your relationship with Leonard -- how do you know him, for how long, etc. Write about his character, and his accomplishments both before and during imprisonment. Discuss improvements made since being incarcerated such as education and his philanthropic work. Discuss Leonard's positive attitude and, despite his innocence, the fact that he has openly expressed remorse and sadness over the deaths that occurred on June 26, 1975. Finish your support letter by telling the Parole Board how you will support Leonard once he is granted parole. Your support might be financial, such as a place to live, use of a vehicle, or help finding job offers. Your support can also be emotional such as providing advice and encouragement. IMPORTANT NOTE TO ALL SUPPORTERS: When you write a letter in support of Leonard's parole, mail the letter directly to the U.S. Parole Commission, but also please send a copy of your correspondence to the Peltier Legal Team, c/o LP-DOC, P.O. Box 7488, Fargo, ND 58106. Time to set him free... Because it is the RIGHT thing to do. Friends of Peltier?? :) http://www.FreePeltierNow.org From fentona at shaw.ca Wed Jun 3 08:11:51 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 07:11:51 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Ex-Conference Board Author Speaks Out; Confirms "Push Back" From Copyright Lobby Funders Message-ID: <7E8B8E19-F9FC-4513-A2E2-1C53C3BEBFB0@shaw.ca> http://www.michaelgeist.ca/ Ex-Conference Board Author Speaks Out; Confirms "Push Back" From Copyright Lobby Funders The following was posted late yesterday by Curtis Cook, one of the listed authors on the plagiarized Conference Board of Canada reports. Cook's experience sheds new light on the Conference Board plagiarism story, including interference from copyright lobby funders, the exclusion of deBeer's research from the report, and the decision to lay blame on Cook, who had left the organization almost a full year before publication of the reports. Cook's response has been reposted as a full blog post with his permission: I have waited a week for the Conference Board to remove my name from its controversial intellectual property publications. On May 27 I wrote to Anne Golden to: ? Remove my name as an author from the publications (since I have not worked for the Conference Board for almost a year); and ? Publicly acknowledge that I was not responsible for the plagiarized content. On June 1, I finally received a call from Anne Golden who did not address any of my concerns and abruptly ended the call by disconnecting. Here is what I know: ? I was a full-time employee with the Conference Board between September 2007 and July 2008. I resigned almost a year ago to take a fulfilling job with a non-profit in British Columbia. ? I submitted draft research to my former supervisor for the IP reports in mid-August 2008. I finished the research after I moved even though I was neither on salary nor on contract with the Board. ? The research I submitted did NOT include the controversial passages or plagiarized content. ? I worked with three contract researchers on this project between April 2008 and June 2008, including Jeremy deBeer, whose work I integrated into the draft. These researchers did not submit research that included the controversial/plagiarized content. ? I had no involvement in any content changes and did not see these papers after I submitted them in August. ? My new work was interrupted in mid-September by my former supervisor at the Conference Board to tell me there had been ?push back? from one of the funding clients about the research and inclusion of Mr. deBeer?s contribution. I had quit almost two months earlier so this was of no concern to me. ? Around the same time, my new work was also interrupted by a call from one of the funding clients who expressed similar concerns. Again, I informed him that I no longer had anything to do with these reports. ? I received news of its publication on May 26, 2009, ten months after my resignation. I downloaded and read the research after I was informed of the controversy and was alarmed to see the direction it had taken. ? I sent my letter to Anne Golden the following day. ? The VP of Public Policy e-mailed me on May 29th to ask for my assistance in finding both researchers who could "fix" the reports, as well as external reviewers who would be impartial in reviewing the new work. His message stated that ?I trust your judgment, experience and knowledge and would value your help.? The Conference Board wants my help to fix reports that were published 10 months after my departure. It wants me to help fix publications that were re-written (and plagiarized) months after my departure and after they discarded the research I compiled and submitted. The Conference Board asks for my help but won't acknowledge that it was wrong to put my name on reports that bear little resemblance to the original research I submitted, were substantially reworked, and were published ten months after I resigned. After Anne Golden laid blame on contract researchers and supervisors late last week, I noticed two of the authors who still were listed on the organization's web site were no longer on the staff list. I am not prepared to wait for Anne Golden to conduct the review she promises because I have a pretty good sense of what happened, even though my involvement with the Conference Board and these reports ended with the submission of credible research 10 months ago. I am curious to see if my account results in some form of backlash, if the Conference Board is prepared to dig a deeper hole for itself or if more fiction will surface. -------------- next part -------------- Michael Geist's Blog / Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:00:45 GMT From fentona at shaw.ca Wed Jun 3 08:24:31 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 07:24:31 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Venezuela Chavez says "Comrade" Obama more left-wing Message-ID: http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSN0252119420090603 Venezuela Chavez says "Comrade" Obama more left-wing Tue Jun 2, 2009 9:39pm EDT CARACAS, June 2 (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday that he and Cuban ally Fidel Castro risk being more conservative than U.S. President Barack Obama as Washington prepares to take control of General Motors Corp. During one of Chavez's customary lectures on the "curse" of capitalism and the bonanzas of socialism, the Venezuelan leader made reference to GM's bankruptcy filing, which is expected to give the U.S. government a 60 percent stake in the 100-year-old former symbol of American might. "Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right," Chavez joked on a live television broadcast. During a decade in government, Chavez has nationalized most of Venezuela's key economic sectors, including multibillion dollar oil projects, often via joint ventures with the private sector that give the state a 60 percent controlling stake. Obama has vowed to quickly sell off General Motors once the auto giant is back on its feet, but the government will initially control the company after a $30 billion injection of taxpayer funds. Chavez, a vehement critic of the U.S. "empire," has toned down his rhetoric since Obama took office in January and the two men shook hands during a summit in Trinidad and Tobago in April. (Reporting by Enrique Andres Pretel; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel, Editing by Jackie Frank) From fentona at shaw.ca Wed Jun 3 08:53:02 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 07:53:02 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Why'd Obama switch on detainee photos? Maliki went ballistic Message-ID: <8CDCCFFD-9299-4541-81DD-FA6D873552DE@shaw.ca> http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/69213.html Why'd Obama switch on detainee photos? Maliki went ballistic * Posted on Monday, June 1, 2009 By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama reversed his decision to release detainee abuse photos from Iraq and Afghanistan after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki warned that Iraq would erupt into violence and that Iraqis would demand that U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq a year earlier than planned, two U.S. military officers, a senior defense official and a State Department official have told McClatchy. In the days leading up to a May 28 deadline to release the photos in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, U.S. officials, led by Christopher Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told Maliki that the administration was preparing to release photos of suspected detainee abuse taken from 2003 to 2006. When U.S. officials told Maliki, "he went pale in the face," said a U.S. military official, who along with others requested anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity. The official said Maliki warned that releasing the photos would lead to more violence that could delay the scheduled U.S. withdrawal from cities by June 30 and that Iraqis wouldn't make a distinction between old and new photos. The public outrage and increase in violence could lead Iraqis to demand a referendum on the security agreement and refuse to permit U.S. forces to stay until the end of 2011. Maliki said, "Baghdad will burn" if the photos are released, said a second U.S. military official. A U.S. official who's knowledgeable about the photographs told McClatchy that at least two of them depict nudity; one is of a woman suggestively holding a broomstick; one shows a detainee with bruises but offered no explanation how he got them; and another is of hooded detainees with weapons pointed at their heads. Some of the photos were of detainees being held in prisons, while others were taken at the time a detainee was captured. "It was not so much the photos themselves, but that the perception that they would be Abu Ghraib-type photos," added the senior defense official, who said U.S. officials were worried "about the potential street consequences" of making the photos public. Iraq is scheduled to hold a referendum by July 30 on the accord, which calls for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of 2011. If the accord were rejected, the U.S. would have to withdraw from Iraq within a year of the vote or by the summer of 2010. Some U.S. officials fear that would be before Iraq's security forces are ready to protect their country on their own. The status of forces agreement calls for the U.S. to train Iraqi forces in specialized areas such as aviation and intelligence gathering and to step to the side as Iraqi forces take control of their communities. Maliki's office, Iraq's deputy prime minister and the foreign minister didn't answer calls seeking comment. Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said that Obama "has been clear that releasing the photos would have no benefit except to potentially increase the risk to our troops. He's also made clear that the existence of these photos was only known because the acts were investigated and those who undertook them were sanctioned." With tensions rising again in major Iraqi cities such as Baghdad and Mosul, Maliki feared that "if you add this (the photos) to that mix, it could very easily provide an incentive to the extremists" to use more violence, a State Department official said. That, in turn, might cause U.S. and Iraqi commanders to reconsider the troop withdrawal from urban areas, which would be a major setback to Maliki's government and to the Obama administration, which is determined to withdraw troops from Iraq as it escalates the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. The administration, which as late as April had agreed to release as many as 2,100 photos, said in the two weeks before the deadline approached that the release could trigger a backlash against American troops. After U.S. officials notified Maliki, the prime minister put "heavy pressure" on Hill and Army Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, to stop the release, the senior U.S. defense official said. In early May, Odierno and Gen. David McKiernan, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said they objected to the release of the photos. Both Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said they changed their minds largely because of objections from U.S. commanders in the field, but they never mentioned Maliki's reaction. Col. James Hutton, Odierno's spokesman, declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation. The senior U.S. defense official said that Hill and Odierno were the "primary voices" urging Obama to reverse his decision. They were joined by U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command; and McKiernan, who also were concerned that the photos, while not comparable to the pictures of U.S. guards abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, could ignite anti-U.S. violence. The Senate is expected on Tuesday to confirm Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal as McKiernan's successor. Several days after the meeting, Odierno returned to Washington, and he and Gates took their concerns to Obama. It took "considerable lobbying" before the president changed his mind, the senior defense official said. On May 13, Obama appeared on the South Lawn of the White House and said: "The publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals. In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger." The photos are part of a 2004 lawsuit that sought the release of photos that were part of investigations of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and a half dozen other prisons. The Pentagon objected to the release of the photos, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower court ruling to release them. On Monday, the ACLU released a letter signed by a dozen organizations calling for the release of the photos. "The Pentagon should release the photos while reaffirming to the world that the U.S. repudiates such barbaric behavior and is committed to dismantling the culture that allowed it to occur. In the end, full disclosure of the crimes committed by our government will make us all safer," the letter said. (Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and Marisa Taylor contributed to this article.) From fentona at shaw.ca Wed Jun 3 08:54:43 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 07:54:43 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Pakistan plan to attack Taliban haven promises wider war Message-ID: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/117/story/69137.html Pakistan plan to attack Taliban haven promises wider war By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers ISLAMABAD, Pakistan ? Waziristan, the remote area that's the epicenter of Taliban and al Qaida militants in Pakistan, is set to become the next war zone in the nation's fight against Islamic extremists, where clashes between insurgents and the army erupted over the weekend. So far, there are just skirmishes in Waziristan but the key U.S. ally plans a full-scale military offensive there this summer, according to Pakistani and Western officials, a fight that is certain to be deadlier than the current operation in Swat valley and with profound international repercussions. Western leaders have repeatedly said that international terrorist plots are being hatched in Waziristan, while the area provides a sanctuary for Afghan insurgents and al Qaida leaders, possibly including Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al Zawahiri. South Waziristan, a part of the wild tribal territory that lies along the Afghan border, houses Pakistan's public enemy number one, warlord Baitullah Mehsud, who has thousands of armed followers around him. The insurgency across the country is fueled by fighters and suicide bombers sent by Mehsud. North Waziristan is also under the control of a Taliban warlord. Pakistani forces are making rapid progress through Swat valley, in the North West Frontier Province, and they've previously claimed to have cleared two other areas that were under Taliban domination, Bajaur and Mohmand, which are part of the tribal territory. But the specter of Waziristan, the fountainhead of extremism, now looms. "The final battle will be fought in South Waziristan," said Asad Munir, formerly head of military intelligence for the tribal area and the North West Frontier Province. "They've started it (the offensive against the insurgents) and if they leave it mid-way, they should be mentally prepared to hand this country over to the Taliban. They have to complete it. There is no other way." Pakistan has launched multiple operations against Taliban on its soil since 2004 but critics say that each time they have been half- heartedly pursued and ended with a truce that left the militants in control, including a peace deal in South Waziristan in early 2008. But, under intense international pressure, the current offensive in Swat, and before that the recent operation in Bajaur, have finally hit the insurgents hard. Failure now would hugely embolden the militants, Asad said. Taking back Swat and the tribal area, especially Waziristan, would deny the insurgents the vast tracts of territory that they now control, where training camps and schools for indoctrinating suicide bombers are freely run. While Washington and other western allies pressed Pakistan to take action in Swat, which lies just 100 miles from the capital Islamabad, the valley is not thought to be a significant base for Afghan insurgents or al Qaida. But Waziristan is seen by Western countries, from the United States to Spain, as crucial to their homeland security. "Waziristan is at the heart of Western counter-terrorism interests in this region," said a Western security official based in Pakistan, who could not be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. "Waziristan would hit the sweet spot for us. But we'd rather not have a campaign than a campaign (in Waziristan) that failed." Waziristan provides a crucial safe haven to Afghan insurgents, as well as a launching pad for Pakistani jihadists heading to Afghanistan. It is also a headquarters for international terrorists. The offensive in Swat has led to bloody terrorist reprisals, with a chilling threat issued last week by the Taliban to escalate the attacks by striking some of Pakistan's biggest cities. Revenge for army action in Waziristan could cause carnage across the country, severely testing hard-won public support for taking on the Taliban, even destabilizing the country. It would also add to the humanitarian crisis of people displaced by fighting, which stands now at some 3 million. Militarily, Waziristan poses a huge challenge to Pakistani forces. Its harsh mountainous terrain is ideally suited to guerrilla warfare, while the Taliban is concentrated in the area, where they have been entrenched for years, allowing them to build tunnels, bunkers and fortifications. Unlike Swat, where the population largely welcomed the army once they saw that it was a serious operation, the fierce tribal people of Waziristan are deeply hostile to outsiders, including the Pakistani military. South Waziristan, covering 2,500 square miles, has lawless regions to three sides ? North Waziristan to the north, Baluchistan province to the south and the Afghan province of Paktika to the west, providing ready escape routes to the insurgents. Analysts said that a successful operation would need to seal off South Waziristan, especially the option of retreat into Afghanistan, requiring strong co-ordination with the U.S.-led forces across the border. Joint Pakistan-U.S. planning for the operation is likely to be underway, mirroring the collaboration undertaken last year when the Bajaur offensive began and U.S. forces intercepted fleeing Pakistani Taliban in the bordering Afghan province of Kunar. The Waziristan campaign should coincide with the arrival of the extra "surge" of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. "They should co-operate with the Americans and employ the classic 'hammer and anvil' technique, with Pakistan forces isolating South Waziristan and pushing them (the Taliban) towards the border," said Javed Hussain, a former Brigadier with Pakistan's Special Services Group commando unit. "That's where the American forces should act as the anvil, and the Pakistani forces as the hammer. In between the two, the insurgents are crushed." The operation in Swat valley, launched on 7 May, could be over in "two to three days" senior Pakistan defense official Syed Athar Ali told a conference in Singapore Sunday. There is speculation that Waziristan could follow as early as this month (June), though July or August may be more likely given the need to stabilize Swat. Sensing the coming showdown, Taliban in South Waziristan have started to attack army bases and check posts in the area, with 25 militants and at three soldiers reported killed by the authorities Sunday. Shah is McClatchy's special correspondent in Pakistan and is based in Islamabad. MORE FROM MCCLATCHY From fentona at shaw.ca Wed Jun 3 09:00:09 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 08:00:09 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Mysterious 'chip' is CIA's latest weapon against al-Qaida targets hiding in Pakistan's tribal belt Message-ID: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/31/cia-drones-tribesmen-taliban-pakistan Mysterious 'chip' is CIA's latest weapon against al-Qaida targets hiding in Pakistan's tribal belt * Declan Walsh in Peshawar * guardian.co.uk, Sunday 31 May 2009 23.55 BST The CIA is equipping Pakistani tribesmen with secret electronic transmitters to help target and kill al-Qaida leaders in the north- western tribal belt, in a tactic that could aid Pakistan's army as it takes the battle against extremism to the Taliban heartland. As the army mops up Taliban resistance in the Swat valley, where a defence official predicted fighting would be over within days, the focus is shifting to Waziristan and the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud. Declan Walsh: 'Microchips are the talk of the town in tribal areas' Link to this audio But a deadly war of wits is already under way in the region, where tribesmen say the US is using advanced technology and old-fashioned cash to target the enemy. Over the last 18 months the US has launched more than 50 drone attacks, mostly in south and north Waziristan. US officials claim nine of the top 20 al-Qaida figures have been killed. That success is reportedly in part thanks to the mysterious electronic devices, dubbed "chips" or "pathrai" (the Pashto word for a metal device), which have become a source of fear, intrigue and fascination. "Everyone is talking about it," said Taj Muhammad Wazir, a student from south Waziristan. "People are scared that if a pathrai comes into your house, a drone will attack it." According to residents and Taliban propaganda, the CIA pays tribesmen to plant the electronic devices near farmhouses sheltering al-Qaida and Taliban commanders. Hours or days later, a drone, guided by the signal from the chip, destroys the building with a salvo of missiles. "There are body parts everywhere," said Wazir, who witnessed the aftermath of a strike. Until now the drone strikes were the only threat to militants in Waziristan, where the Pakistani army had, in effect, abandoned the fight. But now, emboldened by a successful campaign to drive militants out of Swat, a region about 80 miles from Islamabad, the army is preparing to regain lost ground in the more remote tribal belt. It will be a much tougher campaign than in Swat, with the army pitched against a formidable, battle-hardened opponent. Yesterday Taliban fighters ambushed a military position in what could be a prelude to much more intense combat. For the US military, drones have proved to be an effective weapon against al-Qaida targets, and they are becoming increasingly accurate. On 1 January a drone-fired missile killed Usama al-Kimi, a Kenyan militant who orchestrated last year's Marriott hotel bombing in Islamabad, a senior official with Pakistan's ISI spy agency said. It is a high-tech assassination operation for one of the world's most remote areas. The pilotless aircraft, Predators or more sophisticated Reapers, take off from a base in Baluchistan province. But they are guided by a joystick-wielding operator half a world away, at a US air force base 35 miles north of Las Vegas. Barack Obama has approved the drone campaign, which is cheap and limits the danger posed to US troops. But the strikes have many unintended victims. A Pakistani newspaper estimated that 700 people had been killed since 2006, most of them civilians, as a result of drone attacks. For the tribesmen who plant the microchips and get it wrong, the consequences can be terrible. Last month the Taliban issued a video confession by Habib ur Rehman, 19. "They money was good," he said in a quavering voice, describing how he was paid 20,000 rupees (?166) to drop microchips hidden in a cigarette wrapper at the home of a target. Rehman said his handler promised thousands of pounds if the strike was successful, and protection if he was caught. The end of the video showed Rehman being shot dead with three other alleged spies. Residents say such executions ? there have been at least 100 ? indicate how much the drone strikes have worried the Taliban. In Wana, the capital of south Waziristan, foreign fighters are shunning the bazaars and shops, and locals are shunning the fighters. "Before, the common people used to sit with the militants," said Wazir. "Now they are also afraid. Paranoid militant commanders are closely monitoring cross-border traffic with Afghanistan, from where they suspect the chip-carrying CIA spies are coming, said Imtiaz Wazir, a resident of Spin Wam village in north Waziristan. "If I go to Afghanistan without any purpose, the militants come to ask why," he said. A local transporter named Haji Hamid who gave the wrong answer, he said, was found shot dead two months ago, his legs and fingers broken. The drone strikes are despised across Pakistan, where politicians including President Asif Ali Zardari denounce them as a breach of sovereignty. But behind the scenes his government is quietly colluding with Washington. A former CIA officer who served in Waziristan in 2006 said that small American teams comprising CIA agents, radio experts and special forces soldiers are stationed inside Pakistani military bases across the tribal belt. From there, the CIA recruits a network of paid, and sometimes unwitting, informers ? known as "cut-outs" ? to help identify targets, he added. In most cases they are poor local men. Ironically, support for the drone strikes is strongest in the frontier, especially among embattled security officials. "They are very precise, very effective, and the Taliban and al-Qaida dread them," said the provincial police chief, Malik Naveed Khan, with undisguised admiration. The strikes have caused friction between the US and the ISI, which would like America to give it control over the new technology. "The problem with the Americans is that the only instrument up their sleeve is the hammer, and they see everything as a nail," said a senior official. The ISI resents the US for failing to target Mehsud, whose deputy claimed for last week's Lahore attack that killed at least 24 people, including an ISI colonel. But as the army prepares to attack South Waziristan, with broad public support, the warlord's luck may be running out. Authorities in North West Frontier Province are preparing for up to 500,000 refugees, added to 2.5 million displaced by operations in Swat. Mehsud faces other challenges, too. Rival militant groups, with army support, are challenging his dominance in South Waziristan. And he faces the ever-present danger that some visitor could drop a "pathrai" at his doorstep, and bring an American drone with it. From intnsred at golgotha.net Wed Jun 3 10:30:33 2009 From: intnsred at golgotha.net (Intense Red) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 12:30:33 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Why'd Obama switch on detainee photos? Maliki went ballistic In-Reply-To: <8CDCCFFD-9299-4541-81DD-FA6D873552DE@shaw.ca> References: <8CDCCFFD-9299-4541-81DD-FA6D873552DE@shaw.ca> Message-ID: <200906031230.33573.intnsred@golgotha.net> This article is interesting and, of course, based on anonymous sources. The first thing I have to wonder is if it's even true, or if it's an after-the-fact attempt by the Obama administration at damage control. > Maliki said, "Baghdad will burn" if the photos are released, said a > second U.S. military official. Translation: We have to lie to our people because if our "democratic" gov't told them the truth they'd want to hang us. Sounds like a gov't with wide support. :-( -- "The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty." -- Simon Bolivar, the liberator of several Latin American nations from imperial Spain. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jun 3 12:10:32 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 11:10:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Insight into the environment in which Dr. Tiller was murdered In-Reply-To: <514765669.6868031244046024789.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <819020434.6930021244052632730.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Video of Bill O'Reilly Producer's '07 Ambush Interview of Dr. Tiller http://www.commondreams.org/further/2009/06/02-0 From suzannedk at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 13:00:52 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 21:00:52 +0200 Subject: [R-G] Statement on Nuclear Testing by DPRK In-Reply-To: <933597.99099.qm@web94816.mail.in2.yahoo.com> References: <933597.99099.qm@web94816.mail.in2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Right On! On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 11:17 AM, Manik Mukherjee wrote: > International Anti-Imperialist > and People?s Solidarity > Coordinating Committee > (IAPSCC) > > 77/2/1 Lenin Sarani, Kolkata 700 013 > Tel: +91-33-22653550 Fax : +91-33-2264 7754 > e-mail: aiaif_2006 at yahoo.com > President : Ramsey Clark > Former Attorney General, USA > Founder, International Action Centre > General Secretary : Manik Mukherjee > Vice-President, All India Anti-imperialist Forum > May 27, 2009 > > Manik > Mukherjee, General Secretary of International Anti-imperialist and > people?s Solidarity Coordinating Committee (IAPSCC) has issued the > following statement on the Nuclear Testing by Democratic People?s > Republic of Korea : > > The > IAPSCC expresses its full support to all genuine efforts to maintain > and promote world peace and confirms that it is committed to its stand > of demanding a totally nuclear weapons free world. However, it is > firmly of the view that there is no moral or ethical justification of > the policy that would allow some states to keep their stock of nuclear > arsenal, but prevent others to develop any nuclear defense capability. > This is the policy of the imperialists powers like USA, other nuclear > weapons states including India who are not only maintaining their > nuclear weapons stock but are augmenting it, and at the same time are > criticising other nations who want to develop nuclear defense > capability. DPRK is a socialist country, which stands by the struggle > of the common people all over the world against imperialist aggression, > oppression and exploitation. The toiling masses of the world that look > upon DPRK as their staunch ally and firmly assert that DPRK has every > right to defend itself from imperialist aggression and has the right to > develop its nuclear defense capability. It is in the interest of > defense of the common people of the world that DPRK should have this > capability. Along with the people of the world IAPSCC endorses this right. > > > Get an email ID as yourname at ymail.com or yourname at rocketmail.com. > Click here http://in.promos.yahoo.com/address > _______________________________________________ > 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 suzannedk at gmail.com Wed Jun 3 13:36:46 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 21:36:46 +0200 Subject: [R-G] (USA) The far-right's violent return In-Reply-To: <200906021910.02654.intnsred@golgotha.net> References: <846889845.6591281243967395414.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> <200906021910.02654.intnsred@golgotha.net> Message-ID: There are those of us who have become targets, many more than you might think. You know who you are, if you are lucky. Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 1:10 AM, Intense Red wrote: > On Tuesday 02 June 2009, Sid Shniad wrote: > > The murder of George Tiller is an chilling reminder that the violent > > extremism of America's far-right hasn't gone away > > From a strictly revolutionary standpoint, you've got to admire the > right-wing in the US. > > Since Bush was put out of office, have the neo-cons backed off? Not in > the > least -- they're still in attack mode and are as uncompromising as ever. > And > Cheney's antics are playing well and he's successfully rewriting history. > > The population seems somewhat turned off by the religious right after 8 > years of gov't funding and Bush's gospel act. But yet this one nut case > goes > out and shoots a doctor and it has fired up the anti-abortion movement and > caused all of the corporate mass media to "debate" the issue in a "he said, > she said" manner -- tons of free publicity with surprisingly little > negative > commentary. > > Uncompromising militancy like that has not been seen in the American left > since the 1960s. Is it any wonder the American left is an afterthought? > > It pains me to say, but I predict that the US right-wing will make huge > future electoral gains -- militancy on such a scale usually pays off. > > . > Randy > > -- > "My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I'm > going > to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no > fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. Is that clear?" -- > Singer Paul Robeson addressing the US Congress' House Un-American > Activities > Committee anti-communist witchhunt in 1956. > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Wed Jun 3 15:04:34 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 14:04:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] U.S.-Cuba Politics Play Out at OAS Gathering In-Reply-To: <234854375.6727751243984869230.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1578737771.7016511244063074501.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://globalalternatives.org/node/104 U.S.-Cuba Politics Play Out at OAS Gathering By Roger Burbach New America Media U.S.-Cuba relations are once again front and center as the meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, begins today. Cuba, expelled from the OAS in 1962 at the height of the Cold War, will not be present at the gathering. But the United States is facing a virtually united front of Latin American nations demanding that Cuba be readmitted. Chilean Jose Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the organization, declares, ?I want to be clear: I want Cuba back in the Inter-American system?Cuba is a member of the OAS. Its flag is there.? The Obama Administration is sending contradictory signals about what it is up to. On April 20, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will be leading the U.S. delegation to Tegucigalpa, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ?Any effort to admit Cuba into the OAS is really in Cuba?s hands,? referring to past U.S. demands that Cuba change its political system. Two days later, however, the United States proposed reopening discussions on immigration issues that had been suspended early in the Bush Administration. Cuba responded positively to this overture, saying it also wants to talk about regular postal services and to discuss drug interdiction and disaster relief along with immigration concerns. Even before this announcement, Fidel Castro, the retired leader who still exerts considerable influence in the government now headed by his brother, Raul Castro, stated Cuba is willing to dialogue on ?narcotrafficking, organized crime, human trafficking, and to expand other forms of cooperation such as fighting epidemics and natural catastrophes.? But the main stumbling bloc to admittance to the OAS and the normalization of trade relations remains Washington?s inisistance that Cuba transform its government. Raul has made clear that there will be no such change, while Fidel declares, ?cooperation can exist between peoples with different political conceptions.? Washington needs to get over its dogmatic assertion that Cuba has a represessive and non-representative government that puts it beyond the pale as compared to other communist countries, like Vietnam and China, or authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The United States has had normal diplomatic and economic relations with those nations for years. Cuba today is hardly a police state. People speak their minds freely in the streets as any visitor to the island can attest. And the country has vibrant social movements that are able to press for their rights. Just this past May 16, marchers in Havana took to the streets to celebrate the national day against homophobia. Mariela Castro, Raul?s daughter, participated in the demonstration, saying, ?being gay is not a problem, the problem is homophobia,? adding, ?There is a movement in the consciousness of the people that includes government functionaries and leaders.? The Cuban revolution, which just celebrated its 50th anniverary, is in a process of transition and transformation. As Rafael Hernandez, the director of the widely read social and cultural journal Temas told me, ?We are rethinking the very nature of society and what socialism means. A discussion is opening up on many fronts over where we are headed, how property is to be defined, what is the role of the market, and how we can achieve greater political participation, particularly among the youth. In the economy, market reforms and experimentation are taking place, especially in agriculture and the selling of food stuffs. Last year, legislation was passed permitting anyone to solicit the government for 10 hectares of idle land that can be held and farmed for an indefinite period of time. Over 80,000 people have petitioned for land and are in the process of getting it. The new farmers have the right to work the land independently and sell their produce on the open market. The tendency is for them to join a cooperative because of the availability of regularized inputs, not because the state is trying to deny them access, but because the coops have more purchasing clout. While an OAS working group has been set up in an effort to reconcile the U.S. and the Latin American positions, it appears to be going nowhere. Wayne Smith, of the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., who served as head of the U.S. Interests Desk in Havana from 1979-82, says, ?The Obama Administration is trying to appease the Latin American governments by saying it will discuss immigration issues and is open to some degree of engagement with the Cubans.? The OAS could readmit Cuba with the vote of two-thirds of its 30 members. Cuba is not pushing for readmittance, however, with Fidel Castro declaring, ?Cuba respects the criteria of the governments of our brothers in Latin America and the Caribbean who think differently, but we do not wish to be part of that institution.? Over the years the OAS has backed U.S. aggression in Latin America, most notably the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, and then the U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic in 1965. Regardless of what happens at the OAS meetings, ?the United States will come out with egg on its face,? predicts Smith. ?U.S. policy is still stuck in the past.? CENSA: Center for the Study of the Americas 2288 Fulton St., Suite 103, Berkeley, CA From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jun 3 15:03:27 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 14:03:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Bankrupt Thinking In-Reply-To: <1100515745.6368781243896979512.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1800298341.7016141244063007671.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Links and forum to comment on this and other columns at: Focus on the Corporation June 1, 2009 Bankrupt Thinking By Robert Weissman What in the world is the Obama administration thinking? The GM bankruptcy -- entirely avoidable -- seems designed to hurt every constituency it is supposed to assist. First, as to the avoidability issue: There's no doubt that chronic mismanagement and the deep recession have left GM in dire straits. But with the government pouring tens of billions of dollars into the company, it is clear that needed restructuring could have been done outside of bankruptcy. By last week, even the problem of bondholders who sought $27 billion from the company (the government and GM were offering a 10 percent stake in the new company) was moving to resolution. Yet the Obama administration's auto task force has plunged GM into bankruptcy nonetheless. Why? There's no obvious answer to that question. Why does it matter? It matters because bankruptcy may further tarnish GM's already very weakened brand, and make recovery for the company much more difficult. It matters because it creates some unique problems. And it matters because it forecloses -- or, at least makes more difficult -- other ways to reorganize the company. The GM/auto task force plan for bankruptcy and restructuring -- shaped by a secretive, unaccountable group of Wall Street expats without expertise in the industry -- seems designed above all to perpetuate GM as a corporate entity. Preserving corporate GM should be not an end, but a means to protecting workers and their communities, preserving the U.S. manufacturing base, forcing the industry onto an innovative and ecologically sustainable path, and advancing consumer interests. It fails to meet any of these objectives, in entirely avoidable ways. GM probably needs to be downsized, but there are questions about the extent to which it should be downsized and the method. There are very significant questions about decisions being made to eliminate brands, close factories and terminate dealer relationships. The auto task force may well be needlessly costing tens or hundreds of thousands of jobs at auto plants and suppliers. It has authorized the closing of many hundreds of GM and Chrysler dealerships, even though these dealerships do not impose meaningful costs on the manufacturers. Dealership closings alone will result in more than 100,000 lost jobs. While there is probably a need to reduce GM's capacity, there is no need to cut worker wages and benefits. Auto worker wages contribute less than 10 percent of the cost of a car, so even the most draconian cuts will do little to increase profits. Yet the Obama administration's auto task force helped push the United Auto Workers into further acceptance of a two-tier wage structure that will make new auto jobs paid just a notch above Home Depot jobs. This will drag down pay across the auto industry, with ripple effects throughout the entire manufacturing sector. Stunningly, the Obama administration brags that "the concessions that the UAW agreed to are more aggressive than what the Bush Administration originally demanded in its loan agreement with GM." http://tinyurl.com/nx68hm The ultimate evidence of the task force's disconnect from its public mission is its approval of GM plans to increase outsourcing production of cars for sale in the United States. GM has now disclosed its intent to begin production in China for sale in the United States. What is the possible rationale of permitting a company propped up with U.S. taxpayer funds to increase production overseas for sale in the U.S. market? The point of the bailout is not to make GM profitable at any cost, but to protect the communities that rely on the automaker, as well as U.S. manufacturing capacity. Finally, if the Chrysler bankruptcy is a harbinger, the bankruptcy is likely to wipe out the legal claims of people injured by defective and dangerous GM cars. None of this need be so. The government could have averted bankruptcy. It could have sent its plans to Congress for more careful review. It could have demanded that worker wages and conditions be maintained or improved, rather than worsened. It could have been more surgical in the downsizing it is requiring, and more forward-looking at preserving manufacturing capacity. The government could (and still can) choose to accept sucessorship liability in the New GM for the injuries inflicted on real people by Old GM. Some of these avoidable harms can still be averted, if the Obama administration chooses to exert the control that attaches to owning 60 percent of GM. Unfortunately, President Obama says, to the contrary, that "our goal is to get GM back on its feet, take a hands-off approach, and get out quickly." More on a different way to manage the GM restructuring in my next column. 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 Jun 3 15:04:50 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 14:04:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Controversial Coal Mining Method Gets Obama's OK In-Reply-To: <711914671.6723281243984281782.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <829155490.7016561244063090881.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Chicago Tribune June 2, 2009 Controversial Coal Mining Method Gets Obama's OK by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten Washington - With the election of Barack Obama, environmentalists expected to see the end of the "Appalachian apocalypse" -- their name for exposing coal deposits by blowing the tops off of whole mountains. But in recent weeks, the Obama administration has quietly decided to open the way for at least two dozen more "mountaintop removal" projects. The decision to clear a path for the controversial projects was never officially announced, but instead conveyed in a letter this month to a West Virginia congressman and coal ally, Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall. The letter said that the Environmental Protection Agency would not block 42 of 48 mine projects that it had reviewed so far, including some of the most controversial mountaintop mines. In mountaintop removal, explosives blast away a peak and expose coal seams. Coal companies say the practice is safer and more efficient than traditional shaft mining. Critics say the process scars the landscape and dumps tons of waste, some of it toxic, into streams and valleys. The administration's decisions are not the final word on the projects -- or on the future of mountaintop removal -- but it removes a major obstacle. And the decision, coupled with the light it sheds on relations between the mining industry and the Obama White House, has disappointed environmentalists. Some say they feel betrayed by a president they thought would end or sharply limit the practice. What makes the issue politically sensitive is the fact that environmentalists were an active force behind Obama's election, while his standing among Democratic voters in coal states is tenuous. Halting mountaintop removal could eliminate jobs in those states and put upward pressure on energy prices. Coal advocates have solicited help from officials as high as White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and the issue sparked contentious debates among administration officials, including one shouting match in which top officials of two government agencies were heard pounding their fists on the table. The White House is "searching for a way to walk this tightrope," said Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, whose president, Cecil Roberts, has urged administration officials to allow the procedure. "They have a large constituency of people who want to see an immediate end to mountaintop removal, and an equally large constituency -- many of them Democrats, I might add -- whose communities depend on those jobs." Earlier, Obama had won praise from the green lobby for taking a skeptical view of the procedure. And the EPA announced in March that it would review mountaintop projects. The EPA has the authority to review and ultimately block mountaintop removal under the Clean Water Act, but if the agency raises no objections, the final decision is made by the Army Corps of Engineers. The corps previously indicated its intention to approve the 48 permits. A review of Obama campaign statements showed the presidential candidate expressing concern about the practice without specifically promising to end it. On a West Virginia visit, he said he wanted "strong enforcement of the Clean Water Act" and added, "I will make sure the head of the Environmental Protection Agency believes in the environment." And EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said this year that the agency had "considerable concern" about the projects. She pledged that her agency would "use the best science and follow the letter of the law in ensuring we are protecting our environment." Soon afterward, the agency blocked six major mountaintop projects in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. But this month, after White House meetings with coal companies and advocates such as Rahall and West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, the EPA gave the green light to at least two dozen projects. "It was a big disappointment," said Joan Mulhern, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that has led court challenges to mountaintop removal. Mulhern charged that the EPA "blew off" Jackson's earlier promises that the agency would adhere to science and conduct an open process. Ed Hopkins, a top Sierra Club official, said that some of the projects that obtained the EPA's blessing "are as large and potentially destructive as the ones they objected to. "It makes us wonder what standards -- if any -- the administration is using." From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jun 3 15:01:35 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 14:01:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Report Ties Dubious Iran Nuclear Docs to Israel In-Reply-To: <1566871494.7013621244062725891.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <611031011.7015051244062895925.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47081 Report Ties Dubious Iran Nuclear Docs to Israel Analysis by Gareth Porter* WASHINGTON, Jun 3 (IPS) - A report on Iran?s nuclear programme issued by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month generated news stories publicising an incendiary charge that U.S. intelligence is underestimating Iran?s progress in designing a "nuclear warhead" before the halt in nuclear weapons-related research in 2003. That false and misleading charge from an intelligence official of a foreign country, who was not identified but was clearly Israeli, reinforces two of Israel?s key propaganda themes on Iran ? that the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is wrong, and that Tehran is poised to build nuclear weapons as soon as possible. But it also provides new evidence that Israeli intelligence was the source of the collection of intelligence documents which have been used to accuse Iran of hiding nuclear weapons research. The Committee report, dated May 4, cited unnamed "foreign analysts" as claiming intelligence that Iran ended its nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 because it had mastered the design and tested components of a nuclear weapon and thus didn?t need to work on it further until it had produced enough sufficient material. That conclusion, which implies that Iran has already decided to build nuclear weapons, contradicts both the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, and current intelligence analysis. The NIE concluded that Iran had ended nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 because of increased international scrutiny, and that it was "less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005". The report included what appears to be a spectacular revelation from "a senior allied intelligence official" that a collection of intelligence documents supposedly obtained by U.S. intelligence in 2004 from an Iranian laptop computer includes "blueprints for a nuclear warhead". It quotes the unnamed official as saying that the blueprints "precisely matched" similar blueprints the official's own agency "had obtained from other sources inside Iran". No U.S. or IAEA official has ever claimed that the so-called laptop documents included designs for a "nuclear warhead". The detailed list in a May 26, 2008 IAEA report of the contents of what have been called the "alleged studies" ? intelligence documents on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons work ? made no mention of any such blueprints. In using the phrase "blueprints for a nuclear warhead", the unnamed official was evidently seeking to conflate blueprints for the reentry vehicle of the Iranian Shehab missile, which were among the alleged Iranian documents, with blueprints for nuclear weapons. When New York Times reporters William J. Broad and David E. Sanger used the term "nuclear warhead" to refer to a reentry vehicle in a Nov. 13, 2005 story on the intelligence documents on the Iranian nuclear programme, it brought sharp criticism from David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security. "This distinction is not minor," Albright observed, "and Broad should understand the differences between the two objects, particularly when the information does not contain any words such as nuclear or nuclear warhead." The Senate report does not identify the country for which the analyst in question works, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff refused to respond to questions about the report from IPS, including the reason why the report concealed the identity of the country for which the unidentified "senior allied intelligence official" works. Reached later in May, the author of the report, Douglas Frantz, told IPS he is under strict instructions not to speak with the news media. After a briefing on the report for selected news media immediately after its release, however, the Associated Press reported May 6 that interviews were conducted in Israel. Frantz was apparently forbidden by Israeli officials from revealing their national affiliation as a condition for the interviews. Frantz, a former journalist for the Los Angeles Times, had extensive contacts with high-ranking Israeli military, intelligence and foreign ministry officials before joining the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff. He and co-author Catherine Collins conducted interviews with those Israeli officials for "The Nuclear Jihadist", published in 2007. The interviews were all conducted under rules prohibiting disclosure of their identities, according to the book. The unnamed Israeli intelligence officer?s statement that the "blueprints for a nuclear warhead" - meaning specifications for a missile reentry vehicle - were identical to "designs his agency had obtained from other sources in Iran" suggests that the documents collection which the IAEA has called "alleged studies" actually originated in Israel. A U.S.-based nuclear weapons analyst who has followed the "alleged studies" intelligence documents closely says he understands that the documents obtained by U.S. intelligence in 2004 were not originally stored on the laptop on which they were located when they were brought in by an unidentified Iranian source, as U.S. officials have claimed to U.S. journalists. The analyst, who insists on not being identified, says the documents were collected by an intelligence network and then assembled on a single laptop. The anonymous Israeli intelligence official's claim, cited in the Committee report, that the "blueprints" in the "alleged studies" collection matched documents his agency had gotten from its own source seems to confirm the analyst?s finding that Israeli intelligence assembled the documents. German officials have said that the Mujahedin E Khalq or MEK, the Iranian resistance organisation, brought the laptop documents collection to the attention of U.S. intelligence, as reported by IPS in February 2008. Israeli ties with the political arm of the MEK, the National Committee of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), go back to the early 1990s and include assistance to the organisation in broadcasting into Iran from Paris. The NCRI publicly revealed the existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in August 2002. However, that and other intelligence apparently came from Israeli intelligence. The Israeli co-authors of "The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran", Yossi Melman and Meir Javeanfar, revealed that "Western" intelligence was "laundered" to hide its actual provenance by providing it to Iranian opposition groups, especially NCRI, in order to get it to the IAEA. They cite U.S., British and Israeli officials as sources for the revelation. New Yorker writer Connie Bruck wrote in a March 2006 article that an Israeli diplomat confirmed to her that Israel had found the MEK "useful" but declined to elaborate. Israeli intelligence is also known to have been actively seeking to use alleged Iranian documents to prove that Iran had an active nuclear weapons programme just at the time the intelligence documents which eventually surfaced in 2004 would have been put together. The most revealing glimpse of Israeli use of such documents to influence international opinion on Iran?s nuclear programme comes from the book by Frantz and Collins. They report that Israel?s international intelligence agency Mossad created a special unit in the summer of 2003 to carry out a campaign to provide secret briefings on the Iranian nuclear programme, which sometimes included "documents from inside Iran and elsewhere". The "alleged studies" collection of documents has never been verified as genuine by either the IAEA or by intelligence analysts. The Senate report said senior United Nations officials and foreign intelligence officials who had seen "many of the documents" in the collection of alleged Iranian military documents had told committee staff "it is impossible to rule out an elaborate intelligence ruse". *Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006. (END/2009) From intnsred at golgotha.net Wed Jun 3 16:30:16 2009 From: intnsred at golgotha.net (Intense Red) Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 18:30:16 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Road Map to Peace was bogus from the start; Netanyahu cites secret deal with Bush to justify more settlements In-Reply-To: <611031011.7015051244062895925.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> References: <611031011.7015051244062895925.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <200906031830.16284.intnsred@golgotha.net> Netanyahu cites secret deal with Bush to justify more settlements Revelation puts more strain on relations with US as Obama heads for Middle East The Israeli government of Benjmain Netanyahu is seeking to deflect Washington's demand for a total settlement freeze by complaining that it ignores secret agreements between his predecessors and the Bush administration that construction in existing Jewish settlements could continue. The rift between Mr Netanyahu's government and the US appeared to deepen yesterday, with a clear declaration by President Barack Obama that a freeze ? including on "natural growth" of West Bank settlements ? was among Israeli "obligations". But Mr Netanyahu's government ? which has made it clear it will not accept a total freeze ? is pushing to restore at least part of the private "understandings" which it is emerging were struck between Israel and the previous US administration despite the Bush team's repeatedly stated opposition to settlement construction. The Israeli government is arguing that Ariel Sharon, with reservations, agreed in 2003 to the internationally endorsed Road Map and the withdrawal of 8,000 settlers from Gaza in 2005, only on condition that Israel could proceed with expansion within the physical boundaries of existing West Bank settlements. A senior Israeli official familiar with the current talks with the US said: "When the government of Israel adopted the Road Map... it was based on understandings reached with the US. It is hard for the US to say we have to keep to our commitments but ignore the understandings." The argument was being pressed in talks that Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak was holding in Washington yesterday and is likely to feature in discussions that the US Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, is expected to have with the Israeli leadership here on Monday. Israeli officials are braced for President Obama to repeat his call for a settlement freeze when he makes his major speech on US relations with the Muslim world in Cairo tomorrow. Israeli officials also complain that the new team in Washington is making "no distinction" between settlements in the larger blocs that Mr Bush told Mr Sharon in 2004 he expected would be in Israeli territory in any final status deal with the Palestinians, and those elsewhere in the occupied West Bank. Although the Bush administration later "clarified" that borders were a matter for negotiation, Israel swiftly assumed it was entitled to continue building within such blocs. There is no sign that President Obama sees himself bound by any such covert oral understandings reached with his predecessor's administration ? the status and durability of which has reportedly been challenged with vigour by US officials. Mr Obama told National Public Radio: "I've said very clearly to the Israelis both privately and publicly that a freeze on settlements, including natural growth, is part of those obligations." He added that Palestinians also had parallel obligations to improve security and end incitement. The senior Israeli official suggested that Mr Netanyahu was ready to reach an agreement with the US precluding settlement-building that would in his view prejudice final status negotiations with the Palestinians, and that this would include not building on E1, the bitterly controversial planned corridor linking Jerusalem to the large settlement of Ma'ale Adumim. The official rejected reports of a secret coalition agreement between Mr Netanyahu and his hard-right Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, to resume E1-building. But the Palestinians ? and for now at least the US ? argue that any further settlement construction would prejudice negotiations, not least in Arab East Jerusalem where Mr Netanyahu is determined to keep a free hand in building settlements. Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the Six Day War in 1967, but this has never been accepted by the international community. Haaretz reported yesterday that Washington was "furious" over plans by the Jerusalem municipality, backed by the Interior Ministry, to build a nine-storey 200-room hotel in East Jerusalem, just 100 metres from the Old City, which includes a Palestinian market and kindergarten. The row has exposed the extent that the Bush administration was willing to sanction settlement-building, despite its publicly stated policy. Dov Weisglass, who was the closest lieutenant of then-prime minister Sharon, said in a newspaper yesterday that the deals originated in a 1990s agreement on "natural growth" which was further refined in 2002, "though the Americans completely denied the existence of the understandings". They have been confirmed by Bush administration assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams. Mr Weisglass said it had been agreed between Mr Sharon, himself, Mr Abrams and another US official, Stephen Hadley, that settlement growth could continue provided it did not involve new settlements, that no further "Palestinian land" would be expropriated, that expansion would be within the "existing construction line" and that public funds would not be used to encourage settlements. The Bush administration's secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, confirmed the agreement, he said. -- "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal." -- US President Richard M. Nixon, clearly confusing the president of a republic with a dictator. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Jun 3 18:45:11 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:45:11 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Spirit Level Message-ID: <4A271917.1000400@ashisuto.co.jp> Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett Penguin Books (2009) Review by John Carey The Sunday Times (March 08 2009) This is a book with a big idea, big enough to change political thinking, and bigger than its authors at first intended. The problem they originally set out to solve was why health within a population gets progressively worse further down the social scale; they estimate that together they have clocked up more than fifty person-years gathering information from research teams across the globe. Their eureka moment came when they thought of putting the medical data alongside figures showing the extent of economic inequality within each country. They say modestly that since dependable statistics both on health and on income distribution are internationally available, it was only a matter of time before someone put the two together. All the same, they are the first to have done so. Their book charts the level of health and social problems - as many as they could find reliable figures for - against the level of income inequality in twenty of the world's richest nations, and in each of the fifty United States. They allocate a brief chapter to each problem, supplying graphs that display the evidence starkly and unarguably. What they find is that, in states and countries where there is a big gap between the incomes of rich and poor, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, obesity and teenage pregnancy are more common, the homicide rate is higher, life expectancy is shorter, and children's educational performance and literacy scores are worse. The Scandinavian countries and Japan consistently come at the positive end of this spectrum. They have the smallest differences between higher and lower incomes, and the best record of psycho-social health. The countries with the widest gulf between rich and poor, and the highest incidence of most health and social problems, are Britain, America and Portugal. Richard Wilkinson, a professor of medical epidemiology at Nottingham University, and Kate Pickett, a lecturer in epidemiology at York University, emphasise that it is not only the poor who suffer from the effects of inequality, but the majority of the population. For example, rates of mental illness are five times higher across the whole population in the most unequal than in the least unequal societies in their survey. One explanation, they suggest, is that inequality increases stress right across society, not just among the least advantaged. Much research has been done on the stress hormone cortisol, which can be measured in saliva or blood, and it emerges that chronic stress affects the neural system and in turn the immune system. When stressed, we are more prone to depression and anxiety, and more likely to develop a host of bodily ills including heart disease, obesity, drug addiction, liability to infection and rapid ageing. Societies where incomes are relatively equal have low levels of stress and high levels of trust, so that people feel secure and see others as co-operative. In unequal societies, by contrast, the rich suffer from fear of the poor, while those lower down the social order experience status anxiety, looking upon those who are more successful with bitterness and upon themselves with shame. In the 1980s and 1990s, when inequality was rapidly rising in Britain and America, the rich bought homesecurity systems, and started to drive 4x4s with names such as Defender and Crossfire, reflecting a need to intimidate attackers. Meanwhile the poor grew obese on comfort foods and took more legal and illegal drugs. In 2005, doctors in England alone wrote 29 million prescriptions for antidepressants, costing the NHS GBP 400 million . Status anxiety and how we respond to it are basic, it seems, to our animal natures. In an experiment with macaque monkeys, the animals were housed in groups, and the social hierarchies that developed among them were observed. Then the monkeys were taught to administer cocaine to themselves by pressing a lever. The dominant monkeys in each group were relatively abstemious, but the subordinate monkeys took a lot of cocaine to medicate themselves against the pain of low social status. In a similar experiment, high-status monkeys from different groups were housed together, so that some of them became low status. The downwardly mobile monkeys accumulated abdominal fat and developed a rapid build-up of atherosclerosis in their arteries, just like humans. The different social problems that stem from income inequality often, Wilkinson and Pickett show, form circuits or spirals. Babies born to teenage mothers are at greater risk, as they grow up, of educational failure, juvenile crime, and becoming teenage parents themselves. In societies with greater income inequality, more people are sent to prison, and less is spent on education and welfare. In Britain the prison population has doubled since 1990; in America it has quadrupled since the late 1970s. American states with a wide gap between rich and poor are likelier to retain the death penalty, and to hand out long sentences for minor crimes. In California in 2004, there were 360 people serving life sentences for shoplifting. California has built only one new college since 1984, but 21 new prisons. Whereas societies with high income differentials are exceptionally punitive, in Japan imprisonment rates are low and offenders who confess their crimes and express a desire to reform are generally trusted to do so by the judiciary and the public. The authors' method is objective and scientific, so that the human distress behind their statistics mostly remains hidden. But when they quote from interviews conducted by social researchers, passion and resentment flood into their book. A working-class man in Rotherham tells of the shame he felt having to sit next to a middle-class woman ("this stuck-up cow, you know, slim, attractive"); how he felt overweight and started sweating; how he imagined her thinking, "listen, low-life, don't even come near me. We pay to get away from scum like you." In half a page it tells you more about the pain of inequality than any play or novel could. It might be said that The Spirit Level merely formulates what everyone has always felt. Western European utopias have almost all been egalitarian. Polls in Britain over the past twenty years show that the proportion of the population who think income differences too big is on average eighty per cent. But what is new about their book, the authors insist, is that it turns personal intuitions into publicly demonstrable facts. With the evidence they have supplied, politicians now have a chance to "do genuine good". By reducing income inequality, they can improve the health and wellbeing of the whole population. How this should be effected, Wilkinson and Pickett do not think it is their job to say, but increasing top tax rates or legislating to limit maximum pay are possibilities they suggest. They warn, though, that short-term remedies like this could be reversed by a change of government, and that we need to find ways of rooting greater equality more deeply in our society. This is their book's mission, and they have set up a not-for-profit trust (equalitytrust.org) to make the evidence they set out better known. One illusion that, cheeringly, they hope to dispel is that the super-rich are some kind of asset we should all cherish, rather than, from the viewpoint of social health, the equivalent of the seven plagues of Egypt. The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett Allen Lane GBP 20 416 pages Copyright 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/services/terms_and_conditions/ Please read our Privacy Policy: http://www.nidp.com/ To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from Times Online, The Times or The Sunday Times, click here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/services/syndication/ This website is published by a member of the News International Group. News International Limited, 1 Virginia Street, London E98 1XY, is the holding company for the News International group and is registered in England No 81701. VAT number GB 243 8054 69. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article5859108.ece?print=yes 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 fentona at shaw.ca Thu Jun 4 08:10:49 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 07:10:49 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Author Yves Engler damns foreign policy Message-ID: <88D35F7D-1E02-4DF4-9441-0E26E5FE5D1D@shaw.ca> http://www.straight.com/article-227837/author-yves-engler-damns-foreign-policy News Features June 4, 2009 Author Yves Engler damns foreign policy By Carlito Pablo Yves Engler says the U.S. empire and corporations set the foreign agenda. Activist and Vancouver-raised author Yves Engler isn?t surprised by the appeal of a made-in-Canada doctrine called the ?responsibility to protect?. This doctrine was formulated about eight years ago by an international commission that included then?Harvard academic and current federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. ?I think it?s captivated a big chunk of progressive opinion in Canada because it sounds good,? Engler told the Georgia Straight by phone just before an event in Vancouver that would launch his new book, The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy (Fernwood Publishing, 2009). ?Everyone would like to think that when there?s serious human-rights violations somewhere, they should be stopped.? Ignatieff is a strong advocate of the concept, which declares that a sovereign state is responsible for protecting its people from crimes against humanity, such as genocide and ethnic cleansing. If a country is unable or unwilling to carry out this duty, that responsibility shifts to the international community. Sovereignty yields to the imperative of humanitarian protection. While Engler noted that the doctrine touches on a ?very humanistic trait?, the Montreal-based writer argued that it?s a ?dangerous? principle. ?It also speaks to quite a serious political naivet?, and I think quite a sector?of liberal?not in the political-party sense, but in the political sense?opinion that is seduced by imperialism with a nice covering,? he said. In The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, Engler examines Canada?s long record of actively supporting imperialism, from fighting on the side of the British Empire to being the modern-day ally of the U.S. Canada participated in British suppression of the slave rebellions in the Caribbean during the 19th century. After the First World War, Ottawa lusted after Britain?s Caribbean colonies but was turned down by London. In 2004, Canada supported the U.S.?inspired coup against Haiti?s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Engler writes that Canada?s policy in the Middle East over the last 50 years, including its unyielding support of Israel, has been ?designed, above all else, to guarantee U.S. control over the region?s energy resources?. Canada?s chief of defence staff, General Walter Natynczyk, helped plan the U.S.?led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and was deputy commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad. In 2004, Montreal-based SNC Technologies, now owned by Virginia-based defence contractor General Dynamics, became part of an international consortium that has provided millions of bullets to U.S. troops in Iraq. Mexico was on the receiving end of Canada?s first recorded use of gunboat diplomacy when the destroyer HMCS Rainbow was dispatched to an area near Mazatl?n in 1915. According to Engler, Ottawa has supported dictators in many Latin American countries where Canadian companies had mining interests. Within weeks of the bloody coup that overthrew Chilean president Salvador Allende in 1973, Canada recognized Augusto Pinochet?s brutal military junta. Engler also notes that Canada helped prop up pro-American dictators in East Asian countries where Canadian mining companies were operating, such as Suharto in Indonesia and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. During the Vietnam War, Canada supplied $2.5 billion in war materials to the U.S. Canada?s long-time involvement in Central and South Asia is currently represented by its combat mission in Afghanistan. According to Engler, Canadians fought alongside the British in the Third Afghan War in 1919. When interviewed, Engler said Canadian foreign policy is influenced by ?support for empire??historically the British Empire and more recently the American empire?as well as support for Canadian corporate interests around the world. He recalled a debate in Parliament about a year ago during which Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to use the term ?responsibility to protect?, apparently because it has a strong association with the Liberal party. ?To me, it kind of encapsulated Canadian foreign policy,? Engler said. ?The Harper government, their form of imperialism is just, ?We do it, we support the Americans, we believe in our interests, and we believe in militarism.? ? He added that ?more sophisticated supporters of capitalism? need to create an ideological justification for intervening in other countries? affairs. ?But they need to do it in a more high-minded kind of way because it does catch a lot of people who are not politically astute,? Engler said. ?They get kind of caught up: ?Oh, this is about responsibility to protect, it?s about humanitarian intervention?it sounds good.? And the sort of economic or the geopolitical interests that are driving the process, those are left aside.? From fentona at shaw.ca Thu Jun 4 10:27:35 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 09:27:35 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Propaghandi Scores Against War Message-ID: <9631EF51-584A-4ADF-9F0C-3CC5C41CE2E1@shaw.ca> http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/2657 June 3, 2009 Propaghandi Scores Against War Torture, Terror, and Don Cherry face the music in the Band's sixth release by Erin Empey The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca Left to right: Jord Samolesky, Todd Kowalski, Chris Hannah, David ?Beaver? Guillas Photo: Chris Hannah Propagandhi, Winnipeg?s ?progressive thrash? heroes, have just released a new album. Supporting Caste is twelve and a half songs of political passion and metal-tinged post-punk. Singer Chris Hannah discusses the issues inspiring their sixth full-length album. Erin Empey: Do you think that Propagandhi has evolved since the release of Potemkin City Limits? What?s new with Supporting Caste? Chris Hannah: I'd like to think so! At the very least, we added The Beave on second guitar to the line-up, so that's new, and in my opinion has added a lot more depth, dimension and atmosphere to our customary sonic pummelings. Also, Jord has more gray hair on this record. I?m not sure if that comes through on the recording though. Since you guys decided to fold your record label last year, how has working with Smallman been compared to G7 Welcoming Committee? Well, considering we're in a time where the racket of selling recordings to people has been essentially eviscerated, it's been pretty good! We've known them for years, they understand where we're coming from and they live within choking distance. These are important factors. G7 operated using Participatory Economics (parecon), where business decisions were made democratically and profits were shared equally among members. Based on your experience, do you think it could be applied on a larger scale? After a decade of experience in a parecon-inspired enterprise that was subject to all the human frailties and palace intrigues that every single gathering of more than two people throughout history has always endured, I still can't come up with any good reason why people shouldn't endeavor to embrace parecon's core values of solidarity, equity, diversity and self-management in their workplaces. It makes sense and it is right. The track ?Human(e) Meat? opens with a howling Sandor Katz about to be cannibalized. Who is Katz and why do you want to eat him? Sandor Katz is someone who talks and writes about food. He has a book called "the Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved" that is actually worth reading until you hit the absurd and utterly embarrassing chapter where he tries to rationalize torturing, maiming, killing and mutilating sentient animals for his personal enjoyment. It is the type of embarrassing new-age hippy nonsense that sets serious debate about food politics and human ethics back a decade every time it rears its hippy head. We simply used his logic, step by step, and daydreamed me rationalizing torturing, maiming, killing and mutilating him for my personal enjoyment. Which is of course also absurd, which was the point of the illustration. Apparently he has no sense of humour (or of his own irony for that matter) and is very upset about it. Poor persecuted meat eaters! Will they never be free from the tyrannical oppression of vegetarians? In ?Dear Coaches Corner? you lament Don Cherry using his platform to promote militarism. Do you think that there are ugly politics in hockey culture beyond Don Cherry's routines? For sure. Cherry is just the emptiest and hence, the loudest barrel. The culture of professional hockey is essentially a propaganda wing of the western elite and their geo-political objectives. Why else would Jim Balsillie, head cocknose of the company that makes the Blackberry, appear on Hockey Night in Canada thanking Canadian troops in Afghanistan for "defending our lifestyle?" Wait, I thought it was about liberating Afghan women? Whoops! During the pre-release of Supporting Caste, proceeds from downloads went to Partners in Health, Sea Shepherd Society and Peta2. Why are these groups important to you? Partners in Health provides a preferential option for the poor in health care. At its root, their mission is both medical and moral. It is based on solidarity, rather than charity alone. When their patients are ill and have no access to care, their team of health professionals, scholars, and activists will do whatever it takes to make them well ? just as one would do if a member of one's own family were ill. They stand with their patients, some of the poorest and sickest victims of poverty and violence, in their struggle for equity and social justice. People for the ethical treatment of animals is probably best known as the most frequently criticized and denounced activist organization on the planet. Some of the criticisms are legitimate, like those that lament campaigns that play on and foster or perpetuate sexist stereotypes in the service of drawing attention to the mundane terrors visited upon animals in human societies. Still, Peta2 (the youth wing of its parent organization) is currently the most effective potential gateway drug to an abolitionist animal liberation perspective that is not merely anti-animal exploitation, but anti-capitalist, anti-sexist and connects human affairs with non-human animal affairs. Less than one percent of the planet's living creatures live on land, so you'll have to excuse Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society for his bluntness when declaring the Sea Shepherds Society's "single-mindedness" for defending the oceans from human encroachment and exploitation. We humans constitute less than 0.1% of life on earth and act like we are entitled to the rest of it. Humans continue to terrorize and destroy the largest-brained sentient mammals in the history of earth and enlist the services of PR firms to cloak the brutality in vestments of scientific research. The Sea Shepherd intends to stop such stupidity. Do you ever feel awkward about speaking on behalf of groups you are not a part of, such as Aboriginals, refugees or women? With an influential band, is there a danger of overshadowing the voices of those you are trying to help? Not if you're a good listener. My obligation as I see it is to take the information that marginalized groups have articulated to me about the realities they face in a fucked up system and relay it to my people in a way that has resonance. And what can I say? My people happen to be largely white guys in NHL starter caps. Hey, we need information too, eh! When are you playing Vancouver? I refuse to answer such a politically-loaded question! Erin Empey is a Vancouver based journalist who plays in the band Rebel Spell. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jun 4 13:15:40 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 12:15:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Torture and justice, American style In-Reply-To: <77F806CA61E4469D947CA688D856AE90@twubby.com> Message-ID: <1947457194.7313621244142940464.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The Canadian Charger June 3, 2009 Torture and justice, American style By Dr. Mohamed Elmasry "I could see them, dragged naked along the concrete corridor," reported the 18- year-old boy. "Their skin was tearing off their bodies and the extreme pain showed on their faces. Electric shockers such as are used on livestock had first been used on them. I saw the burns on their arms and legs. Then ?wrist-breakers? were used on them; clamps with a handle for applying pressure on the wrists. Their wrists were swollen twice their size and twisted about two-thirds out of proportion." This is not a recent report by a Muslim who just got out of Guant?namo describing the conditions of other fellow prisoners. This is a report by Kenneth Shilman, a white American, published in The Jackson Daily, Mississippi, on June 21, 1961. Shilman was a member of a civil-rights movement called Freedom Riders. The movement had both white and black Americans and they rode from city to city on interstate buses to challenge racial segregation in the South. The treatment of the black Riders, when arrested, was far worse. Welcome to torture - American style! When he took office in 1934, New York City Mayor Fiorelllo LaGuardia told police he would fire any officer who used torture to force a confession. Six months later, he changed his order to: "I?ll fire anyone if he uses third-degree (torture) methods and the newspapers hear about it." In 1929, District Attorney R. H. Elder said, "The third degree has now become established as a recognized practice in the police department of the city of New York. Every policeman stationed in the city is equipped with the instruments to administer the torture incident to that process." "In more recent years, the United States has become famous for the judicial use of police torture as the "third degree." Like the torture of the Inquisition, its purpose is to force a confession," said Daniel P. Mannix in his 1964 book The History of Torture, "Many of the accounts of third-degree tortures could be taken straight out of the annals of the Spanish Inquisition." But Americans should not take all the credit. "There is little doubt that the Spaniards introduced the conception of torture into the Western world," said Mannix. In 1511, Bartolome de Las Casas, a bishop known as the Apostle of the Indies and who is generally credited with having started the African slave trade, describes the death of several chiefs at the hands of the Spaniards in Cuba, perhaps at a location not too far from Guant?namo: "I saw four or five Indian leaders being roasted alive at a slow fire and the miserable victims screamed so loudly that they woke the commander of the garrison who gave orders that they were to be strangled. But the officer of the guard refused and instead had them gagged. He stirred up the fire himself and roasted them deliberately to death." I do not understand why Barack Obama flipped-flopped to stop the release of all the photos of tortured prisoners by his people in Baghram, Abu Ghraib or Guant?namo. Should Obama not release these pictures, if for no other reason than to let the world know of new American ways to torture? Were there any invited forms of torture by low-ranking American officers that should be entered into the history of torture, or were they old, textbook American methods? What old American techniques, as listed by Mannix, are now outdated? Is squeezing the accused?s testicles with pliers still popular? What about using a dentist?s drill? And the American touch: "The blows hurt much more if the victim doesn?t know from whom or when he?s going to be hit next." If Obama is real to his campaign pledges, he should open an investigation to save the soul of his nation. While he?s at it, he should let us know about those American military courts held for Muslims arrested after 911. The world wants to know how different these courts are from those presided over by 19th-century American "hanging judges." One of the most famous, Judge Roy Bean, once acquitted a white man for shooting a Chinese man on the grounds: "There ain?t no law makin? it illegal to shoot a damn Chink." When a Mexican was shot, he ruled: "Serves the greater right fer gettin? in front of a gun." Bean sentenced a Mexican to death for being accused of stealing. "You?re dead, dead, you olive-colored, chili-eatin?, sheep-stealin? son of a bitch." Obama or not, the tradition of torture is still alive in American justice, reserved especially for Muslim men, women and children. * Dr Mohamed Elmasry is Professor Emeritus of Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo; Founder, The Canadian Islamic Congress; and member, editorial board, The Canadian Charger. He can be reached at elmasry at thecanadiancharger.com ** The Canadian Charger is Canada?s new national independent not-for-profit multimedia interactive online magazine with 60 of Canada?s top experts, writers and cartoonists: www.thecanadiancharger.com From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jun 4 13:16:28 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 12:16:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Blair Incorporated In-Reply-To: <8DA2B81E7EEC4A0AB44237ECC542B43F@twubby.com> Message-ID: <835431102.7314091244142988766.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5136856/Blair-Incorporated.html Daily Telegraph April 14, 2009 Blair Incorporated Tony Blair is the most highly paid speaker on the planet, and his wife is not doing too badly, either. By Gordon Rayner As Tony Blair soaked up the applause of an adoring Filipino audience at the end of his latest paid speaking engagement last month, a startling statistic must surely have popped into his head. In the space of just 30 minutes, Mr Blair had earned ?183,000 ? the same as his salary as prime minister. Put another way, he earned ?6,000 per minute for addressing a 2,000-strong audience in Manila, making him far and away the highest-paid public speaker on the planet. And the lectures, where Mr Blair delivers such pearls of wisdom as "politics really matters, but a lot of what goes on is not great", are only a small part of his vast earnings, which could very well net him a staggering ?80 million by the time he reaches retirement age in 10 years' time. Welcome to Blair Incorporated, a money-making machine like no other in the history of former political leaders. No other retired statesman, not even Mr Blair's old buddy Bill Clinton, has made so much cash so quickly after leaving office. Between them, Mr Blair and his wife Cherie have banked close to ?18 million in the two years since they moved out of Downing Street, with no sign of any let-up in their earning power. Such is the demand for Mr Blair's services on the international speaking circuit that there is a two-year waiting list for bookings, and Max Markson, the colourful Australian PR man who has worked with the likes of Nelson Mandela and Mr Clinton, described him as "one of the biggest stars in the world". Mr Blair, 55, is certainly acting the part. He has assembled a global empire with its headquarters in a smart four-storey office in Grosvenor Square and outlying offices in America, Africa and the Middle East. At the last count, Mr Blair employed 82 people to run his ventures; a religious foundation, charities raising money for sport, Africa and to halt climate change, and of course his permanent office at the American Colony hotel in Jerusalem, where he is an international envoy to the Palestinian territories. And to shuttle between his activities, Mr Blair (who was so cruelly denied the presidential-style personal airliner he craved during his time in office) has taken to renting a Gulfstream V executive jet, which costs up to ?80,000 for a typical three-day round trip. Like any chief executive, he travels with a gaggle of aides, who often include the ever-loyal Ruth Turner, his former Downing Street "gatekeeper" who was arrested (but not charged) during the cash for honours investigation, and who heads up his US office based at Yale University. Incredible as it may seem for a man who portrayed himself as the champion of the disenfranchised, ?80,000 is small change to Mr Blair, thanks to the speaking tours, which rake in around ?2.5 million per year, advisory roles with Zurich and JP Morgan Chase, which bring in another ?2.5 million and his latest venture, advising other leaders on good governance, for which he charges around ?1 million per contract. Nor has Mrs Blair been letting the grass grow under her piggy bank. Having earned a ?1 million advance for her autobiography, Speaking For Myself , she has continued with her second career as a public speaker, banking around ?25,000 per engagement, mostly through trips to America. Her appearances this year will include a speech at the Institute of Travel and Tourism conference in Dubai in June. Mrs Blair's experience of holiday hunting may have been limited in recent years by her uncanny ability to conjure numerous stays at the exotic homes of acquaintances such as Cliff Richard and Robin Gibb, but the conference organisers have assured paying delegates that: "Cherie has some knowledge of the travel industry as her mother was a travel agent for Lewis's department store in Liverpool." As Cherie Booth QC, she has also carried on with her legal career, picking up one of her most high-profile cases to date after being retained by two local authority pension funds to prepare a joint action against Sir Fred Goodwin and Royal Bank of Scotland in the American courts. Conservative estimates suggest the case will keep her earnings from legal work above ?100,000 a year. Mrs Blair also sits as a part-time judge for 15 days a year for the standard daily fee of ?575. Her impressive workload has also included lucrative appearances on Channel 4: she was paid ?10,000 for presenting a one-hour documentary on the future of Christianity last month, and received slightly more for chairing a series on street weapons last year. She also has an occasional column in The Times , which pays around ?1,000 a time. The Blairs need all the money they can get their hands on, with mortgages on four properties in London, Buckinghamshire, Bristol and Durham totalling almost ?9 million and more than 80 staff between them, whose combined wages are likely to top ?2.5 million per year. Yet there are increasing signs that Mr Blair is prepared to give up some of his lucrative outside interests ? temporarily at least ? by becoming the first full-time president of the European Union as and when the role is created. Mr Blair, who sees himself as uniquely placed to build a bridge between Europe and the Obama administration, held private talks with the European Commission president, Jos? Manuel Barroso, in Brussels last week while the world was focusing on the G20 summit in London. As well as sounding out Mr Barroso for support, Mr Blair has reportedly talked Gordon Brown around to backing him, and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, is also understood to have told Mr Blair he would have his vote. At the beginning of this year, when I last spoke to Blair's biographer, Anthony Seldon, about rumours that Blair was interested in the presidency, Prof Seldon dismissed the suggestion out of hand, saying the former premier had no appetite for European bureaucracy. Since then, however, he has revised his opinion. "I now think he might well want to do it," Dr Seldon told me from his study at Wellington College. "My sense is that he is finding it harder to operate as a freelance diplomat than he thought it would be. It's harder to get influence without an official position, and with each passing month his contacts and his inside knowledge decline, his name declines ? he is a declining asset. So it may make more sense to him to come inside an office that has a standing and operate from there. "His earning power might go down in the time he was doing it, as he would have to give up some of his activities, but people have always made the mistake of thinking he is a man obsessed by money. He is not that kind of person, though he may have acquired the habits of the rich. On a personal level, I don't think a drop in income would worry him." Cherie Blair may react with horror to the thought of her husband giving up some of his earnings for a job that will pay just ?200,000 a year (the equivalent of 33 minutes' work for Mr Blair at the moment). But Mrs Blair would be able to console herself with the knowledge that after completing a two-and-a-half-year term as EU President (or even the maximum of five years), her husband would be a more bankable asset than ever on the worldwide lecture circuit. Tony Blair?s earnings since leaving office in June 2007: ? Speaking fees: ?2.5 million per annum ? Advance for memoirs: ?4.6 million ? Advisory role with JPMorgan Chase: ?2 million pa ? Advisory role with Zurich financial services: ?500,000 pa ? Contract to advise Kuwaiti leaders on good governance: ?1 million ? Prime Ministerial pension: ?63,468 ? Allowance for private office: ?84,000 Total to June 2009: ?15,894,936 Outgoings: ? Mortgages: ?384,000 pa ? Staff wages: ?2.4 million ? Office rental: ?550,000 pa ? Gulfstream V jet rental: ?500,000 pa Total: ?7,668,000 Cherie Blair?s earnings since June 2007: ? Advance for autobiography: ?1 million ? Speaking fees: ?200,000 pa ? Legal work: ?100,000 pa ? Court fees for sitting as crown court recorder: ?8,625 pa ? Fee for Channel 4 programme on Christianity: ?10,000 ? Fee for Channel 4 series on street weapons: ?15,000 ? Articles in The Times: ?2,000 Total to June 2009: ?1,644,250 Outgoings: ? Mortgages: ?20,400 pa ? Staff wages: ?140,000 pa ? Council tax: ?5,507 pa ? Household expenditure: ?60,000 pa Total: ?444,164 * Some figures are approximate From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jun 4 13:15:05 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 12:15:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Iran's president, rival, spar in debate In-Reply-To: <9E5857583C6C48D38A7B1E3A68A90FBC@twubby.com> Message-ID: <1774001352.7313351244142905846.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-debates04-2009-jun04,0,2553718.story Los Angeles Times June 4, 2009 Iran's president, rival, spar in debate Leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tangles with Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister and one of his opponents in the presidential race. The hard-hitting encounter is part of a series of debates. Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Reporting from Tehran -- Iran's president waved an apparent intelligence file on his challenger's wife in the air Wednesday night, accusing her of violating government rules in an explosive televised debate that laid bare the rifts within the country's establishment. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the aging former prime minister who is the leading contender against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the presidential election next week, kept his cool and struck back forcefully, defending his wife as a dedicated scholar and artist and accusing the incumbent of using the instruments of state to dig up dirt on his opponents. "This is typical of your government," he told Ahmadinejad. "Instead of finding solutions, you send your deputies to make files on the people." The long-anticipated 90-minute encounter, watched by more than 40 million people, was the second in a series of seven live one-on-one debates among the four presidential contenders. The two candidates attacked each other unremittingly, touching on sensitive issues such as human rights, Iran's involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict and its relations with the United States in a freewheeling format rare on state television. Mousavi, struggling with his words during the beginning of the debate, hammered hard at Ahmadinejad's foreign policy, accusing him of needlessly alienating other countries. He mocked what he described as Ahmadinejad's erratic behavior during several crises and trips abroad and repeatedly criticized Ahmadinejad for questioning the existence of the Holocaust, which he said hurt Iran's national interests and unified the world behind Israel, Tehran's rival. "Relations between Europe and Israel had become a bit bad due to its crimes in Gaza," he said. "Due to those remarks, [Europe] stood behind Israel." Ahmadinejad, smiling and often sarcastic, fought back forcefully. In crisp diction and barbed words, he noted that during Mousavi's 1981-89 tenure as prime minister, he too had called for Israel's destruction, shuttered newspapers and jailed students. The president grabbed credit for expanding Iran's nuclear program and standing up to the West. "For 27 years the Americans were pursuing a policy of regime change against us," he said. "Now they are saying they are not. Whose foreign policy brought that about?" Ahmadinejad painted Mousavi as part of a cabal that includes Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential ayatollah and former president, and is dedicated to defeating him to secure vested interests. He named names, accusing several key political figures and their families of corruption and hinting at evidence showing Mousavi's alleged wrongdoings. Mousavi was calm and quiet throughout much of the debate, but his body language showed contempt for the president. He rarely looked him in the eye except while delivering a searing, 12-minute final segment that sounded like a prosecutor's closing argument. He took Ahmadinejad to task for harassing students, shuttering newspapers and banning books and accused him of cronyism for appointing an interior minister who had a fake university degree, the gambit that probably prompted Ahmadinejad to raise the issue of Mousavi's wife. Mousavi likened Ahmadinejad's populist giveaways to the behavior of 19th century monarchs who used the public treasury to curry favor with the masses by tossing them a few coins. "We should be trying to increase jobs and production," he said. He argued several times that Ahmadinejad had put the country in danger and did not adhere to the laws, leafing through a thick packet of paper and citing example after example. "I don't think you're a dictator," he said, "but your attitude will lead to dictatorship." daragahi at latimes.com From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jun 4 13:16:05 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 12:16:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Bernanke raises alarm on spending In-Reply-To: <5B90CB2D78D54A06AB6F648FB2F9FD34@twubby.com> Message-ID: <583899903.7313821244142965303.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/bernanke-raises-alarm-on-spending/article1167676/ Globe and Mail Report on Business June 4, 2009 Bernanke raises alarm on spending Barrie McKenna Washington ? F ederal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke warned Wednesday that the U.S. spending spree now threatens the country's financial stability, amid growing questions over whether governments and central banks around the world have gone too far. The question now is whether the very measures that are being used to save the global economy from an outright meltdown could trigger hyperinflation and higher interest rates down the road, sowing the seeds for the next crisis. Central banks have pushed key interest rates to near zero and flooded financial markets with cash, while governments from Ottawa to Berlin have run up huge debts with spending on infrastructure and bailouts in an attempt to stop the recession from worsening. Mr. Bernanke's comments came one day after an attack on central banks by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Europe's biggest economy. While Mr. Bernanke's warning Wednesday related to fiscal policy, both officials were warning about pulling back excesses that could pose severe problems later. Tensions about how to get the ailing global economy off life support burst into the open as Ms. Merkel and Mr. Bernanke clashed over fiscal and monetary policy. Ms. Merkel attacked the Fed, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank for intervening in financial markets to bolster the economy, warning of inflation and other problems. ?What other central banks are doing must be reversed,? she said. ?We must return to independent and sensible monetary policies, otherwise we will be back to where we are now in 10 years' time,? Ms. Merkel said. She also said she is ?skeptical? of the use of so-called quantitative easing, including direct purchases of government bonds by the Fed and other central banks. Mr. Bernanke shot back: ?I ? respectfully ? disagree with her views.? The Fed chairman told a U.S. congressional committee Wednesday that he acted because the world was facing an extreme financial crisis and a deep recession. ?Strong action on the fiscal and monetary side is justified,? he told members of the House of Representatives budget committee. But Mr. Bernanke did voice concern about another hangover from the recession: the ballooning deficit. He cautioned that the U.S. government is jeopardizing future prosperity if it continues borrowing at the current rate to cover the widening gap between its revenues and expenditures. ?Even as we take steps to address the recession and threats to financial stability, maintaining the confidence of the financial markets requires that we, as a nation, begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance,? Mr. Bernanke warned. The U.S. government must show fiscal discipline now or it will face financial instability and shaky growth in the years ahead, he said. The government will run up a record $1.85-trillion (U.S.) deficit this year, equivalent to 13 per cent of gross domestic product, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The deficit is on course to be more than four times larger than last year's all-time high. The first hint of trouble may already be showing up in rising long-term interest rates. Yields on 10-year notes have climbed about one percentage point since March, when the Fed said it would buy $300-billion of long-term government bonds. In trading yesterday, 10-year T-bills were yielding 3.54 per cent. Concern among investors about the deficit is a key cause of those rising rates, Mr. Bernanke said. ?In recent weeks, yields on longer-term Treasury securities and fixed-rate mortgages have risen,? he said. ?These increases appear to reflect concerns about large federal deficits but also other causes, including greater optimism about the economic outlook, a reversal of flight-to-quality flows and technical factors related to the hedging of mortgage holdings.? Rising interest rates undermine everything the Fed is trying to do to revive business and consumer spending. And Mr. Bernanke's comments mark a clear warning to Congress that it's time to start thinking about the post-recession and fiscal restraint. Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the ranking Republican on the committee, warned that the government's borrowing needs, combined with the Fed's pledge to buy government bonds, is a ?dangerous policy mix? that could soon spark ?runaway inflation.? Mr. Ryan also worries the Fed will keep priming the pump too long in the face of a deep recession, undermining its ability to keep prices in check. ?We policy makers should realize that our most challenging policy period is going to be ahead of us,? he told Mr. Bernanke. But many experts disagree, arguing that high interest rates pose a greater danger than inflation. Menzie Chinn, a professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin, said Japan's experience in the 1990 suggests that surging debt levels do not spark hyperinflation when an economy is mired in recession. ?America is a big net debtor to the rest of the world, with extremely large holdings of U.S. Treasuries by foreign private and state actors,? Prof. Chinn said. ?I worry more about higher real interest rates than higher inflation.? From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jun 4 15:17:52 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 14:17:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Hezbollah has a shot at controlling Lebanon's government In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1234055628.7371111244150272646.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/hezbollah-has-a-shot-at-controlling-lebanons-government/article1165791/ Globe and Mail June 3, 2009 Hezbollah has a shot at controlling Lebanon's government Christian political leader Michel Aoun may be decisive figure in coming election Patrick Martin Bkerki , Lebanon ? N asrallah Sfeir is worried. The 85-year-old Patriarch of Lebanon's once-dominant Maronite Christian community says his ?people are divided.? They are torn between supporting Christian parties that back the pro-Western March 14 Movement that governs the country, and those that support another Christian party, one that is allied with the Hezbollah-led opposition. As a result, Lebanon, which has seen more than its share of civil war, foreign invasion and terrorism in the past three decades, may be on the verge of choosing a parliament led by a group that Canada and other countries consider terrorists. Patriarch Sfeir chose his words carefully in the nationally televised sermon he delivered this week; he does not want to appear political. But he also knows that with the outcome all but certain in most Sunni and Shia Muslim districts, it will fall to Lebanon's Christians to determine which parliamentary group will triumph in Sunday's election. And while he may have chosen his words carefully, to the cognoscenti the Patriarch's message was clear: A vote for Hezbollah risks dragging Lebanon into more conflict. ?He's really made no secret of his animosity toward Hezbollah,? said Karim Makdisi, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. Indeed, speaking to a Western correspondent after mass on Sunday, Patriarch Sfeir said he is deeply disturbed by Michel Aoun, the former military chief of staff who three years ago entered into a political agreement with Hezbollah. ?He's a good man,? the Patriarch said of the General. ?But he supports Hezbollah. He used to oppose them,? he added, shaking his head. But in the Christian towns and villages along the Mediterranean coast north of Beirut and in the hills above the city, there are many who part company with the Patriarch. ?The majority of people here are supporting Aoun,? said the mukhtar , or head, of one district that accounts for about 9,000 registered voters. ?And they don't believe that Hezbollah will cause them problems. ?People here remember Geagea,? said the mukhtar , referring to the Lebanese Forces leader, Samir Geagea. The most prominent Christian leader supporting the March 14 bloc, Mr. Geagea served a lengthy prison term for crimes committed during the 1975-1990 civil war before being pardoned after Syrian forces withdrew from Lebanon in 2005. ?He was the sort of guy who'd take 30 people outside and have them shot,? said the mukhtar . ?They definitely prefer Aoun.? It has been a remarkable political comeback for Gen. Aoun, the man who once attempted to overthrow the Lebanese government; who fled the Syrians and spent 15 years in exile in France. Returning to Lebanon just 11 days after Syrian forces left, Gen. Aoun made no secret of his political ambitions. Few people, however, took him seriously. But having announced the creation of his Free Patriotic Movement and having parted company with the March 14 bloc, the General, as he likes to be known, stunned the Lebanese with his 2006 ?Paper of Common Understanding? with Hezbollah. ?It was a brilliant stroke,? Prof. Makdisi acknowledges. Today Gen. Aoun stands poised to become the kingmaker in Sunday's election. Breaking through sectarian barriers, he has breathed new political life into the opposition Hezbollah and its fellow Shia party, Amal. The current parliamentary majority, the coalition of 67 deputies known as the March 14 Movement, is led by the Future Party of Saad Hariri, son of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in February, 2005. Mr. Hariri rode a wave of public outrage and sympathy into office later that year. His party, composed mostly of Sunni Muslims, was joined by Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, the mainly Christian Lebanese Forces of Mr. Geagea, and some smaller parties and independents. They chose the unelected, pro-Western Fouad Sinora to be Prime Minister. But the outrage at the Hariri assassination has subsided. Not even the recent publication in a German newsmagazine of an article suggesting Hezbollah, rather than Syria, was behind the killing has stirred things up. As well, the governing group has been plagued with crises. First, there was the 2006 war waged by Israel against Hezbollah that killed more than 1,000 people and destroyed an enormous amount of Lebanon's infrastructure. Then came a serious challenge from Hezbollah, which emerged enhanced in influence after its run-in with Israel, to the makeup of the government. The combination has left March 14's future precarious. The major opposition bloc of 56 deputies, dominated by Hezbollah and Amal, had been unable to break through the ceiling imposed by Lebanon's political system that apportions seats on a sectarian basis ? until they were joined by Gen. Aoun. Of course, even if the opposition bloc does form a majority in parliament, Gen. Aoun, a Christian, would not become prime minister. That position is reserved for a Sunni Muslim, a fact that also precludes anyone in the Shia Hezbollah movement from taking the job. That doesn't trouble Gen. Aoun or Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. In Lebanon, it's the power behind the scenes that matters most. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jun 4 15:23:31 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 14:23:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Most Arabs know this speech will make little difference In-Reply-To: <1730414896.7373441244150533000.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1464749466.7374211244150611915.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-most-arabs-know-this-speech-will-make-little-difference-1694532.html Independent 2 June 2009 Most Arabs know this speech will make little difference I suspect that what the Arab world wants to hear is that Obama will take his soldiers out of Muslim lands Robert Fisk More and more, it looks like the same old melody that Bush's lads used to sing. We're not against the Muslim world. In fact, we are positively for it. We want you to have democracy, up to a point. We love Arab "moderates" and we want to reach out to you and be your friends. Sorry about Iraq. And sorry - again, up to a point - about Afghanistan and we do hope that you understand why we've got to have a little "surge" in Helmand among all those Muslim villages with their paper-thin walls. And yes, we've made mistakes. Everyone in the world, or so it seems, is waiting to see if this is what Barack Obama sings. I'm not sure, though, that the Arabs are waiting with such enthusiasm as the rest of the world. I haven't met an Arab in Egypt - or an Arab in Lebanon, for that matter - who really thinks that Obama's "outreach" lecture in Cairo on Thursday is going to make much difference. They watched him dictate to Bibi Netanyahu - no more settlements, two-state solution - and they saw Bibi contemptuously announce, on the day that Mahmoud Abbas, the most colourless leader in the Arab world, went to the White House, that Israel's colonial project in the West Bank would continue unhindered. So that's that, then. And please note that Obama has chosen Egypt for his latest address to the Muslims, a country run by an ageing potentate - Hosni Mubarak is 80 - who uses his secret police like a private army to imprison human rights workers, opposition politicians, anyone in fact who challenges the great man's rule. At this point, we won't mention torture. Be sure that this little point is unlikely to get much play in the Obama sermon, just as he surely will not be discussing Saudi Arabia's orgy of head-chopping when he chats to King Abdullah on Wednesday. So what's new, folks? Arabs, I find, have a very shrewd conception of what goes on in Washington - the lobbying, the power politics, the dressing up of false friendship in Rooseveltian language - even if ordinary Americans do not. They are aware that the "new" America of Obama looks suspiciously like the old one of Bush and his lads and ladies. First, Obama addresses Muslims on Al-Arabiya television. Then he addresses Muslims in Istanbul. Now he wants to address Muslims all over again in Cairo. I suppose Obama could say: "I promise I will not make any decision until I first consult with you and the Jewish side" along with more promises about being a friend of the Arabs. Only that's exactly what Franklin Roosevelt told King Abdul Aziz on the deck of USS Quincy in 1945, so the Arabs have heard that one before. I guess we'll hear about terrorism being as much a danger to Arabs as to Israel - another dull Bush theme - and, Obama being a new President, we might also have a "we shall not let you down" theme. But for what? I suspect that what the Arab world wants to hear - not their leaders, of course, all of whom would like to have a spanking new US air base on their property - is that Obama will take all his soldiers out of Muslim lands and leave them alone (American aid, doctors, teachers, etc, excepted). But for obvious reasons, Obama can't say that. He can, and will, surely, try his global-Arab line; that every Arab nation will be involved in the new Middle East peace, a resurrection of the remarkably sane Saudi offer of full Arab recognition of Israel in return for an Israeli return to the 1967 borders in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolution 242. Obama will be clearing this with King Abdullah on Wednesday, no doubt. And everyone will nod sagely and the newspapers of the Arab dictatorships will solemnly tip their hats to the guy and the New York Times will clap vigorously. And the Israeli government will treat it all with the same amused contempt as Netanyahu treated Obama's demand to stop building Jewish colonies on Arab land and, back home in Washington, Congress will fulminate and maybe Obama will realise, just like the Arab potentates have realised, that beautiful rhetoric and paradise-promises never, ever, win against reality. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Jun 4 15:28:12 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 14:28:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Politics and the Price of War - Bill Moyers and Jeremy Scahill - PBS, Friday night Message-ID: <1884222442.7377181244150892484.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Politics and the Price of War Bill Moyers and Jeremy Scahill PBS Airtime: Friday, June 5, 2009, at 9:00 p.m. EDT on PBS (local listings: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/about/airdates.html ) From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Jun 4 19:23:59 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:23:59 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt" (2) Message-ID: <4A2873AF.4030506@ashisuto.co.jp> Part Two by Stephen Lendman sjlendman.blogspot.com (May 08 2009) Countercurrents.org (May 11 2009) This is the second of several articles on Ellen Brown's remarkable book titled "Web of Debt ... the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free" (2007). It's a multi-part snapshot. Reading the entire book is strongly recommended - easily obtainable through Amazon or Brown's webofdebt.com site. Bankers Capture the Money Machine - Fighting for the Family Farm In the 1890s, "keeping the family homestead was a key political issue" given that foreclosures and evictions "were occurring in record numbers", much like today. The "Bankers Manifesto of 1892" spelled it out - a willful plan "to disenfranchise farmers and laborers of their homes and property", again like today except that now our very freedom and futures are at stake as sinister forces aim to steal them by turning America into Guatemala and lock it down by police state repression. The panic of 1893 caused an earlier depression - severe enough to establish a precedent of street protests, the result of the first ever march on Washington. Businessman/populist Jacob Coxey led his "Coxey's Army" (of around 500) from Massilon, Ohio (beginning March 25, Easter Sunday) to the nation's capital to demand jobs and a return to debt and interest-free Greenbacks. Local police intervened. The marchers were disbanded. Coxey was arrested. He spent twenty days in jail for disturbing the peace and violating a local ordinance against walking on the grass. However, he was never charged, then released, and is now remembered for his heroics. He began a tradition later sparking suffragist marches; unemployed World War One veterans for their "Bonus Bill" money; numerous anti-war and earlier civil rights protests; in 2004, one million in the nation's capital for women's rights, and the previous day thousands protesting IMF-World Bank policies. The late 19th century Populist movement was the last serious challenge to private bankers' monopoly power over the nation's money. Journalist William Hope Harvey wrote a popular book titled Coin's Financial School (1893) that explained the problem in simple English - that restricting silver coinage was a conspiracy to enrich "London-controlled Eastern financiers at the expense of farmers and debtors". He called England "a money power that can dictate the money of the world, and thereby create world misery". He referred to the "Crime of 73" that limited free silver coinage and replaced it with British gold. It forced America to pay England $200 million annually in gold in interest on its bonds and inspired William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech. He nearly became president, but lost in a close (big-monied financed) race to William McKinley, but he, too, paid a price. He was later assassinated, likely for his protectionism, very much disadvantaging British bankers. With him gone, the Morgans and Rockefellers dominated US banking, and arranged for friendly leaders to run the country, Teddy Roosevelt included, a man with more bark than bite. "The trusts and cartels remained the puppeteers with real power, pulling the strings of puppet politicians" who were bought and paid for like today. The Secret Government Various presidents suggested the worst of what's now clear. By signing the Federal Reserve Act, Woodrow Wilson was a tool of big money. Yet he belatedly expressed regret, said "I have unwittingly ruined my country", and called America "one of the worst ruled ... most completely controlled governments in the civilized world (run by) a small group of dominant men". Franklin Roosevelt was as clear in saying "The real truth (is that) a financial element in the large centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson". Other officials said the same thing, and so did Matthew Josephson (in his 1934 book) calling bankers and business titans "Robber Barons" - men who "lived for market conquest, and plotted takeovers like military strategy". They sought monopolies for market dominance and trusts - concentrated wealth in a few hands to be manipulated for maximum profits and power. During the Gilded Age, trusts became strong enough to plant "their own agents in the federal commissions, (use) government regulation (for) greater control ... protect themselves from competition", and keep prices high. Four names (among others) stand out - Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and J P Morgan running finance with the power of a potentate. "He didn't build, he bought. He took over other people's businesses, and he hated competition" so he eliminated it. Together with Rockefeller, they dominated business and finance through interlocking directorates, the same way as today throughout industry, commerce and finance. For his part, Morgan was so dominant, financial writer John Moody called him "the greatest financial power in the history of the world" even before the establishment of the Federal Reserve. Morgan died months before its creation, but his influence made it possible. His long arm favored the fortunate - with enough funding to monopolize their industries. "But where did (he and other bankers get their money)?" Congressman Wright Patman explained that they created it "out of an empty hat". They held the ultimate credit card, limitless accounting-entries to buy out competitors, corner raw materials markets, control politicians, and after the birth of public relations, popular opinion the way distinguished author/psychogist and activist Alex Carey explained in his seminal book titled Taking the Risk out of Democracy (1996): "The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy". It came into its own during World War One, then grew, became dominant, and remains near-omnipotent today, even with fissures appearing with enough promise to challenge it. The Jekyll Island Affair - Establishing the Federal Reserve In 1910, seven financial titans met secretly on this privately-owned island off the coast of Georgia and created the Federal Reserve: -- established three years later on December 23, in the middle of the night, by an act of Congress; -- its most outrageous action ever that few legislators, if any, even read or would have understood if they did because the text was so intentionally vague; -- it enfranchised powerful bankers to hold the nation hostage in permanent debt bondage by giving them the right to create money, in violation of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that states Congress alone has the power "To coin (create) money (and) regulate the value thereof ..." Woodrow Wilson made it possible, "Morgan's man in the White House" with an administration staffed with his cronies. This act was so publicly harmful it had to be shepherded through a carefully arranged Conference Committee, scheduled for between 1:30 - 4:30 am three days before Christmas when many lawmakers had left town and many others were asleep. It was then enacted the next day - one that will live in infamy for the damage it caused. "The bill was so obscurely worded that no one really understood its provisions". The nation's money would be printed by the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing, then issued as a government obligation (or debt) to the private Federal Reserve with interest. Nominally, Congress and the president appoint Fed governors, but they operate secretly with no government oversight or control. As a privately owned banking cartel, they're a power unto themselves. The chairman sits at its helm, but he's a mere tool of the bankers who control him. The 1913 Federal Reserve Act "was a major coup" for them. The Fed exists to serve them, not the government or public interest. Therein lies its problem and why it must be abolished. For over a century, powerful international bankers wanted a private central bank giving them "the exclusive right to 'monetize' the government's debt (that is, print their own money and exchange it for government securities or IOUs.)" The entire Act was written in obscure Fedspeak so no one but its creators knew its purpose. "In plain English, the Federal Reserve Act authorized a private central bank to create money out of nothing, lend it to the government at interest, and control the national money supply, expanding or contracting it at will". Nothing has been the same since. Who Owns the Federal Reserve? Contrary to common belief, it's a private banking cartel owned by its member banks in each of its twelve Fed districts. "The amount of Federal Reserve stock" each one holds "is proportional to its size". The New York Fed is most dominant (like a mother bank) owning 53% of the System's shares because the nation's largest commercial banks are located there, on Wall Street, of course, with names like JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley prominent and familiar. Bank of America was founded in California and remains concentrated heavily in Western and Southwestern states, yet operates globally like the others. The largest banks are financial superpowers with interests in commercial and investment banking, insurance, real estate, home mortgages, credit cards, and virtually all things financial - nationally and globally. Financial commentator Hans Schicht refers to Wall Street's "master spider" controlling a powerful inner circle of men, headed by him. Their business is done secretly behind closed doors by what he calls "spider webbing". It exercises "tight personal management and control, with a minimum of insiders and front-men who themselves have only partial knowledge of the game. They also have "leverage" over mergers, takeovers, chain store holdings where one company holds shares of others, conditions annexed to loans, and so forth. Further, they make concentrated wealth "invisible. The master spider studiously avoids close scrutiny by maintaining anonymity, taking a back seat, and appearing to be a philanthropist". Post-World War Two, the center of power shifted from the House of Rothschild to Wall Street with David Rockefeller Seniorr (John D's grandson) becoming "master spider", a sort of boss of bosses, much like the underworld but much more deadly and powerful. All the more so because "the Robber Barons (used) their monopoly over money to buy up the major media, educational institutions", and other means of communications. They got all this but Morgan wanted more - to "secure the banks' loans to the government with a reliable source of taxes, (gotten directly from) the incomes of the people. There was just one snag." The Supreme Court "consistently" declared federal income taxes unconstitutional. So how were they instituted and why are they willingly paid? The Federal Income Tax The Constitution omits any mention of a federal income tax because the Founders "considered the taxation of private income, the ultimate source of productivity, to be economic folly". They also decided that the States and federal government shouldn't impose the same tax at the same time. Congress was to have responsibility "for collecting national taxes from the States' " tax revenues. Direct taxes were to be apportioned according to each State's population. "Income taxes were considered unapportioned direct taxes in violation of this provision of the Constitution". Except in times of war, no federal income tax existed until the 16th Amendment was ratified on February 13 1913 empowering Congress to levy one - unapportioned among the states. Even without one, the economy grew impressively for nearly a century and a half, adequately funded by customs and excise taxes. For a brief period, Congress enacted an income tax in 1894 when the nation was at peace. On April 8 1895, in Pollock vs Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, the Supreme Court held that unapportioned income taxes were unconstitutional. "That ruling has never been overturned". To get around it, Wall Street packaged the 16th Amendment with the Federal Reserve Act, both in 1913. It applied only to annual incomes over $4000, well above the average level at the time. The original tax code was simple enough to be covered in fourteen pages. It's now a 17,000 page monster, filled with obscure provisions professionals struggle to understand or even know about. It also has "whole pages devoted to private interests", including loopholes exempting powerful corporations from paying rightfully owed taxes. Before World War Two, income taxes affected few people. However, from 1939 to 1944, Congress passed various ones, including to fund the war effort, and began letting workers (voluntarily) pay them in installments. Thereafter, "withholding" became mandatory. "Today the federal income tax has acquired the standing of a legitimate tax enforceable by law, despite longstanding (Supreme Court rulings) strictly limiting its constitutional scope". Numerous other taxes were also added, including on capital gains, real estate, corporate income, FICA, sales, luxury, and IRS interest and penalties. With all hidden ones included (dozens in all), up to forty percent of an average worker's income goes for taxes. Enough for some tax protesters to challenge the 16th Amendment's legitimacy on grounds that it was improperly ratified. However, US courts rejected the argument and now it's "beyond review" - even though no tax would be needed if the federal government printed its own money interest-free instead of taking ours to defray banker-imposed charges. After signing the Federal Reserve Act, Woodrow Wilson called himself "a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country". Yet he knew precisely what he did. He was a lawyer, a PhD, a historian and political scientist, and former Princeton University president before entering politics. Reaping the Whirlwind - The Great Depression In theory, the Federal Reserve was established to stabilize the economy, smooth out the business cycle, manage a healthy, sustainable growth rate, and maintain stable prices. It failed dismally on all counts - most noticeably in the 1930s after a depression followed the crash. The Fed wasn't the solution. It was the problem. As in recent years, it kept interest rates low and money plentiful - not money, in fact, but "credit" or "debt", the same problem creating havoc today. In the 1920s, production rose faster than wages, but (again like today) people could borrow on credit. Then as stocks soared in "value", Wall Street promoted buying them on margin (namely, leverage on credit) on the premise that higher prices could repay loans. It turned "investing" into a "speculative pyramid scheme" based on money that didn't exist. The Fed caused the whole scheme with easy and plentiful money (credit). It assured the inevitable crash, and late in the game Fed officials saw it coming. New York Fed governor, Benjamin Strong, warned wealthy industrialists, politicians, and high foreign officials to sell stocks, then began reducing the money supply and raising bank-loan rates to correct the bubble "naturally". It caused a huge liquidity squeeze. Stock purchases declined. Prices fell. Margins were called causing the crash over three days - so-called Black Thursday (on October 24), Monday and Tuesday. The subsequent fallout was disastrous. From 1929 to 1933, "the money stock fell by a third, and a third of the nation's banks closed their doors ... It was dramatic evidence of the dangers of delegating the power to control the money supply to a single autocratic head of an autonomous agency". It resulted in a "vicious cyclone of debt ... dragging all in its path into hunger, poverty and despair" - the very process repeating today, including insiders being tipped off, selling high, profiting from the collapse at fire sale prices, and letting the public pay for the dirty scheme they had in mind in the first place. Then, like today - shifting huge wealth amounts from "the Great American Middle Class to Big Money". Instead of shutting the Fed and prosecuting its conspirators, Congress enacted the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), "ostensibly to prevent" another collapse. It insured deposits up to $5000 at the time and rescued some banks, but not all. It was for "rich and powerful" ones, the equivalent of prominent names today and considered then like now, "too big to fail" run by officials too important to offend. Milton Friedman blamed the Great Depression on the contraction of the money supply, but others disagreed. Chairman Louis McFadden of the House Banking and Currency Committee said it "was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence ... The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all". The "Bankers Manifesto of 1934" suggested the same thing, and some observers today believe it's again playing out, this time on a global scale for much greater stakes for both winners and losers. Roosevelt, Keynes and the New Deal Roosevelt addressed the collapse straightaway, starting impressively in his first 100 days with the passage of fifteen landmark acts, covering: -- emergency banking; -- Glass-Steagall and the FDIC; -- empowering the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that was toothless under Hoover; -- the Securities Act of 1933, then the Securities Exchange Act of 1934; -- the Home Owners' Loan Corporation to refinance homes and prevent foreclosures; and -- an alphabet soup of development agencies in charge of constructing national infrastructure and producing jobs for the unemployed. In all, it was a whirlwind of achievement in a few short months unlike anything before or since - so much in such a short time. This writer's late April article said: Despite its flaws and failures, FDR's New Deal was remarkable in what it accomplished. It helped people, put millions back to work, reinvigorated the national spirit, built or renovated 700,000 miles of roads, 7800 bridges, 45,000 schools, 2500 hospitals, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 1000 airfields, and various other infrastructure, including much of Chicago's lakefront where this writer lives. It cut unemployment from 25% in May 1933 to eleven percent in 1937, then it spiked before early war production revived economic growth and headed it lower. Challenging Classical Economic Theory - Keynesianism Post-World War Two, it dominated economic policy, the idea being that deficit spending could propel nations to prosperity unlike the classical economic belief that money supply increases weren't needed. Its theory was that when the supply contracts, so do prices and wages naturally leaving everything in balance like before. It didn't work at a time people wanted jobs, but there were few around. Factories could produce, but there was little demand, and resources were available but unused - for the lack of enough pump priming to reinvigorate a collapsed economy. Enough, but not too much because as long as bankers print money, added liquidity means more debt and a greater amount to service. In addition, doing it crowds out social services, sacrifices industrial growth, and increases inflation hugely over time. The five cent ice cream cone and candy bars this writer remembers as a boy today cost around $2.50. If government printed its own money, they might still be a nickel or pretty close. Congressman Wright Patman suggested it in 1933 by asking: "Why is it necessary to have Government ownership and operation of banks? The Constitution of the United States says that Congress shall coin money and regulate its value", not hand it over to predatory private bankers. Instead of returning money-creation power to the government, Roosevelt let "moneychangers" keep it under an overhauled Federal Reserve - a still powerful private banker-controlled "citadel, run from the top down (by) a small cartel of appointed banking representatives (operating) behind a curtain of secrecy", more powerful than government itself. Had Roosevelt acted like Jackson and Lincoln, it would have been his greatest achievement. Even so, in his first few months in office, he got enacted tough reformist legislation, very much impacting bankers. He also "took aim at the trusts and monopolies that had returned in force" in the anything-goes 1920s. By 1929, consolidation left around 200 companies "in control of over half of all American industry". FDR reversed the trend with new legislation, reviving earlier trust-busting efforts. He also imposed banking regulations as cited above - enough to get him to call financiers "unanimous in their hatred of me, and I welcome their hatred". Lucky for him he survived. Big money plays for keeps, wins more often than it loses, and generally on what matters most. Wright Patman Exposes the Money Machine A Texas Democrat, he served in Congress from 1929 - 1976 where from 1963 - 1975 he headed the House Banking and Currency Committee until his death. Unlike his counterparts today in the House and Senate, he was called an "economic Populist", one way being for how he exposed Fedspeak to reveal the scheme behind it. In an August 5 1964 Committee document titled "A Primer on Money", he concluded: "The Federal Reserve is a total moneymaking machine. It can issue money or checks. And it never has a problem of making its checks good because it can obtain the $5 and $10 bills necessary to cover (them) simply by asking the Treasury Department's Bureau of Engraving to print them." Although the Fed now returns most interest on its government bonds to the Treasury, of far greater importance is the windfall its member banks get. "The bonds that have been acquired essentially for free become the basis of the Fed's 'reserves' - the phantom money that is advanced many times over by commercial banks in the form of loans". Virtually all money in circulation comes from the Fed and its member banks, expanded by a factor of about ten (through fractional reserve lending) for every federal debt dollar monitized. It all "consists of loans on which the banks have been paid interest". This interest, not what the Fed gets, "is the real windfall to the banks". The limitless money-creation machine is kept hidden "in obscure Fedspeak", even undecipherable to people who think they understand the process. In The Creature from Jekyll Island (1998), Ed Griffin states that: "modern money is a grand illusion conjured by the magicians of finance and politics. (The Fed's function) is to turn debt into money. It's just that simple ... if one remembers that the process is not intended to be logical but to confuse and deceive." It has to be. Would the public ever put up with it if they realized they'd be had - that their tax money was being used to enrich bankers, and Washington made it possible. "Magical(ly) multiplying reserves is called fractional reserve banking" that seems more like a con or "shell game". Each dollar deposited "magically" becomes about ten in the form of loans or computer-generated funds. As explained below, "reserves" are being phased out so the ten to one multiple is actually higher but the principle is the same. So if $1 million deposited becomes $10 million, and $900,000 can be loaned out (the other $100,000 required for reserves), "money created out of thin air (at five percent interest) is doubled in about two years". The Fed claims it returns 95% of its profits to the Treasury. In fact, it's only the interest on federal securities held as reserves. Far more important is the windfall afforded banks, the Fed's owners, that "use the securities as the 'reserves' that get multiplied many times over in the form of loans" that generate huge profits for them. Wright Patman wanted to abolish the Open Market Committee and nationalize the Fed, thus giving Congress control of it as a "truly federal agency" issuing interest-free money. The Fed is now heading for a zero percent reserve requirement meaning they'll be "no limit to the number of times deposits can be relent". There's effectively no limit now as if banks exhaust their reserves, they can borrow freely from the Fed - today at zero percent interest. Inside the Fed's Playbook "Banks don't have to have the money they lend before they make loans, because the Fed will 'provide' the necessary reserves by making them available at the federal funds rate" - today amounting to limitless free money at zero percent interest to be loaned out at higher rates for profit. The "slight of hand" is that the Fed "creates reserves out of thin air". Loans then become deposits that banks can freely re-lend many times over - the more deposits, the greater the amount of lending. It's a process of multiplying the money supply and charging interest for doing it, a very profitable business when working well in a healthy economy. So, the process works as follows: -- banks "lend money (they) don't have"; -- loans become deposits on their books; -- when borrowers spend their money, banks raise their reserves back to the required ten percent (or less) "by borrowing from the Fed or other sources"; and -- the Fed never runs out of reserves because its "open market operations" create more of them; it simply manufactures whatever amounts it wishes out of thin air, and the public is none the wiser or that they're being taxed to pay for this shell game. Reserves don't comprise safe money to pay claimants. They're accounting entries at Federal Reserve banks letting commercial banks "make many times those sums in loans". In plain English, "reserve accounts are a smoke and mirrors accounting trick concealing the fact that banks create the money they lend out of thin air, borrowing any 'reserves' they need from the Fed, which also creates the money out of thin air". What a business, especially given how secretive it is under the protection and auspices of the federal government that sanctions the con. There's more as well. Besides what they loan out, banks "create their own investment money" to use for their own purposes. Traditionally, commercial banks invested conservatively, but not investment banks. They raise money for their clients through stock issuances and sales. But more important is their "proprietary trading" that involves using their own money to buy or sell stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, or any other financial instrument or derivative thereof no matter how risky. Since investment and commercial banks may be one in the same, limitless sums are available through magical money creation and open-ended Fed borrowing, then leveraged multiple times through more borrowing. The game worked "magically" until it no longer did the old way, so alternatives are used. Bear Raids and Short Sales The 1929 "Crash" happened on three "Black" days but "continued for nearly four years, stoked by speculators who made huge profits not only on the market's" ascent but during its plunge to eleven percent of its peak value. Called a "bear raid", it targets vulnerable stocks for "take-down" quick profits or corporate takeovers at fire sale prices. When done on a large scale, short selling can impact markets greatly on the downside just like heavy "program buying" can rocket it up. The whole business amounts to blatant manipulation for quick profits. Short sellers actually do it with borrowed (not owned) stock, then sell it into the market. If it declines (it may also rise, of course), it's re-bought at the lower price, returned to the seller, with short-sellers pocketing the difference as profit. It's not investing. It's gambling with someone else's stock, without permission to borrow it, and as a result harms its owner by driving down the price when it works. "Short selling is sometimes justified as being necessary to keep a brake on (over-exuberance) that might otherwise drive popular stocks into dangerous 'bubbles'. (However,) Any alleged advantages to a company from the liquidity afforded by short selling (and supposedly keeping markets honest) are offset by the serious harm (this causes) companies targeted for take-down(s) in bear raids." When done with enough force, it can destroy companies if that's the intent. "Short selling is the modern version of the counterfeiting (that brought) down the Continental in the 1770s". Currencies, bonds, and commodities can be shorted just like stocks - to manipulate them for profit. Worse still, and illegal, is so-called naked short-selling without first borrowing the security shorted, assuring it can be borrowed, or arranging to borrow it as required by law - the reason being that it's an even easier way to manipulate stock prices so SEC regulations ban it. Even so, the idea that markets move randomly is rubbish. So is believing that companies or nations don't target competitors for destruction by attacking their worth through short selling or other manipulative ways. Hedge funds and Derivatives "Hedge funds are private funds that pool the assets of wealthy investors with the aim of making 'absolute returns' - making a profit whether (markets go) up or down" on whatever financial assets they invest in. Leverage is used for maximum profitability, the more of it the greater gain or loss. In futures trading, it's called the margin - placing "many more bets than if they had paid the full price". Originally, hedge funds were to "hedge (investment) bets ... against currency or interest rate fluctuations (but) they quickly became instruments for manipulation and control". At their peak, they controlled over half of daily equity market trading because of their numbers, size, amount of capital, and frequency of their buying or selling. Derivatives are one of their key tools - essentially making "side bets that some underlying investment will go up or down" to insure against the risk. "All derivatives are variations on futures trading (and like it) is inherently speculation or gambling". Familiar examples include puts and calls - on whether assets will go down or up. "Over ninety percent of the derivatives held by banks ... are 'over-the-counter' (ones) specially tailored to financial institutions (with) exotic and complex features, not traded on standard exchanges". They're unregulated, hard to trace, and "very hard to understand", quite often impossible. In a 1998 interview, banking columnist John Hoefle called them "the last gasp of a financial bubble". More recently Warren Buffett said they were "financial weapons of mass destruction" even though he owns a sizable amount of them and incurred considerable losses as a result. Derivatives aren't assets. They're "just bets" on how assets will perform using very little real money. Most is borrowed to make private unreported, unregulated bets that have soared to a "notional value" of around $370 trillion, according to the Bank for International Settlements as of 2006. Notional value is "the number of units of an asset underlying the contract, multiplied by the spot price of the asset". In other words, "fanciful, dubious or imaginary" assets. The amount gets so large because when unregulated "gamblers can bet any amount of money they want", and when markets work well for them, the sky's the limit. In mid-2006, the Office of the Controller of the Currency reported that around 97% of US bank-held derivatives were owned by five major US banks, including JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup. In November 2005, Bloomberg reported that the credit derivatives market was "vulnerable to a crisis if one (of their major bank holders) fails to pay on contracts that insure creditors from companies defaulting ..." John Hoefle warned we were "on the verge of the biggest financial blowout in centuries, bigger than the Great Depression ..." Since banks can create money out of thin air, how can they go bankrupt? Because under accounting rules, commercial banks have to balance their books so their assets equal liabilities. "They can create all the money they can find borrowers for, but" if loans default, banks must record a loss. Just imagine - if the government created money and not banks, economic stability would follow, crises could be avoided or greatly lessened, inflation would be minimal or non-existant, prosperous growth would be long-term, and bank loans would be far less risky than today assuring steady profits but in smaller amounts. A follow-up article will discuss global debt entrapment. _____ Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/05/reviewing-ellen-browns-web-of-debt-part_08.html http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman110509.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 fentona at shaw.ca Thu Jun 4 19:30:46 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 18:30:46 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Fwd: GM - Government Motors T-Shirt References: Message-ID: <6B10B6A7-5D28-4F95-B664-C0834F9AB5BA@shaw.ca> > http://tcritic.com/archives/gm-government-motors-t-shirt/ > > GM - Government Motors T-Shirt > GM - Government Motors T-Shirt > > > > > > > > > Source unknown > > Skin > white > black > Layout > one > two > > From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Jun 5 03:55:34 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:55:34 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] How The US Empire Contributed To The Economic Crisis Message-ID: <4A28EB96.2080305@ashisuto.co.jp> by Ivan Eland Mwcnews.net (May 12 2009) A few - and only a few - prescient commentators have questioned whether the US can sustain its informal global empire in the wake of the most severe economic crisis since World War Two. And the simultaneous quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan are leading more and more opinion leaders and taxpayers to this question. But the US Empire helped cause the meltdown in the first place. War has a history of causing financial and economic calamities. It does so directly by almost always causing inflation - that is, too much money chasing too few goods. During wartime, governments usually commandeer resources from the private sector into the government realm to fund the fighting. This action leaves shortages of resources to make consumer goods and their components, therefore pushing prices up. Making things worse, governments often times print money to fund the war, thus adding to the amount of money chasing the smaller number of consumer goods. Such "make-believe" wealth has funded many US wars. For example, the War of 1812 had two negative effects on the US financial system. First, in 1814, the federal government allowed state-chartered banks to suspend payment in gold and silver to their depositors. In other words, according Tom J. DiLorenzo in Hamilton's Curse (2008), the banks did not have to hold sufficient gold and silver reserves to cover their loans. This policy allowed the banks to loan the federal government more money to fight the war. The result was an annual inflation rate of 55 percent in some US cities. The government took this route of expanding credit during wartime because no US central bank existed at the time. Congress, correctly questioning The Bank of the United States' constitutionality, had not renewed its charter upon expiration in 1811. But the financial turmoil caused by the war led to a second pernicious effect on the financial system - the resurrection of the bank in 1817 in the form of the Second Bank of the United States. Like the first bank and all other government central banks in the future, the second bank flooded the market with new credit. In 1818, this led to excessive real estate speculation and a consequent bubble. The bubble burst during the Panic of 1819, which was the first recession in the nation's history. Sound familiar? Although President Andrew Jackson got rid of the second bank in the 1830s and the US economy generally flourished with a freer banking system until 1913, at that time yet another central bank - this time the Federal Reserve System - rose from the ashes. We have seen that war ultimately causes the creation of both economic problems and nefarious government financial institutions that cause those difficulties. And of course, the modern day US Empire also creates such economic maladies and wars that allow those institutions to wreak havoc on the economy. The Fed caused the current collapse in the real estate credit market, which has led to a more general global financial and economic meltdown, by earlier flooding the market with excess credit. That money went into real estate, thus creating an artificial bubble that eventually came crashing down in 2008. But what caused the Fed to vastly expand credit? To prevent a potential economic calamity after 9/11 and soothe jitters surrounding the risky and unneeded US invasion of Iraq, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan began a series of interest rate cuts that vastly increased the money supply. According to Thomas E Woods Jr in Meltdown (2009), the interest rate cuts culminated in the extraordinary policy of lowering the federal funds rate (the rate at which banks lend to one another overnight, which usually determines other interest rates) to only one percent for an entire year (from June 2003 to June 2004). Woods notes that more money was created between 2000 and 2007 than in the rest of US history. Much of this excess money ended up creating the real estate bubble that eventually caused the meltdown. Ben Bernanke, then a Fed governor, was an ardent advocate of this easy money policy, which as Fed Chairman he has continued as his solution to an economic crisis he helped create using the same measures. Of course, according to Osama bin Laden, the primary reasons for the 9/11 attacks were US occupation of Muslim lands and US propping up of corrupt dictators there. And the invasion of Iraq was totally unnecessary because there was never any connection between al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein, and even if Saddam had had biological, chemical, or even nuclear weapons, the massive US nuclear arsenal would have likely deterred him from using them on the United States. So the causal arrow goes from these imperial behaviors - and blowback there from - to increases in the money supply to prevent related economic slowdown, which in turn caused even worse eventual financial and economic calamities. These may be indirect effects of empire, but they cannot be ignored. Get rid of the overseas empire because we can no longer can afford it, especially when it is partly responsible for the economic distress that is making us poorer. _____ Ivan Eland is Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an MBA in applied economics and PhD in national security policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent fifteen years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He is author of the books, The Empire Has No Clothes: US Foreign Policy Exposed (2004, 2008), and Putting "Defense" Back into US Defense Policy (2001). http://www.countercurrents.org/eland120509.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 fentona at shaw.ca Fri Jun 5 11:32:01 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 10:32:01 -0700 Subject: [R-G] The defence industry grows in Halifax Message-ID: <2BE23837-6FDA-4031-B343-F5D9163579C3@shaw.ca> http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/2695 June 5, 2009 A Harbour For War? The defence industry grows in Halifax by Hillary Lindsay The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca Canadian warships in Halifax Harbour. Tax-breaks to military contractors like Lockheed-Martin make the area a favourite for weapons manufacturers. Photo: Glenn Canning HALIFAX-In April, Lockheed Martin announced it would be growing its operations in Halifax, creating 100 new jobs over the next five years. The announcement was hailed by Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald as "further proof of Nova Scotia's reputation as a destination of choice for the world's best companies." Lockheed is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers, reporting sales of $42.7 billion last year. The province, through Nova Scotia Business Inc. (NSBI), is supporting its expansion with a $1.8 million payroll rebate. "It's frightening when you have a company doing as well as Lockheed and they're getting tax breaks," says Heidi Verheul, a member of the Halifax Peace Coalition (HPC), an organization speaking out against Lockheed's expansion and payroll rebate. "We should be investing in more sustainable industries," she adds. NSBI is not in the business of sustainability, however, but of increasing economic activity in the province. And industries like defence and aerospace contribute $1.5 billion to the provincial economy each year and provide jobs with $70,000 annual salaries, says Sarah Levy of NSBI. "You can't argue with numbers like that." But Verheul says it's unethical for the province to support companies like Lockheed. "This is a company that earned over $3 billion in profit last year from war. It should not be getting government handouts. Its Hellfire missiles are used to kill people in the Middle East." HPC member Tamara Lorincz adds that it's the choices and policies of the provincial and federal government that help make weapons manufacturing more profitable. A year ago, the Harper government unveiled the Canada First Defence Strategy, which commits to raising defence funding from $18 billion in 2008-09 to over $30 billion in 2027-28. In total, the government plans to invest close to $490 billion in defence over a 20 year period. The move is an obvious boon for weapons manufacturers who will profit from large contracts with the Canadian military. In November, a Lockheed Martin-led team was awarded a $2 billion contract for the installation, integration and long-term in-service support of a new combat system for 12 of the Canadian Navy's frigates, or warships. When announcing the new jobs in Nova Scotia, Tom Digan, president of Lockheed Martin Canada, stated that "an expansion in Halifax simply makes sense." Nova Scotia is home to approximately 40 per cent of all Canadian military assets. Operating in Halifax provides a "proximity to clients," says Levy, an advantage that NSBI highlights on its website. Indeed, one of Lockheed Martin's offices in Halifax is inside the Canadian Forces base. The company has a 25 year ongoing relationship with the Canadian Navy, says Levy - a relationship Lockheed refers to as a "25 year legacy." Lorincz does not support the Canadian military having such cozy relations with Lockheed. She points out that Norway's government pension fund divested itself of its shares in Lockheed because the company's activities as a weapons manufacturer are considered in breach of its ethical guidelines. Lorincz adds that no socially responsible investment (SRI) fund will invest in weapons manufacturers either. "If it's not ethical for Norway, if it's not ethical for SRI, why are we doing this?" she asks. Lockheed isn't the only weapons manufacturer to see the advantage of locating in Halifax. L-3 Electronic Systems, General Dynamics and Xwave also have offices in the city. "We're not opposed to the workers," says Verheul. "People need to feed their families. We want to see more sustainable industries supported." "Jobs to make combat systems are not the kind of jobs that we need," echoes Kaleigh Trace, a Dalhousie University student and a member of the Student Coalition Against War (SCAW). In February, SCAW protested Lockheed's presence at a Dalhousie career fair. "The government should be supporting companies involved in the green economy and investing more in education, not supporting a weapons industry," she says. While the Canadian and provincial government invest in weapons and defence, Lorincz points out that the "real enemies" are going unnoticed. "We're facing real threats like climate change," she says, but the same year the federal government spend $18 billion on defence, $1.5 billion was spend on environment. "When we ask Canadians what their priorities are, they say health and the environment," says Lorincz. She points to a 2005 poll done by the Centre of Research and Information that found the top three program priorities for Canadians are protecting the environment (78 per cent), spending more on health care (74 per cent) and spending more on education and training (73 per cent). She would like to see the federal and provincial government shift their priorities accordingly. "Let's get people working on solar and renewable energy." Hillary is an organizer with the Halifax Media Co-op and Managing Editor at The Dominion. From intnsred at golgotha.net Fri Jun 5 11:50:57 2009 From: intnsred at golgotha.net (Intense Red) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 13:50:57 -0400 Subject: [R-G] The defence industry grows in Halifax In-Reply-To: <2BE23837-6FDA-4031-B343-F5D9163579C3@shaw.ca> References: <2BE23837-6FDA-4031-B343-F5D9163579C3@shaw.ca> Message-ID: <200906051350.57281.intnsred@golgotha.net> > "It's frightening when you have a company doing as well as Lockheed ? > and they're getting tax breaks," says Heidi Verheul ... "We should be > investing in more sustainable industries," she adds. Sadly, war industries *are* among the most "sustainable" industries. That will certainly be true for as long as Canada remains in NATO. -- Fast fact: 20% of the human race does not have access to clean water and 31% of the world's population has no electricity. From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jun 5 12:46:51 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 11:46:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Hezbollah no threat: former Lebanese PM In-Reply-To: <363C98CFE60049689D69AFCA4DED572B@twubby.com> Message-ID: <996162175.7614311244227611020.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/hezbollah-no-threat-former-lebanese-pm/article1169635/ Globe and Mail June 5, 2009 Hezbollah no threat: former Lebanese PM The group ?is not the monster it is made out to be in Israel and the West' By Patrick Martin Beirut ? A respected former Lebanese prime minister says the West has nothing to fear should the Hezbollah-led opposition win Sunday's national election. For one thing, says Salim el-Hoss, prime minister from 1976 to 1980, from 1987 to 1990 and from 1998 to 2000, the Change and Reform bloc that includes Hezbollah will almost certainly have no more than a narrow majority with which to wield power. Because of Lebanon's consociational democratic system (which divides power among the country's religious communities in a way that keeps any one from gaining too much power), other factions would have more than the one-third of the 128 seats in the legislature required to veto legislation. More importantly, says Mr. el-Hoss, a Sunni Muslim, ?Hezbollah is not the monster it is made out to be in Israel and the West.? ?Nasrallah has made it clear that he does not wish for Hezbollah to take power,? Mr. el-Hoss added, pointing out that the Hezbollah leader has been content to let the party's Shia ally, Amal, hold the influential parliamentary Speaker's position and a greater number of cabinet posts than Hezbollah could have claimed. ?He has also put Michel Aoun forward as the leader of the opposition bloc.? General Aoun, a former chief of Lebanon's military, entered into an agreement with Hezbollah in 2006 calling for his largely Christian Free Patriotic Movement to work with the Shia party. It was the first time such a move has been made across sectarian lines in Lebanon. Gen. Aoun has also made unprecedented overtures to Syria, which not that long ago wanted him dead. In 1989 he fought Syrian forces after attempting to take over Lebanon's Syrian-backed government. Gen. Aoun would ultimately lose that battle, but only after several months and more than 1,000 deaths. He took refuge in the French embassy, which negotiated a deal allowing him to go into exile in France; he returned to Lebanon only after Syrian forces had left 15 years later. It is noteworthy that Mr. el-Hoss should sing Gen. Aoun's praises, given that he was the prime minister that the general attempted to overthrow. ?That's past,? said Mr. el-Hoss, now 80 and in poor health. ?I've come to believe that reaching across sectarian lines is exactly what this country needs, and this man can pull it off.? He points to the south of the country where Christian communities are interspersed among Shia towns and villages. ?These days, there are no clashes between those communities,? Mr. el-Hoss said. ?They used to happen on a daily basis.? He credits the alliance between Gen. Aoun and Hezbollah with achieving this calm. Sheik Nasrallah, he says, stood up to an Israeli invasion in 2006 and was still standing after Israel retreated. ?It's appropriate,? Mr. el-Hoss said, ?that Hezbollah should have a role in determining the next government.? Is he not concerned that Hezbollah would want to create an Islamic state? ?Nonsense,? the former prime minister said. ?No one can make anything of the kind out of Lebanon. It's too hard to get people to agree.? ?Look,? he concluded, ?Sunnis are the people most sensitive to any threats from Shiites. I'm Sunni, and I can assure you, there's nothing to worry about.? From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jun 5 12:47:36 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 11:47:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S. bankrupts: study In-Reply-To: <828361409.7442631244159352314.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <694006237.7614651244227656016.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090604/us_nm/us_healthcare_bankruptcy Reuters June 4, 2009 Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S. bankrupts: study By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Washington (Reuters) ? Medical bills are behind more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies , U.S. researchers reported on Thursday in a report they said demonstrates that healthcare reform is on the wrong track. More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts , the team at Harvard Law School , Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine . "Unless you're Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy," Harvard 's Dr. David Himmelstein, an advocate for a single-payer health insurance program for the United States, said in a statement. "For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection," he added. The United States is embarking on an overhaul of its healthcare system, now a patchwork of public programs such as Medicare for the elderly and disabled and employer-sponsored health insurance that leaves 15 percent of the population with no coverage. The researchers and some consumer advocates said the study showed the proposals under the most serious consideration are unlikely to help many Americans. They are pressing for a so-called single payer plan, in which one agency, usually the government, coordinates health coverage . "Expanding private insurance and calling it health reform will fail to prevent financial catastrophe for hundreds of thousands of Americans every year," Dr. Sidney Wolfe of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen said in a statement. About 170 million people get health insurance through an employer but President Barack Obama says soaring healthcare costs hurt the economy and force businesses to drop medical insurance for their workers. CANCELED COVERAGE "Nationally, a quarter of firms cancel coverage immediately when an employee suffers a disabling illness; another quarter do so within a year," the report reads. Obama told Congress on Wednesday he was open to making mandatory health insurance part of the overhaul. Neither Congress nor Obama are considering the kind of single-payer plan advocated by Public Citizen, Himmelstein and his colleague Dr. Steffie Woolhandler. "We need to rethink health reform," Woolhandler said. "Covering the uninsured isn't enough. "Only single-payer national health insurance can make universal, comprehensive coverage affordable by saving the hundreds of billions we now waste on insurance overhead and bureaucracy." The researchers studied 2,134 random families who filed for bankruptcy between January and April in 2007, before the current recession began. They used public bankruptcy court records and surveyed 1,032 people by telephone. "Using a conservative definition, 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92 percent of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5,000, or 10 percent of pretax family income ," the researchers wrote. "Most medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations." The researchers, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation , said the share of bankruptcies that could be blamed on medical problems rose by 50 percent from 2001 to 2007. Patients with multiple sclerosis paid a mean of $34,167 out of pocket in 2007, diabetics paid $26,971, and those with injuries paid $25,096, the researchers found. (Editing by Bill Trott and Jackie Frank) From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jun 5 12:48:24 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 11:48:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Reagan didn't do it In-Reply-To: <1890528942.7378671244151075575.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1488325153.7615031244227704788.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090603_reagan_didnt_do_it/ Truthdig June 3, 2009 Reagan Didn't Do It By Robert Scheer How could Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics and author of generally excellent columns in The New York Times, get it so wrong? His column last Sunday-"Reagan Did It"-which stated that "the prime villains behind the mess we're in were Reagan and his circle of advisers," is perverse in shifting blame from the obvious villains closer at hand. It is disingenuous to ignore the fact that the derivatives scams at the heart of the economic meltdown didn't exist in President Reagan's time. The huge expansion in collateralized mortgage and other debt, the bubble that burst, was the direct result of enabling deregulatory legislation pushed through during the Clinton years. Ronald Reagan's signing off on legislation easing mortgage requirements back in 1982 pales in comparison to the damage wrought 15 years later by a cabal of powerful Democrats and Republicans who enabled the wave of newfangled financial gimmicks that resulted in the economic collapse. Reagan didn't do it, but Clinton-era Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, now a top economic adviser in the Obama White House, did. They, along with then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and Republican congressional leaders James Leach and Phil Gramm, blocked any effective regulation of the over-the-counter derivatives that turned into the toxic assets now being paid for with tax dollars. Reagan signed legislation making it easier for people to obtain mortgages with lower down payments, but as long as the banks that made those loans expected to have to carry them for 30 years they did the due diligence needed to qualify creditworthy applicants. The problem occurred only when that mortgage debt could be aggregated and sold as securities to others in an unregulated market. The growth in that unregulated OTC market alarmed Brooksley Born, the Clinton-appointed head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and she dared propose that her agency regulate that market. The destruction of the government career of the heroic and prescient Born was accomplished when the wrath of the old boys club descended upon her. All five of the above mentioned men sprang into action, condemning Born's proposals as threatening the "legal certainty" of the OTC market and the world's financial stability. They won the day with the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which put the OTC derivatives beyond the reach of any government agency or existing law. It was a license to steal, and that is just what occurred. Between 1998 and 2008, the notational value of the OTC derivatives market grew from $72 trillion to a whopping $684 trillion. That is the iceberg that our ship of state has encountered, and it began to form on Bill Clinton's watch, not Reagan's. How can Krugman ignore the wreckage wrought during the Clinton years by the gang of five? Rubin, who convinced President Clinton to end the New Deal restrictions on the merger of financial entities, went on to help run the too-big-to-fail Citigroup into the ground. Gramm became a top officer at the nefarious UBS bank. Greenspan's epitaph should be his statement to Congress in July 1998 that "regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary." That same week Summers assured banking lobbyists that the Clinton administration was committed to preventing government regulation of swaps and other derivatives trading. Then-Rep. Leach, as chairman of the powerful House Banking Committee, codified that concern in legislation to prevent the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or anyone else from regulating the OTC derivatives, and American Banker magazine reported that the legislation "sponsored by Chairman Jim Leach is most popular with the financial services industry because it would provide so-called legal certainty for swaps transactions. . " Legal certainty for swaps-meaning the insurance policies of the sort that AIG sold for collateralized debt obligations without looking too carefully into what was being insured and, more important, without putting aside reserves to back up the policies in the case of defaults-is what caused the once respectable company to eventually be taken over by the U.S. government at a cost of $185 billion to taxpayers. Leach, an author of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which allowed banks like Citigroup to become too big to fail, is now a member of the board of directors of ProPublica, which bills itself as "a non-profit newsroom producing journalism in the public interest." Leach serves as the chair of a prize jury that ProPublica has created to honor "outstanding investigative work by governmental groups," and perhaps he will grant one retrospectively to Brooksley Born and the federal commission she ran so brilliantly before Leach and his buddies destroyed her. From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jun 5 12:44:40 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 11:44:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Canadian, U.S., U.K. life, health insurers investing heavily in tobacco companies In-Reply-To: <80831FB591484DE694DDCD2D0D7F2529@twubby.com> Message-ID: <1417572195.7613381244227480154.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: "Sid Shniad" To: "Undisclosed-Recipient:;"@bentley1.sfu.ca Sent: Friday, 5 June, 2009 10:29:42 GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: Canadian, U.S., U.K. life, health insurers investing heavily in tobacco companies http://www.theprovince.com/Health/Canadian+life+health+insurers+investing+heavily+tobacco+companies/1664704/story.html The Province June 5, 2009 Canadian, U.S., U.K. life, health insurers investing heavily in tobacco companies Canadian firm Sun Life has $1 billion in two companies Major U.S., Canadian and British life and health insurance companies have billions of dollars invested in tobacco companies, says a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Wesley Boyd, the study's lead author, found that at least $4.4 billion US in insurance company funds are invested in companies whose affiliates produce cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco. "Despite calls upon the insurance industry to get out of the tobacco business by physicians and others, insurers continue to put their profits above people's health," said Boyd, a faculty member of Harvard Medical School. "It's clear their top priority is making money, not safeguarding people's well-being," he wrote. Tobacco is considered the leading cause of lung cancer and a major risk factor for heart attack, stroke, pulmonary disease and cancer. According to the World Health Organization, it is a contributing factor in 5.4 million deaths a year. Researchers first revealed that health and life insurance companies had major investments in tobacco companies in 1995 in an article in the British medical journal Lancet. "Although investing in tobacco while selling life or health insurance may seem self-defeating, insurance firms have figured out ways to profit from both," Boyd wrote. "Insurers exclude smokers from coverage or, more commonly, charge them higher premiums. Insurers profit -- and smokers lose -- twice over." According to the study, U.S. insurer Prudential Financial Inc. has $264.3 million invested among three U.S. tobacco companies, including Reynolds America and Philip Morris. Canadian insurer Sun Life Financial Inc., which sells life, disability and health insurance, has a stock portfolio with more than $1 billion in two tobacco companies, including $890 million in Philip Morris. Prudential Plc, which sells health and disability insurance, has $1.38 billion in two tobacco companies, including British American Tobacco. The study also details the substantial tobacco investments of the U.S. firms Northwestern Mutual and Massachusetts Mutual Life, and the Scottish firm Standard Life Plc. Agence France-Presse From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jun 5 12:45:58 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 11:45:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Feeling the Hate In Jerusalem on Eve of Obama's Cairo Address In-Reply-To: <1228636698.7611661244227270106.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1596814970.7614001244227558900.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: "Sid Shniad" Sent: Friday, 5 June, 2009 11:41:10 GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: Feeling the Hate In Jerusalem on Eve of Obama's Cairo Address June 05, 2009 Max Blumenthal: Feeling the Hate In Jerusalem on Eve of Obama's Cairo Address Max Blumenthal writes : On the eve of President Barack Obama?s address to the Muslim world from Cairo, Egypt, I stepped out onto the streets of Jerusalem with my friend Joseph Dana to interview young Israelis and American Jews about their reaction to the speech. We encountered rowdy groups of beer sodden twenty-somethings, many from the United States, and all eager to vent their visceral, even violent hatred of Barack Obama and his policies towards Israel. Usually I offer a brief commentary on my video reports, but this one requires no comment at all. Quite simply, it contains some of the most shocking footage I have ever filmed. Watch it and see if you agree. ( Warning: this video contains profanity and material offensive to just about anyone. ) http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/06/max-blumenthal-feeling-the-hate-in-jerusalem-on-eve-of-obamas-cairo-address.html From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jun 5 15:24:10 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 14:24:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Murder of Dr. Tiller, a Foreshadowing In-Reply-To: <1391301008.7019571244063490670.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1313808335.7676211244237050308.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cristina-page/the-murder-of-dr-tiller-a_b_209562.html Huffington Post May 31, 2009 The Murder of Dr. Tiller, a Foreshadowing By Cristina Page For those who would like to think today's murder in church of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, is an isolated incident, here's the horrifying news: You are wrong. The pattern is clear and frightening. In March 1993, three months into the administration of our first pro-choice president, Bill Clinton, abortion provider Dr. David Gunn was murdered in Pensacola, Florida. That was the beginning of what would become a five-fold increase in violence against abortion providers throughout the Clinton years. Today's assassination of Dr. George Tiller comes 5 months into the term of our second pro-choice president. For anyone who would like to believe that this is a statistical anomaly, a coincidence that doesn't portend anything, again, you are wrong. During the entire Bush administration, from 2000-2008 there were no murders. During the Clinton era, between 1994-2000 there were 6 abortion providers and clinic staff murdered, and 17 attempted murders of abortion providers. There were 12 bombings or arsons during the Clinton years. During the Bush administration, not only were there no murders, there were no attempted murders. There was one clinic bombing during the Bush years. One can only conclude that like terrorist sleeper cells, these extremists have now been set in motion. Indeed the evidence is already there. The chatter, the threats, the hate-filled rhetoric are abundant. In the last year of the Bush administration there were 396 harassing calls to abortion clinics. In just the first four months of the Obama administration that number has jumped to 1401. And so the execution of Tiller, 67, is not only tragic but ominous. He was born into an era when being an abortion provider meant saving women's lives. And the cold-blooded murder in church and in front of his wife of this stalwart defender of women rights and beloved physician, comes as a message for others, as well as tragic deja vu. Battered women are at greatest danger of being killed by their abusers when they are most strong -- that is, when they muster the courage to leave. The same phenomenon may be true in the abusive political abortion debate. The pro-choice movement, specifically our abortion providers, are in the greatest danger of violence when we take power. When the anti-abortion movement loses power, their most extreme elements appear to move to the fore and take control. The murder of Dr. Tiller suggests that violence against abortion providers may be far more linked to the power, or lack thereof, anti-abortion groups have politically than to laws designed to increase penalties against such acts. History has another disturbing lesson for us. The escalation of anti-abortion rhetoric plays a direct role in instigating violence. When anti-abortion groups ratchet up the rhetoric, they know exactly what they're doing and the results it will have. Even if they maintain deniability, as Operation Rescue recently did saying, in effect, we wanted Tiller gone, but didn't want him murdered, they have inflamed the rhetoric. And suddenly people Like Dr. Tiller's murderer become inspired. Eleanor Bader, co-author of Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorism, in an article in March for RHRealityCheck.org about clinics bracing for an uptick in violence after the election of Obama wrote, "immediately after Obama's election, Douglas Johnson, Legislative Director of the National Right to Life Committee, called him a "hardcore pro-abortion president." The American Life League dubbed him "one of the most radical pro-abortion politicians ever," and Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life warned that Obama will "force Americans to pay for the killing of innocents." Americans United for Life, the Family Research Council and Operation Save America quickly joined the chorus." Bader interviewed clinic staff -- many seeing a direct relationship between the pro-choice victory in November and increased aggression against them and their patients. Claire Keyes, of Allegheny Reproductive Health in Pittsburgh, explained: Right after the election we saw a small upsurge in anti-abortion activity. But since the inauguration, things have gotten measurably worse. There's been an increase in picketing by students from Franciscan University in Ohio. On Saturdays there are 60-plus protesters and there's been an increase in screaming and aggression. We don't have a parking lot so people park on the street. The antis have surrounded cars, trapping the women inside, and in several cases the antis jumped into vehicles and touched or grabbed at them. The police were called but so far they don't seem to be responding appropriately. Bader also quotes Elizabeth Barnes, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Women's Center, who explained, "When the pendulum swung in the direction of protecting women's rights, we expected something. The way the antis are reacting has changed, they're taking more liberties, pressing the boundaries of legal, civil protest." Many in the pro-choice movement believed that the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) law, passed in 1994 in response to Gunn's murder, was responsible for reigning in violence against abortion providers. Clearly that is not the case. Based on statistics on violence against abortion providers compiled by the National Abortion Federation, even after the passage of FACE in 1994, there was still considerable violence and threats against clinic personnel, including six murders. As appears clear, the pro-choice movement has looked through rose-colored glasses, assuming or hoping that legalities can restrain terrorists. In fact, it didn't abate after FACE, as we've seen. It was not until a comforting anti-abortion president did they calm down and stop the murder, bombing and harassment spree. As a result of Bush's policies, recent reportings from clinics suggest that we may be seeing a surge in abortions. That has failed to inspire introspection from anti-abortion groups. That Clinton presided over the most dramatic decline in abortion rates in the recorded history of our country left them unmoved. That Obama has assigned his senior-most staff to the task of finding ways to reduce the need for abortion has not protected clinics nor providers nor Obama. Holder and his Justice Department should take note of the chatter and move aggressively against this form of domestic terrorism. The hate-filled rhetoric against Obama from the anti-abortion movement is at unprecedented levels, even for this reflexively inflammatory group. They refer to him as the "Most Pro-Abortion President Ever" ignoring the fact that he is the first to extend an olive branch in hopes that together we can make abortion more rare. Anti-abortion groups will put out carefully worded press statements condemning the murder of Dr. Tiller, as became routine for them during the Clinton years. But unless the rhetoric they choose from now on becomes careful too -- they may be the enablers of murder and terror. From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jun 5 15:23:50 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 14:23:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] GM Nationalization:The Path Not Taken, Choices Still Ahead In-Reply-To: <815019360.7058301244068215772.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <203084378.7676181244237030693.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2009/000319.html Forum to comment on this and other columns at: June 3, 2009 GM Nationalization: The Path Not Taken, Choices Still Ahead By Robert Weissman Whatever the woes of General Motors -- and they are substantial -- it does not follow that the government needed to drive the company into bankruptcy. With at least $50 billion in government supports undergirding the new GM, the Obama administration auto task force deciding GM's fate could have steered the company away from bankruptcy court. If it had so chosen, it could have acquired the company outright -- a much better course to advance the legitimate public interest in rescuing GM. The purported rationale for bankruptcy was to deal with the problem of recalcitrant bondholders, owed $27 billion by GM and rejecting the GM/government offer of exchanging that debt for a 10 percent share in the New GM. It has been apparent for weeks that the bondholder problem could be addressed with some creative negotiations. By the end of last week, the government had found a way to be creative; having sweetened the pot, an accommodation with the bondholders was at hand. But GM, under the aegis of the auto task force, filed for bankruptcy anyway, setting in motion a series of likely excessive factory shutdowns, needless dealership closings and anticipated cancellation of the rights of victims of defective GM cars. Given the deal with the bondholders, the bankruptcy declaration was wholly discretionary and avoidable. But the government had available a much better alternative to avoid bankruptcy than just cutting a deal with the bondholders. It could have simply taken complete control of the company. Instead of declaring bankruptcy on Monday, the government could have announced the taking of GM through eminent domain. The government could have paid shareholders the market price for their shares -- worth less than $1 billion. It could have paid bondholders the market price for their bonds; trading at about 8 cents on the dollar, that would have totaled a little more than $2 billion. The UAW, which needs cash not equity to fund its healthcare benefit pool, could have been given preferred stock paying a substantial interest rate. (Assuming it could reach agreement on a shared vision for the restructured GM, the U.S. government could have decided to work in concert with the Canadian and Ontario governments -- which will control 12 percent of the New GM.) This would have been an aggressive approach -- but less so than the administration's maneuvers in bankruptcy. With complete control of the company, the government could have explicitly set out to manage General Motors in the public interest. As Ralph Nader has said, this would not require micromanaging the company, but it would require managing it. There are many different public management options. Consider the U.S. Postal Service as one example. It operates independently but under government supervision, and with some affirmative mandates and obligations. USPS is required to deliver on Saturdays, for example, even though it may be more profitable to cut Saturday service. It must deliver to the entire country, with a flat-rate first class stamp, even though it would likely make more money with limited service or differential rates. A GM under public management would aim for a return to profitability -- or at least breaking even. But it would take into account other public priorities. And it would focus on medium- and long-term objectives rather than short-term profitability. A publicly managed GM would take pains to avoid excessive layoffs and would not needlessly close dealerships. A publicly managed GM would abandon GM management's desire to move production for the U.S. market to low-wage countries. It would maintain decent wages, benefits and working conditions. It would not maneuver to deny victims of defective GM cars their day in court. It would prioritize safety in its new vehicle design. Above all, a publicly owned and managed GM would invest heavily in new ecologically friendly technology. As part of a government plan to remake the nation's transportation infrastructure, it would retool plants to meet growing demand for buses and trains. Having decided not to pursue the full public ownership route, the Obama administration still finds itself about to own 60 percent of the New GM. This majority stake comes with some important limitations; with a significant portion of the company still trading publicly (10 percent immediately after bankruptcy, and more over time), the government will have legal duties to the minority shareholders. Still, the government as majority shareholder will have ultimate control, and the long-term and socially appropriate investment practices can all be justified as in GM's long-term interest. The biggest problem is that the Obama administration explicitly disdains a desire to manage the company to advance the public interest. Even worse, the administration has stated its desire to begin selling off the government-held shares in GM in six to 18 months after the company emerges from bankruptcy; that posture puts a premium on measures to achieve short-term profitability ? exactly the orientation that landed GM in its present predicament. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, and director of Essential Action . From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Jun 5 16:57:58 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 15:57:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Noam Chomsky on Obama's Cairo Speech In-Reply-To: <1531644181.7709501244242206378.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1646833821.7712541244242678042.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> News Release by Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) Chomsky on Obama Speech June 4, 2009 NOAM CHOMSKY Chomsky, whose recent books include Interventions and The Essential Chomsky , sent the following to the Institute for Public Accuracy this morning: "A CNN headline, reporting Obama's plans for his June 4 Cairo address, reads 'Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world.' Perhaps that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted. "Keeping just to Israel-Palestine -- there was nothing substantive about anything else -- Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to 'point fingers' at each other or to 'see this conflict only from one side or the other.' There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change or even be considered. "Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral U.S. rejectionism. "Obama once again praised the Arab Peace Initiative, saying only that Arabs should see it as 'an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities.' How should the Obama administration see it? Obama and his advisers are surely aware that the Initiative reiterates the long-standing international consensus calling for a two-state settlement on the international (pre-June '67) border, perhaps with 'minor and mutual modifications,' to borrow U.S. government usage before it departed sharply from world opinion in the 1970s, vetoing a Security Council resolution backed by the Arab 'confrontation states' (Egypt, Iran, Syria), and tacitly by the PLO, with the same essential content as the Arab Peace Initiative except that the latter goes beyond by calling on Arab states to normalize relations with Israel in the context of this political settlement. Obama has called on the Arab states to proceed with normalization, studiously ignoring, however, the crucial political settlement that is its precondition. The Initiative cannot be a 'beginning' if the U.S. continues to refuse to accept its core principles, even to acknowledge them. "In the background is the Obama administration's goal, enunciated most clearly by Senator John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to forge an alliance of Israel and the 'moderate' Arab states against Iran. The term 'moderate' has nothing to do with the character of the state, but rather signals its willingness to conform to U.S. demands. "What is Israel to do in return for Arab steps to normalize relations? The strongest position so far enunciated by the Obama administration is that Israel should conform to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map, which states: 'Israel freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).' All sides claim to accept the Road Map, overlooking the fact that Israel instantly added 14 reservations that render it inoperable. "Overlooked in the debate over settlements is that even if Israel were to accept Phase I of the Road Map, that would leave in place the entire settlement project that has already been developed, with decisive U.S. support, to ensure that Israel will take over the valuable land within the illegal 'separation wall' (including the primary water supplies of the region) as well as the Jordan Valley, thus imprisoning what is left, which is being broken up into cantons by settlement/infrastructure salients extending far to the East. Unmentioned as well is that Israel is taking over Greater Jerusalem, the site of its major current development programs, displacing many Arabs, so that what remains to Palestinians will be separated from the center of their cultural, economic, and sociopolitical life. Also unmentioned is that all of this is in violation of international law, as conceded by the government of Israel after the 1967 conquest, and reaffirmed by Security Council resolutions and the International Court of Justice. Also unmentioned are Israel's successful operations since 1991 to separate the West Bank from Gaza, since turned into a prison where survival is barely possible, further undermining the hopes for a viable Palestinian state. "It is worth remembering that there has been one break in U.S.-Israeli rejectionism. President Clinton recognized that the terms he had offered at the failed 2000 Camp David meetings were not acceptable to any Palestinians, and in December, proposed his 'parameters,' vague but more forthcoming. He then announced that both sides had accepted the parameters, though both had reservations. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Taba, Egypt to iron out the differences, and made considerable progress. A full resolution could have been reached in a few more days, they announced in their final joint press conference. But Israel called off the negotiations prematurely, and they have not been formally resumed. The single exception indicates that if an American president is willing to tolerate a meaningful diplomatic settlement, it can very likely be reached. "It is also worth remembering that the Bush I administration went a bit beyond words in objecting to illegal Israeli settlement projects, namely, by withholding U.S. economic support for them. In contrast, Obama administration officials stated that such measures are 'not under discussion' and that any pressures on Israel to conform to the Road Map will be 'largely symbolic,' so the New York Times reported (Helene Cooper, June 1). "There is more to say, but it does not relieve the grim picture that Obama has been painting, with a few extra touches in his widely-heralded address to the Muslim World in Cairo on June 4." From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Jun 5 18:31:57 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 06 Jun 2009 09:31:57 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] What Hamilton Has Wrought Message-ID: <4A29B8FD.4050608@ashisuto.co.jp> by Thomas J DiLorenzo LewRockwell.com (October 06 2008) The current economic crisis is the inevitable consequence of what I call Hamilton's Curse (2008) in my new book of that name. It is the legacy of Alexander Hamilton and his political, economic, and constitutional philosophy. As George Will once wrote, Americans are fond of quoting Jefferson, but we live in Hamilton's country. The great debate between Hamilton and Jefferson over the purpose of government, which animates American politics to this day, was very much about economic policy. Hamilton was a compulsive statist who wanted to bring the corrupt British mercantilist system - the very system the American Revolution was fought to escape from - to America. He fought fiercely for his program of corporate welfare, protectionist tariffs, public debt, pervasive taxation, and a central bank run by politicians and their appointees out of the nation's capital. Jefferson and his followers opposed him every step of the way because they understood that Hamilton's agenda was totally destructive of liberty. And unlike Hamilton, they took Adam Smith's warnings against economic interventionism seriously. Hamilton complained to George Washington that "we need a government of more energy" and expressed disgust over "an excessive concern for liberty in public men" like Jefferson. Hamilton "had perhaps the highest respect for government of any important American political thinker who ever lived", wrote Hamilton biographer Clinton Rossiter. Hamilton and his political compatriots, the Federalists, understood that a mercantilist empire is a very bad thing if you are on the paying end, as the colonists were. But if you are on the receiving end, that's altogether different. It's good to be the king, as Mel Brooks would say. Hamilton was neither the inventor of capitalism in America nor "the prophet of the capitalist revolution in America", as biographer Ron Chernow ludicrously asserts. He was the instigator of "crony capitalism", or government primarily for the benefit of the well-connected business class. Far from advocating capitalism, Hamilton was "befogged in the mists of mercantilism" according to the great late nineteenth century sociologist William Graham Sumner. The Curse of Government Debt In a lengthy "report" to Congress on the topic of the public debt Hamilton said that "a national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a public blessing". He would spend the rest of his life politicking for excessive government spending - and debt. The reason Hamilton gave for favoring a large public debt was not to finance any particular project, or to stabilize financial markets, but to combine the interests of the affluent people of the country - particularly business people - to the government. As the owners of government bonds, he reasoned, they would forever support his agenda of higher taxes and bigger government. (He condemned Jefferson's first inaugural address and its minimal government message as "the symptom of a pygmy mind".) No wonder one historian entitled his book on Hamilton "American Machiavelli". Wall Street financiers naturally took an immediate liking to Hamilton's idea, and became the financial cornerstone of the Federalist Party (and later, the Whigs and Republicans). When Hamilton engineered the nationalization of the states' debt as treasury secretary - something that was totally unnecessary since many states like Virginia had nearly paid off their war debts - the plan was to cash out much of the old debt at face value. This immediately became public knowledge in New York City, but the news spread ever so slowly to the rest of the country. Consequently, Hamilton's friends and supporters from New York City and New England went on a mad scramble down the eastern seaboard, purchasing bonds from hapless war veterans (who had been paid in bonds) for as little as two percent of par value. Huge fortunes were made by these slick New York speculators. Robert Morris pocketed a nifty $18 million. John Quincy Adams wrote to his father that the wealthiest Federalist lawyer in Massachusetts made a huge fortune with this caper. Hamilton participated in this parade of plunder himself, but claimed that the profits he made were for his brother-in-law. The link between Wall Street and the federal government was cemented into place later on, when investment banks took on the responsibility of marketing the government's bonds, which of course they still do to this day. Thus, Wall Street investment bankers became inveterate lobbyists for any and all tax increases (on the rest of the population, anyway) to assure that their own principal and interest would be paid, and that they could promise their clients - the purchasers of government bonds - that the bonds were a good investment. They were corrupt from the very beginning. When Hamilton and George Washington led some 15,000 conscripts into Pennsylvania to enforce the hated whiskey tax, the purpose was not only to collect the tax and reassure bondholders, but also to send a message to any future tax resisters. The volunteer officers who led the conscripts were mostly "from the ranks of the creditor aristocracy in the seaboard cities", wrote Claude Bowers in Jefferson and Hamilton (1925). (The rebellion succeeded, nevertheless. George Washington pardoned all of the tax protesters despite Hamilton's hysterical opposition and his desire to hang all of them.) James Madison remarked that this episode revealed Hamilton's agenda of "the glories of a United States woven together by a system of tax collectors". Douglas Adair, an editor of The Federalist Papers {1}, wrote that "with devious brilliance, Hamilton set out, by a program of class legislation, to unite the propertied interests of the eastern seaboard into a cohesive administration party". He also "transformed every financial transaction of the Treasury Department into an orgy of speculation and graft in which selected senators, congressmen, and certain of their richer constituents ... participated". If this sounds familiar it is because the political descendants of these eighteenth-century "propertied interests" are today's benefactors of the Wall Street Plutocrat/DC Political Class $700 Billion Bailout Bill of 2008. When Hamilton's Federalist Party consolidated its power during the Adams administration, government spending and debt skyrocketed. Citizens were prohibited to criticize it, however, thanks to the Sedition Act that outlawed free political speech. The national debt was so large that eighty percent of the government's annual expenditures were needed to service the debt. This was exactly what Hamilton wanted. As John C Miller, author of The Federalist Era (1998), wrote, Hamilton's main objective was "concentrating economic and political power in the Federal government", even if it meant destabilizing the entire nation's economy. The Founding Father of Central Banking Hamilton is also considered to be the founding father of central banking since America's first central bank, the Bank of the United States (BUS), existed primarily due to his efforts as Treasury Secretary. As William Graham Sumner wrote in his biography of Hamilton, however, "[A] national bank ... was not essential to the work of the Federal Government". The real purpose of Hamilton's bank, Sumner believed, was "the interweaving of the interests of wealthy men with those of their government". And interweave it did, providing cheap credit to business supporters of the Federalist Party, attempting to engineer boom-and-bust cycles to influence elections (called "political business cycles" in today's parlance) and even financing the political campaigns of BUS supporters. The BUS was a disaster for the general public, however; excessive money creating by the BUS printing press caused 72 percent inflation in its first five years, from 1791 to 1796. It became so unpopular that its twenty-year charter was not renewed, but then the War of 1812 gave it a new life, and it was resurrected in 1817. It immediately caused the Panic of 1819, and did what all central banks have always done: generated boom-and-bust cycles for the next twenty years. The bursting of the housing bubble in our time is the latest example of this hoary tradition. Hamilton's BUS was de-funded by President Andrew Jackson, and then a version of it was resurrected once again in 1863 by the neo-Hamiltonian Lincoln administration with several National Currency Acts. This, and other interventions of that period (fifty percent average tariff rates, massive corporate welfare for the railroad industry, income taxation, pervasive excise taxation), led historian Leonard Curry to observe in his book, Blueprint for Modern America: Nonmilitary Legislation of the First Civil War Congress (1968), that the interventions "ushered in four decades of neo-Hamiltonianism: government for the benefit of the privileged few". The record of Hamiltonian central banking from that time until the Fed was created in 1913 was summarized in a scholarly paper by economists Michael Bordo, Anna Schwartz and Peter Rappaport: "monetary and cyclical instability, four banking panics, frequent stock market crashes, and other financial disturbances". The Wall Street elite's response to all this central bank-induced monetary instability was even more centralized banking with the creation of the Federal Reserve Board. It may have meant instability to the ordinary citizens, but was the source of great riches to the banking industry and other members of the politically well-connected class. Sound familiar? Things have not changed at all to this day. A recent Fed publication entitled "A History of Central Banking in the United States" proudly boasts that "the Federal Reserve has similarities to the country's first attempt at central banking, and in that regard it owes an intellectual debt to Alexander Hamilton" who, the Fed says, "sounded like a modern-day Fed chairman". When Jefferson and his followers fiercely opposed Hamiltonian statism they were fighting to avoid bringing the rotten, corrupt, and economically-impoverishing system of British mercantilism to America. They understood what Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations (1776), which was a harsh condemnation of British mercantilism as both corrupt and impoverishing. Indeed, many of these men (or their ancestors) came to America in the first place to escape from that very system. Hamilton mocked Adam Smith just as he mocked Jefferson's "pygmy mind" and his "excessive concern for liberty". It may have taken several generations, but that system of "crony capitalism" or "government for the benefit of the privileged few" has been cemented into place for quite some time now. The politically incestuous relation between the banking and finance industries and government is the sole cause of the current economic crisis, particularly the boom-and-bust cycle caused by the Fed and the system of fractional reserve banking (that is, lending money that you don't have) that it administers. Hamilton's Curse is plaguing America once again. Note {1} I wonder if he means Fame and the Founding Fathers (1998) by Douglass Adair. (Bill Totten) _____ Thomas J DiLorenzo - TDilo at aol.com - is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe (2007) and How Capitalism Saved America (2004). His latest book, Hamilton's Curse: How Jefferson's Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution - And What It Means for America Today, will be published on October 21. Copyright (c) 2008 LewRockwell.com Thomas DiLorenzo Archives at LRC http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo-arch.html Thomas DiLorenzo Archives at Mises.org http://www.mises.org/articles.asp?mode=a&author=DiLorenzo Copyright (c) 2007 LewRockwell.com http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo151.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 fentona at shaw.ca Fri Jun 5 22:35:47 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 21:35:47 -0700 Subject: [R-G] A look at Canadian Foreign Policy in 2009 Message-ID: <225ADACA-85B1-4848-B321-B54D5663D56A@shaw.ca> http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/33769&55249 A look at Canadian Foreign Policy in 2009 Summary: Jon Elmer, Manuel Rozental, Harsha Walia each give a different take on Canadian foreign and domestic policy, with a look at what Canadian policy looks like today and what the trends are for the future. Credits: Dawn Paley Notes: Recorded at the Council of Canadians BC/Yukon Regional Meeting, April 18, 2009. [...] http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/33769&55249 From shimogamo at attglobal.net Sat Jun 6 00:19:45 2009 From: shimogamo at attglobal.net (Totten Bill) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 15:19:45 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Virus Message-ID: <50b6db1c0906052319q682f2824rc6942c265f39b512@mail.gmail.com> Dear Friends The message below seems to be a virus. It came from my brother-in-law saying he sent me pictures but it seems to have invaded my address book and is sending the same message to everyone in it. Please delete it. I'm very sorry for this nuisance. Bill -----------------------???????----------------------- From: Bill Totten Reply-To: Bill Totten To: yokada at ashisuto.co.jp Subject: Bill sent you photos on Tagged :) [a:http://www.taggedmail.com/welcome.html?conn=2j5r0knym&ect=1ho868vw&tId=150337&fid=cbd79fe546263a72&emt=1000&ict=0&linkId=0]If you can't see this email please click here [img:http://www.tagged.com/imgsrv.php?uid=5423144315&ect=1ho868vw] Bill Totten Bill Totten sent you photos on Tagged Want to see the photos? [a:http://www.taggedmail.com/welcome.html?conn=2j5r0knym&ect=1ho868vw&tId=150337&fid=cbd79fe546263a72&emt=1000&ict=0&bn=1&linkId=1][img:https://secure-static.tagged.com/images/btn-Yes-large.gif][a:http://www.taggedmail.com/welcome.html?conn=2j5r0knym&ect=1ho868vw&tId=150337&fid=cbd79fe546263a72&emt=1000&ict=0&bn=2&linkId=2][img:https://secure-static.tagged.com/images/btn-No-large.gif] Click Yes if you want to see the photos, otherwise click No. But you have to click! Please respond or Bill may think you said no :( [a:http://www.taggedmail.com/no_more.html?unsem=yokada%40ashisuto.co.jp&tId=150337&fid=cbd79fe546263a72&linkId=3]Click here to block all emails from Tagged Inc., 110 Pacific Mall Box #117, San Francisco, CA. 94111 [img:http://www.tagged.com/tracking/pixel.php?ect=1ho868vw&fid=cbd79fe546263a72&tId=150337&ict=0&emt=1000] -- http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Jun 6 04:39:17 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:39:17 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt" (3) Message-ID: <4A2A4755.4000401@ashisuto.co.jp> Part Three by Stephen Lendman sjlendman.blogspot.com (May 11 2009) Countercurrents.org (May 12 2009) This is the third in a series of articles on Ellen Brown's superb 2007 book titled "Web of Debt", now updated in a December 2008 third edition. It tells "the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free". This article focuses on global debt entrapment. Global Debt Enslavement - From Gold Reserves to Petrodollars "The gold standard (while it lasted) was a necessary step in giving bankers' 'fractional reserve' legitimacy, but the ruse could not be sustained indefinitely" because exiting gold to defray foreign debts results in money backing it to be withdrawn from circulation. The result - contraction, recession, or depression, the very problem that forced FDR to drop the gold standard to prevent an even greater collapse. In 1971, Nixon did it permanently "when foreign creditors threatened to exhaust US gold reserves by cashing in their paper dollars for gold". John Kennedy was the last president to challenge Wall Street, contends Donald Gibson in one of his two books about him. In Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency (1994), he said that Kennedy opposed "free trade", believed industry should serve the nation, and that America should sustain its independence by developing cheap energy. That "pitted him against the oil/banking cartel", intent on "raising oil prices to prohibitive levels in order to" entrap the world in a "web of debt". Evidence also suggests that "Kennedy crossed the bankers by seeking to revive a silver-backed currency", independent of the Fed. In fact, on June 4 1963, he issued Executive Order (EO) 11110 giving the president authority to issue currency. He then ordered the Treasury to print over $4 billion of "United States Notes" in place of Federal Reserve Notes. Some believe that he intended to replace them all when enough of the new currency was in circulation - to return money-creation power to the government where it belongs. Five and a half months later, he was assassinated. In his second book on the president, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-up (1999), Gibson contends that a private network of wealthy individuals did it - not the FBI, CIA, Mafia, LBJ, the oil cartel, or anti-Castro extremists. Whatever the truth, bankers regained their power in short order when Johnson rescinded Kennedy's Executive Order and fully restored their money-creation authority. They've had it ever since. Bretton Woods - The Rise and Fall of the International Gold Standard In mid-1944, the Bretton Woods monetary management system was established, about a year before World War Two ended but when its outcome was clear. It created a postwar international monetary system of convertible currencies, fixed exchange rates, free trade, the US dollar as the world's reserve currency linked to gold, and those of other nations fixed to the dollar. It also designed an institutional framework for market-based capital accumulation to ensure that newly liberated colonies would pursue capitalist economic development beneficial to the victorious powers, most of all America. In August 1971, the system unraveled when Nixon closed the gold window - ending the last link between gold, the dollar, and sound money. Thereafter, currencies would float and compete with each other in a casino-like environment, easily manipulated by powerful insiders, hedge funds, giant international banks, or governments at times in their own self-interest. According to F William Engdahl: "Market forces now could determine the dollar (entirely without gold). And they did it with a vengeance." Bretton Woods was to ensure stability along with the IMF and World Bank's original missions - to establish exchange rates for the former and provide credit to war-torn Third World countries for the latter. Both bodies are, in fact, hugely exploitative while David Rockefeller ostensibly convened Bretton Woods to ensure gold-backed currencies would "justify a massive expansion of US dollar debt around the world". The scheme worked until Vietnam war debt unraveled it. It might have continued (for a while at least) by raising the gold price. Instead it was kept at $35 an ounce forcing Nixon to close the gold window permanently, then take "the brakes off the printing presses" to generate as many dollars as there were willing takers. After that, Wall Street financiers "proceeded to build a worldwide financial empire based on a 'fractional reserve' banking system (using) bank-created paper dollars in place of the time-honored gold. Dollars became the reserve currency for a global net of debt to an international banking cartel." Skeptics said they planned it that way to pull off "the biggest act of bad faith in history". True or not, gold failed as a global reserve currency because there isn't enough of it to go around. Inevitably shortages result forcing something to change. Flawed as it is, however, "floating" exchange rates are much worse, especially for developing nations at the mercy of giants, like America, able to devalue currencies by attacking them through short selling. Manipulative power is so great, it can extract painful concessions that are hugely profitable to bankers. Earlier in the 1930s, floating exchange rates proved disastrous, yet most countries agreed to them post-1971. Ones that resist are very vulnerable and can be coerced as a condition of debt relief, much like what happened after oil quadrupled in price in 1974. Suspicions about it at the time were justified. It was a Kissinger - Saudi royal family scheme to revive dollar dominance by recycling petrodollars into US investments and weapons in return for guaranteeing the kingdom's safety - mainly from America had they turned us down. In a word, it was protection money like the underworld extracts on a smaller scale with oil now backing dollars instead of gold. Henceforth, countries need dollars to buy it and require exports for enough of them. As for oil producers, Wall Street and London bankers profited from windfall petrodollar deposits - recyclable as developing nation loans to buy oil but at the same time to be entrapped in permanent debt bondage. Pre-1973, Third World debt "was manageable and contained ... financed mainly through public agencies (for projects) promising solid economic success". That changed when commercial banks took over. Their business isn't development. It's "loan brokering (or) loan sharking", preferably with dictator/strongmen able to cut deals on their own. Later the IMF got involved. At the behest of giant bankers, as "debt policemen" instituting rigorous structural adjustments, including slashed wages and social benefits as well as state asset sales on favorable terms to private investors. At the same time, America got deeply indebted. It's now the world's largest by far and needs hundreds of billions annually to keep the dollar recycling game going - in the last twelve months alone, far more than that after the national debt doubled. Today, the nation is "hopelessly mired in debt to support the banking system of a private international cartel". Ordinary people pay the price. Germany Finances a War without Money The 1919 Versailles Treaty imposed onerous post-World War One terms on Germany. In May 1921, it got a six-day ultimatum to accept them or have the industrial Ruhr Valley militarily occupied. Even worse, it lost its colonies, all their resources, and the population had to pay the cost of war, amounting to three times the value of all property in the country. At the same time, German mark speculation caused it to plummet causing hyperinflation that by 1923 was catastrophic. In January, the mark dropped to 18,000 to the dollar. By July, it was 353,000, by August 4,620,000, and by November an astonishing 4,200,000,000,000 - effectively worthless from the greatest ever hyperinflation, ravaging the nation's savings and making later calamitous events inevitable. Loss of German assets compounded the problem. Britain took its colonies along with Alsace-Lorraine and Silesia with its rich mineral and agricultural resources. Lost was 75% of the country's iron ore, 68% of zinc ore, 26% of coal as well as Alsatian textile industries and potash mines. In addition, Germany's entire merchant fleets were taken, a portion of its transport and fishing fleet plus locomotives, railroad cars and trucks - all justified as legitimate war debts that were fixed at an impossible to pay 132 billion gold marks at six percent interest. The 1923 Dawes Plan (named for US banker Charles Dawes) imposed fiscal control to continue the looting and assure reparations were paid. A huge debt pyramid resulted that collapsed after the 1929 crash along with radical political elements gaining prominence. How to cope was the key question. Like the earlier American Greenbackers, Germany issued its own money after Hitler came to power. He had two choices, and like Lincoln, did it right. He freed the country from debt bondage and at the same time implemented vast infrastructure development - what Roosevelt as well did, but in his case by indebtedness to bankers. Hitler issued $1 billion interest-free, "non-inflationary bills of exchange, called Labor Treasury Certificates". He put millions back to work, paid them with the Certificates that were used for goods and services to create more jobs and revive prosperity. Within two years, Germany was "back on its feet ... with a solid, stable currency, no debt, and no inflation, at a time" America and Western economies were still struggling. Hitler, however, diverged from the Greenbackers by equating bankers with Jews and launching a reign of terror against them. Greenbackers knew the real enemy - private bankers imposing debt bondage with onerous terms. Beyond that and his imperial aims, Hitler reinvigorated the Third Reich in a few years, became hugely popular, and achieved it even before undertaking large-scale military spending. It impressed Pastor Sheldon Emry to write: "Germany issued debt-free and interest-free money from 1935 and on, accounting for its startling rise from the depression to a world power in five years. Germany financed its entire government and war operation from 1935 to 1945 without gold and without debt, and it took the whole Capitalist and Communist world" to bring him down and restore the power of bankers. Had Germany created debt and interest-free money post-Versailles, it could have escaped its disastrous inflation, later ravages, and rise of a tyrant like Hitler. In the 1920s, the privately-owned Reichsbank, not the government, caused havoc by flooding the economy with money compounded by foreign investor speculators shorting the mark and betting on its decline - because the Reichsbank printed massive currency amounts to be loaned "at a profitable interest to the bank. When (it couldn't keep up with demand), other private banks were allowed to create marks out of nothing and lend them at interest as well." According to Hitler's Reichsbank president, Hjalmar Schacht, the government regulated the Bank, ended speculation by eliminating "easy access to loans of bank-created money", and solved the previous decade's hyperinflation problem as a result. Reexamining the Inflation Humbug Old theories die hard. It's not money creation that causes inflation. It's because merchants have to raise prices to cover costs, the result of "a radical (currency) devaluation" stemming usually from it being manipulated by its floating exchange rate. Case in point - post-Soviet Russia's ruble collapse. It had nothing to do with rampant money creation. As F William Engdahl explained in his Century of War (2004): "In 1992, the IMF demanded a free float of the Russian ruble as part of its 'market-oriented' reform. The ruble float led within a year to (a 9900%) increase in consumer prices, and a collapse in real wages of 84 percent. For the first time since 1917, at least during peacetime, the majority of Russians were plunged into existential poverty." American-imposed "shock therapy" was the economic equivalent of military conquest, and most Russians have paid dearly to this day. With the IMF in charge, the nation and its former republics were weakened and made dependent "on Western capital and dollar inflows for their survival". A tiny elite got "fabulously rich" while most Russians experienced deep poverty and despair. In 1993 and 1994, it was even worse for Yugoslavia and Ukraine, by some estimates an even greater hyperinflation than in Weimar Germany. Again the textbook explanation was rubbish. Yugoslavia collapsed because the IMF "prevented the government from obtaining the credit it needed from its own central bank". Unable to create money and issue credit, social programs couldn't be financed or the provinces kept in place as one country. Yugoslavia's problem was its success under a mixed free-market socialist model that threatened Western capitalism once the Soviet Union disbanded. It was feared that other former republics would emulate it, free from IMF shock therapy. As a result, the country had to be dismembered and its model destroyed, especially because of its strategic location - its "critical path" to potential Central Asian oil and gas. In the 1980s, its imports exceeded exports, and it borrowed huge foreign sums for unprofitable factories. With too few dollars for repayment, IMF debt relief was requested under its usual terms. The result was twenty percent unemployment after 1100 companies went bankrupt. Worse still, inflation rose dramatically to over 150% in 1991. With still too little money to retain the provinces, "economic chaos followed causing each (one) to fight for its own survival" lasting a decade and causing tens of thousands of deaths and destruction. Washington-imposed policies made it worse - a total embargo causing hyperinflation and seventy percent unemployment while blaming it on Milosevic. Ukraine met the same fate the result of IMF diktats. The currency collapsed, inflation soared, and state industries unable to get credit went bankrupt - as planned. It's an ugly scheme to let Western predators buy assets on the cheap. Once Europe's breadbasket, Ukraine was reduced to begging the US for food aid, which then dumped its excess grain on the country, further exacerbating its self-sufficiency. Predatory capitalism is ruthless. This is how it works with bankers in the lead role. Argentina is another example - "swallowed (by) the same debt monster" as the others. In the late 1980s, inflation rose 5000 percent, but money creation had nothing to do with it. Post-World War Two, the country was troubled by inflation, but it wasn't critical until after Juan Peron's 1974 death. Over the next eight years, it increased seven-fold to 206 percent - not by printing pesos but by radically devaluing the currency combined with a 175 percent rise in oil prices. One source said it was done intentionally to benefit exporters, speculators, and capitalists to prove free-market policies work best. Nonetheless, high inflation and speculation became "hallmark(s) of Argentine financial life", the result of disastrous government policies. Even worse was that Argentina was "targeted by international lenders for massive petrodollar loans". When interest rates rocketed in the 1980s, repayment became impossible, and obtaining concessions came at the expense of IMF demands. In the 1990s, they were implemented. The peso was pegged to the dollar. Currency devaluations ceased. The country lost its international competitiveness. The "money supply was fixed, limited and inflexible", and as a result national bankruptcies occurred in 1995 and again in 2001, but government reaction wasn't as expected. Argentina defied its creditors, defaulted on its debt, and began its road to recovery - with no foreign help or intervention. Post-2001, the economy grew by eight percent for two successive years. Exports increased. The currency stabilized. Investors returned. The IMF was paid off, and unemployment eased. Numerous other examples are similar. Professor Henry C K Liu calls foreign capital a "financial narcotic that would make the (19th century) Opium War(s) look like a minor scrimmage". In the late 1990s, Asian Tiger economies got a taste. America's Economic War on Asia Today's Japan evolved out of its feudal past once a modern central government was formed. Its 20th century economic model "has been called 'a state-guided market system'. The (government) determines the priorities and commissions the work, then hires private enterprise to carry it out." America's military-industrial complex resembles it, but differs in one major respect. Post-World War Two, Japan developed its economy without war. America practically worships it to the detriment of everyone at home and abroad. At the end of the 1980s, "Japan was regarded as the leading economic and banking power in the world", and thus a challenge to US supremacy as the country that could say no. Its model was so successful that Asian "Tiger" economies copied it - in South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, and elsewhere. Washington determined to undercut them as early as the 1985 James Baker-engineered Plaza accord and Baker-Miyazawa agreement. He got Toyko to exercise monetary and fiscal measures to expand domestic demand and reduce Japan's trade surplus. At the same time, the Bank of Japan cut interest rates to 2.5% in 1987 and held that level until May 1989. The idea was for lower rates to stimulate US goods purchases, but instead, cheap money went into Japanese stocks and real estate fueling two colossal bubbles. The yen was also affected. Within months, it shot up forty percent against the dollar, and overnight Japan became the world's largest banking center. At its twin bubble peaks, Tokyo real estate (in dollars) exceeded all of America's and its stock market represented 42% of world valuations - but not for long. In 1990, Japan proposed financing former Soviet republics on its model and drew strong US opposition for two reasons. It might exclude US companies, and it would rely on the successful model that fueled Japanese and Asian Tiger growth. It had to be stopped and was. Pressure was applied with threats of drastic US troop cuts that might endanger Japan's security. The scheme was drop your economic plans or defend yourself. At the same time, the country's twin bubbles imploded, and within months its Nikkei index lost $5 trillion in value, the result of predatory Wall Street short selling intervention. It left Japan severely hurt and no longer a challenge to America. Confronting Asia's Tiger economies came next. In a Century of War (2004), F William Engdahl explained: These economies "were a major embarrassment to the IMF and free-market model. Their very success in blending private enterprise with a strong state economic role" threatened IMF exploitation. "So long as the Tigers appeared to succeed with a model based on a strong state role, the former communist states and others could argue against taking the extreme IMF course. In east Asia during the 1980s, economic growth rates of seven to eight per cent per year, rising social security, universal education and a high worker productivity (free from debt) were all backed by state guidance and planning under market-based rules." In 1993, Washington demanded changes - deregulate, open financial markets, and allow free foreign capital flows. Easing followed along with trouble. From 1994 to 1997, hot money flooded in and created speculative real estate, stock, and other asset bubbles ripe for imploding. Hedge fund predators like George Soros took full advantage, attacking the weakest regional economy and its currency - Thailand and its baht. The aim: forced devaluation, and it worked. Thailand floated its currency and needed first-time ever IMF help. Next came the Philippines, Indonesia, and South Korea with much the same result and fallout. Prosperous Asian Tigers were forced into IMF debt bondage as their populations sank into economic chaos and mass poverty, the result of a liquidity crisis severe enough to plunge the region into depression. Within months, over $100 billion shifted to private hands, and within a year $600 billion in stock market valuations were lost. East Asia was effectively looted. Real earnings plummeted. Unemployment soared with the International Labor Organization estimating around 24 million lost jobs along with the region's remarkable miracle - its prosperous middle class. People literally were thrown overboard - small farmers and business owners, unions, and millions of ordinary people made human wreckage, the result of Wall Street-designed predation, the same scheme wrecking havoc today on a global scale. China Awakens and Prospers Under Deng Xiaoping, China changed from a centrally-planned economy to its own market-based model under government-owned banks able to issue credit for domestic development. Until the global economic crisis emerged, it grew impressively at double-digit rates. Key is its banking system, its government-issued currency, and a system of state-owned banks. Henry C K Liu distinguishes between "national" and "central" banks - the former serves the national and public interest; the latter, private international finance at the expense of the nation and people. In 1995, China's Central Bank Law gave the People's Bank of China (PBoC) central bank status, but more in name than form in that it still follows government policies by directing money for internal development, not bank profits. In addition, China is debt free and thus unemcumbered by IMF mandates and predatory banking cartel interests. It also protected its currency by refusing to let it float (beyond a minor adjustment) and be vulnerable to speculative predators. The proof is in the results. China's independent monetary policy works, much like colonial America, government under Lincoln, and Nazi Germany under Hitler. They printed their own money, debt free, and prospered - impossible under today's American model of indebtedness to predatory bankers. Even worse are New World Order and WTO rules for a global government run by powerful international bankers and corporations - "oppressing the public through military means and restricting individual freedoms". Financial terrorism as well by shifting wealth hugely to the top at the expense of beneficial social change to be abandoned. A follow-up article focuses on America captured in a "web of debt". _____ Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre of Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10 am US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/05/reviewing-ellen-browns-web-of-debt-part_11.html http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman120509.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 critical.montages at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 05:27:02 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 07:27:02 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Obama to "Clear the Way for Detainees Facing the Death Penalty to Plead Guilty without a Full Trial" Message-ID: June 6, 2009 Obama Weighs Plan Allowing 9/11 Suspects to Plead Guilty By WILLIAM GLABERSON The Obama administration is considering a change in the law for the military commissions at the prison at Guant?namo Bay, Cuba, that would clear the way for detainees facing the death penalty to plead guilty without a full trial. The provision could permit military prosecutors to avoid airing the details of brutal interrogation techniques. It could also allow the five detainees who have been charged with the Sept. 11 attacks to achieve their stated goal of pleading guilty to gain what they have called martyrdom. The proposal, in a draft of legislation that would be submitted to Congress, has not been publicly disclosed. It was circulated to officials under restrictions requiring secrecy. People who have read or been briefed on it said it had been presented to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates by an administration task force on detention. The proposal would ease what has come to be recognized as the government?s difficult task of prosecuting men who have confessed to terrorism but whose cases present challenges. Much of the evidence against the men accused in the Sept. 11 case, as well as against other detainees, is believed to have come from confessions they gave during intense interrogations at secret C.I.A. prisons. In any proceeding, the reliability of those statements would be challenged, making trials difficult and drawing new political pressure over detainee treatment. Some experts on the commissions said such a proposal would raise new questions about the fairness of a system that has been criticized as permitting shortcuts to assure convictions. David Glazier, an associate professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who has written about the commission system, said: ?This unfortunately strikes me as an effort to get rid of the problem in the easiest way possible, which is to have those people plead guilty and presumably be executed. But I think it?s going to lack international credibility.? The draft legislation includes other changes administration officials disclosed last month when President Obama said he would continue the controversial military commission system with changes that would increase detainees? rights. It is not known whether the White House has approved the proposed death penalty provision. A White House spokesman declined to comment. The provision would follow a recommendation of military prosecutors to clarify what they view as an oversight in the 2006 law that created the commissions. The law did not make clear if guilty pleas would be permitted in capital cases. Federal civilian courts and courts in most states with capital-punishment laws permit such pleas. But American military justice law, which is the model for the military commission rules, bars members of the armed services who are facing capital charges from pleading guilty. Partly to assure fairness when execution is possible, court-martial prosecutors are required to prove guilt in a trial even against service members who want to plead guilty. During a December tribunal proceeding in Guant?namo, the five detainees charged with coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks said they wanted to plead guilty. Military prosecutors argued that they should be permitted to do so. Defense lawyers argued that tribunals should follow American military law and bar the guilty pleas. The military judge has not yet made a decision. Lawyers who were asked about the administration?s proposed change in recent days said it appeared to be intended for the Sept. 11 case. ?They are trying to give the 9/11 guys what they want: let them plead guilty and get the death penalty and not have to have a trial,? said Maj. David J. R. Frakt of the Air Force, a Guant?namo defense lawyer. The military commission system has been effectively halted since January while the administration considers its options. The only death penalty case now before a military judge is the case against the five detainees charged as the planners of the Sept. 11 attack, including the self-proclaimed mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Cmdr. Suzanne M. Lachelier, a Navy lawyer for one of the detainees in the Sept. 11 case, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, said of the Obama administration, ?They?re encouraging martyrdom.? The administration has not announced whether it will continue with the Sept. 11 case in the military commissions or charge some of the men in federal court. Officials involved in the process said that lawyers reviewing the case have said that federal-court charges against four of the men might be possible, but that the evidence might be too weak for a federal court case against one of the five, Walid Bin Attash, a veteran jihad fighter who was known as Khallad. Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said no decisions had been made about where the men would be prosecuted. Mr. Boyd said it was premature to discuss any legislative proposals. But, he said, ?As the president has said, the administration is working diligently to identify possible legislative amendments to the current military commission system.? A bill presented to Congress seeking changes in the commissions could open a new debate about the system for trying terrorism suspects. The administration is already in a standoff with Congress over financing for Mr. Obama?s plan to close the Guant?namo prison by January. In the Sept. 11 case, the five detainees have seemed to be daring the United States to put them to death, expressing pride in their acts of what they call jihad against America, which they described as ?the terrorist country,? and its allies, ?the filthy Jews.? In December, the military judge, Col. Stephen R. Henley, ordered written arguments from lawyers. ?Can an accused plead guilty,? Colonel Henley asked, ?to a capital offense at a military commission?? The military prosecutors argued that Congress had a ?clear intent? to permit guilty pleas in death penalty cases at Guant?namo. They note that a detainee could be sentenced to death only after a unanimous vote by a panel of military officers. Critics of the military commission system say that the battles over its fairness show that any execution would bring new scrutiny around the world. They say the prosecutors should be required to present evidence proving that anyone who is to be executed was actually guilty of the crimes charged. Requiring prosecutors to reveal what they know about detainees and how they know it would cast light both on the interrogation techniques used against the men and the acts of terrorism for which they are facing death, said Denny LeBoeuf, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who works on Guant?namo death penalty issues. ?Don?t we have an interest as a society,? Ms. LeBoeuf asked, ?in a trial that examines the evidence and provides some reliable picture of what went on?? From suzannedk at gmail.com Sat Jun 6 15:06:09 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 23:06:09 +0200 Subject: [R-G] Obama to "Clear the Way for Detainees Facing the Death Penalty to Plead Guilty without a Full Trial" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The ultimate Constitutional law professor has spoken, rejecting law by remaking it to fit lawlessness. Suzanne On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 1:27 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi < critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote: > > June 6, 2009 > Obama Weighs Plan Allowing 9/11 Suspects to Plead Guilty > By WILLIAM GLABERSON > > The Obama administration is considering a change in the law for the > military commissions at the prison at Guant?namo Bay, Cuba, that would > clear the way for detainees facing the death penalty to plead guilty > without a full trial. > > The provision could permit military prosecutors to avoid airing the > details of brutal interrogation techniques. It could also allow the > five detainees who have been charged with the Sept. 11 attacks to > achieve their stated goal of pleading guilty to gain what they have > called martyrdom. > > The proposal, in a draft of legislation that would be submitted to > Congress, has not been publicly disclosed. It was circulated to > officials under restrictions requiring secrecy. People who have read > or been briefed on it said it had been presented to Defense Secretary > Robert M. Gates by an administration task force on detention. > > The proposal would ease what has come to be recognized as the > government?s difficult task of prosecuting men who have confessed to > terrorism but whose cases present challenges. Much of the evidence > against the men accused in the Sept. 11 case, as well as against other > detainees, is believed to have come from confessions they gave during > intense interrogations at secret C.I.A. prisons. In any proceeding, > the reliability of those statements would be challenged, making trials > difficult and drawing new political pressure over detainee treatment. > > Some experts on the commissions said such a proposal would raise new > questions about the fairness of a system that has been criticized as > permitting shortcuts to assure convictions. > > David Glazier, an associate professor at Loyola Law School in Los > Angeles who has written about the commission system, said: ?This > unfortunately strikes me as an effort to get rid of the problem in the > easiest way possible, which is to have those people plead guilty and > presumably be executed. But I think it?s going to lack international > credibility.? > > The draft legislation includes other changes administration officials > disclosed last month when President Obama said he would continue the > controversial military commission system with changes that would > increase detainees? rights. It is not known whether the White House > has approved the proposed death penalty provision. A White House > spokesman declined to comment. > > The provision would follow a recommendation of military prosecutors to > clarify what they view as an oversight in the 2006 law that created > the commissions. The law did not make clear if guilty pleas would be > permitted in capital cases. Federal civilian courts and courts in most > states with capital-punishment laws permit such pleas. > > But American military justice law, which is the model for the military > commission rules, bars members of the armed services who are facing > capital charges from pleading guilty. Partly to assure fairness when > execution is possible, court-martial prosecutors are required to prove > guilt in a trial even against service members who want to plead > guilty. > > During a December tribunal proceeding in Guant?namo, the five > detainees charged with coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks said they > wanted to plead guilty. Military prosecutors argued that they should > be permitted to do so. Defense lawyers argued that tribunals should > follow American military law and bar the guilty pleas. The military > judge has not yet made a decision. > > Lawyers who were asked about the administration?s proposed change in > recent days said it appeared to be intended for the Sept. 11 case. > > ?They are trying to give the 9/11 guys what they want: let them plead > guilty and get the death penalty and not have to have a trial,? said > Maj. David J. R. Frakt of the Air Force, a Guant?namo defense lawyer. > > The military commission system has been effectively halted since > January while the administration considers its options. The only death > penalty case now before a military judge is the case against the five > detainees charged as the planners of the Sept. 11 attack, including > the self-proclaimed mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. > > Cmdr. Suzanne M. Lachelier, a Navy lawyer for one of the detainees in > the Sept. 11 case, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, said of the Obama > administration, ?They?re encouraging martyrdom.? > > The administration has not announced whether it will continue with the > Sept. 11 case in the military commissions or charge some of the men in > federal court. Officials involved in the process said that lawyers > reviewing the case have said that federal-court charges against four > of the men might be possible, but that the evidence might be too weak > for a federal court case against one of the five, Walid Bin Attash, a > veteran jihad fighter who was known as Khallad. > > Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said no decisions had been > made about where the men would be prosecuted. Mr. Boyd said it was > premature to discuss any legislative proposals. But, he said, ?As the > president has said, the administration is working diligently to > identify possible legislative amendments to the current military > commission system.? > > A bill presented to Congress seeking changes in the commissions could > open a new debate about the system for trying terrorism suspects. The > administration is already in a standoff with Congress over financing > for Mr. Obama?s plan to close the Guant?namo prison by January. > > In the Sept. 11 case, the five detainees have seemed to be daring the > United States to put them to death, expressing pride in their acts of > what they call jihad against America, which they described as ?the > terrorist country,? and its allies, ?the filthy Jews.? > > In December, the military judge, Col. Stephen R. Henley, ordered > written arguments from lawyers. ?Can an accused plead guilty,? Colonel > Henley asked, ?to a capital offense at a military commission?? > > The military prosecutors argued that Congress had a ?clear intent? to > permit guilty pleas in death penalty cases at Guant?namo. They note > that a detainee could be sentenced to death only after a unanimous > vote by a panel of military officers. > > Critics of the military commission system say that the battles over > its fairness show that any execution would bring new scrutiny around > the world. They say the prosecutors should be required to present > evidence proving that anyone who is to be executed was actually guilty > of the crimes charged. > > Requiring prosecutors to reveal what they know about detainees and how > they know it would cast light both on the interrogation techniques > used against the men and the acts of terrorism for which they are > facing death, said Denny LeBoeuf, an American Civil Liberties Union > lawyer who works on Guant?namo death penalty issues. > > ?Don?t we have an interest as a society,? Ms. LeBoeuf asked, ?in a > trial that examines the evidence and provides some reliable picture of > what went on?? > > _______________________________________________ > 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 Sat Jun 6 15:03:29 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 14:03:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The odd couple: Hizbullah and the general In-Reply-To: <442199818.7732871244246165449.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <301564765.7809451244322209909.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://mondediplo.com/2009/06/04lebanon Le Monde Diplomatique June 2009 A quiet revolution in Lebanon?s political scene The odd couple: Hizbullah and the general In Lebanon?s legislative elections on 7 June, two members of the national unity government will be pitted against each other. Saad Hariri and his 14 March group face the Maronite general, Michel Aoun, who has formed a strong and surprising alliance with Hizbullah by Nicolas Dot-Pouillard On 24 August 2008, the Maronite leader, General Michel Aoun, made his first visit to south Lebanon in 33 years. As head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), he wanted to demonstrate the strength of his alliance with Hizbullah. South Lebanon had been under Israeli occupation until May 2000, and in the war of July and August 2006 its border villages were the scene of bloody battles. Aoun met the regional Hizbullah leader Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, and Wafik Safa, one of its military leaders. He went walkabout in Bint Jbeil beneath huge portraits of Imad Mughniyeh, Hizbullah?s military chief assassinated in Damascus in February 2008. He visited the Museum of the Resistance at Nabatiyeh and paid homage to the victims of the 1996 and 2006 Israeli bombings of Qanaa. General Aoun?s visit had symbolic importance for both the FPM and Hizbullah. It was meant to show that the alliance between the two parties (who signed a memorandum of understanding on 6 February 2006) is popular and durable, and not merely a marriage of convenience. It might seem strange that one of Lebanon?s Christian leaders should become the close ally of Hizbullah, an Islamist-nationalist party allied to Syria and Iran. But this bizarre reconciliation is part of the huge political reorganisation that has been taking place in Lebanon since Syria pulled out its troops in 2005. Aoun was a Lebanese army commander during the civil war, known for his fierce opposition to interference from Syria, whose forces he had fought in March 1989. He even went before the United States Senate in 2003 to argue in favour of economic sanctions against Damascus. But now, through Hizbullah, Aoun?s reconciliation with Syria is sealed: in December he made a triumphant visit to Damascus and met President Bashar al-Assad several times. When Aoun returned to Lebanon from exile in France in May 2005, he and his party refused to join the pro-western ?14 March? alliance, formed after the assassination of the Sunni prime minister Rafik Hariri. The anti-Syrian 14 March grouping relies on support from Sunni and Druze Muslims as well as some Christians, and is backed by France, the US and Saudi Arabia. It includes Maronite groups who are particularly hostile to Aoun: Samir Geagea?s Lebanese Forces (a Christian militia that Aoun?s forces fought against in 1989); the Phalangists of former president Amine Gemayel ( 1 ); and the Qornet Shehwan Gathering, a group of Christian intellectuals close to the Maronite patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir. Relations between Aoun?s party and the patriarchate are strained, since the FPM?s charter aims to ?separate politics from religion to facilitate the establishment of a secular state? ( 2 ) ? a prospect the religious authorities are not too keen on. The gulf between the FPM and the 14 March alliance is all the deeper because the two have a different analysis of the regional situation following Syria?s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005. Aoun and his supporters believe that defending national integrity no longer depends merely on opposing Syrian interference, but all foreign interference, including from the West and Saudi Arabia. Reflecting the aspirations of marginalised, middle-class Maronite Christians, the FPM opposes sectarianism and wants the country to move towards secularism, whereas it believes the 14 March alliance wants to perpetuate the traditional sectarian order. But although Aoun?s supporters argue for secularism and state reform, it doesn?t stop them analysing events in sectarian terms. Rima, a young FPM activist living in Ashrafiyyeh, a Christian quarter of Beirut, says: ?Syria and Iran are no longer the biggest threat to Lebanon. For years now the threat has come from a Sunni fundamentalism that is extremely hostile to Christians ( 3 ), a fundamentalist ideology funded by Saudi petrodollars. So we have to unite with the Shia but also with non-sectarian Sunni. I prefer Iran ? a country with intellectuals, elections and some rights ? to Saudi Arabia, where women aren?t even allowed to drive.? The alliance between the FPM and Hizbullah can be seen in the context of opposing regional and denominational blocs: Iran and Syria on one side, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt on the other. Before setting off for Tehran on 13 October last year, Aoun condemned ?Lebanon?s subservience to Riyadh and the US administration?. This strategic visit, at Iran?s invitation, was unprecedented for a Maronite political leader. The bitterness remains Lebanon ?s Christian political camp has never truly been united. Admittedly, it was hostile to Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser?s pan-Arab project in the 1950s and 1960s. In July 1958, President Camille Chamoun, leader of the NLP (National Liberal Party), called on the US military to intervene in Beirut against pro-Nasser movements. And in the 1970s, the Maronite bloc showed some degree of unity in opposing pan-Arabism: there were the Maronite militias such as Etienne Sakr?s Guardians of the Cedar and Georges Adwan?s Tanzim militia, as well as the alliance between Bashir Gemayel (commander of the armed wing of the Phalangists) and the Israeli army in 1982, against the Palestine Liberation Organisation ( 4 ). But the political unity at the beginning of the 1980s was achieved through the barrel of a gun and masked deep divisions within the Christian community. After the killing of the (Christian) family of Tony Frangieh ( 5 ), leader of the Marada Brigade, at Ehden in northern Lebanon in June 1978 by Phalangist militias, and the elimination of dozens of NLP activists in January 1980, Bashir Gemayel asserted that ?for the first time in 14 centuries, Lebanese Christians are united militarily?. But they had paid a high price and the bitterness remains. Unity among ordinary Christians themselves is even more tenuous on account of the differing denominations. For instance, the Maronites have shown a certain ideological consistency but other Christians, notably the Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics, have filled the ranks of secular (non-denominational) parties such as the Communists and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). The current division between the Aounists on the one hand, and the Phalangists and Lebanese Forces on the other, is not a historic aberration: it confirms the rivalry and the ongoing political and denominational struggle within the Christian camp ( 6 ). What is new is the ideological shift at the heart of the Maronite Christian camp created by the alliance between Aoun and Hizbullah. For the first time, a mass Maronite movement has allied itself politically and strategically with an organisation that is Islamist, nationalist, anti-American, anti-Israeli and inside the Arab and Islamic sphere of influence. This represents a minor revolution among the Maronite public. For the Aounists have altered Lebanon?s political and sectarian landscape. They have created a situation where a national Maronite movement can explicitly support Hizbullah?s right to keep its weapons, in the context of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict: ?Bearing arms is not an end in itself, but a noble and sacred means that is exercised by any group whose land is occupied, on the grounds of political resistance? ( 7 ). The alliance has also brought communities together. In July and August 2006, during the Israeli war on Hizbullah, many Shia took refuge in the mountains of Christian areas, at the behest of the FPM. This popular dynamic grew with the opposition demonstrations and sit-ins in Beirut, led by Hizbullah and the FPM in December 2006 against the government of Fouad Siniora. What the Aounists are calling for is a strong, secular, regulatory state and a new relationship ( 8 ) between Christians and Muslims within a nationalist context. But this position has already thrown up contradictions. In July 2008, an inter-Christian meeting at Dbayeh (near Beirut) brought together more than 200 Christian opposition leaders to discuss a summary of ?Christian principles? unveiled by Aoun in December 2007. Aoun is now presenting himself as a leader of the Christian community, capable of leading the Maronites ? in spite of the inherent contradiction with the secular, non-sectarian policies professed by his party. Will it be worth it? What?s more, Aoun sees himself as the defender of eastern Christians, a position he reinforced with his visits to Iran and Syria in 2008. The FPM?s acceptance of the new electoral law creating ?small constituencies? does give Christians better representation in parliament ( 9 ), but it also endorses the sectarian argument. Only the Lebanese Communist Party, the SSNP and small leftwing or Nasserist movements voiced their opposition to the new electoral law ? which is just as sectarian as the last ? by staging demonstrations in front of parliament last August. Aoun?s supporters may have taken part in demonstrations to defend public services in May 2006, alongside Hizbullah and the Lebanese Communist Party, but three years later, the new Aounist telecommunications minister, Gibran Bassil (Aoun?s son-in-law), has completely accepted privatisation of the telecoms industry. The June elections will be decisive for General Aoun. If the FPM simply maintains its seats (currently 19 out of 128), its alliance with Hizbullah will have been justified. But it will provoke a leadership crisis among the Christians. However, if the FPM and Hizbullah win the elections, Michel Aoun will face a different challenge: that of reconciling his new status as leader of Lebanon?s Christians with his reformist, secular policies. Translated by Stephanie Irvine More by Nicolas Dot-Pouillard Nicolas Dot-Pouillard is a researcher at the EHESS (?cole des Hautes ?tudes en Sciences Sociales) in Paris and at the Lebanese University, Beirut ( 1 ) The son of Pierre Gemayel, founder of the Phalangists in the 1930s. He became president in 1982 after the assassination of his brother Bashir. ( 2 ) The Charter of the Free Patriotic Movement Party , September 2005. ( 3 ) Fidaa Itani, ? Al-Qaida roots itself in Lebanon ?, Le Monde diplomatique , English edition, February 2008. ( 4 ) The Phalangists started out as a branch of the Lebanese Forces but became autonomous under Bashir Gemayel. They played a major role in the massacres at the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila in September 1982. ( 5 ) The Frangieh clan in based in the Zghorta region of northern Lebanon. Although Maronite, it is linked historically to Syria. Suleiman Frangieh was president of Lebanon between 1970 and 1976. ( 6 ) Read the International Crisis Group report, ? The New Lebanese Equation: The Christians? Central Role ?, Middle East Report No 78 , Beirut/Brussels, July 2008. ( 7 ) Memorandum of understanding between Hizbullah and FLM, Beirut, 6 February 2006, available in French here . ( 8 ) In 1943 a verbal agreement was reached between the Maronites and the Sunni dividing up the state?s key functions: the presidency of the republic went to the Maronites, presidency of the council of ministers to the Sunni, presidency of parliament to the Shia, and vice-presidency of parliament to the Greek Orthodox. ( 9 ) Lebanon?s electoral system is complex: parliament?s 128 seats are divided up according to religious denomination: half to Christians (34 Maronites, 14 Greek Orthodox, 8 Greek Catholics etc), half to Muslims (27 Sunni, 27 Shia, 8 Druze etc). Before the reform, most Christian parliamentarians were elected in ?large constituencies?, which included a large number of Muslim voters, a factor that affected the vote. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Jun 6 15:03:52 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 14:03:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] =?utf-8?b?TWlzaGFs4oCZcyBMdWNr?= In-Reply-To: <1147617416.7728091244245130017.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <692048395.7809481244322232470.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n09/shtz01_.html London Review of B ooks 14 May 2009 Mishal?s Luck Adam Shatz Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas by Paul McGeough In early September 1997, Danny Yatom, the head of Mossad, arranged a special screening for Binyamin Netanyahu, who was then prime minister. The film, shot on the streets of Tel Aviv, presented the plan for the assassination of Khalid Mishal, the head of Hamas?s political bureau in Amman. Twenty-one Israelis had died in Hamas suicide attacks in the previous two months, and Netanyahu was eager for revenge. The peace process might be undermined, but that would be just as well: Netanyahu shared Hamas?s hostility to Oslo, and had compared trading land for peace to appeasement with Hitler. Mishal, Paul McGeough writes in Kill Khalid , his gripping account of the plot, was selected from a list of targets by Netanyahu not only because he was suspected of orchestrating the suicide bomb campaign, but because he made an articulate case for Hamas?s position, in a suit rather than clerical robes: ?he was too credible as an emerging leader of Hamas, persuasive even. He had to be taken out.? It was an extremely sensitive operation. Israel had signed a peace treaty with King Hussein in 1994, and the murder of a Palestinian leader in Amman would be sure to fuel speculation that Mossad had got the green light, and perhaps some helpful tips, from Jordan?s General Intelligence Department (GID). This was no way to treat a friend ? at least not one you respected ? and the Israelis knew it. Unlike the flamboyant assassinations of the PFLP spokesman Ghassan Kanafani (killed in 1972 in a car bomb in Beirut) and Arafat?s top aide Khalil al-Wazir (gunned down in 1988 in his home in Tunis by Israeli commandos), Mishal?s murder had to be discreet and, if possible, invisible. The attack would take a matter of seconds ? so quick he wouldn?t know it was happening. One agent would shake a can of Coke and pop it open to distract Mishal while another would spray levofentanyl, a chemically modified painkiller, in his ear. He would feel as if he?d been bitten by an insect; 48 hours later the drug would kill him, leaving no trace. Mossad agents rehearsed the assassination using water instead of poison on unsuspecting pedestrians in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu liked what he saw, and gave Yatom the go-ahead. He was not dissuaded by Hamas?s proposal for a 30-year hudna (truce), relayed by King Hussein on 22 September in a letter delivered by hand to the secret Mossad station at the Israeli embassy in Amman. Three days later, a pair of Mossad agents disguised as Canadian tourists ? they were carrying passports borrowed from Canadian Jews living in Israel ? waited for Mishal at 10 a.m. outside his office, where his driver was due to drop him off. The plot unravelled almost as soon as it began. Mishal?s driver suspected that he?d been followed by a green Hyundai. When he saw a blond, bearded man in sunglasses approaching his boss as he stepped out of the car, with a ?bizarre instrument? in his hand, he pounced on him ? though not before the poison had been squirted into Mishal?s ear from that instrument, a nebuliser. The attackers piled into the Hyundai, but they didn?t know their way around Amman, and were chased by Mishal?s bodyguard, who did. Eventually they jumped out of their car, but got stuck in a crowded marketplace, where Mishal?s bodyguard wrestled them into a taxi and took them to the nearest police station. Mishal seemed fine at first, but a few hours later he realised that something was wrong: his ear was ringing, he was shivering; he suddenly felt exhausted and nauseous. As his aides rushed him to hospital, he lost consciousness altogether. Hamas?s claim that Mishal had been the target of an assassination attempt might have been squelched by the Jordanians, and Mishal might have died, had it not been for Randa Habib, a Lebanese journalist who broke the story to Agence-France Presse. General Samih Batikhi, head of the GID, insisted that nothing more than a fight between locals and tourists had taken place; another official suggested that Mishal?s driver had sparked the row by making unwelcome advances to the Canadians. The absence of a weapon wasn?t the only reason the Jordanians were sceptical. Why would Mossad place its special relationship with the GID at risk? Only a week earlier Danny Yatom had stopped by the headquarters in Amman ? after a family holiday at the royal palace on the Red Sea ? to chat with Batikhi. Now here was Hamas, accusing Israel of violating the peace treaty: a serious charge which, if true, would require a response. Batikhi, who viewed Hamas as troublemakers, was inclined to dismiss the Agence-France Presse report until he received credible information that two men involved in the fight were seen running into the Israeli embassy (they would be joined by two other accomplices). When Netanyahu called King Hussein to say that Yatom was flying to Amman on urgent business that ?could have bearing on the peace process?, Hussein assumed the visit was a response to Hamas?s offer of a hudna; but Batikhi knew better. He ordered the army to surround the Israeli embassy in Amman, and asked the Canadian ambassador to quiz the two men in Jordanian custody ? ?Shawn Kendall? and ?Barry Beads? ? on their ?Canadian-ness?. It didn?t take long for them to be exposed as impostors. ?We did it . . . We sprayed him with a chemical,? Yatom confessed to Batikhi after landing in Jordan: ?There?s nothing you can do about it . . . He?s been poisoned and all his bodily functions will deteriorate. There?ll be no apparent cause of death . . . We?d better deal with the consequences.? But Hussein wasn?t prepared to deal with the consequences. He felt, he said, as if the Israelis had ?spat on my face?. Despite ? and partly because of ? his friendship with Israel, Hussein had allowed Hamas to operate out of Amman. Hamas gave him leverage in negotiations with Israel and the US, and, as McGeough points out, they also ?gave back something that Arafat and the PLO threatened ? Hussein?s legitimacy?. The Jordanians had no love for Mishal: Batikhi regarded him as ?shallow, brittle and unbending?, and Hussein had gone to great lengths to replace him, securing the release to Jordan four months earlier of the more pliable Mousa Abu Marzook, the former head of the Hamas political bureau, who had spent two years in an American prison awaiting extradition to Israel. But Marzook?s cosiness with Jordan?s security services, and his reputation for moderation (which had earned him the nickname Mr CIA), had cost him support inside Hamas; and he wasn?t helped now by rumours that the Jordanians had conspired with Israel to return him to his old job. Suddenly Hussein?s honour ? if not his political survival ? depended on saving Mishal. The crisis offered Hussein a chance to settle scores with Netanyahu, who had treated him with undisguised contempt, and whom he suspected of seeking to ?destroy all I have worked to build between our peoples?, as Hussein had written to Netanyahu in March. Netanyahu had approved a tunnel underneath the al-Aqsa Mosque, which led to rioting in which dozens of Palestinians and a number of Israelis died; he had also betrayed his promise to Hussein not to build new settlements in East Jerusalem, with his plan to encircle the neighbourhood of Jabal Abu Ghneim with Jewish apartment complexes. In Hussein?s view, the assassination was part of Netanyahu?s plan to sabotage Oslo and to destabilise his own regime, so that a Palestinian state could be established in Jordan ? the old fantasy of the Israeli right. Refusing to speak to Netanyahu, he placed a call to Clinton. ?If Mishal dies, peace dies with him,? Hussein warned. The embassy would be stormed, the Israelis in Jordanian custody would hang, and relations would be broken off. Clinton agreed to pressure the Israelis to hand over the antidote to the poison used on Mishal, along with the formula. Forty-eight hours after Yatom landed in Amman, an Israeli doctor arrived at the same airport with the goods, just in time to save Mishal. Netanyahu even flew to Jordan to apologise to the king in person. Hussein?s humiliation of Netanyahu did not end there. As the ?father of the treaty? with Hussein, Efraim Halevy, Israel?s envoy to the EU and Mossad?s former deputy director, recognised, the king needed a deal, not just the antidote; and if he didn?t get one, the Israelis now held in Jordan would never come home. The price, Halevy argued, should be the release of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the paraplegic cleric who had founded Hamas in Gaza, and was now serving his eighth year of a life sentence. This was ?political dynamite?, in the words of an American official: Yassin?s return to Gaza was bound to raise the standing of Hamas among Palestinians, and to weaken Arafat, Israel?s ?peace partner?. Arafat made an operatic display of joy over Yassin?s release, but privately he was furious: not only would King Hussein get the credit, but the sheikh would threaten his control of the national movement, and undermine his negotiations with Israel. ?Why should I pay a price for this?? he moaned to Clinton?s Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross. Shortly after Mishal?s life was saved, a group of Jordanian officials discussed the affair with Clinton. ?Though he was not present, the meeting was an extraordinary moment in the life of Khalid Mishal,? McGeough writes: ?Mishal and his movement had been acknowledged as key players.? It was also an extraordinary reversal of fortune. Hamas, in the words of a senior American official, had been having ?its worst year? until ?Mossad?s balls-up in Amman?. Marzook and Yassin had been behind bars, and hundreds of Hamas leaders had been jailed by Arafat?s Preventive Security Service, headed in Gaza by Mohammed Dahlan, whose methods had made some Hamas prisoners nostalgic for their Israeli jailers. Now Marzook was back in Amman, and Yassin was back in Gaza, a symbol of Palestinian defiance whose authority even Arafat found difficult to challenge. The greatest beneficiary of the failed assassination, however, was its intended victim, whom Mossad had turned into a star of the Islamic resistance. Marzook campaigned to get his old job back but didn?t stand a chance against the ?martyr who would not die?. Mishal?s insistence that only armed resistance would end the occupation, and that Arafat had nothing to show for his renunciation of violence (?Where did it get him? Where?s his independent state??), prevailed in Hamas?s shura , or decision-making council. ?The day they tried to kill him was the day Mishal the leader was born,? a Jordanian journalist told McGeough. ?The man who died that day was Abu Marzook. Nobody wanted to talk to Abu Marzook after that ? it was Mishal, Mishal, Mishal.? McGeough tells the story of the Amman plot in the gritty, unsentimental style of a hard-boiled thriller. Kill Khalid is a reporter?s book, drawing plentifully on interviews with the important players, including Mishal. The Mishal affair may not be as much of a turning point in the conflict as McGeough claims, but its wider resonances are striking. More than a decade later, Mishal is Hamas?s political chief in Damascus, and Netanyahu, the man who ordered his assassination, is back in power in Jerusalem. The Islamic resistance movement, Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyah ( hamas means ?zeal? in Arabic), now controls the Gaza Strip, having survived the prisons of the IDF and the Palestinian Authority, a pitiless blockade, international isolation, the ?targeted? assassinations of many of its leaders, an American-backed putsch and an Israeli invasion. And though neither the US nor the EU will speak to Mishal, on the grounds that Hamas is a ?terrorist? organisation, he has won the respect of a growing number of politicians in the West, including Jimmy Carter. Mishal was born in 1956, into a peasant family in the Jordanian-ruled West Bank village of Silwad, 16 miles north of Jerusalem. His father, Abd al-Qadir, was a sheikh who had fought in the 1936 Arab Revolt and in the 1948 war with Israel; he had also been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the militant Islamist group founded in Egypt in 1928. Mishal, during his childhood in Silwad, saw little of his father: in 1957, Abd al-Qadir had taken a second wife and moved with her to Kuwait, where he established a new family. Ten years later, however, the Israeli army occupied Silwad, and Fatima Mishal and her children fled to Amman, then to Kuwait, where they were reunited with Abd al-Qadir. The emirate was not without its difficulties for Palestinian refugees, who couldn?t buy property without a Kuwaiti partner, and were collectively viewed as a potential fifth column. But since in most of the Arab world Palestinians had a choice between the heroism of guerrilla warfare and the misery of the refugee camps, Kuwait offered the hope of a more or less normal life. Palestinians staffed Kuwait?s schools and civil service, and took great pride in their contribution to the country?s economy. Mishal?s father befriended a senior member of the royal family who admired his sermons, and rose to the position of mullah, no small achievement for a country preacher. Kuwait?s comparatively liberal ambience had also made it a centre of Palestinian politics. It was in Kuwait that Arafat and his comrades had founded Fatah; it was there, too, that young Palestinians in the national movement?s various factions ? secular-nationalist, Marxist, Islamist ? would fight over its future. Khalid Mishal joined the Muslim Brotherhood at the age of 15. As McGeough emphasises, this was not a fashionable choice in the early 1970s, when the armed resistance to Israel was led by secular nationalists, and Islamists faced accusations of complacency, if not cowardice, for standing on the sidelines. But Mishal, like a growing number of pious Muslims in the diaspora, was convinced that the Palestinian struggle had to be grounded on Islamic principles; it was, they believed, the Arabs? deviation from those principles that had led them to defeat in 1948 and 1967. They thought that Arafat was repeating the same error when, in the mid-1970s, he began to express support for a ?transitional? Palestinian state in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem ? and hinted, implicitly, at an eventual rapprochement with the Jewish state. For Mishal and his comrades, who called for the creation of an Islamic state in all of historical Palestine, this was treason; at a stroke Arafat was lending legitimacy to the state that had caused the Palestinian ordeal, and selling out the refugees. At Kuwait University, where he studied physics, Mishal founded the Islamic Association of Palestinian Students, a rival to the Arafat-controlled General Union of Palestinian Students, and became its president. When he graduated, he asked his mother to say ?amen? to his wish to become ?a martyr for Palestine?. ?My son, I can?t say ?amen? to that,? she replied. ?It?s too difficult.? She needn?t have worried: Khalid, a contemplative, bookish young man, a reader of Camus and Dostoevsky, was not in a hurry to become a martyr. Not only had he joined an organisation that had until this point kept its distance from the armed struggle; unlike many of his classmates, who were slipping out of Kuwait to join the fedayeen in southern Lebanon, he had decided that he could better serve the national cause by remaining a student. In McGeough?s words, he ?was opting to live to fight another day?. Mishal soon acquired the trappings of a quiet, middle-class life: a stable job as a high-school physics teacher, a wife and children. But in his spare time he was meeting behind closed doors with a group of Palestinian Muslim Brothers to develop what he called his ?project?, the creation of an Islamic alternative to Fatah. The time had come, they believed, for Islamists to take part in the armed struggle, and to wrest control of the movement. They belonged to a new generation of Islamists who drew inspiration from the Iranian Revolution and the Afghan holy war; they pointed to the failure of secular Arab nationalists to govern effectively (or to confront Israel), and wanted to fuse the energies of nationalism and Islam. For them ?there was no contradiction between fighting for Palestine and conducting a religious life.? Mishal drew selectively on Palestinian history ? including his father?s story ? to argue that the Muslim Brotherhood, not Fatah, had launched the national resistance: ?We?re the root; Fatah is a mere branch.? To most observers, Mishal?s early efforts couldn?t have looked promising. Supporters of Fatah and the left far outnumbered Palestine?s Islamists, and Arafat controlled the purse strings of the PLO. But Arafat had little to show for his leadership of the PLO, apart from its survival. He had held it together thanks to his charisma and his flair for cutting deals, but he had involved the Palestinian movement, to disastrous effect, in Arab politics, above all in the Lebanese civil war. Though spartan in his own habits he had allowed corruption in the PLO to fester, since compromised allies were more easily controlled. And he governed in the style of the region, making decisions capriciously and without consulting anyone, as if his nickname, Mr Palestine, entitled him not to. Islamic opposition movements combining piety with political militancy were excoriating nationalist leaders throughout the region; what grounds were there for seeing the Palestinian movement as an exception? The main surprise, perhaps, is that it took so long. In 1983, Mishal and his Kuwaiti allies presented their ?project? to a meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood in Amman. Arafat and his soldiers had recently been expelled from Lebanon, and the PLO, exiled to Tunis, had never seemed so far from achieving independence, or so directionless. Mishal, McGeough writes, gave a daring speech that amounted to a ?full-frontal assault on the supremacy of Yasir Arafat?. His recommendations were adopted, and Mishal was made head of the Kuwait-based Jihaz Filastin ? the Palestine Apparatus that would pay for military operations in the Occupied Territories. (McGeough, drawing uncritically on Mishal?s account, makes rather too much of this conference, claiming that it marks the founding of Hamas; in fact, Hamas was established four years later, at the Gaza home of Sheikh Yassin on 9 December 1987, the day the intifada broke out.) Mishal?s first assignment, as head of the Palestine Apparatus, was to raise money in the Gulf so that Yassin?s followers could undergo weapons training in Jordan. Tipped off by an informer, Israel jailed Yassin for plotting to destroy the Jewish state. Yassin?s involvement in weapons training came as a shock to many Israelis; even today there are figures in Israeli intelligence who insist that his guns were pointed at Fatah. Ever since they occupied Gaza, the Israelis had been cultivating Yassin ? a Muslim Brother who?d been jailed by Egypt ? in their struggle against Palestinian nationalism, much as the Americans had supported the Afghan mujahedin. (McGeough suggests that some of the money raised by Muslims abroad in support of the mujahedin may have found its way to Palestine.) Yassin made no secret of his hatred of Israel, but, as a Muslim Brother, he believed that before taking up arms to recover their land, Palestinians would first have to undergo ?ideological, spiritual and psychological re-education?. While secular nationalists mobilised against the occupation, in strikes and guerrilla attacks, Yassin promoted social works and religious instruction. Overlooking his belief that ?re-education? was only preparation for the impending jihad, the Israelis regarded him as a tactical ally against the PLO. In the early 1970s, while Israel repressed any stirrings of nationalist resistance, Yassin was permitted to open up the Islamic Centre, an umbrella organisation that included a mosque, a clinic, a kindergarten, a festival hall and a headquarters for an alms committee; with the occupier?s approval he was soon receiving considerable funds from the Gulf. In the mid-1980s, the military governor of Gaza gave a succinct summary of Israel?s relationship to Yassin: ?The Israeli government gives me a budget and the military government gives it to the mosques.? After a trip to Gaza in 1985, Daniel Kurtzer, an official at the US embassy in Tel Aviv, barged into a meeting of Shimon Peres?s advisers and asked them: ?Have you guys lost your minds? Do you ever learn from history? Do you know what you?re doing in Gaza as we speak? . . . You really think you can tame these guys?? When Gazan Islamists wanted to cross over to the West Bank in support of their comrades in clashes with Fatah, the Israelis let them through. As one official explained to McGeough, ?they?ll only be beating each other up.? In fact, Yassin and other Islamists inside the Occupied Territories were drawing the same lessons from the revolutionary Islamic struggles in Iran, Afghanistan and Lebanon as Mishal and his comrades were in the diaspora: that the gradualist philosophy of the Brothers should give way to the rifle. In its 1988 charter, Hamas proclaimed its desire to ?raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine? and depicted the Zionist project as the latest chapter of a Jewish conspiracy for world domination that had begun with the French Revolution, and continued with the Russian Revolution and two world wars. Yet the Israelis continued to indulge Hamas during the first few years of the intifada, focusing their repression on the secular National Unified Leadership of the Uprising, and allowing the Islamists to receive substantial funds from abroad. With this money ? raised by Hamas-affiliated charities in Europe, the US and the Gulf ? Hamas expanded its influence, building a vast network of schools, daycare centres, hospitals and athletic clubs. Mishal relocated to Amman in 1990, when he and his family were forced to flee Kuwait after Arafat gave his blessings to Saddam Hussein?s invasion, thereby jeopardising the security of the 400,000 Palestinians who?d made a decent life for themselves in the emirate ? not to mention his ties to the Gulf Arabs who bankrolled the PLO. Arafat?s mistake was Hamas?s good fortune: Gulf rulers who had paid for the PLO?s operating budget now wrote their cheques to Hamas, which had denounced Saddam?s attack. Drained of funds and desperate to come in from the cold, Arafat scurried to Madrid and then to Oslo; ignoring the warnings of Palestinian leaders from the Occupied Territories, he signed a deal in September 1993 that made him Israel?s policeman, while providing no guarantee of a freeze on Israeli settlements, or the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. In no small part thanks to disappointment with Oslo ? and frustration with Arafat and the ?Tunisians? who returned to govern the PA ? Hamas became the main opposition party in Palestine, attracting support not primarily for its Islamic piety, but for its lack of corruption, and its willingness to stand up to Israel. It also developed a substantial military wing, the Qassam Brigades, which would launch a ferocious campaign of suicide attacks inside Israel in 1994, following Baruch Goldstein?s massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs mosque in Hebron. There could be no balance of power with Israel, but perhaps, Mishal and his men reasoned, there could be a balance of fear. Arafat won praise from the US and Israel as a ?partner in peace? for his brutal crackdown on Hamas. But he soon discovered that he could repress Hamas only at prohibitive cost to his own legitimacy. Working under Mousa Abu Marzook in Hamas?s political bureau, Mishal kept a low profile during the first intifada: ?A little obscurity is good. My comrades and God know what I have been doing.? But according to regional intelligence agencies, he had established an increasingly influential position inside Hamas, overseeing ?funds, weapons and military infrastructure?; some Israeli officials referred to him as Hamas?s prime minister. Agents observed that he avoided public highways in Lebanon, preferring roads used by the Syrian army, and that he travelled frequently to Singapore, Pakistan and other Muslim countries. Though he did not make an official appearance as a leader of Hamas until 1995, he was now, as head of the Palestine Apparatus and a member of the three-man military committee which directed the Qassam Brigades, Hamas?s single most powerful figure. Mishal had a stroke of luck when, brushing aside the warnings of his colleagues, Marzook travelled to the US only six months after the Clinton administration declared Hamas a ?terrorist? organisation ? and only a day after a suicide attack near Tel Aviv. He was arrested by the FBI at JFK airport and spent the next two years in prison, leaving Mishal to take over the political bureau. Marzook continued to think of himself as Hamas?s natural leader, but his visit to the US had infuriated his colleagues, and Mishal proved himself an adroit operator in the shura council. The rivalry between Mishal, a Kuwaiti Palestinian who?d never lived a day under occupation, and Marzook, a prot?g? of Yassin from a poor family in Gaza, was partly a reflection of the old tensions between Palestinians from the ?inside? and those from the diaspora. But matters of style and personality were just as important. Marzook was a gregarious, impulsive man who enjoyed an audience; Mishal was a careful, patient listener who won over his colleagues with his seriousness and with his rigorous adherence to the principles of shura. And so when Marzook returned to Jordan in 1997, he found himself out of a job. The failed assassination gave Mishal a renewed sense of purpose: ?I?ve been given a new life for a new role,? he said. Two years later, he was deported by Hussein?s heir, King Abdullah, but soon found a home in Damascus, where, like Hizbullah, Hamas has given the Syrians a card to play in their efforts to recover the Golan Heights. In return, Syria has provided him with protection from Israel, which has assassinated dozens of Hamas militants since the second intifada, including Sheikh Yassin, killed by a helicopter gunship in March 2004. After Yassin?s death Mishal became Hamas?s undisputed leader. And in November of that year, another obstacle to Mishal ? and to Hamas?s eclipse of Fatah ? vanished when Arafat died. Without Arafat, and under Abbas?s impotent, feckless leadership, Fatah was rudderless. Hamas now dominated Palestinian politics. Mishal is often portrayed as the ?hardliner in Damascus?, in implicit (and unfavourable) contrast with Hamas ?moderates? in the Occupied Territories. But McGeough, who spent many hours talking to Mishal, situates him at Hamas?s ?pragmatic centre?. He is a militant, but not a fanatic; a nationalist, not a proponent of transnational jihad. (An American analyst told McGeough: ?I?ve met him three times now and I still have not heard him say the word ?Islam?.?) It?s true that Mishal led the opposition inside the shura to participating in the 1996 parliamentary elections, arguing that to do so would be to admit the legitimacy of the Oslo Accords. But he also argued in favour of taking part in the 2006 elections, inspired by the example of Hizbullah in Lebanon, and led Hamas to a decisive victory. As McGeough points out, Hamas ran on a platform of reform, promising clean governance and transparency; it made no mention of an Islamic state in its electoral manifesto, and hardly spoke of violence, leaving Fatah to boast of its contribution to the armed struggle. During the campaign Mishal spoke to rallies from Damascus, through a mobile phone held to the microphone of a loudspeaker. Hamas?s victory was greeted with a diplomatic boycott by the powers that had urged democracy on the Palestinian people, along with efforts to ?bolster? Abbas and, ultimately, to foment civil war between Hamas and Fatah. The West responded this way to the elected government of Hamas because it refuses to renounce violence, abide by previous agreements between Israel and the PA, and recognise the state of Israel. Mishal?s view is that if Hamas were to satisfy the Quartet?s three demands, there would be little to distinguish Hamas from Fatah, which renounced violence, repudiated its claim to 78 per cent of historical Palestine and accepted Israel?s legitimacy ? and got very little in return except an interminable ?peace process?. Israel, in Mishal?s view, would never have removed the settlers from Gaza had it not been for the Qassam rockets fired at Sderot. Hamas, he insists, will continue the armed struggle until the occupation ends. Yet his movement does not use force indiscriminately, and, as many Israeli officials acknowledge, he has honoured ceasefires more faithfully than Arafat did. Mishal does not accept Israel?s ?right to exist? ? this would be tantamount, in Hamas?s eyes, to legitimising their own dispossession ? but de facto recognition is another matter, and he has on several occasions advocated a hudna of 20 to 30 years. At a summit in Mecca on 7 February 2007 he expressed Hamas?s support for continued negotiations based on a two-state deal along the 1967 border, a position that, McGeough suggests, brings him closer to Washington?s official position than Netanyahu, who advocates only a vague ?economic peace?. Until a Palestinian state is established, and there is some parallel recognition by Israel of Palestinian rights to national self-determination ? and some resolution of the refugees? plight ? Mishal is not going to recognise the Jewish state. And in Mecca he agreed only to ?respect? ? not ?abide by? ? earlier agreements with Israel. But he has also indicated that Hamas?s stated positions are far less important than its actions: ?Watch what we do, not what we say.? What this means is that Hamas is likely to continue calling for the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea, while at the same time seeking an end to the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Mishal and his associates don?t view the two-state arrangement as anything like a long-term solution to the conflict, but they are realists, and they are willing to live with it ? provided it doesn?t result in the cantonisation of Palestinian land, and provided it?s not a way of shutting them out, as Abbas and the West intend it. Hamas wants to be a part of the deal, and, as it demonstrated during the Oslo years, is in an ideal position to play the role of spoiler if it?s not. As for the 1988 charter, with its luxuriant borrowings from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion , Hamas isn?t likely to repudiate it, particularly if it comes under pressure to do so: it was precisely Western calls for repudiation that led Hamas to suspend its efforts to revise it, and to eliminate the offending passages. But Mishal and other Hamas officials have indicated on several occasions that the charter is a historical document that long ago ceased to reflect their thinking. Mishal is reported to consider it an embarrassment, and has insisted that the conflict with Israel ?is a political issue between us; it is not theological.? Although he has authorised ? and indeed praised ? the use of suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, he has also emphasised that ?we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture . . . We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us.? Unlike most of the secular nationalist factions, including Fatah, Hamas has never struck at targets outside the zone of conflict. Mishal is not a charismatic leader in the mould of Arafat, or even of Yassin. He?s a good speaker, yet he has arrived at his position not by giving speeches, but rather, McGeough suggests, by patiently fielding the views of his colleagues inside Hamas?s shura. By promoting discussion and consensus, he?s been able to steer Hamas towards an implicit acceptance of coexistence with Israel. Despite his commitment to the armed struggle, he is not a hothead, and he is far less interested in martyrdom than in lifting the blockade, securing the release of Palestinian prisoners, and achieving recognition for Hamas on the international stage. Unlike some of Hamas?s leaders, particularly those who have spent their lives under occupation, Mishal has travelled widely, and he understands the way things work in the outside world. The world, in turn, has begun to take notice of him. He may be a ?Specially Designated Global Terrorist? in the eyes of the US Treasury, but he has been receiving an increasing number of visitors from the West, as well as a handful of Jewish leaders. As the director of Hamas?s foreign policy, Mishal has forged a close alliance with Syria and Iran, the so-called resistance bloc; he has been a frequent guest in Tehran, which is reported to smuggle weapons to Gaza through Sudan and Cyprus. But he has been careful to preserve his movement?s independence, and has developed cordial relations with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and, increasingly, Turkey. ?Hamas is not an Iranian tool,? a former senior Israeli official told McGeough. ?Hamas needs Tehran and Damascus, but it?s a balance that Mishal manages well.? As Mishal points out, he wouldn?t have gone to Mecca in February 2007 or supported the Saudi peace plan ? or backed the Sunni insurgents in Iraq ? if he were simply a client of Tehran. Will the Obama administration talk to Hamas? In a recent interview with La Repubblica , Mishal said that it was just ?a matter of time?. In American think tanks close to the administration (and, one imagines, in the State Department), it?s understood that Hamas will have to be engaged sooner or later: Abbas simply does not command enough support among Palestinians to reach a deal on his own, and if Hamas is destroyed, it?s likely to be replaced not by Fatah, but by jihadi extremists. In March, a bipartisan group of senior American officials ? including Paul Volcker, an economic adviser to Obama, the former Republican senators Chuck Hagel and Nancy Kassebaum, the former World Bank president James Wolfensohn and the former UN ambassador Thomas Pickering ? urged Obama to talk to Hamas. But the power of the Israel lobby makes any direct overture risky. Legal restrictions, too, would have to be overcome: three years ago, the US Congress passed a law banning the use of funds for diplomatic contact with Hamas, and ended assistance to any Palestinian ministry connected to Hamas. Although Hamas has never attacked American interests, Obama may find it hard to authorise talks with the ?specially designated global terrorists? in its leadership. And while the administration is pursuing a thaw with Damascus, George Mitchell isn?t likely to stop by Mishal?s bunker. Just how Mitchell expects to reach a deal without talking to Hamas isn?t clear. As Mishal remarked to McGeough in a recent interview, ?Would he have succeeded in Belfast if he was ordered to ignore the IRA?? Isolating Hamas, however, remains the order of the day, and it was the unspoken subtext of the recent ?donors conference? at Sharm el-Sheikh, where leaders from the West and the Arab world came to pledge ?3.2 billion in aid to the Palestinians. Hamas was not invited, since the purpose was to bolster Abbas and the PA. And though it was Gaza, not the West Bank, that was devastated during Israel?s offensive, most of the funds will go to the PA in Ramallah. (Of the $900 million the US has pledged, $600 million has been earmarked for the PA to ?reorganise itself?.) In an implicit concession to Hamas, Hillary Clinton recently said that Washington would not oppose the formation of a unity government between Fatah and Hamas, but she added that the US ?will not deal with nor in any way fund? a Palestinian government that fails to meet the Quartet?s three conditions: a demand it hasn?t imposed on the coalition government in Lebanon, in which Hizbullah has veto power; or indeed on such pro-Western Arab governments as Saudi Arabia that have yet to make peace with Israel. Meanwhile, Israel has prevented construction materials from entering Gaza, partly because of their alleged ?dual use? in arms production ? but also as a means of pressuring Hamas to release Corporal Gilad Shalit ? and even pasta and lentils have been turned away at the crossing. None of this is going to turn Palestinians against Hamas, any more than America?s arming of Fatah or Israel?s attack on Gaza did. Hamas is part of the fabric of Palestinian politics, and neither force nor diplomatic isolation will make it go away. Its history is one of tenacity in the face of enormous odds: it has been nourished by the efforts to destroy it. No one is in a better position to appreciate this than Israel?s new prime minister who, once again, finds himself facing the martyr who would not die. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Jun 6 15:06:00 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 14:06:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Auto crisis debate: 'New thinking' stuck in old neo-liberal frame In-Reply-To: <925006895.7363321244149228913.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <807892140.7809681244322360142.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.rabble.ca/news/2009/06/auto-crisis-debate-new-thinking-stuck-old-neo-liberal-frame Rabble.ca June 3, 2009 Auto crisis debate: 'New thinking' stuck in old neo-liberal frame Before I even read Alice Klein?s two rabble.ca columns on auto collective bargaining issues I was inundated with calls from friends and colleagues to respond. Most were really angry at what they considered to be criticisms of autoworkers and the CAW that were ?beyond the pale,? coming from progressive sources. Upon reading Klein?s first article, 'How to arrive alive,' [2] first in NOW , and then on rabble.ca , I was blown away by the mixture of conservatism and naivet? -- as well as the appearance of some of the old tiresome calls for ?new thinking? that one hears so often among middle-class industrial relations types these days. Now, in the wake of the historic and strategic defeats of the CAW and its U.S. counterpart (the UAW) in recent collective agreements, I still find it quite disturbing. This article appeared just before the Chrysler bankruptcy began and included a series of suggestions about the strategy that the CAW should choose in its concession bargaining with that company and GM. The column begins with a number of conflicting points about ?offsetting gains,? taxpayers? interests (a formulation that never bodes well for leftists) and the need for new perspectives. There are muddled hints about the goals of government intervention (according to Klein it?s supposed to be support for high wages and low unemployment, but what government has worked for those goals in the past 30 years?), as well as confusing notions about the causes of the auto crisis. At the same time, she acknowledges that labour costs barely affect the cost of vehicles. Getting down to the nitty-gritty, she calls for the following program for the union to contribute to the solution of the auto crisis: ? The union should make pension concessions, because a) pension costs contribute to the insolvency of the companies; b) since millions of people on the continent are facing huge pension losses due to the market downturn so should autoworkers; c) taxpayers can?t be expected to only help those facing losses in auto; ? A future auto sector must become smaller and more competitive. In such an environment, autoworkers need to have a more ?entrepreneurial? relation with their employers. This should include things like ?earning more when profits increase and less when sales are lower?; union acceptance of shares in the companies, in lieu of ?financial obligations? owed by the companies. Even more, they should argue for ?a place at the boardroom table.? ? Job sharing, with a twist: the extra time off might stimulate autoworkers to start their own business ventures. Arguments stay fully within neo-liberal environment All of these arguments attack the problem from the point of view of private employers, with the aim of encouraging the creation of more competitive, private profit-oriented solutions. They are fully in keeping with the neo-liberal environment that has created the problems in the first place. And, most disappointingly, they all pose the problem as being the demands by workers for decent and secure jobs, good livelihoods and retirements, reduced dependence on the power of private employers and the need for collective power and confidence that strong unions create. It should come as no surprise that Alice Klein is a small business person and these views tend to reflect the perspective of many people who run small businesses -- many of whom are extremely socially enlightened -- who are crunched between larger corporations, the demands of workers and the requirements of the competitive marketplace. They, like most people in this conservative era, have great difficulty conceiving of solutions that involve alternatives to a society dominated by the logic of private capital accumulation and market competition. The arguments around pensions make reference to a real crisis, but reflect the kind of anger and envy that many people feel towards those they see as ?privileged? workers who have things that they don?t have. While the costs of defined pension programs (which guarantee a negotiated level of company-paid benefits when you retire) do affect the viability of companies like GM and Chrysler, they only do so only in a particular context. GM and Chrysler have been around for decades and have been cutting the number of workers through productivity increases and because of the decline in their market share, thus increasing the ratio of pensioners to active workers. The transplants (Honda and Toyota) have few retirees, since they only opened in the 1980s. The ability of companies to fully fund private pension plans is also dependent on the health of the marketplace and their ability to make profits -- all severely affected by the larger economic crisis. Punishing workers is no solution to pension problem The pension problem cannot be resolved by cutting the benefits to the workers who made it through 30 years of toil -- and high productivity -- on the assembly line. Nor should it penalize those active workers who are currently bearing the burden of the concessions that the auto unions in the U.S. and Canada have agreed to over the past five years. It can only be addressed by increasingly socializing the costs of retirement -- reducing the dependence of workers on the competitive success of their employers. That means dramatically increasing the amount that government pensions pay to all retirees, as well as widening the package of benefits that are paid by the state, including pharmaceuticals, vision, dental and the like. In the meantime, fully-bargained benefits, negotiated by unionized workers need to be protected by the state. The only thing that attacking the gains that autoworkers have made over the years -- in a context where their employers were rolling in profits and governments were not providing adequate public pensions -- accomplishes, is to make it all that more difficult for other workers to make gains. The longer term effect is to reduce the pension rights of all workers (and sharpen the current crisis). The other issue here is the lack of adequate state protection of negotiated pensions when employers can?t pay them. The U.S., ironically, has stronger protections. Canadian provincial governments must protect privately bargained pension plans and the Ontario protection fund needs to be funded properly, as per the Arthurs Commission recommendations. In the latest GM concessions agreement, the CAW bargained some commitments by GM to better fund their pension obligations and by the Ontario government to move toward guaranteeing a greater portion of negotiated pensions. The second point is even more disturbing: the idea of social progress for working people entails a reduction in their dependence on the immediate ups and downs of the marketplace. Asking for workers to lower their incomes when profits fall is tantamount to moving backwards over 100 years when there were almost no unions. While all wages have a longer-term relationship to the profits of employers in the private sector, unions have lessened the ability of employers to lower wages and benefits in response to changes in the marketplace through collective agreements. Why would anyone who cares about the interests of working people want to change this? Labour, Capital and conflict of interest Accepting shares in lieu of wages and benefits for the members or seats on boards of directors doesn?t make much sense, either. In general, unions that have shares in enterprises which compete in the marketplace face huge structural constraints and limitations on what they can do. They have to be competitive, bring in respectable rates of profit and be responsive to the requirements of the financial markets. How is this different from the capitalists who currently own these companies? In order to survive, they have to do what the current owners do (cutbacks, speedup, outsourcing, wage concessions), all of the things that workers have a union in order to limit or stop. That?s why they call it a system. The UAW already experimented with having a representative on the board of Chrysler -- former president, Doug Fraser -- and it didn?t provide any particular opening to fight for the workers. Quite the opposite: it reinforced a community of interests with the employers and those who finance them. The tendency to argue for worker participation in the process of seeking to increase company profits in this way only puts the union in a kind of conflict of interest: if worker investment requires higher profits, they are forced to cut costs, increase productivity and all of the things that come at the expense of workers. There is a fundamental conflict of interest between the interests of shareholders and their managers on the one hand, and workers and their unions on the other. It is rooted in the system and can?t be avoided by pious wishes and hopes. Klein?s suggestion in her second article, ?Meet the New Boss,? [3] that, ?To survive, the new owners (workers) will have to manage the company in a way that is fair to workers, shareholders, government, customers and suppliers? is an impossibility in a capitalist economic system, particular in this era of neoliberalism and hyper competition (which Klein seems to see as a positive thing). Unfortunately for Klein and the other supporters of worker ownership schemes, the solutions being negotiated at GM and Chrysler make them impossible. Union shares in the funds that will pay for retirement benefits can only be used for that purpose and their voices on the boards of directors are limited and non-voting. Even more, the UAW had hoped to sell the company shares as soon as possible and, instead, has settled in the GM agreement for non-voting preferred shares that provide dividends to help pay for the retirement benefits. Even if they could use their shares as a way of influencing company policy, they too would be limited by their responsibility to raise the value of the money in the funds that can only be used for retirement benefits. This again structures the familiar conflict of interest situation. The one positive thing that Klein ends up supporting in her articles is job sharing -- using EI funds to share reduced work time. Even in this solidaristic scheme, she hopes that workers use some of their time off the job to start their own businesses, ?getting involved with entrepreneurial spirit.? Like my dear departed parents who never tired of trying to direct me to towards opening up a business doing things like ?laundry for my activist friends who never have the time,? some small business types never learn! Herman Rosenfeld worked on the line and as an elected union representative at GM and retired as a national representative in the education department of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW). He is a sessional instructor in the Labour Studes Department at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and a writer and political activist, based in Toronto. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Jun 6 15:07:20 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 14:07:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Will Congress get our "80-20 Vision"? In-Reply-To: <1832524080.7045111244066590497.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1363131627.7809881244322440749.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> June 3, 2009 Our government is continuing to hide behind the skirts of Afghan women, using their plight to justify military actions in the region. Yet where is the leadership that will truly support the women of Afghanistan and peace? When only 5% of the $864 billion dollars spent on the War on Terror since 2001 has gone to development, how can we say we're making life better for the women whose countries are being destroyed? General Petraeus himself has suggested that a counter-insurgency doctrine should be 80% development, 20% military, yet, as the Congressional Progressive Caucus notes, the supplemental funding bill does not come close to reflecting this ratio. Just Monday , leadership of both houses have escalated what was 91 billion to almost 100 billion. Now it is full of earmarks, including eight huge C-17 cargo jets sought by the Boeing Co., that Obama had on his list of eliminations last month. We can't turn our backs for a minute. We and the women of Afghanistan and Iraq are being robbed. This is a total outrage. As negotiators work on reconciling the supplemental funding bill between the House and the Senate this week, please call your representatives at 1-800-517-5696 and tell them they have spent far too much money on violence, weapons and war; it is time to demand a 80-20 development/military funding ratio. If you haven't already, please also sign our petition asking for real leadership for the women of Afghanistan here . To learn more about what we can do to help the women of Afghanistan, be sure to listen to See Jane Do's interview with Sweeta Noori , director of Women for Women in Afghanistan, and see other interviews from our Afghan Women Speak Out interview project on PINKTank! Thank you for standing in solidarity with our Afghan sisters and standing up against outrageous war funding. Peace, Allison, Audrey, Blaine, Dana, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Janna, Janet, Jean, Jodie, Liz, Lori, Lydia, Medea, Nancy, Pam, Paris, and Rae Call your representatives at 1-800-517-5696 and ask them to only approve a supplemental with an 80-20 development/ military funding ratio Sign our petition to ask for real leadership for the women of Afghanistan GET OUR TEXT MESSAGES! SUSTAIN PEACE! unsubscribe from this list From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Jun 6 15:06:30 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 14:06:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Why Socialism? Albert Einstein In-Reply-To: <621530240.7727901244245097087.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <2042323722.7809781244322390092.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://monthlyreview.org/598einstein.php Monthly Review May 2009 Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein This essay was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949). Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is. Let us first consider the question from the point of view of scientific knowledge. It might appear that there are no essential methodological differences between astronomy and economics: scientists in both fields attempt to discover laws of general acceptability for a circumscribed group of phenomena in order to make the interconnection of these phenomena as clearly understandable as possible. But in reality such methodological differences do exist. The discovery of general laws in the field of economics is made difficult by the circumstance that observed economic phenomena are often affected by many factors which are very hard to evaluate separately. In addition, the experience which has accumulated since the beginning of the so-called civilized period of human history has?as is well known?been largely influenced and limited by causes which are by no means exclusively economic in nature. For example, most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior. But historic tradition is, so to speak, of yesterday; nowhere have we really overcome what Thorstein Veblen called "the predatory phase" of human development. The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future. Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end. Science, however, cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends. But the ends themselves are conceived by personalities with lofty ethical ideals and?if these ends are not stillborn, but vital and vigorous?are adopted and carried forward by those many human beings who, half unconsciously, determine the slow evolution of society. For these reasons, we should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on questions affecting the organization of society. Innumerable voices have been asserting for some time now that human society is passing through a crisis, that its stability has been gravely shattered. It is characteristic of such a situation that individuals feel indifferent or even hostile toward the group, small or large, to which they belong. In order to illustrate my meaning, let me record here a personal experience. I recently discussed with an intelligent and well-disposed man the threat of another war, which in my opinion would seriously endanger the existence of mankind, and I remarked that only a supra-national organization would offer protection from that danger. Thereupon my visitor, very calmly and coolly, said to me: "Why are you so deeply opposed to the disappearance of the human race?" I am sure that as little as a century ago no one would have so lightly made a statement of this kind. It is the statement of a man who has striven in vain to attain an equilibrium within himself and has more or less lost hope of succeeding. It is the expression of a painful solitude and isolation from which so many people are suffering in these days. What is the cause? Is there a way out? It is easy to raise such questions, but difficult to answer them with any degree of assurance. I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas. Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept "society" means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society?in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence?that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is "society" which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word ?society.? It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished?just as in the case of ants and bees. However, while the whole life process of ants and bees is fixed down to the smallest detail by rigid, hereditary instincts, the social pattern and interrelationships of human beings are very variable and susceptible to change. Memory, the capacity to make new combinations, the gift of oral communication have made possible developments among human being which are not dictated by biological necessities. Such developments manifest themselves in traditions, institutions, and organizations; in literature; in scientific and engineering accomplishments; in works of art. This explains how it happens that, in a certain sense, man can influence his life through his own conduct, and that in this process conscious thinking and wanting can play a part. Man acquires at birth, through heredity, a biological constitution which we must consider fixed and unalterable, including the natural urges which are characteristic of the human species. In addition, during his lifetime, he acquires a cultural constitution which he adopts from society through communication and through many other types of influences. It is this cultural constitution which, with the passage of time, is subject to change and which determines to a very large extent the relationship between the individual and society. Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate. If we ask ourselves how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible, we should constantly be conscious of the fact that there are certain conditions which we are unable to modify. As mentioned before, the biological nature of man is, for all practical purposes, not subject to change. Furthermore, technological and demographic developments of the last few centuries have created conditions which are here to stay. In relatively densely settled populations with the goods which are indispensable to their continued existence, an extreme division of labor and a highly-centralized productive apparatus are absolutely necessary. The time?which, looking back, seems so idyllic?is gone forever when individuals or relatively small groups could be completely self-sufficient. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that mankind constitutes even now a planetary community of production and consumption. I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society. The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor?not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production?that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods?may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals. For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call ?workers? all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production?although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is ?free,? what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists' requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product. Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights. The situation prevailing in an economy based on the private ownership of capital is thus characterized by two main principles: first, means of production (capital) are privately owned and the owners dispose of them as they see fit; second, the labor contract is free. Of course, there is no such thing as a pure capitalist society in this sense. In particular, it should be noted that the workers, through long and bitter political struggles, have succeeded in securing a somewhat improved form of the ?free labor contract? for certain categories of workers. But taken as a whole, the present day economy does not differ much from ?pure? capitalism. Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an ?army of unemployed? almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers' goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before. This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society. Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured? Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Jun 6 15:11:24 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 14:11:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Trying Harder in Af-Pak In-Reply-To: <1499309954.7810171244322651529.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1892617324.7810281244322684275.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.truthout.org/060109R t r u t h o u t June 1, 2009 Trying Harder in Pakistan and Afghanistan This week in Cairo Obama will undoubtedly embody our good intentions and fundamental decency as Americans. But, for all our self-deluding innocence and naivete, we will remain Graham Greene's leper, and the harder we try in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the more our actions sound as a warning bell and an anti-American recruiting call to Muslims all over the world. by Steve Weissman "Master, how long will it take for me to reach enlightenment?" the eager student asked. "Perhaps ten years," the teacher answered. "But what if I try extra hard?" the student asked. "How long will it take then?" The teacher thought for a moment and smiled. "Then," he said, "it will take twenty years." Anyone who has studied Eastern philosophy or martial arts will have heard the story in one form or another, but it has special application to President Barack Obama's escalating intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The harder he tries to win a military confrontation in the two countries or to engage in a major effort to reform them, the longer and deeper he will find himself sucked into unwinnable wars and inescapable quagmires. The reason should be obvious. The presence of American troops, aircraft and pilotless drones - or too much American money and too many American aid workers - will turn increasing numbers of Afghans, Pakistanis and their fellow Muslims from around the world against us and against those who appear to do our bidding. Nationalistic and religious reaction is the one unchanging lesson of foreign intervention, especially in countries that have a history of having fought against the British, French or other colonial powers. Yet, the Pentagon never learned the lesson from Vietnam and refuses to learn it from Iraq, where top generals still speak of staying at least another ten years. Nor have Obama's White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress gotten the message, believing they can soften any anti-American reaction by adding several billions of dollars more in non-military foreign aid. In other words, we will try harder, work smarter and do more. It's a can-do American response, neatly repackaged under brand Obama, as if his apparent decency and good intentions will be enough to change the way average Afghans and Pakistanis - and the Pakistani officer corps - will respond to what looks like unending foreign intervention. Even those who should know better are swallowing the bait. Only three senators - Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), Bernie Sanders (Independent-Vermont) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) - voted against the supplemental appropriations to escalate American military intervention in Afghanistan. Leaders of the formerly antiwar MoveOn also gave their blessing to Obama's wars, while well-intentioned feminists and defenders of human rights are urging the State Department to use American intervention as a wonderful opportunity to remake foreign cultures in America's image, as if anyone knows a good way to do that. Almost no one in the narrow debate talks of Washington's long-standing struggle to dominate the oil and gas resources of Central Asia and the pipelines to bring them to market. Everyone talks of the very real need to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, without ever raising similar and inter-related concerns about Indian and Israeli nukes. And early calls for an exit strategy from either Afghanistan or Pakistan have been replaced by plans to build a monumental new American embassy in Islamabad. Our folly knows no limits. We're in for the long haul, and those of us who have seen the movie too many times before can only try to explain the drama as it develops. For starters, let me suggest a first reading or rereading of Graham Greene's "The Quiet American," in which he describes the similar overlay of innocence and naivete that led up to America's massive intervention in Southeast Asia. One of his key characters is a truly idealistic CIA man who blows up women and children, all for a good cause. "Innocence," warned Greene, "is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm." Think about those words as you hear President Obama's eagerly awaited speech this week in Cairo. He will undoubtedly embody our good intentions and fundamental decency as Americans. But, for all our self-deluding innocence and naivete, we will remain Graham Greene's leper, and the harder we try in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the more our actions will sound as a warning bell and an anti-American recruiting call to Muslims all over the world. The Soviets learned that lesson in Afghanistan and the Chinese seem to be avoiding similar pitfalls in most of their global interventions. But we are Americans, and we try harder. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Jun 6 15:24:49 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 14:24:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] A Bush in sheep's clothing Message-ID: <972133754.7811471244323489466.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/04/barack-obama-middleeast The Guardian 4 June 2009 A Bush in sheep's clothing Obama's speech shows little real change. In most regards his analysis maintains flawed American policies Ali Abunimah Once you strip away the mujamalat ? the courtesies exchanged between guest and host ? the substance of President Obama's speech in Cairo indicates there is likely to be little real change in US policy. It is not necessary to divine Obama's intentions ? he may be utterly sincere and I believe he is. It is his analysis and prescriptions that in most regards maintain flawed American policies intact. Though he pledged to "speak the truth as best I can", there was much the president left out. He spoke of tension between "America and Islam" ? the former a concrete specific place, the latter a vague construct subsuming peoples, practices, histories and countries more varied than similar. Labelling America's "other" as a nebulous and all-encompassing "Islam" (even while professing rapprochement and respect) is a way to avoid acknowledging what does in fact unite and mobilise people across many Muslim-majority countries: overwhelming popular opposition to increasingly intrusive and violent American military, political and economic interventions in many of those countries. This opposition ? and the resistance it generates ? has now become for supporters of those interventions, synonymous with "Islam". It was disappointing that Obama recycled his predecessor's notion that "violent extremism" exists in a vacuum, unrelated to America's (and its proxies') exponentially greater use of violence before and after September 11, 2001. He dwelled on the "enormous trauma" done to the US when almost 3,000 people were killed that day, but spoke not one word about the hundreds of thousands of orphans and widows left in Iraq ? those whom Muntazer al-Zaidi's flying shoe forced Americans to remember only for a few seconds last year. He ignored the dozens of civilians who die each week in the "necessary" war in Afghanistan, or the millions of refugees fleeing the US-invoked escalation in Pakistan. As President George Bush often did, Obama affirmed that it is only a violent minority that besmirches the name of a vast and "peaceful" Muslim majority. But he seemed once again to implicate all Muslims as suspect when he warned, "The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer." Nowhere were these blindspots more apparent than his statements about Palestine/Israel. He gave his audience a detailed lesson on the Holocaust and explicitly used it as a justification for the creation of Israel. "It is also undeniable," the president said, "that the Palestinian people ? Muslims and Christians ? have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation." Suffered in pursuit of a homeland? The pain of dislocation? They already had a homeland. They suffered from being ethnically cleansed and dispossessed of it and prevented from returning on the grounds that they are from the wrong ethno-national group. Why is that still so hard to say? He lectured Palestinians that "resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed". He warned them that "It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered." Fair enough, but did Obama really imagine that such words would impress an Arab public that watched in horror as Israel slaughtered 1,400 people in Gaza last winter, including hundreds of sleeping, fleeing or terrified children, with American-supplied weapons? Did he think his listeners would not remember that the number of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians targeted and killed by Israel has always far exceeded by orders of magnitude the number of Israelis killed by Arabs precisely because of the American arms he has pledged to continue giving Israel with no accountability? Amnesty International recently confirmed what Palestinians long knew: Israel broke the negotiated ceasefire when it attacked Gaza last November 4, prompting retaliatory rockets that killed no Israelis until after Israel launched its much bigger attack on Gaza. That he continues to remain silent about what happened in Gaza, and refuses to hold Israel accountable demonstrates anything but a commitment to full truth-telling. Some people are prepared to give Obama a pass for all this because he is at last talking tough on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. In Cairo, he said: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop." These carefully chosen words focus only on continued construction, not on the existence of the settlements themselves; they are entirely compatible with the peace process industry consensus that existing settlements will remain where they are for ever. This raises the question of where Obama thinks he is going. He summarised Palestinians' "legitimate aspirations" as being the establishment of a "state". This has become a convenient slogan to that is supposed to replace for Palestinians their pursuit of rights and justice that the proposed state actually denies. Obama is already on record opposing Palestinian refugees' right to return home, and has never supported the right of Palestinian citizens of Israel to live free from racist and religious incitement, persecution and practices fanned by Israel's highest office holders and written into its laws. He may have more determination than his predecessor but he remains committed to an unworkable two-state "vision" aimed not at restoring Palestinian rights, but preserving Israel as an enclave of Israeli Jewish privilege. It is a dead end. There was one sentence in his speech I cheered for and which he should heed: "Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail." ? Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to end the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Editor's note, 5 June 2009: This article originally included a sentence saying "the last suicide attack targeting civilians by a Palestinian occurred in 2004". This was incorrect and Ali Abunimah posted a clarification here in the discussion thread. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Jun 6 19:19:53 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:19:53 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Anti-Empire Report Message-ID: <4A2B15B9.4040300@ashisuto.co.jp> by William Blum www.killinghope.org (June 05 2009) The great, international, demonic, truly frightening Iranian threat The United States is "facing a nuclear threat in Iran" -- article in Chicago Tribune and other major newspapers, May 26 "the growing missile threat from North Korea and Iran" -- article in the Washington Post and other major newspapers, May 26 "Iran's threat transcends religion. Regardless of sectarian bent, Muslim communities need to oppose the attempts by Iran ... to extend Shia extremism and influence throughout the world". - op-ed article in Boston Globe, May 27 "A Festering Evil. Doing nothing is not an option in handling the threat from Iran" -- headline in Investor's Business Daily, May 27 2009 This is a very small sample from American newspapers covering but two days. "Fifty-one percent of Israelis support an immediate Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites" -- BBC, May 24 After taking office, on Holocaust Memorial Day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "We will not allow Holocaust-deniers [Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] to carry out another holocaust". -- Haaretz (Israel), May 14 2009 Like clinical paranoia, "the threat from Iran" is impervious to correction by rational argument. Two new novels have just appeared, from major American publishers, thrillers based on Iran having a nuclear weapon and the dangers one can imagine that that portends - Banquo's Ghosts (2009) by Rich Lowry & Keith Korman, and The Increment (2009) by David Ignatius. Bomb, bomb, bomb. Let's bomb Iran, declares a CIA official in the latter book. The other book derides the very idea of "dialogue" with Iran while implicitly viewing torture as acceptable. {1} On May 12, in New York City, a debate was held on the proposition that "Diplomacy With Iran Is Going Nowhere" (English translation: "Should we bomb Iran?"). Arguing in the affirmative, were Liz Cheney, former State Department official (and daughter of a certain unindicted war criminal) and Dan Senor, formerly the top spokesman for Washington's Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. Their "opponents" were R Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state, and Kenneth Pollack, former National Security Council official and CIA analyst and author of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (2002), a book that, unsurprisingly, did not have too long a shelf life. {2} This is what "debate" on US foreign policy looks like in America in the first decade of the 21st century AD - four quintessential establishment figures. If such a "debate" had been held in the Soviet Union during the Cold War ("Detente With The United States Is Going Nowhere"), the American mainstream media would unanimously have had a jolly time making fun of it. The sponsor of the New York debate was the conservative Rosenkranz Foundation, but if a liberal (as opposed to a progressive or radical leftist) organization had been the sponsor, while there probably would have been a bit more of an ideological gap between the chosen pairs of speakers, it's unlikely that any of the present-day myths concerning Iran would have been seriously challenged by either side. These myths include the following, all of which I've dealt with before in this report but inasmuch as they are repeated on a regular basis in the media and by administration representatives, I think that readers need to be reminded of the counter arguments. * Iran has no right to nuclear weapons: Yet, there is no international law that says that the US, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not. Iran has every reason to feel threatened. In any event, the US intelligence community's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of December 2007, "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities", makes a point of saying in bold type and italics: "This NIE does not assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons". The report goes on to state: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program". * Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier: I have yet to read of Ahmadinejad saying simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally that he thinks that what we know as the Holocaust never happened. He has instead commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks. And he has questioned the figure of six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany, as have many other people of all political stripes. * Ahmadinejad has called for violence against Israel: His 2005 remark re "wiping Israel off the map", besides being a very questionable translation, has been seriously misinterpreted, as evidenced by the fact that the following year he declared: "The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom". {3} Obviously, he was not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place peacefully. * Iran has no right to provide arms to Hamas and Hezbollah: However, the United States, we are assured, has every right to do the same for Israel and Egypt. * The fact that Obama says he's willing to "talk" to some of the "enemies" like Iran more than the Bush administration did sounds good: But one doesn't have to be too cynical to believe that it will not amount to more than a public relations gimmick. It's only change of policy that counts. Why doesn't Obama just state that he would not attack Iran unless Iran first attacked the US or Israel or anyone else? Besides, the Bush administration met with Iran on several occasions. The following should also be kept in mind: The Washington Post (March 05 2009) reported: "A senior Israeli official in Washington" has asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation". This was the very last sentence in the article and, according to an extensive Nexis search, did not appear in any other English-language media in the world. In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion "Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel". She "also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears". This appeared in Haaretz.com (October 25 2007, print edition October 26), but not in any US media or in any other English-language world media except the BBC citing the Iranian Mehr English-language news agency (October 27). Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Changeman! In January 2006 I was invited to attend a book fair in Cuba, where one of my books, newly translated into Spanish, was being presented. All my expenses were to be paid by the Cuban government and I was very much looking forward to the visit. Only one problem - the government of the United States would not give me permission to go. My application to travel to Cuba had also been rejected in 1998 by the Clinton administration. (On that occasion I went anyhow and was extremely lucky to avoid being caught by the American Travel Police on the way back and being fined thousands of dollars.) I mention this because Obama supporters would have us believe - as they themselves believe - that their Changeman has been busy making lots of important changes, Cuba being only one example. But I still don't have the legal right to travel to Cuba. The only real change made by the Obama administration in regard to Cuba is that Cuban-Americans with family on the island can travel there and send remittances without restrictions. The April 13 White House announcement listed several other provisions concerning telecommunications companies, but what this will actually mean in practice, if anything, is unknown, particularly as it affects Cuba's access to the Internet. American anti-Castroites have long blamed Cuban's deficient Internet access on the proverbial "communist suppression", when the technical availability and prohibitive cost were to a large extent in the hands of American corporations. Microsoft, for example, bars Cuba from using its Messenger instant messaging service. {4} And Google has long blocked Cuban access to many of its features. {5} Venezuela and Cuba have been working on an underwater cable system that they hope will make them less reliant on the gringos. The multifarious US economic embargo, which causes unending hardship and expense for the Cuban people, remains in place. Here is Changeman in a recent press conference: Reporter: Thank you, Mr President. You've heard from a lot of Latin America leaders here who want the US to lift the embargo against Cuba. You've said that you think it's an important leverage to not lift it. But in 2004, you did support lifting the embargo. You said, it's failed to provide the source of raising standards of living, it's squeezed the innocent, and it's time for us to acknowledge that this particular policy has failed. I'm wondering, what made you change your mind about the embargo? The President: Well, 2004, that seems just eons ago. What was I doing in 2004? Reporter: Running for Senate. The President: Is it while - I was running for Senate. There you go. {6} Yes, there you go; you shouldn't confuse campaign rhetoric with the real world and the real Changeman. The case of the Cuban Five is another chance for Changeman to come to the rescue. This outrageous perversion of justice whereby Cubans were sent to the United States to try to learn of further terrorist attacks in Cuba planned by anti-Castroites in Florida and were themselves arrested by the FBI on information partly supplied to the US by the Cuban government as their contribution to the War On Terrorism. {7} The Cuban Five have been in US prisons for more than ten years. Around June 15 the Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on whether or not they will hear the appeal of the Five. The Clinton administration arrested them. The Bush administration continued the awful, mindless, crimeless persecution for eight more years. But now comes the Changeman administration. Hooray! Oh, in late May, the Changeman administration filed a brief urging the Court to deny the Five a hearing, and on June 2, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an Organization of American States meeting: "I want to emphasize the United States under President Obama is taking a completely new approach to our policy toward Cuba". {8} Another opportunity for Changeman to come to the rescue also involves Cuba - closing the Guantanamo prison. But our hero is once again displaying a woeful lack of political courage and imagination. If there's good evidence that certain detainees are a danger to anyone, then try them in US civilian courts with full rights, a decent defense team, and excluding secret evidence and coerced confessions. If they're found guilty - and with an American jury sitting in judgment of "terrorists", this, in almost all cases, would be the verdict - then imprison them in one of America's maximum security prisons, which already houses about 355 men labeled as "terrorists". {9} The new ones will not be any more of a danger in prison than the ones already there. However, if they're found innocent, then declare them free men. It would be much easier then to find a country to accept them, including the United States. Until now, the world has been told repeatedly by Washington that these men are "the worst of the worst". Small wonder that no country or community wants them near. But if they've been tried and acquitted, this situation should change markedly. So Mr Obama, we're waiting for you to step into a phone booth. It's part of America's ideology to pretend that it doesn't have any ideology. Oh, a woman nominated to be a Supreme Court justice. A woman whose parents are from Puerto Rico. A Latina! A Latina Supreme Court justice! Oh, hooray for America! Who cares? Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court justice. He's black. He's as hopelessly reactionary as they come. No one should give a damn that Sonia Sotomayor is a woman with a Latin American background. All that counts is her politics. Her ideology. Her positions on important social and political issues. Yes, I know, we're talking about the Law, the Majesty of the Law, judges who are scholars, impartial scholars, who study the fine points and the history of a law, experts on the Constitution of the United States, not swayed by today's partisan squabbles but take the long view, looking at precedent, considering what precedent may be set for the future. Don't believe it. That may be true in the infrequent Supreme Court case where no ideological question at all is raised. Otherwise the judges are all biased human beings, appointed by a biased president, confirmed by biased members of the Senate. Patrick Martin recently observed on the World Socialist Web Site: "For the past twelve years ... under two Democratic presidents and one Republican, the post of US Secretary of State has been occupied by, in succession, a white woman, a black man, a black woman, and a white woman". {10} And they all loved the empire. When the empire called for it, they bombed, invaded, and killed; they overthrew, occupied, tortured, and lied; and swore allegiance to Israel and the corporations. And now we have a black president. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, or Stokely Carmichael he's not. His policies and his appointments have all fallen in that area that runs from ever so slightly to the left of center to clear conservative and imperialist on the right. He's more loath to being identified as, or collaborating with, progressives than with right-wingers. Team Obama sees the left as an eccentric old aunt who keeps showing up at family functions, making everyone uncomfortable and wishing she'd just go away. America, and the world, have to grow up. Forget color. Forget ethnicity. Forget gender. Forget sexual orientation. Forget even the class the person comes from. Look at the class they serve. And understand that the person wouldn't be in the position they are, or be nominated for the position, if there was any serious question about their loyalty to the capitalist ethic or American world domination. It also matters not whether the president is comically inarticulate or whether he speaks in complete grammatical sentences. Keep your eye on the policies. Obama To the numerous fans of Barack Obama, on the left, in the middle, on the right, and to the apolitical Obamaniacs, my advice is to read Being There (1971) by Jerzy Kosinski, or see the film version (1979) of the same name starring Peter Sellers. Also read The Emperor's New Clothes (1837) by Hans Christian Andersen. "Men go mad in herds, but only come to their senses one by one". -- Charles Mackay, 19th century Scottish journalist Notes 1. Washington Post (May 26 2009) book review 2. Washington Post (May 15 2009) 3. Associated Press (December 12 2006) 4. Associated Press (June 02 2009) 5. Does Google Censor Cuba? 6. White House Press Office (April 19 2009) 7. Cuban Political Prisoners ... in the United States 8. Washington Post (June 03 2009) 9. "There Are Already 355 Terrorists in American Prisons", Slate Magazine (May 29 2009) 10. "The fundamental social division is class, not race or gender", World Socialist Web Site (May 28 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://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer70.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 Jun 7 05:11:43 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:11:43 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt" (4) Message-ID: <4A2BA06F.70405@ashisuto.co.jp> Part 4 by Stephen Lendman sjlendman.blogspot.com (May 13 2009) This is the fourth in a series of articles on Ellen Brown's superb 2007 book titled Web of Debt, now updated in a December 2008 third edition. It tells "the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free". This article focuses on America's "web of debt" entrapment. The Debt Spider Captures America - American Workers Consigned to Debt Serfdom America has been trapped for over two centuries, with today's debt level way exceeding developing nations. Like bankrupt people staying "afloat by making the minimum payment(s) on (their) credit card(s), the government (avoids) bankruptcy by paying just the interest on its monster debt" - now double in size since Brown's first edition and onerous enough for Controller of the Currency David Walker to warn earlier of its unaffordability by this year. If America can't service the amount, it's officially bankrupt and the economy will collapse. If it happens, IMF austerity will follow and turn America into Guatemala. Other vulnerable economies as well - permanent debt bondage and worker serfdom. Catherine Austin Fitts was a former high-level Wall Street and government insider. She points to a "financial coup d'etat" conspiracy between the two to hollow out America, centralize power and knowledge, shift wealth to the top, destroy communities and local infrastructure, create new wealth by rebuilding them, and leave human wreckage in its wake. She also calls today's crisis "a criminal leveraged buyout of America (meaning) buying (the) country for cheap with its own money and then jacking up the rents and fees to steal the rest". She calls it the "American Tapeworm" model: It's "to simply finance the federal deficit through warfare, currency exports, Treasury and federal credit borrowing and cutbacks in domestic 'discretionary' spending ... This will then place local municipalities and local leadership in a highly vulnerable position - one that will allow them to be persuaded with bogus but high-minded sounding arguments to further cut resources. Then to 'preserve bond ratings and the rights of creditors', our leaders can be persuaded to sell our water, national resources and infrastructure assets at significant discounts of their true value to global investors" - masquerading as a plan to "save America by recapitalizing it on a sound financial footing". In fact, it's to loot the country by shifting wealth offshore and to the top. Also, to destroy the country's middle class, consign US workers to serfdom, then meet expected civil disobedience with military force, followed by mass internment in over 800 FEMA detention camps in every state. Today, the rich are getting richer while millions of Americans struggle daily to get by and live perilously from paycheck to paycheck, a mere one away from insolvent disaster. Given where we're heading, Warren Buffett warns that America is changing from an "ownership society" to a "sharecroppers' " one, no different than feudal serfdom. Economist Paul Krugman calls it "debt peonage", much like the post-Civil War South that forced debtors to work for their creditors. Make no mistake, it's a corporate America scheme for a plentiful reserve army of labor no better off than in developing countries - at low wages, no benefits, weak unions if any, and government engineering the whole scheme. Even personal bankruptcy protection eroded under the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection of 2005 - benefitting lenders at the expense of borrowers by keeping them chained to their debts. It requires many more people "to file under Chapter 13, which does not eliminate debts but mandates that they be repaid under a court-ordered payment schedule over a three to five year period". Homes, in some cases, may be seized and even owe a "deficiency, or balance due" if its sales price doesn't cover it. This Act "eroded the protection the government once provided against (various) unexpected catastrophes (like job loss and high medical expenses) ensuring that working people (henceforth) are kept on a treadmill of personal debt". Even worse are loopholes in the law letting "very wealthy people and corporations ... go bankrupt ... and shield(ing) their assets from creditors ..". This bill was written at the behest of credit card companies that entrap consumers in debt, charge usurious interest, and demand repayment no matter what besets them. In one respect, debt bondage is worse than slavery. As property, slaves had to be cared for. Debt slaves have to fend for themselves and pay tribute (interest) to their captors. The Illusion of Home Ownership In 2004, household home ownership rates were "touted" to be nearly 69%. In fact, only forty percent of homes are debt-free, but that percentage fell given the amount of refinancing in recent years. As a result, "most mortgages on single-family properties today are less than four years old" meaning they're many years away from free and clear ownership. "The touted increase in home ownership actually means an increase in debt (and) Households today owe more relative to their disposable income than ever before", although in recent months they've been repaying it and saving more. Earlier, and still now, low "teaser rates" entrapped households in onerous debt, fueling the housing bubble as another Federal Reserve/lender ploy to pump "accounting-entry money into the economy", set it up for trouble, then let financial predators exploit it for profit. The same strategies for Third World countries are playing out in America with too few people the wiser. The 19th century "Homestead Laws that gave settlers their own plot of land (cost and debt free) have been largely eroded by 150 years of the 'business cycle', in which bankers have periodically raised interest rates and called in loans, creating successive waves of defaults and foreclosures" - worst of all for subprime and other risky mortgage holders defaulting in record numbers with millions still ahead in what's playing out as the nation's worst ever housing crisis showing no signs of ending. The Perfect Financial Storm It looms in the form of inflation and deflation given the enormity of newly created money at the same time borrowers can't repay loans that then default. When that happens, "the money supply contracts and deflation and depression result". When the housing market corrected between 1989 and 1991, "median home prices dropped by seventeen percent, and 3.6 million mortgages" defaulted. The equivalent 2005 decline "would have produced twenty million defaults, because the average equity-to-debt ratio ... had dropped dramatically" - from 37% in 1990 to fourteen percent in 2005, a record low as a result of equity extracted refinancings. "What would twenty million defaults do to the money supply?" Two trillion dollars would evaporate or about one-fifth of M3. The fallout would cause huge stock and home value declines, income taxes needing to be tripled, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits halved, and pensions and comfortable retirements gone for the vast majority of workers. And that's assuming a modest housing price decline when it's already far more severe and continuing, giving pause to the virtually certain calamity ahead and devastation for the millions affected. Policy changes in 1979 to 1981 laid the groundwork for today's crisis by "flood(ing) the housing market with even more new money", and much more. They let Fannie and Freddie speculate in derivatives and mortgage-backed securities and by so doing assume enormous risk. In June 2002, writer Richard Freeman warned of the impending dangers in an article titled: "Fannie and Freddie Were Lenders - US Real Estate Bubble Nears Its End". He cited the largest housing bubble in history made all the greater by Fannie and Freddie manipulation and stated: "... what started out as a simple home mortgage has been transmogrified into something one would expect to find at a Las Vegas gambling casino. Yet the housing bubble now depends on (highly speculative derivatives as new) sources of funds", made all the riskier through leverage. In 2003, Freddie was caught cooking its books to make its financial health look sound. In 2004, Fannie did the same thing. Meanwhile, housing peaked in 2006, then steadily imploded, bringing the economy down with it. Derivatives in the Eye of the Cyclone In November 2006, financial expert and investor safety advocate Martin Weiss called the derivatives crisis: "a global Vesuvius that could erupt at almost any time, instantly throwing the world's financial markets into turmoil ... bankrupting major banks ... sinking big-name insurance companies ... scrambling the investments of hedge funds (and) overturning the portfolios of millions of average investors". Gary Novak's web site explains the derivatives crisis as follows: the banking system gridlocked because "pretended assets are fake and fake assets" consumed real ones. Deregulation, beginning in the 1980s, caused the problem. Once eliminated, "funny money became the order of the day (in the form) of very complex vehicles (called) derivatives, which were often made intentionally obscure and confusing". Even financial experts don't understand them, and that was the whole idea - to sell junk to the unsuspecting, profit hugely as a result, and let buyers handle the problems. It was a Ponzi scheme disappearing money "down the derivatives hole". Holders are now stuck with "pretend" values. They can't sell and no one will buy. A global liquidity shortage resulted. "The very thing derivatives were designed to create - market liquidity - has been frozen to immobility in a gridlocked game". Ironically, derivatives are sold as insurance "against something catastrophic going wrong". The solution is now the problem writ large. Something gone wrong makes counterparties (on the other side of the bet) "liable to fold their cards", take losses, "and drop out of the game". In May 2005, early signs of a crisis emerged after GM and Ford debt was downgraded to junk. Dire warnings followed of "a derivatives crisis 'orders of magnitude' beyond LTCM" in 1998. To head it off, the Fed and other central banks covertly flooded the market with liquidity by no longer reporting M3 - "the main staple of money supply management and transparent disclosure for the last half-century, the figure on which the world has relied in determining the soundness of the dollar". Even worse is that the government isn't doing it interest and inflation-free. The private Federal Reserve and banks are creating a massive amount of government debt, debasing the currency, and risking a future hyperinflation even though none is around today. When the Fed buys government bonds with newly issued money, they stay in circulation, "become the basis for generating many times their value in new loans; and the result is highly inflationary". Catherine Austin Fitts describes an Orwellian (pump and dump) scheme letting "the powers that be steal money by manipulation (then) keep this thing going, but in a way that leads to a highly totalitarian government and economy - corporate feudalism" with workers as serfs. Another observer said: "The only way government can function and maintain control in an economically collapsed state is through a military dictatorship", where it looks like we're heading with police state laws enacted and hundreds of concentration camps nationwide to handle expected civil disobedience disruptions once people realized they've been had. Financial Market Rigging The notion that markets move randomly and reflect investors' sentiment is rubbish. There's a "mechanism at work, like the Wizard of Oz behind a curtain, pulling on strings and pushing buttons". Indeed there is with names. In 1989, Reagan's EO 12631 created the Working Group on Financial Markets (WGFM) in response to the 1987 market crash. It's more commonly known as the Plunge Protection Team (PPT), including the president, Treasury secretary, Fed chairman, SEC chairman, and Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chairman. Its purpose: to enhance "the integrity, efficiency, orderliness, and competitiveness of our Nation's financial markets and (maintain) investor confidence". The plain truth is that the PPT rigs market performance up or down at Wall Street's discretion because insiders profit both ways. Money used to manipulate markets is "Monopoly money, funds created from nothing and given for nothing" just to move markets as insiders wish. In a June 2006 article titled "Plunge Protection or Enormous Hidden Tax Revenues", Chuck Austin wrote bluntly stating: "... Today the markets are, without a doubt, manipulated on a daily basis by the PPT. Government controlled 'front companies' such as Goldman Sachs, J P Morgan and many others collect incredible revenues through market manipulation. Much of this money is probably returned to government coffers, however, enormous sums ... are undoubtedly skimmed off by participating companies and individuals." They're no different from Mafia crime families but far larger and more profitable. Further, these banks are global crimes syndicates writ large, and, unlike the Mafia, have limitless Fed-supplied funds, free from accountability, investigation, and prosecution. "The PPT not only cheats investors out of trillions of dollars, it also eliminates competition that refuses to be 'bought' through mergers. Very soon now, only global companies and corporations owned and controlled by the NWO (New World Order) elite will exist." Wall Street giants sit atop that pyramid. Along with the PPT, the "Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) exists - "authorized by Congress to keep sharp swings in the dollar's exchange rate from 'upsetting' financial markets". In a word, like the PPT, it operates by rigging markets for insiders, the usual suspects being major Wall Street firms - getting inside information on how to invest or the equivalent of tomorrow's Wall Street Journal today. Another organization exists for the same purpose - the so-called Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group (CRMPG), established in 1999 to handle the LTCM crisis and protect against future ones. According to one account, it was "set up to bail out its members from financial difficulty by combining forces to manipulate markets" with US government approval. One of its devices is for the nation's giant banks to collude in large-scale program trading, amounting to over half of all daily New York Stock Exchange volume and on some days much more. Knowing which way to bet puts them at odds with smaller firms and ordinary investors, vulnerable to losing out by a scam designed to defraud them - supported, however, by the full faith, credit, and muscle of the government. But is an eventual day of reckoning coming? Hans Schicht believes so and says: "In 2003, master spider David Rockefeller was 88 years old, so today", he'll be 94 in June. "(W)herever we look, his central command is seen to be fading. Neither is there a capable successor in sight to take over the reigns ... Corruption is rife ... Rivalry is breaking up the empire." "What has been good for Rockefeller, has been a curse for the United States. Its citizens, government and country indebted to the hilt, enslaved to his banks ... The country's industrial force lost to overseas in consequence of strong dollar policies (pursued for bankers not the country ... )" With Rockefeller leaving the scene, sixty years of dollar imperialism (is ending) ... The day of financial reckoning is not far off any longer ... With Rockefeller's strong hand losing its grip and the old established order fading, the world has entered a most dangerous transition period, where anything could (and may) happen". Consider also the possibility that the "spider" moved to London where a "navy of pirate hedge funds ... rule the world out of Cayman Islands" - an "epicenter for globalization and financial warfare" run by "Anglo-Dutch oligarchy" chosen officials allied with major global banks and shadow financial system players. But even best laid plans at times fail, given how vulnerable even major banks are from their derivatives bets. As gold expert Adrian Douglas observed: The system is so corrupted that if huge bets go wrong, the giants "have no other choice (than) to manipulate the price of underlying asset prices to prevent financial ruin ... Instead of stopping this idiotic sham business from growing to galactic proportions, they've let it spin out of control (placing them) all on the hook ... (This) sham is coming unglued because the huge excess liquidity (in the system ballooned to) asset bubbles all over the place". He concluded that when derivatives buyers catch on to the scam and "quit paying premiums for insurance that doesn't exist, (they'll be) a whole new definition of volatility ... the financial equivalent of a hurricane Katrina hitting every US city on the same day ... When the bubble(s collapse), the banking empire ... built on (them) must collapse as well". To fend it off, Wall Street and its European partners are using desperate measures, "including a giant derivatives bubble that is jeopardizing the whole shaky system". In a February 2004 article called "The Coming Storm", the London Economist warned that "top banks around the world are now massively exposed to high-risk derivatives (posing a systemic) risk of an industry-wide meltdown". John Hoefle believes that "the Fed has been quietly rescuing banks ever since. (He) contends that the banking system went bankrupt in the late 1980s, with the collapse of the junk bond market and the real estate bubble". The S & L crisis was "just the tip of the iceberg". The Fed secretly took over Citicorp in 1989, arranged shotgun mergers for other giant banks, back door bailouts, and "bank examiners were ordered to ignore bad loans. These measures, coupled with a headlong rush into derivatives and other forms of speculation gave banks a veneer of solvency while actually destroying what was left of the US banking system." It got in trouble because big gambles failed, including Third World debt defaults as well as Enron and other corporate bankruptcies. Giant US banks "are masters at ... counting trillions of dollars of worthless IOUs (like derivatives) on their books at face value (to make it look like they're) solvent". Between 1984 and 2002, takeovers papered over failures by reducing bank numbers nearly in half and consolidating the top seven into three - Citigroup, J P Morgan Chase, and Bank of America. According to Hoefle: "The result of all these mergers is a group of much larger, and far more bankrupt giant banks. (A) similar process played out worldwide." He added that "zombies have now taken over the asylum" and writer Michael Edward agreed in a 2004 article titled: "Cooking the Books - US Banks Are Giant Casinos (engaging in) smoke and mirror accounting", then merging with each other to conceal their derivatives losses with "paper asset" bookkeeping. It means that "US banks have become (a giant) Ponzi scheme paying account holders with other account holder assets or deposits" - robbing Peter to pay Paul but promising to end very badly. Does this "mark the inevitable end times of a Ponzi scheme that is inherently unstable?" Perhaps private banking as well, replaced by pension and mutual funds, and others able to operate efficiently at low cost. Battling back, giants expanded into investment banking with repeal of Glass-Steagall, but profits continued to fall as the economic downturn accelerated, resulting in investment banks converting to commercial ones and retrenching temporarily from core businesses like M & A and corporate lending. "Meanwhile, banking as a public service has been lost to the all-consuming quest for profits", the very strategy getting giants in trouble and needing periodic government bailouts. Very few of their services involve "taking deposits, providing checking services, and making consumer or small business loans". Instead, they concentrate on "dubious practices" responsible for a giant Ponzi scheme with "the entire economy in its death grip". They created a "perilous derivatives bubble that has generated billions of dollars in short-term profits but has destroyed the financial system in the process". The "too big to fail" concept resulted from the S & L crisis when many of them collapsed and Citibank lost half its value. In 1989, Congress passed the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act, bailing S & Ls out with taxpayer money. It was a brushfire compared to today's global conflagration, making it far harder to contain and effectively teetering all banks on bankruptcy. Considering the damage they've done, it's time to cut them loose and let them survive or fail on their own. And if the latter, it will be a major step toward restoring economic health overall. Banking services can more efficiently be provided than by parasites using us as their food source". The irony is that our economic system is built on an illusion. We have been tricked into believing we are inextricably mired in debt, when the 'debt' was for an advance of 'credit' that was ours all along." It's high time we reclaimed it. _____ The next article focuses on taking back our money power. Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10 am US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13553 http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/05/reviewing-ellen-browns-web-of-debt-part_13.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 fentona at shaw.ca Sun Jun 7 10:39:09 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 09:39:09 -0700 Subject: [R-G] =?windows-1252?q?Canada=92s_New_Leaf?= Message-ID: <724AF43F-A2F3-4189-84D0-E7CA7BC68DF1@shaw.ca> http://www.newsweek.com/id/200860 Canada?s New Leaf America's war deserters could always take comfort in Canada. Now, it's the country that's deserting them. Gretel C. Kovach NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Jun 15, 2009 Kimberly Rivera thought joining the Army would solve her problems. Before she enlisted in 2006, she was struggling on her Wal-Mart paycheck while her husband worked odd jobs and tended their two small kids. She knew she'd be sent to Iraq, but she didn't mind. "I thought I was helping my family and helping my country," she says. But her problems only got worse; she and Mario did nothing but fight on the phone, and the war kept eating at her. In January 2007, while she was home on leave in Mesquite, Texas, she and Mario packed up their car and headed for Toronto rather than let her return to Iraq. The old junker barely made it before breaking down. Now 26, Rivera has more problems than ever. Her mother hasn't spoken to her since she fled to Canada, although Rivera misses her terribly. And the Canadian government keeps trying to send her home to face desertion charges. She might end up in a military prison?but says she has no regrets about her broken commitment to the service of her country. "At least I can say I never killed anyone, ever," she says. "I think that's a little more honorable." As Rivera awaits her next court appeal in July, some 50 other American deserters are waging their own asylum battles in Canada. They've inspired rallies and parliamentary resolutions, and triggered clashes between lawmakers and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Not long ago Iraq provoked similar passions on the U.S. side of the border. But after six years of conflict, thousands of combat deaths and innumerable scandals, most Americans are eager to move on. In some ways the war over the war now rages more fiercely in Canada than in the United States. Dubbed "Resisterville" by opponents of the war, Toronto has become the deserters' refuge of choice. Many settled in the Parkdale neighborhood, a gritty area west of downtown, where placards pledging support for the dissenters sit in some apartment windows, framed by grubby stonework and peeling paint. Rivera and her husband rented a place there, and last year they had their third child, Katie. As the first mother to publicly campaign for asylum, Rivera offers an alluring face for the movement, appearing at rallies with her Canadian- born child to read a poem she wrote for the Iraqi people. "I was fighting for your liberty," it reads. "I was fighting for peace. But in reality, I was fighting to destroy everything you know and love." When Rivera deployed to Iraq in October 2006, she sounded a lot more like the red-blooded, flag-waving Texan she'd been raised to be. As far as the enemy was concerned, "bomb them all to hell," she thought. A few months into her tour her attitude began to change. Standing in full battle rattle before a young Iraqi girl who shook and sobbed and peered up at her with wild-eyed terror, Rivera was painfully reminded of her daughter Rebecca. The carnage, the constant menace, the strain of separation from her family?all of it wore her down. She barely slept, ate little and withdrew from her fellow troops. Home on leave, Rivera couldn't fathom returning to the war zone. She and Mario talked things over, then packed up their belongings, loaded Rebecca and her older brother Christian into a beat-up Geo Prizm and took off for Canada. She and the others have found succor in the War Resisters Support Campaign. Working out of a cramped office loaned by the United Steelworkers of America, the group has opened chapters in 12 Canadian cities and built a roster of supporters that numbers in the thousands. It helps newcomers find housing, apply for work permits and pay for legal counsel. But more than anything, it tries to ratchet up pressure on the Canadian government to let the deserters stay. Among the organization's most ardent members are Vietnam-era deserters like Lee Zaslofsky, who serves as the campaign's de facto spokesman. Back in the 1960s and '70s, Canada proudly offered shelter to more than 50,000 Americans, roughly half of whom ended up staying, despite President Jimmy Carter's unconditional pardon in 1977. Now grayer but just as fiery, the old-timers still gather at grungy watering holes to toss back drinks and rail against injustice. One recent evening at an Irish pub the talk turned to the American public's apparent disengagement from the war in Iraq. "It has not captured the hearts and minds of the American people because there is no draft," says Carolyn Egan, a trade unionist and Vietnam-era expat. "The people don't want to hear about it," Zaslofsky offered. "It's 'We want it over and Obama is going to make it go away'." Yet Canada isn't the open-armed sanctuary it once was. True, the public is firmly against the Iraq War; according to a recent poll, three in five Canadians think the Americans should be granted permanent residency. And in March, Parliament voted for the second time in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for a halt to deportations of deserters. But Harper, a Conservative, spoke in support of the Iraq War before assuming power and has uniformly rejected the petitioners' asylum claims. Last July, the government began deporting deserters. Harper's immigration minister, Jason Kenney, once complained that the resisters were "bogus refugee claimants," clogging the courts with baseless applications. When one of the deserters' supporters, accompanied by a cameraman, cornered Kenney and pleaded with him not to separate Rivera from her Canadian child, Kenney replied, "Talk to the Obama administration," and got in his car and sped off. That hostility leaves immigration lawyers few options. "I don't think this is a situation that ultimately will be resolved in the courts," says Alyssa Manning, Rivera's attorney. "I'm just buying time for a political solution." All of which means that the United States must now figure out what to do with the deserters who have already begun trickling back. No one expects Obama to issue them a pardon. They'll have to plead their cases before the military command. Prosecution rates of deserters have increased during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, from 2 percent at the start to about 10 percent now (the remainder receive administrative punishments, like the loss of a stripe). With the help of a new electronic notification system that issues arrest warrants to local police, the military has been nabbing more deserters than ever, according to Lt. Col. Nathan Banks, an Army spokesman. Indeed, Rivera says Texas cops called her family members incessantly for months, even relatives she'd never met. Still, Banks thinks the resister issue has been overblown. More than 20,000 soldiers have deserted the Army since 2001, peaking at 4,700 in 2007, the highest number in decades (the figure dropped to about 2,900 last year). Yet that amounts to less than 1 percent of the force. Contrast that with 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War, when some 33,000 soldiers, or 3.4 percent, abandoned their posts. "The vast majority of American soldiers serve their country admirably," says Banks. And those who flee, he adds, usually do so for family or financial reasons, not to make a political statement. That doesn't mean the Canadian deserters will find a receptive audience if they're sent home. Robin Long was the first American soldier to be deported and received a 15-month sentence in the brig. Next up was Cliff Cornell, who got 12 months. Jeremy Hinzman could be removed at any moment, and Rivera?whose asylum application has already been rejected twice?may well follow. Her apartment remains a maze of moving boxes, a continual reminder of the legal limbo she finds herself in. She cringes at the thought of another long separation from her family, of bidding farewell to Toronto, a city she's come to love. "The best thing about Canada is it allowed me to get the strength to deal with the consequences" of deserting. Those consequences are just starting to unfold. From shniad at sfu.ca Sun Jun 7 13:52:31 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 12:52:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Real News Network - Peace be upon Barack In-Reply-To: <275860341.7733671244246427817.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <408959029.36471244404351901.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Peace be upon Barack Pepe Escobar: Commentary on Obama's speech to the Muslim World. http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3808 From shniad at sfu.ca Sun Jun 7 13:52:47 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 12:52:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Has the two-state ship sailed? In-Reply-To: <1281788239.7811681244323730644.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <282929532.36501244404367126.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/has-the-two-state-ship-sailed/article1170673/ Globe and Mail June 6, 2009 Has the two-state ship sailed? Some still see alternatives to the consensus plan for peace ? including one that?s already in play Patrick Martin JERUSALEM ? Barack Obama insists on it. So does Mahmoud Abbas, Tony Blair, the European Union, the United Nations and seemingly just about every moderate-thinking citizen of the planet. It is the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, taken as a given even by most Israelis and Palestinians. But Israel?s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, still doesn?t agree, and an impressive gathering of right-wing politicians met in Jerusalem recently to back him up, outlining several reasons why the two-state solution is a failed option, no matter what Barack Obama says, and proposing several alternatives. Ironically, these Israelis have only expressed what many Palestinian thinkers have been arguing for some time: The two-state ship has sailed and it?s not coming back. Not even Mr. Obama can turn it around. Are there alternatives to a two-state solution? Sure there are. But a lot of people aren?t going to like what they are. TWO STATES FOR TWO PEOPLES Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, said a few days ago that the idea of ?two states for two peoples? was a ?political slogan? conceived in the backrooms of the formerly governing Kadima Party, led by Tzipi Livni, and need not be taken as given. This one-time prime minister has a short memory. While Kadima did use it as a slogan, the concept of partitioning Palestine into two states was first publicly expressed in the late 1930s by the British Peel Commission. At that time, the Jews under the British Mandate accepted the idea and the Arab community vehemently rejected it. It surfaced again in 1947 in UN Resolution 181, which called for the partition of the area into an Arab state and a Jewish state, with a special international regime ruling Jerusalem. Again, the Jewish community accepted it, relying on it for its 1948 declaration of independence. Again the Arab community rejected it and Arab states fought to repel it. They lost. In the 19 years that followed, from 1948 to 1967, the two communities were effectively partitioned between Israel on the one hand, and Jordan?s occupation of the West Bank (and Egypt?s occupation of Gaza) on the other. And, in the two decades after that, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the representative of the Palestinian resistance, came to accept the idea of two states ? at first tentatively, as in Yasser Arafat?s 1974 olive-branch speech to the UN, and then, explicitly, in its 1988 two-states declaration. By 1991, the two-state solution had become a dogma, and was the basis of the 1993 Oslo Accords and several other peace initiatives culminating in the 2007 Annapolis conference, when both Israelis and Palestinians committed themselves to a two-state conclusion. The trouble was, this acceptance and worldwide support came only after Israeli settlers had created substantial ?facts on the ground? in the occupied territories. More than that, in many cases, such as in the Israeli communities built in occupied parts of Jerusalem, and in the large settlement blocs near Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israelis overall began to believe those areas were inexorably part of Israel. Members of Israel?s right now argue that the two-state formula has been tried and failed. They cite the violence that came after the Oslo Accords, and the collapse of Gaza into a ?Hamas-stan? after Israeli forces and settlers were unilaterally withdrawn. ?You see,? they say, ?Palestinians are not capable of governing themselves.? Many of them add that Palestinians don?t even want two states. The fact that the Palestinian leadership won?t recognize Israel as a Jewish state, says Moshe Yaalon, Israel?s Vice-Prime Minister, shows ?they want Israel to disappear.? ?That?s not true,? says Diana Buttu, a Palestinian Canadian who lives in Ramallah and has served as an adviser to Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. ?Most Palestinians want two states ? but many of them think it?s no longer feasible.? Israel has grabbed too much of the West Bank, leaving little to be given back. ?The maximum Israel would be prepared to offer isn?t even close to the minimum Palestinians could accept,? she says. The fact is, most Israelis don?t want Palestinians to have a real state at all. Even the dwindling peace camp, and certainly Ms. Livni?s Kadima Party, when they say they support a two-state solution, they really mean a Palestinian state that would have severe limits on its military capacity, its foreign policy and its borders. It?s not much different from the self-governing ?entity? Mr. Netanyahu speaks of. ONE STATE FOR ALL ITS PEOPLE When Uri Elitzur, a former chief of staff for Mr. Netanyahu, took the podium at that recent right-wing conference, he shocked the group by saying that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the creation of a single state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, a state that would include the Palestinians as citizens. ?Have you lost your mind?? one man shouted from the audience. ?You?re crazy,? another agreed, and the jeering became so intense that Mr. Elitzur quickly concluded his remarks. But the man may not be far off the mark. Many on Israel?s right would, indeed, like to see Israeli sovereignty over all of Palestine, but they?d like it to come without the Palestinians. To that end, many have proposed, over the years, what they call the ?Jordanian option.? Since more than half the population of Jordan are Palestinians, they argue, this is the homeland in which all Palestinians should live. Some extremists have advocated the forcible ?transfer? of Palestinians, both outside and inside Israel?s borders, to Jordan. It is not unlike the vision many on the extreme side of Hamas and in Islamic Jihad have in their dreams: one state, an Islamic state that stretches from the sea to the Jordan. But if those wild dreams are not going to be realized, then what will? For their part, Palestinians, at the time of the British mandate and in Israel?s early days, proposed a single state with equal rights for every citizen. That was the position of the PLO when it was formed, and of many of the more left-wing Zionist movements. It?s the view several Palestinians are again espousing. Israel has largely rejected that idea, knowing that such a state would have an Arab majority and that the Jewishness of the state would be lost. The single state envisioned by many Israelis would limit the rights of Palestinians. That was the idea of Prime Minister Menachem Begin?s 1977 ?autonomy plan? for the Palestinians. Another plan long advocated by Israeli settlers calls for the Palestinians to remain in the West Bank and Gaza, under Israeli sovereignty, but to be citizens of Jordan or Egypt and to have voting rights there. That was pretty much the situation in the early years of Israel?s occupation after the 1967 war. (In response to such suggestions, Jordan?s Foreign Minister called Israel?s ambassador onto the carpet last week and informed him that Israelis should mind their own affairs.) There is a third option, however, put forward by people such as Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, to fashion a single state structured in such a way as to allow two distinct peoples to coexist. A ?consociational democracy? (as in Bosnia and Northern Ireland) involving power-sharing and the division of the territory into federated cantons would allow for ?soft borders? and a ?blurring? when dealing with symbolic issues such as Jerusalem, he says. Diana Buttu agrees: ?I?ve come to believe that the aspirations of both people would best be served by a state like this.? CONFEDERATION Many of the views expressed by the Israeli right propose linkages to Jordan, Egypt or both. Adi Mintz, a former director of the Council of Judea and Samaria, argues that Jordan should extend its sovereignty over the 38 per cent of the West Bank where Palestinians actually live, and that Egypt should agree to take over Gaza and use the under-populated Sinai peninsula to house refugees. Giora Eiland, a former national-security adviser, agrees and says that Israel can compensate Egypt by giving it some land in the southern Negev. But neither Jordan nor Egypt is keen to take part in such schemes. The dream of a full confederation of Israel, Palestine and Jordan is still harboured by some. It was advocated by Jordanians several years ago, and still forms part of the thinking of people such as Israel?s President, Shimon Peres. But it will remain a dream for the foreseeable future, as it would still require an independent Palestinian state to first be established, and the odds against that are high. MANAGING THE CONFLICT If Mr. Netanyahu decides to say no to the Obama two-state approach, we will see the solution that has the best chance of success: maintaining the status quo. That?s the view preferred by Mr. Yaalon: ?There?s no solution to be found in the near future. We should focus on managing the conflict.? Efraim Inbar, a prominent Bar-Ilan University professor who once supported the Oslo two-state process, agrees: ?It may be that there is no solution.? And that?s the view Ms. Buttu has come to hold: ?I don?t see a lot forcing Israel to make any real tough decisions. I can understand why they?d opt for the status quo.? As for the Palestinians, she says they?re tired: ?They suffered the most from the years of resistance. They?re not looking for another round.? If that?s true, and if Mr. Netanyahu decides not to adhere to Mr. Obama?s plan, then we can expect to see the further growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, probably accompanied by improvements in Palestinians? daily lives ? exactly the formula the Netanyahu government has proposed. In that event, Israel and the semi-occupied Palestinian territories will begin to look like a single state even if it wasn?t intended. It?s just that it will be one state for two peoples, but with two different classes of rights. Patrick Martin is The Globe and Mail?s Middle East bureau chief. From shniad at sfu.ca Sun Jun 7 13:52:10 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 12:52:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Myths about Anti-Semitism Distort Human Rights in Our Schools and Universities In-Reply-To: <1673336384.7444491244159735088.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <892631166.36441244404330844.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticlePrint/21570 ZNet May 30, 2009 Jews Are Not an Equity-Seeking Group How Myths about Anti-Semitism Distort Human Rights in Our Schools and Universities By Jason Kunin It needs to be said categorically because it is getting in the way of defending Palestinian rights specifically and human rights in general: Anti-Semitism, pervasive and deadly only a couple generations ago, is no longer a form of oppression. This does not mean that Jews are never oppressed. Many are. But when Jews experience oppression today, it is because they are queer, or disabled, or elderly, or poor, or women, or because they come from one of the many marginalized Jewish communities of colour, such as the Bene Israels, the Ethiopian Jews, the Mizrachim, or the Sephardim. Jews experience oppression based on race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, and yes, even religious practice, to a point, since Judaism remains a comparatively marginalized religion even in places where Jews as a people prosper, even if finding a Bat Mitzvah card is easier today than it used to be. But Jews are not currently oppressed on the basis of Jewish identity alone. Measured in terms of social power, a white Jewish male is just another white male, his Jewishness of no more relevance than if he were Dutch or Irish. Individual Jews may continue to understand themselves as a "race," much in the way Hitler did, and they may still be perceived as such by some non-Jews, but the ability of Jews to access social privilege is not determined by this racial understanding of Jewishness. Jews as a category apart - specifically, as a racial category, which has been the basis of anti-Semitism since at least the mid-nineteenth century - can no longer with any reasonable justification earn them recognition as an equity-seeking group. Not anymore. As a form of oppression, anti-Semitism is experienced only on the basis of Jewish religious observance, and then only insofar as the world in which they live does not adequately accommodate Judaic practices, such as the keeping of the Sabbath, or acknowledge Jewish faith traditions. Could anti-Semitism become dangerous again? Nazi-like dangerous? Anything could happen in the future. But it isn't dangerous now. Distinguishing between prejudice and oppression To understand why I say this, it's important to distinguish between prejudice and oppression. Prejudice is simply an opinion based on limited information or stereotypes. Everyone has prejudices. We all have some opinions based on incomplete information. Prejudices only have the capacity to become oppression, however, when they are held by those who occupy positions of power and privilege. The rich and the poor may each believe the other is lazy, but only the rich have the capacity to translate this prejudice into laws and social policies that protect their wealth and perpetuate the suffering of the poor. There's a very simply formula in anti-oppression theory: oppression = prejudice + power Prejudice can exist at both an ideological level (e.g. "white people are ignorant and mean") and at an individual level (e.g. "I won't vote for that white politician"), but unless that prejudice can also translate into institutional practices that marginalize or exclude, then that prejudice is not oppression but merely a prejudice. Given the current reality of global white supremacy, neither of the examples I have given above have the potential to oppress. In my grandparents' time, anti-Semitism excluded Jews from universities, hotels, beaches, and neighbourhoods. Whole industries were closed to Jews. Jewish refugees from Hitler during the war were denied refuge in safe countries merely because they were Jews. But it's not 1938 anymore. Today, anti-Semitism's institutional impacts are negligible if non-existent. It has been downgraded from a form of oppression to a prejudice. Are there people today who dislike Jews just because they are Jews? Certainly. Are there anti-Semites who defile Jewish cemeteries with swastikas and who make anti-Semitic jokes? Unfortunately, yes. But have all these anti-Semites combined managed to exclude Jews from positions of influence, power, and wealth just because they are Jews ? Hardly. Ignore the B'nai Brith reports that anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise - 8.9% higher in 2008, according to their latest "Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents" in Canada. Part of the problem with the audit is its loose definition of anti-Semitism. Despite the report's disclaimers that it does not count criticisms of Israel as incidents of anti-Semitism, it does include any criticism of Israel that involves the "deligitimizaiton, demonization, and criminalization" of Israel - an overly broad net that would include basically anything B'nai Brith doesn't like, such as the annual Israeli Apartheid Week events on campuses, which usually features Jewish speakers and are often put together in collaboration with Jewish organizers. Moreover, one could argue that the high reporting of anti-Semitic incidents, especially to police, is an indication of the social privilege Jews enjoy, given that most racialized groups don't trust law enforcement agencies enough to report acts of racism, either because they don't expect the people who work in law enforcement to recognize racism, or because their experience has taught them that law enforcers don't take it seriously. In fact, in real racism, law enforcers and the judicial system are perpetrators of racism. They're not the people you go to for help. On the surface, B'nai Brith's annual "Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents" would appear alarming, but only because it fails to distinguish between prejudice and oppression and identify anti-Semitism as the prejudice it has now become. When every act of prejudice appears as a manifestation of oppression, the world does indeed seem a scary place. Make no mistake, it's not fun to be at the receiving end of prejudice. I did not appreciate the drunk several years ago at a hotel in Mexico who jokingly referred to a fire set for the purpose of collecting insurance money as "a Jewish fire." Nor did I enjoy having a boorish professor in first year university tell me I had "the face of someone who looked like he was about to make a very good deal." But at the end of the day, I had the money and leisure time to vacation at that hotel in Mexico, and the boorish professor gave me an "A" in his course. (Maybe he was scared of my Jewish lawyer.) So while I have experienced anti-Semitism as a form of prejudice, I have not experienced it as a form of oppression. It has not resulted in my being socially or economically marginalized. Anti-Semitism in Arab, Muslim, or non-Western countries Of course, I'm talking about Canada here - as well as North America and, more generally, "the West" - but I would argue that Jews have little reason to fear anti-Semitism in other parts of the world too. Take, for example, the anti-Semitism of Arab countries that is so often invoked (and frequently exaggerated) to justify the need for the state of Israel, despite the fact that it was actually the creation of Israel that provoked the modern persecution of Jews in these countries, which up until the 1980s was real enough. Sometimes the anti-Semitism was state-sponsored, while other times it emerged as part of a broader popular reaction against Israel, or against a perceived tendency of a particular government to favour Israel. Regardless of the source, to the extent that anti-Semitism still exists in these countries today, it no longer poses any serious threat to Jews, if only because Arab states have already purged themselves of their Jewish populations, and at the end of the day, anti-Semitism is of little importance in countries that no longer contain any Jews and have shown no interest in persecuting Jews abroad. At any rate, the story of Arab state persecution of Jews is several decades out of date. When the Cold War ended, Arab countries, having lost their Soviet patron, were left politically and militarily weak, leaving the corrupt leaders of these supposedly anti-Semitic states lining up to join the U.S.-Israel alliance. Egypt and Libya, once bastions of Arab state resistance against Israel, are today part of the club. Even Syria wants in. Since 2002, the Arab League has offered Israel full recognition and membership in the Arab League in return for the creation of a Palestinian state inside the 1967 borders. King Hussein of Jordan speaks of a "57-state solution" in which every Muslim state would recognize Israel in return for its withdrawal to the pre-1967 "green line." The only thing preventing this normalization of relations is Israel. While there may be individuals in Arab or Muslim lands - as well as in Christians lands, by the way - who unjustly hate Jews and go out of their way to do them harm only because they are Jews, such isolated attacks are extremely rare and pose far less risk to Jews than traffic accidents or smoking. Attacks on Jews because they are Jews, such as the murder of the Chabad rabbi and his wife in last year's Mumbai attacks - and, of course, let's remember that those attacks killed at least 170 other people, most of whom were not Jewish - are horrible and criminal and rightly condemned. But they do not oppress . Not all acts of violence are oppression. There is a difference. The source of violence matters. Anyone can commit an act of violence. Oppression is when a dominant group uses social and political institutions to limit the rights and privileges of specific groups under its control. It emanates from centers of power, most often the state. By this definition, there are very few places in the world where Jews are still oppressed . Iran would be one, given the secondary status of Jews in a state that defines itself as Muslim, but things are evidently comfortable enough for Iran's 20,000 Jews that few have expressed interest in Israel's recent overtures to take them in. It's also interesting to note that in this country whose president is so often maligned for his Holocaust denial, the most popular television mini-series in recent history was Zero Degree Turn , an Iranian Schindler's List about a real-life Persian diplomat who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. What's left is maybe Russia, where anti-Semitism is still quite prevalent and where large numbers of Jews still live. Being Jewish in Russia, I've been told by Russian Jews, can be hard, but then life in Russia is hard for most non-Jewish Russians as well. Indeed, during the 1990s, when the state broke down and the criminal gangs and kleptocrats took over, one million Russian Jews were given the option of leaving for Israel, and they did - an option unavailable to most Russians, who had to stay on the sinking ship. In this instance, Russian Jews actually had privileges above and beyond those of ordinary Russians, privileges based solely on the fact that they were Jewish (and in many cases, partly or negligibly Jewish). The "New" Anti-Semitism In recent years, people like former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers and feminist scholar Phyllis Chesler, among others, have been warning of a "new anti-Semitism" that disguises itself as criticism of Israel. There is, however, little merit to such claims. First of all, the argument that criticism of Israel is even "potentially" anti-Semitic is a convenient strategy for shutting down all criticism of Israel. Second of all, the claim is groundless since some anti-Semites are actually pro-Israel - like the French nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen, who believes in France for the French and Israel for the Jews - while many Jews, inside and outside of Israel, are not only critical of Israel but even anti-Zionist. There are Jewish traditions of anti-Zionism that go back almost a century, from the bi-national Zionism of Martin Buber and Judah Magnes, to the Bundists, to the religious orthodox like the Neturei Karta who have always opposed Israel on religious grounds. And then, of course, there are the scores of specifically Jewish Palestinian solidarity groups that set themselves up in opposition to Israel, such as Not in Our Name, Jewish Independent Voices, Jewish Voices for Peace, and so forth, as well as the many Jews who have taken leading roles in the international movement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. Here in Canada, the Liberal MP and prominent "human rights" lawyer Irwin Cotler -probably the most influential Zionist in parliament - has been promoting a variation of the anti-Zionism-is anti-Semitism argument. In a National Post article published earlier this year, Cotler warned of the rise of a new "anti-Semitism expressed as anti-Zionism" that is "predicated on the notion that the Jews alone have no right to a homeland." He explained, "The new anti-Semitism involves discrimination against the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations -- the denial of, and assault upon, the Jewish people's right even to live -- with Israel as the ?collective Jew among the nations.'" Cotler's argument is nonsense since criticism of Israel has never been about whether Jews have a right to national self-determination but about Zionism's choice to create a state through the dispossession of another people. I have a right to a home, for example, but I don't have a right to Cotler's home. The dispute, in other words, is not over the desire of Jews to organize collectively but over real estate: it's all about location, location, location. Jews have arrived Jews today are well represented in all the central institutions of power: in politics, in business, in education, and in the media. The system works for their benefit more than for others. In Montreal, in April 2004, the Snowdon campus of my old elementary school, United Talmud Torah, was torched by an arsonist who left a note linking the attack to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The school's library was destroyed. The attack made front page news. Politicians around the country condemned it, including the prime minister, as did chiefs of police of several major cities. Donations flooded in from all over Canada. Ordinary people donated books to replace those destroyed by the fire. One year later, news channels across the country featured feel-good stories about the reopening of the restocked, remodelled library. In contrast, a week before the 2004 attack, the al-Mahdi Islamic Centre in Pickering, outside Toronto, was vandalized and set on fire. The Globe and Mail had a small article about it on page 12. There was no chorus of condemnation from politicians all over the country. Donations did not flood in. To use an old expression, Jews have arrived . As Bernie Farber, Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Jewish Congress, told TheToronto Star recently, " We have come to a point in the 21st century where at least in the halls of government, and I think very much in the mainstream of Canadian life, we are viewed as part and parcel of Canadian polity." Interestly, Farber's "we" does not make clear whether he is referring to Jews in general or to Jewish community "leaders" like himself who head top-down, corporate-dominated organizations like the CJC. Maybe he sees no distinction. It is, after all, part of the condition of privilege to universalize one's privileges as "normal" and to mistake one's own privileged interests as everyone's. This is why the Jewish billionaires who have appointed themselves our leaders - the Aspers, the Schwartz-Reismans, the Bronfmans, and the Tannenbaums - believe they can speak for the whole of the Jewish people. The Jewish elite, once excluded from the gentile old boys networks as a result of anti-Semitism, has over time become not only accepted but an integrated part of the white elite to the point where it no longer serves any purpose to note their Jewishness at all. They have even intermarried into each others' families. They have the same class interests and the same class fears. The Jewish Holocaust haunts them both because, unlike the Romani Holocaust - the Porajmos , a word few people know - it tells a story that strikes at the deepest fears of all privileged classes: the revocation of privilege, the stripping away of whiteness. The dispossession of a Palestinian farmer may be outside of their experience and therefore their capacity to feel empathy, but the degradation of a famous Jewish pianist or the on-going disputes over Nazi-plundered Jewish art - those stories speak to fears they're familiar with. For the Jewish and non-Jewish (and half-Jewish) elite, identification with Israel is automatic because it affirms their place among the privileged in the world. Colonialism, after all, has always served to define whiteness by setting it against the darkness of the native, the "savage." Similarly, Zionism affirms the whiteness of Jews, for it places them firmly within the centers of white imperial power and defines them in opposition to the native, the Arab, the Muslim fanatic. Indeed, Zionism, which first took root in the nineteenth century among Christian Zionists like Lord Shaftsbury - or, in Canada, with Henry Wentworth Monk - can be seen not simply as a Jewish ideology but an elite one, intended from its inception to advance first British, then later U.S. imperial interests. It is important to erase the distinction between the Jewish and non-Jewish elite so that one does not succumb to the old anti-Semitic notion that our country's corporate and political class is pro-Israel only because there's a group of hook-nosed Jewish Zionists with money bulging out of their pockets playing them like puppet masters. Jewish leaders are a part of this class, and support for Israel speaks to common class interests, not separate ethnic or "racial" ones. Distorted human rights policies and bogus equity: the case of schools and universities It is important to see the place of Jews within the broader white power structure because the perpetuation of the myth that Jews still need protecting as Jews has led to the distortion of equity and human rights arguments for the purposes of silencing criticism of Israel and Zionism. This is especially true of schools and universities, which are the real battlegrounds these days. Student organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week at campuses across Ontario have come up against the arbitrary application of university human rights policies to justify shutting them down. At Carleton University in Ottawa this year, administrators ordered the removal of IAW posters depicting a cartoon of an Israeli helicopter shelling a Palestinian child on the basis that it was "insensitive to the norms of civil discourse in a free and democratic society" and it might " incite others to infringe rights protected in the Ontario Human Rights code" (my emphasis). Shortly afterwards, the University of Ottawa did the same thing. Their communications department issued a memo explaining that the posters did not recognize "the inherent dignitity and equal rights of all students." In 2008, McMaster University banned the use of the word "apartheid" when applied to Israel on the basis that it was "offensive" to many McMaster students, a claim that was supported by McMaster's Human Rights and Equity Services (HRES) office. At the high school level, where I teach, it's even worse. Across the country, Zionist organizations have thoroughly infiltrated our school boards, which have all sorts of formal and informal partnerships with organizations like the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Simon Weisenthal Center, and B'nai Brith. They are facilitated by members on staff who are part of these organizations or who have been influenced by Zionism. Despite the efforts of some exceptional educators in developing equity guidelines and policy language, Zionist groups usually learn how to exploit these policies to their advantage. In fact, Zionist groups have not only hijacked the human rights policies of our boards, but in some cases they have also authored them. Dr. Karen Mock, for example, the former head of B'nai Brith, was appointed a few years ago as the Senior Policy Advisor on Equity and Diversity to the Ontario Ministry of Education and developed the province's Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy. Formerly, she was head of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. At a presentation on racism she gave at my school a few years ago, Dr. Mock mentioned anti-Semitism about twelve times, anti-black racism once, and anti-Native racism never. Yet when asked to produce an example of Jewish oppression in the school system, the only example she could come up with was the fact that high school commencement ceremonies are often on Friday nights during the Sabbath. The Simon Weisenthal Center, which poses as an organization that promotes Holocaust awareness but which actually promotes the view that increasing criticism of Israel is the prelude to another Holocaust, has a program it started a few years ago in which they fly principals and other school staff and administration to Los Angeles for a "Zionist boot camp," where they learn how to go back to their schools and integrate Zionist indoctrination into programs that supposedly promote tolerance. One program, which is actually called "Teaching Tolerance," encourages schools to put up the national flags of various countries in the world, including the Israeli flag, in order to teach "tolerance." This perverse idea that racial, religious, and cultural tolerance requires embracing the national governments with which various groups may or may not over-identify - a practice that has basically been modeled by Zionists, who cannot extricate Jewish identity from the state of Israel - has had ramifications for other communities not directly tied to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Earlier this school year, Turkish groups used the same arguments as Zionists in their successful efforts to have a book about the Armenian genocide removed from the Toronto District School Board's list of recommended resources for a new locally developed course on genocide. The argument was that the book would "promote hate" towards Turkish students, which is exactly the same argument Zionists use to shut down criticism of Israel. Both claims defy logic and sense. During the Israeli bombing of Gaza in January, TDSB staff returning from winter holidays were greeted by a memo directing us not to discuss the situation in Gaza in the classroom, and if it were to come up, to address it in a "balanced" and "non-political" way. The memo was issued by the equity department. So why no board expression of sympathy for our Palestinian students who have family in Gaza? Why no directives about how to be sensitive to the emotional trauma of Palestinian students at our classes? Is it because the board believes, like the late Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, that there's no such thing as a Palestinian? Is it because the safe alternative - expressing sympathy for "both sides" affected by the bombing - would have laid bare the fact that only one side was actually suffering? Clearly, the sensitivities of Jewish students outweigh the feelings of Palestinian students, which is how "equity" gets played out when your equity and human rights policies are either designed by Zionist groups, influenced by Zionist thinking, or enforced in ways that are deferential to Zionist sensitivities. Another by-product of this skewed notion of "equity" is the incessant and unreasonable demand for "balance" every time criticism of Israel is leveled. And yet efforts to bebalanced have been shut down. Three years ago, complaints from the Canadian Jewish Congress to the TDSB led to the removal from school libraries of Deborah Ellis's book Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak , a book that precisely featured a "balance" of perspectives with narratives by Palestinian and Israeli children. To argue that Israel is an oppressed nation and Jews an equity seeking group cannot help but distort the entire way in which oppression and equity are understood. And this has ramifications for everyone - blacks, First Nations, Hispanics, Muslims, and even Jews who genuinely do experience oppression because they are queer, or disabled, or one of the Jewish racial minorities who experience marginalization in a Jewish community that is dominated by Ashkenazi (European) Jews. Zionism isn't just a Palestinian problem, though obviously they suffer its impacts far more than anyone. Zionism is also a Jewish problem, and a black problem, and a Muslim problem, and a First Nations problem. It's everyone's problem because its analysis of power places an exaggerated Jewish suffering at the center of social oppression. The sooner we can do away with the notion that Jews as Jews are an oppressed people and that Zionism is inextricable from being Jewish, the sooner we can stop protecting the powerful in the name of human rights and create a world that is equitable and just for everyone, including Jews. Jason Kunin is a Toronto high school teacher and writer. He can be contacted at jkunin at rogers.com . From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Jun 7 18:38:43 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:38:43 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Crony capitalism has taken root in America Message-ID: <4A2C5D93.2000900@ashisuto.co.jp> by Sin-ming Shaw The Japan Times (May 19 2009) For twenty years, Americans have denounced the "crony capitalism" of Third World countries, especially in Asia. But, just as those regions have been improving their public and corporate governance - Hong Kong just witnessed a breakthrough court decision against a telecom tycoon who is the son of the province's richest and most powerful man - crony capitalism is taking root in the United States, a country that the world long considered the gold standard of a level playing field in business. The recently completed "stress tests" of US banks are but the latest indication that crony capitalists have now captured Washington. It is no surprise that stock markets liked the results of the tests that US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner administered to America's big banks, for the general outcome had been leaked weeks before. Indeed, most professional investors trashed the tests as dishonest even as their holdings benefited from a rising market. Even The Wall Street Journal, usually financial markets' loudest cheerleader, openly disparaged the tests' integrity. The government had allowed bankers to "negotiate" the results, like a student taking a final examination and then negotiating a grade. The tests were supposed to reveal the true conditions of banks saddled with unaudited "'toxic assets" in housing loans and derivatives. The reasoning behind the tests seemed unimpeachable. But was it? As any seasoned banker knows, a well-managed bank should undertake internal "stress tests" regularly as a matter of good housekeeping. The financial crisis should have mandated a running stress test to keep senior management up to date daily. Why, then, did the US need the government to conduct a financial exercise that bankers themselves could and should have done far better and faster? The truth is that the tests were not designed to find answers. Both Wall Street's chieftains and the Obama administration already knew the truth. They knew that if the true conditions at many big banks were publicly revealed, many would have been immediately declared bankrupt, necessitating government receivership to stop a tsunami of bank runs. But the Obama administration did not want to be tagged as "socialist" for nationalizing banks, however temporarily, even though experts such as former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker had recommended just that. Moreover, nationalizing banks would have required dismissing Wall Street captains and their boards for grossly mismanaging their firms. Wall Street's titans, however, had convinced Obama and his team that their continued stewardship was essential to getting the world out of its crisis. They successfully portrayed themselves as victims of a firestorm, rather than as accessories to arson. Geithner and Larry Summers, Obama's chief economic adviser, share Wall Street's culture as proteges of Robert Rubin, the former treasury secretary who went on to serve as a director and senior counselor at Citigroup. Neither man found it difficult to accept the bankers' absurd logic. The stress tests were meant to signal to the public that there was no immediate threat of bank failures. This message, it was hoped, would stabilize the market so that prices for toxic assets could rise to a level at which bankers might feel comfortable selling them. So far, Geithner seems to have succeeded in his tests, as the stock market has indeed more than stabilized, with prices of bank shares such as Citigroup and Bank of America quadrupling from their lows. The feared implosion of Wall Street seems to have been avoided. But no one ever seriously thought that the US would allow Citigroup and Bank of America, to name just two, to fail. Markets had already factored into share prices the belief that the US government would not allow any more banks to collapse. What the world wanted was an accurate picture of what the banks were worth and "mark-to-market" valuations to guide investors as to how much new capital they needed. The world also wanted to see the US retaking the high road in reinforcing business ethics and integrity so lacking under the Bush administration. As taxpayers had already put huge sums into rescuing failing banks, with the prospect of more to come, a transparent process to reveal how the money was being used was imperative. Substantial public rescue funds have reportedly been siphoned off to foreign banks, Goldman Sachs and staff bonuses for purposes unrelated to protecting public interests. None of this was either revealed or debunked by Geithner's tests. Instead, public servants now appear to be in cahoots with Wall Street to engineer an artificial aura of profitability. Moreover, the value of toxic assets remains as murky as ever. Once-sacrosanct accounting principles have been amended at Wall Street's behest to allow banks to report essentially whatever they want. Now, negotiated stress test results have been released to "prove" that the banks are a lot healthier. Calling this a Ponzi scheme might be too harsh. Few financial professionals have been fooled. Like swine flu, crony capitalism has migrated from corrupt Third World countries to America. Is it any wonder, then, that China is perceived as an increasingly credible model for much of the developing world? _____ Sin-ming Shaw, a former founding chairman of a hedge fund and a private equity fund in Asia, has been a visiting scholar at Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and Oxford. He blogs at sinmingshaw.blogspot.com. (c) 2009 Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org) (c) The Japan Times. All rights reserved http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/eo20090519a2.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 Mon Jun 8 05:24:37 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:24:37 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt" (5) Message-ID: <4A2CF4F5.5040901@ashisuto.co.jp> Part Five by Stephen Lendman sjlendman.blogspot.com (May 15 2009) This is the fifth of several articles on Ellen Brown's superb 2007 book titled "Web of Debt", now updated in a December 2008 third edition. It tells "the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free". This article focuses on taking back our money power. Recapturing What's Ours and Turning Scarcity to Abundance In 1952, Norman Vincent Peale (1898 - 1993) first published his most famous book - "The Power of Positive Thinking". It sold about five million copies and was a New York Times bestseller for 186 consecutive weeks delivering messages like: "Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory." FDR struck the same theme in saying: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself". In 1900, Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz" was first published, conveying "the notion that a life of scarcity could be transformed in an instant into one of universal abundance ..." In real life, the secret is by taking back our money power from the private bankers who stole it in 1913, in the middle of the night, two days before Christmas, and kept it ever since. Today's real cause of scarcity is that "somebody is paying interest on most of the money in the world all of the time", and by so doing enslaves nearly everyone in perpetual debt bondage. Meeting America's huge debt burden requires the money supply to keep expanding, "and for that to happen, borrowers must continually go deeper into debt, merchants must continually raise their prices, and the odd men out in the bankers' game of musical chairs must continue to lose their property to the banks". The result - inevitable wars, competition, strife, inflation, deflation, recessions, depressions, debt bondage, poverty, and despair, while at the same time bankers get fabulously richer and more powerful. The obvious solution is to stop "parasitic" banks from "feeding on the world's prosperity", but the "Witches of Wall Street" don't yield easily. Dethroning them will take the process Francis Fox Piven explained in her 2006 book, "Challenging Authority". She quoted Thomas Jefferson responding to the repressive 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts saying: "A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles". Disruptive social actions have done it as Piven explained: "ordinary people (have) power ... when they rise up in anger and hope, defy the rules ... disrupt (state) institutions ... propel new issues to the center of political debate (and force) political leaders (to) stem voter defections by proferring reforms. These are the conditions that produce" democratic change. Sidestepping the Debt Web with "Parallel" Currencies Community currencies, for example, that historically rose "spontaneously when national (ones) were scarce, unobtainable", or in the case of Weimar Germany worthless because of hyperinflation. "Hundreds of communities in the United States, Canada and Europe did the same thing during the Depression" when hard times forced creative solutions. "Like the medieval tally, these currencies were simply credits (letting bearers) trade (them) for an equivalent value in goods and services ..." Today, community currencies "operate legally in more than 35 countries ..." and in North America over thirty are available in places like Ithaca, New York where Ithaca HOUR scrip is used, saying on the back: "This is money (entitling) the bearer to receive one hour of labor or its negotiated value in goods and services. Please accept it, then spend it ..." Another example is corporate credits like airline frequent flyer miles entitling holders to free flights and other benefits like lodging, rental cars, restaurant meals and even groceries. Computer technology provides other alternatives as well, without currencies, by facilitating trades electronically. In 1981 after IBM released its XT computer, the first electronic currency system was devised - a Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) for recording transactions and keeping accounts by simply having "an information system for recording human effort". It tallied credits in and debits out, tax and interest free, and stored electronically. Check out these sites for more information: -- ithacahours.com; -- madisonhours.org; -- communitycurrency.org; and -- geog.le.ac.uk/ijccr. The main drawback to these systems is they're small, local, and fail to address the greater problem - "the mammoth debt spider that is sucking the lifeblood from the national economy" and our well-being. Solving that requires national currency reform - returning money creation power to the people who own it from bankers who stole it. Goldbugs vs Greenbackers In 1896 at the Democratic National Convention, William Jennings Byran railed against Goldbugs and their moneyed interests backers in support of Greenbacker farmers and laborers saying: "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold". The arguments went like this: -- Bankers claimed gold was a stable medium of exchange; "sound" or "honest" money in relatively fixed supply that couldn't be inflated by irresponsible governments out of proportion to the demand for goods and services; -- Greenbackers called scarcity a drawback letting governments condone "dishonest" money through fractional reserve banking; they'd be harmed too many previous times not to know it; also, during the 1850s Gold Rush, its supply and consumer prices rose sharply, did again from 1917 - 1920, and during the 1970s when gold rose from $40 an ounce to $800 and inflation along with it. The debate still continues, but today's goldbugs are money reformers, not bankers who have it all going their way so why change. As a medium of exchange, gold has serious drawbacks. In the Great Depression, it left the country, exacerbating deflation that caused the money supply and demand to contract. Another problem is that productivity is linked to its availability, but more practical matters are also relevant like needing gold bars for large purchases, something avoided by paper, checkbook and electronic money. In the 1990s, Harvey Barnard proposed a new currency reform idea that included a national sales tax in lieu of the federal income tax with the aim of zero inflation and a stable economy. The National Economic Stabilization and Recovery Act (NESARA) he called it. His idea was for the government to issue currency in three forms - standard silver coins, standard gold ones, and Treasury credit notes or Greenbacks. Treasury notes would replace Federal Reserve ones with the Federal Reserve abolished. NESARA was never introduced in Congress and might work if enacted. But why bother when the central problem is more simply addressed by returning money creation power to the government as the Constitution mandates. Paper currency isn't the problem. A private banking cartel controlling it is what's at issue to fix. By doing it, "the water of a free-flowing money supply can transform an arid desert of debt into the green abundance envisioned by our forefathers". It's there for the taking by simply "eliminating the financial parasite that is draining our abundance away", and there's nothing complicated about doing it. The Federal Debt How to pay it off is the question Congress one day must address. We can't grow our way out, but here's another way - pay it off "by turning (government) bonds into what they should have been all along, legal tender". Economic analyst Al Martin cites a 2001 US Treasury study showing that US debt service may force the government to raise the personal income tax to 65% by 2013, and if interest can't be paid, bankruptcy and economic collapse will follow as well as for global economies within five days. The only alternative at that point would be "through currency (and) military might, or internal military power ..." However, two centuries ago, Alexander Hamilton showed "that Congress could dispose of the federal debt by 'monetizing' it, but Congress made the mistake of delegating that function to a private banking system". It can fix it by "buying back its own bonds with newly-issued US Notes" it can print in limitless amounts - debt and interest free. It's being done now - "not by the government but by the private Federal Reserve". However, doing it leaves the bonds in circulation, with two sets of securities (bonds and cash) instead of one. "This highly inflationary (scheme) could be avoided" if the government just bought back its own bonds and voided them out - a win-win arrangement for the nation and public with only bankers losing out as they should. It's simple to do and would be able to "extinguish the national debt with the click of a mouse". In January 2004, the Treasury did it when it "called" (paid off) a thirty-year bond issue prior to its due date. Paying "in book-entry form" eliminated doing it with paper currencies or checks and turned securities from interest-bearing to non-interest bearing ones. Bondholders had a choice. They could take their redemption amount in cash or not sell and get no interest. By this method, the Treasury "can pay off the entire federal debt ... It just has to announce that it is calling its bonds and other securities, and that they will be paid 'in book-entry form' ". No cash is involved and funds received can be otherwise reinvested. The process can be accomplished gradually as securities come due. It's just a matter of doing it along with restoring money creation power to the government and making America democratic again, unbeholden to bankers. Federal Debt Liquidation without Inflation "Inflation results when the money supply increases faster than goods and services, and replacing government securities with cash would not change the size of the money supply". If government buys its own bonds, they simply convert from interest-bearing notes into non-interest-bearing legal tender (cash). The money supply remains unchanged, and there's no inflationary impact. That's "very different from what happens today" with the Fed buying bonds, not voiding them out, and creating "reserves" for issuing "many times their value in new loans". It adds new cash to the money supply - a "highly inflationary (scheme simply avoided by having) the government buy back its own bonds and (take) them out of circulation". It's also a way to solve the "Social Security crisis". Resolve it by "simply cashing out (of) federal bond holdings (in exchange for) newly-issued US notes" with no inflationary effect because no new money would be created. Bonds would become cash, remain in the fund, and be used for future pay-outs. Fed-held securities could be cashed out the same way and just as benignly. Cash would replace bonds. They'd be voided out. The money supply would be unchanged, and inflation would be avoided. It would work no differently for foreign central bank held debt since bonds and cash are the same thing and either can be held in reserve to support their own currencies or to buy oil per the 1974 OPEC agreement. Already sovereign debt holders are cutting back, reducing their US securities reserves but doing it discretely so as not to be disruptive. However, "the tide is rolling out, and US bonds will be coming back to (our) shores whether we like it or not". At issue is who'll buy them and whether an inflationary or non-inflationary path will be taken. So far it's the former with all the dangers involved. Federal Reserve-Issued "Helicopter" Money Early in the new millennium, deflationary concerns were great enough for Ben Bernanke to deliver a Washington 2002 speech titled: "Deflation: Making Sure 'It' Doesn't Happen Here". He explained that lowering interest rates isn't the sole way to inject new money into the economy. The "US government has a new technology, called a printing press (an electronic one), that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost". The government could reflate the economy and buy hard assets at the same time. At issue again is whether government or private bankers do it (or local communities acting independently) and the positive or negative effects of each choice. Today we're banking cartel controlled, and it's "brought the system to the brink of collapse. The privately-controlled Federal Reserve, which was chartered specifically to 'maintain a stable currency', has allowed the money supply to balloon out of control. The Fed manipulates the money supply and regulates its value behind closed doors, in blatant violation of the Constitution and the antitrust laws" with the full faith and blessing of the administration, Congress and courts. It "can't be held to account; it doesn't even have to explain its rationale or reveal what is going on". Imagine the difference if the "banking spider ... could be decapitated, returning national (money creation) sovereignty to the people themselves". In other words, the rightful owner. _____ A final article addresses a people-oriented banking system. Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10 am US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13553 http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/05/reviewing-ellen-browns-web-of-debt-part_15.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 fentona at shaw.ca Mon Jun 8 08:39:29 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 07:39:29 -0700 Subject: [R-G] International solidarity protests against Peruvian forest laws Message-ID: http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/global/latin/47043272.html International solidarity protests against Peruvian forest laws By Rick Kearns, Today correspondent Story Published: Jun 8, 2009 Story Updated: Jun 8, 2009 NEW YORK ? Thousands of demonstrators on two continents have joined the struggle to defend the rights of indigenous peoples in Peru, who have been staging road and pipeline blockades for more than 50 days. Advocates are fighting against a series of Forest Laws that facilitate the seizing of indigenous land by various corporations as part of a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, and that criminalize protest and provide immunity to military who kill demonstrators. This year?s demonstrations follow actions staged last year when Peruvian indigenous leaders shut down parts of the country and lifted the strikes weeks later after being promised concessions. The concessions, according to spokespeople, did not materialize and the Inter-ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon or AIDESEP renewed the struggle in April with the help of 40,000 indigenous peoples. As the blockades and counter-measures unfolded, some allies have responded with protests of their own. One of the more highly visible actions took place in New York City May 23 in front of the Peruvian Mission to the United Nations. Indigenous leaders from the U.S., Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and other countries were in New York to attend the eighth session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Egberto Tabo, general coordinator for the Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin, read from a statement entitled ?Solidarity with our Peruvian brothers and sisters.? ?As indigenous leaders from the five continents, we are profoundly concerned about current events in the Peruvian Amazon. This past May 9 the Peruvian Government declared a State of Emergency in various districts. ? The State of Emergency is nothing more than a disproportionate response to the legitimate complaints and demands for indigenous rights. ? and is worsening conflicts, criminalizing social protest and putting at even greater risk indigenous peoples rights.? Tabo said COICA, and the 63 other organizations that signed the petition, received support from the UN Permanent Forum. The signatories had a list of requests and denunciations aimed at the Peruvian government. According to the statement, the protestors requested the lifting of the emergency decree and they denounced government press releases sent to Peruvian media that avoided addressing the main concerns of the demonstrations, as well as demanding that the government respect the International Labour Organization treaty 169 ??which has constitutional status in Peru. ? and which both establish that Native peoples should be consulted regarding all actions that impact them.? ?It is clear that the development of the Amazon is being carried out ignoring the wishes of the indigenous people and that the Amazon is seen as having natural riches that should be sold to the highest bidder,? Tabo said. ?We cannot continue to allow a group of transnational companies to divide up the Amazon, as if it were just a business without consideration given to the territory of ancestral peoples, or without taking into account that this is the ?lungs of the world? and the greatest source of fresh water on the continent. We will not permit the continuation of this exploitation.? Among the signers of the statement were the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Colombia, and the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia, the Council of All the Lands of Chile and the National Network of Mayan Peoples of Guatemala. The list included indigenous and allied groups from Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Argentina, the U.S., Peru, Kenya, Papua, Suriname, Algeria, South Africa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Canada (Assembly of First Nations), Venezuela, Brazil, Nepal and India. The U.S. featured several organizations including Amazon Watch, Din? CARE, Environmental Defense Fund, Hawaii Institute for Human Rights, Indigenous Environmental Network, and the Xicana Indigenous Woman?s Network. Tabo presented the statement to a representative of the Peruvian Mission who gave no comment upon receiving the document. In the week after the New York demonstration, allies and sympathizers in Los Angeles, Calif., as well as Lima and Puno, Peru held events to call attention to the struggle of the indigenous peoples of Peru. While UN Permanent Forum officials did not issue a formal response during the New York protest, Chair Victoria Tauli-Corpuz released an official statement June 2, after the meeting. ?The Chair of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues expresses her deep concern on the reports received during the Eighth Session of the UNPFII, regarding the current situation in Peru. According to the information received, a state of siege was decreed by the Peruvian Government on 8 May 2009 in response to the mobilization of indigenous peoples in the Amazon region against extractive industries concessions in the area without the adequate consultations and respect for their free, prior and informed consent. ?The Chair wishes to recall that the Peruvian Government is under the obligation to consult and respect indigenous peoples? rights as a Party to ILO Convention 169. Furthermore, Peru led the negotiations on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and was one of the countries which actively supported the adoption of the Declaration, which calls for the full respect of indigenous peoples? rights, including the rights related to their traditional lands, territories and resources and to their free, prior and informed consent.? According to comments made by AIDESEP President Alberto Pizango in the first week of June, further protest actions in Peru will continue. (One of the protest issues involves criminal charges filed against Pizango for his involvement in the blockades.) From fentona at shaw.ca Mon Jun 8 12:48:29 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 11:48:29 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Fwd: PERU: More "Free Trade" Repression References: Message-ID: Begin forwarded message: > From: Rights Action > Date: June 8, 2009 8:29:01 AM PDT (CA) > To: 'Rights Action' > Subject: PERU: More "Free Trade" Repression > > MORE ?FREE TRADE? REPRESSION > THIS TIME IN A PLACE CALLED PERU > > BELOW: A report from Amazon Watch on the recent killing of dozens > of indigenous people in Peru. > > As you read the reports, understand that this is not ?their? issue; > this is a global issue; this is ?our? issue in the north (el > norte). Since the 1980s and 1990s, the governments of the USA and > Canada -- along with our ?development? institutions (from the World > Bank, International Monetary Fund and Inter-American Development > Bank, to our ?aid? agencies [US-AID, CIDA]) -- have been pushing for > and insisting on the ?free trade? trade model of development, on the > signing of ?free trade? agreements. > > WHAT TO DO: See below. > > To get on/ off Rights Action's email list: > http://www.rightsaction.org/lists/?p=subscribe&id=3/ > > = = = > > AMAZON WATCH > > In Bagua, Peru: Gregor MacLennan + 511 - 993 916-389 In the U.S.: > Atossa Soltani, 202-256-9795, atossa at amazonwatch.org; Nick Magel, > 419-283-2728,nick at amazonwatch.org; > > POLICE OPEN FIRE ON INDIGENOUS BLOCKADE IN THE PERUVIAN AMAZON - 25 > CIVILIANS AND 9 POLICE DEAD, 150 INJURED > > Peruvian Government Criticized for Orchestrating Violent Attack on > Peaceful Blockade While Censoring Congressional Debate on "Free > Trade Laws" > > Interviews with Eyewitnesses and High-resolution Photos Available > Upon Request Photos of June 5 Police Attack on Peaceful Blockade in > Bagua > > Bagua, Peru (June 6, 2009) ? In the early morning hours on Friday, > Peruvian Special Forces staged a violent raid on a group of > indigenous people at a peaceful blockade on a road outside of Bagua > in a remote area of the northern Peruvian Amazon resulting in 25 > civilians confirmed dead and more than 150 injured. > > Over 600 police attacked several thousand unarmed Awajun and Wambis > indigenous peoples including many women and children and forcibly > dispersed them using tear gas and live ammunition. > > Dramatic photos (available on www.amazonwatch.org) of the attack > show clearly the police brutally beating and shooting demonstrators > at close range. > > At 2am police began to approach the demonstrators as they were > sleeping along the Fernando Bela?nde Terry road. Demonstrators > refused to move from the roadblock as police in helicopters fired > teargas grenades and live ammunition. Eyewitnesses report that > police also attacked from both sides firing live rounds into the > crowd as people fled into surrounding steep hillsides, many becoming > trapped. > > As the unarmed demonstrators were being killed and injured some > wrestled with police, fighting back in self-defense, which resulted > in the reported deaths of nine police officers. > > In local radio reports the chief of police claimed that the > indigenous demonstrators were armed and fired first. This claim has > been strongly rejected by dozens of local eyewitnesses including > local journalists who confirmed that Amazonian demonstrators have > been entirely peaceful and only bear traditional spears and in no > way provoked any violence. A point highlighted by the fact that the > blockades have been going on for 56 days without a single incident. > > Gregor MacLennan of Amazon Watch who is currently in Bagua gathering > first hand testimonies from blockade participants, local journalists > and residents stated: > > "All eyewitness testimonies say that Special Forces opened fire on > peaceful and unarmed demonstrators including from helicopters, > killing and wounding dozens in an orchestrated attempt to open the > roads. It seems that the police had come with orders to shoot. This > was not a clash, but a coordinated police raid with police firing on > protesters from both sides of their blockade." > > "There have been many accounts of atrocities committed by the > Special Forces. Some have reported seeing the police throwing liquid > on the cadavers and burning them. Also local residents have given > accounts of having seen police throwing bodies of dead civilians > into the river in an apparent attempt to underreport the number of > dead. We've also received accounts that some of those injured were > being detained by security forces and denied medical attention > leading to additional deaths. There are many people still reported > missing and access to medical attention in the region is horribly > inadequate." > > Peru's Ombudsman's office issued a strong statement yesterday > demanding an end to the violence. Letters condemning the > government's actions are pouring in from thousands of Peruvians and > international human rights activists and organizations. Today, > Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the chair of the Permanent Forum on > Indigenous Issues of the United Nations issued a letter expressing > "shock and deep distress at reports received of atrocities > committed" and calling on the government to "Immediately cease all > violence against indigenous communities and organizations." > > Indigenous peoples have vowed to continue protests until the > Peruvian Congress revokes the "free trade" decrees issued by > President Garcia under special powers granted by Congress in the > context of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States. > > In the past two weeks, the Constitutional Committee of Congress has > ruled that legislative decrees 994 and 1090 were unconstitutional. > The Peruvian Congress was scheduled to debate the revocation of > decree 1090 again on Thursday. However, Garcia's political party, > for the third time, prevented the debate preferring instead to > attack the peaceful blockades. The government Ombudsman office has > filed a legal action with the constitutional tribunal regarding the > unconstitutionality of decree 1064, which affects the land rights > laws in Peru. > > "Garcia has rejected several congressional debates on the decrees, > opting for violent attacks and brute force that will only worsen > this conflict. It is outrageous that the ministers are now > attempting to blame the victims for this incident and cover up the > number of indigenous people dead," said Gregor MacLennan. > > The protests have provoked national debate about government policies > in the Amazon that ignore indigenous peoples and encourage large- > scale extractive industries in Amazonian lands. Indigenous peoples > assert that new laws undermine their rights and open up their > ancestral lands to private companies for mining, logging, > plantations, and oil drilling without their consultation or consent. > > AIDESEP, the national indigenous organization of Peru presented a > legal petition yesterday for "precautionary measures" to the Inter- > American Commission on Human Rights requesting intervention to > prevent more bloodshed. Orders for the arrest of leaders of AIDESEP, > including Alberto Pizango who is being charged with sedition, were > put in effect on Friday. > > A coalition of human rights and environmental organizations are > urging the Garcia Government to stand down and cease violent > confrontations by the military and calling for solidarity > demonstrations at Peruvian Embassies around the world. There were > demonstrations on Friday at the Peruvian Government missions in San > Francisco and Washington, DC. More are planned next week. > > AIDESEP, the national indigenous organization of Peru has called for > a nationwide general strike starting June 11th. > > AIDESEP: www.aidesep.org.pe. > > = = = > > WHAT TO DO? > > Contact AMAZON WATCH: In Bagua, Peru: Gregor MacLennan, > +511-993-916-389. In the U.S.: Atossa Soltani, 202-256-9795, atossa at amazonwatch.org > ; Nick Magel, 419-283-2728, nick at amazonwatch.org; > > EDUCATIONAL DELEGATION TO GUATEMALA - JULY 6-14 Please join this > trip that will investigate ?Dam ?Development? Projects under-mining > human rights & the environment?. Over 9 days, delegates will meet > with development, enviro and human rights activists; visit Chixoy > hydro-electric dam affected Mayan-Achi communities; visit Mayan > Q?eqchi communities that may well be harmed by the pending Xalala > hydro-electric dam; visit Mayan-Mam communities being harmed by > Goldcorp Inc?s huge gold mine. Interested: Karen Spring: spring.kj at gmail.com > > To get on/ off Rights Action's email list: > http://www.rightsaction.org/lists/?p=subscribe&id=3/ > From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 8 15:12:49 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 14:12:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Community Action Alert on York University conference questioning Israeli's right to exist In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <2146425493.486891244495569384.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> From: JEWISH CANADA [mailto:news at jewishcanada.ca] Sent: June 8, 2009 1:24 PM Subject: Community Action Alert on York University conference questioning Israeli's right to exist COMMUNITY ACTION ALERT REGARDING UPCOMING YORK UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE QUESTIONING ISRAEL ?S RIGHT TO EXIST B?nai Brith Canada has brought to urgent attention of the Government the sponsorship by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of an upcoming June 22nd-23rd conference at York University titled, ?Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace?. As many of you know, this conference being held under the guise of academia is in fact a blatant exercise in anti-Zionist propaganda. Its entire thrust calls into question the Jewish State?s very right to exist, and promises to be a veritable ?who?s who? of anti-Israel propagandists. We were disturbed to learn that the SSHRC, a federal agency that is answerable to Parliament and which reports directly to the Minster of Industry, was listed as a lead sponsor on the conference?s website, contributing both moral and financial support. Subsequent to our appeal to the Government on this matter, the Hon. Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology, released a statement on the conference that is reproduced below. While the statement stops short of announcing a funding withdrawal, it does bring into question the SSHRC?s continued support for the conference. Statement from the Hon. Gary Goodyear OTTAWA, June 5, 2009 ? The following is a statement from the Hon. Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology, on the conference at York University entitled, ?Israel/Palestine: mapping models of statehood and prospects for peace?. ?Our government is committed to the principle academic independence and the independent, arms-length, peer review process for assessing applications for research grants. ?It has come to my attention that following a recommendation of a peer review board earlier this year, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council provided $19,750 under its Aid to Research Workshops and Conferences Program to a conference at York University entitled ?Israel/Palestine: mapping models of statehood and prospects for peace?. ?Approval of this funding was based on an initial proposal that did not include detailed information on the speakers at the conference. Since funding was provided, the organizers of the conference have added a number of speakers to their agenda. ?Several individuals and organizations have expressed their grave concerns that some of the speakers have, in the past, made comments that have been seen to be anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic. Some have also expressed concerns that the event is no longer an academic research-focussed event. ?Therefore, I have spoken to the president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to bring these concerns to his immediate attention and asked that Council give them full consideration. In particular, I asked that the Council, once they have seen this information, to consider conducting a second peer review of the application to determine whether or not the conference still meets SSHRC?s criteria for funding of an academic conference.? ACTION ALERT ? WRITE TO MINISTER GARY GOODYEAR ? Convey your thanks and appreciation to the Minster for his request to the SSHRC that it reconsider its support for this conference in light of the serious concerns that have been brought to light. ? Urge the Minister to direct the SSHRC to immediately withdraw its funding from this sham of a conference that seeks to delegitimize the Jewish State and its supporters here at home. ? Please send a blind carbon copy of your letter to B?nai Brith Canada at bnb at bnaibrith.ca Office of the Hon. Gary Goodyear 117 Confederation Building House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6 T: (613) 996.1307 F: (613) 996.8340 E-mail: goodyg at parl.gc.ca B'nai Brith Canada has been active in Canada since 1875 as the foremost Jewish human rights organization. To learn more about its advocacy work and diverse community and social programs, please visit http://www.bnaibrith.ca . From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 8 15:27:23 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 14:27:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] 'Single-Payer' Supporters Challenge Democrats In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <52671882.493491244496443718.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/05/AR2009060503518.html?wprss=rss_politics Washington Post June 6, 2009 'Single-Payer' Supporters Challenge Democrats "Obama is really the one who is puzzling to us. We were all supporters of him. . . . It's hard to understand how he can expect to rally support around a plan that will leave the big insurance companies in charge and keep hurting patients." Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association By Dan Eggen When President Obama convened a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, N.M., last month, he wanted to talk about credit card reform. But many in the crowd had a different agenda. "So many people go bankrupt using their credit cards to pay for health care," the first questioner said to applause. "Why have they taken single-payer off the plate?" The "single-payer" activists had struck again. As Obama and congressional Democrats work to hammer out landmark health-care legislation, they face increasingly noisy protests from those on the left who complain that a national program like those in Europe has been excluded from the debate. The White House and Democratic leaders have made clear there is no chance that Congress will adopt a single-payer approach -- named for the idea that a single government-backed insurance plan would pay for all Americans' medical costs -- because it is too radical a change. That has not dissuaded single-payer activists, who have spent months hounding Democratic lawmakers and organizing demonstrations, including one that resulted in 13 arrests at a Senate hearing last month. The offensive continues this weekend with plans to swamp a series of "house parties" on health care hosted by Organizing for America, an Obama-backed project at the Democratic National Committee. Opportunity and Challenge The movement poses both an opportunity and a challenge for Obama, who is able to position himself as a centrist by opposing a single-payer plan but who risks angering a vocal part of the Democratic base. "Obama is really the one who is puzzling to us," said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association, a union that has been leading many of the single-payer protests. "We were all supporters of him. . . . It's hard to understand how he can expect to rally support around a plan that will leave the big insurance companies in charge and keep hurting patients." Many Republicans see the movement as evidence that Democrats are setting the country on the path to "government-run health care," as they describe it. Conservatives for Patients' Rights, an advocacy group bankrolled by ousted Columbia/HCA chief Rick Scott, unveiled a $1.2 million ad campaign Thursday that portrays Democratic plans as a "bulldozer" aimed at eliminating private insurance companies. "It's just one step removed from a single-payer system," Scott said in an interview, referring to current Democratic proposals. "The goal is to get rid of the insurance companies, and then the government makes all the decisions." Obama and other Democrats dispute such characterizations, saying they favor a plan that would marry private and public resources to control costs and expand coverage for 46 million uninsured Americans. Obama wrote in a letter to Democrats this week that he "strongly" backs creating a public insurance option to compete with private carriers, and also signaled that he is open to the idea of requiring coverage for all Americans. Obama has rejected the idea of establishing a single government insurance program, however, saying the U.S. tradition of providing health care through employers would make such a shift politically and practically impossible. "If I were starting a system from scratch, then I think that the idea of moving towards a single-payer system could very well make sense," Obama said in response to the questioner in New Mexico, echoing comments he made during his presidential campaign. "The only problem is that we're not starting from scratch. . . . We don't want a huge disruption as we go into health-care reform where suddenly we're trying to completely reinvent one-sixth of the economy." Advocates of a single national program argue that its benefits would far outweigh the drawbacks, noting that most other industrialized nations guarantee coverage for all at far lower costs with generally better health outcomes. They also dispute allegations by Scott and other conservatives that such a system would lead to rationing and waiting lists, saying that Americans face the same problems and worse now. "Single-payer on its merits can win," said Tim Carpenter, national director of Progressive Democrats of America. "But we've been cut out by the doctors, the insurance companies and other special interests." A Small Victory The single-payer activists won a small victory this week when Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who is leading health-care negotiations as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, agreed to meet with them after months of tension. Those in attendance said Baucus apologized for not including single-payer advocates more prominently in earlier hearings, but he also said it is too late to change direction. Polling on single-payer insurance varies widely, based largely on how the issue is framed. In an April Kaiser Family Foundation poll about ways to increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance, the option finished last on an eight-item list, with 49 percent in favor and 47 percent opposed. Moreover, about a third of those who support a public insurance option would turn against the idea if it were an initial step toward single-payer care, the poll found Most mainstream progressive groups, including some that have previously advocated a single-payer approach, think Obama's strategy has the best hope for success. Many groups draw lessons from the Clinton administration, which buckled under attacks from Republicans and the medical lobby when it proposed a more centralized approach [NB: not single payer] . This time around, unions and groups such as Health Care for America Now plan to spend more than $80 million on ad buys, outreach and other efforts to support Obama and the Democrats. The DNC, using Obama's campaign e-mail list of 13 million names, kicks off its effort today with thousands of "house parties" focused on "the urgency of passing health care reform this year," according to a news release. In an e-mail this week, Progressive Democrats of America urged its supporters to "take the single-payer message" to the meetings. DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse said the gatherings are open to all. "Their voices, energy and passion are welcome, and no one is looking at them as the enemy," he said. "It's just that with the system we have, single-payer is not something that's likely to happen." Polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 8 15:35:16 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 14:35:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Legacy of George Tiller In-Reply-To: <1650525816.496371244496770985.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1860581980.497971244496916728.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2009/06/carole-joffe-the-legacy-of-george-tiller.html The Beacon Broadside June 4, 2009 The Legacy of George Tiller By Carole Joffe [Today's blog post is from Carole Joffe, author of Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us (Beacon Press, forthcoming January 2010) and Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to provide Abortion before and after Roe v Wade (Beacon Press, 1996) and professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis.] "It comes down to who is the patient. Is the woman the patient, or is the fetus the patient? One or other is the patient. I've never heard a fetus talk to me. I've heard thousands and thousands of women share their pain, their desperation, and their hopelessness." These words were spoken to me some twenty years ago by Dr. George Tiller, as I was researching a book on abortion providers' experiences before and after Roe v Wade. Tiller, who was brutally assassinated in his church on May 31, was one of the most compassionate-- and feminist-- individuals I have ever encountered. "Trust women" was his well-known motto, prominently displayed at his clinic in Wichita, Kansas. He was asked repeatedly by friends how he could continue his work in the face of the unending violence and legal harassment that he endured in the years leading up to his murder: his home and office were frequently blockaded (I recall hearing that he and his wife had to be helicoptered out of their house to attend a child's wedding, as antiabortion fanatics were surrounding his home); he was shot in both arms in 1993; and he was subjected to numerous lawsuits brought by a grandstanding anti-abortion Attorney General in Kansas and by Operation Rescue operatives, all of which he ultimately won, but which took a huge toll, financially and emotionally. His answer was always the same: "Where else can these women go?" Tiller's answer was not a rhetorical one. He was one of the very few physicians in the United States who provided abortion care well into the third trimester of pregnancy. It is this fact that made him so reviled in antiabortion circles, and unquestionably the most controversial abortion provider in the country. Operation Rescue relocated their offices to Wichita a few years ago, with the specific intent of closing him down. Each day, the women who came to him from all over the U.S., and from abroad as well, had to go through a gauntlet of protestors holding grotesque posters and screaming about "Tiller the baby killer." It is hardly surprising that antiabortion zealots would find Dr. Tiller such a convenient target, focusing on his late term procedures. What has been more surprising, and disappointing, to me has been the inadequate coverage of Tiller's work in most of the mainstream media in the days since his murder. I myself have spoken to a fair number of reporters, have read numerous stories from papers across the country, and consumed a great deal of television and radio reporting on this event. I have been struck that although all reporters mention that he offered late term abortions, as a way of explaining his notoriety in antiabortion circles, remarkably few of these print or radio and television journalists explained why Tiller did this, and who actually were the recipients of these procedures. The fact that so many of those reporting on Tiller were so oblivious of the circumstances of his patients is in itself a powerful indication of the marginality of both abortion providers and patients in American culture. In simplest terms, many of those who came to George Tiller's clinic for late second or third trimester abortions were women (and their partners) who were carrying much wanted pregnancies that had gone horribly wrong. These were women in many cases who had already set up cribs and had baby showers. Some of these women had fetuses with heartbreaking anomalies, that were discovered only later in pregnancy, such as anencephaly, a lethal birth defect in which most of the brain and parts of the skull are missing. Other women had themselves become very ill in the course of a pregnancy, such as the onset of cancer, which demanded a course of chemotherapy. Tiller, himself a practicing Christian, had set aside a space in his clinic-- a Quiet Room-- for grieving parents, who could if they wished, be counseled by a chaplain on staff, and participate in a baptism or other blessings for the lost pregnancy. In a perceptive piece written immediately after Tiller's death, the journalist Michelle Goldberg points out the irony that many of the procedures that he performed, for wanted pregnancies that had gone terribly wrong, "are as far away from the much-reviled concept of 'abortion on demand' that one could get... Almost anyone of childbearing age could end up needing Tiller's services." To be sure, not all of the abortions that Tiller performed were for difficult medical situations. Some were for wrenching social situations. Tiller was commonly referred to as "Saint George" within the abortion providing community, not only because he persisted in his practice for so long in the face of constant threats, but because he took on cases no one else would. To relate just one of numerous instances I have heard, a clinic director in the deep South was faced with a situation of a young girl, brought to the clinic by her mother: "a very pregnant eleven years, blond, blue eyes, and small... too far in the pregnancy for us to help." The girl had been raped by a relative. The solution chosen was a familiar one in the abortion providing world. The clinic staff donated money to the indigent family for travel expenses, sent them off to Wichita, and Tiller performed her abortion for free. Why did Dr. Tiller receive a constant stream of referrals from his colleagues across the country? Why are there only one or two other doctors remaining in the U.S. who have a practice similar to his? The answer lies in a combination of highly restrictive state laws and hospital regulations governing later abortions, inadequate training opportunities for these more complex procedures, and, of course, the kind of unbearable scrutiny that likely awaits anyone willing to undergo this work. In the wake of this horrific murder, many have rightly called for a more widespread condemnation of the violence that has plagued the abortion providing community for years. As Gloria Feldt, former president of Planned Parenthood aptly put it, "George Tiller needs more than candlelight vigils," and his death demands "massive outrage" from all sectors of society, particularly political leaders. But I also believe that another response to this killing must be to demand that the mainstream medical community acknowledge the reality that there will always be some women who need abortions later on in pregnancy. Local medical institutions must make provision for these cases-- especially since these women can no longer be sent off to Kansas, out of sight and mind of "respectable" doctors and hospitals. In the abstract, late term abortions are understandably distasteful to many. When considered in the context of real women's lives, however, these procedures are essential. This is what George Tiller understood. This will hopefully be his legacy. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 8 15:42:37 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 14:42:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Why Flaherty Loves His $50 Billion Deficit In-Reply-To: <478578121.6664871243976729161.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1809256134.501751244497357543.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> TheTyee.ca June 1, 2009 Why Flaherty Loves His $50 Billion Deficit Finance Minister Jim Flaherty reassures his base: Economic Club of Toronto. After creating it with tax cuts, he has an excuse to slash government. By Murray Dobbin It is astonishing given all the commentary and news stories about the "sudden" $50 billion federal deficit there has not been a single story in the mainstream media that focuses on the principal explanation: the huge tax cuts made by the Liberals and Conservatives since 1995. First it was former finance minister Paul Martin with his $100 billion income tax cut over five years starting in 2000. Then it was Jim Flaherty in 2007 with $60 billion over five years. Add to that the $12 billion lost each year by lowering the GST from seven per cent to five per cent and the $50 billion is no mystery. It was an inevitability whenever the next recession hit. But what to make of the sudden embrace of deficits by those who built their political careers on fiscal conservatism? There is no mystery here, either. Neo-cons like Jim Flaherty don't really care about deficits per se -- their ultimate goal is downsizing the social and redistributive role of government. From that perspective, the $50 billion shortfall is a godsend: a useful crisis that will provide the rationale for huge spending cuts. Without all those tax cuts, it is arguable that there would be no deficit at all. Not only that, of course, we could have been spending that money on the collective needs of Canadians -- municipal infrastructure, national child care, pharmacare, lowered tuition fees, money for greening the economy, targeted industrial development. Giving away the store Between 1984 and 2006, the federal government voluntarily gave up more than $250 billion in revenue through tax cuts, which went disproportionately to the wealthy and large corporations. But just looking at the tax cuts implemented by the current minister since that time reveals that half the projected deficit was caused by Jim Flaherty himself. According to a January 2008 study by Marc Lee , a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), Flaherty's 2006 and 2007 tax cuts (scheduled to be phased in over five years) would result in a loss of revenue for 2008-09 of $28.2 billion: $5.9 billion in corporate taxes, $10.3 billion in personal income taxes and $12 billion in GST revenue. The corporate tax cuts skyrocket to $14.8 billion in 2012-13, according to Lee, as the corporate income tax rate falls to 15 per cent, the lowest of the G7 and one of the lowest in the OECD. Given the severe recession, these numbers would be somewhat lower but it does not alter the fact that the cuts were ill-advised and never accomplished their stated goals. The ideology held that these cuts would lead to economic growth and massive new corporate investment. All that was needed for endless growth into the future was for government to "get out of the way." The corporate tax cuts produced just what one would expect -- a huge increase in pre- and after tax profits through 2007 but without any comparable increase in new productive investment or productivity. Canada has been cutting corporate taxes for 10 years to levels now well below those of our main "competitor" -- the US (where the rate has remained steady through the decade) -- and yet our international competitiveness has declined. While the statutory corporate tax rate was being reduced by 11 percentage points since 1999, the Word Economic Forum reports that our competitiveness declined from fifth place in 1999 to tenth in 2008-09 . Indeed, corporate tax rates seem to have little to do with competitiveness. Six of the top ten countries are Northern European nations with some of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. Tax cuts and spending cuts are key elements of the Washington Consensus -- the ideology that has driven the global economy since the 1980s. This failed ideology was all about reducing the percentage of the economy devoted to public spending. This was revealed in dramatic fashion by Paul Martin in his 1995 speech on his budget, famous for cutting federal social spending by 40 per cent. Martin boasted, oddly enough, not about slaying the deficit but about reducing the role of government: "Relative to the size of our economy, program spending will be lower in 1996?97 than at any time since 1951." To maintain that lofty accomplishment, Martin rid the country of huge budget surpluses in the late 1990s with his $100 billion tax cut. The price of a civilized society "Taxes," said American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, "are the price we pay for a civilized society." Ultimately, when citizens decide questions about taxes, they are choosing between public goods and private goods. Presumably, the overall goal is one of happiness and if that is the case, a recent study suggests that so-called "tax relief" (taxes framed as an affliction) is over-rated. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development survey showed people in Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands ranked first, second and third, respectively, in the OECD's rankings of "life satisfaction." They are amongst the highest taxed countries in the world. Canada was eighth -- but one of only five countries to have registered a decline between 2000 and 2006. Another study , by economist Hugh MacKenzie of the CCPA, shows that Canadians get a great deal for the taxes they pay. Every Canadian gets an average of $17,000 worth of benefits from their tax-funded public services, which translates to about $41,000 for a middle-income family -- or 63 per cent of its yearly income. Says MacKenzie: "Tax cuts don't give you money for free. They introduce a trade off between a private benefit in the form of lower taxes and a reduced public benefit." There are only two ways to deal with the extraordinary deficits the country is facing: cuts to social spending or a return to a tax system that pays for the things we want. Jim Flaherty can hardly wait to use the $50 billion "crisis" to start cutting. Will Canadians stop him? From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 8 15:42:07 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 14:42:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The great, international, demonic, truly frightening Iranian threat In-Reply-To: <1193578810.501151244497283974.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <94547653.501551244497327858.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22782.htm The Great, International, Demonic, Truly Frightening Iranian Threat By William Blum June 07, 2009 " Information Clearing House " "The United States is "facing a nuclear threat in Iran" ? article in Chicago Tribune and other major newspapers, May 26 "the growing missile threat from North Korea and Iran" ? article in the Washington Post and other major newspapers, May 26 "Iran's threat transcends religion. Regardless of sectarian bent, Muslim communities need to oppose the attempts by Iran ... to extend Shia extremism and influence throughout the world." ? op-ed article in Boston Globe, May 27 "A Festering Evil. Doing nothing is not an option in handling the threat from Iran" ? headline in Investor's Business Daily, May 27, 2009 This is a very small sample from American newspapers covering but two days. "Fifty-one percent of Israelis support an immediate Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites" ? BBC, May 24 After taking office, on Holocaust Memorial Day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "We will not allow Holocaust-deniers [Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] to carry out another holocaust." ? Haaretz (Israel), May 14, 2009 Like clinical paranoia, "the threat from Iran" is impervious to correction by rational argument. Two new novels have just appeared, from major American publishers, thrillers based on Iran having a nuclear weapon and the dangers one can imagine that that portends ? "Banquo's Ghosts" by Rich Lowry & Keith Korman, and "The Increment" by David Ignatius. "Bomb, bomb, bomb. Let's bomb Iran," declares a CIA official in the latter book. The other book derides the very idea of "dialogue" with Iran while implicitly viewing torture as acceptable. 1 On May 12, in New York City, a debate was held on the proposition that "Diplomacy With Iran Is Going Nowhere" (English translation: "Should we bomb Iran?"). Arguing in the affirmative, were Liz Cheney, former State Department official (and daughter of a certain unindicted war criminal) and Dan Senor, formerly the top spokesman for Washington's Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. Their "opponents" were R. Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state, and Kenneth Pollack, former National Security Council official and CIA analyst and author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq", a book that, unsurprisingly, did not have too long a shelf life. 2 This is what "debate" on US foreign policy looks like in America in the first decade of the 21st century AD ? four quintessential establishment figures. If such a "debate" had been held in the Soviet Union during the Cold War ("Detente With The United States Is Going Nowhere"), the American mainstream media would unanimously have had a jolly time making fun of it. The sponsor of the New York debate was the conservative Rosenkranz Foundation, but if a liberal (as opposed to a progressive or radical leftist) organization had been the sponsor, while there probably would have been a bit more of an ideological gap between the chosen pairs of speakers, it's unlikely that any of the present-day myths concerning Iran would have been seriously challenged by either side. These myths include the following, all of which I've dealt with before in this report but inasmuch as they are repeated on a regular basis in the media and by administration representatives, I think that readers need to be reminded of the counter arguments. ? Iran has no right to nuclear weapons: Yet, there is no international law that says that the US, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not. Iran has every reason to feel threatened. In any event, the US intelligence community's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of December 2007, "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities", makes a point of saying in bold type and italics: ?This NIE does not assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons.? The report goes on to state: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program ." ? Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier: I have yet to read of Ahmadinejad saying simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally that he thinks that what we know as the Holocaust never happened. He has instead commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks. And he has questioned the figure of six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany, as have many other people of all political stripes. ? Ahmadinejad has called for violence against Israel: His 2005 remark re "wiping Israel off the map", besides being a very questionable translation, has been seriously misinterpreted, as evidenced by the fact that the following year he declared: ?The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom.? 3 Obviously, he was not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place peacefully. ? Iran has no right to provide arms to Hamas and Hezbollah: However, the United States, we are assured, has every right to do the same for Israel and Egypt. ? The fact that Obama says he's willing to "talk" to some of the "enemies" like Iran more than the Bush administration did sounds good: But one doesn't have to be too cynical to believe that it will not amount to more than a public relations gimmick. It's only change of policy that counts. Why doesn't Obama just state that he would not attack Iran unless Iran first attacked the US or Israel or anyone else? Besides, the Bush administration met with Iran on several occasions. The following should also be kept in mind: The Washington Post , March 5, 2009, reported : "A senior Israeli official in Washington" has asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation." This was the very last sentence in the article and, according to an extensive Nexis search, did not appear in any other English-language media in the world. In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion "Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel." She "also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears." This appeared in Haaretz.com , October 25, 2007 (print edition October 26), but not in any US media or in any other English-language world media except the BBC citing the Iranian Mehr English-language news agency, October 27. Notes 1. Washington Post , May 26, 2009 book review 2. Washington Post , May 15, 2009 3. Associated Press , December 12, 2006 From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Mon Jun 8 15:48:06 2009 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 14:48:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] center / constitutional rights: Act: Free San Francisco 8 Message-ID: <510788.41589.qm@web111509.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Take Action: Free the San Francisco 8! http://www.freethesf8.org/ Dear Supporter: In less than one week, the San Francisco 8 - former Black Panthers and other activists - will have a preliminary hearing in San Francisco. They are being charged with the murder of a police officer in 1971. The charges are based on confessions extracted by torture, and it is clear that the indictments against these men are an attempt to rewrite the history of the Black Panthers and the gains of the Civil Rights movement. Take action today and support the San Francisco 8. In 1973, New Orleans police employed torture over the course of several days to obtain information from members of the Black Panthers about the death of Sergeant John Young, an officer of the San Francisco Police Department. The men were stripped naked, beaten, blindfolded, covered in blankets soaked with boiling water and had electric probes placed on their genitals, among other methods. In 1974, a court ruled that both San Francisco and New Orleans police officers had engaged in torture to extract a confession, and a San Francisco judge dismissed charges against three men in 1975 based on that ruling. In January 2007, eight elder activists - Richard Brown, Richard O'Neal, Ray Boudreaux, Hank Jones, Francisco Torres, Harold Taylor, Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim - were arrested after a grand jury convened in San Francisco to reopen the case. The state Attorney General of California initiated the prosecution of the San Francisco 8, and he is the person who has the power to stop it. Put the pressure on and write Attorney General Jerry Brown to demand the charges against these activists be dropped. Stand for justice and support the San Francisco 8 today. Sincerely, Annette Dickerson Director of Education and Outreach ???? Take Action?? :) http://www.freethesf8.org/ Send a fax?? :) http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/383/t/4089/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27347 ? Sign the Open Letter?? :) http://www.freethesf8.org/what_to_do.html ?? Center for Constitutional Rights ll 666 Broadway 7th floor NY, NY 10012 ll 212-614-6464 ll http://www.ccrjustice.org??? From fentona at shaw.ca Mon Jun 8 16:37:41 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 15:37:41 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Fwd: Keeping Up with Latin America's Second Best Democracy References: <764A7A5D-E934-478B-96FF-E33D2BCB8016@vf.shawcable.net> Message-ID: http://www.borev.net/2009/06/keeping_up_with_latin_americas.html > Author: BoRev > > Peru celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square with a > bloody massacre of its own! So far dozens of Indigenous and > paramilitary forces have been killed. What the hell, right? Better > bloggers have been giving the blow by blow over the weekend. We've > just got a half-assed Monday morning roundup: > Indigenous leaders are upset because the government forced through a > series of oil, mining and logging deals turning over large swaths of > the Amazon to multinational companies without ever consulting the > tribes who actually live on the land. > After weeks of peaceful protest, dipshit President Alan Garcia > decided to respond "with serenity and firmness," which basically > meant sending in 400 paramilitaries forces to fire on people from > helicopters. > Protesters took some of the paramilitaries hostage during the melee. > Rather than negotiate, the government decided to bust them out, > Steve McQueen style, except they bungled the operation, killing nine > cops. > Human rights groups claim up to 100 indigenous have been killed. > Douchey government reports say: 9. > President Alan Garcia has charmingly referred to the Indians as > "barbarians," and argues that technically they are "not first class > citizens." > DON'T WORRY b/c the massacre is "unlikely to sour investors in the > medium-term or threaten his presidency." Whew! > The Wall Street Journal says Garcia can't concede to any indigenous > demands because Peru's "free" trade agreement with the U.S. won't > allow it. > Average Peruvians (and the UN) have been shocked by the massacre, so > the Government has started a hilarious media campaign to > blame...Hugo Chavez! Christ nobody would buy that, right? > Haha: actual headline from Today's Washington Times, "Suspicions > Link Chavez to Peru Revolt" > Here are lots of bloody pictures of the whole awfulness, in case > you're into that sort of thing. > Read more? > From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 8 16:36:34 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 15:36:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] 'The USS Liberty': America's Most Shameful Secret by Eric Margolis In-Reply-To: <59E8282CFB13451397152BEB666665F3@jac> Message-ID: <2047560567.528021244500594010.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis12.2.html ?The USS Liberty?: America 's Most Shameful Secret " Liberty 's" intercepts may have shown that Israel seized upon sharply rising Arab-Israeli tensions in May-June 1967 to launch a long-planned war to invade and annex the West Bank, Jerusalem , Golan and Sinai. by Eric Margolis This article was written in 2001. NEW YORK ? On the fourth day of the 1967 Arab Israeli War, the intelligence ship "USS Liberty" was steaming slowly in international waters, 14 miles off the Sinai Peninsula . Israeli armored forces were racing deep into Sinai in hot pursuit of the retreating Egyptian army. " Liberty ," a World War II freighter, had been converted into an intelligence vessel by the top-secret US National Security Agency, and packed with the latest signals and electronic interception equipment. The ship bristled with antennas and electronic "ears" including TRSSCOMM, a system that delivered real-time intercepts to Washington by bouncing a stream of microwaves off the moon. " Liberty " had been rushed to Sinai to monitor communications of the belligerents in the Third Arab Israeli War: Israel and her foes, Egypt , Syria , and Jordan . At 0800 hrs, 8 June, 1967, eight Israeli recon flights flew over " Liberty ," which was flying a large American flag. At 1400 hrs, waves of low-flying Israeli Mystere and Mirage-III fighter-bombers repeatedly attacked the American vessel with rockets, napalm, and cannon. The air attacks lasted 20 minutes, concentrating on the ship's electronic antennas and dishes. The " Liberty " was left afire, listing sharply. Eight of her crew lay dead, a hundred seriously wounded, including the captain, Commander William McGonagle. At 1424 hrs, three Israeli torpedo boats attacked, raking the burning " Liberty " with 20mm and 40mm shells. At 1431hrs an Israeli torpedo hit the " Liberty " midship, precisely where the signals intelligence systems were located. Twenty-five more Americans died. Israeli gunboats circled the wounded " Liberty ," firing at crewmen trying to fight the fires. At 1515, the crew were ordered to abandon ship. The Israeli warships closed and poured machine gun fire into the crowded life rafts, sinking two. As American sailors were being massacred in cold blood, a rescue mission by US Sixth Fleet carrier aircraft was mysteriously aborted on orders from the White House. An hour after the attack, Israeli warships and planes returned. Commander McGonagle gave the order: "prepare to repel borders." But the Israelis, probably fearful of intervention by the US Sixth Fleet, departed. " Liberty " was left shattered but still defiant, her flag flying. The Israeli attacks killed 34 US seamen and wounded 171 out of a crew of 297, the worst loss of American naval personnel from hostile action since World War II. Less than an hour after the attack, Israel told Washington its forces had committed a "tragic error." Later, Israel claimed it had mistaken " Liberty " for an ancient Egyptian horse transport. US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, and Joint Chiefs of Staff head, Admiral Thomas Moorer, insisted the Israeli attack was deliberate and designed to sink " Liberty ." So did three CIA reports; one asserted Israel 's Defense Minister, Gen. Moshe Dayan, had personally ordered the attack. In contrast to American outrage over North Korea's assault on the intelligence ship "Pueblo," Iraq's mistaken missile strike on the USS "Stark," last fall's bombing of the USS "Cole" in Aden, and the recent US-China air incident, the savaging of "Liberty" was quickly hushed up by President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. The White House and Congress immediately accepted Israel 's explanation and let the matter drop. Israel later paid a token reparation of US $6 million. There were reports two Israeli pilots who had refused to attack " Liberty " were jailed for 18 years. Surviving " Liberty " crew members would not be silenced. They kept demanding an open inquiry and tried to tell their story of deliberate attack to the media. Israel 's government worked behind the scenes to thwart these efforts, going so far as having American pro-Israel groups accuse " Liberty 's" survivors of being "anti-Semites" and "Israel-haters." Major TV networks cancelled interviews with the crew. A book about the " Liberty " by crewman James Ennes' was dropped from distribution. The Israel lobby branded him "an Arab propagandist." The attack on "Liberty" was fading into obscurity until last week, when intelligence expert James Bamford came out with Body of Secrets, his latest book about the National Security Agency. In a stunning revelation, Bamford writes that unknown to Israel, a US Navy EC-121 intelligence aircraft was flying high overhead the "Liberty," electronically recorded the attack. The US aircraft crew provides evidence that the Israeli pilots knew full well that they were attacking a US Navy ship flying the American flag. Why did Israel try to sink a naval vessel of its benefactor and ally? Most likely because " Liberty 's" intercepts flatly contradicted Israel 's claim, made at the war's beginning on 5 June, that Egypt had attacked Israel , and that Israel 's massive air assault on three Arab nations was in retaliation. In fact, Israel began the war by a devastating, Pearl-Harbor style surprise attack that caught the Arabs in bed and destroyed their entire air forces. Israel was also preparing to attack Syria to seize its strategic Golan Heights . Washington warned Israel not to invade Syria , which had remained inactive while Israel fought Egypt . Bamford says Israel 's offensive against Syria was abruptly postponed when " Liberty " appeared off Sinai, then launched once it was knocked out of action. Israel 's claim that Syria had attacked it could have been disproved by " Liberty ." Most significant, " Liberty 's" intercepts may have shown that Israel seized upon sharply rising Arab-Israeli tensions in May-June 1967 to launch a long-planned war to invade and annex the West Bank, Jerusalem , Golan and Sinai. Far more shocking was Washington 's response. Writes Bamford: "Despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel attacked the ship and killed American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson Administration and Congress covered up the entire incident." Why? Domestic politics. Johnson, a man never noted for high moral values, preferred to cover up the attack rather than anger a key constituency and major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Congress was even less eager to touch this "third rail" issue. Commander McGonagle was quietly awarded the Medal of Honor for his and his men's heroism ? not in the White House, as is usual, but in an obscure ceremony at the Washington Navy Yard. Crew member's graves were inscribed, "died in the Eastern Mediterranean. " as if they had be killed by disease, rather than hostile action. A member of President Johnson's staff believed there was a more complex reason for the cover-up: Johnson offered Jewish liberals unconditional backing of Israel , and a cover-up of the " Liberty " attack, in exchange for the liberal toning down their strident criticism of his policies in the then raging Vietnam War. Israel , which claims it fought a war of self defense in 1967 and had no prior territorial ambitions, will be much displeased by Bamford's revelations. Those who believe Israel illegally occupies the West Bank and Golan will be emboldened. Much more important, the US government's long, disgraceful cover-up of the premeditated attack on " Liberty " has now burst into the open and demands full-scale investigation. After 34 years, the voices of " Liberty 's" dead and wounded seamen must finally be heard. May 2, 2001 Eric Margolis, contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada. He is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World . See his website. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Jun 8 16:38:33 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 15:38:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] David Rovics: In the Name of God (the Murder of Dr. Tiller) In-Reply-To: <4676C523F30B4200A609F9BB1B15836D@twubby.com> Message-ID: <870222573.529141244500713877.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> David Rovics: In the Name of God (the Murder of Dr. Tiller) In the Name of God I woke up this morning And I turned on the news It was a Sunday morning They were sitting in the pews The doctor's wife was in the choir She was about to sing She saw it all in front of her And she heard that awful ring In the name of God he held his pistol Pointed at the doctor's head In the name of God he pulled the trigger Now the doctor's lying dead Dr. Tiller had a family Three daughters and a son Two girls were both doctors Who were proud of what he'd done They knew someone had to do something Before they left this world behind If it wasn't them then who would serve The cause of womankind In the name of God... This is not Afghanistan It's the Heartland USA Where a girl has to wonder If she'll get acid in her face Where they bomb the women's clinics Because the preacher told them to Where the man there on the TV Tells them that's what they should do In the name of God... David Rovics http://www.davidrovics.com http://davidrovics.guestbooks.cc http://www.soundclick.com/davidrovics http://songwritersnotebook.blogspot.com http://www.myspace.com/davidrovics http://twitter.com/drovics From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Jun 8 18:40:07 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:40:07 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold Message-ID: <4A2DAF67.7060807@ashisuto.co.jp> Six Ways the Financial Bailout Scams Taxpayers How the Financial Bailout Scams Taxpayers, Subsidizes Wall Street, and Props Up Our Broken Financial System by Andy Kroll Mother Jones (May 26 2009) This story first appeared on the Tom Dispatch website. On October 3rd, as the spreading economic meltdown threatened to topple financial behemoths like American International Group (AIG) and Bank of America and plunged global markets into freefall, the US government responded with the largest bailout in American history. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, better known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), authorized the use of $700 billion to stabilize the nation's failing financial systems and restore the flow of credit in the economy. The legislation's guidelines for crafting the rescue plan were clear: the TARP should protect home values and consumer savings, help citizens keep their homes, and create jobs. Above all, with the government poised to invest hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in various financial institutions, the legislation urged the bailout's architects to maximize returns to the American people. That $700 billion bailout has since grown into a more than $12 trillion commitment by the US government and the Federal Reserve. About $1.1 trillion of that is taxpayer money - the TARP money and an additional $400 billion rescue of mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The TARP now includes twelve separate programs, and recipients range from megabanks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase to automakers Chrysler and General Motors. Seven months in, the bailout's impact is unclear. The Treasury Department has used the recent "stress test" results it applied to nineteen of the nation's largest banks to suggest that the worst might be over; yet the International Monetary Fund as well as economists like New York University professor and economist Nouriel Roubini and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman predict greater losses in US markets, rising unemployment, and generally tougher economic times ahead. What cannot be disputed, however, is the financial bailout's biggest loser: the American taxpayer. The US government, led by the Treasury Department, has done little, if anything, to maximize returns on its trillion-dollar, taxpayer-funded investment. So far, the bailout has favored rescued financial institutions by subsidizing their losses to the tune of $356 billion, shying away from much-needed management changes and - with the exception of the automakers - letting companies take taxpayer money without a coherent plan for how they might return to viability. The bailout's perks have been no less favorable for private investors who are now picking over the economy's still-smoking rubble at the taxpayers' expense. The newer bailout programs rolled out by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner give private equity firms, hedge funds, and other private investors significant leverage to buy "toxic" or distressed assets, while leaving taxpayers stuck with the lion's share of the risk and potential losses. Given the lack of transparency and accountability, don't expect taxpayers to be able to object too much. After all, remarkably little is known about how TARP recipients have used the government aid received. Nonetheless, recent government reports, Congressional testimony, and commentaries offer those patient enough to pore over hundreds of pages of material glimpses of just how Wall Street friendly the bailout actually is. Here, then, based on the most definitive data and analyses available, are six of the most blatant and alarming ways taxpayers have been scammed by the government's $1.1-trillion, publicly-funded bailout. 1. By overpaying for its TARP investments, the Treasury Department provided bailout recipients with generous subsidies at the taxpayer's expense. When the Treasury Department ditched its initial plan to buy up "toxic" assets and instead invest directly in financial institutions, then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Jr assured Americans that they'd get a fair deal. "This is an investment, not an expenditure, and there is no reason to expect this program will cost taxpayers anything", he said in October 2008. Yet the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), a five-person group tasked with ensuring that the Treasury Department acts in the public's best interest, concluded in its monthly report for February that the department had significantly overpaid by tens of billions of dollars for its investments. For the ten largest TARP investments made in 2008, totaling $184.2 billion, Treasury received on average only $66 worth of assets for every $100 invested. Based on that shortfall, the panel calculated that Treasury had received only $176 billion in assets for its $254 billion investment, leaving a $78 billion hole in taxpayer pockets. Not all investors subsidized the struggling banks so heavily while investing in them. The COP report notes that private investors received much closer to fair market value in investments made at the time of the early TARP transactions. When, for instance, Berkshire Hathaway invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs in September, the Omaha-based company received securities worth $110 for each $100 invested. And when Mitsubishi invested in Morgan Stanley that same month, it received securities worth $91 for every $100 invested. As of May 15th, according to the Ethisphere TARP Index, which tracks the government's bailout investments, its various investments had depreciated in value by almost $147.7 billion. In other words, TARP's losses come out to almost $1,300 per American taxpaying household. 2. As the government has no real oversight over bailout funds, taxpayers remain in the dark about how their money has been used and if it has made any difference. While the Treasury Department can make TARP recipients report on just how they spend their government bailout funds, it has chosen not to do so. As a result, it's unclear whether institutions receiving such funds are using that money to increase lending - which would, in turn, boost the economy - or merely to fill in holes in their balance sheets. Neil M Barofsky, the special inspector general for TARP, summed the situation up this way in his office's April quarterly report to Congress: "The American people have a right to know how their tax dollars are being used, particularly as billions of dollars are going to institutions for which banking is certainly not part of the institution's core business and may be little more than a way to gain access to the low-cost capital provided under TARP". This lack of transparency makes the bailout process highly susceptible to fraud and corruption. Barofsky's report stated that twenty separate criminal investigations were already underway involving corporate fraud, insider trading, and public corruption. He also told the Financial Times that his office was investigating whether banks manipulated their books to secure bailout funds. "I hope we don't find a single bank that's cooked its books to try to get money, but I don't think that's going to be the case". Economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, suggested to TomDispatch in an interview that the opaque and complicated nature of the bailout may not be entirely unintentional, given the difficulties it raises for anyone wanting to follow the trail of taxpayer dollars from the government to the banks. "[Government officials] see this all as a Three Card Monte, moving everything around really quickly so the public won't understand that this really is an elaborate way to subsidize the banks", Baker says, adding that the public "won't realize we gave money away to some of the richest people". 3. The bailout's newer programs heavily favor the private sector, giving investors an opportunity to earn lucrative profits and leaving taxpayers with most of the risk. Under Treasury Secretary Geithner, the Treasury Department has greatly expanded the financial bailout to troubling new programs like the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP) and the Term Asset-Backed-Securities Loan Facility (TALF). The PPIP, for example, encourages private investors to buy "toxic" or risky assets on the books of struggling banks. Doing so, we're told, will get banks lending again because the burdensome assets won't weigh them down. Unfortunately, the incentives the Treasury Department is offering to get private investors to participate are so generous that the government - and, by extension, American taxpayers - are left with all the downside. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-prize winning economist, described the PPIP program in a New York Times op-ed this way: "Consider an asset that has a 50-50 chance of being worth either zero or $200 in a year's time. The average 'value' of the asset is $100. Ignoring interest, this is what the asset would sell for in a competitive market. It is what the asset is 'worth'. Under the plan by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the government would provide about 92 percent of the money to buy the asset but would stand to receive only fifty percent of any gains, and would absorb almost all of the losses. Some partnership! "Assume that one of the public-private partnerships the Treasury has promised to create is willing to pay $150 for the asset. That's fifty percent more than its true value, and the bank is more than happy to sell. So the private partner puts up $12, and the government supplies the rest - $12 in 'equity' plus $126 in the form of a guaranteed loan. "If, in a year's time, it turns out that the true value of the asset is zero, the private partner loses the $12, and the government loses $138. If the true value is $200, the government and the private partner split the $74 that's left over after paying back the $126 loan. In that rosy scenario, the private partner more than triples his $12 investment. But the taxpayer, having risked $138, gains a mere $37." Worse still, the PPIP can be easily manipulated for private gain. As economist Jeffrey Sachs has described it, a bank with worthless toxic assets on its books could actually set up its own public-private fund to bid on those assets. Since no true bidder would pay for a worthless asset, the bank's public-private fund would win the bid, essentially using government money for the purchase. All the public-private fund would then have to do is quietly declare bankruptcy and disappear, leaving the bank to make off with the government money it received. With the PPIP deals set to begin in the coming months, time will tell whether private investors actually take advantage of the program's flaws in this fashion. The Treasury Department's TALF program offers equally enticing possibilities for potential bailout profiteers, providing investors with a chance to double, triple, or even quadruple their investments. And like the PPIP, if the deal goes bad, taxpayers absorb most of the losses. "It beats any financing that the private sector could ever come up with", a Wall Street trader commented in a recent Fortune magazine story. "I almost want to say it is irresponsible". 4. The government has no coherent plan for returning failing financial institutions to profitability and maximizing returns on taxpayers' investments. Compare the treatment of the auto industry and the financial sector, and a troubling double standard emerges: As a condition for taking bailout aid, the government required Chrysler and General Motors to present detailed plans on how the companies would return to profitability. Yet the Treasury Department attached minimal conditions to the billions injected into the largest bailed-out financial institutions. Moreover, neither Geithner nor Lawrence Summers, one of President Barack Obama's top economic advisors, nor the president himself has articulated any substantive plan or vision for how the bailout will help these institutions recover and, hopefully, maximize taxpayers' investment returns. The Congressional Oversight Panel highlighted the absence of such a comprehensive plan in its January report. Three months into the bailout, the Treasury Department "has not yet explained its strategy", the report stated. "Treasury has identified its goals and announced its programs, but it has not yet explained how the programs chosen constitute a coherent plan to achieve those goals". Today, the department's endgame for the bailout still remains vague. Thomas Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, wrote in the Financial Times in May that the government's response to the financial meltdown has been "ad hoc, resulting in inequitable outcomes among firms, creditors, and investors". Rather than perpetually prop up banks with endless taxpayer funds, Hoenig suggests that the government should allow banks to fail. Only then, he believes, can crippled financial institutions and systems be fixed. "Because we still have far to go in this crisis, there remains time to define a clear process for resolving large institutional failure. Without one, the consequences will involve a series of short-term events and far more uncertainty for the global economy in the long run." The healthier and more profitable bailout recipients are once financial markets rebound, the more taxpayers will earn on their investments. Without a plan, however, banks may limp back to viability while taxpayers lose their investments or even absorb further losses. 5. The bailout's focus on Wall Street mega-banks ignores smaller banks serving millions of American taxpayers that face an equally uncertain future. The government may not have a long-term strategy for its trillion-dollar bailout, but its guiding principle, however misguided, is clear: What's good for Wall Street will be best for the rest of the country. On the day the mega-bank stress tests were officially released, another set of stress-test results came out to much less fanfare. In its quarterly report on the health of individual banks and the banking industry as a whole, Institutional Risk Analytics (IRA), a respected financial services organization, found that the stress levels among more than 7,500 FDIC-reporting banks nationwide had risen dramatically. For 1,575 of the banks, net incomes had turned negative due to decreased lending and less risk-taking. The conclusion IRA drew was telling: "Our overall observation is that US policy makers may very well have been distracted by focusing on nineteen large stress test banks designed to save Wall Street and the world's central bank bondholders, this while a trend is emerging of a going concern viability crash taking shape under the radar". The report concluded with a question: "Has the time come to shift the policy focus away from the things that we love, namely big zombie banks, to tackle things that are truly hurting us?" 6. The bailout encourages the very behaviors that created the economic crisis in the first place instead of overhauling our broken financial system and helping the individuals most affected by the crisis. As Joseph Stiglitz explained in the New York Times, one major cause of the economic crisis was bank overleveraging. "[U]sing relatively little capital of their own", he wrote, "[banks] borrowed heavily to buy extremely risky real estate assets. In the process, they used overly complex instruments like collateralized debt obligations." Financial institutions engaged in overleveraging in pursuit of the lucrative profits such deals promised - even if those profits came with staggering levels of risk. Sound familiar? It should, because in the PPIP and TALF bailout programs the Treasury Department has essentially replicated the very overleveraged, risky, complex system that got us into this mess in the first place: in other words, the government hopes to repair our financial system by using the flawed practices that caused this crisis. Then there are the institutions deemed "too big to fail". These financial giants - among them AIG, Citigroup, and Bank of America - have been kept afloat by billions of dollars in bottomless bailout aid. Yet reinforcing the notion that any institution is "too big to fail" is dangerous to the economy. When a company like AIG grows so large that it becomes "too big to fail", the risk it carries is systemic, meaning failure could drag down the entire economy. The government should force "too big to fail" institutions to slim down to a safer, more modest size; instead, the Treasury Department continues to subsidize these financial giants, reinforcing their place in our economy. Of even greater concern is the message the bailout sends to banks and lenders - namely, that the risky investments that crippled the economy are fair game in the future. After all, if banks fail and teeter at the edge of collapse, the government promises to be there with a taxpayer-funded, potentially profitable safety net. The handling of the bailout makes at least one thing clear, however: It's not your health that the government is focused on, it's theirs - the very banks and lenders whose convoluted financial systems provided the underpinnings for staggering salaries and bonuses while bringing our economy to the brink of another Great Depression. _____ Andy Kroll is a writer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He welcomes feedback, and can be reached at his website. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/05/six-ways-financial-bailout-scams-taxpayers 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 fentona at shaw.ca Mon Jun 8 22:23:16 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 21:23:16 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Many Iraqis jeer U.S. media campaign Message-ID: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/06/07/Many-Iraqis-jeer-US-media-campaign/UPI-93481244385792/ Top News Many Iraqis jeer U.S. media campaign BAGHDAD, June 7 (UPI) -- Many Iraqis have come to ridicule a high- priced U.S. media campaign aimed at polishing the military's image and promoting democracy, observers said. The Arabic-language newspaper Baghdad Now is one of the products dismissed in Iraq as U.S. propaganda, The Washington Post reported Sunday. Baghdad Now portrays Iraqi soldiers as efficient civil servants and shows Iraqis of all sectarian backgrounds working in harmony, said Ziyad al-Aajeely, director of Iraq's nonprofit Journalistic Freedom Observatory. "The millions spent on this is wasted money," al-Aajeely said. "Nobody reads this." During the last six years, the U.S. government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on billboards, printed material, and television and radio airtime aimed at marginalizing extremists and fostering reconciliation in Iraq, the Post reported. While U.S. officials declined to speak publicly about the effectiveness of the campaign, a U.S. Army officer in Baghdad who asked to remain anonymous said Iraqi soldiers mock Baghdad Now. "They say it's childish," the officer said. "Baghdad Now makes a good fuel source at the Iraqi checkpoints." From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Tue Jun 9 01:44:50 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:44:50 +1000 Subject: [R-G] Swine flu and the case for a single-payer healthcare system in the United States | Links Message-ID: <4A2E12F2.10701@greenleft.org.au> Most Americans would shudder to think that the healthcare system in US features some of the same inequities as that of Mexico. However, the United States' privately controlled system now excludes 48 million people (16% of the population), under-insures another 20 million and leads to the death of more than 20,000 people a year from treatable illnesses. Even those who are insured have faced a 117% increase in the costs of healthcare since 1999 as employers shift rising costs onto their workers.(5) Private control has also translated into long wait times for care. In Boston, for instance, it is easier to schedule an appointment for cosmetic surgery than for a skin cancer treatment, the average wait time of which is 73 days.(6) Despite utilising the highest levels of medical technology in the world, healthcare in the US is often inaccessible, costly and features long wait times for necessary procedures. Americans, just as their Mexican counterparts, have adapted to this unjust system by avoiding care. A recent study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that 6 in 10 of those polled had delayed or skipped medical treatment in the last year.(7) In this environment of avoidance, chronic conditions can quickly be converted into hazardous public health crises. Diabetes, hypertension and HIV/AIDS infection all continue to spread at alarming rates within the borders of the US.(8) Yet, access to care continues to be dependent on a person?s ability to pay. An airborne virus, such as the swine flu, becomes all the more efficient while filtering through a healthcare system directed by profiteering health insurance companies such as Oxford, CIGNA and Aetna. Both Americans and Mexicans have been left exposed by inefficient health systems. Full article at http://links.org.au/node/1091 Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism From suzannedk at gmail.com Tue Jun 9 02:08:23 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 10:08:23 +0200 Subject: [R-G] 'The USS Liberty': America's Most Shameful Secret by Eric Margolis In-Reply-To: <2047560567.528021244500594010.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> References: <59E8282CFB13451397152BEB666665F3@jac> <2047560567.528021244500594010.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: Good Luck! May hyperbole do its hoped for work, except the phrase "Most Shameful" is so overused as to without meaning. And, a secret no longer a secret, is one no longer. Misuse of wrds leads to misuse of meaning leading to lackluster writing, sir. respectfuly, Suzanne On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 12:36 AM, Sid Shniad wrote: > > > http://lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis12.2.html > > > > ?The USS Liberty?: America 's Most Shameful Secret > > > > " Liberty 's" intercepts may have shown that Israel seized upon sharply > rising Arab-Israeli tensions in May-June 1967 to launch a long-planned war > to invade and annex the West Bank, Jerusalem , Golan and Sinai. > > > > by Eric Margolis > > > > This article was written in 2001. > > > > NEW YORK ? On the fourth day of the 1967 Arab Israeli War, the intelligence > ship "USS Liberty" was steaming slowly in international waters, 14 miles off > the Sinai Peninsula . Israeli armored forces were racing deep into Sinai in > hot pursuit of the retreating Egyptian army. > > > > " Liberty ," a World War II freighter, had been converted into an > intelligence vessel by the top-secret US National Security Agency, and > packed with the latest signals and electronic interception equipment. The > ship bristled with antennas and electronic "ears" including TRSSCOMM, a > system that delivered real-time intercepts to Washington by bouncing a > stream of microwaves off the moon. > > > > " Liberty " had been rushed to Sinai to monitor communications of the > belligerents in the Third Arab Israeli War: Israel and her foes, Egypt , > Syria , and Jordan . > > > > At 0800 hrs, 8 June, 1967, eight Israeli recon flights flew over " Liberty > ," which was flying a large American flag. At 1400 hrs, waves of low-flying > Israeli Mystere and Mirage-III fighter-bombers repeatedly attacked the > American vessel with rockets, napalm, and cannon. The air attacks lasted 20 > minutes, concentrating on the ship's electronic antennas and dishes. The " > Liberty " was left afire, listing sharply. Eight of her crew lay dead, a > hundred seriously wounded, including the captain, Commander William > McGonagle. > > > > At 1424 hrs, three Israeli torpedo boats attacked, raking the burning " > Liberty " with 20mm and 40mm shells. At 1431hrs an Israeli torpedo hit the " > Liberty " midship, precisely where the signals intelligence systems were > located. Twenty-five more Americans died. > > > > Israeli gunboats circled the wounded " Liberty ," firing at crewmen trying > to fight the fires. At 1515, the crew were ordered to abandon ship. The > Israeli warships closed and poured machine gun fire into the crowded life > rafts, sinking two. As American sailors were being massacred in cold blood, > a rescue mission by US Sixth Fleet carrier aircraft was mysteriously aborted > on orders from the White House. > > > > An hour after the attack, Israeli warships and planes returned. Commander > McGonagle gave the order: "prepare to repel borders." But the Israelis, > probably fearful of intervention by the US Sixth Fleet, departed. " Liberty > " was left shattered but still defiant, her flag flying. > > > > The Israeli attacks killed 34 US seamen and wounded 171 out of a crew of > 297, the worst loss of American naval personnel from hostile action since > World War II. > > > > Less than an hour after the attack, Israel told Washington its forces had > committed a "tragic error." Later, Israel claimed it had mistaken " Liberty > " for an ancient Egyptian horse transport. US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, > and Joint Chiefs of Staff head, Admiral Thomas Moorer, insisted the Israeli > attack was deliberate and designed to sink " Liberty ." So did three CIA > reports; one asserted Israel 's Defense Minister, Gen. Moshe Dayan, had > personally ordered the attack. > > > > In contrast to American outrage over North Korea's assault on the > intelligence ship "Pueblo," Iraq's mistaken missile strike on the USS > "Stark," last fall's bombing of the USS "Cole" in Aden, and the recent > US-China air incident, the savaging of "Liberty" was quickly hushed up by > President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. > > > > The White House and Congress immediately accepted Israel 's explanation and > let the matter drop. Israel later paid a token reparation of US $6 million. > There were reports two Israeli pilots who had refused to attack " Liberty " > were jailed for 18 years. > > > > Surviving " Liberty " crew members would not be silenced. They kept > demanding an open inquiry and tried to tell their story of deliberate attack > to the media. Israel 's government worked behind the scenes to thwart these > efforts, going so far as having American pro-Israel groups accuse " Liberty > 's" survivors of being "anti-Semites" and "Israel-haters." Major TV networks > cancelled interviews with the crew. A book about the " Liberty " by crewman > James Ennes' was dropped from distribution. The Israel lobby branded him "an > Arab propagandist." > > > > The attack on "Liberty" was fading into obscurity until last week, when > intelligence expert James Bamford came out with Body of Secrets, his latest > book about the National Security Agency. In a stunning revelation, Bamford > writes that unknown to Israel, a US Navy EC-121 intelligence aircraft was > flying high overhead the "Liberty," electronically recorded the attack. The > US aircraft crew provides evidence that the Israeli pilots knew full well > that they were attacking a US Navy ship flying the American flag. > > > > Why did Israel try to sink a naval vessel of its benefactor and ally? Most > likely because " Liberty 's" intercepts flatly contradicted Israel 's claim, > made at the war's beginning on 5 June, that Egypt had attacked Israel , and > that Israel 's massive air assault on three Arab nations was in retaliation. > In fact, Israel began the war by a devastating, Pearl-Harbor style surprise > attack that caught the Arabs in bed and destroyed their entire air forces. > > > > Israel was also preparing to attack Syria to seize its strategic Golan > Heights . Washington warned Israel not to invade Syria , which had remained > inactive while Israel fought Egypt . Bamford says Israel 's offensive > against Syria was abruptly postponed when " Liberty " appeared off Sinai, > then launched once it was knocked out of action. Israel 's claim that Syria > had attacked it could have been disproved by " Liberty ." > > > > Most significant, " Liberty 's" intercepts may have shown that Israel > seized upon sharply rising Arab-Israeli tensions in May-June 1967 to launch > a long-planned war to invade and annex the West Bank, Jerusalem , Golan and > Sinai. > > > > Far more shocking was Washington 's response. Writes Bamford: "Despite the > overwhelming evidence that Israel attacked the ship and killed American > servicemen deliberately, the Johnson Administration and Congress covered up > the entire incident." Why? > > > > Domestic politics. Johnson, a man never noted for high moral values, > preferred to cover up the attack rather than anger a key constituency and > major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Congress was even less eager > to touch this "third rail" issue. > > > > Commander McGonagle was quietly awarded the Medal of Honor for his and his > men's heroism ? not in the White House, as is usual, but in an obscure > ceremony at the Washington Navy Yard. Crew member's graves were inscribed, > "died in the Eastern Mediterranean. " as if they had be killed by disease, > rather than hostile action. > > > > A member of President Johnson's staff believed there was a more complex > reason for the cover-up: Johnson offered Jewish liberals unconditional > backing of Israel , and a cover-up of the " Liberty " attack, in exchange > for the liberal toning down their strident criticism of his policies in the > then raging Vietnam War. > > > > Israel , which claims it fought a war of self defense in 1967 and had no > prior territorial ambitions, will be much displeased by Bamford's > revelations. Those who believe Israel illegally occupies the West Bank and > Golan will be emboldened. > > > > Much more important, the US government's long, disgraceful cover-up of the > premeditated attack on " Liberty " has now burst into the open and demands > full-scale investigation. After 34 years, the voices of " Liberty 's" dead > and wounded seamen must finally be heard. > > > > May 2, 2001 > > > > Eric Margolis, contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada. > He is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American > Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and > the Muslim World . See his website. > _______________________________________________ > 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 shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Jun 9 06:01:32 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:01:32 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt" (6) Message-ID: <4A2E4F1C.70500@ashisuto.co.jp> Part Six by Stephen Lendman sjlendman.blogspot.com (May 18 2009) This is the sixth and final article on Ellen Brown's superb 2007 book titled "Web of Debt", now updated in a December 2008 third edition. It tells "the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free". This article focuses on establishing a people-oriented banking system. It's high time we had one and reclaimed what's rightfully ours. Restoring National Sovereignty with A Truly National Banking System One serving everyone, not powerful moneychangers alone, the so-called Money Trust cartel of Wall Street bankers looting the national wealth for themselves and heading the country for bankruptcy, tyranny and ruin. Stopping them is Job One, and only mass activist outrage can do it. At the Chicago Democratic National Convention, William Jennings Bryan won the nomination saying: "(W)e believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government ... I stand with Jefferson (and say), as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that banks should go out of the governing business ... (W)hen we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other necessary reforms will be possible, and ... until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished". No Fed existed at that time. If one did and operated like today, Bryan would have said abolish it or make it truly federal. As a US government agency, money created would go directly to the Treasury. But that's only three percent of the money supply. What about the other 97% in the form of commercial loans? Would that put government in the commercial lending business? "Perhaps, but why not. As Bryan said, banking is the government's business, by Constitutional mandate" - at least the part of it involved in creating new money. The rest could be in private hands, like today - through banks and other financial institutions, such as finance companies, pension and mutual funds, insurance companies, and securities dealers. "These institutions do not create the money they lend but merely recycle pre-existing funds". With government printing money, banks would become more equitable recyclers - "borrowing money at a low rate and lending it at a higher one", except for one downside. Some would go bankrupt, but start-ups would replace them under a more stable and equitable system. In 1946, the Bank of England was nationalized in name only and retained its (privately-controlled) money printing power. In 2003, James Robertson and John Bunzl proposed changing it their book titled: Monetary Reform: Making It Happen {1}. They advocated making it illegal for banks to create new money as loans. Only a central bank should do it with commercial banks having to borrow it for relending. Government officials, however, balked at the idea saying the nation would be harmed as banks would go broke having been stripped of their "credit multiplier" capacity - the British version of fractional reserve lending. London banks are second only to Wall Street so rather than risk this fate they'd likely relocate "en masse to the Continent" and force the British economy to collapse. In the 1940s, Representative Jerry Voorhis proposed a similar plan to Congress called "the 100 Percent Reserve Solution", his idea being "to require banks to establish 100 percent reserve backing for their deposits" - done by borrowing from the Treasury to supply what they needed. In The Lost Science of Money (2002), Stephen Zarlenga wrote: "With this elegant plan, all the bank credit money the banks have created out of thin air, through fractional reserve banking, would be transformed into US government legal tender - real, honest money". True enough but at a cost so great that (in 1946) it launched Richard Nixon's political career with a vicious red-baiting campaign accusing Voorhis of Communist Party links. His plan was later revived but never enacted into law. One of its advocates is Zarlenga's American Monetary Institute. It drafted an American Monetary Act to eliminate fractional reserve banking and impose a 100% reserve requirement on all demand deposits, making them unavailable to loan and only for "a (fee-based) warehousing and transferring service". The Fed would be incorporated into the Treasury with the government solely authorized to create new money - to be circulated inflation and deflation-free for purposes such as: infrastructure development, education, health care, job creation, financing local economies, and funding government at all levels. For their part, banks would function traditionally - as intermediaries for deposits loaned out to borrowers. A Monetary Reform Act goes further by requiring: - 100% reserve requirement on all bank deposits, including savings; deposits wouldn't be counted as reserves against which to make loans; they'd be held in trust solely for their depositors' use; - banks servicing depositors could only lend their own money; and - doing it with depositors' funds would require they establish separate institutions, not called banks. If Congress reclaims its money-creation power, banks will have to maintain 100% reserve requirements (available for withdrawals), to "avoid the electronic duplication that is the source of" money supply growth today. It would require them to raise enough money to "fund" all outstanding loans. "The 'credits' (or loans then) become 'deposits' that represent 'liabilities' of the banks, money (they) owe to the depositors". It would be secured (by borrowing) around $6 trillion or more in real money, not the fictitious kind they create today. In turn, they'd have to raise interest rates, pay depositors less, operate on thinner margins, and likely drive customers to more competitive non-bank institutions, already controlling eighty percent of the market. In December 2006, William Hummel proposed an alternative in an article titled "A Plan for Monetary Reform" under which banks could sell their existing loans to investors with ready cash if the federal debt was paid off by monitizing it with government-issued currency. Federal bond holders would need a new home for their savings with a rate of return making up for what they lost. Investment funds would likely create new vehicles for it. They could buy bank loans with investors' money and bundle them as securities for resale with interest. Selling the loans would let banks avoid incurring substantial new debt to meet the new 100% reserve requirement. Bank "balance sheets could be wiped clean and they could start fresh with new loans" - operating traditionally by borrowing low and lending higher. However, these new limitations could prove harmful, "imposing an unfair burden on unsuspecting shareholders, warranting some equitable division of the sale proceeds in compensation". Consider also that if these type restrictions existed, banks "would have little incentive to service the depository needs of the public". A solution would be to transfer its "depository role to a system of (nationwide) bank branches acting as one entity under the (government-run) Federal Reserve". In other words, a government-run public utility. It would make the Fed "the sole depository and only its branches would be called 'banks' ". Others would close down or become private financial institutions in whatever form they'd choose. Robert Guttman explains that basic banking is fairly simple - to provide a safe place to store money and transfer it to others. A government agency could handle it easily. It did earlier through the US Postal System (until shut down in 1967) and can do it again. With the restoration of traditional banks, servicing credit cards would also have to be addressed as banks might be unable to do it. One solution would be to turn credit extension "over to a system of truly national banks (authorized to operate with) the 'full faith and credit of the United States' as agents of Congress", newly empowered to create money. In addition, government banks wouldn't be profit driven enough to charge exorbitant rates. They'd be "reasonable, predictable and fixed". Consider also that old banks (namely existing branches) could be bought to become government-run ones, or if insolvent banking giants were nationalized, their branches alone might do the job. The FDIC could hire new management or have existing ones operate under new guidelines. The difference would be that interest would accrue to the government (and the) 'full faith and credit of the United States' would become an asset of the" country. There's one other limitation as well - 100% reserve requirements would restrict money growth so it would have to expand to meet demand by other means. One way in a system with no federal debt or interest is to let consumer debt be self-regulated as under the LETS system in which "money is created whenever someone pays someone else with 'credits', and it is liquidated when the outstanding credits are used up". Nationwide, "money would come into existence when it was borrowed from the community-owned bank, (then) extinguished as the loans were repaid". It's no different than how money is created now except that communities, not bankers (siphoning off interest in windfall profits), will do it. None of the above systems are perfect, but they're far better than the current corrupted one benefitting bankers, not people. The Question of Interest - Solving the "Impossible Contract" Problem Money controlled by banks only creates the "principle and not the interest" to repay loans. Governments, on the other hand, can "not only lend but spend money into the economy, covering the interest shortfall and keeping the money supply in balance". However, "returning all the interest collected on loans to the government would require nationalizing" all forms of lending at interest, including banks. In the real world, a semi-private, semi-public system might work better as follows: - governments would create money and be its initial lender; - private financial institutions, including banks, "would recycle this money as loans"; - they'd still earn interest, but not as much; - as a result, the money supply would need to expand to cover it, but not as much as now; and - overall it would expand proportionally to demand keeping inflation contained. Vilified today as socialism, it's the very system colonists used successfully to jump-start the country, make it grow, and do it without taxes or inflation. Franklin and Jefferson championed it. So did Jackson, Lincoln, and perhaps Kennedy later on. Early 20th century Australia's Commonwealth Bank created money, made loans, and collected interest at a fraction of what private bankers charged. It worked well enough for the country to have one of the highest standards of living in the world at that time. Once private banks printed money, Australia became heavily indebted, and its living standard fell to a 23rd place ranking. In the 1930s, the Fed printed money. However, FDR empowered the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to provide plenty of cheap credit to build infrastructure, create jobs, and provide emergency loans to states. The US Postal Savings System, Small Business Administration (SBA), Fannie and Freddie initially worked the same way outside the private banking system. After being privatized, these mortgage lenders became corrupted, then bankrupt proving government can be the solution, not the problem, and a cheaper, more efficient one besides. From her own experience as Assistant HUD Secretary, Catherine Austin Fitts states: "The public policy 'solution' has been to outsource government functions to make them more productive. In fact, this jump in overhead (simply subsidizes) private companies and organizations ... regardless of (their) performance. (The scheme) make(s) no sense except for the property managers and owners who build and manage it for layers of fees." It's the same argument used against privatized health care as opposed to cheaper, more efficient universal coverage leaving out insurer middlemen, letting government buy drugs at lower cost, and still leaving lifelong, high quality, comprehensive, and affordable choices in consumers' hands. It's a system begging to be instituted but won't be under Obama. Once again, fear of big government is misguided. It should protect and serve everyone equally - impossible with the Money Trust running it, the way it works now with bankers creating money and extracting the national wealth for themselves. Masquerading as "free enterprise today is a system in which giant corporate monopolies (use) their affiliated banking trusts to generate unlimited funds to buy up competitors, the media, and the government itself, forcing truly independent private enterprise out" - the very system Adam Smith and other classical economists abhorred. Private banks have America and most other nations by the throat. They force governments to pay interest on their own money as well as "advance massive loans to their affiliated cartels and hedge funds, which use the money to raid competitors and manipulate markets". Its Darwinism in the extreme giving power brokers the right to choose who survives and who doesn't with ordinary people faring worst of all. The solution is "publicly-operated police, courts and laws to keep corporate predators at bay" under a nationalized banking system, creating its own money, and serving people, not bankers - a truly equitable, sustainable, efficient and democratic system freed from parasitic financiers. Beating the Robber Barons at Their Own Game Using accepted business practices, the Rockefellers, Morgans, Carnegies, and Vanderbilts et al "deprived their competitors of property" by buying it on the open market through takeovers. Their "slight of hand" was how they funded them - through their own affiliated banks able to create money out of thin air, the same way it's done today for even larger stakes. What banking cartels can do, so can governments - but through a much smaller, fairer and more efficient nationalized banking system operating as a public utility. Private financial institutions could still recycle loans but in the way described above. Another choice would be for government to buy out all banks - a more equitable but unnecessary choice even though it would be quite affordable with the power to create money. What better time than now given the gravity of today's economic crisis leaving world economies close to collapse. According to Murray Rothbard, the entire commercial banking system is bankrupt. It belongs in receivership and their managements jailed for embezzlement. Taxpayers would save a lot of money, and nations would be on the road to recovery and prosperity. One observer says too-big-to-fail banks are already stealth nationalized since taxpayer bailouts stand ready whenever they get in trouble - the idea being that costs are socialized and profits privatized, a process begging to be halted. Taxpayer-supported banks "can and should be made public institutions operated for the benefit of" everyone. Given that major banks today are corrupted and bankrupt, now is the time to do it - not as a temporary measure but irrevocably under a totally restructured system. The Quick Fix - Government that Pays for Itself How much newly created government money would be inflation free? Could income and other taxes be eliminated? Would it "avoid the 'impossible contract' problem by furnishing the money necessary to cover the interest (not) advanced in commercial loans?" If government and not banks created money, the amount needed would be less - "without cutting government programs or adding to a burgeoning federal debt". Inflation would be avoided and income taxes eliminated without sacrificing growth and prosperity in proportion to a larger population. More people would be employed as well compared to over twenty percent out of work today according to economist John Williams when all excluded and distorted categories are included. Imagine an inflation-tax-free economy with enough government-created money for health care, education, infrastructure development, other productive growth, environmental cleanup, scientific research, development of alternative energy sources, and much more. It would be utopian compared to today's unsustainable system devouring people for profits and heading world economies for ruin. Under today's "impossible contract" system, 99% of the money supply is borrowed, all at interest to lenders. It means more of it is owed back in principle and interest than was borrowed. The money supply must continue to expand to keep up and prices along with it. The latter could be avoided if a proportional amount of goods and services are created, not at all the case in America with growing amounts of manufacturing offshored under a financialized economy paying tribute to bankers - "for lending money they never had to lend" in the first place. Roger Langrick solves the "impossible contract" this way: let government "issue enough new money to match the outstanding collective interest bill of the nation" even though it's prohibitive at around $500 billion annually for government debt service alone. Today's public and private debt comes to many tens of trillions so servicing that burden is staggering, yet innovative solutions may handle it, and once done, a brighter tomorrow awaits. Ending Third World Debt Today most of it is held by giant US-based banks like Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase. If they're placed in receivership, the "US government could declare a 'Day of Jubilee' " of debt forgiveness, and if done, it "would not be an entirely selfless act". For America to pay off its international debt, it needs all the goodwill it can get. Forgiving other debts would encourage our creditors to forgive ours as world nations have no interest in seeing major economies collapse. What affects one, harms others. "Our shiny new monetary scheme, rather than appearing to be a slight of hand, could unveil itself as a millennial model for showering abundance everywhere" for the mutual benefit of everyone. It's simple to do - just void out debts on banks' books with a click of a mouse. "No depositors or creditors would lose money, because (none) advanced their own money in the original loans". They were created out of thin air through accounting entries. On banking financial statements, they're liabilities because accounting rules say books must balance. Once old debts are gone, new ones can be avoided by stabilizing national currencies to prevent devaluation by speculators. Bretton Woods protected against this. A new system is now needed, one that "retains the virtues of the gold standard while overcoming its limitations". One now in use is to peg currencies to the dollar but with it comes loss of flexibility to compete in international markets or be able to budget enough for domestic needs - with a fixed money supply. Argentina's "currency board" in the 1990s forced its eventual bankruptcy in 1995 and again in 2001 as earlier mentioned. A global currency is another proposal - one that creates more problems than it solves. The world "is not one nation or one region", and who's to be boss and in charge. Further, if all governments issued the same currency, "the global money supply (would be) vulnerable to irresponsible governments (issuing) too much". Strong ones would end up dominating the weak, and national sovereignty would be weakened, perhaps ended. A "fully dollarized" world is a prescription for trouble enough to make scarcity "the order of the day". Rather than one currency, "a single global yardstick" is needed "against which governments can value their currencies - some independent measure (by) which merchants can negotiate their contracts and be sure of getting what they bargained for". How to do it is the question? A New Bretton Woods Michael Rowbotham picked up on John Maynard Keynes idea of pegging currencies to a basket of commodities, calling it "a profoundly democratic idea". He states: "Today, wheat grown in one country may, due to a devalued currency, cost a fraction of wheat grown in another. This leads to (cheap wheat producers) becoming (heavy exporters) regardless of need, or the capacity to produce better quality wheat in other locations. In addition, currency values can change dramatically and the situation can reverse. Critically, such wheat 'prices' bear no relation to genuine comparative advantage of climate, soil type, geography and even less to indigenous/local/regional needs". Nor does it stabilize production in relation to need. By "imputing value to a nation's produce, and allowing this to determine the value of (its) currency, one is imputing value to its resources, its labourers and acknowledging its own needs". An international trade unit could be established based on a basket of commodities representative enough to fend off speculators - just a "yardstick for pegging currencies and negotiating contracts". Exchange rates would be fixed everywhere but not forever. Changes would "reflect the national market for real goods and services", not currencies. They'd be "no room for speculation or hedging". Various proposals involve "private international currency exchanges, but the same (type) reference unit (could) stabilize exchange rates among official national currencies". One calls for: - a new fixed exchange rate system; - a treaty banning speculation in derivatives; - canceling or reorganizing international debt; and - having governments issue enough "credit" to create full employment, then used for technical innovation and infrastructure development. The plan is for exchange rates to be "based on an international unit of account pegged against the price of an agreed-upon basket of hard commodities". Other plans are around as well, all stressing the same idea - "the urgent need for change" because the current system is corrupted and broken. How then to stabilize national currencies? "The simplest and most comprehensive ... international currency yardstick (measure) seems to be the Consumer Price Index ... modified to reflect" real consumer expenditures, not the quantity of currencies traded in international markets by speculators. Henceforth, currencies "would just be coupons for units of value recognized globally" - stable enough for "commercial traders (to) 'bank' on them". National currencies "would become what (they) should have been all along - (contracts) or promise(s) to return value in goods and services of a certain worth, as measured against a universally recognized yardstick for determining value". Government without Taxes or Debt Only a "radical shift in our concepts of money and banking will save us from the cement wall looming ahead" - an abyss otherwise named. Letting bankers hold "an illusory sum of gold", to be multiplied many times over by fractional reserve alchemy, entraps everyone in debt bondage. "The result was a (giant) Ponzi scheme that has pumped the global money supply into a gigantic credit bubble" now imploding. Everything of value is at risk, including our futures and that of our loved ones - unless we can reverse the corrupted system entrapping us, and think of the benefits: expanded government services and prosperity, inflation and tax free. Today's "web of debt" is based on fraud, deceit, and manipulative sleights of hand, including: - fractional reserve alchemy - pure hocus-pocus witchcraft hokum; - the gold standard of an earlier time letting bankers dangerously inflate the money supply "on the same gold reserves"; - the private banking cartel Federal Reserve owned by major banks in each of twelve Fed districts empowered to create money and charge the government, business, and individuals interest on it - the result being everyone put in permanent debt bondage to world-class predators; - the federal debt and money supply; both continually expand under a highly inflationary scheme; - the federal income tax to pay interest to bankers; - the FDIC and IMF to ensure mega-banks get bailed out no matter what unwarranted risks they take; the IMF is also a sort of knee-cap breaking enforcer for the monied interests - extracting multiple pounds of flesh in as part of a giant extortion racket; - a "free market" for those who own it under a corrupted, manipulated system of socialized risks and privatized profits, enforced by the Pentagon's long arm; - the Plunge Protection Team (PPT) and Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group (CRMPG) - created to rig and manipulate markets along with colluding Wall Street bankers bailed out whenever they get in trouble; the notion that markets move randomly is rubbish - about as real as the tooth fairy or Mother Goose; - "floating" exchange rates - for more manipulation and collusion in international currency markets; - short selling - for speculators in all type assets; when used against currencies, it can artificially force them down enough to cause economic havoc the way it was done to Asian Tiger countries in 1997 and many others as well; - "globalization" and "free trade" - a predatory system benefitting America and the West under WTO rules; countries also become vulnerable to speculative assaults when their currencies are convertible and economies opened to "free trade"; - inflation myths - money creation isn't the problem; speculative currency attacks force destructive devaluations, meaning prices rise as a result; American inflation is "caused by private banks inflating the money supply with debt", not by printing money; also by productive growth not keeping up; - the "business cycle" - responsible financial managements produce stable prosperity; when irresponsibly done by a private banking cartel, booms and busts result; it's an unnatural "monetary scheme in which money comes into existence as a debt to private banks for 'reserves' of something lent many times over"; - the home mortgage boondoggle - monetizing home mortgages today creates most money; borrowers think they're using "pre-existing funds, when the bank is just turning one's promise to pay into an 'asset' secured by real property"; when paid off, the interest usually exceeds the original loan, and in cases of default, banks seize the homes; - the housing bubble - it was caused by easy credit in the 1990s and post-2000 by an irresponsible Fed and Wall Street bankers' plan, including massive fraud like issuing up to ten mortgages on a single home when its owner had only one; - adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) - affecting about half of all US ones, it was a scam through subprime lending and low "teaser" rates, later ratcheted to unaffordable levels and catching buyers unawares; - the secret bankruptcy of banks - they gambled hugely on risky derivatives and housing loans, far afield from traditional banking of borrowing low and lending higher for modest, stable profits; the result - all major banks are insolvent with only government bailouts keeping them afloat; - "vulture capitalism" and derivatives - the former amounts to predatory banks and hedge funds "buying out shareholders and bleeding businesses of profits, using loans of 'phantom money' created on a computer screen" out of thin air; the latter turned banks into casinos making huge bets that went sour; and - moral hazard, once called the "Greenspan put"; substitute Bernanke and Geithner now for the maestro of misery; it lets banking giants take outsized risks knowing bailout backups await any that go sour. Conclusion - private commercial banking practices are corrupted, destructive and obsolete, and vulture capitalist investment banks are parasites on productivity, serving their interests at public expense. Congress should and must either close down insolvent banks or put them in receivership as step one. Then "claim them as public assets, and operate them as agencies serving" public depository and credit needs. The federal debt is another problem - at "its mathematical limits, (it's) forcing another paradigm shift if the economy is to survive". We have a choice: let a debt-based house of cards collapse or have it be a wake-up call for radical change. Again, imagine the possibilities: - ending personal income taxes and stimulating stable economic growth at the same time; - eliminating the federal debt entrapping us and future generations in permanent bondage; - returning money creation power to the government as the Constitution mandates with a cornucopia of benefits to follow; - strengthening universal Social Security for everyone in place of disappearing private pensions; - fostering stable, inflation-free prosperity with no booms and busts; - keeping borrowing costs fair and affordable, not subject to private bank manipulation; and - ending destructive currency devaluations and economic warfare for private gain; with stable exchange rates, the "dollar becomes self-sustaining, and the United States and other countries become self-reliant", free from foreign creditors and one-way market rules benefitting the strong over the weak. Impossible? Only for non-believers, but it won't happen magically. It's for organized people to challenge organized money enough for government to reclaim its money creation power. Nothing short of a populist revolution for radical change is needed - bubbling up from the grassroots to an unstoppable force. "Reviving the 'American system' of government-issued money" would return us to our colonial roots, and like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, "we the people would finally have come home". More on that topic in a follow-up article. Note: {1} http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:eJlif1NPL1QJ:www.jamesrobertson.com/book/monetaryreform.pdf+%22Monetary+Reform:+Making+It+Happen%22&cd=1&hl=ja&ct=clnk&gl=jp _____ Stephen Lendman is a Research Associates of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10 am US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13641 http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/05/reviewing-ellen-browns-web-of-debt-part_18.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 fentona at shaw.ca Tue Jun 9 10:00:06 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 09:00:06 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Afghanistan Past & Present Message-ID: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21663 Afghanistan Past & Present June 09, 2009 By Dave Markland Source: From Winston Churchill to Oliver North When Canadian pollsters seek the country's views on the war in Afghanistan, they frequently pose a question about whether Ottawa has sufficiently explained the purpose and goals of the war. When the public then registers its dissatisfaction with both the Harper government's policies and its public relations, news editors and the official opposition duly scorn the Tories - for their messaging. Little effort is made to hold Harper's feet to the fire when consistent majorities say they want Canadian troops out of Afghanistan; instead, the government's communications style is at issue. A better question to ask the nation might be whether the media themselves have lived up to their duties in reporting on the war. As we shall see, the war gets only the most uncritical coverage in the major media, whose response to the goal of imperial domination of Afghanistan scarcely differs from one century to the next. [...] http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21663 From fentona at shaw.ca Tue Jun 9 11:38:35 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:38:35 -0700 Subject: [R-G] William Blum: Team Obama/Cult Obama Message-ID: Team Obama/Cult Obama The praise heaped on President Obama for his speech to the Muslim world by writers on the left, both here and abroad, is disturbing. I'm referring to people who I think should know better, who've taken Politics 101 and can easily see the many hypocrisies in Obama's talk, as well as the distortions, omissions, and contradictions, the true but irrelevant observations, the lies, the optimistic words without any matching action, the insensitivities to victims. Yet, these commentators are impressed, in many cases very impressed. In the world at large, this frame of mind borders on a cult. In such cases one must look beyond the intellect and examine the emotional appeal. We all know the world is in big trouble -- Three Great Problems: universal, incessant violence; financial crisis provoking economic suffering; environmental degradation. In all three areas the United States bears more culpability than any other single country. Who better to satisfy humankind's craving for relief than a new American president who, it appears, understands the problems; admits, to one degree or another, his country's responsibility for them; and "eloquently" expresses his desire and determination to change US policies and embolden the rest of the world to follow his inspiring example. Is it any wonder that it's 1964, the Beatles have just arrived in New York, and everyone is a teenage girl? I could go through the talk Obama gave in Cairo and point out line by line the hypocrisies, the mere platitudes, the plain nonsense, and the rest. ("I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States." -- No mention of it being outsourced, probably to the very country he was speaking in, amongst others. ... "No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons." -- But this is precisely what the United States is trying to do concerning Iran and North Korea.) But since others have been pointing out these lies very well I'd like to try something else in dealing with the problem -- the problem of well-educated people, as well as the not so well-educated, being so moved by a career politician saying "all the right things" to give food for hope to billions starving for it, and swallowing it all as if they had been born yesterday. I'd like to take them back to another charismatic figure, Adolf Hitler, speaking to the German people two years and four months after becoming Chancellor, addressing a Germany still reeling with humiliation from its being The Defeated Nation in the World War, with huge losses of its young men, still being punished by the world for its militarism, suffering mass unemployment and other effects of the great depression. Here are excerpts from the speech of May 21, 1935. Imagine how it fed the hungry German people. --------------------- I conceive it my duty to be perfectly frank and open in addressing the nation. I frequently hear from Anglo-Saxon tribes expressions of regret that Germany has departed from those principles of democracy, which in those countries are held particularly sacred. This opinion is entirely erroneous. Germany, too, has a democratic Constitution. Our love of peace perhaps is greater than in the case of others, for we have suffered most from war. None of us wants to threaten anybody, but we all are determined to obtain the security and equality of our people. The World War should be a cry of warning here. Not for a second time can Europe survive such a catastrophe. Germany has solemnly guaranteed France her present frontiers, resigning herself to the permanent loss of Alsace-Lorraine. She has made a treaty with Poland and we hope it will be renewed and renewed again at every expiry of the set period. The German Reich, especially the present German Government, has no other wish except to live on terms of peace and friendship with all the neighboring States. Germany has nothing to gain from a European war. What we want is liberty and independence. Because of these intentions of ours we are ready to negotiate non-aggression pacts with our neighbor States. Germany has neither the wish nor the intention to mix in internal Austrian affairs, or to annex or to unite with Austria. The German Government is ready in principle to conclude non-aggression pacts with its individual neighbor States and to supplement those provisions which aim at isolating belligerents and localizing war areas. In limiting German air armament to parity with individual other great nations of the west, it makes possible that at any time the upper figure may be limited, which limit Germany will then take as a binding obligation to keep within. Germany is ready to participate actively in any efforts for drastic limitation of unrestricted arming. She sees the only possible way in a return to the principles of the old Geneva Red Cross convention. She believes, to begin with, only in the possibility of the gradual abolition and outlawing of fighting methods which are contrary to this convention, such as dum-dum bullets and other missiles which are a deadly menace to civilian women and children. To abolish fighting places, but to leave the question of bombardment open, seems to us wrong and ineffective. But we believe it is possible to ban certain arms as contrary to international law and to outlaw those who use them. But this, too, can only be done gradually. Therefore, gas and incendiary and explosive bombs outside of the battle area can be banned and the ban extended later to all bombing. As long as bombing is free, a limitation of bombing planes is a doubtful proposition. But as soon as bombing is branded as barbarism, the building of bombing planes will automatically cease. Just as the Red Cross stopped the killing of wounded and prisoners, it should be possible to stop the bombing of civilians. In the adoption of such principles, Germany sees a better means of pacification and security for peoples than in all the assistance pacts and military conventions. The German Government is ready to agree to every limitation leading to abandonment of the heaviest weapons which are especially suitable for aggression. These comprise, first, the heaviest artillery and heaviest tanks. Germany declares herself ready to agree to the delimitation of caliber of artillery and guns on dreadnoughts, cruisers and torpedo boats. Similarly, the German Government is ready to adopt any limitation on naval tonnage, and finally to agree to the limitation of tonnage of submarines or even to their abolition, provided other countries do likewise. The German Government is of the opinion that all attempts effectively to lessen tension between individual States through international agreements or agreements between several States are doomed to failure unless suitable measures are taken to prevent poisoning of public opinion on the part of irresponsible individuals in speech, writing, in the film and the theatre. The German Government is ready any time to agree to an international agreement which will effectively prevent and make impossible all attempts to interfere from the outside in affairs of other States. The term ?interference? should be internationally defined. If people wish for peace it must be possible for governments to maintain it. We believe the restoration of the German defense force will contribute to this peace because of the simple fact that its existence removes a dangerous vacuum in Europe. We believe if the peoples of the world could agree to destroy all their gas and inflammable and explosive bombs this would be cheaper than using them to destroy one another. In saying this I am not speaking any longer as the representative of a defenseless State which could reap only advantages and no obligations from such action from others. I cannot better conclude my speech to you, my fellow-figures and trustees of the nation, than by repeating our confession of faith in peace: Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos. We, however, live in the firm conviction our times will see not the decline but the renaissance of the West. It is our proud hope and our unshakable belief Germany can make an imperishable contribution to this great work.[1] -- End of speech excerpts -- How many people in the world, including numerous highly educated Germans, reading or hearing that speech in 1935, doubted that Adolf Hitler was a sincere man of peace and an inspiring, visionary leader? NOTES [1] The entire speech can be found at: http://members.tripod.com/~Comicism/350521.html From fentona at shaw.ca Tue Jun 9 13:15:04 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 12:15:04 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Iraq's New Death Squad Message-ID: <9309ADDD-634A-43C4-861A-DACF3809599A@shaw.ca> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090622/bauer?rel=emailNation Iraq's New Death Squad By Shane Bauer This article appeared in the June 22, 2009 edition of The Nation. June 3, 2009 The light is fading from the dusty Baghdad sky as Hassan Mahsan re- enacts what happened to his family last summer. We're standing in the courtyard of his concrete-block house, his children are watching us quietly and his wife is twirling large circles of dough and slapping them against the inside walls of a roaring oven. He walks over to his three-foot-tall daughter and grabs her head like a melon. As she stands there, he gestures wildly behind her, pretending to tie up her hands, then pretending to point a rifle at her head. "They took the blindfold off me, pointed the gun at her head and cocked it, saying, 'Either you tell us where al-Zaydawi is, or we kill your daughter.'" "They just marched into our house and took whatever they wanted," Hassan's mother says, peeking out the kitchen door. "I've never seen anyone act like this." As Hassan tells it, it was a quiet night on June 10, 2008, in Sadr City, Baghdad's poor Shiite district of more than 2 million people, when the helicopter appeared over his house and the front door exploded, nearly burning his sleeping youngest son. Before Hassan knew it, he was on the ground, hands bound and a bag over his head, with eight men pointing rifles at him, locked and loaded. At first he couldn't tell whether the men were Iraqis or Americans. He says he identified himself as a police sergeant, offering his ID before they took his pistol and knocked him to the ground. The men didn't move like any Iraqi forces he'd ever seen. They looked and spoke like his countrymen, but they were wearing American-style uniforms and carrying American weapons with night-vision scopes. They accused him of being a commander in the local militia, the Mahdi Army, before they dragged him off, telling his wife he was "finished." But before they left, they identified themselves. "We are the Special Forces. The dirty brigade," Hassan recalls them saying. The Iraq Special Operations Forces (ISOF) is probably the largest special forces outfit ever built by the United States, and it is free of many of the controls that most governments employ to rein in such lethal forces. The project started in the deserts of Jordan just after the Americans took Baghdad in April 2003. There, the US Army's Special Forces, or Green Berets, trained mostly 18-year-old Iraqis with no prior military experience. The resulting brigade was a Green Beret's dream come true: a deadly, elite, covert unit, fully fitted with American equipment, that would operate for years under US command and be unaccountable to Iraqi ministries and the normal political process. According to Congressional records, the ISOF has grown into nine battalions, which extend to four regional "commando bases" across Iraq. By December, each will be complete with its own "intelligence infusion cell," which will operate independently of Iraq's other intelligence networks. The ISOF is at least 4,564 operatives strong, making it approximately the size of the US Army's own Special Forces in Iraq. Congressional records indicate that there are plans to double the ISOF over the next "several years." According to retired Lt. Col. Roger Carstens, US Special Forces are "building the most powerful force in the region." In 2008 Carstens, then a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, was an adviser to the Iraqi National Counter-Terror Force, where he helped set up the Iraqi counterterrorism laws that govern the ISOF. "All these guys want to do is go out and kill bad guys all day," he says, laughing. "These guys are shit hot. They are just as good as we are. We trained 'em. They are just like us. They use the same weapons. They walk like Americans." When the US Special Forces began the slow transfer of the ISOF to Iraqi control in April 2007, they didn't put it under the command of the Defense Ministry or the Interior Ministry, bodies that normally control similar special forces the world over. Instead, the Americans pressured the Iraqi government to create a new minister-level office called the Counter-Terrorism Bureau. Established by a directive from Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, the CTB answers directly to him and commands the ISOF independently of the police and army. According to Maliki's directive, the Iraqi Parliament has no influence over the ISOF and knows little about its mission. US Special Forces operatives like Carstens have largely overseen the bureau. Carstens says this independent chain of command "might be the perfect structure" for counterterrorism worldwide. Although the force is officially controlled by the Iraqi government, popular perception in Baghdad is that the ISOF--the dirty brigade--is a covert, all-Iraqi branch of the US military. That reading isn't far from the truth. The US Special Forces are still closely involved with every level of the ISOF, from planning and carrying out missions to deciding tactics and creating policy. According to Brig. Gen. Simeon Trombitas, commander of the Iraq National Counter-Terror Force Transition Team, part of the multinational command responsible for turning control of the ISOF over to the Iraqi government, the US Special Forces continue to "have advisers at every level of the chain of command." In January 2008 the US Special Forces started allowing ISOF commanders to join missions with them and the ISOF rank and file. Starting last summer--when Hassan's family was attacked--ISOF battalions began launching missions on their own, without American advisers, in Sadr City, where political agreements forbid the Americans from entering. Accusations of human rights abuses, killings and politically motivated arrests have surfaced, including assaults on a university president and arrests of opposition politicians. The US government has been focused on turning out "as many men in arms as possible, as quickly as possible," says Peter Harling, senior Middle East analyst at the International Crisis Group. "There has been very little impetus to build checks and controls to prevent abuse. It's been very much about building up capability without the oversight that could prevent some of the units [from] turning into proxies working for some politician." In Sadr City opposition to the Iraqi government and the US occupation is strong. There is no longer any visible militia presence, but pictures of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr still stick to the US- built concrete walls that enclose the city, and calls to prayer end with a demand for the hastened exit of "the enemy." There, the ISOF uses a policy of collective punishment, aimed at intimidating civilians, charges Hassan al-Rubaie, Sadrist member of the parliamentary Security and Defense Committee. "They terrorize entire neighborhoods just to arrest one person they think is a terrorist," he says. "This needs to stop." US Special Forces advisers have done little to respond to allegations of abuse. Civilian pleas, public protests, complaints by Iraqi Army commanders about the ISOF's actions and calls for disbanding it by members of Parliament have not pushed the US government to take a hard look at the force they are creating. Instead, US advisers dismiss such claims as politically motivated. "The enemy is trying to discredit them," says Carstens. "It's not because they are doing anything dirty." On the same night Hassan Mahsan's house was raided, 26-year-old Haidar al-Aibi was killed with a bullet to the forehead. His family says there was no warning. They tell me how it happened as we drink tea on the floor of their living room, furnished only with thick foam cushions and mournful depictions of the Shiite martyr Hussein. A woman weeps loudly in the corner, the sleeping child of her dead son almost obscured by the folds of her black garments. Fathil al-Aibi says the family was awakened around midnight by a nearby explosion. His brother Haidar ran up to the roof to see what had happened and was immediately shot from a nearby rooftop. When Fathil, his brother Hussein and his father, Abbas, tried to bring Haidar downstairs, they were shot at, too. For about two hours he lay lifeless on the roof while his family panicked as red laser beams from rifle scopes danced on their windows. "We had tests the next day at the university," Hussein says. "We didn't think he would go like this." Down the road, around the same time that night, police commando Ahmed Shibli says he was also being fired on. He illuminates two bullet holes in his house with a kerosene lamp as we talk. The men who busted open his front door called themselves the dirty brigade, he says, and they were carrying American weapons, not the AK-47s or PKCs the National Police use. When they entered, they fired immediately. "It wasn't a warning shot. They shot at me like they wanted to kill me as I was getting down on the ground. It was like we were first-degree terrorists." They fired again, he says, fatally shooting his ailing 63- year-old father. As blood poured from the old man's hip, Ahmed says the men held a gun to his little boy's head and forced his wife to search the room for the police-issued weapon he had left at work. Ahmed and his brother were hauled to the outskirts of the city, along with Hassan, where they were lined up with other men in the dark. Hassan insists on substantiating his story by showing me an official complaint issued by a local army commander named Mustafa Sabah Yunis, alleging that an "unknown armed squadron" entered the area and arrested him. Meanwhile, the Iraqi Army was rushing in to respond to the gunfire, and according to Hussein al-Aibi, these soldiers were shot at as well. He tells me the army got Haidar off the roof and drove him to the hospital. On the way, Fathil says, the vehicle was stopped by a dirty brigade operative, who asked Iraqi Army Major Abu Rajdi where they were going. According to Fathil, Rajdi told the operative, "This is a college student who has nothing to do with anything, and you shot him recklessly." The operative responded by hitting Rajdi and saying, "Turn around and go back, or we'll shoot him and we'll shoot you too." At Haidar's funeral, Fathil asked Rajdi to testify. "You are a representative of the government, and you saw it all happen," he told the major. "You saw that he didn't have a weapon in his hand." Fathil says the major declined. "This is the dirty brigade," he recalls Rajdi saying. "We are afraid of them. When we see them, we retreat. If I testify against them, I'll be killed the next day. They kill and no one will hold them accountable, because they belong to the Americans." Major Rajdi's fear and distrust of the ISOF are echoed by other members of the regular Iraqi Army. "Sometimes we are surprised when the Special Forces enter," says Lt. Colonel Yahya Rasoul Abdullah, commander of the Third Battalion of the Forty-second Brigade in Sadr City. "Bad things happen. Some people steal, and some abuse women. They don't know the people on the streets like us. They just go after their target. We have suffered from this problem." Accounts of older ISOF operations I heard around Baghdad suggest that the Americans may have knowingly allowed violence against civilians. In Adhamiya, long the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency in Baghdad, two hospital employees described their 2006 run-in with the ISOF to me. According to both witnesses, a self-identified ISOF operative named "Captain Hussam" unloaded his machine gun in the Al Numan Hospital after seeing the body of his superior, who had died under the hospital's care. An American operative with a red beard stood by silently watching. According to one witness, the Iraqi operative demanded his commander's death certificate, threatening to "torture you, kill you and kill the people of Adhamiya" if they didn't comply. The witnesses said the eight operatives who entered the hospital were driving Humvees, vehicles that only the Americans and the ISOF use. The next day, Captain Hussam returned, a witness said, offering a box of bullets as an apology. The effective head of the American ISOF project is General Trombitas of the Iraq National Counter-Terror Transition Team. A towering man with a gray mustache and a wrinkled brow, Trombitas spent nearly seven of his over thirty years in the military training special forces in Colombia, El Salvador and other countries. On February 23 he gave me a tour of Area IV, a joint American-Iraqi base near the Baghdad International Airport, where US Special Forces train the ISOF. As we walk away from the helicopter, he cracks a boyish smile. Though he's worked with special forces all over the world, he tells me the men we are about to meet are "the best." Trombitas says he is "very proud of what was done in El Salvador" but avoids the fact that special forces trained there by the United States in the early 1980s were responsible for the formation of death squads that killed more than 50,000 civilians thought to be sympathetic with leftist guerrillas. Guatemala was a similar case. Some Guatemalan special forces that had been trained in anti-terrorism tactics by the United States during the mid-1960s subsequently became death squads that took part in the killing of around 140,000 people. In the early 1990s, US Special Forces trained and worked closely with an elite Colombian police unit strongly suspected of carrying out some of the murders attributed to Los Pepes, a death squad that became the backbone of the country's current paramilitary organization. (Trombitas served in El Salvador from 1989-90 and in Colombia from 2003-2005, after these incidents took place.) "The standards get looser when the Americans aren't with [the local special forces], and they can eventually become death squads, which I believe actually happened in Colombia," says Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo, a book about the hunt for Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar by CIA and US Special Forces. The tactics taught in each country are the same, Bowden says. "They teach the same kind of skills. They use the same equipment." Trombitas told the official blog of the Defense Department that the training missions used in Latin America are "extremely transferable" to Iraq. Salvadoran Special Forces even helped train the ISOF, he tells me. "It's a world of coalitions," he says. "The longer we work together, the more alike we are. When we share our values and our experiences with other armies, we make them the same." Trombitas guides me into a warehouse where ISOF operatives, most of them in black masks, have been preparing for our arrival. He walks me through a special display of their American equipment--machine guns, sniper rifles, state-of-the-art night-vision equipment and fluffy desert camo that makes soldiers look like teddy bears. He takes me up a catwalk overlooking a fake house stocked with cartoonish posters of big-breasted women pointing pistols, a couple of real men dressed as "terrorists" with kaffiyehs wrapped around their faces and a 10-year- old boy playing hostage. As we stand in the observation area, the door explodes. After a minute of constant shooting, the operatives march out with the "terrorists," the boy and a poster of an '80s-style villain, wearing a jean jacket and holding a woman hostage. More than twenty bullet holes are centered on his forehead. "Look at that marksmanship," Trombitas says, smiling proudly. Trombitas gets to the issue of human rights before I do. He assures me that US Special Forces take allegations of human rights abuses very seriously--two Iraqi men were let go for prisoner abuse since he took over in August last year, he says--but he won't comment on specific cases. I raise the issue of accountability and bring up one well- documented mission that caused waves in the Iraqi Parliament: in August the ISOF raided Diyala's provincial government compound, reportedly with the support of US Apache helicopters. They arrested a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Iraq's main Sunni Arab party. They also arrested the president of the university, also a Sunni, and killed a secretary and wounded four armed guards during the night. I barely get the word "Diyala" out of my mouth before the American operatives standing around us start to grumble nervously and a translator jumps in. "For the reputation of the ISOF, please, let's cut that off," he says. Abdul-Karim al-Samarrai, a member of the ruling United Iraqi Alliance and the parliamentary Security and Defense Committee, says that what happened in Diyala was one of many signs of the prime minister's bad intentions for the ISOF. "Politicians are afraid because this force can be used for political ends," he says. In response to outrage from members of Parliament over the arrest of politicians by the ISOF, Maliki, who is officially required to approve every ISOF target, denied any knowledge of the Diyala mission. His claim of innocence raises important questions. If the man who is supposed to be in charge of the ISOF has no knowledge of its missions, then who is ultimately responsible for the force? Was Maliki lying to cover up the fact that he is using the force for political purposes? Or was someone else-- namely the Americans--calling the shots? Diyala was only the first publicized case of possibly politically motivated arrests. In December the ISOF arrested as many as thirty- five officials in the Interior Ministry who were thought to be in opposition to Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party. This past March the ISOF arrested at least one leader of the Awakening Councils, semiofficial Sunni neighborhood militias that have been increasingly at odds with Maliki over his failure to keep a promise to incorporate the councils into the military or give them other employment. The Maliki government has developed a "culture of direct control," says Michael Knights, a Lafer Fellow at the Washington Institute and the head of its Iraq program. Knights visits Iraq regularly and has close contact with the country's security services. He says the people in charge of the ISOF at the regional levels are "personally chosen loyalists or relatives of Maliki. It reminds me of Saddam." Knights says that Maliki is only supposed to approve or reject missions that come to him, but occasionally he will "assert his prerogative as the commander in chief and tell the ISOF to do something or not to do something." Knights raises the possibility that the ISOF will become Maliki's personal death squad. "The prime minister is looking for re- election, and there are not that many restraints on his ability to target political opponents, as [his government] has been doing with the Sadrists for years now." Samarrai, along with other members of Parliament, is calling for disbanding the Counter-Terrorism Bureau. He says there is no legal basis for an armed brigade to exist outside the control of the Interior or Defense ministry. "People are afraid of the existence of an organization with such dreadful capabilities that reports directly to the prime minister," he says. Member of Parliament Hassan al-Rubaie is concerned about the close relationship between the ISOF and the Americans. "If the US leaves Iraq, this will be the last force they will leave behind," he insists. He is worried that such a powerful and secretive force that is closely tied to the Americans could turn Iraq into a "military base in the region" by allowing the United States to continue to conduct missions in Iraq with the cover of the ISOF. "They have become a replacement" for the Americans, he says. President Obama has said he plans to increase reliance on the US Special Forces; Defense Secretary Robert Gates's recent appointment of Stanley McChrystal as commander of Afghanistan suggests that he is keeping his word. From 2003 to 2008, McChrystal was the head of the Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees the Army's most secretive forces and is responsible for the training of special forces abroad. McChrystal was also commander of US Special Operations Forces in Iraq for five years, during which time, according to the Wall Street Journal, he commanded "units that specialize in guerrilla warfare, including the training of indigenous armies." "The eventual drawdown in Iraq is not the end of the mission for our elite forces," Gates said in May 2008. Gates hasn't spoken on the issue since Obama took office; but Obama says he will institutionalize irregular warfare capabilities, and the White House stresses the need to "create a more robust capacity to train, equip and advise foreign security forces, so that local allies are better prepared to confront mutual threats." Bowden says those "local allies" are often used for covert operations. "The United States Special Operations Command cultivates relationships with special forces in other countries because it gives the United States the opportunity of intervening militarily in a covert way," he says. "The ideal covert op is one that is actually carried out by local forces." As I stand on the tarmac with Trombitas in Area IV, waiting for our helicopter to return and fly us back to the Green Zone, I ask him how long the United States will be involved with the ISOF. "Special forces are special because we do maintain a relationship with foreign forces," he says. "Part of our theater-engagement strategy is to maintain a relationship with those units that are important to the security of the region and to the world." As our helicopter appears in the lightly clouded sky, he chooses his next words carefully: "We are going to have a working relationship for a while," he says. About Shane Bauer Shane Bauer is a freelance journalist and Arabic speaker living in the Middle East. more... From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 9 13:43:33 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 12:43:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Goodbye, GM - Michael Moore In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <147734334.805411244576613240.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Today : June 3, 2009 Michael Moore Goodbye, GM by Michael Moore At the deathbed of General Motors, I find myself filled with?dare I say it?joy. Here are my nine suggestions for transforming the company. I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the president of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled. As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence"?the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one?has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh?and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle-class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes. So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with?dare I say it?joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job. But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know?who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear? Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made Roger & Me , I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions: 1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the president must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass-transit vehicles and alternative-energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks, and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated. We are now in a different kind of war?a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford, and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet. The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true?that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline. President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately. 2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce?and most of those who have been laid off?employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st-century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now. 3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high-speed trains for nearly five decades?and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high-speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to D.C. in under seven hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now. 4. Initiate a program to put light-rail mass-transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system. 5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy-efficient clean buses. 6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories?that simply isn't true). 7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels, and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them. 8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy. 9. To help pay for this, impose a $2 tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy-saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them. Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car. One hundred years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front?and the back?seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Highway One. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The president?and the UAW?must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon. Yesterday , the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years. So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint, Michigans, of this country. Sixty percent of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job. Michael Moore is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker and author. He directed and produced Roger & Me , Bowling for Columbine , Fahrenheit 9/11 , and Sicko . He has also written seven books, most recently, Mike?s Election Guide 2008 . BACK TO TOP June 1, 2009 | 7:12 AM From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 9 13:44:07 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 12:44:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] California dreamin' takes on a nightmare quality In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1169908626.805651244576647885.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/california-dreamin-takes-on-a-nightmare-quality/article1174321/ Globe and Mail Report on Business June 9, 2009 California dreamin' takes on a nightmare quality First in many things, now the state is the first to hit the fiscal wall Barrie McKenna bckenna at globeandmail.com California is used to be being first in many things - environmental laws, technology trends and crazes of all kinds. It now also enjoys the dubious distinction of being first to hit the fiscal wall - a problem that could soon threaten the entire United States as it struggles to deal with the hangover from a spending binge and a deep recession. California is facing a widening gap between its sagging tax revenues and rising expenditures, pushing the state near bankruptcy. Like most states, California is constitutionally bound to balance its budget every year and it cannot run a deficit. So California is scrambling to slash spending to cope with dramatically lower tax revenues, and it's looking to Washington for help. And therein lies the dilemma. If the root cause of the global financial crisis was that consumers and financial institutions ran up too much debt, does the United States risk perpetuating the problem by now shifting the debt burden to the public sector? California may be a harbinger of what's to come. Private debts and losses are rapidly being shifted onto the balance sheets of governments, warned New York University economist Nouriel Roubini, who was among the few to predict the severity of the financial crisis. "We are socializing the private losses and putting them on the balance sheet of governments and increasing public debts, thus increasing the overall leverage of the economy," Mr. Roubini argues. The problem isn't going away, and it isn't sustainable. The United States, and other governments around the world, are sowing the seeds of a possible sovereign debt crisis, according to Mr. Roubini. The trillions of dollars funnelled into the economy - for bailouts, banks and bridge building - is putting an increasingly heavy strain on government debt burdens. Most experts agree that short-term stimulus was helpful. But it shouldn't be a substitute for reducing the leverage of the entire economy. The U.S. deficit is expected to hit $1.85-trillion (U.S.) this year, more than triple last year's $455-billion figure. The additional borrowing gets added to a swelling debt. Debt held by the U.S. public is now projected by the Congressional Budget Office to reach 82 per cent of gross domestic product in 10 years, up from 41 per cent in 2008. History has shown that chronically high debt levels push up interest rates, crowd out private spending, and in a worst-case scenario, lead to default. Bill Gross, who manages Pacific Investment Management Co. (Pimco), the world's largest bond fund, warned last week that the United States could eventually lose its coveted triple-A credit rating, forcing it to pay even higher rates to carry its debt. Sovereign debt problems are typically a problem for emerging economies. Now they're spreading to advanced economies. At the same time, central banks in the United States and elsewhere have been busy printing money to try to prop up consumers and businesses - "monetizing the fiscal deficits," as Mr. Roubini puts it. Coming out the other side of the recession, all that cash in the system risks causing significant inflation, a new round of asset bubbles and eventually, higher long-term interest rates on government bonds and mortgages. Last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel ominously warned that central banks may be laying the seeds of the next crisis unless they find a way to remove all this easy money. A hint of what's to come may already be showing up in the recent spike in yields on 10-year U.S. Treasury bills. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. But shifting the debts of California, and other states, onto the U.S. taxpayer is clearly not the answer. Americans must recognize that they will have to accept higher taxes, fewer services, and probably both in the years ahead. Mr. Roubini says the private sector must also learn to live within its means. Banks must convert their debts to equity. Households should do the same by reducing the principal on their mortgages and other debts. Whatever happens, the ways of the past aren't sustainable. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 9 13:42:44 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 12:42:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The North American Auto Industry in Crisis In-Reply-To: <3A90D85829E5458791C854E0C0588262@twubby.com> Message-ID: <1679283474.804911244576564014.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.monthlyreview.org/090608rosenfeld.php Monthly Review June 2009 The North American Auto Industry in Crisis In the face of a lack of mobilization and struggle by their unions, North American workers have been disoriented, demobilized, and frightened by mass layoffs, speedup, plant closures, and threats of the bankruptcy of their employers. Both the UAW and CAW were compromised by previous concessions, and the larger labor movements in both countries have been unable to mount any real challenges to neoliberalism. This has emboldened employers and the state in their demands on the workers. Herman Rosenfeld The current financial crisis marks a series of turning points in the history of the North American auto industry. 1 First, the iconic ?Big Three? have been downsized to ?The Detroit Three.? Once the global symbol of U.S. productivism and consumerism, they now teeter on the brink of bankruptcy and, in the process, profound questions are being raised about the decline of U.S. manufacturing jobs more generally. Second, the auto unions, themselves once emblematic of what workers could achieve within capitalism, have been reduced to lobbying to save ?their? companies, and a decades-long trend in private-sector labor negotiations has now confirmed collective bargaining as having shifted from demands by workers to demands on workers. This highlights the broader crisis of labor: if labor cannot find a way to renew itself it could fade into irrelevancy. And third, the environment ? which the industry so rapaciously disregarded and the unions so short-sightedly ignored ? seems to have forced itself onto the agenda. In coming to grips with both the threats and opportunities provided by this historic moment, the following points are crucial: 1. The current financial crisis may have been the immediate factor that drove the U.S.-based auto companies to the wall, but their troubles precede and go beyond this crisis. Their problems are rooted in the particular strategic choices they made in the pursuit of profits, in the uneven impact and failures of the privatized U.S. welfare state, in the destructive dynamics ? to workers and their communities ? of the intensified global competition that now characterizes capitalism, and in overcapacity in the auto industry. 2. The postwar successes of the auto unions in winning a ?middle-class? lifestyle are over. The union strategies of those years came at the expense of building longer-term class capacities inside and outside the union ? neither developing the capacity of workers collectively to challenge the power and control of employers in the workplace, nor contributing to a class-wide movement against the entire class of employers on the political and social terrain. When circumstances changed, the costs of this neglect were manifested in the unions being left dependent on trying to accommodate the companies. This, too, has come to a dead end. 3. We cannot take much solace from the apparent crisis of neoliberalism. While this current ideological setback represents an important political opening, the essence of neoliberal practices, on the part of both the state and companies, has hardly disappeared ? as has been made clear in their pressures on autoworkers to conform to ?market realities? and the March 30 ultimatum from President Obama. 4. The current challenge is not how to save the companies, but how to save our productive capacities and communities. Only such a shift in how we define the problem can effectively address immediate needs ? including not only the needs of those who will remain in the Detroit Three, but also of the tens of thousands of workers already laid off and the tens of thousands more that will come with ?successful? restructuring ? and do so in a way that builds the independence and broader capacities that create possibilities for hope. The Current Crisis The collapse of credit markets for major industrial borrowers hit all auto companies and their suppliers, with the drop in consumer borrowing leading to massive declines in sales. While the slump presents short-term challenges to the Japanese and European car firms, it signals a crisis of survival for the Detroit Three. General Motors, alone, lost $30.9 billion in 2008. Its fourth quarter loss was $9.6 billion, a decline of 39 percent in revenue. It sustained losses in North America and the rest of the world. This burned a huge hole in its cash reserves. The corporation ended 2008 with about $14 billion in cash, which is close to the minimum amount of cash GM claims it needs to fund its operations. (That figure includes the $4 billion it borrowed from the U.S. Federal government.) Figures are similar for Chrysler and Ford. Unable to get credit from seized-up private markets, the Detroit Three were forced to borrow from the state. Both GM and Chrysler applied for and received loan guarantees from the U.S. and Canadian governments (with conditions), while Ford mortgaged its assets to access a line of credit. The U.S. government provided a total of $17.4 billion to GM and Chrysler. Each asked for still more from the Obama administration. 2 The Canadian and Ontario governments promised $3 billion, plus tax relief of various kinds. In order to receive the loan guarantees, the lame-duck Congress and the Bush administration imposed a set of conditions on the companies, accompanied by a vicious attack on the workers. The companies were forced to submit formal restructuring plans to cut costs, streamline their operations, and change their product offerings, subject to approval by the new administration at the end of March 2009. GM, in its report, promised to cut three of its eight brands, close five more of its U.S. factories, and cut another 47,000 jobs globally by the end of 2009 ? 19 percent of its workforce, with jobs outside the United States accounting for 26,000 of its reductions and 20,000 U.S. jobs slated to go. GM of Canada asked for $7.5 billion from the federal and Ontario governments. While the company pledged it would not announce any new closures of Canadian plants, it did say that it planned to cut its Canadian workforce to 7,000 by 2010. In 2005, GM of Canada employed 20,000 Canadian workers. The demands made on the workers were harsh: The United Auto Workers (UAW) had to match the wage, benefit, and working condition levels at the U.S. operations of Honda, Nissan, and Toyota. This applied to Canada, too (the Canadian Auto Workers [CAW] argued that they would match the U.S. parent companies of the Detroit Three branch plants). In addition, at least half the contributions to the new U.S. union-administered funds for retiree health care benefits (called a VEBA), would have to take the form of (now devalued and fragile) company stock. The requirement was that the workers should ?come to the table,? with the unions referred to as stakeholders . Of course, their fellow stakeholders ? the top managers and bondholders ? hardly faced demands that threatened their health, incomes, and economic survival. At least 80 percent of the bonds are owned by enormously rich private and speculative ?vulture? hedge funds. The requirement to match nonunion workplaces was nothing more than an open challenge to unionization itself. The Obama administration rejected the initial restructuring plans of both GM and Chrysler. Taking a decidedly hands-on approach to shaping the restructuring process, it demanded that GM fire its chairman and CEO, Rick Wagoner, and engage in ?a more aggressive restructuring plan? that would include more concessions from the workers and bondholders, changes to product lines, and other efforts to make it competitive with the transplants. It was given sixty days of working capital, and if it failed to live up to the conditions, it would be subject to what Obama called a ?controlled? bankruptcy proceeding. In his first news conference, the new GM chairman confirmed what financial analysts had already noted: that the bankruptcy plan was ?more probable? than ever. Bankruptcy could allow a judge to invalidate worker pensions, benefits, and all contractual benefits. 3 Chrysler was deemed ?not viable as a stand alone company? and was ordered to form a partnership with Fiat. It was given thirty days of working capital to consummate the merger and was also threatened with bankruptcy. 4 The Canadian federal and Ontario provincial governments quickly demanded more concessions from CAW members. What might these developments mean? Obama and his auto commission have decided to use the power of the capitalist state to impose a solution fully in keeping with neoliberalism. Whatever the ultimate outcome for GM and Chrysler, the industry would be modeled on the lean and mean transplants: competitive, profit-making machines with weak or no unions. Finance would retain a dominant role in deciding its priorities. And the demand for short-term profitability, discouraging longer-term investments and costly new technology, would come at the expense of the environment. The administration is using its power to force reluctant bondholders to accept hugely discounted returns, in the name of the broader interests of the capitalist class as a whole. It is using the threat of bankruptcy to force workers to accept further job loss, reductions in wages, benefits, pension rights, work intensification, and deteriorating working conditions. The firing of Wagoner was an effort to appeal to the growing anger of many Americans with the greedy CEO?s of the financial sector ? while making no real fundamental changes, other than reinforcing the disciplining power of Wall Street financial interests. In a similar way, in appearing to be equally harsh with both bondholders and the UAW, the administration maintains a fa?ade of fairness ? even though workers will end up paying with their basic livelihoods and pensions. 5 In the face of a lack of mobilization and struggle by their unions, North American workers have been disoriented, demobilized, and frightened by mass layoffs, speedup, plant closures, and threats of the bankruptcy of their employers. Both the UAW and CAW were compromised by previous concessions, and the larger labor movements in both countries have been unable to mount any real challenges to neoliberalism. This has emboldened employers and the state in their demands on the workers. The auto unions accepted the terms of the original demands with minimal conditions of their own. The UAW negotiated concession agreements with Ford and GM, but wasn?t able to resolve the issue of company contributions to the VEBA in the latter. The CAW bargained a pattern agreement of concessions with GM, but hit a snag in Chrysler Canada bargaining, with the latter demanding deeper cuts than at GM and publicly threatening to pull out of Canada. Ford of Canada also complained that the cuts didn?t go deep enough. Right-wing Canadian Prime Minister Harper, Finance Minister Flaherty, and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty insisted on further concessions. At the time of writing ? the beginning of May ? Chrysler has gone into a ?surgical bankruptcy,? after feverish efforts to put together a package fell short. It included provisions for more layoffs and plant closures. The U.S. and Canadian governments translated their $15.5 billion in aid into a total of 10 percent ownership of the company (8 percent going to the United States and 2 percent to Canada); Fiat will own 20 percent and eventually 35 percent; the UAW will hold 55 percent of the company through shares in their VEBA, to pay for retiree medical costs (minus vision and dental benefits which were given up). A group of bondholders refused to swap their devalued debt claims for shares. The new Chrysler board will include three members from the U.S. Treasury, one each from the Canadian government and the UAW?s VEBA (the latter without independent voting rights), and three from Fiat. This was preceded by massive new concessions by both the UAW and the CAW, which radically undermined the traditional package of rights won by those unions over the years. The unions then moved to apply the new round of concessions to GM and Ford as well?in a perverse version of ?pattern bargaining.? The Chrysler bankruptcy arrangement is seen as a ?dry run? for GM. In both cases, the illusion of union participation and part ownership hides the fact that workers? wages, benefits, working conditions, and pensions will now be held hostage to the need to increase the return on ?their? investments in the company and their responsibility to pay for their own retirees? health care. 6 Survival of the Detroit Three A number of factors have contributed to placing the survival of the Detroit Three at risk. A key element is the dependence of workers on privately bargained pension and social insurance plans ? the so-called ?private welfare state.? The weak U.S. social safety net and the privatized, employer-based health insurance system worked to reinforce some of the structural advantages of the transplants. They have younger workforces and radically lower ?legacy costs? ? the cost of paying for retirees? pensions and health care. 7 General Motors, alone, has about five retirees and surviving spouses for every active worker in its plants in the United States. Toyota has about three hundred retirees in its entire U.S. operations. Even in Canada, pension costs are an issue. Although the single-payer health care system limits costs to the employers and evens the playing field somewhat, public pensions are also low and the legacy costs to the Detroit Three for retirees? benefits there are substantial. Cutbacks in government health care spending and privatization have increased the role of private insurance, while access to drugs, vision, and dental care remain private. As the companies increased productivity over the years through technological change, outsourcing, speedup, and the adoption of lean production techniques, the number of active workers decreased and the proportion of retirees correspondingly increased. Factoring in market share losses and buyout packages for active workers, the costs of pensions and retiree health care became unsustainable. Productivity doubled in the past twenty years, alongside a 25 percent reduction in jobs. At the end of the 1970s, when the concession era began, there were about 750,000 hourly workers at the Detroit Three ? today, more than two-thirds of those jobs are gone. 8 In most developed capitalist economies, the market is not likely to grow more than 2 or 3 percent annually. So ongoing productivity increases will push up the rate of job loss in the overall manufacturing sector even higher over time. Much has been made in the media about the wage differentials between the Detroit Three and the transplants, although labor costs reflect no more than 7 percent of the cost of an average new car. Autoworkers create enormous surplus value for capital, and concerns about their wages ignore this reality. 9 Before the latest UAW collective agreement in 2007 that cut in half the wage rates of newly hired workers at GM, Ford, and Chrysler (and made them ineligible for some benefits and pensions), there was a three dollar an hour difference between them and the transplants. Of course, this reflected efforts of the nonunion plants to prevent unionization. Factoring in the new base rates, even this differential disappears. 10 Another factor is the increasing share of the market by the transplants and imports, enhanced by trade liberalization rules and the perception (and sometimes the reality) that foreign-made cars were of higher quality. A major component of the changes in buying patterns has been the rise in oil prices and the tendency of the Detroit Three to concentrate on large, gas-guzzling vehicles, especially SUV?s. 11 In fact, it was the explosion in SUV sales that explains much of the last wave of sales growth for the Detroit companies. 12 These manufacturers were simply acting as ?rational? capitalists, specializing in market segments that brought in the greatest profits. The transplants also produced vehicles for all segments of the market ? and joined the rush towards production of SUV?s ? but their expertise is in the production of smaller, high-mileage cars. Finally, there is overcapacity in North American and world auto markets. Auto is a classic example of how the profit-seeking drive of capital ? along with limitations on working peoples? capacity to buy goods ? leads to the production of more goods than can be consumed, driving and sharpening competitive pressures. The Economist notes that, ?According to CSM Worldwide, an automotive-market consultancy firm, the world could produce about 94 million cars a year ? about 34 million more than it is buying.? 13 Even with the wealth and depth of the North American market there is a huge imbalance between capacity to produce vehicles and the market for them. In the context of the current downturn, this is even more problematic. Sales of a little over thirteen million light vehicles, including imports, in 2008, were down 18 percent from 2007. The high point of the market ? around sixteen million units ? is not expected to return until possibly 2013, according to the Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research. Another auto analyst predicts that, even with the plant closures, capacity will be something like 16.9 million units in 2009. 14 Actual output is forecast to be just 9.5 million, with an anemic capacity utilization rate of 56 percent. How We Got Here From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 9 15:06:50 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 14:06:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Anti-immigrant right win 15% of Dutch vote in European elections In-Reply-To: <1292719934.534461244501393362.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <778871218.850021244581610577.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/05/european-elections-the-netherlands-far-right The Guardian 5 June 2009 Anti-immigrant right win 15% of Dutch vote in European elections ? Exit polls predict Freedom party to take second place ? Leader Geert Wilders faces prosection for hate speech Ian Traynor in Brussels The Dutch anti-immigrant maverick, Geert Wilders, scored his biggest victory yesterday, seizing 15% and second place in European elections for the Netherlands , according to exit polls last night. The bleached blond populist, barred from Britain and facing prosecution at home for hate speech, led his Freedom party to win four of the Netherlands' 25 seats in the European parliament at the first attempt, pushing the Labour party of the coalition government's finance minister, Wouter Bos, into third place. Wilders wants the European parliament abolished, Bulgaria and Romania kicked out of the EU, the mass deportation of immigrants from the Netherlands, and a minimum say for Brussels over Dutch policy. The virulence of his anti-Islam and anti-immigrant activities saw him barred from entering Britain earlier this year, while the Dutch authorities are prosecuting him for inciting hatred. He is also under 24-hour security amid intense hostility to his statements on Islam, likening the Koran to Hitler's Mein Kampf and making a film depicting Islam as a vehicle of violence and terrorism. Last night's estimate of 15% represented a big increase on the 6% he took in the last general election in 2006, despite fielding a list of unknowns for seats in the European parliament. "Geert Wilders' onward march in Dutch politics continues," said the newspaper, De Telegraaf. The Christian Democrats of prime ?minister Jan Peter Balkenende won the election, according to the television exit poll, but dropped 4 points and lost two seats. Its coalition partner, the Labour party, took 4 seats, like Wilders, but dropped 10 points and forfeited three seats. Wilders will take further encouragement from a mock election staged among 15,000 pupils in 140 schools in the Netherlands this week which gave him more than 19% support, ahead of all other parties. Only two of 27 EU countries, Britain and the Netherlands, voted yesterday. The election climaxes on Sunday with elections in 18 countries. The Dutch bent the rules governing the world's biggest trans-national ballot by releasing reliable partial results and exit polls late last night, despite a ban on announcing the election outcome until after the vote ends on Sunday evening. National politicians and senior EU ?officials appealed for people to use their vote, amid fears that the turnout would fall well below 40% to the lowest level of the seven elections in the last 30 years. Turnout in the Netherlands was around 40%, similar to five years ago and half the level of the general election in 2006. Some 375 million people are eligible to vote for 736 seats in the chamber which alternates between Brussels and Strasbourg. With unemployment across the EU nudging 10%, the highest level in a decade, according to figures released this week, the recession, jobs, and worries for the future are key issues. Apathy and anger are likely to cause a low turnout, as well as protest voting that will hit mainstream parties and benefit extremists, according to analysts. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 9 15:06:39 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 14:06:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] We wanted a world leader. We saw only a US president In-Reply-To: <1304720263.536381244501594768.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1083624671.849851244581599746.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/05/barack-obama-cairo The Guardian 5 June 2009 We wanted a world leader. We saw only a US president Obama's long-awaited speech demonstrated little to suggest America will pursue any course beyond its own interests Ahdaf Soueif This is hard. It's hard because we so need to believe that Obama is about change, that he's wise, that he's good, that he has the interests of the world ? rather than just the interests of the United States ? at heart. The 3,500 invited guests were told they'd have to be in their places by 10.30. But Obama would speak at one . An odd time for everyone, it would seem: for us in Cairo, where the cool of the evening is the preferred time for any event, and for people in America, who wouldn't yet have woken up. I dress with my eye on the television screen: the loop of Obama touching cheeks with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, his hand resting for a companionable minute on the old monarch's arm. Just before I leave the house I glimpse the prancing horses that make up part of Obama's procession into Cairo. The Egyptian state is doing pomp, and relieved (because of the security lockdown) of traffic and noise Cairo is playing along: the morning light is clear and free of dust, the flame trees are magnificent with their crowns of red massed flowers. In the great Festival Hall under the dome of Cairo University we are a good-humoured crowd, amusing ourselves during our three-hour wait by applauding the mic checks and housekeeping announcements of the Egyptian staff. Then something interesting happens: an American strides on to the stage, brusque and marine-like in his efficiency, he marches through a prolonged mic check: "One, two, three, mic check, from Cairo, Egypt, one, two ?" When he's finished the tiny patter of hesitant applause dies out very quickly. In a ?couple of minutes he's back. "Mic check," he announces ? then grins: "Last time, I promise." The crowd roars its approval, applauds him. They even applaud Hilary Clinton as she beams in through a side door. There are a lot of empty seats: the ?security arrangements and the ?promise of the long wait have kept people away. But then Obama comes in, and we're on our feet: waving, ?cheering, ?clapping. And that, really, is the highlight of the occasion. Obama did what many of us hoped he would not do: he accorded faith a central position in the relationship between our different parts of the world: rather than human beings with different histories and different political interests and ambitions ? and despite a quick acknowledgment of colonialism ? we were essentially people of different faiths who would now make nice with each other. And such is our beleaguered state of mind here in this part of the world that every time he quoted the Qur'an, he was applauded. But then again, it seemed that it was the same 200 or so people who were putting their hands together ? to less effect each time. "Extremism" was top of the agenda, even though al-Qaida, once so modern and cutting edge, is now tired and irrelevant. But it was prodded out of its stall again as justification for American operations in Afghanistan. We were reminded of the 3,000 people killed in New York ? people who had done no harm to anyone. And every person listening east of Rome and many west of it would have been thinking "and what about the million Iraqis, what about the Afghanis, what about ?" And ?nothing about non-Muslim extremism, about the 40 million American Christian Zionists anticipating the Rapture with glee, or the Israeli settlers who in Hebron take your photo and upload it to God to fast-lane you to hell. Obama's speech was a lawyerly speech, a clever speech. It certainly departed from the Bush discourse, but how far away from the policies of the last eight years are the sources it springs from? We still can only wait and see. The biggest applause he got was when he said that all US troops would be out of Iraq by 2012, and when he repeated his position on the Israeli settlements. He's been brave on the settlements, and of course we're all grateful for every step in the direction of halting the dispossession of the Palestinians. But it also needs to be remembered that stopping the settlements has been part of the official position of every American administration; what's required is the implementation of that position by cutting off the funding for the settlements and closing the tax loophole that allows private American organisations to fund them. Around the pedestal carrying the Eternal Flame of Knowledge outside the university, the American activist group Code Pink carried banners that said "Obama: Stop funding Israeli war crimes". They came out of Gaza on Wednesday carrying a letter from Hamas to the American president, and they were at pains to point out that Hamas chose an American feminist group to carry their letter. I don't know if they managed to deliver it. There is a difference between believing that ultimately the interests of the inhabitants of the planet are genuinely interconnected and believing that the interests of the world can be made to seem compatible with America's. Obama has said that America should have not only the power but the moral standing to lead the world. Today we waited for him to demonstrate that moral standing and assume the leadership of the world. He did not; he remained the President of the United States. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 9 15:21:15 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 14:21:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Obama Electrifies The World: Can We Believe The Hype? Message-ID: <1157071708.857021244582475907.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/3888 ZNet June 8, 2009 Obama Electrifies The World: Can We Believe The Hype? By Danny Schechter The President As Celebrity Conquers Europe Even Europe Moves Right You still want to like him, even if it has now been confirmed that the President of the United States travels with an official food taster or so the French news agency reported. "They have someone who tastes the dishes," said waiter Gabriel de Carvalho from the "La Fontaine de Mars" restaurant where Obama and his family turned up for dinner on Saturday night. It wasn't very pleasant for the cooks at first, but the person was very nice and was relaxed, so it all went well," he said on the Itele news channel." Perhaps more brain shattering was the quote attributed to the owner of the Restaurant, who said with all sincerity that he had seen God. "We all think of him that way," he added. Ironically, as the elevated ONE was sightseeing in Paris , Republicans of the Freedom Fries inclination were blasting him for even being there at all, perhaps just jealous because he seemed like he was having fun. More ominously, European voters were moving right in the EU elections. (Turnout was low!) Reports the New York Times: "Heather Grabbe, director of the Open Society Institute in Brussels , said that two striking features of the elections were the failure of the left to make a breakthrough and the advances threatened by the far-right and other fringe parties. "At a time of crisis," she said, "people often lose faith in the established political parties but they will typically move to the left when there is the prospect of higher unemployment, in the hope that the state will look after them. "The left needs a new narrative," Ms Grabbe added, "the narrative of the state looking after people has failed to hold even at a time of deep unemployment." These paradoxes also speak to the way politics has merged with celebrity reinforced by 24/7 TV news cycles. Some like the President of France marry celebrities. Others like Barack and Michelle become celebrified, sparking adulation and fostering unrealistic expectations. This tendency is fueled by disgust with politicians as usual on the one hand, and the desire to have someone who you can believe will be different on the other. We all want someone to make a difference as the economy and the public's sense of another possibility crash like that Air France plane. Obama has that special charisma, and builds a mystique that resonates in a period when so little else does. "It's the smile" one TV producer told me the other day. Another put it down to his youth. No, said a third, it's his skill as an orator especially because his predecessor couldn't put two words together. Lets not forget, it was like that with JFK and Jackie too. In their time, they represented a new generation, exuded style and the aphrodisiac of power. For some, they walked on water. And like Obama, JFK was treated more as a personality more than a leader of a party. You can view Obama as a devious calculating cynic, saying one thing and then doing another. You can see him as a prisoner of larger forces that push all politicians into the embrace of special interests serving the status quo masked as "the politics of the possible." Or you can still be bullish because he is going over the heads of the dead weights in office worldwide. "Obama is going over the heads of elites, attempting to establish moral legitimacy as a leader, turning popularity into policy, " writes Robert Marquand in the Christian Science Monitor. "What we are seeing is not spin, but a sincere effort to reach out to hearts and minds, appealing to better instincts, to the reasonable nature of others. It is a revolutionary approach." Revolution, smevolution. Populism can be progressive or reactionary as it has been throughout our history. The Tea Baggers see themselves as "populists" fighting the supposed "tyranny" of the government. " So did the "Yes We Can" crowd who put Mr. O in office and are now mostly cheering or half-cheering from the sidelines. Words are necessary even if they are not sufficient. AP reports, "There are already some indications [Barack's] words are having the desired effect of undercutting extremists. A militant leader in Egypt called on the Taliban to respond positively to Obama's gestures, and Hamas militants in Gaza say they are ready 'to build on this speech' "Obama may have managed to 'plant the seed of doubt in some minds' of extremists, said Robert Malley, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank. 'There was enough ... that represented openings for those who wanted openings.'" Revolutionaries know how to appropriate rhetoric to advance their agendas and audiences. Before Obama conquered Cairo , Napoleon did the same. Writes Hizb ut-Tahrir, "he told the people, 'You will be told that I came to destroy your religion; do not believe it ... I have more respect than the Mamelukes for your God, His Prophet, and the Koran' and many more sweet words besides." Adds Ahdaf Soueif "This is hard. It's hard because we so need to believe that Obama is about change, that he's wise, that he's good, that he has the interests of the world - rather than just the interests of the United States - at heart." That's the key, the words, "We so need to believe." Even as unemployment reaches near depression levels, the Unions and many progressives want to believe. The alternative: realizing that we live in a system, that Obama can say and do good and will also say and do evil. That's his function. Unfortunately, our media doesn't really explain this but treats politics like sports, generating heat, not light. It is more interested in what he is eating --did you see that NBC White House special featuring his lunch-time hamburger run-- than doing. What is our function as citizens? If you are reading this, presumably, it is to be more critical, more analytical, able to make distinctions, willing to live with and challenge the contradictions, aware that institutions have more impact than individuals. Love Obama or hate him, he's here, barring the unthinkable, for the next few years. He's not God. He is or should be a public servant and the job of the public is not to serve him but to challenge him and hold him accountable too. You can't allow your "analysis" to lead to paralysis. These are dangerous times, when the people who want to wreck the prospects for change are more mobilized than the people who want to secure that change. We live in a noise machine with few mass movements and lots of mass confusion. Instead of telling Twitter what you are doing, tell us all what you are ready to do. News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org. He directed the DVD "Barack Obama: People's President" (ChoicesVideo.Net) about his campaign and insists he is not a cheerleader. Comments to dissector at mediachannel.org From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Jun 9 15:36:09 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 14:36:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] 60 die in Peru rainforest protest In-Reply-To: <3A6CE9B572414D599AEEAAE4FC908124@twubby.com> Message-ID: <901947917.864951244583369036.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The Real News June 9, 2009 60 die in Peru rainforest protest Clashes between police and indigenous protesters over drilling for oil and gas in rain forest Recent free trade agreements signed with the American and Canadian governments fueled the government to go ahead with changes to domestic laws that would seek to advance mineral, logging, oil and agricultural ?development? into previously untouched areas of the Amazon. This touched off a over-50-day protest that has shut down parts of the Amazon. http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3832 From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Jun 9 18:56:03 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:56:03 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Securitization: The Biggest Rip-off Ever Message-ID: <4A2F04A3.1080507@ashisuto.co.jp> Financial Deregulation has Opened Up A Pandora's box by Mike Whitney Global Research (June 05 2009) Is it possible to make hundreds of billions of dollars in profits on securities that are backed by nothing more than cyber-entries into a loan book? It's not only possible; it's been done. And now the scoundrels who cashed in on the swindle have lined up outside the Federal Reserve building to trade their garbage paper for billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded loans. Where's the justice? Meanwhile, the credit bust has left the financial system in a shambles and driven the economy into the ground like a tent stake. The unemployment lines are growing longer and consumers are cutting back on everything from nights-on-the-town to trips to the grocery store. And it's all due to a Ponzi-finance scam that was concocted on Wall Street and spread through the global system like an aggressive strain of Bird Flu. The isn't a normal recession; the financial system was blown up by greedy bankers who used "financial innovation" game the system and inflate the biggest speculative bubble of all time. And they did it all legally, using a little-known process called securitization. Securitization - which is the conversion of pools of loans into securities that are sold in the secondary market - provides a means for massive debt-leveraging. The banks use off-balance sheet operations to create securities so they can avoid normal reserve requirements and bothersome regulatory oversight. Oddly enough, the quality of the loan makes no difference at all, since the banks make their money on loan originations and other related fees. What matters is quantity, quantity, quantity; an industrial-scale assembly line of fetid loans dumped on unsuspecting investors to fatten the bottom line. And, boy, can Wall Street grind out the rotten paper when there's no cop on the beat and the Fed is cheering from the bleachers. In an analysis written by economist Gary Gorton for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta?s 2009 Financial Markets Conference titled, "Slapped in the Face by the Invisible Hand; Banking and the Panic of 2007" {1}, the author shows that mortgage-related securities ballooned from $492.6 billion in 1996 to $3,071.1 in 2003, while asset backed securities (ABS) jumped from $168.4 billion in 1996 to $1,253.1 in 2006. All told, more than $20 trillion in securitized debt was sold between 1997 to 2007. How much of that debt will turn out to be worthless as foreclosures skyrocket and the banks balance sheets come under greater and greater pressure? Deregulation opened Pandora's box, unleashing a weird mix of shady off-book operations (SPVs, SIVs) and dodgy, odd-sounding derivatives that were used to amplify leverage and stack debt on tinier and tinier scraps of capital. It's easy to make money, when one has no skin in the game. That's how hedge fund managers and private equity sharpies get rich. Securitization gave the banks the opportunity to take substandard loans from applicants who had no way of paying them back, and magically transform them into Triple A securities. "Abra-kadabra". The Wall Street public relations throng boasted that securitization "democratized" credit because more people could borrow at better rates since funding came from investors rather than banks. But it was all a hoax. The real objective was to turbo-charge profits by skimming hefty salaries and bonuses on the front end, before people found out they'd been hosed. The former head of the FDIC, William Seidman, figured it all out back in 1993 when he was cleaning up after the S&L fiasco. Here's what he said in his memoirs: "Instruct regulators to look for the newest fad in the industry and examine it with great care. The next mistake will be a new way to make a loan that will not be repaid." (Bloomberg) That's it in a nutshell. The banks never expected the loans would be paid back, which is why they issued them to ninjas; applicants with no income, no collateral, no job, and a bad credit history. It made no sense at all, especially to anyone who's ever sat through a nerve-wracking credit check with a sneering banker. Trust me, bankers know how to get their money back, if that's their real intention. In this case, it didn't matter. They just wanted to keep their counterfeiting racket zooming ahead at full-throttle for as long as possible. Meanwhile, Maestro Greenspan waved pom-poms from the sidelines, extolling the virtues of the "new economy" and the permanent high plateau of prosperity that had been achieved through laissez faire capitalism. Now that the securitization bubble has burst, forty percent of the credit which had been coursing into the economy has been cut off triggering a 1930s-type meltdown. Fed chief Bernanke has stepped into the breach and provided a $13 trillion dollar backstop to keep the financial system from collapsing, but the broader economy has continued its historic nosedive. Bernanke is trying to fill the chasm that opened up when securitization ground to a halt and gas started exiting the credit bubble in one mighty whooosh. The deleveraging is ongoing, despite the Fed's many programs to rev up securitization and restore speculative bubblenomics. Bernanke's latest brainstorm, the Term Asset-backed securities Lending Facility (TALF), provides 94 percent public funding for investors willing to buy loans backed by credit card debt, student loans, auto loans or commercial real estate loans. It's a "no lose" situation for big investors who think that securitized debt will stage a comeback. But that's the problem; no one does. Attractive, non recourse (nearly) risk free loans have failed to entice the big brokerage houses and hedge fund managers. Bernanke has peddled less than $30 billion in a program that's designed to lend up to $1 trillion. It's been a complete bust. To understand securitization, one must think like a banker. Bankers believe that profits are constrained by reserve requirements. So, what they really want is to expand credit with no reserves; the equivalent of spinning flax into gold. Securitization and derivatives contracts achieve that objective. They create a confusing netherworld of odd-sounding instruments and bizarre processes which obscure the simple fact that they are creating money out of thin air. That's what securitization really is; undercapitalized junk masquerading as precious jewels. Here's how economist Henry C K Liu sums it up in his article "Mark-to-Market vs Mark-to-Model": "The shadow banking system has deviously evaded the reserve requirements of the traditional regulated banking regime and institutions and has promoted a chain-letter-like inverted pyramid scheme of escalating leverage, based in many cases on nonexistent reserve cushion. This was revealed by the AIG collapse in 2008 caused by its insurance on financial derivatives known as credit default swaps (CDS) ... "The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve jointly allowed banks with credit default swaps (CDS) insurance to keep super-senior risk assets on their books without adding capital because the risk was insured. Normally, if the banks held the super-senior risk on their books, they would need to post capital at eight percent of the liability. But capital could be reduced to one-fifth the normal amount (twenty percent of eight percent, meaning $160 for every $10,000 of risk on the books) if banks could prove to the regulators that the risk of default on the super-senior portion of the deals was truly negligible, and if the securities being issued via a collateral debt obligation (CDO) structure carried a Triple-A credit rating from a 'nationally recognized credit rating agency', such as Standard and Poor?s rating on AIG. "With CDS insurance, banks then could cut the normal $800 million capital for every $10 billion of corporate loans on their books to just $160 million, meaning banks with CDS insurance can loan up to five times more on the same capital. The CDS-insured CDO deals could then bypass international banking rules on capital." {1} The same rule applies to derivatives (CDS) as securitized instruments; neither is sufficiently capitalized because setting aside reserves impairs one's ability to maximize profits. It's all about the bottom line. The reason credit default swaps are so cheap, compared to conventional insurance, is that there's no way of knowing whether the dealer has the ability to pay claims. It's fraud, on a gigantic scale, which is why the financial system went into full-blown paralysis when Lehman Brothers defaulted. No one knew whether trillions of dollars in counterparty contracts would be paid out or not. There are simply more claims on wealth than there is money in the system. Bogus mortgages and phony counterparty promises mean nothing. "Show me the money". The system is underwater, and it cannot be fixed by more of the Fed's presto liquidity. Here's what Gary Gorton says later in the same article: "A banking panic means that the banking system is insolvent. The banking system cannot honor contractual demands; there are no private agents who can buy the amount of assets necessary to recapitalize the banking system, even if they knew the value of the assets, because of the sheer size of the banking system. When the banking system is insolvent, many markets stop functioning and this leads to very significant effects on the real economy ..." Indeed. The shadow banking system has collapsed, not because the market is "frozen" or because investors are in a state of panic after Lehman, but because derivatives and securitization have been exposed as a fraud propped up on insufficient capital. It's snake oil sold by charlatans. That's why European policymakers are resisting the Fed's requests to create a facility similar to the TALF to start up securitization again. Here's a revealing clip from the Wall Street Journal which explains what's going on behind the scenes: "Bankers are pushing European policy makers to consider a US-style program to aid the region's economy by reviving the moribund market for bundled consumer loans. Officials at the European Securitisation Forum, a trade group representing banks and other market participants, said Tuesday that central bankers should consider stepping in with a program similar to the US Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, which provides loans to private investors who buy new securities tied to consumer loans ... "After suffering heavy losses on securities stuffed with poorly made loans, investors are reluctant to wade back in, and Europe lacks big players like the Pacific Investment Management Company in the US, whose buying can mobilize other investors ... The market also faces uncertainty over how European regulators will change the rules of the game, in part by imposing tougher capital requirements on banks, the main buyers of securitized assets in Europe. "One European Commission proposal would dramatically hike the capital required of banks holding a securitized asset if the originator allowed its share of that asset to fall below a five percent threshold ... "Paul Sharma of Britain's Financial Services Authority said regulatory action is likely to shrink the investor base for ABS, in part by increasing the capital cushions banks will have to hold against ABS holdings in their trading books. He also argued that ABS were inappropriate for banks to hold as liquid assets, because they have proven difficult to sell in a market crisis. " 'There is very much a query in the minds of regulators as to whether there is a significant future for securitization', said Mr Sharma, though he added his own view was that the market did have a future role." See? In Europe regulators still do their jobs and make sure that financial institutions have money before they create trillions of dollars in credit. They don't stick with their heads in the sand while crooked bankers fleece the public. Bernanke's job is to step in and put an end to the hanky-panky, not add to the problems by restoring a credit-generating regime that transferred hundreds of billions of dollars from hard-working people to fatcat banksters and Wall Street flim-flammers. Notes: {1} http://www.frbatlanta.org/news/CONFEREN/09fmc/gorton.pdf {2} Henry C K Liu, "Mark-to-Market vs Mark-to-Model" - http://www.henryckliu.com/page191.html {3} "In Europe, a US Way To Fix ABS Market?" by Neil Shah and Stephen Fidler, Wall Street Journal _____ Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Mike Whitney: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=listByAuthor&authorFirst=Mike&authorName=Whitney Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article. To become a Member of Global Research: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=section§ionName=membership The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor at yahoo.com www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner. For media inquiries: crgeditor at yahoo.com (c) Copyright Mike Whitney, Global Research, 2009 (c) Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=13863 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 Tue Jun 9 22:41:20 2009 From: mstainsby at resist.ca (Macdonald Stainsby) Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 22:41:20 -0600 (MDT) Subject: [R-G] "Prentice tables bill to expand Nahanni park reserve" -- BS Alert!! Message-ID: <64a382bf3ca356c406697854a7c370aa.squirrel@mail.resist.ca> Let's just unpack some of this bullshit and put it out on the table, shall we? Good! Here's the point of all this. The Mackenzie Gas Project will devastate the Beaufort Delta, ravage the Colville Hills region of the Sahtu, begin a process of colonial settler population transfers to the Valley where up until this day there is still a majority of the population Dene. This will include a highway, and the "temporary" migration of 1000's of workers near small communities like Wrigley/Pedzheh K? who currently have populations of about 200 people. Why am I ranting about the Mackenzie Gas Project when this is an article about Nahanni expanding? Because it's really a part of the CPAWS/CBI/WWF/Duck Fuckers scam to set up the guaranteed construction of the MGP. Let's back up. The supposed "enviros" here want to "protect" 50% of the Boreal Forest (regardless of the fact that this has no basis and is not feasible; currently far more than that is not developed-- and the earth doesn't know the difference between a park and a undeveloped area) but have already surrendered most of this territory-- especially when it comes to oil, gas, coal, diamonds and more. The area they are talking about is sacred, and should never be touched. Except even this pathetically small area (talking about it as "six times bigger than before" sounds just fricking peachy, don't it? It's a pr scam. Don't buy it.) has mines that are to operate within the "park". It is certainly a grand thing, no kidding, that the main waterways are not to be damaged, or only slightly so. No one disputes that, and to know that this area is protected better than before is a good thing-- if it were happening in and of itself. It's not. You see, the corporate cabal of CBI/WWF/CPAWS and the Duck Fuckers are doing this because "the Mackenzie Gas Project can't be stopped". They have surrendered this pipeline to Imperial and TransCanada, telling us to "make it green" [sic]. Oh yeah, that other point? It's all about the tar sands baby. Yes, this gas is supposed to go into the Fort McMurray area-- what will link that pipe up? Yep! Another pipeline, across unceded sovereign Lubicon territory, right through what is called by the Nation the "Tear Drop" traditional lands. Then what will this gas do? Facilitate the tripling of the tar sands production. Remember, we are already talking about the largest single industrial project in the history of humanity. We are talking about tripling this, and burning all this massive natural gas deposit for the dirtiest "oil" around. The Mackenzie River, properly called the Deh Cho, gets 40% of the water in what is the largest river in the state of Canada from the Athabasca River-- so contaminated already it is assumed to already be killing people left right and centre. This water, with three times the contaminants, would then flow through-- guess where? That's right, the same national Dene territory that straddles the Nahanni. This pipeline is being given up for the crumbs of Nahanni and it is being facilitated and counseled by these so-called "environmentalists"-- each and every one of them funded through the back door by the Pew Charitable Trusts-- started by Sunoco money and today run by the same family. Oh, wait! It's better. These people are now going to send out press releases "applauding" the expansion of this park, and nary a critical word nor admission of what back room deals they have been cutting got us to this place. The idea that the Mackenzie Gas Project can't be stopped is not only wrong, it's a lie. It's been stopped before. The united voices and people of Denendeh blocked this evil pipeline in the 1970's. It's not impossible to stop-- it even has practical precedent. These fake enviro liars need to be held accountable-- for with the displacement of the people of the Valley by settlers Denendeh will never be the same. And with their hopeless shrugs and tugs to industry, nothing the "greens" say is worth a whit. And they also have to explain why the Lubicon do not matter to them. They need explain why the destruction of the mighty Deh Cho is of no consequence to them. They also need to cop to the fact that building this pipeline also means a highway-- that will lead to many mines, uranium exploration, more and more gas, perhaps even the Sverdrup basin in the high Arctic going to fuel the dark, death laden tar sands gigaproject. In other words, the trade of the MGP for the tiny area called "huge" by the media means _nothing less_ than the full scale industrialization of Denendeh along the same model as Alberta. They may even try to get an "offset" for this small park. But why should they worry about any of this? They aren't even calling for a moratorium on tar sands- let alone shutting it down. Suncor is a corporate partner of the Pew-front CBI. Liars and thieves must be called liars and thieves. There is no option but the truth. I only visit the real north. It is the only place I know where the earth is real, proud and healthy. I have some of the most profound feelings in the very pit of my stomach standing in parts of the great expanses along the Deh Cho Valley. Denendeh must not be sacrificed. It must not die to these liars and cheats. They will be held responsible-- but first, we must prepare to fight. Normally rants make me feel better. Not this time. --Macdonald Prentice tables bill to expand Nahanni park reserve Last Updated: Tuesday, June 9, 2009 | 6:31 PM CT CBC News Nahanni National Park Reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its pristine watershed and unique rock formations.Nahanni National Park Reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its pristine watershed and unique rock formations. (CBC) Nahanni National Park Reserve in the Northwest Territories would grow to six times its current size under a bill tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice tabled legislation calling for the park reserve's boundaries to be expanded to encompass 30,000 square kilometres of land from the current 4,765 square kilometres. Officials say the enlarged park will be slightly smaller than Vancouver Island, making Nahanni the third-largest national park in Canada. At 44,807 square kilometres, Wood Buffalo National Park, which straddles the N.W.T.-Alberta border, is the country's largest national park. Prentice, the minister responsible for Parks Canada, says the expansion will cover much of the South Nahanni River watershed and 91 per cent of the Greater Nahanni Ecosystem. The park reserve is located in the southwestern corner of the Northwest Territories. It is primarily accessed by air from Fort Simpson, N.W.T.The park reserve is located in the southwestern corner of the Northwest Territories. It is primarily accessed by air from Fort Simpson, N.W.T. (CBC) "What's been achieved today is that the entire rivershed, the entire watershed has been protected," Prentice told reporters in Ottawa Tuesday. "It is, as we said, really Canada's gift to the world, and it will be protected as a national park. And it will be something that we will leave to our children and our grand children, so it is a spectacular day." The Nahanni National Park Reserve ? created in 1972 and officially designated a park reserve in 1976 ? is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its pristine watershed, unique rock formations and as a habitat for grizzly bears, woodland caribou and Dall?s sheep. Commercial development is prohibited within its boundaries, although two mines operate on the outskirts of the current park boundaries. Those mines will be allowed to stay, but otherwise the area will be off-limits to development. Two sport hunting guides who currently operate in the park will be allowed to stay for 10 years once the new boundaries are established, officials say. 'We hope the entire watershed will be green' "There will be no development other than third-party interests that exist in there, which will eventually diminish with time," Jonas Antoine, a member of the Nahanni Expansion Working Group, told CBC News. "You know, sometime in the future we hope the entire watershed will be green," Antoine said. The announcement is a big relief to Dene elders who live in the Nahanni area, said Grand Chief Jerry Antoine of the Dehcho First Nations. "They're the ones who really, really fought to tell the world that we are Dene people and that we have a home here, and we have a way of life that we need to be respected and also recognized," Antoine said. Western Arctic NDP MP Dennis Bevington said the park expansion is not a done deal at this time, but he said he hopes it will happen. "The bill that make the park will now go through a process, including committee hearing," Bevington said. "I hope that that will be fruitful." Tuesday's announcement follows a commitment made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in August 2007, when he said the government would add 5,400 square kilometres to the park reserve. -- Macdonald Stainsby Co-ordinator, http://oilsandstruth.org -- moderated radical discussion list: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green -- In the contradiction lies the hope. -Bertholt Brecht. From barmy_basket at yahoo.es Wed Jun 10 02:54:17 2009 From: barmy_basket at yahoo.es (peripatetic) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:54:17 +0200 Subject: [R-G] italian police seized 134 billions $ in US bonds to two japanese In-Reply-To: <4A2F7395.3040400@yahoo.es> References: <474192000906091303yeec4075g1738f1a5f7521545@mail.gmail.com> <4CC8DF20-B15F-4F95-B96F-07A3739BB2D2@g8o.net> <20090609182917.35589d23@crashcart> <4A2EE4D4.7050102@pdx.edu> <20090609192850.5355d56b@crashcart> <4A2F4C37.5050201@pdx.edu> <20090610042116.2b2088f4@crashcart> <4A2F7395.3040400@yahoo.es> Message-ID: <4A2F74B9.2020806@yahoo.es> > Strangely, I did not find this news on any english language source. > Here is the official communication from the italian financial police > > > Google translation here > > > More about it (in italian only) on Google news > > > > http://webabuser.blogspot.com/ > From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Jun 10 03:18:54 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:18:54 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Ending Today's Economic Crisis Simply and Easily Message-ID: <4A2F7A7E.9090306@ashisuto.co.jp> in America and Globally by Stephen Lendman sjlendman.blogspot.com (May 27 2009) Some of the best ideas are often the simplest. When applied to the global economic crisis, the solution is easier than imagined. What's hard, in fact a Gordian Knot, is the political will to embrace it. But even matters that great can be solved by a bold stoke, and according to legend, Alexander the Great's "Alexandrian solution" was achieved with one stroke of his sword, cutting the Knot in half. Applied to the global economic crisis, it means addressing it with effective policies, not ones wrecking America and other troubled nations worldwide. Economist Michael Hudson explains that "debt leveraging is what caused our economic collapse", so piling on more ("The Recovery Plan from Hell" he calls it) makes things worse, especially the way it's done: - in America, by a private banking cartel Federal Reserve bailing out its members to enrich them - the key giant ones referred to as Wall Street; and - the US Treasury doing the same thing; it let the federal debt skyrocket to stratospheric levels and affirmed Adam Smith's dictum in The Wealth of Nations (1776) that no country ever repaid its debts, surely not huge ones in a private banking cartel run state, and therein lies the problem - easily solved with a bold stroke, thus far not taken nor will it without mass public action demanding it. Which is why this article is written, inspired by the work of others. Economist Michael Hudson for one. Global Research.ca editor Michel Chossudovsky another, and noted author and writer Ellen Brown for her extraordinary book titled Web of Debt (2007) and her explanation of how "Cash-Starved States Need to Play the Banking Game" the same way as North Dakota. If done at state and federal levels, it can save the economy from Wall Street's predation - by removing the debt overhang through debt write-downs as well as funding sustainable, inflation-free prosperity. It's not a pipe dream. It's real. It happened before and can again. Short of that, according to Hudson: "debt service will (keep) crowd(ing) out spending on goods and services and there will be no recovery. Debt deflation will drag the economy down while assets are transferred further into the hands of the wealthiest ten percent of the population (mainly the top one percent), operating via the financial sector." Eventually the economy will collapse, but Wall Street will profit hugely - aided and abetted by corrupted public officials allied with the private parasitic Federal Reserve turning America into what Hudson calls a "zombie economy" and banana republic. What Works for North Dakota Can Work for the Other States, America, and Everywhere On March 2, Brown explained North Dakota's "Banking Game" and asked: "What does the State of North Dakota have that other states don't ... its own bank" - and therein lies its uniqueness and strength. When only four of the fifty states are solvent, North Dakota runs surpluses, and according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, it's expected to have them in Fiscal Year 2009 and 2010. In his January 2009 State of the State address, governor John Hoeven explained: "Since 2000, the State of North Dakota has gained jobs, and now we are gaining population, as well. "Personal income has grown by 43 percent - nearly fifteen percent faster than the national average. In fact, our per capita income has moved up twelve places, from 38th to 26th among all the states (despite a tiny 641,481 population, according to 2008 US Census Bureau figures). "Wages have grown 34 percent, compared to just 26 percent for the rest of the country. "Our gross state product since 2000 has grown by nearly $10 billion, from $17.7 billion to more than $27 billion last year - a 56 percent increase - again, faster than the nation. "And our foreign exports have grown by 225 percent since 2000, breaking the $2 billion mark for the first time in North Dakota history. "Furthermore, our economic growth and diversification, along with the good financial stewardship, has enabled us to build a surplus and a solid financial reserve for the future ... the state of our state is strong (at a time) our nation's economy is in a down-cycle..." On May 23, The Bismark Tribune and other state papers reported that North Dakota has the nation's lowest unemployment rate at four percent. Clearly, it has a leg up on the other states, something all their governors and legislators should note along with federal officials in Washington. What works for North Dakota can work everywhere. The Bank of North Dakota is the only state-owned bank in the nation - established in 1919 by its legislature "to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men", according to Brown quoting management consultant Charles Fleetham in a February 2009 article published in his home state, Michigan. Brown continues: "Three elected officials oversee the bank: the governor, the attorney general, and the commissioner of agriculture. The bank's mission is to deliver sound financial services that promote agriculture, commerce and industry (and operate) as a bankers' bank, partnering with private banks to loan money to farmers, real estate developers, schools and small businesses." Also to students and private individuals in the state at low affordable rates. Key though is how it operates and stays solvent when so many of the nation's banks are financially strapped and face bankruptcy. As Brown explains: "Certified, card-carrying bankers are allowed to do something nobody else can do ... create 'credit' with accounting entries on their books". It turns money into credit by what's called "fractional reserve banking" that multiplies each dollar deposited magically into about ten in the form of loans or computer-generated funds. It's literally money created out of thin air so that banks can re-lend it many times over, and the more deposits, the greater the amount of lending. At issue is whether credit should be private or public, and as Brown wrote in a December 29 article titled "Borrowing from Peter to Pay Paul: The Wall Street Ponzi Scheme called Fractional Reserve Banking": "Readily available credit has made America 'the land of opportunity' ever since the days of the American colonists", with more on that below. "What has transformed this credit system into a Ponzi scheme that must continually be propped up with bailout money is that the credit power has been turned over to private bankers who always require more money back than they create" because they charge high interest rates to make a profit. When governments lend their own money, profit isn't at issue so rates can be low and affordable to businesses, farmers, and private individuals, and for their own and municipality needs, it's interest-free. Brown and others have explained that "fractional reserve banking" dates from the 17th century, done then mainly in gold and silver coins. Early bankers soon realized it was simpler to use deposit receipts (called notes) as a means of payment. They then began creating money by making loans through promises to pay, and more could be issued than the amount of coins on hand as only enough were needed to service redemptions - today's idea of a reserve requirement. What began earlier as notes, today are accounting entries that literally create money out of thin air. And it works the same for government as for privately-owned banks, except for the following. As publicly-run institutions, their mandate is entirely different: - they don't have to earn profits; - they're not beholden to Wall Street or shareholders; and - only the state's creditworthiness matters, and so far, in over 230 years, no state ever went out of business and virtually none ever default on their debt, even when poorly governed. Further, they can lend to themselves and municipalities interest-free, and to businesses, farmers, and individuals at low affordable rates to create internal growth and sustainable prosperity. And the more often loans are rolled over, the more debt-free money is created - without fear of inflation. As long as new money produces goods and services, inflation can't occur. Only imbalances cause problems - "when 'demand' (money) exceeds 'supply' (goods and services)". Price stability is assured when both increase proportionally, and that's exactly how it worked in colonial America and under Lincoln during the Civil War as Brown explained in Web of Debt. In 1691, Massachusetts became "the first local government to issue its own paper money ..." called scrip. Other colonies followed, Pennsylvania most effectively by issuing new money without inflation or need for taxes. For over 25 years, it collected none, and at the same time, its population grew and commerce prospered. The "secret was in not issuing too much (credit), and in recycling the money back to the government in the form of principal and interest on government-issued loans". In other words, keeping everything proportionally in balance and not having to pay interest to predatory private lenders - the very system wrecking America today and other economies run by private central banks. Lincoln did the same thing in spite of assassination threats before his inauguration as well as "treason, insurrection, and national bankruptcy" during his first year in office. Considering what he faced, his accomplishments were remarkable, including: - building the world's largest army; - defeating the South; - turning the country into the world's "greatest industrial giant"; - launching the steel industry, a continental railroad system, and a new era of farm machinery and cheap tools; - establishing free higher education; - giving settler ownership rights and encouraging land development through the Homestead Act; - having government support all branches of science; - standardizing methods of mass production; - increasing labor productivity by fifty to 75%; and - still more "with a Treasury that was completely broke and a Congress that hadn't been paid". He did it by nationalizing control over banking so government could print its own money - interest free without paying usurious rates that private bankers demanded, from 24 to 36%. As a result, "the economy was jump-started with a 600 percent increase in government spending and cheap credit directed at production" - done with government-issued Greenbacks. They financed the war, paid the troops, and spurred the nation's growth - free from the system wrecking the country today to let parasitic private banks prosper. In Web of Debt, Brown explained that early 20th century Australia operated under a publicly-run bank as well - its Commonwealth Bank that created money, made loans, and collected interest at a fraction of what private bankers charge. It worked well enough for the country to have one of the highest living standards in the world at the time. Once private bankers took over, Australia became heavily indebted, and its living standard fell to a 23rd place ranking - clearly showing the destructive power of private bank-created money and overwhelming benefits possible when governments print their own. America today can have the same advantages instituted by: - its colonists; - Lincoln; - early 20th century Australia; - the Middle Ages, falsely portrayed as a backward and impoverishing era only saved by industrial capitalism; in fact, under its banker-free tally system, it prospered for hundreds of years; and - China for thousands of years before the era of private banking, and today because Beijing directs The People's Bank of China (its semi-independent central bank) to grow the nation's economy and create millions of jobs for its burgeoning population. America and world economies can be just as prosperous but only with determined effort enough to replace their corrupted systems with one that's fairest and works best . A publicly-run banking system benefits everyone by using deposits for sustainable internal growth and government needs - at the state and local levels. And for the federal government, by printing its own money interest-free for the same purpose. This writer and Brown believe that credit should be a public utility under a nationalized banking system, creating its own money at the federal level and with deposits into state-run banks - to serve people, not predator bankers. It would be the most equitable, sustainable, efficient and democratic system, free from parasitic lenders, and it would work equally well at the federal, state and community levels with local branches of government banks serving municipalities, their businesses, and residents at affordable costs. Under the privately-run Federal Reserve and parasitic giant banking system, corporate monopolies run America and use "their affiliated banking trusts to generate unlimited funds to buy up competitors, the media, and the government itself, forcing truly independent private enterprise out" - the very system classical economists abhorred. Private banks hold nations hostage by making them pay interest on their own money as well as "advanc(ing) massive loans to their affiliated cartels and hedge funds, which use the money to raid competitors and manipulate markets". In America, it's an extreme form of Darwinism with the federal government and 46 of the fifty states insolvent - and small businesses and ordinary people faring worst. Another way is essential to keep the nation, individual states, local communities, and most people from becoming "zombies" and America transformed into Guatemala. With federal, state, and community banks made a public utility under a nationalized banking system, consider the benefits: - personal and payroll taxes could be eliminated; - stable, sustainable economic growth could be generated; - America's manufacturing base could be rebuilt; - vital infrastructure projects could be undertaken on a scale never before imagined, including cleaning up the environment and developing alternate, sustainable, clean, safe, and affordable energy sources; - many millions of new good-paying jobs could be created, putting an end to unemployment for everyone willing and able work; and for those willing but unable, aid could be provided; - home foreclosures would end, and the dream of home ownership would be in reach for everyone because mortgages would be plentiful, cheap, and not designed to scam the unwary; - inflation could be ended; - booms and busts would be a thing of the past; - destructive currency devaluations and economic warfare for private gain would no longer be a threat; - private pensions, savings, and investments would be secure; and - federal, state, and local debt could be eliminated. Imagine the following: Weeks back, Bloomberg and others reported that from $12 to 14 trillion in bailouts and stimulus have been allocated or spent, while the Fed can't account for $9 trillion in off-balance sheet transactions. Why? Because of unprecedented willful fraud given a wink and nod by the highest officials in Washington partnered with criminal bankers to loot the Treasury and fleece the public. Now imagine if $1 trillion of the total looted went to publicly-run banks for productive purposes. "Fractional reserve" magic would create $10 trillion. If around half of it went there (remember already allocated or spent), an astonishing $70 trillion could be used productively, not wasted, used to buy damaged assets cheap for greater consolidation, or for speculation at the risk of a severe future inflation. Then envision a new future: - the federal debt could be eliminated; - all unfunded liabilities, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would be secure in perpetuity; - the nation and all fifty states would become solvent and on their way to comfortable surpluses; and - a sustainable, inflation-free, prosperous future would result with essential social benefits for everyone, including affordable or perhaps free health care, education, and the end of poverty because a guaranteed minimum income could be assured. Overall, it would be nothing short of a revolutionary new America, only rhetorically addressed up to now, with all winners and no losers - except the private predator banks and their corrupted public sector partners. And remember, newly created money isn't inflationary as long as imbalances are avoided and it's productively used for new goods and services. That's the kind of America to work for and not quit until achieved. If not now, when? If we don't do it, who will? If not done soon enough, it may be too late. If that's not incentive enough, what is? _____ Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen at sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10 am US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13720 http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/05/ending-todays-economic-crisis-simply.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 Jun 10 13:20:11 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:20:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] A Tale of Two Depressions: 1929 and today In-Reply-To: <361223255.906081244588475191.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <2106834500.1138291244661611008.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3421&ref=patrick.net A Tale of Two Depressions The world economy is tracking or doing worse than during the Great Depression From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jun 10 13:19:39 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:19:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The IMF Accountability Moment In-Reply-To: <1162907052.903851244588159463.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <385225229.1138171244661579103.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> June 9, 2009 The IMF Accountability Moment By Robert Weissman The Obama administration's budgetary Machiavellianism has backfired. Seeking to avoid a direct up-or-down vote on a proposal to send $108 billion to the International Monetary Fund, the administration, at the last moment, had the money stuck into a supplemental appropriations bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That maneuver turned out to be too clever by a turn. Republicans in the House of Representatives -- opposed to the process by which the IMF money was added, frustrated with the IMF unaccountability and critical of international institutions in general -- have announced they will oppose the appropriations bill. Meanwhile, 51 antiwar Democrats in the House voted against the appropriations bill when it was first under consideration, and 41 Democrats (overlapping substantially but not entirely with the 51 antiwar Democrats) have raised concerns about funding the IMF without attaching meaningful conditions. This unlikely coalition is poised to defeat the supplemental, unless the administration can peel off 18 of the antiwar Democrats to support the bill. The administration may need more than 18 if other Democrats vote against the bill because of the IMF money (this might include Blue Dog Democrats who object to the budgetary impact of the IMF funding and the ways in which the IMF money will aid European banks, as well as progressives). Defeating the bill will be a meaningful statement against the wars, and against unconditional money for the IMF. The White House and Congressional leadership are pressuring Progressive Dems to support the supplemental, warning of the cost of dealing a legislative defeat to President Obama. Whether they can stand up to the pressure -- and thus the outcome of the supplemental -- will depend in significant part on how much the public mobilizes to urge a vote against the wars and the IMF. You can take action through this "Citizen Whip" site maintained by firedoglake.com: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/Supplemental Emanuel of course wields enormous power, but his arguments are misplaced. A defeat on the supplemental will be self-inflicted, not the work of progressives unsympathetic to the president. If the administration and House leadership are unable to garner sufficient votes to pass the supplemental, they can pull the IMF funding. Republicans will support a war-only bill. But antiwar forces will have shown their seriousness and power. And, the administration can seek funding for the IMF later this year, hopefully moving through normal legislative procedures. That would enable a legitimate debate over the merits of IMF funding. Critics would raise concerns that the money will be used to bail out European banks that lent recklessly in Eastern Europe. Appropriations Committee Chair David Obey has highlighted this issue, and noted the incongruity of aiding the European banks while Europe refuses to employ the stimulative measures adopted by the United States and China, among others. Critics would also focus on the contractionary policies -- primarily reduced government spending and higher interest rates -- that the IMF is imposing on borrowing countries hit by a global financial crisis not of their making. These policies are the opposite of the stimulative policies that the IMF recommends for rich countries, and directly contrary to the global stimulus that was the rationale for the decision of the G-20 (the world's most economically powerful countries) to increase IMF resources by $750 billion. On the ground in borrowing countries, these policies deepen the harmful impact of the economic crisis, and translate into serious human depredations. Less money is available for health, education and other key government programs; unemployment skyrockets; and families struggle to subsist. The IMF's favored contractionary policies also conflict with the economic logic of providing loans in the context of an economic crisis. "The main purpose of providing balance of payments support to a developing country in a time of recession or approaching recession is to enable the government to pursue the expansionary fiscal and monetary policies necessary to stabilize the economy," explains the Center for Economic and Policy Research in a recent paper. To be clear, the IMF has a response to these arguments: It says it has changed, and is much more reticent about demanding borrowing countries adopt contractionary policies than it once was. And, it says it aims to protect social spending in crisis-affected countries. Putting it mildly, the evidence does not exactly comport with this story. But in any case, it is a claim that should be examined through a proper legislative process. And, if the IMF takes the position that it only imposes contractionary policies when absolutely necessary, then it should be receptive to the top-line requests from IMF campaigners. These include demands that no contractionary conditions be included in IMF programs absent a quantitative showing that such conditions are necessary and cannot be delayed, and that health and education spending be exempted from IMF-mandated budget restraints. 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: . From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jun 10 13:22:27 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:22:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] AIPAC Wall Beginning to Crack In-Reply-To: <6D3AEE7B217C4677B8D17737C98273F9@twubby.com> Message-ID: <123485407.1139341244661747096.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.truthout.org/060909R Truthout 9 June 2009 AIPAC Wall Beginning to Crack by Ira Chernus For years, AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) has helped to stonewall the Middle East peace process by building a solid wall around the Israeli government, protecting it from criticism in the US. Senators and representatives have feared the wrath of AIPAC come Election Day, even in states and districts where the Jewish vote is negligible. Whatever they may have thought privately about Israel's policies toward the Palestinians, they've remained silent. I got a first-hand glimpse of the process shortly after last year's election, when I talked to an aide of a newly elected House member. The new member, who represents a district with hardly any organized Jewish community, knew very little about the Middle East when the campaign began. The representative had been "educated" on the issue, the aide told me, by a handful of wealthy Democrats - none from the member's district, all generous contributors to the campaign, and all staunch supporters of the AIPAC line. That's how it works, all over the country. Or at least that's how it used to work. Now, for the first time, there are signs of a crack in AIPAC's vaunted political edifice. The wedge issue is the Obama administration's public demand that Israel stop all new construction in its West Bank settlements, including what the Israelis call expansion to accommodate "natural growth." Though Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads the right-wing Likud party, settlement expansion is hardly a partisan matter in Israel. It has continued at a more or less unbroken pace for years, regardless of which party headed the government. And Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, leader of the opposition Labor Party, is equally staunch in demanding the right of "natural growth." What's new is the serious objection being voiced in the US government, not merely by the president and his administration, but by members of Congress, including John Kerry, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and several prominent Jewish lawmakers, such as Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee; Howard Berman, chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee; and influential representatives Henry Waxman and Robert Wexler. When they met recently with Netanyahu, they made him "very, very aware of the concerns of the administration and Congress," according to one Congressional aide. They pressed Netanyahu on the need to stop building in settlements and rejected his call for Palestinian reciprocity on terrorism as a precondition. (Another sign of the change: A Congressional delegation visiting Israel actually discussed, in private, the possibility of prohibiting Israel from using American weapons in the West Bank.) After so many years of AIPAC dominance, it would be too much to expect all Democrats to back Obama on the settlements question. There are still plenty in Congress who toe the AIPAC line. "We are applying pressure to the wrong party in this dispute," said Rep. Shelley Berkley. "I don't think anybody wants to dictate to an ally what they have to do in their own national security interests," said Rep. Gary Ackerman. Though he allowed that there's "room for compromise," his version of compromise sounds very much like the Israeli government's version: "I think that most people could understand somebody having a child and their child living with them, as long as it's not a ruse to expand" the settlements. But the fact that there is any debate at all on this issue in Congress marks a sea change in Washington, brought about by a perfect storm of converging factors. Most obviously, there is the administration's tough public stance on the settlement expansion. It's not easy for Democrats in Congress to buck a very popular president of their own party, especially when he's making an argument based on national interests and national security. Less obviously, there is a remarkable change in attitude among American Jews. Well, it's less obvious to those who get all their information from the mass media, where this change is far too little reported. But to those of us who have been working in the once-tiny American-Jewish peace movement, the growth of that movement all around us is nothing short of astounding. It was already evident a couple of years ago. In the last two years, the thin stream of dissent has grown steadily broader and higher. At the rate it's going, it could well become something close to a torrent sooner than anyone might imagine. Two-thirds of American Jews say they want the US to play an active role in moving Israel toward peace, even if it means the US publicly disagreeing with, and exerting pressure, on the Israelis. That's according to a poll conducted last summer by J Street, the pro-Israel, pro-peace lobby now widely seen as the counterweight to AIPAC. Contributions to J Street are growing at a rate faster than AIPAC's. In last year's election, of 41 candidates endorsed by J Street for their pro-peace positions, 31 were winners. Working closely with J Street is the grassroots Jewish-American peace group, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, which now claims some 45,000 members and pledges of support from over 1500 rabbis and cantors. Just a few months ago, that latter number was less than 900, another indicator of how fast the Jewish community is changing. But numbers tell only part of the story. Inside the Jewish community, there is an intangible but unmistakable new mood of open discussion, and even debate, about Israeli policies. Politicians, whose job is to sense those intangible moods, are beginning to pick it up. More and more of them realize that the leaders of Jewish organizations who still parrot the AIPAC line may dominate the mass media, but they can no longer dominate their own rank-and-file. And those organizational leaders are surprisingly muted in their support for Netanyahu on the settlements issue. "Even the most conservative institutions of Jewish American life don't want to go to war over settlement policy," said David Twersky, who was until recently the senior adviser on international affairs at the American Jewish Congress. The convergence of a changed presidential administration and a changing Jewish community opens up room for legislators to be influenced by a third factor: common sense. These politicians are smart enough to realize that Netanyahu's demand to accommodate "natural growth" is just what Representative Ackerman fears: a ruse to expand the settlements. According to Israel's own Central Bureau of Statistics, some 40 percent of the growth in settlement population comes not from "natural growth" (the excess of births over deaths), but from new immigration. Since those new immigrants need not only new bedrooms, but new kitchens, living rooms, dining rooms, as well as all the expanded public services that adults require, it seems likely that well over half of the new construction is to accommodate them and not for "natural growth." What's more, as Israeli columnist B. Michael pointed out, when a family in Israel proper has another child or a couple gets married, their government does not provide them with new living space. They just move to new quarters, if they can afford it; if they can't, they make do with the space they already have. Why should the settlers be treated any differently? Indeed, since the settlers are living in their current homes illegally by most interpretations of international law, there is all the more reason that they should be expected to move back to Israel proper, where there is plenty of housing to accommodate them. "What the hell do they want from me?" Netanyahu reportedly complained after his talk with Obama. In the weeks and months ahead, we can expect a growing chorus in the US Congress to echo the changing views of American Jews and answer: We want you to heed the president's call to stop settlement construction completely, comply with international law, and open the door to serious negotiations with the Palestinians toward a two-state solution. Every time that answer is heard publicly, it widens the crack in AIPAC's wall and brings us closer to the day when that wall, inevitably, crumbles. Ira Chernus is professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jun 10 13:19:52 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:19:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Outsourcing's third wave In-Reply-To: <1743430504.852651244581928827.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <485959376.1138261244661592945.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The Economist May 21st 2009 Buying farmland abroad Outsourcing's third wave Rich food importers are acquiring vast tracts of poor countries' farmland. Is this beneficial foreign investment or neocolonialism? EARLY this year, the king of Saudi Arabia held a ceremony to receive a batch of rice, part of the first crop to be produced under something called the King Abdullah initiative for Saudi agricultural investment abroad. It had been grown in Ethiopia, where a group of Saudi investors is spending $100m to raise wheat, barley and rice on land leased to them by the government. The investors are exempt from tax in the first few years and may export the entire crop back home. Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) is spending almost the same amount as the investors ($116m) providing 230,000 tonnes of food aid between 2007 and 2011 to the 4.6m Ethiopians it thinks are threatened by hunger and malnutrition. The Saudi programme is an example of a powerful but contentious trend sweeping the poor world: countries that export capital but import food are outsourcing farm production to countries that need capital but have land to spare. Instead of buying food on world markets, governments and politically influential companies buy or lease farmland abroad, grow the crops there and ship them back. Supporters of such deals argue they provide new seeds, techniques and money for agriculture, the basis of poor countries? economies, which has suffered from disastrous underinvestment for decades. Opponents call the projects ?land grabs?, claim the farms will be insulated from host countries and argue that poor farmers will be pushed off land they have farmed for generations. What is unquestionable is that the projects are large, risky and controversial. In Madagascar they contributed to the overthrow of a government. Investment in foreign farms is not new. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 foreign investors rushed to snap up former state-owned and collective farms. Before that there were famous?indeed notorious?examples of European attempts to set up flagship farms in ex-colonies, such as Britain?s ill-fated attempt in the 1940s to turn tracts of southern Tanzania into a limitless peanut prairie (the southern Tanganyika groundnut scheme). The phrase ?banana republics? originally referred to servile dictatorships running countries whose economies were dominated by foreign-owned fruit plantations. But several things about the current fashion are new. One is its scale. A big land deal used to be around 100,000 hectares (240,000 acres). Now the largest ones are many times that. In Sudan alone, South Korea has signed deals for 690,000 hectares, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for 400,000 hectares and Egypt has secured a similar deal to grow wheat. An official in Sudan says his country will set aside for Arab governments roughly a fifth of the cultivated land in Africa?s largest country (traditionally known as the breadbasket of the Arab world). It is not just Gulf states that are buying up farms. China secured the right to grow palm oil for biofuel on 2.8m hectares of Congo, which would be the world?s largest palm-oil plantation. It is negotiating to grow biofuels on 2m hectares in Zambia, a country where Chinese farms are said to produce a quarter of the eggs sold in the capital, Lusaka. According to one estimate, 1m Chinese farm labourers will be working in Africa this year, a number one African leader called ?catastrophic?. In total, says the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a think-tank in Washington, DC, between 15m and 20m hectares of farmland in poor countries have been subject to transactions or talks involving foreigners since 2006. That is the size of France?s agricultural land and a fifth of all the farmland of the European Union. Putting a conservative figure on the land?s value, IFPRI calculates that these deals are worth $20 billion-30 billion?at least ten times as much as an emergency package for agriculture recently announced by the World Bank and 15 times more than the American administration?s new fund for food security. If you assume that the land, when developed, will yield roughly two tonnes of grain per hectare (which would be twice the African average but less than that of Europe, America and rich Asia), it would produce 30m-40m tonnes of cereals a year. That is a significant share of the world?s cereals trade of roughly 220m tonnes a year and would be more than enough to meet the appetite for grain imports in the Middle East. What is happening, argues Richard Ferguson, an analyst for Nomura Securities, is outsourcing?s third great wave, following that of manufacturing in the 1980s and information technology in the 1990s. Several other features of the process are also new. Unlike older projects, the current ones mostly focus on staples or biofuels?wheat, maize, rice, jatropha. The Egyptian and South Korean projects in Sudan are both for wheat. Libya has leased 100,000 hectares of Mali for rice. By contrast, farming ventures used to be about cash crops (coffee, tea, sugar or bananas). In the past, foreign farming investment was usually private: private investors bought land from private owners. That process has continued, particularly the snapping up of privatised land in the former Soviet Union. Last year a Swedish company called Alpcot Agro bought 128,000 hectares of Russia; South Korea?s Hyundai Heavy Industries paid $6.5m for a majority stake in Khorol Zerno, a company that owns 10,000 hectares of eastern Siberia; Morgan Stanley, an American bank, bought 40,000 hectares of Ukraine in March. And Pava, the first Russian grain processor to be floated, plans to sell 40% of its landowning division to investors in the Gulf, giving them access to 500,000 hectares. Thanks to rising land values and (until recently) rising commodity prices, farming has been one of the few sectors to remain attractive during the credit crunch. The great government grab But the majority of the new deals have been government-to-government. The acquirers are foreign regimes or companies closely tied to them, such as sovereign-wealth funds. The sellers are host governments dispensing land they nominally own. Cambodia leased land to Kuwaiti investors last August after mutual prime-ministerial visits. Last year the Sudanese and Qatari governments set up a joint venture to invest in Sudan; the Kuwaiti and Sudanese ministers of finance signed what they called a ?giant? strategic partnership for the same purpose. Saudi officials have visited Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, South Africa, Sudan, Turkey, Ukraine and Vietnam to talk about land acquisitions. The balance between the state and private sectors is heavily skewed in favour of the state. But where?s it going? That makes the current round of land acquisitions different in kind, as well as scale. When private investors put money into cash crops, they tended to boost world trade and international economic activity. At least in theory, they encourage farmers to switch from growing subsistence rice to harvesting rubber for cash; from growing rubber to working in a tyre factory; and from making tyres to making cars. But now, governments are investing in staple crops in a protectionist impulse to circumvent world markets. Why are they doing this and what are the effects? ?Food security is not just an issue for Abu Dhabi or the United Arab Emirates,? says Eissa Mohamed Al Suwaidi of the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development. ?Recently, it has become a hot issue everywhere.? He is confirming what everyone knows: the land deals are responses to food-market turmoil. Between the start of 2007 and the middle of 2008, The Economist index of food prices rose 78%; soyabeans and rice both soared more than 130%. Meanwhile, food stocks slumped. In the five largest grain exporters, the ratio of stocks to consumption-plus-exports fell to 11% in 2009, below its ten-year average of over 15%. It was not just the price rises that rattled food importers. Some of them, especially Arab ones, are oil exporters and their revenues were booming. They could afford higher prices. What they could not afford, though, was the spate of trade bans that grain exporters large and small imposed to keep food prices from rising at home. Ukraine and India banned wheat exports for a while; Argentina increased export taxes sharply. Actions like these raised fears in the Gulf that one day importers might not be able to secure enough supplies at any price. They persuaded many food-importing countries that they could no longer rely on world food markets for basic supplies. Panic buying What to do instead? The obvious answer was: invest in domestic farming and build up your own stocks. Countries that could, did so. Spending on rural infrastructure is the third largest item in China?s 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) economic-stimulus plan. European leaders said high prices showed the protectionist common agricultural policy needed to be preserved. But the richest oil exporters did not have that option. Saudi Arabia made itself self-sufficient in wheat by lavishing untold quantities of money to create grain fields in the desert. In 2008, however, it abandoned its self-sufficiency programme when it discovered that farmers were burning their way through water?which comes from a non-replenishable aquifer below the Arabian sands?at a catastrophic rate. But if Saudi Arabia was growing more food than it should, and if it did not trust world markets, the only solution was to find farmland abroad. Other Gulf states followed suit. So did China and South Korea, countries not usually associated with water shortages but where agricultural expansion has been draining dry breadbasket areas like the North China Plain. Water shortages have provided the hidden impulse behind many land deals. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chairman of Nestl?, claims: ?The purchases weren?t about land, but water. For with the land comes the right to withdraw the water linked to it, in most countries essentially a freebie that increasingly could be the most valuable part of the deal.? He calls it ?the great water grab?. For the countries seeking land (or water), the attractions are clear. But what of those selling or leasing their resources? They are keen enough, even sending road shows to the Gulf. Sudan is letting investors export 70% of the crop, even though it is the recipient of the largest food-aid operation in the world. Pakistan is offering half a million hectares of land and promising Gulf investors that if they sign up, it will hire a security force of 100,000 to protect the assets. For poor countries land deals offer a chance to reverse decades of underinvestment in agriculture. In developing countries as a whole, the average growth in cereal yields has fallen from 3-6% a year in the 1960s to 1-2% a year now, says the World Bank. This reflects, among other things, a decline in public investment. In the 14 countries that depend most on farming, public spending on agriculture almost halved as a share of total public spending between 1980 and 2004. Foreign aid to farming also halved in real terms over the same period. Farming has done worst of all in Africa, where most of the largest land deals are taking place. There, agricultural output per farmworker was the lowest in the world during 1980-2004, growing by less than 1% a year, compared with over 3% a year in East Asia and the Middle East. The investors promise a lot: new seeds, new marketing, better jobs, schools, clinics and roads. An official at Sudan?s agriculture ministry said investment in farming in his country by Arab states would rise almost tenfold from $700m in 2007 to a forecast $7.5 billion in 2010. That would be half of all investment in the country, he said. In 2007, agricultural investment had been a mere 3% of the total. China has set up 11 research stations in Africa to boost yields of staple crops. That is needed: sub-Saharan Africa spends much less than India on agricultural R&D. Even without new seed varieties or fancy drip-feed irrigation, investment should help farmers. One of the biggest constraints on African farming is the inability to borrow money for fertilisers. If new landlords just helped farmers get credit, it would make a big difference. Yet a certain wariness ought to be maintained. Farming in Africa is hard. It breaks backs and the naive ambitions of outsiders. To judge by the scale of projects so far, the new investors seem to be pinning their hopes on creating technologically sophisticated large farms. These have worked well in Europe and the Americas. Paul Collier of Oxford University says Africa needs them too: ?African peasant farming has fallen further and further behind the advancing commercial productivity frontier.? But alas, the record of large farms in Africa has been poor. Those that have done best are now moving away from staple crops to higher-value things such as flowers and fruit. Mechanised farming schemes that grow staples have often ended with abandoned machinery rusting in the returning bush. Moreover, large farmers are often well-connected and spend more time lobbying for special favours than doing the hard work. Politics of a different sort poses more immediate problems. In Madagascar this year popular hostility to a deal that would have leased 1.3m hectares?half the island?s arable land?to Daewoo Logistics, a South Korean company, fanned the flames of opposition and contributed to the president?s overthrow. In Zambia, the main opposition leader has come out against China?s proposed 2m-hectare biofuels project?and China has threatened to pull out of Zambia if he ever came to power. The chairman of Cambodia?s parliamentary foreign-affairs committee complains that no one has any idea what terms are being offered to Kuwait to lease rice paddies. The head of the UN?s Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, dubs some projects ?neocolonialist?. Bowing before the wind, a Chinese agriculture-ministry official insists his country is not seeking to buy land abroad, though he adds that ?if there are requests, we would like to assist.? (On one estimate, China has signed 30 agricultural co-operation deals covering over 2m hectares since 2007.) Chinese neocolonialism going down well with Mozambique?s elite Objections to the projects are not simply Luddite. The deals produce losers as well as winners. Host governments usually claim that the land they are offering for sale or lease is vacant or owned by the state. That is not always true. ?Empty? land often supports herders who graze animals on it. Land may be formally owned by the state but contain people who have farmed it for generations. Their customary rights are recognised locally, but often not accepted in law, or in the terms of a foreign-investment deal. So the deals frequently set one group against another in host countries and the question is how those conflicts get resolved. ?If you want people to invest in your country, you have to make concessions,? says the spokesman for Kenya?s president. (He was referring to a deal in which Qatar offered to build a new port in exchange for growing crops in the Tana river delta, something opposed by local farmers and conservationists.) The trouble is that the concessions are frequently one-sided. Customary owners are thrown off land they think of as theirs. Smallholders have their arms twisted to sign away their rights for a pittance. This is worrying in itself. And it leads to so much local opposition that some deals cannot be implemented. The Saudi Binladin Group put on hold a $4.3 billion project to grow rice on 500,000 hectares of Indonesia. China postponed a 1.2m hectare deal in the Philippines. Farms control Joachim von Braun, the head of IFPRI, argues that the best way to resolve the conflicts and create ?a win-win? is for foreign investors to sign a code of conduct to improve the terms of the deals for locals. Various international bodies have been working on their versions of such a code, including the African Union, which is due to ratify one at a summit in July. Good practice would mean respecting customary rights; sharing benefits among locals (ie, not just bringing in your own workers), increasing transparency (current deals are shrouded in secrecy) and abiding by national trade policies (which means not exporting if the host country is suffering a famine). These sound well and good. But Sudan and Ethiopia have famines now: should they be declining to sign land deals altogether? Many of the worst abuses are committed by the foreign investors? local partners: will they be restrained by some international code? There are plenty of reasons for scepticism about these deals. If they manage to reverse the long decline of farming in poor countries, they will have justified themselves. But like any big farming venture, they will take years to reveal their full impact. For the moment, the right response is to defer judgment and keep a watchful, hopeful but wary eye on their progress. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jun 10 13:22:48 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:22:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] CAUT calls for Minister's resignation over political interference and attack on academic freedom In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <742407986.1139451244661768233.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2009/10/c4859.html CAUT calls for Minister Goodyear's resignation over political interference and attack on academic freedom OTTAWA , June 10 /CNW Telbec/ - The organization representing more than 65,000 academic and general staff at 121 universities and colleges across Canada is calling for the resignation of Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear following his unprecedented efforts to interfere with funding for a major academic conference. CAUT has learned that Goodyear telephoned the president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to ask him to reconsider a peer-reviewed decision to fund an academic conference called "Israel/Palestine: Mapping models of statehood and prospects for peace" being held at York University later this month. "It's unprecedented for a minister - let alone a minister from the department that funds the granting councils - to intervene personally with a granting council president to suggest that he review funding for an academic conference," said CAUT executive director James Turk. "This kind of direct political interference in a funding decision made through an independent, peer-reviewed process is unacceptable and sets a very dangerous precedent." Turk said that a principal role of universities in democratic societies is to allow a full, open debate of controversial issues. "For a minister to intervene in an effort to derail an academic conference on behalf of special interest groups is simply unacceptable, and compromises the integrity and public purpose of universities," said Turk. "That's precisely what happened here - when you are the minister from the department that funds the granting councils, and you call the president of a granting council to ask him to reconsider funding, the message is very clear." For further information: James L. Turk, Executive Director, (613) 726-5176; Kerry Pither, Communications Officer, (613) 726-5186; mobile (613) 294-2203 From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jun 10 13:23:44 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:23:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Canada's Science Minister Is Accused of Interfering With Academic Conference In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <665247035.1139871244661824360.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://chronicle.com/news/article/6618/canadas-science-minister-is-accused-of-interfering-with-academic-conference Chronicle of Higher Education June 10, 2009 Canada ?s Science Minister Is Accused of Interfering With Academic Conference Canadian academics are calling for the immediate resignation of Gary Goodyear, the federal science minister, after he telephoned the head of a federal grant-making agency, apparently to push it to reconsider a grant for an academic conference on the future of Israel and Palestine, according to The Globe and Mail. The Canadian Association of University Teachers said in a written statement that ?it?s unprecedented for a minister ? let alone a minister from the department that funds the granting councils ? to intervene personally with a granting-council president to suggest that he review funding for an academic conference.? Mr. Goodyear, who in March angered academics by refusing to say whether he accepted evolutionary theory, apparently made the call after B?nai Brith Canada questioned the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council?s decision to subsidize the interdisciplinary conference, which is scheduled for this month at York University, in Toronto, according to The Jewish Tribune. The conference, which has more than 50 confirmed speakers, was organized by legal scholars at York and at Queen?s University to discuss the likely outcome of the two-state peace process as well as the possible constitutional dimensions of a future single state. Some of the speakers were apparently unacceptable to Mr. Goodyear, who issued a written statement saying the grant had been approved ?based on an initial proposal that did not include detailed information on the speakers.? Since then, he went on, ?several individuals and organizations have expressed concerns that some of the speakers have, in the past, made comments that have been seen to be anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic.? Mr. Goodyear said he merely wanted to bring those concerns to the grant-making agency?s attention and to ask whether the conference still met criteria as a grant recipient. ?Karen Birchard From fentona at shaw.ca Wed Jun 10 14:25:38 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:25:38 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Colombian President in Canada to woo politicians over free trade Message-ID: <3ED63293-35CC-4C41-8BCE-2E7C03C43956@shaw.ca> http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/Labour-Industry/2009/06/09/ColombiaPresidentVisitFreeTrade/ Colombian President in Canada to woo politicians over free trade By Amelia Bellamy-Royds June 9, 2009 06:48 pm 3 comments VANCOUVER - If you?ve been following the media's coverage of the Lower Mainland?s drug-fuelled gang wars, you might be forgiven for thinking that the only thing Canada trades with Colombia is cocaine. But with the President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, in Canada this week, the real debate is whether a free trade agreement between the countries will help fight Colombian drug gangs, or just add legitimacy to a government criticized for allowing human rights abuses to go unpunished. A formal free trade agreement between the two countries was signed last fall. This spring, the federal government introduced legislation to implement the deal, but it is not clear whether opposition politicians will let it pass. According to Statistics Canada, Canada?s (legal) trade with Colombia was valued at approximately $640 million in each direction in 2008. That?s about 1.5 per cent of Canada?s total international merchandise trade. But the reasons both governments want a free trade agreement have as much to do with politics as with economics. For Uribe and the government of Colombia, it?s about increased legitimacy at home and improved alliances abroad. For the Harper government, it?s part of a commitment to pursue free trade wherever practical. Canada is negotiating free trade agreements with countries and groups as diverse as the European Union and the Dominican Republic. A free trade agreement with Peru was signed a week after the agreement with Colombia. Legislation to implement that treaty is passing through Parliament with little opposition. But when it comes to Colombia, there is plenty of opposition -- from organized labour, environmental groups and even the United Church of Canada. The federal NDP and Bloc Qu?becois are also opposing the deal. The federal Liberals have been less clear about their position. As a result, they have been targeted by those trying to block the agreement. In a detailed summary of arguments against the agreement, Canadian writer Justin Podur of the alternative media source ZNet argued: If Liberals are motivated by "liberal" principles - of human rights, free expression and assembly, and equal economic opportunity for all - then they should reject the [Canada Colombia Free Trade Agreement]. The Colombian regime violates human rights systematically, and for reasons related to free trade agreements. The [Canadian Council for International Cooperation] Report, "Making a Bad Situation Worse", reports that 46 Colombian unionists were killed in 2008, and 39 in 2007. These unionists were assassinated by paramilitaries that are organized, trained, and run by the military and have been found to work directly for politicians to "cleanse" territories of indigenous and peasant populations and worker's unions. These are not speculative accusations or claims. The evidence for them has been documented by human rights organizations for decades, but in recent years it has also come out in courts of law, the Colombian media, and the international media. After one day of debate on May 25, the legislation has disappeared from the parliamentary schedule. Apparently, the Conservatives don?t want to risk having a vote on the bill until they are sure it would pass. In the meantime, Colombian officials are working to sell the deal. In advance of the President?s visit, Colombian Foreign Affairs Minister Jamie Berm?dez Merizalde visited Ottawa last week, and spoke with opposition politicians. He also spoke with reporter Lee Berthiaume of Embassy newspaper, which covers issues involving or of interest to members of Ottawa?s diplomatic community. In the interview, Merizalde acknowledged Colombia?s problems with violence, including the murder of unionists. However, he also argued: ? every inch that we open up to legitimate trade, for legitimate investment, for legitimate tourism, et cetera, is an inch that we Colombia take away from narco-trafficking and terrorist activities, which is a key issue for Colombia, for the region and for the entire continent. ? [In addition, the agreement] is very important for the two countries to work together hand-in-hand to improve the human rights situation, to improve environmental situation, to improve the labour issues, and so on and so forth. So we can work together in improving the current situation, which is a serious concern for Colombia, for the Colombian government, and I believe for the entire community. Many of the same themes will likely be covered when President Uribe gives a speech Wednesday morning to the International Economic Forum of the Americas conference in Montreal. After the speech, Uribe is expected to travel to Ottawa to meet with federal politicians from all parties. Ready to greet him will be a protest organized by the Canadian Labour Congress. Amelia Bellamy-Royds reports for The Tyee. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Jun 10 15:40:21 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:40:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Big Breakthroughs for Single-Payer Health Care Message-ID: <1923680135.1208631244670021144.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.truthout.org/061009B Truthout Original 10 June 2009 Big Breakthroughs for Single-Payer Health Care by Kevin Zeese [Editor's Note: Kevin Zeese is a former Independent candidate for US Senate in Maryland . He was one of 13 single-payer health care advocates who stood before a Senate panel chaired by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, and demanded that a voice for single-payer health care be allowed to participate in the hearing. Baucus refused, and all 13 who stood demanding to be heard were arrested and removed from the hearing room by Capitol police . - ma/TO] Less than a month after 13 single-payer advocates were arrested protesting the exclusion of single payer, it is at the table in both Houses, making progress while the multi-payer pro-insurance reform is faltering. When we started our campaign one month ago to put single-payer national health insurance on the table, we were ignored. When we stood up and demanded that single payer be part of the debate, we were arrested. Today, single payer is breaking through, while the multi-payer pro-health insurance reform is faltering. Here's the news, single-payer national health insurance will be at the table in the Senate with a witness participating in a hearing this Thursday. And on Wednesday, a hearing is being held on single payer in the House of Representatives. The Senate Committee on Health, Education and Pensions has invited Margaret Flowers, M.D., of Physicians for National Health Policy. to testify this Thursday at 3:00 PM in a hearing on health care reform. Flowers was one of the Baucus 13 I was arrested with three weeks ago protesting the exclusion of single payer from Senate Finance Committee hearings. And on Wednesday, the Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee of the House Education and Labor Committee will hold a hearing titled "Examining the Single Payer Health Care Option" on June 10 at 10:30 AM in 2175 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC. Single payer is making advances while the multi-payer pro-insurance industry reform bill is faltering. ? There are deep divisions over how to pay for the reform with the very unpopular taxing of health benefits now being considered. This was something President Obama opposed during the 2008 campaign. Paying for single payer is much easier as the waste, fraud, abuse and bureaucracy of the health insurance industry - totaling $400 billion annually - would be applied to providing health care. Single payer pays for itself while multi-payer will add to the deficit. ? Mandating that people buy insurance or face fines, another provision President Obama opposed during the campaign, is gaining popularity among pro-insurance company legislators. And, the mandates would provide subsidies to the poor so they can purchase insurance - of course, this is also a subsidy to the health insurance industry. The working class which cannot afford to purchase insurance will feel the burden of this requirement. Under single payer, people are provided health care without these costs, which is one reason it is the most popular reform among voters. ? The Public Insurance Option is opposed by Republicans and the insurance industry. While several schemes have been reported to make the public choice option ineffective, it is causing deep divisions. Single payer is the most popular health care reform among voters, doctors, nurses and economists because it provides all Americans with a choice of doctors and providers. ? The business community is questioning the pro-insurance reforms because they will include mandates on business requiring them to pay for health insurance. At this critical time, business needs relief not burdens. Single payer will provide businesses with economic relief by reducing the costs of health care and leveling the playing field among all businesses and allowing them to compete internationally with other countries with single-payer systems. In an effort to save the faltering pro-insurance reforms, President Obama announced his administration would be getting directly involved in health care negotiations with Congress. And, he announced town hall meetings throughout the US . President Obama will find that at all of these town hall meetings, single payer will be the most popular reform among Americans. He needs to listen to voters. When Obama was in the Illinois Senate he said he supported single payer, but that before Americans got it, they needed to win back the House, Senate and presidency. Well, all three are now in Democratic Party control. It is time for President Obama to advocate for the people and push for single payer and the multi-payer system as the insurance industry is the root cause of the problems in health care. More information: Health care reform falling apart as details become known: http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/362 http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/318 http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/286 Congress considering taxing health benefits: http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/352 http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/287 Robert Reich on how health care profiteers plan to kill public option: http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/346 Insurance companies push to force people to buy insurance: http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/338 http://www.prosperityagenda . From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Wed Jun 10 17:21:19 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:21:19 +1000 Subject: [R-G] =?windows-1252?q?United_States=3A_Solidarity_sometimes_=28e?= =?windows-1252?q?xclusive_excerpt_from_Steve_Early=92s_new_book=2C_Embedd?= =?windows-1252?q?ed_With_Organized_Labor=29_=7C_Links?= Message-ID: <4A303FEF.2010406@greenleft.org.au> With the permission of Monthly Review Press, /Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ is publishing an exclusive excerpt from Steve Early?s new book, /Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home/. /Embedded With Organized Labor/ describes how trade union members in the United States have organised successfully, on the job and in the community, in the face of employer opposition now and in the past. Steve Early has produced a provocative series of essays -- an unusual exercise in ?participatory labor journalism? useful to any reader concerned about social and economic justice. As workers struggle to survive and the labour movements try to revive during the current economic crisis, this book provides ideas and inspiration for trade union activists and friends of labour alike. Steve Early has been an organiser, strike strategist, labour educator and lawyer. He recently retired from his job as national staff member of the Communications Workers of America. Early's articles, reviews and op-ed pieces have appeared in /The Nation/, /New Politics/, /CounterPunch/, /The Progressive/, /American Prospect/, /WorkingUSA/, /New Labor Forum/, /the New York Times/, /Wall Street Journal/, /Los Angeles Times/, /Boston Globe/ and many other publications. He is currently completing a book on the role of 1960s activists in US unions. Excerpt at http://links.org.au/node/1092 Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Jun 10 18:36:22 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:36:22 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Team Obama / Cult Obama Message-ID: <4A305186.2020506@ashisuto.co.jp> by William Blum antiempirereport.blogspot.com (June 09 2009) The praise heaped on President Obama for his speech to the Muslim world by writers on the left, both here and abroad, is disturbing. I'm referring to people who I think should know better, who've taken Politics 101 and can easily see the many hypocrisies in Obama's talk, as well as the distortions, omissions, and contradictions, the true but irrelevant observations, the lies, the optimistic words without any matching action, the insensitivities to victims. Yet, these commentators are impressed, in many cases very impressed. In the world at large, this frame of mind borders on a cult. In such cases one must look beyond the intellect and examine the emotional appeal. We all know the world is in big trouble - Three Great Problems: universal, incessant violence; financial crisis provoking economic suffering; environmental degradation. In all three areas the United States bears more culpability than any other single country. Who better to satisfy humankind's craving for relief than a new American president who, it appears, understands the problems; admits, to one degree or another, his country's responsibility for them; and "eloquently" expresses his desire and determination to change US policies and embolden the rest of the world to follow his inspiring example. Is it any wonder that it's 1964, the Beatles have just arrived in New York, and everyone is a teenage girl? I could go through the talk Obama gave in Cairo and point out line by line the hypocrisies, the mere platitudes, the plain nonsense, and the rest. ("I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States". - No mention of it being outsourced, probably to the very country he was speaking in, amongst others ... "No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons". - But this is precisely what the United States is trying to do concerning Iran and North Korea.) But since others have been pointing out these lies very well I'd like to try something else in dealing with the problem - the problem of well-educated people, as well as the not so well-educated, being so moved by a career politician saying "all the right things" to give food for hope to billions starving for it, and swallowing it all as if they had been born yesterday. I'd like to take them back to another charismatic figure, Adolf Hitler, speaking to the German people two years and four months after becoming Chancellor, addressing a Germany still reeling with humiliation from its being The Defeated Nation in the World War, with huge losses of its young men, still being punished by the world for its militarism, suffering mass unemployment and other effects of the great depression. Here are excerpts from the speech of May 21 1935. Imagine how it fed the hungry German people. --------------------- I conceive it my duty to be perfectly frank and open in addressing the nation. I frequently hear from Anglo-Saxon tribes expressions of regret that Germany has departed from those principles of democracy, which in those countries are held particularly sacred. This opinion is entirely erroneous. Germany, too, has a democratic Constitution. Our love of peace perhaps is greater than in the case of others, for we have suffered most from war. None of us wants to threaten anybody, but we all are determined to obtain the security and equality of our people. The World War should be a cry of warning here. Not for a second time can Europe survive such a catastrophe. Germany has solemnly guaranteed France her present frontiers, resigning herself to the permanent loss of Alsace-Lorraine. She has made a treaty with Poland and we hope it will be renewed and renewed again at every expiry of the set period. The German Reich, especially the present German Government, has no other wish except to live on terms of peace and friendship with all the neighboring States. Germany has nothing to gain from a European war. What we want is liberty and independence. Because of these intentions of ours we are ready to negotiate non-aggression pacts with our neighbor States. Germany has neither the wish nor the intention to mix in internal Austrian affairs, or to annex or to unite with Austria. The German Government is ready in principle to conclude non-aggression pacts with its individual neighbor States and to supplement those provisions which aim at isolating belligerents and localizing war areas. In limiting German air armament to parity with individual other great nations of the west, it makes possible that at any time the upper figure may be limited, which limit Germany will then take as a binding obligation to keep within. Germany is ready to participate actively in any efforts for drastic limitation of unrestricted arming. She sees the only possible way in a return to the principles of the old Geneva Red Cross convention. She believes, to begin with, only in the possibility of the gradual abolition and outlawing of fighting methods which are contrary to this convention, such as dum-dum bullets and other missiles which are a deadly menace to civilian women and children. To abolish fighting places, but to leave the question of bombardment open, seems to us wrong and ineffective. But we believe it is possible to ban certain arms as contrary to international law and to outlaw those who use them. But this, too, can only be done gradually. Therefore, gas and incendiary and explosive bombs outside of the battle area can be banned and the ban extended later to all bombing. As long as bombing is free, a limitation of bombing planes is a doubtful proposition. But as soon as bombing is branded as barbarism, the building of bombing planes will automatically cease. Just as the Red Cross stopped the killing of wounded and prisoners, it should be possible to stop the bombing of civilians. In the adoption of such principles, Germany sees a better means of pacification and security for peoples than in all the assistance pacts and military conventions. The German Government is ready to agree to every limitation leading to abandonment of the heaviest weapons which are especially suitable for aggression. These comprise, first, the heaviest artillery and heaviest tanks. Germany declares herself ready to agree to the delimitation of caliber of artillery and guns on dreadnoughts, cruisers and torpedo boats. Similarly, the German Government is ready to adopt any limitation on naval tonnage, and finally to agree to the limitation of tonnage of submarines or even to their abolition, provided other countries do likewise. The German Government is of the opinion that all attempts effectively to lessen tension between individual States through international agreements or agreements between several States are doomed to failure unless suitable measures are taken to prevent poisoning of public opinion on the part of irresponsible individuals in speech, writing, in the film and the theatre. The German Government is ready any time to agree to an international agreement which will effectively prevent and make impossible all attempts to interfere from the outside in affairs of other States. The term 'interference' should be internationally defined. If people wish for peace it must be possible for governments to maintain it. We believe the restoration of the German defense force will contribute to this peace because of the simple fact that its existence removes a dangerous vacuum in Europe. We believe if the peoples of the world could agree to destroy all their gas and inflammable and explosive bombs this would be cheaper than using them to destroy one another. In saying this I am not speaking any longer as the representative of a defenseless State which could reap only advantages and no obligations from such action from others. I cannot better conclude my speech to you, my fellow-figures and trustees of the nation, than by repeating our confession of faith in peace: Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos. We, however, live in the firm conviction our times will see not the decline but the renaissance of the West. It is our proud hope and our unshakable belief Germany can make an imperishable contribution to this great work. {1} -- End of speech excerpts -- How many people in the world, including numerous highly educated Germans, reading or hearing that speech in 1935, doubted that Adolf Hitler was a sincere man of peace and an inspiring, visionary leader? _____ Note: The entire speech can be found at: http://members.tripod.com/~Comicism/350521.html Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned. http://antiempirereport.blogspot.com/ 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 Jun 11 03:30:13 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:30:13 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Money that Prays Message-ID: <20090611183013.11581392.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> by Jeremy Harding London Review of Books (April 30 2009) Last September, as dust and debris from the tellers' floors began raining onto the empty vaults below, a note of satisfaction was sounded by bankers in the Arab world. Financial institutions sticking to the tenets of Islam, they announced, were largely immune from the debt crisis. Devout Muslims may lend and borrow under certain conditions; they can even buy and sell debt in the form of 'Islamic' bonds, but most other kinds of debt trading are frowned on. Al Rajhi Bank, based in Saudi Arabia, and the Kuwait Finance House posted impressive profits in 2008. Both have come under some nervous scrutiny in 2009 but their ability to weather the recession that has set in behind the credit crunch is not at issue. Unlike most banks in the Middle East, Al Rajhi Bank and KFH are 'sharia-compliant' businesses, which means simply that they try to abide by the evolving body of rules known as the sharia - 'the path to the headwater' - which govern the lives of Muslims. The sharia serves mostly as a guide to personal conduct, though some rules are drafted into the legal codes of majority-Muslim states. It's founded, we're always told, on revealed truth from the Koran and exemplary stories from the Hadith, the sayings and doings of the Prophet. But the real influence of the sharia lies in the way this material is constantly read and recast by modern Islamic scholars, reinventing old traditions or asserting new ones. Whatever they take it to be, growing numbers of Muslims are keen to stay on the path when it comes to banking and finance. The global Muslim population is upwards of 1.3 billion - roughly one in every five people on earth - and, with a religious revival of twenty or thirty years' standing, the way of Islam is now a crowded thoroughfare. It is plied by a great diversity of travellers from different parts of the world; some have money to burn, others next to none, but anybody with a modicum of wealth is nowadays a potential opportunity for banks offering sharia-compliant retail services: current accounts, straightforward financing schemes and home-ownership plans. The term 'Islamic finance' wrests a lot of activities down to a catch-all definition. The same is true, in the financial universe, of the words 'sharia' and 'Islam' itself. Sharia is not a single, coherent jurisprudence for Muslims; there are various schools of interpretation and marked disagreements within each of them. 'Islam', a broad term of convenience for most non-Muslims, is a power-point word in the City: it tells bankers and traders that every day for a few minutes they should shut out the din of the money that merely talks and tune in to the money that prays. But why bother, given that sharia-compliant finance is probably worth less than one per cent of the total value of the world's stocks, bonds and bank deposits? This was reckoned at about $170 trillion in 2007; it's much less than that now of course, but even so, with a value of around $700 billion, Islamic stocks, bonds and bank deposits remain a minority affair, just as Muslims remain a minority in global terms. What fascinates the markets about Islamic finance, however, is its dramatic growth in recent years and confident predictions that it's set to expand at fifteen to twenty per cent every year. Its allure for moderately prosperous, pious Muslims - and quite a few non-Muslims recoiling from the debt crisis in anger and disgust - is different. They admire what they see as a promise to achieve stability and transparency, and a sense of proportion about money: look it in the eye, tell it you like it, but admit that you have lingering doubts about the transcendent value of paper. That's an unsophisticated position, but since the credit crunch not many people trust the sophisticated keepers of the modern money culture; in this sense the rise of sharia-compliant products is also a challenge to the unofficial, polytheist faith of offshore Britannia: the worship of markets in general and financial markets in particular. One of the central differences between the Islamic and conventional approaches to finance is that our own cults - which may well see a revision before the end of this crisis - ascribe supernatural powers to money. Cult specialists are at great pains to understand and control how it works, but admit that it does so in magical ways that go beyond the effects of human commerce (for the markets, too, have magical attributes, including innate goodness). Whatever we want from money, we suspect, as devotees, that in the end it will always behave as it sees fit. Our awe of it is a bit like a rapt meditation on the way the shower of gold behaves - shimmering and falling - when it cascades over Danae in her cloister in Argos. In the story, it's merely the form chosen by Zeus for her seduction, but in our meditation, there is no Olympian in disguise and no intention to seduce, just the metal shimmering and falling, in consummate self-expression, as deity and dogma. Islamic approaches - there are quite a few - are much closer to Nonconformist and Anglican traditions, where the divinity stands to the side of money, reminding the faithful that he is one thing and mammon another. Money, in this view, is an object of caution rather than superstition - and, in spite of its dangers, a useful tool for anyone who wants to build a respectable world, with God's instructions pinned to the wall above the workbench. Maybe this is why sharia-compliant products have been gaining popularity among British Muslims, even if they differ only slightly from conventional ones. Take the home-ownership scheme offered by HSBC's sharia-compliant range, Amanah (amanah means 'trust' in the moral and legal sense). Muslims are forbidden to pay or receive interest and troubled by conventional lending, because it appears to put the burden of risk on the borrower not the lender: in the Islamic view, no transaction is ethical unless risk is fairly distributed between the parties. HSBC Amanah's scheme is based on an Islamic contract known as 'diminishing musharaka' and it's approved, like all HSBC Amanah's services, by a board of sharia scholars. A would-be home-owner must put up forty per cent of the cost price (much less before the credit crunch); the property is registered in a trust (amanah) as a jointly owned asset, with the bank's majority ownership diminishing over an agreed period, as regular payments are made; the customer promises to buy the bank's share, and the bank promises to sell it to the client. The property is envisaged as a set of units and the customer's payments as twofold: one part is rental, for the right to live in it, another is a form of unit-acquisition. The trust keeps a tally of the bank's diminishing ownership and the growing share to the customer. At term, the trust is dissolved and the home passes to the customer. In the meantime, no interest has been charged. But the rental payments received by HSBC Amanah for its willingness to share a risk will have been reviewed - and therefore been subject to change, much like the interest charge on a variable-rate mortgage - at regular intervals. Indeed, rental charges are likely to track changes in a conventional interest rate, for instance Libor, the London Interbank Offered Rate. In the eyes of some Muslims, the resemblance of the rental element to an interest charge casts doubt on the 'Islamic' nature of the scheme; others are happy to say that even when two things are alike, this does not make them identical. The questions of likeness and difference, and what constitutes real compliance, are hotly debated among Muslims throughout the world. As regards risk-sharing, HSBC Amanah's scheme seems little different from those of other lenders when customers fail to keep up payments ('default' is not a sharia-compliant word). The bank will pursue a customer if it thinks the reasons for the failure were 'avoidable', because this would constitute a breach of the promise to buy. But it claims not to handle a genuine misfortune the way conventional mortgage providers deal with a default. Both parties share any losses according to the proportionate ownership at the time. The bank can seize the contents of a customer's current account to offset some of its own losses, but there the matter ends. No question of a debt-collecting agency taking up where the bank left off. Most mortgage companies in the US also draw a line under default, but among Islamic home-ownership providers in Britain this approach has encouraged prudence. Amjid Ali, who heads HSBC Amanah's UK operation, told me that in the first five years of its sharia-compliant home-ownership scheme, he had processed applications to the value of GBP 700 million, of which, after judicious sifting, more than half had come good. He knew of only one case that hadn't worked out: the customer was given eighteen months' grace, at the end of which the house was sold. Devout Muslims who think the HSBC Amanah approach is uncomfortably close to the way a conventional default is handled must surely have had their views confirmed by the government's insistence to mortgage lenders, since the recession set in, that patience with people in difficulty would put a floor under falling house prices and send out a 'caring' signal (reluctant bankers call it empathy). But perhaps the same Muslims derive a certain satisfaction from the fact that conventional mortgage lenders are beating a path to the headwater. A home-buyer signing up to a diminishing musharaka would have to take out buildings insurance with a clause that covered the bank as well. But Islamic tradition is uneasy with conventional insurance. First, there's contractual uncertainty (the devilish detail of insurance policies); second, a risk has been bought by another party, and this is scarcely ever acceptable; third, far from looking like circumspection, conventional insurance has every appearance of a punt, with croupier and client sizing up the odds - and gambling is forbidden. An Islamic option, now available in the UK, allows devout Muslims to subscribe regular payments to a managed mutual fund and think of the process as an exercise in solidarity. This arrangement, known as takaful, was on offer from HSBC Amanah until the end of last year, when it realised that customers found the costs too high: ethical products, like principles, are more expensive, and less profitable, than off-the-shelf alternatives. Collective underwriting was the main feature of the retired model, shared with other takaful services clinging on in a difficult market. The sharia board instructed HSBC that if the fund was underspent by more than GBP 25 per subscriber in a given year, members could have money back or make it over to the launch of a micro-credit scheme in Pakistan. Rising costs are the reality of most insurance, but for takaful members they are mitigated by the concept of 'donation'; subscribers may be grudging or disgruntled, but tradition urges them to see the cost of mutuality as part of their obligation to share risk with their fellow members. If it seems unacceptably high, and there are enough takaful co-operatives around, they're free to chase down a better option. Takaful cover has its origins in Arab seafaring mutuals (not unlike the whaling mutuals, centuries later, of the Quaker communities in New Bedford and Nantucket). It is a small sector of the global insurance business, already thriving in Malaysia and said by its advocates to be growing throughout the world. In Britain, which prides itself on its multiculturalism and its financial services in almost equal measure, takaful has been endorsed by the minister for trade and investment, the Chartered Insurance Institute and the lord mayor of the City of London. Like all sharia-compliant products in the UK - and everywhere, as far as I know - it's available to non-Muslims. One Muslim scholar told me that they already account for sixteen to twenty per cent of the clientele for Islamic retail products in Britain. No need to recite the shahada if you want a sharia-compliant loan from the Islamic Bank of Britain, Lloyds TSB or a UK branch of the Arab Banking Corporation. The idea of conventional insurance as a wager is taken seriously, and sometimes to extremes. Until he was denied the right to re-enter the UK in 2005, Omar Bakri Muhammad, the Syrian radical, was said to drive around uninsured on the grounds that a third-party policy with Kwik Fit or the AA was an abomination in the eyes of God. As a proselytiser for Hizb ut-Tahrir and later a star of Al-Muhajiroun, Bakri had a headstrong attachment to the sharia, even when he was a guest of the Home Office. Many British Muslims, pleased to see the back of him, thought that the danger he courted by refusing to take out cover was itself a gamble in which he wagered his faith against the laws of his host country. Perhaps, if he'd still been around, he'd have joined the first British sharia-compliant car insurance scheme, Salaam Halal Insurance, when it was launched last summer (call centres handle inquiries 'in English, Arabic, Bengali, Gujarati or Urdu'). It isn't just in Britain, and it isn't only in the retail banking sector, that sharia-compliance is catching on. The last ten years have also seen a surge in sharia-compliant securities available to corporate and institutional investors in many parts of the world who want to stick to the rules of the faith. It's a new impulse: in the 1970s, when the oil-producing states were awash with money, there weren't too many worries about petrodollars flooding into the purchase of US Treasury bonds, even though they bore interest, and there were few alternatives to conventional securities. This isn't the case any longer. Malaysia is rich with opportunities for investors in compliant bonds; in Europe, the German Land of Saxony-Anhalt issued the first 'Islamic' government bond in 2004; the British Treasury has also looked into the possibility of issuing sharia-compliant bills. Meanwhile there's no shortage of choice in equities. The Dow Jones Islamic Market (DJIM) started up in 1999: it now has dozens of indices and lists hundreds of companies whose products are approved by its board of sharia scholars. Nation-states may decide to devalue their currencies or privatise their telecommunications, but the odds are against them adopting full sharia-compliance. A few years ago Sudan had a unitary sharia banking system, but since the peace deal between Khartoum and the non-Muslim SPLA in 2005, conventional banking has become the norm in southern Sudan. That leaves Iran as the only country that boasts a banking system operating fully on Islamic principles (the evils of interest, it argues, obtain only if the borrower and lender are wholly distinct, and since Iranian banks are nationalised, the country's interbank lending rate is regarded as a family foible). All other Muslim-majority states have conventional or dual systems; in all cases, the central banks behave conventionally. Conversion to sharia would be ruinous for a wealthy city-state like Dubai, thriving - until the crunch - on Western finance and the 'conventional' lifestyles of expatriates. At the end of last year, the monthly retail-purchase interest on a Platinum Visa card issued by the National Bank of Dubai was 2.99 per cent, while Dubai's sovereign debt stood at 148 per cent of GDP - both well out of order for a conscientious Muslim. Dubai has been on the ropes since last September, but even in better times, the ruling family, like the government of Malaysia, had encouraged sharia-financing across a range of state-funded development projects. Gulf regimes are keenly aware of the changes in fashion that have driven demand for sharia-compliance. So is the private sector. Many innovative sharia-compliant instruments have been theorised - and some of them applied - by companies whose interest in Islam is decidedly recent, among them Deutsche Bank as well as HSBC. Their idea is to access the large amounts of cash swilling around to no great avail in the Gulf: an ambition reciprocated by the owners of this money, who want to put it to work. The difference between now and 1973 is not one of quantity: liquidity in the Gulf has been high again, partly as a result of oil prices, partly because billions of dollars were repatriated from the West by worried owners after 9/11, but also because the Islamic revival has left many Muslims doubting the wisdom of conventional investment. The diffusion of sharia-compliant financial products has opened new routes for their money. For a while some of it headed towards Malaysia and, until the end of last year, plenty was creeping westward again. The appetite for world markets remains strong, but it now answers more closely to the will of God. The prohibitions for Muslims are puzzling to the modern commercial mind. The first obstacle for a pious Muslim trading and banking in conventional economies is interest, the term I've been using for the Arabic riba, though its literal sense is closer to 'excess' and it is sometimes translated as 'usury'. Often, in the Hadith and even more in recent proselytising on the internet, riba is said to be 'eaten'. One of the objections to riba is its propensity to up-end the social order. A person who consumes riba bungles the proper management of need - his own and his debtor's - whereupon the grand plan of give and take, sufficiency for rich and poor alike, begins to come apart. This, as Charles Tripp explains in Islam and the Moral Economy (2006), is also a challenge to 'the balance and proportion of God's ordering of the universe', which must be reflected in 'human relations'. Islamic tradition warns that riba is likely to lead to injustice and exploitation. There's a categorical objection, too: that money may not be conjured up from money to generate like from like. The goods that served (we're told) as currency in Islamic tradition - gold, silver, salt, grain and dates - can only be exchanged 'hand to hand', that is, in a spot transaction, without deferment; and only at parity, one quantity for its exact equivalent, no more, no less. It's not clear why you'd want to swap something - a gold weight, say - for its identical other, but the point here is probably that units of currency, unlike the shirt or the saddle for which they're exchanged, must be beyond any cavilling with regard to value for the system to hold up: an Islamic marker set down fourteen centuries ago against arbitrage. In a story told by Abu Said al Khudri, one of Muhammad's younger companions, the Prophet describes the transaction of a greater number of low-grade dates for a smaller number of quality dates as riba. The most famous chapter and verse on riba is in sura two of the Koran. It warns that dealing in riba will bring on madness or 'torment' (via 'Satan's touch'), and that if you're not prepared to waive a mark-up on a debt, war will be waged against you by God and the Prophet. One sharia-compliant banker I met last year told me that's about as bad as it gets. There is also an injunction to forgive debt in a broader sense: 'If the debtor is in difficulty, then delay things ... Still, if you were to write it off as an act of charity, that would be better for you, if only you knew' (the rules followed by HSBC Amanah try to catch something of this). The charging of riba, it follows, is always a missed opportunity to act generously, to give where a gift is in order, a gesture highly prized in Islamic tradition. In a faith embodied by a trader prophet and espoused by an impressive trading community for which, at its height, knowledge was a key commodity, believers are admonished not to confuse riba with trade. From the second sura, again: 'God has allowed trade and forbidden usury'. In Economics, Ethics and Religion (1997) Rodney Wilson went through the 6226 verses of the Koran and found that 1400 refer to 'economic issues'. It follows that there is a vast body of scholarly opinion dealing with money. A fatwa about charging for debt, or any financial matter, issued by a group of experts such as the Fiqh Academy in Jeddah can carry great weight for certain Muslims, and less for others. In the sharia, like any code which hasn't ossified, the element of interpretation is crucial and within each of the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, there are divergent views, especially between conservatives and modernisers and especially about money. Yet not all the source material under interpretation is stable or straightforward. In the Hadith, for instance, it's said that the Prophet warned against seventy different forms of riba. These have decayed and combined under the pressures of modernity, but there's still room for doubt. Modern nuance can be as puzzling to a non-Muslim (maybe even a Muslim) as the founding inventories: Wilson records a sharia ruling in the United Arab Emirates which found that simple interest was permissible and only compound interest forbidden. Riba catches many non-Muslims out. After a long study of Islamic finance, the anthropologist Bill Maurer couldn't settle on 'interest' as the perfect translation: it seemed clear at first but became streaky as he looked closer. 'Usury' is the obvious alternative, but are we to rely on the older sense of the term - any charge, however small, for the use of borrowed money - or on the way it's understood today, as extortionate interest only? Wilson, a professor in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham who is intrigued by 'the influences of religious belief on economic behaviour', holds that riba is usury in the first sense. That's the view of most practising Muslims; it seems to echo the meaning of the word in Deuteronomy, where Moses instructs the people of Israel not to lend to their own kith and kin at a rate: 'Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury'. Very close to 'interest' after all then. Yet if, like Melanie Phillips, you believe Islamic banking in the UK merely hastens the day when a green flag is raised over Westminster, it's important to think of 'usury' in the later sense, in order to insist that Muslim law is either deluded or deceitful: 'The whole issue of sharia finance', Phillips wrote last year, 'is based on a fabrication ... sharia does not proscribe interest. It proscribes usury.' Were riba just a term for exploitative lending, however, one or two countries might have shuffled nearer to a unitary sharia banking system. But the sharia has few attractions for exchequers and central banks in a modern economy, where the interest rate is a basic tool of monetary policy. The appeal of sharia-compliant banking and investing is in essence to the individual conscience. The emphasis on risk-sharing in HSBC Amanah's products - and all Islamic products - is related to the prohibition on interest: it's obvious to the devout Muslim that collecting interest on a debt involves no risk worth the name; all that's required, in this view, is for a creditor to sit back and wait. The exposure involved in the mere lending of money - self-evident to a non-Muslim - is an unticked box in Islamic tradition, while savings, for which non-Muslims see interest as a fair reward, give rise to worries about hoarding: money should be out there doing the work that enables trade to flourish. A Treasury expert would say Islamic tradition approves of narrow money; a historian would remember Bacon's essay 'Of Seditions and Troubles' and his famous dictum that muck is 'not good except it be spread'. (The essay goes on: 'This is done chiefly by suppressing, or at the least keeping a strait hand upon the devouring trades of usury'.) Risk-sharing, like generosity, puts human relations on an even keel in the Islamic view. A capitalist can weigh a risk but shouldn't accept a promise from a partner to eliminate it: that would be 'risk-transfer', which denies the inherent truth of risk. (In the eyes of sharia scholars it also opens up a vista of potential exploitation, especially when risk is passed on in unknowable ways, say in the form of a mortgage-backed security with a dodgy rating.) No one must guarantee investors' money, except against fraud. Interest and risk-evasion are largely absent, Islamic investors believe, from the world of stocks and shares. To invest in a company is to sign up to joint ownership and collective risk, while ordinary shares pay dividends not interest. Even so, there are constraints. It is forbidden to invest in companies that have anything to do with gambling and you're unlikely to find a business listed in the Dow Jones Islamic Markets indexes with more than a toehold in this area of the leisure industry. In sura two of the Koran, the evils of drinking and gambling are deemed to outweigh their benefits - though these are granted - and maisir (the drawing of arrows, like straws, to divine a course of action or simply to bet) is condemned in sura two. There are other exclusions for devout shareholders. Clearly breweries and distilleries are off-limits, along with pork products. Pornography offends on three overlapping counts: shame, obscenity and baghi, loosely speaking, 'transgression', 'injustice' or 'trespass', anything intrusive then, from a misunderstanding of privacy to a foreign occupation. The DJIM indexes exclude most media businesses but also hotel chains, where minibars and adult channels lower the tone (basement gaming rooms too). Critically, daily trading in debt and riba makes almost all conventional financial institutions, including banks, unacceptable. The way companies that survive this triage are run must next be examined closely. Sharia scholars are unlikely to approve of a firm whose clients owe it large amounts of money - 'accounts receivable' - or one that depends on high returns from interest. The bigger question, though, is a company's financial structure - how much of its capital it has raised by borrowing and how much by selling its performance or potential in the form of share distributions. The DJIM board of sharia advisers screens out any company whose debt is higher than one third of its market capitalisation (a valuation based on the total number of shares issued times the prevailing share price). Debt is a problem in its own right. Borrowing on a regular, matter-of-fact basis is open to question since sharia scholars are wary of conventional banking's dependence on interbank borrowing. The ideal Islamic bank, Rodney Wilson told me, is financed entirely by its depositors' money. In practice, there is plenty of imperfection, but a compliant bank will want to stay as close as possible to this model. Like riba, debt also raises fears about poverty and injustice (some Muslim NGOs are as evangelical about Third World debt as their Christian and secular counterparts). In the Hadith, debt presents a troubling face once the possibility of deferment arises, as it might with a debtor in difficulty. Is it a good thing or a bad thing to put off repayment? Does it matter whether the debtor is wealthy or poor? Bad faith is always threatening to break in on the relationship between a debtor and a creditor: a debtor says he can pay back a loan but how can he be sure? All this drags human relations into the realm of uncertainty - gharar - from which faith, the discourse of absolute certainty, was supposed to protect them. In commerce, gharar is best avoided. Whence the persistence of doubts about contracting for things that don't (yet) exist: tradition might allow for a joiner taking orders on furniture he hadn't yet made, but it disqualified the sale of a foal that was still in the body of the mare. Even the benign, textbook version of the forward contract - a farmer and a miller agreeing a grain price ahead of the harvest - brings a sense of uneasiness. The concept of gharar doesn't just apply to goods whose status is in doubt, but to bargains whose terms are ambiguous and contracting parties whose liability is vague. Though it's often translated as 'hazard', it's not the same as risk, which Muslim societies understand as well as anyone. Business risk is unavoidable and begins when a cargo plane taxis towards the runway. Gharar has more to do with the commercial imagination running ahead of itself: speculation still troubles Islamic scholars; many take a dim view not just of credit derivatives, the villains of the banking crisis, but of any instrument whose value is based on a contract for an underlying asset rather than the asset itself. This is changing, slowly, as a growing number of experts wrestle with intellectual tradition till they get to a place where derivatives, some in any case, appear acceptable. But no sharia adviser would approve of an Islamic financial institution bundling toxic mortgage debts into securities and packing them off to market, still less buying them up. To a conscientious Muslim, this is the perfect storm, in which opaque liabilities, the unknown nature of the underlying debt, fair-weather forecasts by ratings agencies, plus risk transfer and riba, conspire to wreck large parts of the fleet. Is there anyone clinging to the flotsam, post-9/15, who disagrees? Non-Muslims will recognise the process of screening companies out of a portfolio: many charities and individuals have been doing it for years. The fashion in the West for Socially Responsible Investment (SRI), which gained ground in the 1980s and 90s, has become a model for Muslims. That's the view of Mufti Barkatulla, a scholar trained in Uttar Pradesh, and now an adviser on several sharia boards in the UK, among them the Islamic Bank of Britain and Lloyds TSB. He points out that sharia scholars (including the ones who advise the DJIM) rule against investments in tobacco companies and arms manufacturers, even though Islam has no quarrel with either. The sharia is strictly speaking a matter of law, but sharia-compliance and SRI are, in Barkatulla's sense of it, largely about the intimate decisions of prosperous individuals and the grandiose 'ethical' claims of big business. Sharia-compliance doesn't have the boycott component that turns SRI from a sum of personal choices into a self-conscious movement. Opting away from a conventional current account is hardly the same as refusing to buy sugar grown by slaves, as the Quakers did in the 1790s, or divesting from companies with links to apartheid, as American universities did in the 1980s. Even so, it's sometimes seen as a front for Islamic supremacists scheming to overrun the West. The crusader-jihadist wars are a favourable habitat for this kind of idea, which feeds off suspicion and a regular diet of incidental detail. Eccentric Islamists announce that they hope to see Britain under a caliphate; angry groupuscules and male covens dabble in jihadist ideology and scour explosives websites; the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks aloud on Radio 4 about the sharia as 'an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them' and congratulates Muslims 'on the faithful completion of Ramadan' as though he were handing round the sherry on Easter Sunday. With all this and years of high-profile terrorist attacks, from New York to Lahore, plus two wars that have not gone well, a person in Birmingham seeking a fee-based home loan begins to look like the enemy. Before the surge of Islamic banking, many devout Muslims shied away from banks: for the poorly educated, everything, even a non-interest-bearing current account, came under the general heading haram - 'impermissible'. Banks dealt with interest, therefore Muslims shouldn't deal with banks. Mufti Barkatulla told me he'd had to mediate in several cases where police raids had turned up large sums of money stashed in people's homes. Sometimes, he remembered, people were holding GBP 30,000 or more. To the police, this was deeply suspicious; in fact people were hoarding their way out of riba. One of the changes that sharia-compliant banking is bringing in Britain, Barkatulla believes, is that working-class Muslims, older ones especially, are at last shifting 'from a cash-based to a cashless society', as Muslim professionals and businessmen did years ago. If Muslims can't take part in a conventional economy without breaking the rules, at least they can compromise by keeping track of their infringements and 'purifying' the balance by charitable giving equivalent to the amounts in question. These self-administered transfusions are payable over and above the mandatory deduction, known as zakat, that devout Muslims must make and donate to charity in the space of a year. The most common zakat payment is 2.5 per cent per annum on cash, savings and investments less liabilities. (It can be a finicky piece of accounting; the 'zakat calculator' at http://www.ramadhanzone.com is worth a visit.) Unbelievers who worry that Muslims may not wish them well - a complicated piece of projection, but not wholly fantastic right now - should put a yellow highlight over the word zakat, and another over 'purification'. Successful Muslims in the West remitting to the 'poor' and 'needy', as the rules require, are the worry here. Their money may well go to families of the unemployed in Bradford, NGOs in Kuala Lumpur or prosthetics clinics in Sarajevo, but it can also be headed in the direction of people under fire in the West Bank, Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir. At the beginning of last year the Pakistani cleric Sheikh Muhammad Taqi Usmani was a member of the sharia supervisory board at DJIM. A scholar, judge, financial expert and prolific writer, Usmani was also involved with a sharia-compliant mutual in Illinois which Dow had allowed to manage its 'Islamic' fund. But there were internet murmurings about Usmani and in the spring, the McCormick Foundation and the ultra-con Center for Security Policy held an anti-sharia finance workshop in Illinois where his published views about jihad and the subjugation of unbelievers came under scrutiny. Media attention now turned to the Illinois mutual. In 2007, somewhere in the sprawling paperwork for a federal 'terror-funding' trial in Dallas, it had been named by the government as an 'un-indicted co-conspirator' - one of about three hundred - with alleged links to the US Muslim Brotherhood. These, apparently, were forged via the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), a US-based charity at the centre of the investigation. Usmani's thoughts on the obligations of jihad - in the CPS presentation, they were non-ecumenical to say the least - have done sharia-compliant finance in the US very few favours; he's no longer a DJIM adviser. As for the Illinois mutual, it's had to call in the American Civil Liberties Union to help it restore its damaged reputation. Last year, after a mistrial in 2007, a jury in Dallas found the HLF and five of its members guilty of funding Hamas to the tune of $12 million or more, even though the prosecution conceded that the money was spent on medical facilities and good works. But in the US, charitable gifts, purifications and zakat simply cannot go to Palestinians without donors risking a federal investigation. As David Feige explained in Slate after the mistrial, the HLF was accused of 'aiding a terrorist organisation by helping it spread its ideology and recruit members. Translation: even those who support good works are guilty of terrorism if the good works make the terrorists look good.' Governments may strive in their own jurisdictions to compound the hardships of the Palestinians; freedom-loving think tanks may vent their dismay (verging on disgust) about the rise of sharia-compliant mechanisms in the West; but it is too late to quarantine Islamic finance. Alongside the notional clash of civilisations and the real collisions, a very different encounter with Islam has taken place in the worlds of banking and finance. The constant exchange of money and ideas, the morphology of ingenious instruments that can accommodate a different philosophy of wealth-creation, the familiarity with Islamic tradition among conventional financiers and lawyers who draw them up - all this suggests a convergence both more real and less visible than anything that multiculturalism in the arts, the media or interfaith groups was meant to bring about. The old imperatives of trade and profit are at work here, but so is the recent radical style of the money culture itself. The 1980s may have mourned the death of avant-gardes in the arts, but there was a thriving avant-garde in the City, which became a magnet for cadres of bright, ambitious, untried people with remote horizons, dealers sans fronti?res. By the end of the 1990s, this gilded bohemia had a good grasp of sharia-compliance and the breadth of modern, secular trading it could offer Muslims with qualms about the way their money had been doubled back in the 1970s. There were fortunes to be made, and an intellectual challenge in the air. The idea that Islamic finance was out to hobble Western values - 'financial jihad', as the Center for Security Policy calls it - was greeted with scepticism, even a subversive 'So what?' Radical innovation was the watchword and the search was on for complex products that could lock more and more transactions into a compliant framework. Since last September, the dangers of innovation have become clear and the ideal of reckless creativity has taken a hammering. The world of sharia-compliant finance is largely unscathed: Islamic banks in the Middle and Far East have not followed the low collateral/high borrowing regimes favoured by their conventional competitors at home and abroad; Islamic principles have denied investors any real access to shares in the banking sector and thus any exposure to toxic debt. Yet there is still a hunger for access and experimentation - what Mufti Barkatulla describes, enthusiastially, as a willingness to take risks with interpretation itself; 'sharia risk', as he calls it - and a fascination with the sums of money that have been made on markets forbidden to Muslims. To that extent, convergence is still the order of the day, as sharia-compliancy wizards, Muslim and non-Muslim, seek to open up the trade in derivatives to the small but growing number of devout investors who can be persuaded to bid for a calf while the camel is still in labour. _____ The second part of Jeremy Harding's piece on high finance in the Islamic World can be read here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n09/hard01_.html Jeremy Harding is a contributing editor at the LRB. His versions of Rimbaud's poetry are published by Penguin along with John Sturrock's translation of the letters. Other articles by this contributor: Kosovo's Big Men ? Jeremy Harding talks to KLA officers and an 'official government source' in Kosovo The Great Unleashing ? The End of Jihad Europe's War ? Kosovo Afternoonishness ? Syd Barrett Behind the Sandwall ? Morocco's Shame Disaffiliate, Reaffiliate, Kill Again ? Regis Debray Saved and Depoliticised at One Stroke ? the Dangers of Intervention Jeremy Harding goes to Beirut to meet the novelist Elias Khoury ? 'Before everything else, a writer of stories' ISSN 0260-9592 Copyright (c) LRB Ltd, 1997-2009 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n08/hard01_.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 intnsred at golgotha.net Thu Jun 11 10:33:32 2009 From: intnsred at golgotha.net (Intense Red) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:33:32 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Outsourcing's third wave In-Reply-To: <485959376.1138261244661592945.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> References: <485959376.1138261244661592945.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <200906111233.32189.intnsred@golgotha.net> > Rich food importers are acquiring vast tracts of poor countries' farmland. > Is this beneficial foreign investment or neocolonialism? Let's see, the Saudis invest in Ethiopia and have the food sent back to Saudi Arabia while Ethiopians go hungry. What is the difference between this and the Brits exporting potatoes from Ireland to Britain during the height of the 1800s Irish potato famine? This is not foreign "investment." Both sides do not benefit. It's just old fashioned exploitation and colonialism. -- "The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs." -- Karl Marx From suzannedk at gmail.com Thu Jun 11 12:41:52 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:41:52 +0200 Subject: [R-G] We wanted a world leader. We saw only a US president In-Reply-To: <1083624671.849851244581599746.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> References: <1304720263.536381244501594768.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> <1083624671.849851244581599746.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: The last eight years of illegal wars of choice in countries and on Human Rights world wide have lessened the global reach of respect and U S presidentail power by seruiously tarnishing the Shining City on the Hill. . On 6/9/09, Sid Shniad wrote: > > > > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/05/barack-obama-cairo > > > > The Guardian 5 June 2009 > > > > We wanted a world leader. We saw only a US president > > > > Obama's long-awaited speech demonstrated little to suggest America will > pursue any course beyond its own interests > > > > Ahdaf Soueif > > > > This is hard. It's hard because we so need to believe that Obama is about > change, that he's wise, that he's good, that he has the interests of the > world ? rather than just the interests of the United States ? at heart. > > > > The 3,500 invited guests were told they'd have to be in their places by > 10.30. But Obama would speak at one . An odd time for everyone, it would > seem: for us in Cairo, where the cool of the evening is the preferred time > for any event, and for people in America, who wouldn't yet have woken up. I > dress with my eye on the television screen: the loop of Obama touching > cheeks with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, his hand resting for a > companionable minute on the old monarch's arm. Just before I leave the house > I glimpse the prancing horses that make up part of Obama's procession into > Cairo. > > > > The Egyptian state is doing pomp, and relieved (because of the security > lockdown) of traffic and noise Cairo is playing along: the morning light is > clear and free of dust, the flame trees are magnificent with their crowns of > red massed flowers. > > > > In the great Festival Hall under the dome of Cairo University we are a > good-humoured crowd, amusing ourselves during our three-hour wait by > applauding the mic checks and housekeeping announcements of the Egyptian > staff. Then something interesting happens: an American strides on to the > stage, brusque and marine-like in his efficiency, he marches through a > prolonged mic check: "One, two, three, mic check, from Cairo, Egypt, one, > two ?" When he's finished the tiny patter of hesitant applause dies out very > quickly. In a ?couple of minutes he's back. "Mic check," he announces ? then > grins: "Last time, I promise." The crowd roars its approval, applauds him. > > > > They even applaud Hilary Clinton as she beams in through a side door. There > are a lot of empty seats: the ?security arrangements and the ?promise of the > long wait have kept people away. But then Obama comes in, and we're on our > feet: waving, ?cheering, ?clapping. And that, really, is the highlight of > the occasion. > > > > Obama did what many of us hoped he would not do: he accorded faith a > central position in the relationship between our different parts of the > world: rather than human beings with different histories and different > political interests and ambitions ? and despite a quick acknowledgment of > colonialism ? we were essentially people of different faiths who would now > make nice with each other. And such is our beleaguered state of mind here in > this part of the world that every time he quoted the Qur'an, he was > applauded. But then again, it seemed that it was the same 200 or so people > who were putting their hands together ? to less effect each time. > > > > "Extremism" was top of the agenda, even though al-Qaida, once so modern and > cutting edge, is now tired and irrelevant. But it was prodded out of its > stall again as justification for American operations in Afghanistan. We were > reminded of the 3,000 people killed in New York ? people who had done no > harm to anyone. And every person listening east of Rome and many west of it > would have been thinking "and what about the million Iraqis, what about the > Afghanis, what about ?" And ?nothing about non-Muslim extremism, about the > 40 million American Christian Zionists anticipating the Rapture with glee, > or the Israeli settlers who in Hebron take your photo and upload it to God > to fast-lane you to hell. > > > > Obama's speech was a lawyerly speech, a clever speech. It certainly > departed from the Bush discourse, but how far away from the policies of the > last eight years are the sources it springs from? We still can only wait and > see. > > > > The biggest applause he got was when he said that all US troops would be > out of Iraq by 2012, and when he repeated his position on the Israeli > settlements. He's been brave on the settlements, and of course we're all > grateful for every step in the direction of halting the dispossession of the > Palestinians. But it also needs to be remembered that stopping the > settlements has been part of the official position of every American > administration; what's required is the implementation of that position by > cutting off the funding for the settlements and closing the tax loophole > that allows private American organisations to fund them. > > > > Around the pedestal carrying the Eternal Flame of Knowledge outside the > university, the American activist group Code Pink carried banners that said > "Obama: Stop funding Israeli war crimes". They came out of Gaza on Wednesday > carrying a letter from Hamas to the American president, and they were at > pains to point out that Hamas chose an American feminist group to carry > their letter. I don't know if they managed to deliver it. > > > > There is a difference between believing that ultimately the interests of > the inhabitants of the planet are genuinely interconnected and believing > that the interests of the world can be made to seem compatible with > America's. Obama has said that America should have not only the power but > the moral standing to lead the world. Today we waited for him to demonstrate > that moral standing and assume the leadership of the world. He did not; he > remained the President of the United States. > _______________________________________________ > 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 tchilds at resist.ca Thu Jun 11 16:23:57 2009 From: tchilds at resist.ca (tchilds at resist.ca) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:23:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Video Resource: anti-war music video to protest CANSEC 2009 Message-ID: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEFQXyLucyk From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Jun 11 20:29:27 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:29:27 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Lagging Recognition Message-ID: <20090612112927.455dbd47.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 (June 08 2009) Through the tangle of green shoots and sprouting mustard seeds, a certain nervous view persists that the arc of events is taking us to places unimaginable. The collapse of General Motors and Chrysler signifies more than the collapse of US car manufacturing. It spells the end of the motoring era in America per se and the puerile fantasy of personal liberation that allowed it to become such a curse to us. Of course, many Nobel prize-winning economists would argue that it has only been a blessing for us, but that only shows how the newspapers are committing suicide-by-irrelevance. And if other societies, such as China's late-entry industrial start-up, want to adopt a similar fantasy, they will only find themselves all the sooner in history's garage with a tailpipe in their mouths. Here in the USA, we will mount the most strenuous campaign to keep the motoring system going - in fact, we're already doing it - but it will fail just as surely as two (so far) of the "big three" automakers have failed. It will fail because car-making is only one facet of a larger network of systems that is coming undone, namely a revolving debt cheap energy economy. Americans will never again buy as many new cars as they were able to do before 2008 on the terms that were normal until then: installment loans. Our credit system is completely broken. It choked to death on securitized debt engineered by computer magic and business school hubris. That complex of frauds and swindles coincided with the background force of peak oil, which meant, among other things, that economic growth based on ever-increasing energy resources was over, and along with it ever-increasing credit. What it boils down to now is that we can't service our debt at any level, personal, corporate, or government - and that translates into comprehensive societal bankruptcy. The efforts of our federal government to work around this now, to cover up the "non-performing" debt and to generate the new lending necessary to keep the old system going, is a tragic exercise in futility. I'm not saying this to be a "pessimistic" grandstanding doomer pain-in-the-ass, but because I would like to see my country make more intelligent choices that would permit us to continue being civilized, to move into the next phase of our history without a horrible self-destructive convulsion. Another consequence of the debt problem is that we won't be able to maintain the network of gold-plated highways and lesser roads that was as necessary as the cars themselves to make the motoring system work. The trouble is you have to keep gold-plating it, year after year. Traffic engineers refer to this as "level-of-service". They've learned that if the level-of-service is less than immaculate, the highways quickly enter a spiral of disintegration. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers reported several years ago that the condition of many highway bridges and tunnels was at the "D-minus" level, so we had already fallen far behind on a highway system that had simply grown too large to fix even when we thought we were wealthy enough to keep up. Right now, we're pretending that the "stimulus" program will carry us over long enough to resume the old method of state-and-federal spending based largely on bonding (that is, debt). The political dimension of the collapse of motoring is the least discussed part of problem: as fewer and fewer citizens find themselves able to buy and run cars, they will feel increasingly aggrieved at the system set up to make motoring virtually mandatory for all the chores of everyday life, and their resentments will rise against the elite that can still manage to enjoy it. Because our car-dependency is so extreme, the reaction of the dis-entitled classes is liable to be extreme and probably delusional to an extreme, too. You can already see it being baked in the cake. Happy Motoring is so entangled in our national identity that the loss of it is bound to cause a national identity crisis. In places like the American south, the old Dixie states, motoring lifted more than half the population out of the dust, and became the basis of the New South economy. The sons and grandsons of starving sharecroppers became Chevy dealers and developers of suburban housing tracts, malls, and strip malls. They don't have any nostalgia for the historical reality of hookworm and fourteen-hour-days of serf labor in hundred-degree heat. Theirs is a nostalgia for the present, for air-conditioned comfort and convenience and the groaning all-you-can-eat Shoney's breakfast buffet off the freeway ramp. When it is withdrawn from them by the mandate of events, they will be furious. Given the history of the region and the predilections of its dominant ethnic group, one might imagine that they will want to take out their gall and grievance on the half-African politician who presides over the situation. Among the ever-expanding classes dis-entitled from the so-called American Dream, the crisis is only marginally different in other regions of the nation. Mr Obama faces a range of awful dilemmas, and it is painful to see them go unrecognized and unacknowledged by his White House. It's hard to imagine that the president and his elite advisors are blind to these equations, but as the weeks tick by they seem stuck in a box of limited perception. We're in a strange hiatus for now. "Hope" levitates the legitimacy of the dollar, the stock markets, and the authority of leadership. In the background, implosion continues, debt goes unpaid, banks ignore bad loans to keep them off their books, jobs and incomes vanish, cars and other things go unsold, and a tragic wishfulness strains to sustain the unsustainable. Our expectations are inconsistent with what is happening to us. It will be very painful for us to walk away from the car-centered life. Half the population faces the ugly obstacle of being hopelessly over-invested in a suburban house and all the life-ways associated with it. There will be no easy way out for them, whatever they chose to do politically, whatever noise they make, whomever they scapegoat, whatever fantasies they cultivate about what the world owes them, or who they think they are. Mr Obama should not waste another week pretending that we can keep this old system going. The public needs to know that we will be making our livings differently, inhabiting the landscape differently, and spending our days and nights differently - even while we suffer our losses. The public needs to hear this from more figures than Mr Obama, too, from leaders in the state capitals, and the agencies, and business and education and what remains of the clergy. But somebody has to set in motion the chain of recognition, or events will soon do it for us. _____ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/06/lagging-recognition.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 Jun 11 23:13:13 2009 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:13:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Focus Parole, Friends Digest Vol. 3, No. 4 Message-ID: <909195.58959.qm@web111513.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> *'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'* "An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it." -- Gandhi ????????????????? *'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'* * Parole Expenses * Pocket change, $1, $5, or more... For the sake of freedom, no amount is too small. Funds are needed to meet expenses associated with Leonard Peltier's parole hearing next month. The need is urgent. Please give what you can. Mail donations to: LP-DOC, PO Box 7488, Fargo, ND 58106. Or donate by credit card: . * Parole Letters * It's EXTREMELY important that everyone write a letter in support of Leonard's parole.? You can find sample language at . * Online Parole Petition * Have you signed the parole petition on Mr. Peltier's behalf? If not, do it today. We'll be closing down the petition around June 26 so that data can be compiled for delivery to the U.S. Parole Commission.? So don't wait. Do it now. Not sure if you've signed?? Sign again.? Any duplicates will be deleted before the signatures are submitted to the Parole Commission. Do more than sign.? Forward the above link to all your friends, family members, colleagues, etc., and urge them also to support parole for Leonard Peltier.? Post the link on electronic bulletin boards, in chat rooms, on blogs and Web sites...? Do it and keep doing it. * Gather at USP-Lewisburg on July 27 * Leonard Peltier's parole hearing is scheduled for July 27. Join other Peltier supporters at the entrance of USP-Lewisburg at 7:30 a.m. Meet at the corner of Route 15 and William Penn Road. Help spread the word.? The Parole Examiner has to pass by to enter the prison, so wear Peltier shirts and carry signs. USP-Lewisburg is located in central Pennsylvania, 200 miles north of Washington, DC, and 170 miles west of Philadelphia. Map and Directions: * 2009 Oglala Commemoration * The Oglala Commemoration Committee has announced the 10th annual commemoration event on June 26 in Oglala, SD. See details at . * May 20 Event in Portland * Lakota Chief Leonard Crow Dog spoke to a large crowd on behalf of Peltier at the Native American Student and Community Center at Portland State University, OR. Sponsored by local Peltier supporters and hosted by the Native American Studies Department, the evening also included drumming and singing by the local chapter of the American Indian Movement, flute by Isaac Trimble, and presentations by several other speakers. Paintings and drawings by Peltier and Bob Robideau were on display, provided by Bonnie Kahn's Wild West Gallery on NW 23rd, who represents both artists locally. Video of Chief Crow Dog: ????????????????? *'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'* "Never cease in the fight for peace, justice, and equality for all people. Be persistent in all that you do and don't allow anyone to sway you from your conscience." -- Leonard Peltier ????????????????? *'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'* Also frequently visit and our main Blog at .? The Blog is updated daily. Register to receive e-mail announcements. It's easy. Go to our homepage at . Scroll down the page until you see "Join Us" on the left sidebar. Enter your e-mail address in the text box. Then point to and click on "Subscribe". Or send a blank e-mail message to . We encourage other sites to link to our Web site and blogs. No prior permission is required. Visit us on your preferred social network, too (MySpace, Facebook, etc.): . Time to set him free... Because it is the RIGHT thing to do. Friends of Peltier http://www.FreePeltierNow.org From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Jun 12 04:40:34 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:40:34 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Islam and the Armies of Mammon Message-ID: <20090612194034.9fe8efad.shimogamo@ashisuto.co.jp> Jeremy Harding returns to the subject of high finance in the Islamic World by Jeremy Harding London Review of Books (May 14 2009) The rules that govern Islamic banking and finance are non-negotiable, cast in tradition, as good as stone. A finance house that sticks to the plot will not come to grief in a credit crisis; neither will its clients. Yet once large sums are involved - sums beyond the reach of modest customers - Islamic entrepreneurs, corporate and institutional investors take risks with the principles that sharia-compliant finance is meant to embody, by colonising conventional areas where the promise of riches and power looks irresistible but the path is forbidden. The challenge here is technical as much as moral. Faith-accountable fund managers and devout privateers in Malaysia and the Gulf may want a stake in Western wealth creation, but they must try to stick to Islamic principles when they intrude on the money. 'Leveraging', 'derivatives', 'shorting': the ambient glamour of these operations, like the terminology itself, seems dangerous in the new light of day, yet cautious capitalists still find them serviceable and inventive theorists of sharia-compliance are intrigued by them. In the Square Mile, compliant financing techniques are available if enough money and intellectual resources are put into a project. In 2007 there was a star turn: a sharia-compliant leveraged buy-out of Aston Martin Lagonda, then part of Ford, and a glamorous accessory in the not so compliant 007 range. (The cars themselves are 'compliant', someone involved in the deal assured me.) For the purposes of the acquisition, two investment management companies in Kuwait formed a third company with Aston Martin's CEO and a retired British rally driver. The financial gadgetry involved was impressive, though by the standards of Bond's MI6 boffin, the phlegmatic Q, hardly spectacular. AML was bought for about GBP 480 million. To work around the problem of interest payable on the money that had to be raised - from banks - the buyers pressed a compliant dashboard button known as the 'commodity murabaha': rather than lending money directly to a borrower, a bank agrees to buy a commodity and sell it on to him (immediately) with a fee added into the sale price; the borrower sells the commodity in the markets (immediately), but his repayment to the bank for the commodity it bought on his behalf is deferred for a period of time agreed by the parties. The Kuwaitis had already raised the bulk of the money for the purchase; the remainder, in the order of GBP 200 million, was put up by a syndicate of banks, led by the London office of the German commercial bank WestLB, which bought on the London Metal Exchange to the value of the sum required, sold the metal warrants to the purchasing company on the same day, with a mark-up, after which the company sold them on, as the model requires. The deal committed the new owners of AML to a single repayment, five to eight years later. Phased debt repayments, the norm in this kind of arrangement, were avoided, as was the distinction between senior debt (which gets priority repayment) and subordinate debt; Islam is unhappy with different classes of debt, as it is with different classes of stock. Five to eight years seems a long time, but the timing was based on an analysis of AML's business cycle - high-end toys like Aston Martins are slow earners - and found favour with the Kuwaitis, the banks and the sharia advisers. Two of the WestLB people who handled the buy-out were satisfied by the impression it made in the City and in the Gulf. It was evidently a lot of work for Eva Bigalke, the bank's executive director of Islamic Finance, who managed the legal underpinnings of the deal. These were vast as well as intricate: when I asked her for an idea of the size of the legal file, she raised her hand some way from the table, not far short of Proust. It seemed to her that this was the moment when sceptics had to concede that sharia-compliance could find a way to the real money, which was only accessible to conventional entrepreneurs a few years ago. The AML deal is scarcely mind-boggling; around $25 billion was raised for the acquisition of RJR Nabisco at the end of the 1980s and, as Bigalke's colleague Harvey Hoogakker remarked, the Alliance Boots buy-out in 2007 involved about GBP 12 billion. Both were the work of the private equity monster Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, with whom a couple of flush Kuwaiti investment companies bear no comparison. Hoogakker, WestLB's executive director of leveraged finance, described the Aston Martin buy-out as a modest 'mid-market deal', whose significance, he felt, had to do with an 'emerging' trend having finally, startlingly emerged. There was, Bigalke added, a thoroughgoing change in the way the Middle East was thi