From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Sun Mar 1 01:53:57 2009 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 00:53:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Leonard Peltier DOC Actions: Robideau's Passing; etc.. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <743709.39041.qm@web111511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Friends Digest Vol. 3, No. 1 ????????????????? *'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'* The human voice is different from other sounds.? It can be heard over noises that bury everything else. Even when it's not shouting. Even if it's just a whisper. Even the lowest whisper can be heard over armies... when it's telling the truth. ????????????????? *'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'* * Robert Robideau * As you know, Robert Robideau (Leonard's cousin and co-defendant) passed to the spirit world recently.? Red Town Radio will air a tribute to Bob tomorrow, February 28, at 3:00 p.m. Central time.? Guests will include Starr Robideau, Russell Means, and David Hill. Anyone wishing to share memories of Robert Robideau is encouraged to call in. See . Also see Leonard Peltier Remembers Robert Robideau at . On March 14 and 15, there will be an honoring ceremony for Robert Robideau in Albuquerque, NM. Contact: nantinkirose at hotmail.com, 505-286-5432. * Keep Leonard Safe * Mr. Peltier's move back to Lewisburg is temporary.? He may be moved again at any time.? We ask supporters to keep up the pressure on the Bureau of Prisons.? Demand that Mr. Peltier is moved to a facility commensurate with his current security rating. See . * Wounded Knee II * Today is the anniversary of the 1973 takeover at Wounded Knee. See . On YouTube, you can watch an interview with Bill Means as he remembers Wounded Knee: . ????????????????? *'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'* "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 ????????????????? *'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'* ----- Please circulate to family and friends and otherwise widely post our listserv announcements. Also frequently visit our Blog at or receive our blog postings by Web feed (download a free newsfeed reader at ): Atom: RSS: Or 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 . You also can Bookmark our home page and/or blog. Click on the Bookmark button provided at each of these sites to use any program you wish by which to save the sites to your list of browser favorites. Visit us often to learn more about efforts to win Leonard's freedom and find out what you can do to help. We encourage other sites to link to our Web site and blogs. No prior permission is required. Visit us on your preferred social netork (MySpace, Facebook, etc.): . ? Robideau's Passing Friends, We're sad to report that Robert Robideau passed over at his home in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday, February 17th. Please offer a prayer for his safe journey. Also remember the Robideau family in your prayers. Friends of Peltier ----- Time to set him free... Because it is the RIGHT thing to do. Friends of Peltier http://www.FreePeltierNow.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe,?? send a blank message to freepeltiernow-on at mail-list.com To contact the list owner, send your message to?? freepeltiernow-list-owner at mail-list.com mail-list.com??? 1302 Waugh Dr. #438??? Houston, Texas??? 77019??? USA From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Mar 1 04:01:55 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:01:55 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Message-ID: <49AA6B23.8060604@ashisuto.co.jp> by Ralph Nader Countercurrents.org (February 27 2009) While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated glacier day by day, the nation's credit unions are a relative island of calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism. Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer people "teaser rates" to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford. Ninety one percent of the 8,000 credit unions are reporting greater overall growth in mortgage lending than any other kinds of consumer loans they are extending. They are federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for up to $250,000 per account, such as the FDIC does for depositors in commercial banks. They are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to increase stock values and the value of the bosses' stock options as do the commercial banks. Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are responsible to their owner-members who are their customers. There are even some special low-income credit unions, though not nearly enough to stimulate economic activities in these communities and to provide "banking" services in areas where poor people can't afford or are not provided services by commercial banks. According to Mike Schenk, an economist with the Credit Union National Association, there is another reason why credit unions avoided the mortgage debacle that is consuming the big banks. Credit Unions, Schenk says, are "portfolio lenders. That means they hold in their portfolios most of the loans they originate instead of selling them to investors, so they care about the financial performance of those loans." Mr Schenk allowed that with the deepening recession, credit unions are not making as much surplus and "their asset quality has deteriorated a bit. But that's the beauty of the credit union model. Credit unions can live with those conditions without suffering dire consequences", he asserted. His use of the word "model" is instructive. In recent decades, credit unions sometimes leaned toward commercial bank practices instead of strict cooperative principles. They developed a penchant for mergers into larger and larger credit unions. Some even toyed with converting out of the cooperative model into the shareholder model the way insurance and bank mutuals have done. The cooperative model, whether in finance, food, housing or any other sector of the economy, does best when the owner-cooperators are active in the general operations and directions of their co-op. Passive owners allow managers to stray or contemplate straying from cooperative practices. The one area that is now spelling some trouble for retail cooperatives comes from the so-called "corporate credit unions", a terrible nomenclature, which were established to provide liquidity for the retail credit unions. These large wholesale credit unions are not exactly infused with the cooperative philosophy. Some of them gravitate toward the corporate banking model. They invested in those risky mortgage securities with the money from the retail credit unions. These "toxic assets" have fallen $14 billion among the 28 corporate credit unions involved. So the National Credit Union Administration is expanding its lending programs to these corporate credit unions to a maximum capacity of $41.5 billion. NCUA also wants to have retail credit unions qualified for the TARP rescue program just to provide a level playing field with the commercial banks. Becoming more like investment banks the wholesale credit unions wanted to attract, with ever higher riskier yields, more of the retail credit union deposits. This set the stage for the one major blemish of imprudence on the credit union subeconomy. There are very contemporary lessons to be learned from the successes of the credit union model such as being responsive to consumer loan needs and down to earth with their portfolios. Yet in all the massive media coverage of the Wall Street barons and their lethal financial escapades, crimes and frauds, little is being written about how the regulation, philosophy and behavior of the credit unions largely escaped this catastrophe. There is, moreover, a lesson for retail credit unions. Beware and avoid the seepage or supremacy of the corporate financial model which, in its present degraded overly complex and abstract form, has become what one prosecutor called "lying, cheating and stealing" in fancy clothing. _____ Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and three-time presidential candidate. http://www.countercurrents.org/nader270209.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 hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org Sun Mar 1 10:09:58 2009 From: hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org (Hunter Gray) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 10:09:58 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Shooting Lupus Dead Message-ID: <001201c99a90$8e3536b0$0400a8c0@computer> NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR: MARCH 1 2009 While, as recent history indicates, premature declarations of "victory" can prove fallacious, I can report -- as per my observations and, more to the point, those of my long-term and medically conservative physician who happens to be LDS, that's we've definitely turned a "good big corner" in our Lupus War. Here is my initial post, followed by Mack's query, and then by my response. I should add that I've just thrown off an upper bronchial problem -- now endemic here in southeastern Idaho during many days of atypical icy fog -- and have tossed it without any medicinal aid. [Still have troublesome sinus problems stemming from an old, serious facial injury.] I am posting this on lists where significant numbers have been concerned about my med condition. Most are now aware that Systemic Lupus, relatively rare and considered "lethal", has a genetic base [in some cases, environmental factors play a secondary role] and a special preference for Native Americans, Blacks, Chicanos, and some Asian groups, and women in general. It's one of the most serious of the auto-immune diseases [where the body's immune system attacks various organs]. It has no cure and there have been no new Lupus medicines of substance for half a century -- although stem cell research offers grounds for some optimism. For the rest [updated through February 28 2009], see http://hunterbear.org/shooting_lupus.htm HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na?shdo?i?ba?i? and Ohkwari' Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm [The site is dedicated to our one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray: http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands. http://hunterbear.org/outlaw_trail1.htm In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings. Then it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and remembering way. [Hunter Bear] http://www.hunterbear.org/GRAY%20LANDS%20AND%20GRAY%20GHOSTS.htm From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Mar 1 19:34:49 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:34:49 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Future of Transit Message-ID: <49AB45C9.3050306@ashisuto.co.jp> Public transportation needs massive investment. Will the Obama administration step up? by Adam Doster and Kate Sheppard In These Times (February 23 2009) More than 2.5 million people live in the Baltimore Metropolitan Area and most never step foot on public transit. The city's bus system is slow and inefficient, and the region supports only two rail lines, a 15.5-mile light rail route that traverses the city from north to south and a heavy rail metro track that runs from the city center to the northwestern suburbs. Both lines serve only a combined 80,000 riders daily. Baltimoreans may not prefer driving, but they have little choice. That's why local mass transit advocates were thrilled in 2002 when a state advisory committee unveiled the Baltimore Region Rail System Plan, an ambitious proposal that called for the construction of six lines extending more than 109 miles. First on tap was the Red Line, a $1 billion high-capacity east-west rail corridor that would connect with the existing train routes and serve 250,000 people who reside in some of the city's most densely populated but underserved neighborhoods. "There could be massive economic reinvestment in those areas, which is badly needed", says Stuart Sirota, a regional planner who helped develop the 2002 plan. But the project has languished since its inception, stuck under multiyear environmental studies (standard practice for new infrastructure projects), a Republican governor unfriendly to transit expansion and a dearth of federal funds. By contrast, during the same period, Maryland moved ahead with an equally expensive plan to widen a 10-mile section of I-95, the major interstate that runs along the East Coast. Classified as an upgrade of existing infrastructure, the highway lobby fast-tracked the project - first proposed in 2002 - through the environmental regulatory process. Today, it's fully funded and well under construction. "Transit has been the poor stepchild of highways", says Sirota. "That's been the status quo over the last forty-plus years, and our region isn't any different". The United States is a nation of cars. For more than sixty years, federal zoning, housing and transportation policies - including President Eisenhower's monumental 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act - have diffused the population and established the automobile as the primary means of travel. Prioritizing highway construction over mass transit was justifiable following World War Two, when gas was cheap and abundant, climate change was not yet understood and cities were struggling to handle population growth. Today, it is a recipe for economic and environmental disaster. Yet the federal government remains in a time warp, prioritizing highway funding even as Americans ditch their cars for seats on trains and buses. This year presents two enormous opportunities to alter the equation: First, the economic recovery package, which will include billions on transit infrastructure, and second, the reauthorization of the surface transportation bill, which could redistribute federal funds. If bureaucratic inertia and a lack of political imagination don't squash substantive reforms, transportation policy could be fundamentally restructured in 2009. But - especially to judge from the stimulus negotiations - that's a big "if". Failing infrastructure In August 2005, President Bush signed into law the current transportation bill - the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) - which will expire September 30 2009. Infamous for its inclusion of the $200 million "Bridge to Nowhere", the $244 billion bill also failed to improve funding for mass transit. Since 1982, transportation funding has broken down this way: eighty percent for roads, twenty percent for mass transit. Nothing changed in 2005, leaving Americans with a national mass transit infrastructure that lacks coherent policy vision and desperately needs major investment. In its 2009 "Report Card for America's Infrastructure Future", the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the United States a "C minus" for its rail network, in part because of the government-owned Amtrak, which the Government Accountability Office recently described as being in "poor financial shape". And the problems for rail are only worsening: Because freight and intercity passenger trains often share tracks, expected ridership increases will stress an already maxed-out system. ASCE estimates that more than $200 billion is needed through 2035 to accommodate this growth. ASCE's mark on US mass transit was even worse: a "D". According to the Federal Transit Administration, $15.8 billion is needed annually to maintain conditions of the nation's transit agencies, while improving to "good" conditions would require an annual $21.6 billion. But in 2008, federal funding for transit totaled just $9.8 billion. Because funding hasn't kept pace with need, what resources are devoted to mass transit generally cover maintenance and upkeep - not expansion. When Congress reauthorized SAFETEA-LU in 2005, it earmarked a mere $1.6 billion a year for the construction of new commuter and light rail systems, less than one percent of the total amount allocated. "Expenditures are far outpacing revenues", says Deron Lovaas, federal transportation policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, "and we're not making any improvements". The pattern creates a staggering backlog. Reconnecting America, which advocates for mass transit, identifies $248 billion in developments that have already been proposed. That's roughly the same amount promised for highways and transit, combined, in the last federal transportation bill. At the current rate of federal investment, it would take 77 years to complete these projects, and that doesn't include the billions of dollars that cities with older systems require to modernize existing transit routes. Not surprisingly, half of all Americans still lack any access to mass transit, and only twenty percent live near high-capacity outlets (rail or rapid bus), even though eighty percent of Americans reside in areas defined as metropolises. Ditch my ride Despite deteriorating infrastructure, commuters keep jumping aboard. Since 1995, public transit ridership has risen a whopping 32 percent, more than double the rate of population growth. In 2007, Americans took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation, the highest number in more than fifty years. The trajectory continued in 2008: Subways, buses, commuter rail and light-rail systems saw a 6.5 percent jump in ridership in the year's third quarter, the largest quarterly upsurge in 25 years. With transit booming, many Americans are ditching their once-beloved cars. The Federal Highway Administration reports thirteen consecutive months of driving decline, with 112 billion less vehicle-miles traveled than in the previous thirteen-month span. The high cost of auto transit accounts for some of the behavioral shift. The American Public Transportation Association (APTA), which represents the bus, rapid transit and commuter-rail systems industry, estimates that, by taking transit instead of driving last year, an average household would have saved $9,499, the equivalent of a year's supply of food. Concern about climate change is also altering transit dynamics. According to APTA, a commuter traveling twenty miles alone by car each day who switches to public transportation would reduce her carbon dioxide emissions by 4,800 pounds per year. "Americans are driving so much less", says Robert Puentes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. "But they sure haven't stopped traveling". Demand for mass transit will only intensify in the future. When Eisenhower launched his grand highway experiment, not only was the US population smaller and younger, but about half of all households were organized as traditional nuclear families - making cars a natural choice upon which to base a transit system. Not anymore. Today, American households are older (from now until 2030, more people will turn 65 each year than in the previous year), smaller (the share of single person households has edged slightly past the conventional family household) and more attracted to dense, walkable neighborhoods. "We're not building for an Ozzie-and-Harriet world anymore", says David Goldberg, communications director for Transportation For America (T4), a coalition of more than 100 state and sixty national groups advocating transit reform. "For [moving] goods, for people to get to and from work, for the quality of life in these places, there has to be a well-functioning transportation system that offers a wide range of options". 'What do we want?' 'TRANSIT!' Republican pollster Frank Luntz recently found that 94 percent of Americans are concerned about the country's infrastructure and 81 percent would be willing to pay one percent more on their taxes if the money were to go toward infrastructure. They ranked energy infrastructure as their top priority, but eighteen percent listed mass transit as the infrastructure most in need of investment, while passenger rail, bike lanes and pedestrian paths also made it into the top desires. On Election Day, 25 of 33 ballot initiatives to increase local and state taxes for public transportation passed, including an 800-mile high-speed rail line in California that is expected to cost $40 billion by the target completion date in 2030. "The public sees infrastructure as clean water, they see it as school buildings, they see it as bike paths and airports and railways", Luntz said on a conference call with reporters in December 2008. "They do not just see it as repairing highways". After years of neglect, federal lawmakers are finally taking action. In October, Congress approved a five-year, $13 billion reauthorization of Amtrak, almost double its current federal funding level. Senators John Kerry (Dem - Massachusetts) and Arlen Specter (Rep - Pennsylvania) followed that up by introducing a law to fund high-speed rail lines in several key corridors of the country. And House members extended tax benefits to bikers and re-established a federal interagency Bicycle Task Force to promote coordination on bike issues. But these piecemeal reforms pale next to the investments made by other countries. China has opened a new subway system in each of the past six years. And France spends twenty times as much per capita on rail as the United States does. Having outgrown its current transit system, America must reorganize how its people and its goods move in order to ensure prosperity in the future. An October 2008 American Public Transportation Association survey found that 85 percent of public transit systems reported capacity problems and 35 percent were considering service cuts. The long-term cost of inaction is even greater. In a January 2008 report authorized by Congress, the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission concluded that without bold and well-coordinated surface transportation policies, the nation's assets will further deteriorate, greenhouse gas emissions will rise and adverse public health effects will proliferate. "At the moment, the condition of mass transit is perilous", says T4's Goldberg. "This is a huge turning point". Status quo defenders The T4 political coalition has grown mightier in recent years. It now includes the American Public Health Association, which sees mass transit and smart-growth as ways to fight health concerns like obesity. And there's talk that the influential American Association of Retired People might sign on as well, pushed by increasing concern that older Americans need mass transit options. Another notable addition is the National Association of Realtors, which, in the heady days of the McMansion boom, didn't register much concern for mass transit. But as real estate values around transit hubs have exploded, so too has the group's interest. Defending the status quo will be the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the umbrella group for state departments of transportation. In years past, legislators have relied heavily on what highway-friendly state transit officials say they need in funding. AASHTO's highway-heavy stimulus wishlist is a prime example. Florida devoted only one percent of its $6.97 billion request to mass transit; Missouri around five percent of its $800 million request. Even more progressive transit-policy states, such as California and New York, asked for less than half of their funding to go to transit. Road builders and others from the concrete lobby, like the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), will also weigh in. AASHTO and ARTBA have sway in Congress, going back to the days when the country's interstates were a major source of jobs. For 27 years, these groups have preserved their lopsided funding allotment. New approaches needed But even funding for roads is hurting these days. In September 2008, the Federal Highway Trust Fund - which uses the gas tax to fund a majority of road repair projects - went broke, forcing Congress to spend $8 billion to ensure temporary solvency. Yet the fund is expected to run out again later this year, leading even the most conservative transit policymakers to talk about greener options. Some in Congress are lobbying for a simple gas tax increase to fix the highway-funding problem. But that idea doesn't take into account that gasoline-powered cars are becoming increasingly fuel-efficient, much less that battery, biofuel and plug-in hybrid technologies have begun to permeate the market. Another idea is for a mileage tax. Several states are now considering it, and Portland, Oregon, already tried it in 2006 and 2007. Cars were equipped with a mileage counter, and when they filled up at fuel stations, they were levied a tax for the number of miles they had traveled, rather than charged a gas tax at the pump. It was fairly popular with testers - 91 percent of participants liked it more than the gas tax, according to survey by the Oregon Department of Transportation - but the program is not ready to scale nationally. But to reshape policy, NRDC's Lovaas says one method could be to specify that money meant for highway and bridge projects be used only for repair and maintenance. Another policy proposal would include language specifying that repair projects be giving priority over new road construction when funding is distributed. Others are focusing on the percentages: While transit advocates would ideally like a fifty-fifty split between roads and mass transit funding, T4 is lobbying for a sixty-forty split, which would still increase funding for mass transit from its current level. Transit advocates will likely differ over just how far to go in advocating for a better apportionment. Friends of the Earth (FOE) launched a "no new roads" campaign around the stimulus plan, calling instead for cleaner alternatives. But others, like the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), don't necessarily oppose new roads. They only oppose roads and projects that don't address congestion, sprawl and inaccessibility. "In the past, the environmental movement and the smart growth movement have sort of just juxtaposed roads to mass transit", says CNU President and former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist. He argues that road funding should instead be based on whether it creates a network of accessible, user-friendly streets for pedestrians, mass transit and cars. A less-than-stimulating start Meanwhile, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair James Oberstar (Dem - Minnesota) - who will likely have plenty of say in what the House transit package looks like - has sent signals that he'll fight for something tougher than previous transportation bills. His original stimulus proposal called for $85 billion for infrastructure investments, with more than half going to energy and environmental projects and at least $17 billion to mass transit. Of that, $12 billion would go to public transit, and $5 billion for rail. Another $30 billion would go to highways and bridges. Oberstar noted that his plan "creates green-collar jobs and invests in projects that decrease our dependence on foreign oil and address global climate change". However, when the stimulus proposal came out in mid-January, the road money stayed the same but the transportation portion had been reduced by 25 percent. As for rail - for which Oberstar wanted $5 billion - its funding was reduced to $1.1 billion. Transit advocates were able to tack $3 billion more onto the stimulus through an amendment, but the total was still short of what Oberstar originally called for. "How those decisions were made, I don't know", says Jim Berard, communications director for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "It's disappointing that our recommendation was not accepted on the whole, but at the same time we got a good deal for transportation infrastructure and we want to keep the momentum going for this bill". The Senate Appropriations Committee's draft stimulus was even more meager than the House version, providing just $9.5 billion for transit. The chamber then rejected an amendment offered by Senators Patty Murray (Dem - Washington) and Dianne Feinstein (Dem - California) to increase transportation funding by $18 billion - $5 billion for mass transit and $13 billion for highways - by a mere two votes. Instead, lawmakers tacked on an additional $11.5 billion in tax rebates for car purchases, forcing struggling local transit agencies to shore up their riddled budgets in-house. And as In These Times went to press, Senator Barbara Boxer (Dem - California), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, was reportedly co-sponsoring an amendment with notorious climate change skeptic Senator James Inhofe (Rep - Oklahoma) that would throw an additional $50 billion at roads and highways. As Boxer's committee will be responsible for the reauthorization of the transporation bill, the amendment doesn't bode well. "It shows that there's absolutely no new thinking coming out of that committee on the role that transportation needs to play in achieving global warming goals", says FOE's Transportaion Coordinator Colin Peppard. "We need better leadership from the committee that's going to be drafting this bill". Those who favor spending on roads argue that they provide a more immediate stimulus because they're "shovel-ready". But at least $50 billion worth of backlogged repairs are needed for public transit systems, compared to $8.5 billion needed to maintain current road. Yet the stimulus draft gave billions more to roads - meaning much would likely be spent on expanding or building new roads. Meanwhile, despite the fact that Amtrak's northeast corridor alone needs more than $10 billion in repairs, the draft allocated only $1.1 billion for improving all of Amtrak. Yet even this pittance was deemed too generous by Senators Ben Nelson (Dem - Nebraska) and Susan Collins (Rep - Maine), who, as In These Times went to press, had proposed slashing it by $850 million. Berard, however, remains bullish about the coming congressional session. "There will be other times down the road to advocate for more transit funding", he says. "We will be taking a very close look at how to get more for transit in that as well". Though unable to give a sense of dollar figures or percentages, Berard says the preliminary work on the legislation is underway, and legislators plan to move a bill through the House by the end of June. Up in LaHood One of the biggest wild cards on transportation policy is going to be Obama's pick to head the Department of Transportation, the former representative from Illinois, Ray LaHood. The seven-term Republican, who retired this year, served on the House Transportation Committee, though never in a leadership position. In the past few years, he broke from his party when it came to Amtrak. In 2005, he noted in the Peoria Journal-Star that "we've got a good Amtrak system in Illinois and I don't think we want to destroy it by talking about privatization". Last June, he voted for the Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act, which aimed to promote increased public transportation use. LaHood was also a member of the Congressional Bike Caucus, a group of representatives who work to improve bike infrastructure. But many believe LaHood's nomination was based more on politics than expertise. The Department of Transportation was also the cabinet post where Bush made his token appointment of a Democrat in 2001, and Obama had promised a bipartisan administration. Environmental groups are giving LaHood the benefit of the doubt. "While his overall record on energy and environment issues is poor", says FOE President Brent Blackwelder, "there are reasons to hope he may be open to the visionary transportation policy that is needed to move our country forward". Another major factor will be Carol Browner. Her role as Obama's chief energy and climate adviser - a new position that didn't require Senate confirmation - will likely take some time to flesh out. It seems likely that, given Obama's emphasis on a comprehensive climate plan and Browner's experience as the Environmental Protection Agency administrator during the Clinton administration, she'll also play a key role in transportation policy. Similarly, the White House's focus on climate policy may mean that Obama himself weighs in more on this year's transit bill than did previous presidents. And Vice President Joe Biden, who as a senator famously commuted to and from the Capitol via Amtrak, is no shrinking violet on public transit issues, either. Whether mass transit receives the attention it deserves is a question of political will. In regions across the country, legislators are adjusting to the new demands of commuters. Even in Baltimore, where foot dragging has kept the Red Line shelved for years, progress is being made. In September, the Maryland Transportation Agency released its preliminary Environmental Impact Statement, the first significant step toward applying for federal funding. And new Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon is making sure the city is a key partner in any state negotiations. Federal lawmakers must now find a way to support more projects like Baltimore's and, in doing so, devise a new vision for America's transit system. This year is the perfect opportunity to start. Authors' post-stimulus addendum: Transit advocates pushed hard to improve the grim first draft of the stimulus proposal - and their effort paid off. About $17 billion dollars were devoted to mass transit in the $787 billion bill President Obama signed in mid-February, roughly the same number Representative Oberstar called for in his initial committee recommendations. Not only did Senator Boxer's road amendment die in committee and Senator Nelson's proposed cuts lose out in the face of intense opposition, but local transit agencies will get a boost through an $8.4 billion increase in transit capital assistance grants. The package also includes a hefty $8 billion for high-speed rail, funding that Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly added in the final bargaining sessions. While the resources won't begin to address the enormous investment needs and came at the expense of other stimulative programs - school construction funds and aid to state governments, most notably - it's a reassuring sign that Democrats understand the need to chart a new path during this summer's transportation negotiations. _____ Adam Doster is a senior editor at In These Times and a reporter-blogger for Progress Illinois. Kate Sheppard is the political reporter for the online environmental magazine, Grist.org. She has also written for The American Prospect, Bitch, The Guardian and MSN. http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4262/the_future_of_transit/ http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/4262/ 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 ivanddrury at yahoo.ca Sun Mar 1 22:58:33 2009 From: ivanddrury at yahoo.ca (Ivan D. Drury) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 21:58:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Take Hamas off the EU terror list - sign the appeal... Message-ID: <651478.76627.qm@web55505.mail.re4.yahoo.com> Appeal for the removal of Hamas from the EU terror list! On the occasion of the June 2009 European elections, we are launching an urgent appeal to all candidates for the 736 seats in the European parliament. We ask that they actively pursue the immediate and unconditional removal of Hamas and all other Palestinian liberation organizations from the European list of proscribed terrorist organizations. We further ask that they acknowledge the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and, by so doing, recognise, Hamas as a legitimate voice for the Palestinian people's aspirations for national liberation. First signatories (extract): Jose Saramago (writer, Portugal) Mairead Maguire (peace nobel price laureate, Ireland) Danny Morrison (writer, Ireland) Ronnie Kasrils (former South African minister) Giulietto Chiesa (European MP, Italy) Lucio Manisco (former European MP) Gianni Vattimo (philosopher and former European MP) Domenico Losurdo (director of the institute for philosophy, University Urbino, Italy) Augusto Boal (theatre director, Brazil) Gretta Duisenberg (chair Foundation Stop the Occupation, Netherlands) Fran?ois Houtart (professor emeritus Catholic University Louvain, Belgium) Tariq Ramadan (professor, Oxford/Erasmus Universities) Tariq Ali (writer, film-maker and editor of New Left Review, Britain) Jan Myrdal (writer, Sweden) James Petras (Bartle professor emeritus Binghamton University, USA) Franco Cavalli (oncologist and president of the International Union of Cancer (IUCC), Switzerland) Daniel Vischer (MP of the Green Party, Switzerland) Alima Boumediene Thiery (senator, France) See full list: www.antiimperialista.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6060&Itemid=229 The initiative was launched by Nadine Rosa-Rosso, a teacher and independent communist militant living in Bruxelles. It is a result of the Beirut Resistance Forum from 16-18 January 2009. The call can be signed by sending a message to camp at antiimperialista.org. ************************************ Anti-imperialist Camp www.antiimperialista.org camp at antiimperialista.org ************************************ __________________________________________________________________ Get a sneak peak at messages with a handy reading pane with All new Yahoo! Mail: http://ca.promos.yahoo.com/newmail/overview2/ From fentona at shaw.ca Mon Mar 2 00:13:03 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 23:13:03 -0800 Subject: [R-G] U.S. influence in Iraq far from over Message-ID: <83B399FF-DB70-4290-AD0F-499EAE4A1862@shaw.ca> Sun, March 1, 2009 U.S. influence in Iraq far from over By ERIC MARGOLIS http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2009/03/01/8575876-sun.html Barack Obama won the votes of many Americans by promising to swiftly end the Iraq War and bring U.S. troops home. He denounced George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq as a "violation of international law." So will U.S. troops leave Iraq? Will those responsible for this trumped-up war face justice? No, on both counts. President Obama says U.S. combat troops will leave Iraq by August 2010. However, the U.S. military occupation will not end. What we are seeing is a public relations shell game. The U.S. has 142,000 soldiers and nearly 100,000 mercenaries occupying Iraq. Obama's plan calls for withdrawing the larger portion of the U.S. garrison but leaving 50,000-60,000 troops in Iraq. To get around his promise to withdraw all "combat" troops, the president and his advisers are rebranding the stay-behind garrison as "training troops, protection for American interests, and counterterrorism forces." At a time when the U.S. is bankrupt and faces a $1.75 trillion deficit, the Pentagon's gargantuan $664 billion budget (50% of total global military spending) will grow in 2009 and 2010 by another $200 billion to pay for the occupation of Iraq and Obama's expanded war in Afghanistan. Throw in another $40 billion to $50 billion for the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Obama insists the U.S. will withdraw from Iraq. But his words are belied by the Pentagon, which continues to expand bases in Iraq, including Balad and Al-Asad, with 4,400-metre runways for heavy bombers and transports. AIR BRIDGE They are key links in the U.S. Air Force's new air bridge that extends from Germany to Bulgaria and Romania, Iraq and the Gulf, then onward to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Besides Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone and U.S. embassy (the world's largest), the Pentagon reportedly wants to retain 58 permanent bases in Iraq (by comparison, there are 36 in South Korea), total control of its air space and immunity from Iraqi law for all U.S. troops. The U.S. also will retain major bases in neighbouring Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Diego Garcia. U.S. oil companies are moving in to exploit Iraq's vast energy reserves, the Mideast's second largest after Saudi Arabia. U.S. troop levels will remain high during Iraq's December elections to ensure "security," according to the Pentagon. In other words, ensuring the U.S.-selected regime "wins" the vote. Iraqi parties, notably Baath, opposing the U.S. occupation, are banned from running. Many Iraqis believe the U.S. will never leave their nation. In short, contrary to all Obama's high-blown rhetoric about pulling out of Iraq, Washington clearly intends it will remain a U.S. military, political and economic protectorate. Washington is following exactly the same control model the British Empire used to rule Iraq, and exploit its oil: Install a figurehead ruler, keep him in power using a "native" army (read today's Iraqis army and police). RAF units based in Iraq (read U.S. air bases) bomb any rebellious areas. Smaller British ground units based in non-urban areas are on call to put down attempted coups against the king. The U.S. plan for Iraq is identical. Obama made clear that officials responsible for the Iraq war, torture, kidnapping or assassination will not be prosecuted. The theft of over $50 billion in U.S. "reconstruction" funds sent to Iraq is being hushed up. By contrast, Britons are demanding release of cabinet documents leading to war that are likely to expose Tony Blair's lies and illegalities. BYGONES There is no corresponding call for justice in the United States. Obama tells the public, let bygones be bygones. Unless, of course, it's Osama bin Laden. Between 600,000 and one million Iraqis died as a result of President George W. Bush's aggression, which cost nearly $1 trillion and some 4,500 U.S. dead. Four million Iraqis remain refugees. The U.S. holds over 20,000 Iraqi political prisoners. Mr. President, this is not a bygone. It's a historic crime that demands justice. Keep your word about withdrawing from Iraq. Enough with the Bush doubletalk. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Mar 2 04:51:04 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:51:04 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Great Solvent North Message-ID: <49ABC828.8050800@ashisuto.co.jp> by Theresa Tedesco New York Times Op-Ed (February 28 2009) Toronto - Has the world turned upside down? America, the capital of capitalism, is pondering nationalizing a handful of banks. Meanwhile, Canada, whose banking system had long been notorious for its stodgy practices and government coddling, is now being celebrated for those very qualities. The Canadian banking system, which proved resilient in the global economic crisis, is finally getting its day in the sun. A recent World Economic Forum report ranked it the soundest in the world, mostly as the result of its conservative practices. (The United States ranked fortieth.) President Obama has joined the adoring throng. He recently said that Canada has "shown itself to be a pretty good manager of the financial system in the economy in ways that we haven't always been here in the United States". Paul Volcker, former chief of the United States Federal Reserve, commented that what he's arguing for "looks more like the Canadian system than the American system". Most people don't know that the vision behind Canada's banking system, made up of a few large, national banks with branches from coast to coast, actually had its beginnings in the United States. Canada's system is the product of a banking framework inspired by Alexander Hamilton, the first American secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton envisioned the First Bank of the United States, chartered in 1791, as a central bank modeled on the Bank of England. Canadians found inspiration in Hamilton's model, but not all Americans did. In the 1830s, President Andrew Jackson opposed extending the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, perceiving it as monopolistic. Money-lending functions were then assumed by local and state-chartered banks, eventually giving rise to the free-market, decentralized system that America has today. Today, Canada's system remains truer to Hamilton's ideal. The five major chartered banks, the few regional banks and handful of large insurance companies are all regulated by the federal government. Canadian banks are relatively constrained in the amounts they can lend. Canadian banks are required to have a bigger cushion to absorb losses than American banks. In addition, Canadian government regulations protect the domestic banks by limiting foreign competition. They also keep banks broadly owned by public shareholders. Since Canada's financial services sector was deregulated in 1987, permitting the banks to buy brokerage houses, they have enjoyed vast earnings power because of their diverse businesses and operations. And in contrast to the recent shotgun marriages at bargain prices between ailing Wall Street brokerages and American banks, Canadian banks paid top dollar decades ago for profitable, blue-chip investment firms. Canadian banks are known to be risk-averse, and this has served them well. While their American counterparts were loading up their books with risky mortgages, Canadian banks maintained their lending requirements, largely avoiding subprime mortgages. The buttoned-down banks in Canada also tended to keep these types of securities on their books, rather than packaging them and selling them to investors. This meant that the exposures they did have to weak mortgages were more visible to the marketplace. The big five Canadian banks - Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Bank of Montreal - survived the recent turmoil relatively unscathed. Their balance sheets remain intact and their capital ratios are comfortably above requirements. Yes, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government may buy as much as 125 billion Canadian dollars (about $100 billion) worth of mortgages, increasing banks' capacity to lend. But this is small change compared with the scale of Washington's bailout. Few would have predicted that Canadian banks, long derided as among the least autonomous because of stringent government oversight, would emerge from the global mayhem as some of the more independent international players. Since Mr Obama seems to admire the Canadian banking system, his administration might want to take a page out of its playbook. This would entail building a national banking system based on a small number of large, broadly held, centrally and rigorously regulated firms. Imitating the Canadian model would require sweeping consolidation of American banks. This would be a very good thing. Washington had difficulty figuring out the magnitude of the financial crisis because there are so many thousands of banks that it was impossible for regulators to get into all of them. Washington is already on the path to achieving consolidation. Eventually, some of the larger banks into which the government is injecting taxpayer money will probably be deemed beyond help, and will either be allowed to die or be partnered with other banks. The market will take its cues from this stress-testing, and make its own bets on which banks will survive. It's hard to predict how many will have survived when the dust settles, but the new landscape might consist of only fifty or sixty banking institutions. More radically, Washington could take over the licensing of banks from the states, or, at the very least, consider more stringent regulation of global and super-regional banks. After all, the Canadian system is considered successful not only because it has fewer banks to regulate, but because regulation is based on the tenets of safety and soundness. There is no time to waste. Reconfiguring the American banking structure to look more like the Canadian model would help restore much-needed confidence in a beleaguered financial system. Why not emulate the best in the world, which happens to be right next door? At the very least, Hamilton would have approved. _____ Theresa Tedesco is the chief business correspondent for The National Post. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/opinion/28tedesco.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 Mar 2 08:45:56 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 07:45:56 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Jean-Bertrand Aristide remains potent force in Haiti Message-ID: http://www.miamiherald.com/582/story/928042.html Posted on Sun, Mar. 01, 2009 Jean-Bertrand Aristide remains potent force in Haiti BY JACQUELINE CHARLES Five years after he fled into exile amid a bloody revolt, former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is continuing to cast a long shadow over Haiti's political landscape. His reemergence as a central figure in Haiti's political future comes as the once all-powerful Fanmi Lavalas political party seems to be imploding amid an internal power struggle over which competing faction has the right to lead in Aristide's absence. The internal dispute boiled over into Haiti's larger political debate last month when Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council -- presented with two competing slates of Lavalas candidates for the upcoming April 19 parliamentary elections -- disqualified all 16 office-seekers from across the country who had registered for the 12 senate seats under the Lavalas banner. The electoral council's explanation for the disqualifications: According to Lavalas bylaws, the party's national representative -- Aristide -- must sanction candidates. Others, including some Lavalas leaders, disagree. They say the council's ruling is a pretext to keep the party, which boycotted the 2006 presidential and legislative elections, from getting a foothold in President Ren? Pr?val's government. The matter has confused and confounded even loyal Lavalas supporters, who have publicly criticized each other. CENTER STAGE The election exclusion has placed Aristide at the crux of the debate, and stirred concerns within the international community that banning Haiti's most popular and biggest political party from the vote could lead to contested elections and provoke a repeat of the political crisis that led to the 2004 rebellion and Aristide's ultimate departure to South Africa. ''Throughout Haiti's history, Haiti has had leaders who have either fled or been placed in exile. It seems to me that Aristide's shelf life is surprising everybody, compared to what has happened with other leaders,'' said Robert Maguire, U.S. Institute of Peace Jennings Randolph senior fellow and director of the Haiti Study Program at Trinity University. ''In part it's because under Ren? Pr?val, you've had improvements in security and kind of less-overt political conflicts. But you haven't had improvements in people's personal and economic well-being,'' Maguire said. ``For some in Haiti, Aristide apparently still holds promise.'' On Saturday, several thousand Aristide supporters blanketed the streets of Port-au-Prince to commemorate the five-year anniversary of his ouster. As they chanted and waved signs demanding his return from exile in Pretoria, South Africa, 7,393 miles away, they also for the first time added a new request: the inclusion of Fanmi Lavalas in the April elections to fill 12 seats in the 30-member Senate. GLOBAL ATTENTION The credibility of the elections is of such importance that it is expected to top the agenda of several planned high-profile visits to Haiti in the coming weeks. Among those expected to visit: former President Bill Clinton, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and members of the U.N. Security Council. The fear, say Haiti observers, is that contested elections or those that erupt into violence could negatively affect storm-battered Haiti's efforts to maintain strong and increasing international support for reconstruction, development and governance. ''That is why it's important for this issue to be resolved in a way that most people in Haiti and most observers are comfortable there is going to be an inclusive election,'' said Mark Schneider of the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit that analyzes conflict in Haiti and elsewhere around the world. And as the international community pushes for the inclusion of Lavalas, in Haiti, the talk turns to Aristide. Some have seized on the exclusion explanation offered by the electoral council, known by the French acronym CEP, to demand Aristide's return -- so that he can formally sanction those seeking office under the Lavalas banner. ''It's clear there is more discussion now about Aristide because of the CEP's need to require Aristide to take some action to validate one or another set of candidates,'' said Schneider. ``Were the CEP to recognize the [Fanmi Lavalas] candidates it registered in December, or some other slate, immediately the issue of Aristide would diminish.'' So far, few here know what to make of the squabbling, including whether the elections, which is expected to cost $16 million, will be postponed. Some are hoping that the electoral council, which has yet to order the ballots or come up with a final budget, will reverse itself and allow Lavalas to participate. But then the question becomes: Which Lavalas? The party today is being led by at least two factions: One is led by Lavalas Senator Rudy H?riveaux and Aristide spokeswoman Dr. Maryse Narcisse of the Fanmi Lavalas Executive Committee. The other involves a 27-member coalition whose most high-profile supporter is former Aristide Prime Minister Yvon Neptune. Narcisse, who is reportedly in South Africa meeting with Aristide, has insisted that she has the right to nominate the 12 candidates she registered on behalf of Lavalas. She also points out she was the first to register her slate and the registration was recognized by the CEP in December. Neptune disagrees, and his group turned in its own list of candidates weeks later. A third faction, led by several Lavalas senators, also handed in a list of candidates. ''This is a very tricky situation,'' Neptune told The Miami Herald. ``On the one hand, the electoral council, and I would even say the government, hasn't been doing what they are supposed to do to accommodate Fanmi Lavalas. At the same time, Fanmi Lavalas has a lot of problems on its own.'' In a wide-ranging interview at his home overlooking the hills of Port- au-Prince, Neptune downplayed his role in the faction, saying he's there as a founding member to help reorganize the splintered party; dismissed the executive committee Aristide reportedly left in charge of Fanmi Lavalas as ''illegal;'' and questioned the motives of Narcisse and others. But Neptune's critics question his motives and loyalty, viewing him as a traitor to Aristide who helped Canada, France and the U.S. governments put in place an interim government in the wake of Aristide's Feb. 29, 2004, departure. ''I did not stay in office to please anybody or to be utilized by anybody,'' he said, dismissing claims that he was pressured to do the international community's bidding. ``I did what I believed was the proper thing to do so that indiscriminate killings would not happen because that was in the planning. Indiscriminate killings. Indiscriminate burnings.'' From fentona at shaw.ca Mon Mar 2 10:05:00 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 09:05:00 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Made in Israel Foreign Policy Puts Canadian Lives at Risk Message-ID: <41087B72-B3B3-44A9-80E2-BF8031BE9F7F@shaw.ca> http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/03/made-in-israel-foreign-policy-puts-canadian-lives-at-risk/ Made in Israel Foreign Policy Puts Canadian Lives at Risk by Bob Gordon / March 2nd, 2009 Speaking at an event sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal Federation of Greater Toronto to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel in May, 2008 Prime Minister Stephen Harper described Canada?s support for Israel as ?unshakable.? Earlier in the day Harper had told the Canadian Jewish Political Action Committee (CJPAC) that anti-Israeli sentiment was ?really just a thinly disguised veil for good old fashioned anti-Semitism.? In a statement issued less than a week later marking the same anniversary the PMO noted that, ?We count ourselves among Israel?s staunchest friends.? These pronouncements represent an accurate appraisal of the Tory government?s stance since its election in early 2006. With Canada?s recent decision to boycott, along with Israel, the planning for the Durban 2 anti-racism conference Canada has become Israel?s strongest supporter. Even the United Sates does not have the loyalty from Canada that Israel does. This new policy represents a significant departure from Canada?s historic Middle East policy of following a middle path. In the wake of the Suez crisis Lester Pearson, then Canada?s Minister of Foreign Affairs won a Nobel Peace Prize for brokering a ceasefire and organizing the first United Nations peacekeeping mission. Since then Canadian peacekeepers have served in the Sinai, Lebanon and the Golan Heights. Only two month?s after the election of Harper in January 2006 shifting policy winds made themselves apparent. In March 2006, Canada was the first state, other than Israel, to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority after Hamas won the election to the Palestinian legislature. That summer the Canadian government refused to sign a resolution that expressed sympathy for the Lebanese civilians caught up in the Israeli invasion of that country. Harper described the resolution as ?a case of political correctness gone mad.? Not surprisingly, this seismic shift in Canadian policy has become evident during the recent Israeli invasion of Gaza. On January 23, 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted on a statement that expressed concern about Gaza?s civilians as a result of ?the series of incessant and repeated Israeli military attacks and incursions.? Alone on the 47 member Council, Canada voted against the resolution. On February 4 the Honourable Lawrence Canon, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Honourable Bev Oda, Minister of International Cooperation issued a statement that blamed Gazans, and their democratically elected government for the invasion: ?Hamas precipitated the recent crisis by its rocket attacks on Israel.? The day before the frightening practical implications of this unconditional support for Israel were made shockingly clear. Eva Bartlett, a Canadian citizen currently in Gaza reported to the mission in Tel Aviv that she was ?being shot at by Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border fence.? Her blogpost of the incident continues, ?Jordie Elms, the Canadian attach? in the Tel Aviv office, informed us that ?Israel has declared the 1 km area along the border to be a ?closed military zone?? and added that humanitarian and aid workers need to ?know the risk of being in a closed area?. Meaning, apparently, that it is OK with Jordie that Israeli soldiers were firing on unarmed civilians.? Shocked by this statement I contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Middle East spokesperson Rodney Moore asked that I put my questions into writing. On February 9 I did so asking for comment on ?Canada?s position on the IDF declared ?no- go? zone extending 1 kilometre into Gaza? and ?allegations made by a Canadian international observer, Eva Bartlett? about contacting the mission while under IDF fire. Four days later Moore responded with a three-part, diplomatically worded non-answer: Canada welcomed the cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas. What is needed now is a permanent, sustainable and durable ceasefire, as called for in United Nations Security Council 1860, so that Israel and the Palestinian Authority can return to the peace process. The security situation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is very poor and unpredictable due to inter-factional violence and ongoing military operations. In its travel advisory to Canadians, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada advises Canadians against all travel to the region surrounding the Gaza Strip due to the risk of rocket and mortar launches, gunfire and of ongoing military activity. His response is remarkable for reasons other than its absolute irrelevance to the questions that were submitted. It twice states that risks to civilians and foreign nationals are a result of Palestinian actions??inter-factional violence? and ?rocket and mortar launches??as well as ?military operations? and ?military actions.? In the specific circumstances of the Bartlett incident this is categorically untrue. It also highlights the emasculation of DFAIT. Under Harper?s autocratic style, Ministries and their spokespersons have been reduced to parroting the party line as it is delivered from the PMO and issuing meaningless, generic statements to the media. In this case the message is that staunch support? of Israel extends to blaming Hamas and Israel equally for the recent fury in Gaza even to the extent that the safety and security of Canadian citizens be damned and disregarded. Bob Gordon writes from Guelph, Ontario. He can be reached at: bob34g at gmail.com . Read other articles by Bob. From mstainsby at resist.ca Mon Mar 2 12:10:22 2009 From: mstainsby at resist.ca (Macdonald Stainsby) Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 12:10:22 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Live feed from DC Power Shift protest Message-ID: <49AC2F1E.5050706@resist.ca> http://understory.ran.org/2009/03/02/watch-live-the-capitol-climate-action/ From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Mar 2 17:09:55 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 16:09:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Canada, allies will never defeat Taliban, PM says In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1442679048.2992621236038995302.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Globe and Mail ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ? March 2, 2009 THE AFGHAN MISSION Canada, allies will never defeat Taliban, PM says But Harper doesn't rule out sending more troops or extending the Canadian combat commitment beyond 2011 deadline PAUL KORING WASHINGTON -- Canadian and other foreign armies can't defeat the Taliban, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in an interview broadcast yesterday. "Frankly, we are not going to ever defeat the insurgency," Mr. Harper said, more than seven years after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban regime. Canadian troops have been fighting and dying in Afghanistan since 2002, but this is the first time the Prime Minister has explicitly said defeating the Islamic extremists can't be done. Mr. Harper, in an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, said that despite sending thousands of soldiers to Afghanistan and suffering more than 100 troop deaths, the "success has been modest" and any gains made could be lost. "We're not going to win this war just by staying," Mr. Harper said, and pointed to the long history of Afghan insurgencies successfully driving out foreign invaders - including the Soviet army in the 1980s and the British a century earlier. "[From] my reading of Afghanistan history, it's probably had an insurgency forever, of some kind," Mr. Harper said. But Mr. Harper didn't rule out sending more troops or extending the Canadian combat commitment beyond the current 2011 deadline. Despite unambiguous and repeated assertions - as recently as last week by Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon - that Canada won't extend its combat role in Afghanistan, Mr. Harper seemed to leave a little wiggle room yesterday. Asked if he would reject such a request from America's new president, Barack Obama, who has just ordered more than 17,000 additional U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan and has vowed to defeat the insurgency, Mr. Harper ducked the question, responding instead by saying: "If President Obama were to ask me that question, I would have a question back for him. And that question would be: 'What is your plan to leave Afghanistan to the Afghans.' " Mr. Harper said the paramount issue for Canadians was not "whether we stay or whether we go," but rather "are we being successful?" He suggested that after more than three years of deploying the biggest battle group Canada has sent overseas since the Korean War, "we have made gains. Those gains are not irreversible, so the success has been modest." Although Mr. Obama has made clear that he regards military success as only one dimension of eventual success in Afghanistan, he has never suggested defeating the insurgency can't be done. Rather, he has exhorted allies to do more militarily. "We must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan," Mr. Obama said during his major foreign-policy speech in Berlin during the election campaign. "The Afghan people need our troops and your troops, our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda." And just before his trip to Ottawa and the announcement he was sending 17,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, Mr. Obama said the war in "Afghanistan is still winnable," although he made clear that solving "the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism" cannot be accomplished "solely through military means." However, with a NATO summit next month and Mr. Obama keen to secure more military commitments from increasingly reluctant European allies, Mr. Harper's assessment that defeating the insurgency is impossible may reinforce the split in the alliance. Canada is one of the very few allies so far willing to send soldiers to southern Afghanistan, heartland of the Taliban where the insurgency has been growing. For Ottawa to be taking the position that foreign troops can't deliver victory may make Mr. Obama's task harder. Mr. Harper said he welcomed the President's decision to send U.S. troops to relieve the embattled Canadian contingent. "We're delighted to have them, especially in Kandahar," he said. But, he added, he wants to know Mr. Obama's strategy "for success and for an eventual departure." From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Mar 2 17:10:29 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 16:10:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Former Gitmo prosecutor slams detention camp In-Reply-To: <6E6BA0A464354765A828D4E042308DE5@twubby.com> Message-ID: <1926938591.2993051236039029218.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Globe and Mail ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? March 1, 2009 Former Gitmo prosecutor slams detention camp OMAR EL AKKAD Lieutenant-Colonel Darrel Vandeveld had been a prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay for one year when he went to seek advice from a priest. He wondered whether he should resign from a legal system he had come to believe was a sham, but he expected to hear he should stick with it and work within the system. The priest offered no such advice. Instead he told the lawyer: "Quit. Do not co-operate with evil." Last fall, Mr. Vandeveld did quit the controversial Guantanamo Bay military commissions system, becoming the latest member of the U.S. military to resign for ethical reasons. Last week, he spoke to The Globe and Mail about his transformation from a hardened prosecutor bent on revenge, to one of Guantanamo Bay's harshest critics ? a man who now believes that many of the Guantanamo detainees, including Canadian Omar Khadr, were grossly abused. "We've mistreated that poor fellow," Mr. Vandeveld said of Mr. Khadr, "regardless of what he's done." Once a Lieutenant-Colonel in the army reserve, Mr. Vandeveld, 47, now describes himself as having switched ranks to PFC ? not Private First Class, but "Private F'in Citizen, free to speak my mind." When Mr. Vandeveld arrived in Guantanamo in May, 2007, he had already worked as a prosecutor in postwar Iraq. Some of his friends in Iraq had been killed, others had committed suicide. "I wanted revenge ? and I was convinced this was the way to do it." But instead of an efficient system designed to deal with hardened terrorists, the lawyer said he found in Guantanamo a cluttered mess ? there was no uniform collection of evidence, and some key evidence was never disclosed to the parties that needed to see it. Mr. Vandeveld was assigned several cases to prosecute, including that of Mohammed Jawad. Mr. Jawad's case ? which bears many similarities to Mr. Khadr's ? would cement Mr. Vandeveld's decision to leave Guantanamo. At about 16 or 17, Mr. Jawad was a year or two older than Mr. Khadr when he was captured in Afghanistan. Like Mr. Khadr, Mr. Jawad is accused of throwing a grenade at U.S. soldiers. No soldiers were killed in the attack, but two suffered serious wounds. Believing that Mr. Jawad had essentially confessed to the attack shortly after his capture in late 2002, Mr. Vandeveld travelled to Kabul to interview the Afghan security officers who detained and questioned the suspect. The Afghans produced a written confession with Mr. Jawad's thumbprint at the bottom. The only problem was, the confession was in Dari ? Mr. Jawad speaks Pashto, and is functionally illiterate. In addition, witnesses to the attack had disappeared, as had much of the supporting evidence, he said. Eventually, a judge would rule that Mr. Jawad's confessions were the product of torture. Mr. Vandeveld also discovered that, after Mr. Jawad's transfer to U.S. authorities at the Bagram detention facilities in northern Afghanistan, he was subjected to several forms of abuse, including "linguistic separation" and the "frequent flier program," which involved moving detainees constantly from cell to cell for weeks at a time as a form of sleep deprivation. It emerged last year that Mr. Khadr had been subjected to the same program. "I couldn't bring myself to believe Americans could do this," he said. "This was just sadistic mistreatment of a kid." Mr. Vandeveld tried to work out a sentence for Mr. Jawad that would see him serve a few months, undergo rehabilitation and be returned to Pakistan. He said the response he received from his superiors was ridicule. Eventually, Mr. Vandeveld asked for a transfer out of Guantanamo, and later left his military position. The office of the Guantanamo Bay prosecution described his ethical qualms at the time of his resignation as baseless, and said he was instead simply angry that his case recommendation had been rejected. Mr. Vandeveld became one of about a half-dozen officials who have quit the controversial Guantanamo Bay legal system ? a list that includes his former boss, chief prosecutor Colonel Morris Davis. However, he admits today that he didn't leave quickly enough. "I felt like I was losing a part of myself ? but I lacked the courage," he said. "It took me too long to separate myself from this." From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Mar 2 17:09:18 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 16:09:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Harper philosophy collides with economic reality In-Reply-To: <3151079355F34B3DBC6E9BFB634329B5@twubby.com> Message-ID: <1930375284.2992301236038958073.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Globe and Mail ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? March 2, 2009 Harper philosophy collides with economic reality The PM who pushed for smaller government is presiding over a rapid expansion of its role as the economy worsens BRIAN LAGHI OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF The Harper Conservatives aren't accustomed to losing elections in Western Canada. But that's just what happened three months ago when Prairie farmers rejected one of the bedrock principles that helped build the conservative movement more than 20 years ago. Farmers sent a sobering message to Tories who want to end the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly on selling Canadian grain. Four of the five seats up for grabs on the 15-member board stayed with pro-monopoly candidates despite a vigorous effort by Tory backbench MPs. Tories speculate that farmers feared the elimination of the monopoly would harm their livelihood. "Oh yeah for sure," said Saskatchewan farmer Sam Magnus, a former Reform Party member and one of the losing candidates. "Farmers believe that government guarantees would protect them no matter how low the price of grain fell." The election is one of the starkest examples of how Stephen Harper's brand of laissez-faire conservatism is being swept aside by Canadians' increasing demands for protection from the faltering economy. After years of pushing for smaller government and market deregulation, Mr. Harper now presides over one of the most rapid government expansions in modern Canadian history. The Conservatives have extended welfare-state entitlements such as employment insurance, are spending money on training and funnelling cash into the auto sector. "New questions are emerging of what is the role of the state," said Joe Garcea, a political studies professor at the University of Saskatchewan. "We're basically at Stage 1." Prof. Garcea said farmers who may want to leave the security of the Wheat Board and sell their grain on their own may not be so enthusiastic in such risky times. "I think the arguments of those who feel the Wheat Board provides the kind of collective clout to be provide greater stability are going to find it easier to make their argument now than they did a few years ago," he said. A number of Tory MPs, including David Anderson, the parliamentary secretary for agriculture, used their considerable influence to persuade farmers to elect candidates sympathetic to their cause. Mr. Anderson and others wrote directly to farmers asking them to end the monopoly. But as the campaign wore on - and the economy got worse - Wheat Board supporters such as the National Farmers Union pointed out that getting rid of the monopoly would mean the end of guaranteed returns for farmers. "The Canadian Wheat Board was designed to minimize risk in exactly these kinds of circumstances," said a flyer mailed out by the union before the vote. "Because it has government-guaranteed payments and borrowings, farmers can count on getting paid by the CWB." University of Waterloo political scientist Peter Woolstencroft said the Tories will have a problem marrying their laissez-faire philosophy with the alarm Canadians currently feel. "The Conservatives have a big problem, it seems to me," said Prof. Woolstencroft, a long-time chronicler of the party. "They know that people are damn worried, and they're not going to be happy with 'Let's let things work themselves out.' " He warned, however, that, if the Tories intervene too much, they could lose what makes them different from the Liberals. "The differentiation, as I see it now, is, 'We will do a better job of handling the very difficult challenges that lie ahead. We're better at running things, we're better at balancing things. But we don't have an agenda or any restructuring of Canada in mind other than surviving.' " Tories themselves acknowledge they have included items in their recent budget that might not have been there before the economic crisis hit. The government has set aside cash, for example, to train aboriginals to cope with expected cuts in the oil patch. "What seemed obvious to us in October of last year has been thrown out the window three times since," said Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl. "What we're doing on many fronts is responding to that reality. We're all in a different world, and not just Conservatives, either." How do Conservatives respond? Former human resources minister Monte Solberg said there are ways the Tories can maintain their Conservative underpinnings while still spending money. He said the Tories should point out the country's successes in avoiding the worst of the financial meltdown thanks to Canada's prudent banking system and insistence on higher lending standards for homeowners. "But going forward, the big issues are ensuring that deficits don't become structural, that we aggressively pursue free trade, and that we prepare to come out of the recession in the best possible shape by building key infrastructure, continuing to lower taxes and tackling non-tariff barriers." From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Mar 2 17:11:16 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 16:11:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Israelis Clearly Oppose Two-State Solution In-Reply-To: <483F43CA28FA4D8F9277A99120248338@twubby.com> Message-ID: <804712681.2993431236039076271.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/32819/israelis_clearly_oppose_two_state_solution/ Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research ??????????????????? ???????????????? February 18, 2009 Israelis Clearly Oppose Two-State Solution (Angus Reid Global Monitor) - A majority of Israli adults oppose the formation of a Palestinian state neighbouring their own country, according to a poll by Maagar Mochot released by Channel 2. 51 per cent of respondents are against the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, while 32 per cent support it. The former British mandate of Palestine was instituted at the end of World War I, to oversee a territory in the Middle East that formerly belonged to the Ottoman Empire. After the end of World War II and the Nazi holocaust, the Zionist movement succeeded in establishing an internationally recognized homeland. In November 1947, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the formation of a Jewish state. In 1948, the British government withdrew from the mandate and the state of Israel was created in roughly 15,000 square kilometres of the mandate?s land, with the remaining areas split under the control of Egypt and Transjordan. Since then, the region has seen constant disagreement between Israel and the Palestinians, represented for decades by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Wars broke out in the region in the second half of the 20th Century, involving Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Around 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to leave their territory during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The "right of return"?under which Palestinians aim to re-occupy their homes in Israel?has always been a questionable point in peace negotiations. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war and their descendants still live in shantytown camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), next to Gaza cities and towns. During the six-day war in 1967, Israel gained control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is currently heading the Palestinian Authority from the West Bank, endorsed by Israel and most of the Western international community. Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas has become the de-facto leader in the Gaza Strip. On Feb. 10, Israel held a legislative election. The outcome was too close to call, with the ruling Kadima and the rightist Likud party garnering roughly the same amount of votes. Israeli president Shimon Peres will ask either Kadima leader Tzipi Livni or Likud leader and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form a government. Following the election, David Makovsky?director of the Washington Institute?s Project on the Middle East Peace Process?commented on the way a new government would deal with current situation, saying, "Livni deeply believes that a two-state solution is in Israel?s national interest based on the democratic threats of holding onto the West Bank. You don?t sense that with Bibi [Netanyahu]." Polling Data In light of the experience with disengagement, the Second Lebanon War and the war against Hamas in Gaza, do you support or oppose the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria? Support 32% Oppose 51% Neither 8% Not sure 9% Source: Maagar Mochot / Channel 2 Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,894 Israeli adults, conducted on Feb. 2 and Feb. 3, 2009. Margin of error is 4.5 per cent. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Mar 2 17:12:01 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 16:12:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Joel Kovel on his termination from Bard College For Criticism Of Zionism In-Reply-To: <0F29462FD55D4D71994EA21384ED5342@twubby.com> Message-ID: <1462287479.2993741236039121834.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> STATEMENT OF JOEL KOVEL REGARDING HIS TERMINATION BY BARD?COLLEGE Introduction In January, 1988, I was appointed to the Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies at Bard College. As this was a Presidential appointment outside the tenure system, I have served under a series of contracts. The last of these was half-time (one semester on, one off, with half salary and full benefits year-round), effective from July 1, 2004, to June 30, 2009. On February 7 I received a letter from Mich?le Dominy, Dean of the College, informing me that my contract would not be renewed this July 1 and that I would be moved to emeritus status as of that day. She wrote that this decision was made by President Botstein, Executive Vice-President Papadimitriou and herself, in consultation with members of the Faculty Senate. This document argues that this termination of service is prejudicial and motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations, but by political values,?principally stemming from differences between myself and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism. There is of course much more to my years at Bard than this, including another controversial subject, my work on ecosocialism ( The Enemy of Nature ). However, the evidence shows a pattern of conflict over Zionism only too reminiscent of innumerable instances in this country in which critics of Israel have been made to pay, often with their careers, for speaking out. In this instance the process culminated in?a deeply flawed evaluation process which was used to justify my termination from the faculty. A brief chronology ? 2002. This was the first year I spoke out nationally about Zionism. In October, my article, "Zionism's Bad Conscience," appeared in? Tikkun . Three or four weeks later, I was called into President Leon Botstein's office, to be told my Hiss Chair was being taken away. Botstein said that he had nothing to do with the decision, then gratuitously added that it had not been made because of what I had just published about Zionism, and hastened to tell me that his views were diametrically opposed to mine. ? 2003. In January I published a second article in Tikkun , "'Left-Anti-Semitism' and the Special Status of Israel," which argued for a One-State solution to the dilemmas posed by Zionism. A few weeks later, I received a phone call at home from Dean Dominy, who suggested, on behalf of Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou, that perhaps it was time for me to retire from Bard. I declined. The result of this was an evaluation of my work and the inception, in 2004, of the current half-time contract as "Distinguished Professor." ? 2006. I finished a draft of Overcoming Zionism . In January, while I was on a Fellowship in South Africa, President Botstein conducted a concert on campus of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, which he has directed since 2003. In a stunning departure from traditional concert practice, this began with the playing of the national anthems of the United States and Israel, after each of which the audience rose. Except for a handful of protestors, the event went unnoticed. I regarded it, however, as paradigmatic of the "special relationship" between the United States?and Israel, one that has conduced to war in Iraq and massive human rights violations in Israel/Palestine. In December, I organized a public lecture at Bard (with Mazin Qumsiyeh) to call attention to this problem. Only one faculty person attended; the rest were students and community people; and the issue was never taken up?on campus. ? 2007. Overcoming Zionism was now on the market, arguing for a One-State solution (and sharply criticizing, among?others, Martin Peretz for a scurrilous op-ed piece against Rachel?Corrie in the Los Angeles Times . Peretz is an official in AIPAC's foreign policy think-tank, and at the time a Bard Trustee?though this latter fact was not pointed out in the book). In August, Overcoming Zionism was attacked by a watchdog Zionist group, StandWithUs/Michigan, which succeeded in pressuring the book's United States?distributor, the University of Michigan Press, to remove it from?circulation. An extraordinary outpouring of support (650 letters to U?of M) succeeded in reversing this frank episode of book-burning. I?was disturbed, however, by the fact that, with the exception of two?non-tenure track faculty, there was no support from Bard in response?to this egregious violation of the speech rights of a professor. When?I asked President Botstein in an email why this was so, he replied that he felt I was doing quite well at taking care of myself. This?was irrelevant to the obligation of a college to protect its faculty?from violation of their rights of free expression?all the more so, a college such as Bard with a carefully honed reputation as a bastion of academic freedom, and which indeed defines such freedom in its Faculty Handbook as a "right . . . to search for truth and understanding without interference and to disseminate his [sic] findings without intimidation." ? 2008. Despite some reservations by the faculty, I was able to teach a course on Zionism. In my view, and that of most of the students, it was carried off successfully. Concurrently with this, another evaluation of my work at Bard was underway. Unlike previous evaluations, in 1996 and 2003, this was unenthusiastic. It was cited by Dean Dominy as instrumental in the decision to let me go. Irregularities in the Evaluation Process The evaluation committee included Professor Bruce Chilton, along with Professors Mark Lambert and Kyle Gann. Professor Chilton is a member of the Social Studies division, a distinguished theologian, and the campus' Protestant chaplain. He is also active in Zionist circles, as chair of the Episcopal?Jewish Relations Committee in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, and a member of the Executive Committee of Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East. In this capacity he campaigns vigorously against Protestant efforts to promote divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel. Professor Chilton is particularly antagonistic to the Palestinian liberation theology movement, Sabeel, and its leader, Rev. Naim Ateek, also an Episcopal. This places him on the other side of the divide from myself, who attended a Sabeel Conference in Birmingham, MI, in October, 2008, as an invited speaker, where I met Rev. Ateek, and expressed admiration for his position. It should also be observed that Professor Chilton was active this past January in supporting Israeli aggression in Gaza. He may be heard on a national radio program on WABC, "Religion on the Line," (January 11, 2009) arguing from the Doctrine of Just War and claiming that it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel for human rights violations?this despite the fact that large numbers of Jews have been in the forefront of protesting Israeli crimes in Gaza. Of course, Professor Chilton has the right to his opinion as an academic and a citizen. Nonetheless, the presence of such a voice on the committee whose conclusion was instrumental in the decision to remove me from the Bard faculty is highly dubious. Most definitely, Professor Chilton should have recused himself from this position. His failure to do so, combined with the fact that the decision as a whole was made in context of adversity between myself and the Bard administration, renders the process of my termination invalid as an instance of what the College's Faculty Handbook calls a procedure "designed to evaluate each faculty member fairly and in good faith." I still strove to make my future at Bard the subject of reasonable negotiation. However, my efforts in this direction were rudely denied by Dean Dominy's curt and dismissive letter (at the urging, according to her, of Vice-President Papadimitriou), which plainly asserted that there was nothing to talk over and that I was being handed a fait accompli . In view of this I considered myself left with no other option than the release of this document. On the responsibililty of intellectuals Bard has effectively crafted for itself an image as a bastion of progressive thought. Its efforts were crowned with being anointed in 2005 by the Princeton Review as the second-most progressive college in the United States, the journal adding that Bard "puts the 'liberal' in 'liberal arts.'" But "liberal" thought evidently has its limits; and my work against Zionism has encountered these. A fundamental principle of mine is that the educator must criticize the injustices of the world, whether or not this involves him or her in conflict with the powers that be. The systematic failure of the academy to do so plays no small role in the perpetuation of injustice and state violence. In no sphere of political action does this principle apply more vigorously than with the question of Zionism; and in no country is this issue more strategically important than in the United States, given the fact that United States support is necessary for Israel's behavior. The worse this behavior, the more strenuous must be the suppression of criticism. I take the view, then, that Israeli human rights abuses are deeply engrained in a culture of impunity granted chiefly, though not exclusively, in the United States?which culture arises from suppression of debate and open inquiry within those institutions, such as colleges, whose social role it is to enlighten the public. Therefore, if the world stands outraged at Israeli aggression in Gaza, it should also be outraged at institutions in the United States that grant Israel impunity. In my view, Bard College is one such institution. It has suppressed critical engagement with Israel and Zionism, and therefore has enabled abuses such as have occurred and are occurring in Gaza. This notion is of course, not just descriptive of a place like Bard. It is also the context within which the critic of such a place and the Zionist ideology it enables becomes marginalized, and then removed. For further information: www.codz.org ; Joel Kovel, "Overcoming Impunity," The Link Jan-March 2009 ( www.ameu.org ). To write the Bard administration: President Leon Botstein president at bard.edu Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou dpapadimitrou at bard.edu From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Mar 2 19:53:34 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:53:34 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] What Next? Message-ID: <49AC9BAE.5060603@ashisuto.co.jp> Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (2005) www.kunstler.com (March 02 2009) Isn't that a question, though ... The Peak Oil story was never about running out of oil. It was about the collapse of complex systems in a world economy faced by the prospect of no further oil-fueled growth. It was something of a shock to many that the first complex system to fail would be banking, but the process is obvious: no more growth means no more ability to pay interest on credit ... end of story, as Tony Soprano used to say. There was a popular theory among Peak Oilers the last decade that the world would enter a "bumpy plateau" period when the global economy would get beaten down by peak oil, would then revive as "demand destruction" drove down oil prices, and would be beaten down again as oil prices shot up in response - with serial repetitions of the cycle, each beat-down taking economies lower - the only imaginable outcome being some sort of quiet homeostasis. This scenario did not play out as expected. It was predicated on a mistaken assumption that all systems would retain some kind of operational resilience while ratcheting down. Anyway, the banking system was mortally wounded in the first go-round and the behemoth is dying hard. The last desperate act of the banking system in the face of Peak Oil's no-more-growth equation was to engineer species of tradable securities that could produce wealth out of thin air rather than productive activity. This was the alphabet soup of algorithm-derived frauds with vague and confounding names such as credit default swaps (CDSs), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), structured investment vehicles (SIVs), and, of course, the basic filler, mortgage backed securities. The banking system is now choking to death on these delicacies. The trouble is that the EMT squad brought in to rescue the banking system - that is, governments - can't remove these obstructions from the patient's craw. They don't want to drown in a mighty upchuck of the alphabet soup. The collapse of complex systems is actually predicated on the idea that the systems would mutually reinforce each other's failures. This is now plain to see as the collapse of banking (that is, of both lending and debt service), has led to the collapse of commerce and manufacturing. The next systems to go will probably be farming, transportation, and the oil markets themselves (which constitute the system for allocating and distributing world energy resources). As these things seize up, the final system to go will be governance, at least at the highest levels. If we're really lucky, human affairs will eventually reorganize at a lower scale of activity, governance, civility, and economy. Every week, the failure to recognize the nature of our predicament thrusts us further into the uncharted territory of hardship. The task of government right now is not to prop up doomed systems at their current scales of failure, but to prepare the public to rebuild our systems at smaller scales. The net effect of the failures in banking is that a lot of people have less money than they expected they would have a year ago. This is bad enough, given our habits and practices of modern life. But what happens when farming collapses? The prospect for that is closer than most of us might realize. The way we produce our food has been organized at a scale that has ruinous consequences, not least its addiction to capital. Now that banking is in collapse, capital will be extremely scarce. Nobody in the cities reads farm news, or listens to farm reports on the radio. Guess what, though: we are entering the planting season. It will be interesting to learn how many farmers "out there" in the Cheez Doodle belt are not able to secure loans for this year's crop. My guess is that the disorder in agriculture will be pretty severe this year, especially since some of the world's most productive places - California, northern China, Argentina, the Australian grain belt - are caught in extremes of drought on top of capital shortages. If the US government is going to try to make remedial policy for anything, it better start with agriculture, to promote local, smaller-scaled farming using methods that are much less dependent on oil byproducts and capital injections. This will, of course, require a re-allocation of lands suitable for growing food. Our real estate market mechanisms could conceivably enable this to happen, but not without a coherent consensus that it is imperative to do so. If agri-business as currently practiced doesn't founder on capital shortages, it will surely collapse on disruptions in the oil markets. President Obama at least made a start in the right direction by proposing to eliminate further subsidies to farmers above the $250,000 level. But the situation is really more acute. Surely the US Department of Agriculture already knows about it, but the public may not be interested until the shelves in the Piggly-Wiggly are bare - and then, of course, they'll go apeshit. The recent huge drop in oil prices has left the public once again convinced that the world is drowning in oil - if only the scoundrelly oil companies were forced to deliver it at reasonable prices. The public has been consistently deluded about this for decades. What's missing so far is for the president of the US to lay out the reality of the situation in a dedicated TV address. I know a lot of you think that Jimmy Carter already tried this and failed to make an impression (and ruined his presidency in the process). I guarantee you that Mr Obama will have to do this sometime in the next few years whether he likes or not, and he'd be well-advised to get it done sooner rather than later. And by this I don't mean just vague allusions to "energy independence" or "renewables" in speeches devoted to many other issues. I mean telling the public the plain truth that we'll never offset oil depletion and the intelligent response is to do everything possible to transition to walkable towns and public transit, not to sustain the unsustainable. The alternatives - that is, what we're trying now - is to further delude ourselves into thinking that we can run WalMart and the suburbs by some other means than oil. Despite all our investments in these things, we won't be able to run them by other means, and the news about this had better get out before enormous disappointment turns into titanic rage. If Americans think they've been grifted by Goldman Sachs and Bernie Madoff, wait until they find out what a swindle the so-called "American Dream" of suburban life turns out to be. On this blizzardy Monday in the power centers of America, attention is fixed on the never-ending fiasco of AIG - a company whose main product turned out to be credit default swaps, and is now choking on them. Kibitzers on the sidelines of finance are forecasting a king-hell bear market suckers' rally in the stock markets followed by a belly flop to Dow 4000 or lower. I myself called for Dow 4000 two years ago - and was obviously a bit off on my timing. All this is surely trouble enough. But while your attention is focused on Rick Santelli in the Chicago trader's pit, or Larry Kudlow desperately seeking "mustard seeds" of new growth in financials, try to let one eye stray to the horizon where these other complex systems are working out their next moves. Farming. The oil markets. These are the coming theaters of alarm and distress. _____ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2009/03/what-next.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 srobin21 at comcast.net Mon Mar 2 23:26:22 2009 From: srobin21 at comcast.net (Steven L. Robinson) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 22:26:22 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Israel: Power of BDS Movement starting to be felt Message-ID: <05cc01c99bc8$f8fca080$54f2fea9@noir> Israelis Are Beginning to See the Power of BDS by Shir Hever Alternative Information Center (AIC) Sunday, 01 March 2009 In recent years, there has been a gradual growth in the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement, calling to put economic pressure on Israel until it recognizes the rights of the occupied Palestinian people and puts an end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, starting on 27 December 2008, which lasted for nearly a month, has given this movement a powerful reason to redouble its efforts. Dozens of BDS campaigns have gained momentum and publicity; dozens of new ones were launched during or immediately after Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip. These campaigns range from calls to boycott goods from the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, to calls to stop all economic contacts with Israel altogether. They include protests at sporting events, two countries cutting diplomatic ties with Israel (Bolivia and Venezuela), and many demonstrations around the world, attended by hundreds of thousands of protestors. The growing protest against the atrocities committed by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip have begun to change something in the Israeli political discourse, and the first indication of this can already be seen in the Israeli economic media. Although the Israeli economic media doesn't concern itself with the moral dimension of the attacks on Gaza, the economic dimension of recent events have created a rising level of concern. In order to demonstrate this trend, here are summaries of four articles that appeared in the Israeli The Marker magazine for economic news: 1. On 2 February, Guy Grimland warned about a growing phenomenon of boycott of Israeli high-tech companies, and several Israeli companies received letters from European and U.S. companies explaining that they cannot invest in Israel for moral reasons. 2. In 3 February, Nehemia Strassler, one of Israel's most famous economic correspondents, attacked the Israeli Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor, Eli Yishai, for calling on the Israeli military to "destroy one hundred homes in Gaza for every rocket that falls in Israel." Strassler had nothing to say about the Palestinians living in these homes or about the loss of life, but he warned: "[the minister] doesn't even understand how the operation in Gaza hurts the economy. The horror sights on television and the words of politicians in Europe and Turkey change the behavior of consumers, businessmen and potential investors. Many European consumers boycott Israeli products in practice. Intellectuals call for an economic war against us and to enforce an official and full consumer boycott. Calls are heard in board meetings of economic corporations to boycott trade relations with Israel. So far deals were cancelled with Turkey, the UK, Egypt and the Gulf States, and visits by economic delegations were cancelled. It's much easier now to switch providers while abandoning Israeli providers. Many company boards are required to take wide considerations into account with regards to the good of society and the environment, and they put political considerations in that slot as well. Of course there is an economic cost to severing diplomatic ties. Qatar cut its trade relations with Israel, Venezuela and Bolivia cut diplomatic relations. Mauritania recalled its ambassador and the relations with Turkey worsened considerably-and this bad ambience seeps into the business sector decisions. Here, just yesterday Dudi Ovshitz, who grows peppers for export, said that 'there is a concealed boycott of Israeli products in Europe.'" 3. On 6 February, Shuki Sadeh wrote about even more companies that have decided to boycott relations with Israel. A Turkish company demanded that Israeli companies sign a document condemning the Israeli massacre in Gaza before they can offer their services for it. Sadeh quoted Naomi Klein's recent call for boycott, the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for boycott and Israeli organizations that support the boycott and provide information for the global BDS movement. Sadeh's article also had concerned quotes by Israeli businessmen who demanded government intervention to protect them from the growing boycott. 4. In 11 February, Ora Koren reported that the Israeli business sectors feel the effects of the attack on Gaza. She reported that Israeli businessmen in Turkey are hiding their names so that the local BDS organizations won't learn about their activities, and that the situation is even worse in the UK. These four articles are a sign that there is a shift in the effectiveness of the BDS movement against Israel, and that if the momentum is maintained and strengthened, Israeli businessmen may decide to move their headquarters away from Israel, or to begin to put pressure on the Israeli government to begin respecting international law, and ending the occupation. http://www.alternativenews.org/content/view/1605/381/ This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm From fentona at shaw.ca Mon Mar 2 23:34:06 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 22:34:06 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Serbian spy's trial lifts cloak on his CIA alliance Message-ID: <1191805D-C584-44AC-BC8E-36E9E5AB0327@shaw.ca> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-serbia-spy-cia1-2009mar01,0,5662696.story From the Los Angeles Times Serbian spy's trial lifts cloak on his CIA alliance As Milosevic's intelligence chief, Jovica Stanisic is accused of setting up genocidal death squads. But as a valuable source for the CIA, an agency veteran says, he also 'did a whole lot of good.' By Greg Miller March 1, 2009 Reporting from Belgrade, Serbia ? At night, when the lawns are empty and the lamps along the walking paths are the only source of light, Topcider Park on the outskirts of Belgrade is a perfect meeting place for spies. It was here in 1992, as the former Yugoslavia was erupting in ethnic violence, that a wary CIA agent made his way toward the park's gazebo and shook hands with a Serbian intelligence officer. Jovica Stanisic had a cold gaze and a sinister reputation. He was the intelligence chief for Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, and regarded by many as the brains of a regime that gave the world a chilling new term: "ethnic cleansing." But the CIA officer, William Lofgren, needed help. The agency was all but blind after Yugoslavia shattered into civil war. Fighting had broken out in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Milosevic was seen as a menace to European security, and the CIA was desperate to get intelligence from inside the turmoil. So on that midnight stroll, the two spies carved out a clandestine relationship that remained undisclosed: For eight years, Stanisic was the CIA's main man in Belgrade. During secret meetings in boats and safe houses along the Sava River, he shared details on the inner workings of the Milosevic regime. He provided information on the locations of NATO hostages, aided CIA operatives in their search for grave sites and helped the agency set up a network of secret bases in Bosnia. At the same time, Stanisic was setting up death squads for Milosevic that carried out a genocidal campaign, according to prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which was established by the U.N. Security Council in 1993 to try those responsible for serious human rights violations in the Balkan wars. Now facing a trial at The Hague that could send him to prison for life, Stanisic has called in a marker with his American allies. In an exceedingly rare move, the CIA has submitted a classified document to the court that lists Stanisic's contributions and attests to his helpful role. The document remains sealed, but its contents were described by sources to The Times. The CIA's Lofgren, now retired, said the agency drafted the document to show "that this allegedly evil person did a whole lot of good." Lofgren, however, doesn't claim to disprove the allegations against Stanisic. "But setting the indictment aside," he said, "there are things this man did that helped bring hostilities to an end and establish peace in Bosnia." Through his attorney, Stanisic, 58, declined to comment, citing the tribunal's ban on communications with the media. But Stanisic has pleaded not guilty, and denies any role in creating the squads or even being aware of the crimes they committed. The CIA's effort puts it in the unusual position of serving as something of a character witness for a war crimes defendant. The agency declined to comment on the document. Because its contents are classified, the letter could be considered by the court only in closed session. Court officials said it was unclear whether the document would be of significant use to the Stanisic defense, or would come into play mainly in seeking a more lenient sentence if he is convicted. Prosecution dubious of Stanisic claims This account is based on dozens of interviews with current and former officials of U.S. and Serbian intelligence agencies, as well as documents obtained or viewed by The Times. Among them are official records of the Serbian intelligence service, and a seven-page account of that bloody period that Stanisic wrote while in prison in The Hague. In that memo, Stanisic portrays himself as someone who sought to moderate Milosevic, and who worked extensively with the CIA to contain the crisis. "I institutionalized cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community in spite of the notoriously bad relations between our two countries," Stanisic writes. That collaboration, he continues, "contributed significantly to the de-escalation of the conflict." The chief prosecutor, Dermot Groome, says that Stanisic's actions to help the CIA and counter Milosevic only underscore the power he had. In his opening argument, Groome said that the "ability to save lives is tragically the very same authority and the very same ability that [Stanisic] used . . . to take lives." Belgrade still bears the scars of war. Bombed-out buildings are scattered across the Serbian capital, including a charred concrete structure on Knez Milos Street that used to be the headquarters for Serbia's State Security Service. Stanisic used to occupy the corner office on the top floor. In his prime, he was in charge of 2,000 employees. He wore dark suits and sunglasses, a Balkan James Bond. His nickname was "Ledeni," Serbian for "icy." Stanisic joined the Yugoslav service in 1975, when the country was still under the communist rule of Josip Broz Tito. He was never regarded as an ideologue or rabid nationalist. But he had a rare aptitude for espionage. "Stanisic was not an ordinary intelligence officer," said Dobrica Cosic, a writer and former dissident who was president of Serbia in 1992 and 1993. "He is an intellectual, not a radical policeman. He was educated and skilled, and he knew how to organize that service." Because of those skills, Milosevic made Stanisic his top spy, despite long-standing distrust between the two. Milosevic had come to power by exploiting Serbian nationalistic fervor and religious animosity. He cast himself as the Serbs' protector, a posture that resonated powerfully with people who still mark the day their ancestors were defeated by Ottoman Turks, who were mostly Muslim, in the 14th century. In 1991, as ethnic violence escalated, Milosevic ordered the creation of secret paramilitary units, with names like Red Berets and Scorpions, that would roam the Balkans. They wore unmarked uniforms, were led by thugs and committed some of the worst atrocities of the war. As the trial got underway last year, Groome showed photos of Stanisic posing with members of the special units. He played audio of intercepted communications in which Stanisic appears to refer to the units as his "boys." At one point, Groome introduced a videotape showing images of Muslim men and boys -- their hands bound with wire -- being led into the woods and shot, one by one, by members of the Scorpions. "Jovica Stanisic established these units," said Groome, an American lawyer. And Stanisic made sure "they had everything that they needed, including a license to clear the land of unwanted people, a license to commit murder." CIA saw no evidence of war crimes Former members of the State Security Service dispute those allegations. "We were doing our jobs, according to the law," said Vlado Dragicevic, who served for years as Stanisic's deputy. "We never committed acts of genocide. On the contrary, we were trying to stop that." CIA officers who served in the region said that they had assumed Stanisic was no choirboy, but they never saw evidence that he was involved in war crimes. Instead, they viewed him as a key ally in a situation spinning rapidly out of control. From early on, Stanisic was eager to cement his relationship with the CIA. At one of his meetings with Lofgren, he turned over a sheaf of documents, including diagrams of bomb shelters and other structures that Serbian companies had built in Iraq for Saddam Hussein. But Stanisic also drew boundaries. He never took payment from the CIA, worked with the agency on operations or took steps that he would have considered a blatant betrayal of his boss. Over time, Stanisic sought to move his relationship with the agency out of the shadows. Well after his secret meetings had started, Stanisic persuaded Milosevic to let him open contacts with the CIA as a back channel to the West. The midnight meetings in the park gave way to daylight sessions in Stanisic's office. The two spies shared a dark sense of humor. Lofgren liked to wander over to the window, aim his phone at the sky and joke that he was getting GPS coordinates for a missile strike. In the letter to The Hague, submitted in 2004, the CIA describes Stanisic's efforts to defuse some of the most explosive events of the Bosnian war. In spring 1993, at CIA prodding, Stanisic pressured Ratko Mladic, military commander of the breakaway Serb republic in Bosnia, to briefly stop the shelling of Sarajevo. Two years later, Stanisic helped secure the release of 388 North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops who had been taken hostage, stripped of their uniforms and strapped to trees as human shields against NATO bombing runs. In his own written account, Stanisic said he negotiated the release "with the support of agency leadership." That same year, Stanisic tried to intervene when French pilots were shot down and taken captive. Mladic "refused to admit that he was holding the pilots," Stanisic wrote. But "my service managed to discover the circumstances and location of their captivity," and shared the information with the CIA and French authorities. By then, the Clinton administration was engaged in an all-out diplomatic push to end the war. Stanisic accompanied Milosevic to Dayton, Ohio, for peace talks, then returned to Serbia to carry out key pieces of the accord. It was left to Stanisic to get the president of Bosnia's Serb republic, Radovan Karadzic, to sign a document pledging to leave office. And Stanisic helped the CIA establish a network of bases in Bosnia to monitor the cease-fire. Doug Smith, the CIA's station chief in Bosnia, recalled meeting with Stanisic and a group of disgusted Bosnian Serb officials in Belgrade. As Stanisic instructed them to cooperate with the CIA, Smith said, the assembled guests "shifted uneasily in their seats." Smith began meeting with Stanisic regularly, including once on a boat on the Sava. In typically dramatic fashion, Stanisic arrived late at the docks. "He emerged out of the darkness with bodyguards" and spent much of the evening talking about his boss, Smith said. "He intensely disliked Milosevic. He went off on how awful Milosevic was -- dishonest and crooked." Asked whether Stanisic was capable of committing war crimes, Smith replied, "I think he would do as little bad as he could." At the time, CIA Director John M. Deutch was trying to clean up the agency's image by cracking down on contacts with human rights violators. Years later, the "Deutch rules" were cited as a reason the agency hadn't done better penetrating groups such as Al Qaeda. But Deutch had no problems with Stanisic. He invited the Serbian to CIA headquarters in 1996, and an itinerary of the visit indicates that Stanisic got a warm welcome. The Serbian spy chief was taken to hear jazz at the Blues Alley club in Georgetown, Va., and driven to Maryland's eastern shore for a bird hunt. Deutch even presented Stanisic with a 1937 Parker shotgun, a classic weapon admired by collectors. Deutch, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, declined to comment. Stanisic's expanding ties to the CIA became a source of friction with Milosevic, who worried that his top spy was plotting against him. In 1998, Stanisic was fired. The ensuing years were chaotic. After a new campaign of violence against Kosovo, Milosevic was forced from office in 2000, arrested the next year and taken to The Hague, where he went on trial for war crimes and died of a heart attack in 2006. A series of political assassinations occurred amid suspicion that Stanisic was somehow still pulling the strings. When Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic -- who had sent Milosevic to The Hague -- was assassinated in 2003, Stanisic was arrested and detained for three months. Then, without explanation, he too was sent to The Hague. For the last five years, Stanisic has gone back and forth between Belgrade and the detention center in the Netherlands. His trial was postponed last year to allow him to return to Belgrade for treatment of an acute intestinal disorder that according to court records had caused substantial blood loss. If Stanisic's health stabilizes, his trial is expected to resume this year. Stanisic is still seen in Belgrade from time to time, occasionally greeted by well-wishers. But much of his life has crumbled. He is divorced from his wife, estranged from his children and spends alternating weeks in the hospital. "The last time I saw him, he was connected to tubes," said Dragicevic, Stanisic's longtime deputy. Sometimes Stanisic is in good spirits and talks of prevailing in his case. But most of the time, Dragicevic said, "he looks like a person who has already surrendered." "The person who was in charge of so many things, the person who was so very important and well-known, is now a very lonely one." greg.miller at latimes.com From fentona at shaw.ca Mon Mar 2 23:44:34 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 22:44:34 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Canada will Represent Israel in Venezuela: Minister Message-ID: <734C47FF-02B9-493F-8FAE-58A32A5208F9@shaw.ca> March 3, 2009 http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/2526 Canada will Represent Israel in Venezuela: Minister Canada extends diplomatic representation from Cuba to Venezuela by Anthony Fenton The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca VANCOUVER?During a recent trip to the Americas, Canadian Minister of State for Latin America, Peter Kent, confirmed that Canada will represent Israel's diplomatic interests in Venezuela. Following Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip in January, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez expelled Israeli diplomats from the country. Chavez called the assault a Palestinian "holocaust." "The President of Israel at this moment should be taken to the International Criminal Court together with the President of the United States," said Chavez in a statement on January 6. On January 14, as the air and ground invasion into Gaza continued, Venezuela cut all diplomatic ties with Israel. President Chavez was hailed as a hero in the Arab world for standing up to Israel. Similar diplomatic moves were subsequently made by Bolivia and Ecuador. Israel waited almost two weeks before responding. On January 28, Israel expelled Venezuela's diplomats. "We're proud that the State of Israel that exists today, led by these criminals, made this decision," said Venezuela's Foreign Minister, Nicolas Maduro. On the same day that Israel barred Venezuela's diplomatic corps, the Jerusalem Post reported that "Israel's interests in Caracas will now be represented by the Canadian Embassy." A Canadian official has since confirmed that Canadian diplomats will represent Israel at the Israeli Embassy in the upscale Altamira district of Caracas. "Canada has agreed to represent Israel's interests in Venezuela," wrote Kent in an email response to The Dominion during his trip to the Caribbean on February 17. Kent also added that Canada is "currently doing this for Israel in Cuba." Kent did not respond to a follow-up query seeking clarification on when Canada began representing Israel's interests in Cuba. Canada was the only member of United Nations Human Rights Council to vote against a January 12 resolution condemning Israel for its invasion of Gaza. The resolution, put forward by the Cuban government, called on Israel to "bring an end to the collective punishment of the Palestinian people and to the excessive use of force." Anthony Fenton is a researcher and writer who lives near Vancouver. From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Tue Mar 3 06:31:05 2009 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 05:31:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Winter 09 issue, Green Pages is available / online reading In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <792975.90497.qm@web111506.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> james m and YouthAIDS help Stop Global AIDS with replyforall and funds from our sponsors. Join the mission at replyforall ? Back to GP.org The Winter 2009 issue of Green Pages is now available for on-line reading. Our first electronic-only edition contains many improvements, including the use of video, color photos, one article available in English and Spanish. We're now located directly on the gp.org server and feature a newly designed masthead. Unlike the previous print editions, you'll be able to post comments directly into the blog. This issue includes a feature article by Wendy Thompson, a long time Green and former UAW local president about a recent caravan of labor activists who drove from Detroit to DC to bring their message to a national audience. In Elections you'll find two important articles detailing the paths that state parties in Arkansas and Illinois have followed for growing the party. The Opinion Section contains an article, in english and spanish, about statehood for Puerto Rico. Finally, this issue brings what we hope will be the first of many articles by Young Greens. The 4 page PDF is being finalized and will be uploaded over the weekend. Read, Comment, Circulate. The Green Pages Editorial Staff Winter 2009 Table of Contents http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/ Features Giving Bush the Boot! http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=1006 When natural gas drilling comes to your town http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=1003 The Fight for Self-Government in Topsham http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=1000 McKinney speaks out for Gaza at massive rally http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=996 Auto caravan voices grievances of union autoworkers http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=992 In memory of a prominent man in political history http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=988 Spotlight on a founding member http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=984 Elections Highlights from all U.S. Green Fall 2008 election results http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=977 Malik Rahim http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=972 Vigorous Green growth in Arkansas http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=969 Green Party of Arkansas Election Highlights http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=963 Lessons from the success of the Illinois Green Party http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=955 Highlights of Illinois Green Party November 2008 election http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=953 Greens in Maine make strides on Election Day http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=947 Five mystery candidates in Florida - Part II http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=939 Pennsylvania Ballot Access Coalition http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=932 World Greens win highest percentage ever in a German state election http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=894 In memory of Arne Naess, founder of Deep Ecology http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=877 Green Party of Canada reaches new heights in 2008 Federal Election http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=908 Presentations on U.S. elections to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=917 Opinion Main Street Must Become Green Street Too! http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=868 Divestment in Israel campaign http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=850 Statehood a viable idea for Puerto Rico? http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=828 Es la estadidad viable para Puerto Rico? http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=823 Now that he's won . . . http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=820 Letter to the Editor http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=815 "I feel like I speak from a very "Green" perspective for lack of another way to put it. This is why I feel on good grounds to offer a little criticism and concern on my part for the U.S. Green Party." Young Greens A voice left out Reflections on an Obama election http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=924 State Reports http://gp.org/greenpages-blog/?p=1011 ------------------- If you're a Facebook user, take a minute to join the Green Pages Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=39478521558 ?Email: office at gp.org Office: PO Box 57065 Washington, D.C. 20037 202-319-7191 or toll-free (US): 866-41GREEN From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Mar 3 07:45:44 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2009 23:45:44 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] America's Fiscal Collapse Message-ID: <49AD4298.7000705@ashisuto.co.jp> by Michel Chossudovsky Global Research (March 02 2009) "We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger". -- President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address (February 24 2009) "Those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government". -- President Barack Obama, A New Era of Responsibility, the 2010 Budget "Strong economic medicine" with a "human face" "Promise amid peril". The stated priorities of the Obama economic package are health, education, renewable energy, investment in infrastructure and transportation. "Quality education" is at the forefront. Obama has also promised to "make health care more affordable and accessible", for every American. At first sight, the budget proposal has all the appearances of an expansionary program, a demand oriented "Second New Deal" geared towards creating employment, rebuilding shattered social programs and reviving the real economy. Obama's promise is based on a mammoth austerity program. The entire fiscal structure is shattered, turned upside down. To reach these stated objectives, a significant hike in public spending on social programs (health, education, housing, social security) would be required as well as the implementation of a large scale public investment program. Major shifts in the composition of public expenditure would also be required: that is, a move out of a war economy, requiring a movement out of military related spending in favour of civilian programs. In actuality, what we are dealing with is the most drastic curtailment in public spending in American history, leading to social havoc and the potential impoverishment of millions of people. The Obama promise largely serves the interests of Wall Street, the defence contractors and the oil conglomerates. In turn, the Bush-Obama bank "bailouts" are leading America into a spiralling public debt crisis. The economic and social dislocations are potentially devastating. Obama's budget submitted to Congress on February 26 2009 envisages outlays for the 2010 fiscal year (commencing October 1st 2009) of $3.94 trillion, an increase of 32 percent. Total government revenues for the 2010 fiscal year, according to preliminary estimates by the Bureau of Budget, are of the order of $2.38 trillion. The predicted budget deficit (according to the president's speech) is of the order of $1.75 trillion, almost twelve percent of the US Gross Domestic Product. War and Wall Street This is a "War Budget". The austerity measures hit all major federal spending programs with the exception of: (1) Defence and the Middle East War, (2) the Wall Street bank bailout, (3) Interest payments on a staggering public debt. The budget diverts tax revenues into financing the war. It legitimizes the fraudulent transfers of tax dollars to the financial elites under the "bank bailouts". The pattern of deficit spending is not expansionary. We are not dealing with a Keynesian style deficit, which stimulates investment and consumer demand, leading to an expansion of production and employment. The "bank bailouts" (involving several initiatives financed by tax dollars) constitute a component of government expenditure. Both the Bush and Obama bank bailouts are hand outs to major financial institutions. They do not not constitute a positive spending injection into the real economy. Quite the opposite. The bailouts contribute to financing the restructuring of the banking system leading to a massive concentration of wealth and centralization of banking power. A large part of the bailout money granted by the US government will be transferred electronically to various affiliated accounts including the hedge funds. The largest banks in the US will also use this windfall cash to buy out their weaker competitors, thereby consolidating their position. The tendency, therefore, is towards a new wave of corporate buyouts, mergers and acquisitions in the financial services industry. In turn, the financial elites will use these large amounts of liquid assets (paper wealth), together with the hundreds of billions acquired through speculative trade, to buy out real economy corporations (airlines, the automobile industry, Telecoms, media, et cetera ), whose quoted value on the stock markets has tumbled. In essence, a budget deficit (combined with massive cuts in social programs) is required to fund the handouts to the banks as well as finance defence spending and the military surge in the Middle East war. Obama's budget envisages: 1. Defense spending of $534 billion for 2010, a supplemental 130 billion dollar appropriation for fiscal 2010 for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a supplemental $75.5 billion emergency war funding for the rest of the 2009 fiscal year. Defence spending and the Middle East war, with various supplemental budgets, is (officially) of the order of 739.5 billion. Some estimates place aggregate defence and military related spending at $1 trillion+. 2. A bank bailout of the order of $750 billion announced by Obama, which is added on to the 700 billion dollar bailout money already allocated by the outgoing Bush administration under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). The total of both programs is a staggering 1.45 trillion dollars to be financed by the Treasury. It should be understood that the actual amount of cash financial "aid" to the banks is significantly larger than $1.45 trillion. {1} 3. Net Interest on the outstanding public debt is estimated by the Bureau of the Budget at $164 billion in 2010. The order of magnitude of these allocations is staggering. Under a "balanced budget" criterion - which has been a priority of government economic policy since the Reagan era - almost all the revenues of the federal government amounting to $2.38 trillion would be used to finance the bank bailout (1.45 trillion), the war ($739 billion) and interest payments on the public debt ($164 billion). In other words, no money would be left over for other categories of public expenditure. The Budget Deficit These three categories of expenditure (Defence, Bank Bailout and Interest on the Public Debt) would virtually swallow up the entire 2010 federal government revenue of 2381 billion dollars Moreover, as a basis of comparison, all the revenue accruing from individual federal income taxes ($1.061 trillion in Fiscal Year 2010), namely all the money households across America pay in the form of federal taxes, will not suffice to finance the handouts to the banks, which officially are of the order of 1.45 trillion. This amount includes the $700 billion (granted during Fiscal Year 2009) under the TARP program plus the proposed $750 billion granted by the Obama administration. While TARP and Obama's proposed bailout are to be disbursed over Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010, they nonetheless represent almost half of total government expenditure (half of Obama's $3.94 trillion budget for fiscal 2010), which is financed by regular sources of revenue ($2381 billion) plus a staggering $1.75 trillion budget deficit, which ultimately requires the issuing of Treasury Bills and government bonds. The feasibility of a large short-term expansion of the public debt at a time of crisis is yet another matter, particularly with interest rates at abysmally low levels. The budget deficit is of the order of 1.75 trillion. Obama acknowledges a 1.3 trillion-dollar budget deficit, inherited from the Bush administration. In actuality, the budget deficit is much larger. The official figures tend to underestimate the seriousness of the budgetary predicament. The $1.75 trillion dollar budget deficit figure is questionable because the various amounts disbursed under TARP and other related bank bailouts including Obama's announced $750 billion aid program to financial institutions are not acknowledged in the government's expenditure accounts. "The aid hasn?t been requested formally, but appears in a line item 'for potential additional financial stabilization efforts', according to the budget overview. The budget office calculated a $250 billion net cost to taxpayers this year, because it anticipates it would eventually recoup some, though not all, of the money expended to help financial companies. "The funds would come on top of the $700 billion rescue package approved last October by Congress. The White House budgets no money for fiscal 2010 and beyond for such aid." (Bloomberg, February 27 2010) Fiscal Collapse A major crisis of the federal fiscal structure is occurring. The multibillion dollar allocations to the War Budget and to the Wall Street Bank Bailout program backlash on all other categories of public expenditure. The Bush administration's $700 billion bailout under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was approved by Congress in October. TARP is but the tip of the iceberg. A panoply of bailout allocations in addition to the $700 billion were decided upon prior to Obama assuming office. In November, the federal government's bank rescue program was estimated at a staggering 8.5 trillion dollars, an amount equivalent to more than fifty percent of the US public debt estimated at fourteen trillion dollars in 2007 {1}. Meanwhile, under the Obama budget proposal, 634 billion dollars are allocated to a reserve fund to finance universal health care. At first sight, it appears to be a large amount. But it is to be spent over a ten year period, that is, a modest annual commitment of 63.4 billion. Public spending will be slashed with a view to curtailing a spiralling budget deficit. Health and education programs will not only remain heavily underfunded, they will be slashed, revamped and privatized. The likely outcome is the outright privatization of public services and the sale of State assets including public infrastructure, urban services, highways, national parks, et cetera. Fiscal collapse leads to the privatization of the State. The fiscal crisis is further exacerbated by the compression of tax revenues resulting from decline of the real economy. Unemployed workers do not pay taxes nor do bankrupt firms. The process is cumulative. The solution to the fiscal crisis becomes the cause of further collapse. Structure of The Public Debt This large scale appropriation of liquid money assets under the bank bailouts by a handful of financial institutions serves to increase the public debt overnight. When the US Treasury allocates 700 billion dollars to the Troubled Assets Relief Program, this amount constitutes a budgetary outlay which inevitably must be financed from within the structure of government revenues and expenditures. Unless all other categories of public expenditure including health, education and social services are slashed, the various outlays under the bank bailout will require running a massive budget deficit which in turn will increase the US public debt. America is the most indebted country on earth. The US (federal government) public debt is currently of the order of $14 trillion. This does not include mounting public debts at the state and municipal levels. This US dollar denominated (federal) debt is composed of outstanding treasury bills and government bonds. The public debt, also called "the national debt" is the amount of money owed by the federal government to holders of US debt instruments. US debt instruments are held by American residents as part of their savings portfolio, companies and financial institutions, US government agencies, foreign governments, individuals in foreign countries. but does not include intergovernmental debt obligations or debt held in the Social Security Trust Fund. Types of securities held by the public include, but are not limited to, Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, TIPS, United States Savings Bonds, and State and Local Government Series securities. The proposed solution becomes the cause of the crisis. The 700 billion bailout under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) combined with the proposed Obama $750 billion aid to financial services industry is but the tip of the iceberg. A panoply of bailout allocations in addition to the 700 billion have been decided upon. The Bush Administration's "Bank Bailout" The government's bank rescue program under the Bush administration was estimated at a staggering 8.5 trillion dollars, an amount equivalent to sixty percent of the Total Gross Federal debt of 14.078 trillion in 2010 {1}. This amount does not include the "aid" to financial institutions proposed by the Obama administration, including an additional 750 billion dollars in Obama's February 2009 budget proposal. The size of these allocations of liquid assets endangers the very structures of the fiscal and monetary system. The total of Bush bank bailouts (8.5 trillion) can be broken down into funds granted by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Housing Authority. The handouts to the financial institutions financed out of Treasury are government expenditures, to be met either through tax revenues or through the emission of public debt instruments. The disbursements under TARP are categorized by the Bureau of the Budget as part of "a mandatory program" under an Act of the US Congress. The Treasury's liability, which includes the controversial Troubled Assets Relief Program, was estimated in November 2008 at 1.1 trillion dollars {1}. Further Treasury allocations, which serve to heighten the burden of the public debt have been envisaged by the Obama administration. Spiralling Public Debt Crisis Is the Treasury in a position to finance this mounting budget deficit officially tagged at 1.75 billion through the emission of Treasury bills and government bonds? The largest budget deficit in US history coupled with the lowest interest rates in US history: With the Fed's "near zero" percent discount rate, the markets for US dollar denominated government bonds and Treasury bills are in straightjacket. Moreover, the essential functions of savings (which is central to the functioning of a national economy) is in crisis. . Who wants to invest in US government debt? What is the demand for Treasury bills at exceedingly low interest rates? The market for US dollar denominated debt instruments is potentially at a standstill, which means that the Treasury lacks the ability to finance its mammoth budget deficit through public debt operations, leading the entire budgetary process into a quandary. The question is whether China and Japan will continue to purchase US dollar denominated debt instruments. Washington is running a public relations campaign to lure Asian investors into buying T-bills and US government bonds. . With the markets for US dollar denominated debt (both domestically and internationally) in crisis, further pressure will be exerted on the Treasury to slash (civilian) public expenditure to the bone, exact user fees for public services and sell off public assets, including State infrastructure and institutions. In all likelihood, this crisis is leading us to the privatization of the State, where activities hitherto under government jurisdiction will be transferred into private hands. Who will be buying State assets at rock bottom prices? The financial elites, which are also the recipients of the bank bailout. Consolidation of the Banks A massive amount of liquidity has been injected into the financial system, from the bailouts but also from pension funds, individual savings, et cetera. The stated objective of the bank bailout programs is to alleviate the banks' burden of bad debts and non-performing loans. In actuality what is happening is that these massive amounts of money are being used by a handful of institutions to consolidate their position in global banking. The exposure of the banks, largely the result of derivative trade is estimated in the tens of trillions of dollars, to the extent that the amounts and guarantees granted by the Treasury and the Fed will not resolve the crisis. Nor are they intended to resolve the crisis. The mainstream media suggests that the banks are being nationalized as a result of TARP, In fact, it is exactly the opposite: the State is being taken over by the banks, the State is being privatized. The establishment of a Worldwide unipolar financial system is part of the broader project of the Wall Street financial elites to establish the contours of a world government. In a bitter irony, the recipients of the bailout under TARP and Obama's proposed 750 billion aid to financial institutions are the creditors of the federal government. The Wall Street banks are the brokers and underwriters of the US public debt, although they hold only a portion of the debt, they transact and trade in US dollar denominated public debt instruments Worldwide. They act as creditors of the US State. They evaluate the creditworthiness of the US government, they rank the public debt through Moody's and Standard and Poor. They control the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board and the US Congress. They oversee and dictate fiscal and monetary policy, ensuring that the state acts in their interest. Since the Reagan era, Wall Street dominates most areas of economic and social policy. It sets the budgetary agenda, ensuring the curtailment of social expenditures. Wall Street preaches balanced budgets but the practice has been lobbying for the elimination of corporate taxes, the granting of handouts to corporations, tax write-offs in mergers and acquisitions et cetera, all of which lead to a spiralling public debt. Circular and Contradictory Relationship The Federal Reserve system is a privately owned central bank. While the Federal Reserve Board is a government body, the process of money creation is controlled by the twelve Federal Reserve Banks, which are privately owned. The shareholders of the Federal Reserve banks (with the New York Federal Reserve Bank playing a dominant role) are among America's most powerful financial institutions. While the Federal Reserve can create money "out of thin air", the multibillion outlays of the Treasury (including the TARP program) will require the emission of public debt in the form of treasury bills and government bonds. US financial institutions oversee the US public debt. They are involved in the sale of treasury bills and government bonds on financial markets in the US and around the World. But they also hold part of the public debt. In this regard, they are the creditors of the US government. Part of this increased public debt required to rescue the banks will be financed or brokered by the same financial institutions which are the object of the bank rescue plan. We are dealing with a pernicious circular relationship. When the banks pressured the Treasury to assist them in the form of a major bank rescue operation, it was understood from the outset that the banks would in turn assist the Treasury in financing the handouts of which they are the recipients. To finance the bank bailout, the Treasury needs to run a massive budget deficit, which in turn requires a staggering increase of the US public debt. Public opinion has been misled. The US government is in a sense financing its own indebtedness: the money granted to the banks is in part financed by borrowing from the banks. The banks lend money to the government and with the money they lend the government, the Treasury finances the bailout. In turn, the banks impose conditionalities on the management of the US public debt. They dictate how the money should be spent. They impose "fiscal responsibility", they dictate massive cuts in social expenditures which result in the collapse and/or privatization of public services. They impose the privatization of urban infrastructure, roads, sewer and water systems, public recreational areas, everything is up for privatization. The recipient banks are the beneficiaries as well as the creditors. As creditors, they will oblige the government (a) to slash expenditures and (b) to run up the public debt through the issuing of treasury bills and government bonds. This public debt crisis is all the more serious because the US federal government does not control monetary policy. All public debt operations go through the Federal Reserve, which is in charge of monetary policy, acting on behalf of private financial interests. The government as such has no authority over money creation. This means that public debt operations essentially serve the interests of the banks. Continuity from Bush to Obama The Obama stimulus program constitutes a continuation of the Bush administration's bank bailout packages. The proposed policy solution to the crisis becomes the cause, ultimately resulting in further real economy bankruptcies and a corresponding collapse of the standard of living of Americans. Both the Bush and Obama bank bailouts are intended to come to the rescue of troubled financial institutions, to ensure the payment of "inter-bank" debt operations. In practice, large amounts of money transit through the banking system, from the banks to the hedge funds, to offshore banking havens and back to the banks. The government and the media tend to focus on the ambiguous notion of "inter-bank debts". The identity of the creditors is rarely mentioned. Multi-billion dollar transfers are conducted electronically from one financial entity to another. Where is the money going? Who is collecting these multibillion debts, which are in large part the consequence of financial manipulation and derivative trade? There are indications that the financial institutions are transferring billions of dollars into their affiliated hedge funds. From these hedge funds they can then channel money capital towards the acquisition of real assets. Through what circuitous financial mechanisms were these debts created? Where is the bailout money going? Who is cashing in on the multibillion dollar government bailout money? This process is contributing to an unprecedented concentration of private wealth. Concluding Remarks Financial manipulation is an integral part of the New World Order. It constitutes a powerful means to accumulate wealth. Under the present political arrangement, those responsible for monetary policy are quite deliberately serving the interests of the financiers, to the detriment of working people, leading to economic dislocation, unemployment and mass poverty. This article has focussed on how financial manipulation has served to shatter the structure of US public expenditure. This restructuring of global financial markets and institutions (alongside the pillage of national economies) has enabled the accumulation of vast amounts of private wealth - a large portion of which has been amassed as a result of strictly speculative transactions. This critical drain of billions of dollars of household savings and state tax revenues paralyses the functions of government spending and spurs the accumulation of a public debt, which can no longer be be financed through the emission of US dollar denominated debt. What we are dealing with is the fraudulent transfer and confiscation of lifelong savings and pension funds, the fraudulent appropriation of tax revenues to finance the bank bailouts, et cetera. To understand what has happened, follow the money trail of electronic transfers with a view to establishing where the money has gone The monetary system, which is integrated into the State budgetary process, has been destabilized. The fundamental relationship between the monetary system and the real economy is in crisis. The creation of money "out of thin air" threatens the value of the US dollar as an international currency. Similarly, the financing of a mammoth US budget deficit through dollar denominated debt instruments is impaired as a result of exceedingly low interest rates. Moreover, the process of household savings is undermined with interest rates close to zero. What we have dealt with in this article is one central aspect of an evolving process of global financial collapse. The international payments system is in crisis. The economic prospects are terrifying. Bankruptcies in the US, Canada, the European Union are occurring at an alarming rate. Country level exports have collapsed, leading to a contraction of international trade. Reports from the Asian economies indicate a massive increase in unemployment. In China's Pearl River basin in Southern Guangdong province's industrial export processing economy, some 700,000 were laid off in January. In Japan, industrial output has collapsed by more than twenty percent since December. In the Philippines, a country of ninety million people, exports collapsed by more than forty percent in December. Financial Disarmament There are no solutions under the prevailing global financial architecture. Meaningful policies cannot be achieved without radically reforming the workings of the international banking system. What is required is an overhaul of the monetary system including the functions and ownership of the central bank, the arrest and prosecution of those involved in financial fraud both in the financial system and in governmental agencies, the freeze of all accounts where fraudulent transfers have been deposited, the cancellation of debts resulting from fraudulent trade and/or market manipulation. People across the land, nationally and internationally must mobilize. This struggle to democratise the financial and fiscal apparatus must be broad-based and democratic encompassing all sectors of society at all levels, in all countries. What is ultimately required is to disarm the financial establishment: - confiscate those assets which were obtained through fraud and financial manipulation, - restore the savings of households through reverse transfers, - return the bailout money to the Treasury, freeze the activities of the hedge funds, and - freeze the gamut of speculative transactions including short-selling and derivative trade. Link: {1} See Table 2 at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12517 Annex: Budget of the United States Government: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget Fiscal Year 2010 The Budget Documents: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget A New Era of Responsibility: The 2010 Budget: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget The tables contained in Annex can also be consulted by clicking: Summary Tables: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fy2010_new_era/Summary_Tables2.pdf See also: http://www.budget.gov http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/pdf/fy10-newera.pdf _____ The Economic Depression was predicted in this 2002 best-seller: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order by Michel Chossudovsky: http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/GofP.html In this new and expanded edition of Chossudovsky?s international best-seller, the author outlines the contours of a New World Order which feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife and undermines the rights of women. The result, as his detailed examples from all parts of the world show so convincingly, is a globalization of poverty. This book is a skillful combination of lucid explanation and cogently argued critique of the fundamental directions in which our world is moving financially and economically. In this new enlarged edition - which includes ten new chapters and a new introduction - the author reviews the causes and consequences of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic meltdown of financial markets, the demise of State social programs and the devastation resulting from corporate downsizing and trade liberalisation. _____ Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than twenty languages. _____ 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. 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. (c) Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2009 (c) Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12517 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 Mar 3 09:55:59 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 08:55:59 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Canadian Mining Firm Financed Violence in Ecuador: Lawsuit Message-ID: <1E7A53E9-D5BE-44FD-8EF9-3F700215E4D9@shaw.ca> Canadian Mining Firm Financed Violence in Ecuador: Lawsuit TMX Group denies claim. Win could affect thousands of other projects by Canadian companies. View full article and comments here http://thetyee.ca/News/2009/03/03/CanMining/ By Jennifer Moore Published: March 3, 2009 TheTyee.ca "Financing being raised in Canada is travelling across borders to do harm," said lawyer Murray Klippenstein by phone from his office in Toronto. "We want to find out if our legal system can respond to this." Klippenstein is perhaps best known for his representation of the estate and family of native activist Dudley George, who was shot and killed by police in Ipperwash Provincial Park in Ontario in 1995. This lawsuit revealed deep political involvement from the premier's office and resulted in a landmark public inquiry. In another ambitious and possibly precedent-setting case, Klippenstein is representing three villagers from the valley of Intag in northwestern Ecuador who are suing Copper Mesa Mining Corporation (TSX:CUX) and the Toronto Stock Exchange. They allege that company directors and the TMX Group have not done enough to reduce the risk of harm being faced by farmers and community leaders in Intag who have faced violent threats and attacks for opposition to a large open-pit copper mine in their pristine cloud forests. Still, they hope to go further. "What is happening in Intag is illustrative of a wider problem," a summary of the legal claim states, "the corporate and financial unaccountability of the Canadian mining industry." So while the case uses established legal principles, the plaintiffs hope it will lead to long-awaited legal reforms to help better control thousands of Canadian financed projects abroad. Klippenstein, who said he "has learned to go miles on very little," acknowledges the "staggering financial mismatch" and says that companies have hundreds of millions of dollars to gain, so it won't surprise him if they spend tens of millions on the case. He also anticipates years of counterattacks, including motions and appeals on technicalities. But he emphasized that the basics of the case are straightforward. "There's a simple fundamental legal point that you shouldn't harm somebody and that you shouldn't use your money to hire someone who you know is likely to do harm." Conflict escalates Marcia Ram?rez is secretary of the Intag Community Development Committee. She lives near the end of the road in an isolated village in one of the most biodiverse places on earth. Her community of Chalguayaco Alto sits at the crossroads of two biodiversity hotspots, the Tumbes-Choc?-Magdalena and the Tropical Andes. "It isn't fair," she told The Tyee, "that a foreign company can come here and contract people who attack us for defending our rights, for wanting to live in a healthy environment, for defending our land and our water." She added, "We'd like the stock exchange to listen to us and to understand that we've been very hurt by one of their companies." Now 25 years old, the fight against large scale copper mining has marked daily life for the diplomatic and dedicated leader since she was about 12. Broad-based opposition to large scale copper mining arose when a Japanese company was initially carrying out mineral exploration a short distance away. When the company released its Environmental Impact Assessment report for the proposed mine, the news that four communities would be displaced, as well as massive deforestation, local desertification, river contamination and harm to endangered species sparked vociferous opposition that persists. Since Copper Mesa, who has a strategic alliance with the giant Rio Tinto, took over the project in 2004, new issues have emerged with apparent attempts to break the opposition. Now land trafficking, threats of violence, as well as relatively high-paying job offers have been driving a wedge between neighbours and families in these rural communities. "But," commented Ram?rez, "what most hurt is when they came... with armed men and sprayed us with gas." In early December 2006, over 50 heavily armed security guards, mostly ex-soldiers, were hired to reach company concessions and set up camp. Local residents had been tipped off and gathered along the narrow dirt road that the company-hired trucks would have to pass. When they arrived, Ram?rez and others tried to urge the armed men to turn around. But instead, the security agents sprayed tear gas into their faces from only a metre away and fired their weapons into the air, injuring one man, also a plaintiff in the case. When the residents didn't back down, the guards finally retreated. The incident was caught on film by a European student researching the controversy and is retold as part of the recent film Under Rich Earth by director Malcolm Rogge that debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. It has also been denounced in a complaint to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. Prior warning Canadian authorities were warned that such an incident could arise. On March 8th, 2005, three months before Copper Mesa (then Ascendant Copper) was listed on the TSX, County Mayor Auki Titua?a wrote to the Finance and Audit Committee of the Toronto Stock Exchange: "We consider it to be appropriate and fair that before accepting open "trade" of Ascendant Copper Corporation's stocks in the Stock Market, you evaluate in depth the "new" company's merits..." Included in his list of 14 concerns were lack of prior community consultation, lack of legally required municipal approval, violation of a municipal ordinance that declares the area an "Ecological County," as well as attempts to foster divisions as a "means to achieve company profits against the citizen's will and at a cost of the loss of unique biodiversity in our territory." Then in May, Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of the Ecological Defense and Conservation of Intag (DECOIN), travelled to Ottawa to present a complaint to the Department of Foreign Affairs claiming that Copper Mesa had violated the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Mining Watch and Friends of the Earth Canada supported the claim. "I'm here," he says in a press release, "because Canadians need to understand the real risk of violence that is emerging as a result of this company's activities." He added, "The Canadian government must take action to curb the excesses of Canadian mining companies operating and exploring overseas." The complaint was withdrawn after eight months when it was apparent that the appropriate authorities would not apply the relevant procedures. The legal summary notes that "the TSX stock market listing of Copper Mesa has allowed the company to obtain over $25 million in capital funds -- some of which paid for the armed attackers" in December 2006. Carolyn Quick, director of corporate communications for the TMX Group, told The Tyee her firm considers the case to be "entirely without merit" and that they will "vigorously defend this position." She would give no further comment about the letter from Mayor Titua?a nor the complaint made to DFAIT. No one from Copper Mesa was available to speak with The Tyee. Globalization of legal accountability Another challenge in holding companies to account in Canada, where the bulk of the world's mining companies are based, are complicated corporate structures that criss-cross continents. "By dispersing their actions across borders and saying that 'Well, we didn't do that in Canada or Ecuador, that decision was made in the U.S.,' they can evade accountability. The courts can respond and say 'Take this case somewhere else,'" says Klippenstein. Copper Mesa whose headquarters in Colorado, "has connections to some nine different legal jurisdictions, making it difficult to identify which jurisdiction is the proper one in which to hold the corporation accountable," says the legal summary of the case. The former website of Copper Mesa (then Ascendant Copper) acknowledged that its corporate structure makes suing directors difficult: "All of the directors of Ascendant and substantially all of their assets and those of Ascendant are located outside of Canada. It may not be possible for purchasers of securities being qualified for distribution under this prospectus to effect service of process within Canada upon directors who reside outside of Canada..." It is for this reason that the lawsuit focuses on decisions allegedly made in Ontario. 'Establish clear legal norms in Canada' However, one possible advantage for rural residents of Intag preparing for a lengthy legal battle on tricky Canadian territory is that they are not alone in their concern. Their broader goals for legal regulations of Canadian mining companies echo what the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (SCFAIT) and the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and other civil society groups have already been saying. While Carlos Zorrilla was in Ottawa in 2005, the SCFAIT was writing its 14th report, which recommended that the government "Establish clear legal norms in Canada to ensure that Canadian companies and residents are held accountable when there is evidence of environmental and/or human rights violations associated with the activities of Canadian mining companies." The government responded saying that it "will continue to examine the best practices of other states attempting to address the accountability of businesses for activities conducted abroad." But it has yet to implement mandatory rules. Still Klippenstein is hopeful in the face of tough odds. "One has to trust in the promise of a certain amount of fairness and independence that the justice system can provide. It has been shown that powerful people can be brought to kneel this way before." It took eight years of legal proceedings before a public inquiry was called in the Dudley George case. They never even made it to court, but a long list of recommendations was implemented. Ram?rez is also optimistic that they have a chance at justice through Canadian courts as part of their fight to leave Intag's cloud forests intact. She points out the variety of sustainable development projects that they have been working on as alternatives to large scale mining, including community owned watersheds, a mixed mini-hydroelectric company, as well as agricultural and tourism initiatives. She urges Canadians to see the benefits: "We want future generations to have what we have." From fentona at shaw.ca Tue Mar 3 09:57:01 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 08:57:01 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Meltdown response: Ecuador erects trade barriers Message-ID: Meltdown response: Ecuador erects trade barriers By JEANNETH VALDIVIESO and FRANK BAJAK ? 1 day ago QUITO, Ecuador (AP) ? Posters plastered on the walls of supermarket chains across this Andean nation proudly declare "Ecuador First." But for many shoppers, buying domestic is no longer really a matter of choice. In what may be the world's most protectionist response to the global economic crisis, Ecuador's leftist government has imposed import restrictions on everything from Peruvian shampoo to Chilean grapes and U.S.-made running shoes. President Rafael Correa says he had to take drastic action to prevent the collapse of an oil-dependent economy shocked by plunging petroleum prices, flagging remittances from workers abroad and the drying-up of foreign investment. Ecuador is particularly vulnerable because it is one of only a few countries in the world ? El Salvador and Panama are the next biggest ? that have adopted the U.S. dollar as their currencies. It doesn't print its own money, using currency printed in the United States. A severe trade deficit could thus drain Ecuador of dollars, potentially causing economic collapse. It's a possibility that also worries CIA Director Leon Panetta. On Tuesday, he listed Ecuador ? along with Argentina and Venezuela ? as countries in dire economic straits that could be destabilized by the worldwide economic crisis. "We can't continue to throw away the money from our oil, the money of our migrants, to buy imported perfumes and imported liquors," Correa said as he explained the import restrictions. Many imports suddenly became out of reach for Ecuadorean shoppers when the measures took effect Jan. 22. Countless jobs also are at stake, in Ecuador and the Andean neighbors that account for nearly half its imports. "I think the country painted itself into a corner and I don't think there was anything else that could be done," said Manuel Chiriboga, director of Quito's nonpartisan Foreign Commerce Observatory. The barriers affect 627 types of goods and take one of three forms: import volume decreases up to 35 percent; import duty increases to between 30-35 percent; or surcharges such as $12 per kilogram for textiles and $10 per pair for shoes. These measures are as severe as any of the protectionist moves catalogued by the World Trade Organization, and no other country has tougher import restrictions, said Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. Oil sales sales account for 40 percent of Ecuador's budget, but Correa isn't just concerned about declining petroleum revenues. Exports of bananas, flowers, shrimp and other products also are down. Correa, a U.S.-trained economist, said the restrictions should keep $1.46 billion from flowing out of Ecuador's $50 billion economy, the biggest outside the United States to use the dollar as its currency. While Ecuador's economy is small in global terms, free trade disciples fear a general spread of similar protectionist measures will seize up the global economy just when it needs rebooting. Already, the International Monetary Fund predicts global trade will decline by 2.8 percent this year ? the first contraction in almost 30 years ? as country after country makes protectionist moves: _ The United States and Russia propping up troubled auto industries _ India imposing a six-month ban on Chinese toys and 5 percent tariffs on some iron and steel products. _ The stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama last month, favoring American steel, iron and manufactured goods for government projects. _ The European Commission reintroducing export subsidies for butter, cheese and milk powder _ China increasing tax rebates for exporters. "In my view, stronger measures are needed to keep smoldering protectionism from breaking into a blaze," Hufbauer said. Correa predicts only a "small impact" on his 14 million citizens. "The poor don't consume perfumes, liquor and chocolates," he said. But Ecuador's automotive sector is expected to suffer greatly, since most vehicles and parts are imported. Auto industry association president Diego Luna expects this year's vehicle sales to plunge 38 percent to 70,000 because of the new import quotas, making layoffs likely. "I don't know that companies can keep this level of employees," he said. Small businesses are affected as well in a country whose official unemployment rate is 7.9 percent. "We're going to have to lay off three employees," said Lenin Salazar, who employs 10 in a business that imports TV and video camera and recorder parts. "It strikes me as very strange because no factory (domestically) makes these types of parts." Some other nations are seeking to borrow their way out of crisis, but Correa may have closed that avenue by defaulting on a third of Ecuador's $10.3 billion foreign debt. He claimed the bond issues were negotiated by crooked former officials and foreign bankers. Correa says he prefers to dedicate government funds to anti-poverty programs ? spending that includes $30 monthly stipends for single mothers. Ecuador's new constitution also burdens the treasury by promising free education for all through college. Such spending was easier when oil prices climbed well above $100 a barrel. Ecuador's oil revenues jumped 222 percent last year from 2007, while imports increased by 26.7 percent. Now Correa forecasts a $3.5 billion trade deficit for 2009 with the plunge in oil prices and and remittances, the twin pillars of Ecuador's economy. Money sent home by Ecuadoreans abroad dropped to $2.8 billion last year from $3 billion in 2007 ? a trend the central bank expects to continue. Some economists believe Correa will need to ditch the U.S. dollar ? which was adopted in 2000 after the near-collapse of Ecuador's banks ? and give his people their own currency again, or keep the dollar as a second currency, as many nations in the region do. Otherwise, they warn of shortages, smuggling and a dangerous increase in the black-market economy. "Inevitably, contraband will be on the rise. Legal commerce will cede space to the informal," said economist Walter Spurrier of the independent Spurrier Group. For now, many Ecuadoreans lament having to buy inferior domestic brands. "The increases for (imported) detergents are brutal," Paola Padilla, a 26-year-old programmer, said as she stared at foreign-made fabric softeners in one Quito supermarket. Her brand had jumped a dollar to $3.60. "I'll see about buying some next week." Frank Bajak reported from Bogota, Colombia. Also contributing were AP writers Joe McDonald in Beijing, Bradley Klapper in Geneva and Aiofe White in Brussels. Copyright ? 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. From fentona at shaw.ca Tue Mar 3 11:29:13 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 10:29:13 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Psychological Operations Against Venezuela: Washington and its war against the Bolivarian Revolution Message-ID: - Below is a rough but readable 'google-translated' version of Golinger's new article (original, in Spanish, below as well). Will re- send when proper translation is circulating. ... Psychological Operations Against Venezuela: Washington and its war against the Bolivarian Revolution By Eva Golinger 3 March 2009 A secret document from the National Intelligence Center United States Army (U.S. Army National Ground Intelligence Center) recently declassified part of a request under the Act on Access to Information Act (FOIA for short) in the United States, confirms that the psychological operations team more powerful Pentagon is using its efforts against Venezuela. The paper, in 2006, analyzes the border situation between Colombia and Venezuela. His writing is done by the 4th Psychological Operations (Active) U.S. Army and the National Intelligence Center U.S. Army, which then asserts that this same team is working on psychological warfare against Venezuela in the region. The text of the little secret that left uncensored explains how the Patriot Plan (previously known as Plan Colombia) has successfully pushed the activities of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Venezuelan territory. Explicitly highlighted in the secret document that "... the Plan Patriota offensive operations and their counterparts in the Colombian army have had a major impact on the activities of the Eastern Bloc [FARC] ... because of their successes against several fronts in Colombia's Eastern Bloc several fronts in the Eastern Bloc are leading more and regenerating their combat activities in the Colombian-Venezuelan border. Mini-Blocks of the Plains and the eastern ... have assumed various roles in strategic response to the Plan Patriota 2B ... " Not be taken as a coincidence the arrival of the Psychological Operations Group 4 (Active) U.S. Army in Colombia in 2006 and the strategy of pushing the FARC and the Colombian civil conflict to the Venezuelan territory. It is precisely when the State Department and the Pentagon began to publicly accuse Venezuela of cooperating with terrorism, specifically referring to an alleged relationship with the FARC. It was in the first half of 2006 that Washington placed Venezuela on a list of countries not cooperating sufficiently with the fight against terrorism ", then imposing a sanction against the South American country that resulted in banning the sale of armamente United States and any international company that uses American technology. The State Department report in 2006 said, "Venezuela's cooperation in the international campaign against terrorism remained negligible ... It is unclear to what extent the Venezuelan government provided material support to Colombian terrorists, if they did, and what level ... "(State Department Report 2006, available at www.state.gov) A few months later, in July 2006, the Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Non-proliferation of the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress held a hearing entitled "Venezuela: Terrorism Center in South America", which stated, "Venezuela, under President Hugo Ch?vez, has tolerated terrorists on its soil and has forged close ties with the officially designated as sponsors of terrorism, Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Colombian terrorist groups use Venezuelan territory as a safe haven ... " At the same time, the international media began to promote parent view binds Venezuela to terrorism. Articles and editorials in the Washington Post, New York Times, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, El Pais in Spain, El Tiempo of Bogot?, the Miami Herald, among others, repeated again and again the alleged links between the Venezuelan government and the FARC in Colombia, although he never showed even a single proof. The evidence is all based on sources "anonymous", "top officials in Washington," and "analysts", without naming names or specific facts or data. THE PROPAGANDA OF THE WARRIORS The Psychological Operations Group 4 (Active) U.S. Army, is the only operational psychological operations unit in the army. The unit consists of 1,300 staff and represents 26% of all units of the Army psychological operations, the other 74% are made up of reservists. For 2011, the unit is planned to grow to approximately 2,300 troops are experts in psychological operations. The official mission of Psychological Operations Group of 4 (Active) is rapidly deployed anywhere in the world to plan, develop and conduct psychological operations and affairs "civilian" (read: subversive) to support the coalition forces and government agencies in Washington . Group 4 staff includes linguists and regional experts who understand the subtleties deeply political, cultural, ethnic and religious target audience. They are also experts in technical areas such as journalism, radio operations, graphic design, print, layout and images of long- range tactical communications. In 2003, the Psychological Operations Group 4 (Active) U.S. Army opened a complex media operations of Special Forces operating with a cost of 8.1 million dollars. This complex is known as the Pentagon's production center for all its psychological operations and their "products" such as flyers, brochures, posters, television and radio segments that are all dedicated to persuade and win the hearts and minds of those who The Pentagon wants to attack. For example, more than 150 million flyers and pamphlets - all produced and printed in the compound of Group 4 of Psychological Operations (Active) - have been scattered throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. Col. James Treadwell, Commander of Group 4, which drew more than 16,000 hours of radio messages were produced and transmitted by his group in Afghanistan, and over 4,000 in Iraq. Printing in the new complex have the ability to print more than 1 million brochures a day. The soldiers of the psychological operations techniques in studying marketing and advertising before designing their "product." It also discusses in detail the impacts and outcomes. They are all experts in propaganda and in the best ways to influence public opinion to promote their agenda. In 2005, unit is "the guerrerros propaganda" was expanded with the establishment of the support element Joint Psychological Operations (JPOs), with Colonel Treadwell led the entire team together. Transferred to the headquarters of Iraq JPOs in Tampa, Florida, Col. Treadwell began to focus their propaganda activities to the south. In statements to press, Treadwell confirmed that its new elite team of psychological operations directed toward a part of Bolivia and Venezuela. Soon after, a millionaire (up $ 100 million) was awarded to the company Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to help design the "campaign" of psychological operations with JPOs. Two other companies, Lincoln Group and SYColeman, also received similar contracts taken from the budget of the team that exceeds $ 8 billion annually. Of these companies, SAIC has a history quite dirty in Venezuela. It was the company along with PDVSA, the state oil, built a joint venture named INTESA, which was commissioned from 1995 to automate the oil industry in Venezuela. INTESA And it was this company that executed one of the most brutal acts of sabotage against the Venezuelan industry at the end of 2002, intended to force President Hugo Ch?vez from power. The company was used as a platform to attack the brain of PDVSA, destroying all its databases and automated systems and converting it into a new company operating manual. Their actions have caused billions of dollars in damage to the economy and its international reputation as a safe supplier and producer of oil. However, did not achieve their goal to overthrow President Chavez and shortly after, INTESA was closed and forced to cease operations in the country. Until, three years later appeared engaged psicol?gicias operations against the same government that had previously unsuccessfully trying to neutralize. Since the team's most powerful psychological operations in the United States is actively working against Venezuela, has seen the fruits of their work at international level and also within the country at the national level. Now, President Chavez is classified as a "dictator" in the international public opinion and few doubt that his alleged "relationship" with the FARC in Colombia - although it has never been a single test that confirms the relationship. Psychological operations are considered by the Pentagon, his most powerful weapon "today. Through displays, radio, newspapers, posters, designs clothes and objects, convey its messages to well-planned and subtly influence on public opinion and their perceptions on issues of interest. This is the new battlefield where everyone is forced to assume a role, because no one escapes the information and communication in the world today. It is the struggle for justice and truth against the lies and manipulation. The decision to be a victim or a combatant in this illegal war is in the hands of each of us. Do not be fooled. ... Operaciones Psicol?gicas Contra Venezuela: Washington y su Guerra contra la Revoluci?n Bolivariana Por Eva Golinger 3 marzo 2009 Un documento secreto del Centro Nacional de Inteligencia del Ej?rcito de Estados Unidos (U.S. Army National Ground Intelligence Center) reci?ntemente desclasificado parcialmente bajo una solicitud de la Ley de Acceso a la Informaci?n (FOIA por sus siglas en ingl?s) en Estados Unidos, confirma que el equipo de operaciones psicol?gicas m?s poderoso del Pent?gono est? empleando sus esfuerzos contra Venezuela. El documento, del a?o 2006, analiza la situaci?n fronteriza entre Colombia y Venezuela. Su redacci?n est? realizada por el Grupo 4 de Operaciones Psicol?gicas (Activa) del Ej?rcito de EEUU y el Centro Nacional de Inteligencia del Ej?rcito de EEUU, hecho que afirma entonces que ?ste mismo equipo de guerra psicol?gica est? trabajando en la regi?n contra Venezuela. El poco texto del documento secreto que dejaron sin censura explica como el Plan Patriota (previamente conocida como Plan Colombia) ha exit?samente empujado las actividades de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) a territorio venezolano. Expl?citamente destacan en el documento secreto que ??las operaciones ofensivas del Plan Patriota y sus contrapartes del ej?rcito colombiano han tenido un impacto importante sobre las actividades del Bloque Oriental [de las FARC]?debido a ?stos ?xitos contra algunos frentes del Bloque Oriental en Colombia, varios frentes del Bloque Oriental est?n conduciendo m?s combate y regenerando sus actividades en la frontera colombo-venezolana. Los Mini-Bloques de los Llanos y la zona oriental?han asumido distintos papeles estrat?gicos en respuesta al Plan Patriota 2B?? No se puede tomar como una coincidencia la llegada del Grupo 4 de Operaciones Psicol?gicas (Activa) del Ej?rcito de EEUU en Colombia en el a?o 2006 y la estrat?gia de empujar a las FARC y el conflicto civil colombiano a territorio venezolano. Pu?s, es justamente tambi?n cuando el Departamento de Estado y el Pent?gono comienzan a acusar publicamente a Venezuela de colaborar con el terrorismo, especificamente haciendo referencia a una supuesta relaci?n con las FARC. Fue en el primer semestre del a?o 2006 que Washington coloc? a Venezuela en una lista de ?pa?ses que no colaboran suficientemente con la lucha contra el terrorismo?, imponiendo entonces una sanci?n contra el pa?s suramericano que result? en la prohibici?n de la venta de armamente de Estados Unidos y de cualquier empresa internacional que utiliza tecnolog?a estadounidense. El informe del Departamento de Estado de 2006 dec?a, ?La cooperaci?n de Venezuela en la campa?a internacional contra el terrorismo sigui? siendo insignificante?No est? claro hasta qu? punto el gobierno de Venezuela ofreci? apoyo material a los terroristas colombianos, si lo hizo, y a qu? nivel?? (Informe del Departamento de Estado de 2006, disponible en ingl?s en www.state.gov) Pocos meses despu?s, en julio de 2006, el Subcomit? sobre Terrorismo Internacional y No Proliferaci?n de la C?mara de Representantes del Congreso estadounidense realiz? una audiencia denominada ?Venezuela: ?Centro del terrorismo en Am?rica del Sur??, en donde declararon, ?Venezuela, bajo el presidente Hugo Ch?vez, ha tolerado a los terroristas en su suelo y ha forjado estrechas relaciones con Estados oficialmente patrocinadores del terrorismo designados como Cuba, Ir?n y Corea del Norte. Los grupos terroristas colombianos utilizan el territorio venezolano como para?so seguro?? Al mismo tiempo, la prensa internacional comenz? a promover matrices de opini?n vinculando a Venezuela con el terrorismo. Art?culos y editoriales en el Washington Post, New York Times, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, El Pa?s de Espa?a, El Tiempo de Bogot?, el Miami Herald, entre otros, repet?an una y otra vez el supuesto v?nculo entre el gobierno venezolano y las FARC en Colombia, aunque nunca presentaron ni una sola prueba contundente. Las evidencias todas se basaban en fuentes ?an?nimas?, ?altos oficiales de Washington?, y ?analistas?, sin nombrar nombres ni datos ni hechos concretos. LOS GUERREROS DE LA PROPAGANDA El Grupo 4 de Operaciones Psicol?gicas (Activa) del Ej?rcito de EEUU, es la ?nica unidad operativa de operaciones psicol?gicas en el ej?rcito. La unidad est? compuesta por 1.300 funcionarios y constituye 26% de todas las unidades de operaciones psicol?gicas del ej?rcito, los dem?s 74% son conformadas por reservistas. Para el a?o 2011, tienen planificado que la unidad crecer? a tener aproximadamente 2.300 tropas expertas en operaciones psicol?gicas. La misi?n oficial del Grupo 4 de Operaciones Psicol?gicas (Activa) es desplegarse r?pidamente a cualquier parte del mundo para planificar, desarrollar y conducir operaciones psicol?gicas y asuntos ?civiles? (l?ase subversi?n) en apoyo a las fuerzas de coalici?n y las agencias gubernamentales de Washington. El personal del Grupo 4 incluye a expertos regionales y linguistas que comprenden profundamente las sutilidades pol?ticas, culturales, ?tnicas y religiosas del p?blico blanco. Tambi?n son expertos en ?reas t?cnicas como periodismo, operaciones de radio, dise?o gr?fico, prensa, diagramaci?n de im?genes y comunicaciones t?cticas de largo rango. En el a?o 2003, el Grupo 4 de Operaciones Psicol?gicas (Activa) del Ej?rcito de EEUU inaugur? un complejo de operaciones medi?ticas de las Fuerzas Especiales Operacionales con un cost? de 8.1 millones de d?lares. Este complejo es conocido como el centro de producci?n del Pent?gono para todas sus operaciones psicol?gicas y sus ?productos?, como volantes, folletos, afiches, segmentos para televisi?n y radio que est?n todos dedicados a persuadir y ganar las mentes y corazones de quienes sean que el Pent?gono desea atacar. Por ejemplo, m?s de 150 millones volantes y folletos ? todos producidos e impresos en el complejo del Grupo 4 de Operaciones Psicol?gicas (Activa) ? han sido diseminados por Irak y Afganist?n. El Coronel James Treadwell, Comandante del Grupo 4, destac? que m?s de 16.000 horas de mensajes para radio fueron producidos por su grupo y transmitidos en Afganist?n, y m?s de 4.000 en Irak. La imprenta en el nuevo complejo tienen la capacidad de imprimir m?s de 1 millon de folletos al d?a. Los soldados de las operaciones psicol?gicas estudian t?cnicas en ?marketing? y publicidad antes de dise?ar sus ?productos?. Tambi?n analizan detalladamente sus impactos y resultados. Son todos unos expertos en la propaganda y en las mejores maneras de influir sobre la opini?n p?blica para promover su agenda. En 2005, est? unidad de ?guerrerros de la propaganda? fue ampliado con el establecimiento del Elemento de Apoyo a las Operaciones Psicol?gicas Conjuntos (JPOSE), con el Coronel Treadwell comandando todo el equipo conjunto. Transferido de Irak a la sede de JPOSE en Tampa, Florida, el Coronel Treadwell comenz? a enfocar sus actividades de propaganda hacia el sur. En declaraciones a prensa, Treadwell confirm? que su nuevo equipo ?lite de operaciones psicol?gicas dirigir?a una parte del trabajo hacia Bolivia y Venezuela. Poco despu?s, un contrato millonario (hasta 100 millones de d?lares) fue otorgado a la empresa Science Applications Internacional Corporation (SAIC) para ayudar dise?ar las ?campa?as? de operaciones psicol?gicas con JPOSE. Dos otras empresas, Lincoln Group y SYColeman, tambi?n recibieron contratos similares tomados del presupuesto del equipo que sobrepasa los 8 billones de d?lares anuales. De ?stas empresas, SAIC tiene una historia bastante sucia en Venezuela. Fue la empresa que junto con PDVSA, la estatal de petr?leo, construyeron una empresa mixta de nombre INTESA, que se encarg? del a?o 1995 de automatizar la industria petrolera en Venezuela. Y fue ?sta empresa INTESA que ejecut? uno de los sabotajes m?s brutales contra la industria venezolana a finales del a?o 2002, con la intenci?n de forzar al Presidente Hugo Ch?vez del poder. La empresa fue utilizada como una plataforma para atacar el ?cerebro de PDVSA?, destruyendo todos sus bases de datos y sistemas automatizados y converti?ndola de nueva en una empresa de operaci?n manual. Sus acciones causaron billones de d?lares en da?os a la econom?a venezolana y su reputaci?n internacional como un suministrador y productor seguro de petr?leo. Sin embargo, no lograron su objetivo de derrocar al Presidente Ch?vez y poco despu?s, INTESA fue cerrado y forzado de cesar sus operaciones en el pa?s. Hasta que, tres a?os despu?s aparecieron contratados para realizar operaciones psicol?gicias contra el mismo gobierno que hab?an intentando neutralizar anteriormente sin ?xito. Desde que el equipo m?s poderoso de operaciones psicol?gicas de Estados Unidos est? trabajando activamente contra Venezuela, se ha visto el fruto de su trabajo a nivel internacional y tambi?n dentro del pa?s a nivel nacional. Ya, el Presidente Ch?vez est? clasificado como un ?dictador? en la opini?n p?blica internacional y son pocos que dudan de su supuesta ?relaci?n? con las FARC en Colombia ? a pesar de que nunca ha habido ni una sola prueba que confirma dicha relaci?n. Las operaciones psicol?gicas son considerados por el Pent?gono su ?arma m?s poderoso? hoy en d?a. A trav?s de pantallas, emisoras, peri?dicos, afiches, dise?os de ropa y objetos, transmiten sus mensajes dirigidos y bien planificados para influir sutilmente sobre la opini?n p?blica y sus percepciones sobre temas de inter?s. Es el nuevo campo de batalla donde todos estamos forzados de asumir un papel, porque nadie se escapa de la informaci?n y la comunicaci?n en el mundo de hoy. Es la lucha por la verdad y la justicia contra la mentira y la manipulaci?n. La decisi?n de ser v?ctima o combatiente dentro de esta guerra irregular est? en manos de cada uno de nosotros. No te dejes enga?ar. From fentona at shaw.ca Tue Mar 3 11:58:31 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 10:58:31 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Avi Lewis: Canada needs Al Jazeera Message-ID: <08133877-6E68-4254-B54F-F7B3F46933F0@shaw.ca> Avi Lewis: Canada needs Al Jazeera By Jenn Watt | March 3, 2009 http://rabble.ca/news/avi-lewis-canada-needs-al-jazeera Al Jazeera English is in the process of getting Canadian Radio- television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approval to be carried on Canadian cable TV. It may be a difficult process for the broadcaster that was protested -- and eventually strongly restricted -- when it applied to the regulator in 2004 to broadcast its Arabic channel. Avi Lewis, a former CBC broadcaster who has been working for Al Jazeera English for the past year, describes his experiences with the network and tells rabble.ca's Jenn Watt why it is crucial that North America let Al Jazeera in. Jenn Watt: If you could give me some background on what you're doing with Al Jazeera English. Avi Lewis: It was just by total coincidence, it was just a few weeks after my last CBC show was abruptly cancelled, or strangled in the crib would be more appropriate. We had done a pilot in May of 2007 for a daily half-hour international news analysis show called On the Map and it got the green light and everything was set to go and we were going to launch it as a ... season of daily programming in the fall ... A couple weeks before we were supposed to get serious about relaunching the show in the fall they cancelled it. I actually found out on a brief phone call that I got while I was on tour with Naomi [Klein] for the Shock Doctrine launch. Just a few weeks later I got approached by Al Jazeera to come in and do an audition for a new election year show that they were doing - a show that was ultimately called Inside USA, which was a half-hour weekly show, which I hosted all of last year that looked at issues in the United States that were off the radar of the official election talk. In other words, our mandate on Inside USA was to tell the stories in the United States that ought to be on the front burner in an election year, but were left outside the very narrow box of traditional election coverage. So when they said that was the show's concept, I mean, I thought I was dreaming because my initial response was that that's what I live to do. That's the kind of journalism I've always tried to do. JW: Are you still working for them now that the election's over? AL: Yes. The show was never conceived of as an ongoing show, it was a special election year look at the United States to give the international audience a glimpse at issues Americans face because there was so much global attention on the United States in an election year and now with the financial crisis. Advertising Al Jazeera felt there was a strong need to give people more than just the horse race and the typical campaign coverage, and try to give longer format pieces and more substantive kind of TV journalism, which is quite out of fashion on most networks these days, but for Al Jazeera that's the whole point of doing television. When the election came, that was all that was planned for the show. From about halfway through that first year, they liked what we were doing and committed to relaunching it. [The program will be launched in the spring, though the title hasn't been released yet.] JW: In your broadcast experience are there any journalistic differences at Al Jazeera, like are they more or less open to story ideas, or are there differences in staffing levels and resources? AL: The first thing that must be said about Al Jazeera is - I've been working in private and public broadcasting for almost 20 years - and I've never even heard of a broadcaster that has anything approaching the philosophy of Al Jazeera. It's very straightforward philosophy and Tony Burman [managing director] has been articulating it very clearly in his case to the Canadian people for why we need Al Jazeera here. It's a place I've always wanted to work. Very simply, it is an unabashedly ambitious project to reverse the information flows on the planet and let people of the Global South give their version of events to people in the richest countries; to give a voice to the voiceless, and to tell truth to power. Those corporate concepts speak to the original and critical role of journalism in functioning democracies, especially as we can see so starkly these days, the political classes of most of the countries on earth were kind of all singing from the same song book when it came to the uniform policies and ideologies that have been locked-in in the last decades and it's led us to a staggering global collapse. Someone has to actually provide a check and balance on power and multinational media corporations with their huge resources and power should be that countervailing force to the way power operates in the world and the orthodoxies that it embraces. In many countries they haven't been. The notion that you work for a company where the corporate mission statement is to try to represent the views of the Global South and try to give those people in those parts of the world their own megaphone and to challenge power in a principled and rigorous, factual way I think is tremendously important right now. ... I think there is a huge scope in North America to play a similar role to be a voice for people who don't have one under the current system. ... Something's a little iffy in claiming to be a voice for anyone, but certainly in television it's easy to hand people a microphone and just allow a huge range of humans who never been on TV to tell their own stories. JW: Do you think that if Al Jazeera is allowed to come into Canada and get some footing in North America, do you think that would affect the other Western news broadcasts? AL: I really do. I think Al Jazeera being on cable in Canada would be very helpful to other broadcasters, simply because when you talk to people who really care about the news and consume a lot of news, there has been growing frustration for years now in the extremely myopic character of Canadian TV news. Bureaus have been closing and commitments to international newsgathering, from newspapers and TV stations alike, the commitment has been dwindling. I think that the Canadian audience is extremely globally minded. It's one of the aspects of our national culture and character that we are internationalists by default - many of us, if not all of us. People are craving news from all corners of the globe. As the crisis we're in is utterly global and the period that we're in is one of tremendous interconnectedness of policies and their impacts, people are desperate to get a clear sense from the ground in other parts of the world of what's going on and how events are affecting people's lives. And they're not getting it in the way they want it from the private broadcaster or the public broadcaster and for Al Jazeera with its 69 bureaus and truly global newsgathering machine to set up shop in this country, it will really raise the bar on international coverage. And I think that the other networks will be forced to respond by upping the ante in their international coverage and I think that would be tremendously healthy for Canadian journalism and Canadian democracy. JW: Within the journalism community, other reporters that you know of, what's the feeling about Al Jazeera? Is there any hesitation from other journalists to join in or accept it as a legitimate broadcaster? AL: No. Here's the weird thing about Al Jazeera. You have the propaganda about Al Jazeera, which really came from the Bush administration in the early days after the initial invasion of Afghanistan and really grew during the invasion of Iraq. And it was taken up by various right-wing interest groups with their own axes to grind in a period that we're finally coming out of globally that was defined by this deeply Islamophobic so-called war on terror. And so that propaganda coming from the Bush administration was amplified by various groups in society who have big microphones, from Fox News spreading outward. There is a consciousness of the Al Jazeera brand, which is utterly false and doesn't correspond to reality, yet it is what most people know of Al Jazeera because they haven't been able to watch it on TV in North America. So when people actually watch Al Jazeera English for the first time, a lot of people are bemused. They're wondering why it's not beheadings all the time because the stereotypes of Al Jazeera are so intense and have been so well disseminated. In fact, it's a very serious, grown- up, truly global, high-quality global news network. For people looking for this controversial, scandalous and edgy thing, people are sometimes disappointed because they think there is something elicit about Al Jazeera because of what they've heard. Whenever people actually get a chance to watch the channel - and happily now there's an extremely good streaming service, which we can talk about later, that allows people to watch it if they have a high- speed Internet connection - you watch Al Jazeera for one hourly newscast and you say, "OK, this is a serious, truly global news network." And that's all it is. It's very hard for people to maintain those stereotypes about Al Jazeera if they actually watch the channel. So this is the challenge. Journalists as a class tend to be fairly lazy - I don't think that's a secret, I've worked in media long enough to know that - but we also tend to be news junkies. So the journalist class in Canada, most of it, has checked in on Al Jazeera and ... you find that most journalists are up to speed on what Al Jazeera is doing and a huge number of them therefore are huge fans. ... The actual quality of the journalism - the double sourcing of all facts, the careful use of language, the commitment to showing all sides and all perspectives on stories - it's all there and you see that as soon as you watch it for five minutes, it's as clear as day. I think most journalists in Canada, who have taken the time to watch Al Jazeera probably want to work there too. Because for people who really want to do news about the rest of the world, there is nowhere like Al Jazeera. JW: Do you think that the stigma that Al Jazeera carries in English and the English world is playing into why we don't have it already in Canada? AL: Oh, there's no question. When Al Jazeera Arabic applied for carriage here a few years ago, the members of the CRTC were subjected to a kind of fear campaign in the climate of global terrorism anxiety. Al Jazeera was painted as something that it's not. And in the compromise position, the CRTC did authorize Al Jazeera for carriage in Canada, but they placed conditions on it that are so ridiculous that no cable operator could make it financially feasible to do it. JW: You said you wanted to come back to Livestation? AL: Livestation's been a real turning point in the ability of people to watch Al Jazeera in those few places in the world - let's remember we're talking about it's available in over 100 countries and in the minority number of countries in the world where Al Jazeera is not available on cable or satellite, we happen to be in one of the two main counties that can't get Al Jazeera. JW: What's the other one? AL: The United States. I think we're two of the most important media markets in the world and we have been deprived. JW: Is there anything that you wanted to add? AL: I think it's worth saying that this an extremely important moment in Canadian media where we have the potential arrival of a new player that will really, I think, open the floodgates for international news, which is incredibly important right now more so than at any other point in history. I do expect that there will be a public debate because of a lot of the, in my view, entirely illegitimate bad press that Al Jazeera has received from folks with a very clear political and ideological reason for tarnishing Al Jazeera's image. We need to speak up. People need to go to IWantAJE.ca and figure out how to watch the channel. All you need to do is challenge your assumptions for a couple of newscasts and you'll have a very clear sense. And if we can get people doing that I think Canadians will be extraordinarily well-served and I do think that they will be a ripple effect in other media. The same people who spoke out against Al Jazeera Arabic have already made it clear that they're going to be campaigning against Al Jazeera English. I think rabble readers and others who are interested in getting this important source of global news on television sets for our fellow Canadians really need to engage with this because I think there are a few Canadian journalists who have moved to Al Jazeera and we're doing it because we think that this network has an intense public service value to people all over the world. Canadians need to be part of it and we need to approach this as a campaign. I think once Canada can watch Al Jazeera, there will be a tremendous opportunity for Al Jazeera to air in the States and that will broaden the horizons of people in a very important country with one of the most claustrophobic media cultures on earth and I think that will be an even bigger public service ultimately. Jenn is editor of rabble.ca's In Cahoots section and is also a reporter for a community newspaper in rural Ontario. She can often be found at home with her cats, wobbling about a lake in her kayak or reading a subversive magazine in the downtown laundromat. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Mar 3 15:02:03 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 14:02:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] CIA destroyed 92 tapes of suspect questioning, confinement In-Reply-To: <2D8879A8D0134E6DBB728E77ED33F846@twubby.com> Message-ID: <45129559.3339591236117723995.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cia3-2009mar03,0,4366945.story Los Angeles Times ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? March 3, 2009 CIA destroyed 92 tapes of suspect questioning, confinement The videotapes, which depicted harsh methods used to question 'high value' Al Qaeda suspects, were ordered destroyed in 2005, government lawyers acknowledge. Washington ? The CIA destroyed 92 videotapes depicting harsh interrogation and confinement of "high value" Al Qaeda suspects, government lawyers disclosed Monday. Meantime, a long-running criminal probe of the tapes' destruction inched toward a conclusion that is unlikely to result in charges against CIA employees, three sources told the Washington Post. Monday's acknowledgment involved a civil lawsuit filed in New York by the American Civil Liberties Union, which sought details of the interrogation programs that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed," said the letter submitted in that case by Acting U.S. Atty. Lev Dassin, the Associated Press reported. "Ninety-two videotapes were destroyed." Then-Directorate of Operations division chief Jose Rodriguez ordered the destruction in November 2005, as scrutiny of the CIA and its treatment of terrorism suspects intensified. The agency's then-director, Michael V. Hayden, argued that the tapes posed "a serious security risk" because they contained the identities of CIA participants in Al Qaeda interrogations. Federal prosecutor John H. Durham, who was appointed last year to investigate why the tapes were destroyed and whether any court directives were violated, has nearly completed formal interviews with all the key characters. Rodriguez has not yet been questioned, sources told the Post. Durham appears unlikely to secure criminal indictments against Rodriguez and other agency personnel involved in the conduct, the sources said, and if he did, such cases are notoriously difficult to prove. At issue are recordings that chronicle the interrogation of two senior Al Qaeda members, Zayn al Abidin Mohamed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, while they underwent a simulated drowning practice known as waterboarding [a.k.a. torture] and in less hostile moments as they interacted with agency employees or sat in their prison cells, according to government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the materials remain classified. Other questions remain, including a request by U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema for information to prepare for the sentencing of Zacarias Moussaoui at about around the time that CIA officials made the decision to order the tapes' destruction, the sources said. Tom Carson, a spokesman for Durham, declined to comment other than to say that the investigation is ongoing. ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said the CIA should be held in contempt of court for withholding the information for so long. "The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systematic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court's order," Singh said. CIA officials rejected the assertion that the agency had sought to hide evidence. "If anyone thinks it's agency policy to impede the enforcement of American law, they simply don't know the facts," spokesman George E. Little said. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Mar 3 15:02:48 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 14:02:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Cynthia McKinney: Ruminations on President Obama's Tenure Thus Far and "Acceptable Punditry" In-Reply-To: <7FDDC73582A549C991547B46ADA6C3A6@twubby.com> Message-ID: <976029963.3339901236117768844.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> March 2, 2009 Cynthia McKinney:? Ruminations on President Obama's Tenure Thus Far and ?Acceptable Punditry? I have played around with this idea for hours now, on whether or not to write this piece.? But the events of the last few hours, I believe, mandate that I raise my voice once again. I have read and re-read President Obama's Joint Congressional Address.? All of the "acceptable punditry" have spoken and given the President glowing reviews.? And so, to them and the population that still believes in them, "All is right with the world."? But for the rest of us, who refuse to swallow the pill that puts us into the Matrix, a good dose of reality is strongly called for. But reality is not what we're getting, not even from one of the national columnists whom I've met, Maureen Dowd. I think Maureen Dowd characterized it as "Spock at the Bridge."? Now, being the Trekkie that I am, that headline grabbed my attention.? I nearly gagged, however, when I got to the line supposedly from President Obama calling President Bush to proclaim, "'I?m ending your stupid war.' Mission Relinquished." Why write things like this now that it is clear that the Obama Administration is continuing the Bush policies for missile strikes inside Pakistan; torture; rendition for torture; public release of Bush Administration e-mails; illegal wiretaps; status of prisoners at the U.S. base in Bagram, Afghanistan; and workplace immigration raids? For the record, President Obama is also pursuing Bush policies on Iran and Israel.? As recently as yesterday, President Obama's Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, responded when asked whether Iran was capable of building an atom bomb.? Admiral Mullen replied, "We think they do, quite frankly." Dowd concludes her ?Spock? piece by imbuing the President with "a Vulcan-like logic and detachment."? But I think the detachment of ?acceptable? political punditry from the real world is what is totally lamentable.? In the process, they render themselves irrelevant. So, it's clear.? I'm about to step into marshy soil here, by noting that I found 19 questionable Obama policies or statements in his Joint Congressional speech delivered three days before his announcement that upon the end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq, up to 50,000 U.S. troops could remain through 2011, after the "pullout." And while various "mint" operations are peddling Obama "Change" coins for purchase, complete with a certificate of authenticity, I wade further into the muck by noting that the President continues the giveaway of our hard-earned coins to an economic team intent on keeping mismanagement structures in place, serving economic ends that do not constitute the common good.? I would refer readers to the many statements that I issued during the final days of our Power to the People Green Party Presidential campaign about re-creating an economic system truly and finally owned by the people, operating in our interest.? It is possible to do that.? All it requires is enough political will. But what forces me out into the open marshland of "non-mainstream" political punditry has to do with the latest Obama "pullout:"? the decision to withdraw from the April 2009 Geneva United Nations World Conference Against Racism, dubbed Durban II. We heard the same palaver in 2001 from the same forces inside our country, basically that a discussion of Zionism, in the context of such a Conference, would be anti-Semitic; therefore all the world's dispossessed and marginalized people must continue to suffer and sacrifice while muting their grievances so that no discussion of Israel would take place on the world stage in this context. Well, in 2001, upon hearing this line of reasoning, I went to then-Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Chairwoman, Eddie Bernice Johnson, and asked if I could be appointed as the CBC Task Force Chair on Durban.? The non-participation argument was also a handy "peg on the track" with the potential of derailing many conversations, including a real discussion about the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the issue of reparations.? Respectful of the excellent preparatory work that had been done, I wanted to avoid that outcome. Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson made the appointment and I led a delegation of 5 Members of Congress to Durban. The current Chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Barbara Lee, was a member of my delegation to Durban.? From my position on the International Relations Committee, we successfully argued for U.S. participation in that Conference at a Hearing designed to quash our effort.? We not only met with then-United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, we also presented her with the untold story of COINTELPRO and the remaining unsolved deaths of its Black Panther Party member victims, commissioned by me and written by Kathleen Cleaver and Paul Wolf.? Our CBC Chairwoman made a beautiful statement of why it was imperative that the United States join with our Native American and Latino brothers and sisters and with oppressed peoples all over the planet and not only make our statement of solidarity, but also institute policies at the Congress that recognized their needs.? It is incorrect to say that the United States was not present at Durban.? We were there and only when the duties of Congress pressed us to return to Washington, DC did the Bush Administration make a big deal about anti-Semitism and then staged its phony walk out.? The United States delegation of Congressional Black Caucus Members was there to support the phenomenal work of U.S. activists and the African and Caribbean delegations, in particular.? I think everyone in Durban was moved by the plight of the Dalits in India and understood better the surging political power of Afro-Latinos. Durban was a clear victory for the world's marginalized peoples, including those of us who reside inside the United States.? But, when the Congressional Delegation returned to the U.S., there was no time for celebration because the tragedy of September 11, 2001 unfolded. What has happened in the interim has devastated the very people that Durban was designed to address, unfortunately, much of it due to U.S. policy.? Now is not the time for the United States to shrink from this call. In order to prevail in Durban, I had to go toe to toe with the Anti-Defamation League and Members of Congress Tom Lantos and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who, among many other Members of Congress, vociferously denounced Durban.? This was something that I did because I felt it was the right thing to do.? Given Israel's recent actions in Gaza that have brought upon it the world's opprobrium, I can imagine that this is the last point in time that Israel might want to revisit Durban.? Israel has said that it will not attend the Conference in Geneva. Early last year, a government official announced Canada's decision to not attend Durban II after deeming the Conference to be anti-Israel.? Shortly afterwards, France followed suit with French President Nicolas Sarkozy stating that the "excesses of 2001" transformed the Conference "into an intolerable platform against the State of Israel."? I would note also that France must be particularly loath to discuss racism now with what is happening in Guadeloupe and Martinique as I write this piece.? And remembering that Paris, itself, was literally on fire just a few years ago. The UK, which has been under severe racial tests with Asians rebelling openly in the streets since Durban 2001, and the Netherlands have both threatened to withdraw their support for the Conference if a "negative spiral" of events takes place.? Interestingly, these remarks came at the same time as the release of a European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance report which found that the tone of Dutch political and public debate on immigrant integration, racism, and other issues relevant to ethnic minorities, had experienced a "dramatic deterioration." So, we shouldn't be surprised that the racism stress test is revealing cracks and fissures in human relations.? But the United States and President Obama should not shield them or this country from these stresses.? This Conference gives us the opportunity to get the issues out in the open and to deal with them.? That's the way to put them to an end.? The world might have changed because of events occurring in September 2001, but it wasn't because the United Nations successfully convened the World Conference Against Racism. And now that I am as completely in the middle of the marsh as I was as completely in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea when my boat was rammed by the Israelis, let me make an observation about one aspect of marshes.? I have witnessed the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets on the Savannah, Georgia marshland.? And the most beautiful rainbows.? Being away from the glass and concrete can give one a better perspective. I observed last year that I thought U.S. voters went to the polls in large numbers to try and regain a bit of dignity lost during the eight years of outright banditry played out in our names, with our resources, against our interests.? But I was reminded at the recently adjourned Transpartisan Alliance convention in Colorado that dignity will not come without first an acknowledgment of the truth:? with truth we can have justice; and with justice we can have peace; and it is only with peace that we can truly have dignity.? Something as easy as a vote, alone, is not going to be enough to wrest us from this mess that has been wrought. This morning, I sent the following message to the White House: ?Mr. President, it was with great disappointment that I read of your decision to pull out of Durban II.? Even the Bush Administration, under pressure from the Congressional Black Caucus, provided some funding for the United Nations effort and sent staff to support the Congressional delegation that attended the Conference.? I was there.? I was head of the Congressional Black Caucus Task Force that negotiated Congressional and Administration engagement on this issue.? There is still time for the U.S. to participate.? Your decision is not irrevocable.? I would encourage you to please reconsider this decision and not only attend the Conference, but also provide funding to ensure its success.? I implore the Members of the Congressional Black Caucus to spearhead the participation of the United States in the United Nation's World Conference Against Racism:? to boldly go where we have gone before.? Dr. King reminded us that "the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."? On this issue, President Obama has shown us his measure.? I hope that the Congressional Black Caucus and the Progressive Caucus and the Democratic Caucus can show us, oh, so much more. From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Mar 3 15:12:35 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 14:12:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Israel lobby fails to block key Obama intelligence appointment In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1720378584.3346381236118355523.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Israel lobby fails to block key Obama intelligence appointment Paul Woodward, Online Correspondent ? Last Updated: March 01. 2009 9:56AM UAE / March 1. 2009 5:56AM GMT In Washington, the Israel lobby, a loose conglomeration of organisations and individuals who throw their weight behind what they perceive as Israel's strategic interests, has until recently enjoyed an unparalleled level of political influence. Nowadays, its power is clearly waning. The appointment of veteran diplomat and uber-realist Chas Freeman as chairman of the highly influential National Intelligence Council is seen by many as a major setback for the lobby. On Friday, Muckety reported: "Despite intense, behind-the-scenes lobbying by some Jewish groups, the Obama administration yesterday tapped veteran diplomat Chas W Freeman Jr to head the National Intelligence Council in what may be its most controversial appointment yet. "As chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Freeman will be responsible for producing the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) - the classified document given to the president and senior intelligence officials that analyses threats to US security." In The National , Tony Karon observed: "If Israel and its backers are to persuade the Obama administration to accept their views on Iran, it is a less than helpful for the NIE be the province of a sceptical, independent thinker who believes that Israel's interests are not necessarily those of the US. Renowned as a brilliant diplomat and analyst, even-handed in his assessments of the Middle East and not bound by the Israel-first consensus that the Israel lobby has fought so hard to establish in US Middle East policy, Mr Freeman was denounced by Steve Rosen, a former top American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) official, as 'a profoundly disturbing appointment'. "Last October Mr Freeman castigated President Bush for 'writing blank cheques to Israel, which harms it by depriving Israelis of any immediate incentive to make the hard choices they must make to achieve long-term security for themselves and their state? it benefits no one for the United States to continue to underwrite the injustices, indignities, and humiliations of the occupation'. "His appointment was all the more remarkable given such statements, and the ire they provoked among Israel's traditionally influential backers." In Arab News , Barbara Ferguson wrote: "Pro-Israeli publications are attacking his appointment as something close to betrayal - Why? He's been called everything from 'a Saudi puppet,' 'Chas of Arabia' to being 'linked to Saudi cash'. "The 'link' goes back to 2007, when as president of the Washington-based Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) he accepted a $1 million donation from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal for the council. "Not only is he is being attacked for being pro-Saudi, but also for his calls for a more balanced US foreign policy between Israel and the Arab world. "Back in 2007, Freeman addressed the pro-Israeli Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, and said: 'Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them.' " At Nieman Watchdog , Dan Froomkin said: "Chas Freeman's selection to be chairman of the National Intelligence Council (first reported by Laura Rozen of Foreignpolicy.com) is notable not just for his surprising (and, to some, disturbing) even-handedness about the Middle East. "The man is one of a rare breed: He is a Washington insider, and yet he is also a ferociously independent thinker, a super-realist, an iconoclast, a provocateur and a gadfly. He has, as I wrote in a Niemanwatchdog.org article about him in 2006, spent a goodly part of the last 10 years raising questions that otherwise might never get answered - or even asked - because they're too embarrassing, awkward, or difficult. "For him to be put in charge of what Rozen calls 'the intelligence community's primary big-think shop and the lead body in producing national intelligence estimates' is about the most emphatic statement the Obama Administration could possibly make that it won't succumb to the kind of submissive intelligence-community groupthink that preceded the war in Iraq." In a speech titled Can American leadership be restored? delivered in 2007 after Hamas had won Palestinian parliamentary elections and Israel had imposed economic sanctions on the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, Mr Freeman said: "The Palestine problem cannot be solved by the use of force; it requires much more than the diplomacy-free foreign policy we have practiced since 9/11. Israel is not only not managing this problem; it is severely aggravating it. Denial born of political correctness will not cure this fact. Israel has shown - not surprisingly - that, if we offer nothing but unquestioning support and political protection for whatever it does, it will feel no incentive to pay attention to either our interests or our advice. Hamas is showing that if we offer it nothing but unreasoning hostility and condemnation, it will only stiffen its position and seek allies among our enemies. In both cases, we forfeit our influence for no gain. "There will be no negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians, no peace, and no reconciliation between them - and there will be no reduction in anti-American terrorism - until we have the courage to act on our interests. These are not the same as those of any party in the region, including Israel, and we must talk with all parties, whatever we think of them or their means of struggle. Refusal to reason with those whose actions threaten injury to oneself, one's friends, and one's interests is foolish, feckless, and self-defeating. That is why we it is past time for an active and honest discussion with both Israel and the government Palestinians have elected, which - in an irony that escapes few abroad - is the only democratically elected government in the Arab world." Beyond Hotmail ? see what else you can do with Windows Live. Find out more! From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Mar 3 15:19:12 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 14:19:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] The Obama Crossroads: Neo-Liberal Coup or Responsible Government In-Reply-To: <0C1F9A91794A48379AF02433E2028918@twubby.com> Message-ID: <2098531750.3350351236118752753.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The Canadian Charger www.thecanadiancharger.com February 14, 2009 SPECIAL: The Obama Crossroads: Neo-Liberal Coup or Responsible Government By Dr. John McMurtry When the U.S. Treasury gave away $700 billion to Wall Street banks with no strings attached in October of 2008, the Obama team gave a green light. A popular insurgence was soon silenced, with public wrath directed instead at the U.S. auto producers (and unions) who followed with a request for $25 billion. The auto companies ended up with a loan of about 1/50th the amount that went to Wall Street as a gift. The subtext message was disturbing. Wall Street firms produce nothing, no-one is required to explain what they are doing with all the public money they received, and no criteria of public benefit are applied. With the Obama team onside, rule by the fast-money men is set to continue. The near-trillion quick hand-out of citizen debt to the bankers with no conditions has remained a non-issue. Even the shift from buying Wall Street assets to direct capital infusion has raised no questions. Obama's subsequent appointments of his economic and financial directors follow in line. Those now in charge of the U.S. money-printing machine (alias the world's reserve currency) and of the financially hollowed-out system that was once the U.S. economy have not really changed. Even the education cabinet post has been filled by what his Bush predecessor says is "a kindred spirit". He (Arne Duncan) has enthusiastically implemented the Bush school program in Chicago - testing children instead of teaching them, firing lots of teachers, pressuring test-failures out of school, and degrading public education with corporate-quiz mechanisms in place of sound learning methods. The Number One Issue: Who Now Runs The Economy and Finance Obama's new U.S. Treasury Secretary is Tim Geithner, a former chief deputy of his Democrat predecessors at Treasury - Robert Rubin (who presided in the first Clinton government and later Citigroup over the "new financial instruments" that have subsequently wrecked the U.S. and world economy), and Larry Summers (who as Secretary of the Treasury in 1999 tore down barriers between commercial and investment banks in the deregulation frenzy that set up the Wall Street crash). Geithner originally came from Kissinger and Associates - "a bipartisan man" - before moving on from deputy at Treasury to head of the New York Federal Bank Reserve. His main qualifying distinction - not mentioned in press releases - has been as chair of a central committee of the BIS (Bank of International Settlements), a body of chief-executive international bankers which has been the unseen point-man of neoliberalism over the last 25 years. The BIS first cut its teeth on collecting debt reparations from Germany which seeded the Nazi Party - for which the BIS later also stored stolen gold. In between these assignments, Geithner served the then-collapsing IMF as director of Policy Development and Review. In short, Geithner is an international money-man following in the tracks of what has preceded him. Behind all the hoopla of "Change We Need" and "The People's President" lies the same monetocracy. Geithner assisted in the massive bank giveaway and its sequel of another further 25 billion plus 300-billion credit to Citigroup, a Rockefeller bank led by Rubin. Neither he nor Summers, the new economic czar, lent anything but support when the flood of public money into the Wall Street hole more than doubled before Christmas from the original $700 billion to $1.5 trillion with no more conditions than before. The biggest heist ever from the public treasury, some might say an extortionate swindle, has been backed by the threat of "give it over, or Americans won't get credit". No-one appears to notice the fraudulent pretext on which it is based. Who needs credit from the private banks when the public and government already back them for any credit they have got? Why pour public money into private-bank hands to lend money they do not have and are not lending when they get it? ? More Dangerous to Our Liberties than Standing Armies Former Federal Reserve chief, Allen Greenspan, observes that "sovereign credit and guarantees put in place during the crisis [i.e., new government money to private banks] is now estimated at 7 trillion". Yet after 1.5 trillion U.S. public dollars thrown at the Wall Street hole, not one homeowner has been relieved of bankruptcy proceedings, the banks do not lend to productive enterprises or even themselves, and no-one tells anyone in America what's been done with all the public money. The idea of a central public bank system controlling the currency and credit constitutionally held by governments and lending it for purposes that serve the public interest (e.g., social infrastructure, housing, environment and education) is as old as the modern state. But it has been dinned out of citizens' minds. In fact, the only democratically accountable and efficient banking system is one in which skyrocketing non-productive costs, unaccountable debt creations and pyramid schemes are made impossible inside the law. Yet most are enslaved to a false double dogma - first, that unaccountable big banks creating compound-interest debts for everyone including governments are economically necessary; and, second, that they must be left free to leverage, mix and repackage debt assets as they please without the money to back the credit or capital they allocate. Statesmen since Thomas Jefferson have not been so foolish. "Banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies", Jefferson pragmatically observed. "Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power [of credit] should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs". Instead, the "monied aristocracy" and its servants are now loaded with public cash even as their vast global pyramid schemes have cratered. The consistent policy to prevent what bankers themselves call "moral hazard" is to leave them to their market fate where their plundering of the world with toxic financial products has poisoned them. The responsible public solution to "keep credit flowing" is for government to keep its control over currency and credit issue to direct loans to public and productive purposes. Let the banks lend money they can back with 100% reserves, and manage as their private depositors allow them to - what in fact the best economists have recommended since the 1929 Crash. Yet even conditions of public service by the banks loaded with public cash have not surfaced to debate. Instead a Bush-Obama transition has handed over the keys of the U.S. Treasury to the very coterie of neoliberal money manipulators who have hollowed out the country's wealth and much of the world. As long as they run the show, the people and the real economy continue down the hole. ? Eco-Economy and Social Justice in Reverse Obama claims that he is bringing "fresh thinking" with Larry Summers as chief of economic policy formation. If you think he can lead a new program of productive economics, employment, non-oil energy, and environmentally friendly manufacture - what every sane person wants and what Obama hope promises - consider the track record of his economics czar. Before becoming Clinton's second-term Secretary of the Treasury where he mentored Geithner, Larry Summers had distinguished himself as an outspoken neoliberal advocating the loot-and-pollute globalization that has brought cumulative ecological as well as financial catastrophe. In a leaked Memorandum as Chief Economist of the World Bank, Summers urged "more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]" for three reasons (all his words): 1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. - - - I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. 2) I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. - - [We should prefer] world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste. 3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. - - - While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable. Summers then explains where he stands on "deregulation" versus "moral and social concerns" in an epitome of neoliberal life blindness: "The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) is that it could be turned around and used against every Bank proposal for liberalization." Summers here lets the cat out of the bag on what "liberalization" demands to be sacrificed to it - "goods", "moral reasons" and "social concerns", all the values Obama says he stands for. After the memo became public, Brazil's Secretary of the Environment Jose Lutzenburger wrote back to Summers: "Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane..." Mr. Lutzenburger was fired. Summers has become President Obama's chief economic adviser. ? No Roots in Adam Smith or the New Deal Adam Smith's vision of the free market did not envisage exporting toxic wastes to the poor to save rich polluters from cleaning up their act. When the market's "invisible hand" was briefly annunciated by Smith, he was clear that the free market was only in "tangible goods useful to mankind". The neoliberal school invokes Smith, but simply erases the productive economy from its models where only money coordinates count. For them, the New Deal is an enemy. When banks failed and credit dried up, Roosevelt's administration ploughed all the public money into public works and productive employment, not into banks' coffers . One New Deal program, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), became the largest employer in the nation financing the arts as well as public infrastructures. The New Deal also started old-age and unemployment insurance, loans to local authorities for slum clearance, and guaranteed income to the indigent - the latter program scrapped by Summers under Clinton. Even now with promises of new major spending on "infrastructures", we may observe it is targeted to upgrade highways, computers and airports rather than to build and protect social and ecological life support systems. ? The Turn to Responsible Government The imperatives are clear. Return constitutional powers over currency and credit to accountable public authority, and away from private banks free- riding on public cash and guarantees for no productive or public goal. Let credit and the allocation of capital flow in correspondence to productive function for what is needed - that without which the life capacity of citizens is reduced. Allocate new capital and interest charges to meet the greatest economic challenge in history - the conversion from fossil to clean renewable fuels, and the re-tooling of manufacture towards ecologically coherent industry, both of which massively create jobs. The eco-energy rescue of the economy with the money for it to come from a responsible central public bank system is a conjuncture made in heaven. It has become politically possible with Wall Street's corrupt collapse, and economically imperative with America and the world facing a life-and-death policy crossroads. Canada's long-serving Prime Minister, MacKenzie King, was no radical. But he realized that "once a nation parts with control of its credit, it matters not who makes the laws - - -Privatized money control is the single greatest threat to democratic freedom". Thus was born the public Bank of Canada in 1935 with statutory public functions of "regulating credit and currency" and of "making loans and advances" to governments. Since the Reagan-Mulroney turn, however, public banks and government have been bent into service to the deregulating, money-leveraging and casino speculations of the borderless money party - all on the back of Canada's social programs, its manufacturing base, its integrity of ecology and resource bases, and secure employment of citizens in good jobs and life-serving vocations. ? Presidential Brand Change in Place of Economic Reform Is Obama's administration only a presidential brand change? Is the same rule of money, waste, toxic commodities and foreign occupations to continue? Observe closely Obama's building of a "new job-creating energy- efficient economy". The image has certainly changed, but the reality remains that a Washington-led carcinogenic capitalism continues to cumulatively strip the earth of its species and resources, impoverish life vocations and the poor, and allocate public policy and wealth for decoupled money multiplication, industrial agribusiness and armed forces with no committed life function. America's President is where the buck stops, but the buck has been passed on to the people who helped end the New Deal, deregulated the financial sector, and broke the wheels of the productive economy. Neoliberal religion still rules. In a lecture at the University of Toronto a few years ago as Harvard's President, Larry Summers, the new chief of economic planning for Obama, proclaimed his credo as "the essential truth" that all "basic value including "literacy is linked to market growth". This is the ultimate neo- liberal equation - More Money-Value Exchanges = More Market Growth = More Basic Values. The social and ecological goods and resources on which every life depends, the most basic values that exist, are simply blinkered out. Since fresh air to breathe, stable climate cycles and life spaces to live and work securely do not compute to this life-blind economics, money- sequence and commodity growth continue to depredate and destabilize human and ecological life systems with no accountability to their requirements. Perpetually turning leveraged money into more money for private money possessors with no life standards is, in the end, the logic of a global cancer. ? Obama's First Crisis: Forgetting the Past The most instructive moments in America's history have been forgotten - for example, the 1776 American Revolution itself which Benjamin Franklin said was most of all to wrest back control over the issuing of money from the private Bank of England; Abraham Lincoln's issue of "greenbacks" to go over the head of the New York bankers' demand of 17% compound interest to fund the war for the Union; and FDR's historic New Deal which guaranteed minimum economic security and put people back to work in rebuilding the real economy. Yet not even the Depression has demanded the economic reset now required to resolve the coinciding energy, environmental, employment and financial crises confronting America and the world. As with soaps, so with Presidents. Sales pitches metamorphize reality into miracles with nothing in fact changed. We are conditioned to the magical thinking - the pervasive images and parables of super cleansers and cosmetics, new vehicles of transfiguring power, aphrodisiac doorways to paradise, redeeming graces for the rejected, and people who pretend to care for us. Is the Obama presidency merely a macro variation on the theme? Already many believe that Obama will save the day without policies to do so, even Europeans gushing over his hope of a climate solution. A deeper turn is required, as events will show. Dr. John McMurtry, FRSC, University Professor Emeritus, University of Guelph, Canada is a member of the Canadian Charger's Board of Contributors www.thecanadiancharger.com From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Mar 3 15:28:30 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 14:28:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Monbiot: This revolting trade in human lives is an incentive to lock people up In-Reply-To: <64C23830-DFD6-41DC-A584-315FFCD2AC14@telus.net> Message-ID: <274899736.3356351236119310322.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The Guardian???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? 3 March 2009 This revolting trade in human lives is an incentive to lock people up The inmate population has soared since Britain started running prisons for profit. Little wonder lobbyists want Titan jails George Monbiot It's a staggering case; more staggering still that it has scarcely been mentioned on this side of the ocean. Last week two judges in Pennsylvania were convicted of jailing some 2,000 children in exchange for bribes from private prison companies. Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan sent children to jail for offences so trivial that some of them weren't even crimes. A 15-year-old called Hillary Transue got three months for creating a spoof web page ridiculing her school's assistant principal. Ciavarella sent Shane Bly, then 13, to boot camp for trespassing in a vacant building. He gave a 14-year-old, Jamie Quinn, 11 months in prison for slapping a friend during an argument, after the friend slapped her. The judges were paid $2.6m by companies belonging to the Mid-Atlantic Youth Services Corp for helping to fill its jails. This is what happens when public services are run for profit. It's an extreme example, but it hints at the wider consequences of the trade in human lives created by private prisons. In the US and the UK they have a powerful incentive to ensure that the number of prisoners keeps rising. The US is more corrupt than the UK, but it is also more transparent. There the lobbyists demanding and receiving changes to judicial policy might be exposed, and corrupt officials identified and prosecuted. The UK, with a strong tradition of official secrecy and a weak tradition of scrutiny and investigative journalism, has no such safeguards. The corrupt judges were paid by the private prisons not only to increase the number of child convicts but also to shut down a competing prison run by the public sector. Taking bribes to bang up kids might be novel; shutting public facilities to help private companies happens - on both sides of the water - all the time. The Wall Street Journal has shown how, as a result of lobbying by the operators, private jails in Mississippi and California are being paid for non-existent prisoners. The prison corporations have been guaranteed a certain number of inmates. If the courts fail to produce enough convicts, they get their money anyway. This outrages taxpayers in both states, which have cut essential public services to raise these funds. But there is a simple means of resolving this problem: you replace ghost inmates with real ones. As the Journal, seldom associated with raging anti-capitalism, observes: "Prison expansion [has] spawned a new set of vested interests with stakes in keeping prisons full and in building more ... The result has been a financial and political bazaar, with convicts in stripes as the prize." Even as crime declines, lawmakers are pressed by their sponsors to increase the rate of imprisonment. The US has, by a very long way, the world's highest proportion of people behind bars: 756 prisoners per 100,000 people, just over 1% of the adult population. Similarly wealthy countries have around one-tenth of this rate of imprisonment. Like most of its really bad ideas, the last Conservative government imported private jails from the US. As Stephen Nathan, author of a forthcoming book about prison privatisation in the UK, has shown, the notion was promoted by the home affairs select committee, which in 1986 visited prisons run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). When the corporation told them that private provision in the US improved prison standards and delivered good value for money, the committee members failed to check its claims. They recommended that the government should put the construction and management of prisons out to tender "as an experiment". Encouraged by the committee's report, the CCA set up a consortium in Britain with two Conservative party donors, Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd and John Mowlem & Co, to promote privately financed prisons over here. The first privately run prison in the UK, Wolds, was opened by the Danish security company Group 4 in 1992. In 1993, before it had had a chance to evaluate this experiment, the government announced that all new prisons would be built and run by private companies. The Labour party, then in opposition, was outraged. John Prescott promised that "Labour will take back private prisons into public ownership - it is the only safe way forward." Jack Straw stated that "it is not appropriate for people to profit out of incarceration. This is surely one area where a free market certainly does not exist." He too promised to "bring these prisons into proper public control and run them directly as public services". But during his first seven weeks in office, Straw renewed one private prison contract and launched two new ones. A year later he announced that all new prisons in England and Wales would be built and run by private companies, under the private finance initiative (PFI). Today the UK has a higher proportion of prisoners in private institutions than the US. This is the only country in Europe whose jails are run on this model. So has prison privatisation here influenced judicial policy? As we discovered during the recent lobbying scandal in the House of Lords, there's no way of knowing. Unlike civilised nations, the UK has no register of lobbyists; we are not even entitled to know which lobbyists ministers have met. But there are some clues. The former home secretary, John Reid, previously in charge of prison provision, has become a consultant to the private prison operator G4S. The government is intending to commission a series of massive Titan jails under PFI. Most experts on prisons expect them to be disastrous, taking inmates further away from their families (which reduces the chances of rehabilitation) and creating vast warrens in which all the social diseases of imprisonment will fester. Only two groups want them built: ministers and the prison companies - they offer excellent opportunities to rack up profits. And the very nature of PFI, which commits the government to paying for services for 25 or 30 years - whether or not they are still required - creates a major incentive to ensure that prison numbers don't fall. The beast must be fed. And there's another line of possible evidence. In the two countries whose economies most resemble the UK's - Germany and France - the prison population has risen quite slowly. France has 96 inmates per 100,000 people, an increase of 14% since 1992. Germany has 89 prisoners per 100,000 - 25% more than in 1992 but 9% less than in 2001. But the UK now locks up 151 out of every 100,000 inhabitants: 73% more than in 1992 and 20% more than in 2001. Yes, our politicians have barely come down from the trees, yes we are still governed out of the offices of the Daily Mail, but it would be foolish to dismiss the likely influence of the private prison industry. This revolting trade in human lives creates a permanent incentive to lock people up: not because prison works, not because it makes us safer, but because it makes money. Privatisation appears to have locked this country into mass imprisonment. monbiot.com Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan sent children to jail for offences so trivial that some of them weren't even crimes. A 15-year-old called Hillary Transue got three months for creating a spoof web page ridiculing her school's assistant principal. Ciavarella sent Shane Bly, then 13, to boot camp for trespassing in a vacant building. He gave a 14-year-old, Jamie Quinn, 11 months in prison for slapping a friend during an argument, after the friend slapped her. The judges were paid $2.6m by companies belonging to the Mid-Atlantic Youth Services Corp for helping to fill its jails. This is what happens when public services are run for profit. It's an extreme example, but it hints at the wider consequences of the trade in human lives created by private prisons. In the US and the UK they have a powerful incentive to ensure that the number of prisoners keeps rising. The US is more corrupt than the UK, but it is also more transparent. There the lobbyists demanding and receiving changes to judicial policy might be exposed, and corrupt officials identified and prosecuted. The UK, with a strong tradition of official secrecy and a weak tradition of scrutiny and investigative journalism, has no such safeguards. The corrupt judges were paid by the private prisons not only to increase the number of child convicts but also to shut down a competing prison run by the public sector. Taking bribes to bang up kids might be novel; shutting public facilities to help private companies happens - on both sides of the water - all the time. The Wall Street Journal has shown how, as a result of lobbying by the operators, private jails in Mississippi and California are being paid for non-existent prisoners. The prison corporations have been guaranteed a certain number of inmates. If the courts fail to produce enough convicts, they get their money anyway. This outrages taxpayers in both states, which have cut essential public services to raise these funds. But there is a simple means of resolving this problem: you replace ghost inmates with real ones. As the Journal, seldom associated with raging anti-capitalism, observes: "Prison expansion [has] spawned a new set of vested interests with stakes in keeping prisons full and in building more ... The result has been a financial and political bazaar, with convicts in stripes as the prize." Even as crime declines, lawmakers are pressed by their sponsors to increase the rate of imprisonment. The US has, by a very long way, the world's highest proportion of people behind bars: 756 prisoners per 100,000 people, just over 1% of the adult population. Similarly wealthy countries have around one-tenth of this rate of imprisonment. Like most of its really bad ideas, the last Conservative government imported private jails from the US. As Stephen Nathan, author of a forthcoming book about prison privatisation in the UK, has shown, the notion was promoted by the home affairs select committee, which in 1986 visited prisons run by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). When the corporation told them that private provision in the US improved prison standards and delivered good value for money, the committee members failed to check its claims. They recommended that the government should put the construction and management of prisons out to tender "as an experiment". Encouraged by the committee's report, the CCA set up a consortium in Britain with two Conservative party donors, Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd and John Mowlem & Co, to promote privately financed prisons over here. The first privately run prison in the UK, Wolds, was opened by the Danish security company Group 4 in 1992. In 1993, before it had had a chance to evaluate this experiment, the government announced that all new prisons would be built and run by private companies. The Labour party, then in opposition, was outraged. John Prescott promised that "Labour will take back private prisons into public ownership - it is the only safe way forward." Jack Straw stated that "it is not appropriate for people to profit out of incarceration. This is surely one area where a free market certainly does not exist." He too promised to "bring these prisons into proper public control and run them directly as public services". But during his first seven weeks in office, Straw renewed one private prison contract and launched two new ones. A year later he announced that all new prisons in England and Wales would be built and run by private companies, under the private finance initiative (PFI). Today the UK has a higher proportion of prisoners in private institutions than the US. This is the only country in Europe whose jails are run on this model. So has prison privatisation here influenced judicial policy? As we discovered during the recent lobbying scandal in the House of Lords, there's no way of knowing. Unlike civilised nations, the UK has no register of lobbyists; we are not even entitled to know which lobbyists ministers have met. But there are some clues. The former home secretary, John Reid, previously in charge of prison provision, has become a consultant to the private prison operator G4S. The government is intending to commission a series of massive Titan jails under PFI. Most experts on prisons expect them to be disastrous, taking inmates further away from their families (which reduces the chances of rehabilitation) and creating vast warrens in which all the social diseases of imprisonment will fester. Only two groups want them built: ministers and the prison companies - they offer excellent opportunities to rack up profits. And the very nature of PFI, which commits the government to paying for services for 25 or 30 years - whether or not they are still required - creates a major incentive to ensure that prison numbers don't fall. The beast must be fed. And there's another line of possible evidence. In the two countries whose economies most resemble the UK's - Germany and France - the prison population has risen quite slowly. France has 96 inmates per 100,000 people, an increase of 14% since 1992. Germany has 89 prisoners per 100,000 - 25% more than in 1992 but 9% less than in 2001. But the UK now locks up 151 out of every 100,000 inhabitants: 73% more than in 1992 and 20% more than in 2001. Yes, our politicians have barely come down from the trees, yes we are still governed out of the offices of the Daily Mail, but it would be foolish to dismiss the likely influence of the private prison industry. This revolting trade in human lives creates a permanent incentive to lock people up: not because prison works, not because it makes us safer, but because it makes money. Privatisation appears to have locked this country into mass imprisonment. monbiot.com From shniad at sfu.ca Tue Mar 3 17:33:24 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 16:33:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Youtube video re Israeli Apartheid week. In-Reply-To: <975795.7387.qm@web39807.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1706760321.3434171236126804337.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Youtube video re Israeli Apartheid week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2Owx2j_fcs ? From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Mar 3 19:10:18 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:10:18 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Small, Green and Good Message-ID: <49ADE30A.5030101@ashisuto.co.jp> The role of neglected cities in a sustainable future by Catherine Tumber Boston Review (March / April 2009) Growing up in a small town, I regularly took bus trips with my mom and little sister into "the city": Syracuse. Like most middle-class families in the 1960s, we had only one car, which my dad drove to work. So we would buy our tickets at the village pharmacy, board the Big Dog, and barrel though miles of farms and sparsely developed land until we reached the highway. Nearing the final stretch, we had to endure the stench of the Solvay chemical works to our right, and the creepy mint green of polluted Onondaga Lake on our left. But we would disembark in Syracuse's vibrant downtown, all glittering lights and vertical planes, filled with department stores, jewelry and candy shops, theaters and movie palaces, "ethnic" food, and people who were interestingly not like us. Smaller American cities, places like Syracuse - and Decatur, New Bedford, Kalamazoo, Buffalo, Trenton, Erie, and Youngstown - were once bustling centers of industry and downtown commerce, with wealthy local patrons committed to civic improvements and the arts. In the 1970s they began a decline from which they have not recovered. Today, most are scanted as doleful sites of low-paying service jobs, with shrinking tax bases and little appeal to young professionals or to what urban theorist Richard Florida calls the "creative class". In Syracuse itself the center of gravity has shifted northward, toward Carousel Mall, leaving a ghostly downtown where Rite-Aid, now the largest store, presides over parking lots and abandoned buildings. Historians and economic demographers generally attribute the decline of small-to-mid-size cities of 50,000 to 500,000 souls to deindustrialization, since many sit in the Midwestern Rust Belt or the Northeast. But the history of smaller-city decline is more complex than that. Smaller cities were also victims of post-war development policies better suited to large cities - or rather, that were painful, but less disastrous, for large metropolitan areas. Extraordinary mid-twentieth century changes in transportation, zoning, housing construction, mortgage financing, and domestic taste facilitated the creation of wide swathes of "bourgeois utopias" that now ring our cities far out into the exurbs. They are the products of a radical transformation of land-use policy that extended supply chains with vast highway systems, further separating people from their workplaces, energy producers from consumers, and farmers from their markets. Large cities survived the changes and the resulting onslaught of suburban shopping malls - itself a reaction to extended supply-chains - in the late 1970s. In smaller cities, malls decimated what was left of retail districts already damaged by massive downtown highway systems that choked off commercial centers from surrounding urban neighborhoods. Neglect of the smaller city, as both place and idea, continued through the rest of the century. As large-metropolitan real estate values skyrocketed in the 1990s, big cities attracted millions of dollars in capital improvements and large-scale development. "New Urbanism" among designers and architects, though not in theory intended only for big cities, attracted funding for pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares, mixed-use building, open spaces, and the preservation of historic architecture that enhanced the metropolitan boom. Now, with the call for reducing the urban carbon footprint, cosmopolitan living is going green. Two recent books proposing models for a low-carbon economy - Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded (2008), and Jay Inslee and Bracken Hendricks's Apollo's Fire (2007) - speak throughout of "villages" and "large cities". Not a word for the distinctive role smaller cities might play in a low-carbon world. That is too bad. Smaller cities have idiosyncratic charms of their own - worthy of sustained attention and renewal. And, fortuitously, they have a distinctive and vital role to play in the work of the new century: smaller cities will be critical in the move to local agriculture and the development of renewable energy industries. These tasks will almost certainly require a dramatic rethinking of land-use policy, and smaller cities have assets that large cities lack. Their underused or vacant industrial space and surrounding tracts of farmland make them ideal sites for sustainable land-use policies, or "smart growth". Yet current urban planning models offer little guidance on how we might begin to make those changes. Nor, until recently, has there been a national forum that matches smaller-city renewal initiatives to national needs. The Revitalizing Older Cities Congressional Task Force, formed just last year, held its first national summit (organized by the Northeast-Midwest Institute) in mid-February. Local governments and advocates of eco-sustainability must build on this new conversation for they have a shared stake in the future. Sustainability advocates could be missing the large, strategic, regional and economic advantages smaller cities can offer a national policy over the long term. The Portland, Oregon-based Post Carbon Cities project offers one bold way to start thinking about national policy, with its call for the "relocalization" of cities, a form of decentralization grounded in local food systems and energy resources. An alternative to the traditional idea of "balancing" economic and environmental needs, relocalization aims to maximize both by dramatically reducing reliance on costly and environmentally damaging supply chains - long transportation routes geared to truck or air transportation - while increasing sustainable agriculture and energy security and creating local jobs that cannot be outsourced. Taking energy security first, the smaller cities of the United States, with their large parcels of vacant, relatively low-value property and proximate surrounding land, could serve the alternative energy industry well. Smaller cities are not only more likely to be located near sources of clean energy - such as waterways, forests, and fields - but they can also generate more energy proportionate to their size. One large obstacle for the clean-energy industry and its advocates is that the current energy infrastructure disadvantages them in competition with coal, natural gas, and oil, which together provide about seventy percent of electrical power in the United States. Achieving "grid parity" - the point at which renewable energy is as cheap as or cheaper than power from prevailing sources - is extremely difficult. The grid, built decades ago for local utility monopolies and now used by a deregulated national energy industry, is in a terrible state of disrepair. More immediately, it is oriented toward large "base loads" traveling over long distances to major population centers, a strain that threatens the fragile system. The United States's "third-world grid", as many are now calling it, is particularly unsuited to storing or transferring small, supplementary loads of electricity - the kind of loads produced by renewable energy sources in their current form. Moreover, keeping energy more local has the advantage of limiting grid transmission loss, which can run as high as ten percent. If smaller cities are to reap the benefits of renewable energy development, the transmission and distribution network must be both modernized and decentralized - changes that electrical energy experts agree are necessary anyway. Local contributions to a first-world energy grid would then vary, depending on terrain and natural resources. Hydrokinetic power harvested from underwater ocean currents shows promise in coastal areas. Hydropower from rivers would generate the most electricity in the West and Midwest, where the drop is higher and the water rush more forceful than in other parts of the country. Solar power on a large scale works best in sunny climates, and wind power on the coasts and in the Great Plains. And, according to a Washington Post report, geothermal energy tapped from the thirteen Western states that sit within the trans-Pacific "Ring of Fire" could provide up to half of the nation's current level of electricity output. But smaller contributions from alternative energy sources should not be overlooked. Small hydropower, defined as producing up to ten megawatts of electricity (enough to support 10,000 homes), is underdeveloped in the United States, lagging far behind Canada, Australia, New Zealand, parts of Asia, and the European Union, where it is found mostly in its fast-developing smaller cities. In New England, a number of projects are under way that will generate three megawatts or less, enough to power a hospital, large shopping center, or small factory. As ideal sites for new energy industries, smaller cities would in turn gain from job creation. Alternative energy technologies are in various stages of development, but one thing is already clear: if they work, they will require space that dense metropolitan areas cannot provide. Solar power, which among alternative energies has come closest to achieving grid parity, can make use of rooftops and awnings in big cities, but offers far greater potential when staged on ground mounts on polluted brownfields, suburban greyfields, or open land. One of the world's largest solar farms, sitting on more than one thousand acres in Kramer Junction in California's Mojave Desert, consists of row upon row of solar panels, which power generating stations at the facility. According to the company that operates it, at capacity, it produces enough power (150 megawatts) to support 150,000 homes. A good rule of thumb, at this point, is that one megawatt of solar-generated power requires about eight acres of land. Wind power, unless sited offshore, also requires large tracts of land. And, by definition, biomass and biogas technologies require farm and forest land to generate the raw resources required, as well as space for the physical plant that conducts the conversion. This year BioEnergy Solutions announced a partnership with Vintage Dairy, of Riverdale, California (just outside Fresno) to convert manure from its 5,000 cows into methane by flushing animal waste into an anaerobic-digester, a covered lagoon "equal in size to the area of nearly five football fields and over three stories deep". As ideal sites for new energy industries, smaller cities would in turn gain from job creation. A 2007 American Solar Energy Society report claimed that renewable energy and energy-efficient industries had already created nearly 8.5 million jobs in the United States, a little more than half in indirectly related fields such as accounting, information technology, and trucking. Many are blue-collar jobs in maintenance and manufacturing. A September 2008 proposal from the Apollo Alliance estimates that its New Apollo Program - a renewable energy proposal on a scale akin to that of the Kennedy administration's space program - could create five million "high-quality" green-collar jobs over the next decade. Indeed, many have pointed out that bold low-carbon policy initiatives could launch the next Industrial Revolution. Happily, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed by President Obama in February, is consistent with Apollo's aims and suggested funding levels. Smaller American cities could participate creatively in this emerging world. In the past, jurisdictional disputes over land use have plagued urban development in smaller cities, so federal investment in regional transportation and energy infrastructure must include pressure to resolve squabbles. The proximity of abundant, relatively cheap land also gives smaller cities a structural advantage in meeting the growing demand for local, sustainable agriculture. As Michael Pollan demonstrates in his best-selling The Omnivore's Dilemma (2007), agribusiness puts down an enormous carbon footprint. Sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry not only produce more nutritious food and less cruelty to animals, they are also far less dependent on petroleum for long-distance transportation, fertilizer, and neurotoxic pesticides (not to mention antibiotics). Building on the work of organic farmers and environmental activists since the 1970s, Pollan's call for relocalizing agriculture coincides with rising alarm about the perils of climate change and dependence on foreign oil. Even the United Nations, which has long embraced agribusiness as the key to famine prevention, is beginning to recognize the role of sustainable, localized practices in food security. The change in public perceptions has created a critical mass of "locavores", most living in big cities far from the heart of agribusiness, who are driving a growing market for organic products. Farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture, community gardens, and green roofs have become increasingly popular, forcing big supermarket chains to offer local, organic produce. New York City alone went from two farmers' markets in 1979 to more than 45 in 2008. Meanwhile, the appeal of farming, on a smaller, more diversified, independent model, is growing among young adults and mid-life professionals. The number of organic farms in New York State almost doubled between 2003 and 2007, from 404 farms to 735. And the number of people aged 45 to 54 operating farms of under fifty acres shot up by seventy percent. Increasingly, urban professionals are investing in farmland and taking on agricultural work as a second vocation. If urban farming - growing food within city limits or on nearby small-scale market farms - and sustainable agriculture in general are to succeed, however, they must be integrated with the larger workforce and with urban and regional planning. Detroit, home to one of the country's first urban farms, pioneered this work. Today eighty acres throughout the city have been appropriated for agriculture and are under cultivation through the Detroit Garden Resource Program Collaborative. Its member organizations provide training in soil management and crop cultivation, bee-keeping, orchard building, composting, and the like through various faith communities and the local schools, and provide on-the-job training and summer employment to teens and adults. The yield for 2007 was 120 tons of food and promises to grow much higher. The county treasurer's office allowed the nonprofit Urban Farming to grow produce on twenty tax-foreclosed vacant properties in 2008. To some extent, the urban agriculture movement is primarily a big-city phenomenon, not least because large cities have received disproportionate publicity and funding. The W K Kellogg Foundation sponsors one of the larger and more daring philanthropic initiatives. Its Food and Fitness program provided planning grants to nine community-based projects that emphasize access to local food and physical exercise among disadvantaged families. Six of them are located in big cities (including Detroit), two in rural areas, and only one in a smaller city - Holyoke, Massachusetts. Funding and advocacy organizations have nothing against smaller city initiatives. Far from it. Kellogg's Ricardo Salvador notes that "the metaphor of sustainability itself is lots of small communities, whether they are city neighborhoods in densely populated areas or small rural communities". As Daniel Lerch, of Post Carbon Cities puts it: "This is not just an issue of scale. Very soon we'll see cities of any size going down the path of sustainability with regard to food and watershed." By minimizing the importance of scale, however, sustainability advocates could be missing the large, strategic regional and economic advantages smaller cities can offer a national policy over the long term. Martin Bailkey, coauthor of a 2000 Lincoln Institute of Land Policy working paper on the history and viability of entrepreneurial "farming inside cities" says "it shouldn't matter whether farms are fifty or sixty miles from, say, New York City, or ten miles from a smaller city like Madison, Wisconsin". But he notes that post-industrial cities with declining populations, particularly in the Midwest, are better positioned to shift urban land-use policy toward farming. Even more intriguing, he says, is the notion that the "mosaic" of smaller cities located in the heartland could one day anchor a regional agricultural shift from industrial monoculture to more localized biodiversity. Large farms now used for federally subsidized commodity crops - mainly corn and soy - could over time be made available in smaller parcels for market farming on a scale that cannot be undertaken within city limits. The Land Connection, based in Evanston, Illinois, is working to do just that. One program helps heirs to farmland put agricultural easements on their property, and its training and transition programs assist farmers who want to replace monoculture with sustainable, organic practices. Founder Terra Brockman says that some of the newer farmers, who may be first-timers or returning to the family business, "are making the decision to sell in smaller cities ... where the demand didn't exist fifteen years ago". What they need, says Brockman, "is really quite simple: land, trained farmers, local processing facilities (which disappeared in the sixties), and logistical transportation". Why not turn the roof and vast parking lot of Irondequoit Mall into a solar "brightfield", and the indoor space into hydroponic market farms? Developing an effective transportation infrastructure is critical to making smaller cities hubs in a relocalized, agricultural economy. As Kellogg's Gail Imig suggests, it might be easier for smaller cities "to work out local distribution systems for transporting food" than for big cities. Still, federal leadership will be crucial. Gayle Peterson of The Headwaters Group Philanthropic Services - consultants for foundations ranging from Kellogg, Mott, and Weyerhouser to community foundations - says: "There is a huge movement among foundations supporting regional food systems uniting networks of cities and towns in a large agricultural food basket ... but there are as yet no group initiatives that cut across the issues". Her colleague, John Sherman, adds: "If anything significant is to take place, the thrust will have to come from economic development agencies" that can provide government funding and coordinated policy leadership. One nonprofit, the Michigan Land Use Institute (MLUI), is emerging as a model of state and regional planning. One of the projects it supports, The Grand Vision, aims to integrate economic opportunities into a working rural landscape and provide land-use experts to help grassroots groups organize and manage their campaigns. Located in the area around Traverse City, a large town of 14,532 that anchors a "micropolitan statistical area" - a term established in 2003 denoting a new federal census standard - with a population of 131,342, The Grand Vision emerged in 2006 when plans for a highway bypass and bridge around Traverse City met with community protest. With the cooperation of Senators Debbie Stabinow and Carl Levin and US Representative Dave Camp, federal highway funding was diverted to a two-year community-planning process. The process was coordinated by consultants with the full involvement of local citizens, municipal bodies, businesses, environmental groups, and social services agencies, all organized into "charrettes". The final results will be unveiled in May. One of MLUI's highly successful programs is Farm to School, which is part of a growing nationwide movement that connects local farm products with school cafeterias. MLUI links the program to a larger state initiative based on a study showing that helping farmers sell to local supermarkets and farmers' markets could increase net farm income in Michigan by nearly sixteen percent and generate up to 1,889 new jobs. Smaller cities might also be better able than large ones to recover for market-farming pusposes land lost to suburban sprawl. Filmmaker Nancy Rosin - who produced a documentary on the history of Rochester, New York's farmers' market - explains that before the rise of grocery store chains after World War I, small-market farming appealed to working people, particularly immigrants from Italy and Eastern Europe, who brought their horticultural skills with them. They grew food on city lots where they lived and, over time, grew much larger quantities in the adjacent suburbs - or what we would now call suburbs - in particular, Irondequoit, less than ten miles from Rochester's downtown market. A sizeable number, she says, held full-time jobs with companies such as Kodak and became known as "Kodak farmers". By mid-century Irondequoit "had the largest square footage of greenhouse glass in the world to support the demand for food in a climate with long, cold winters". A fifty-something Irondequoit native who blogs for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle brings that world to life: "I grew up in the Flats, on Saint Joseph Street. My dad was born there in the old homestead, his parents farmers. My siblings and I were raised there. Although it had changed from when my dad was growing up, I still remember all the farming that went on down there. The greenhouses, the tractors, listening to the frogs on a hot summer night ... it was like living in the country. A drive through the Flats today shows quite a different story. The farms are gone. There are no tractors going up and down the street with trailers bobbing behind them. The greenhouses are gone. Most of the 'old timers' have passed. There are houses where there were fields and wetlands. There has been a lot of change." By the early 1960s Irondequoit was fast being paved over, making way for homes, highways, and strip malls. In 1963 the once-powerful Irondequoit Grange closed and later became the House of Guitars. The gigantic Irondequoit Mall opened in 1990, and, today, after only eighteen years in business, it is considered officially "dead", with less than fifty percent retail occupancy and an uncertain future. What should become of such worn-out retail outlets, which were multiplying by the thousands across the country even before the current economic downturn? A happier future for a smaller city like Rochester, where Kodak alone shed some 45,000 jobs over the past twenty-five years, may involve the restoration and growth of sustainable food systems. One of Kellogg's earliest Food and Fitness pilot programs tried to do just that on several acres where a small vineyard tended by an Italian family years ago still grows. (The program is currently languishing due to conflicts among the community organizations that originally established it.) A series of community "Vision Plans" similar to those in Traverse City called for continuing an existing program of riverfront development, as well as more affordable housing, mixed-use buildings, and pedestrian-friendly streets - all familiar New Urbanism strategies. One recent charrette also called for tearing down part of the Inner Loop freeway, built in 1965, that circles the downtown business district. Here is another idea: why not turn the roof and vast parking lot of Irondequoit Mall into a solar "brightfield", and the indoor space into hydroponic market farms? Why not rebuild those greenhouses? And why not introduce green job-training programs in Rochester, a city that has one of the highest high-school dropout rates in the nation? There is no question that the infrastructure of large metropolitan areas can and must be redesigned and retrofitted for energy efficiency. And not surprisingly, that is where green urban planners have been focusing their efforts: after all, big cities contribute the largest share of the world's carbon output. But focusing on big cities may also reflect what urban historian James J Connolly calls "metropolitan bias". Even those who have written about smaller urban areas, he argues, have "made little effort to distinguish large and smaller cities from each other", treating them as "essentially interchangeable case studies of developments that unfolded on a national and even an international scale". That model, established by sociologist Louis Wirth's influential 1938 essay "Urbanism as a Way of Life", assumes continued modernization, growth, and centralization of political and economic power in big cities. The idea of the "metropolis as the quintessential urban form" was further reinforced by the postmodern cultural turn, which saw global cities as "sites" for the formation of "transnational" identities; by implication, smaller places are repositories of more provincial, outmoded, and "destructive nationalisms". If we temper the metropolitan bias that pervades the sustainable cities movement, green advantages and opportunities distinctive to smaller cities come into focus. But we first must abandon the perpetual-growth paradigm and, when appropriate, embrace shrinkage, not as decline but as a framework for creative reinvention. Several American cities are taking a cue from Europe's Shrinking Cities project, spurred by radical population decline particularly in the former East German Republic. Youngstown, Ohio, the population of which dropped from 170,000 to 82,000 with the decline of the steel industry, was the first American city to make downsizing a matter of formal policy. The Youngstown 2010 initiative has spent upward of $3 million to date to demolish vacant houses and buildings; open access to the Mahoning River; cut back sewage, plowing, and other costly services; further concentrate the population; and open green space for parks and agriculture. According to the city's chief planner, Anthony Kobak, urban-farming incentives are not yet under consideration. Other so-called weak-market cities have launched similar efforts, with greater emphasis on environmental sustainability. In 2008 nearby Cleveland's Neighborhood Progress, Incorporated announced a major project, supported by a grant from the Surdna Foundation, exploring the possibility of turning vacant city lots into agricultural and renewable energy sites. Similar plans are under way in Flint, Michigan, which now owns ten percent of the city's vacant property through the Genesee County Land Bank. Meanwhile, we need to revisit the cultural mythology about smaller places. Sociologist Kenneth Johnson's 2006 study, which tracked demographic changes in rural America, found that since 2001 rural population gains have swung modestly upward in an "uneven" pattern. "Gains have been greatest", he writes, "in the fringes of metropolitan areas and in rural areas that are proximate to metropolitan areas that include smaller cities and that contain natural and recreational amenities". Johnson's study also contradicts two seemingly intractable stereotypes. Immigrants, particularly Latinos, "are dispersing more widely" and account for much of this small metro growth, thus belying the notion that large urban areas are the exclusive preserve of "transnational" pluralism. And rural does not necessarily equal farming. Johnson shows that "the proportion of the rural workforce employed in manufacturing is nearly double that in agriculture", while "many rural areas have also now become thriving centers of recreation and retirement". A new literature is taking shape that recognizes the distinctive characteristics and potential of smaller cities. From the Journal of Urbanism, launched in March 2008, to recent studies by the Brookings Institution's Jennifer S Vey, to PolicyLink's 2008 report To Be Strong Again: Renewing the Promise in Smaller Industrial Cities, to the work of Ball State University's Center for Middletown Studies, small cities are gradually being taken seriously again. That quiet shift reflects changes in the rest of the world. A 2008 UN population study predicted that, by the end of that year and for the first time in history, half the world would live in urban centers and that the trend toward cities would continue, with most of the growth taking place in cities of less than half a million. China alone is planning to build 400 small cities by 2020, to accommodate its shifting rural population. All of this is attracting attention from urban planners and architects. But the growing interest in smaller cities also reflects an imaginative resizing, a spiritually overdue compression of the gigantic, "unsustainable" ambitions of economic-bubble culture. When it comes to the urban-rural divide, small-to-intermediate-size cities may offer the best of both worlds. For all the rural romanticism of the 1970s-era homesteading movement - or for that matter, the vaunted folksiness of "small-town values" - urban life has its allure. Smaller cities are large enough to offer the diversity, anonymity, and vibrancy of urban culture, as well as levels of density that offer efficiencies of scale. They are also small enough to maintain proximity to sustainable food production and renewable energy resources. An inversion is at work here: placing smaller cities at the center of analysis leads to an imaginative template that is decentralized, deconcentrated, relocalized. One of the Obama campaign's strokes of genius was bypassing big-city power centers, where self-appointed national leaders claim to speak for minorities, and working directly with the decentralized grid of smaller-city community organizations across the land. As policymakers rethink the American agricultural economy and invest in renewable energy, they, too, should be looking at smaller cities. Local and municipal leaders also have much to gain in the twenty-first century if they have the eyes to see it. _____ Catherine Tumber is former news and features editor of The Boston Phoenix, and the author of American Feminism and the Birth of New Age Spirituality (2002). http://bostonreview.net/BR34.2/tumber.php TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Mar 4 06:35:38 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:35:38 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Destined for Failure Message-ID: <49AE83AA.1000000@ashisuto.co.jp> by Jason Peters Orion magazine (November / December 2008) I AM ASTONISHED by the number of academics convinced that the infusion of a few technological electrolytes will cure the pounding hangover sure to punish us for partying so recklessly in the hospitality tents sponsored by Cheap Readily Available Oil. People with five or seven letters after their names are clinging to the delusion that energy and technology are interchangeable, that when one goes into decline the other will arrive to take them up the mountain for a weekend of downhill skiing. This error persists for any number of reasons, among them the fact that higher education has largely become a faith-based institution governed by the motto "In Progress We Trust". But perhaps a more immediate cause is that as participants in an increasingly abstract economy we have simply let ourselves live in a kind of blissful ignorance about oil - how it was formed, what we use it for, how we get it, what and whom we destroy in the process. And so as a teacher I have often wondered whether general-education curricula should include an interdisciplinary course on oil - and whether passing such a course should be a graduation requirement. This is part of a larger question concerning the problem of ecological illiteracy, that unselective pestilence as likely to infect a professor as a frat boy. Too many of the guests and tenants in academia bear a striking resemblance to that clueless freeloader at the end of The Great Gatsby who shows up one night after Gatsby's death, unaware that the party is over. But it is, and it's high time we who teach started saying so, because lean times are coming. For example, our dependence on the food system, which is run by oil from farm to table, will waste no time teaching us a few things about how incompetent we are. That many of us with impeccable academic credentials will be among the first to starve means only that chickens do come home to roost: we are the confessors of an educational creed that dismisses the value of the domestic arts and sends graduates out into a world of surrendered skills and purchased necessities. We are the diploma retailers who have allowed students to assume that the machines and the ungraduated will supply all their real needs. We have let these students major in Getting Ahead. We have strip-mined the local talent, converted it into "graduates", and shipped it to Big Important Places. Deracinated and deracinating vandals that we are, chasers of whatever grant money inflates our egos, we have taught students to be as we are: citizens of every place, which is to say citizens of no place - that is, not citizens at all, but parasites. It's time for something better. On every campus we need large, highly visible vegetable gardens that are tended by everyone who likes to eat; cafeterias that provide, insofar as they can, only local foods; compost heaps steaming next to these cafeterias to remind us to pay our debt to the soil. We need administrators committed to dismantling, not enlarging, our vast system of technological dependencies, and professors committed to living defensibly and responsibly and competently before their students. Our foreign studies programs must become local studies programs. Our new buildings must be made to run on energy sources that will still be available when the buildings turn fifty or a hundred. We can't ignore the problem of ecological illiteracy any longer. It must become a prominent curricular concern all across higher education. And no one should graduate who doesn't know what oil has done for us - and especially what it has done to us: made us fat, lazy, stupid, and incompetent. This won't cut it. _____ Jason Peters teaches English at Augustana College and is the editor of Wendell Berry: Life and Work (2007). LIKE THIS ARTICLE? Orion is ad-free, so help us please by subscribing or making a donation. Orion publishes six thoughtful, inspiring, and beautiful issues a year. Subscribe to Orion Magazine https://subscribe.pcspublink.com/subscribeFormGeneric.asp?track=JBP8&pub=ORIN&term=6 Subscribe to the Paperless Edition http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/mag/orion_digital/ Free Trial Offer https://subscribe.pcspublink.com/subscribeFormGeneric.asp?track=JFTA7&pub=ORIN&term=6 Donate https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/OrionSociety/OnlineDonation.html The Orion Society, 187 Main Street, Great Barrington, Massachusetts 01230 413-528-4422 / Toll Free 888-909-6568 / Toll Free Subscriptions 800-254-3713 http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3648 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 Mar 4 12:55:04 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 11:55:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Iran asks Interpol to arrest Israeli war criminals In-Reply-To: <1492416358.3373361236120890827.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1135314047.3695211236196504399.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=87207§ionid=351020101 Press TV???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? 1 March 2009 Iran asks Interpol to arrest Israeli war criminals Iran asks Interpol to arrest Israeli war criminals The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO) has issued a circular calling for the arrest of 15 top Israeli officials over war crimes. At a news briefing on Sunday, Tehran's Public Prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, said that Iran had referred the case to the organization, known as Interpol, drawing on the Interpol charter and Israel's violation of the Geneva Conventions. "ICPO has notified governments of 180 countries to arrest the suspects," who were involved in the 23-day Israeli offensive on Gaza in December and January he said. In December, Iran's judiciary announced its decision to set up a court to look into complaints made by the Palestinian envoy in Iran and wounded Palestinians delivered to Iran, against Israeli atrocities in Gaza, saying it was ready to try the Israelis in absentia. "In the current week, we have completed our investigation of about 15 individuals who were among those criminals," IRIB, Iran's State Television, quoted Mortazavi as saying. "Based on our investigation and according to article 2 of the Interpol charter, we asked Interpol to arrest these suspects." Mortazavi said the charges included war crimes, invasion, occupation, genocide and crimes against humanity.? The Iranian prosecutor was referring to Israeli strikes that started on December 27 on the densely populated Palestinian coastal territory and did not end until it had claimed the lives of more than 1,330 Gazans, mostly civilians. Many international NGOs and human rights organizations, Palestinians wounded in the Gaza onslaught, more than 5,700 Iranian lawyers and attorneys in the Iranian Bar Association along with a large number of medics were also among those who filed complaints against Tel Aviv, Mortazavi added. The list of Israeli war criminals includes: 1 Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert 2 Defense Minister Ehud Barak 3 Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni 4 Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi 5 Commander in Chief of the Israeli Air Force Ido Nehoshtan 6 Commander of the Gaza war -- Operation Cast Lead -- Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant 7 Head of Military Intelligence Directorate Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin 8 Commander of Battalion 13 in the Golani Brigade Lt. Col. Oren Cohen 9 Deputy to the Givati Brigade Col. Ron Ashrov 10 Commander of the Israel Paratroopers' Brigade in Gaza Col. Hertzi Halevy 11 Commander of 401st Armored Corps Brigade convoy Col. Yigal Slovik 12 Commander of the 101st Battalion in the Paratrooper Brigade Lt. Col. Avi Blot 13 Lt. Col. Yoav Mordechai, who served as a commander of the Golani infantry brigade's 13th Battalion in Gaza 14 Givati squad commander Col. Tomer Tsiter 15 Brigade commander in Battalion 51 Col. Avi Peled From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Mar 4 12:53:47 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 11:53:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Goodman: Jailing Kids for Cash In-Reply-To: <1795938419.12770561235158325830.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <225120038.3694451236196427341.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090217_kids_for_cash/ Truthdig: February 17, 2009 Jailing Kids for Cash By Amy Goodman ??As many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been found guilty, and up to 2,000 of them jailed, by two corrupt judges who received kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities that benefited. The two judges pleaded guilty in a stunning case of greed and corruption that is still unfolding. Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan received $2.6 million in kickbacks while imprisoning children who often had no access to a lawyer. The case offers an extraordinary glimpse into the shameful private prison industry that is flourishing in the United States. ??Take the story of Jamie Quinn. When she was 14 years old, she was imprisoned for almost a year. Jamie, now 18, described the incident that led to her incarceration: ??"I got into an argument with one of my friends. And all that happened was just a basic fight. She slapped me in the face, and I did the same thing back. There [were] no marks, no witnesses, nothing. It was just her word against my word." ??Jamie was placed in one of the two controversial facilities, PA Child Care, then bounced around to several other locations. The 11-month imprisonment had a devastating impact on her. She told me: "People looked at me different when I came out, thought I was a bad person, because I was gone for so long. My family started splitting up ... because I was away and got locked up. I'm still struggling in school, because the schooling system in facilities like these places [are] just horrible." ??She began cutting herself, blaming medication that she was forced to take: "I was never depressed, I was never put on meds before. I went there, and they just started putting meds on me, and I didn't even know what they were. They said if I didn't take them, I wasn't following my program." She was hospitalized three times. ??Jamie Quinn is just one of thousands that these two corrupt judges locked up. The Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center got involved when Hillary Transue was sent away for three months for posting a Web site parodying the assistant principal at her school. Hillary clearly marked the Web page as a joke. The assistant principal didn't find it funny, apparently, and Hillary faced the notoriously harsh Judge Ciavarella. ??As Bob Schwartz of the Juvenile Law Center told me: "Hillary had, unknown to her, signed a paper, her mother had signed a paper, giving up her right to a lawyer. That made the 90-second hearing that she had in front of Judge Ciavarella pretty much of a kangaroo court." The JLC found that in half of the juvenile cases in Luzerne County, defendants had waived their right to an attorney. Judge Ciavarella repeatedly ignored recommendations for leniency from both prosecutors and probation officers. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard the JLC's case, then the FBI began an investigation, which resulted in the two judges entering guilty-plea agreements last week for tax evasion and wire fraud. ??They are expected to serve seven years in federal prison. Two separate class-action lawsuits have been filed on behalf of the imprisoned children. ??This scandal involves just one county in the U.S., and one relatively small private prison company. According to The Sentencing Project, "the United States is the world's leader in incarceration with 2.1 million people currently in the nation's prisons or jails-a 500 percent increase over the past thirty years." The Wall Street Journal reports that "[p]rison companies are preparing for a wave of new business as the economic downturn makes it increasingly difficult for federal and state government officials to build and operate their own jails." For-profit prison companies like the Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) are positioned for increased profits. It is still not clear what impact the just-signed stimulus bill will have on the private prison industry (for example, the bill contains $800 million for prison construction, yet billions for school construction were cut out). ??Congress is considering legislation to improve juvenile justice policy, legislation the American Civil Liberties Union says is "built on the clear evidence that community-based programs can be far more successful at preventing youth crime than the discredited policies of excessive incarceration." ??Our children need education and opportunity, not incarceration. Let the kids of Luzerne County imprisoned for profit by corrupt judges teach us a lesson. As young Jamie Quinn said of her 11-month imprisonment, "It just makes me really question other authority figures and people that we're supposed to look up to and trust." ??Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column. ??Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the "Alternative Nobel" prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December. ? From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Mar 4 13:06:43 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 12:06:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Wall Street's Best Investment I: Paying for Policy in Washington In-Reply-To: <49AEB32B.4070304@essential.org> Message-ID: <310800193.3702191236197203775.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2000/000311.html March 4, 2009 ? Wall Street's Best Investment I: Paying for Policy in Washington ? By Robert Weissman ? Financial deregulatory mania over the last three decades led directly to the current financial meltdown. ? Were the deregulators acting out of principle? Perhaps. ? But it couldn't have hurt that the financial sector invested a staggering $5.1 billion in political influence purchasing in the United States over the last decade. ? The money flows are laid out in gruesome detail in "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," a report that my colleague Jim Donahue and I wrote, along with a team of contributors from the Consumer Education Foundation and my organization, Essential Information. The report is available at: < www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm >. ? The entire financial sector (finance, insurance, real estate) drowned political candidates in campaign contributions, spending more than $1.7 billion in federal elections from 1998-2008. Primarily reflecting the balance of power over the decade, about 55 percent went to Republicans and 45 percent to Democrats. Democrats took just more than half of the financial sector's 2008 election cycle contributions. ? The industry spent even more -- topping $3.4 billion -- on officially registered lobbyists during the same period. This total certainly underestimates by a considerable amount what the industry spent to influence policymaking. U.S. reporting rules require that lobby firms and individual lobbyists disclose how much they have been paid for lobbying activity, but lobbying activity is defined to include direct contacts with key government officials, or work in preparation for meeting with key government officials. Public relations efforts and various kinds of indirect lobbying are not covered by the reporting rules. ? During the decade-long period: ? * Commercial banks spent more than $154 million on campaign contributions, while investing $383 million in officially registered lobbying; * Accounting firms spent $81 million on campaign contributions and $122 million on lobbying; * Insurance companies donated more than $220 million and spent more than $1.1 billion on lobbying; and * Securities firms invested more than $512 million in campaign contributions, and an additional nearly $600 million in lobbying. Hedge funds, a subcategory of the securities industry, spent $34 million on campaign contributions (about half in the 2008 election cycle); and $20 million on lobbying. Private equity firms, also a subcategory of the securities industry, contributed $58 million to federal candidates and spent $43 million on lobbying. ? Individual firms spent tens of millions of dollars each. During the decade-long period: ? * Goldman Sachs spent more than $46 million on political influence buying; * Merrill Lynch threw more than $68 million at politicians; * Citigroup spent more than $108 million; * Bank of America devoted more than $39 million; * JPMorgan Chase invested more than $65 million; and * Accounting giants Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG and Pricewaterhouse spent, respectively, $32 million, $37 million, $27 million and $55 million. ? The number of people working to advance the financial sector's political objectives is startling. In 2007, the financial sector employed a staggering 2,996 separate lobbyists to influence federal policy making, more than five for each Member of Congress. This figure only counts officially registered lobbyists. That means it does not count those who offered "strategic advice" or helped mount policy-related PR campaigns for financial sector companies. The figure counts those lobbying at the federal level; it does not take into account lobbyists at state houses across the country. To be clear, the 2,996 figure represents the number of separate individuals employed by the financial sector as lobbyists in 2007. We did not double count individuals who lobby for more than one company the total number of financial sector lobby hires in 2007 was a whopping 6,738. ? A great many of those lobbyists entered and exited through the revolving door connecting the lobbying world with government. Surveying only 20 leading firms in the financial sector (none from the insurance industry or real estate), we found that 142 industry lobbyists during the period 19982008 had formerly worked as "covered officials" in the government. "Covered officials" are top officials in the executive branch (most political appointees, from members of the cabinet to directors of bureaus embedded in agencies), Members of Congress, and congressional staff. ? Nothing evidences the revolving door -- or Wall Street's direct influence over policymaking -- more than the stream of Goldman Sachs expatriates who left the Wall Street goliath, spun through the revolving door, and emerged to hold top regulatory positions. Topping the list, of course, are former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson, both of whom had served as chair of Goldman Sachs before entering government. Goldman continues to be well represented in government, with among others, Gary Gensler, President Obama's pick to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Mark Patterson, a former Goldman lobbyist now serving as chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. ? All of this awesome influence buying has enabled Wall Street to establish the framework for debates in Washington, and to obtain very specific deregulatory actions, with devastating consequences. More on this in tomorrow 's column. ? ? Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, < http://www.multinationalmonitor.org > and director of Essential Action < http://www.essentialaction.org >. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Mar 4 13:29:30 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 12:29:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Return of the War Party Message-ID: <1609743597.3713841236198570265.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22113.htm ? Information Clearing House ??????????????????????????????????????????????????? February 27, 2009 ? Return of the War Party ? "For, unlike Israel, Pakistan and India, none of which signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and all of which ran clandestine programs and built atom bombs, Iran signed the NPT and has abided by its Safeguards Agreement. What it refuses to accept are the broader demands of the U.N. Security Council because these go beyond the NPT and sanction Iran for doing what it has a legal right to do." ? By Patrick J. Buchanan ? "The American Conservative" -- "Real men go to Tehran!" brayed the neoconservatives after the success of their propaganda campaign to have America march on Baghdad and into an unnecessary war that has forfeited all the fruits of our Cold War victory. ? Now they are back, in pursuit of what has always been their great goal: an American war on Iran. It would be a mistake to believe they and their collaborators cannot succeed a second time. Consider: ? On being chosen by Israel's President Shimon Peres to form the new regime, Likud's "Bibi" Netanyahu declared, "Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence." ? Echoing Netanyahu, headlines last week screamed of a startling new nuclear breakthrough by the mullahs. "Iran ready to build nuclear weapon, analysts say," said CNN. "Iran has enough uranium to make a bomb," said the Los Angeles Times. Armageddon appeared imminent. ? Asked about Iran's nukes in his confirmation testimony, CIA Director Leon Panetta blurted, "From all the information I've seen, I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability." ? Tuesday , Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a front spawned by the Israeli lobby AIPAC, was given the Iranian portfolio. AIPAC's top agenda item? A U.S. collision with Iran. ? In the neocon Weekly Standard, Elliot Abrams of the Bush White House parrots Netanyahu, urging Obama to put any land-for-peace deals with the Palestinians on a back burner. Why? ? "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now part of a broader struggle in the region over Iranian extremism and power. Israeli withdrawals now risk opening the door not only to Palestinian terrorists but to Iranian proxies." ? The campaign to conflate Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria as a new axis of evil, a terrorist cartel led by Iranian mullahs hell-bent on building a nuclear bomb and using it on Israel and America, has begun. The full-page ads and syndicated columns calling on Obama to eradicate this mortal peril before it destroys us all cannot be far off. ? But before we let ourselves be stampeded into another unnecessary war, let us review a few facts that seem to contradict the war propaganda. ? First, last week's acknowledgement that Iran has enough enriched uranium for one atom bomb does not mean Iran is building an atom bomb. ? To construct a nuclear device, the ton of low-enriched uranium at Natanz would have to be run through a second cascade of high-speed centrifuges to produce 55 pounds of highly enriched uranium (HUE). ? There is no evidence Iran has either created the cascade of high-speed centrifuges necessary to produce HUE or that Iran has diverted any of the low-enriched uranium from Natanz. ? And the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors retain full access to Natanz. ? And rather than accelerating production of low-enriched uranium, only 4,000 of the Natanz centrifuges are operating. Some 1,000 are idle. Why? ? Dr. Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the IAEA, believes this is a signal that Tehran wishes to negotiate with the United States, but without yielding any of its rights to enrich uranium and operate nuclear power plants. ? For, unlike Israel, Pakistan and India, none of which signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and all of which ran clandestine programs and built atom bombs, Iran signed the NPT and has abided by its Safeguards Agreement. What it refuses to accept are the broader demands of the U.N. Security Council because these go beyond the NPT and sanction Iran for doing what it has a legal right to do. ? Moreover, Adm. Dennis Blair, who heads U.S. intelligence, has just restated the consensus of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran does not now possess and is not now pursuing a nuclear weapons program. ? Bottom line: Neither the United States nor the IAEA has conclusive evidence that Iran either has the fissile material for a bomb or an active program to build a bomb. It has never tested a nuclear device and has never demonstrated a capacity to weaponize a nuclear device, if it had one. ? Why, then, the hype, the hysteria, the clamor for "Action This Day!"? It is to divert America from her true national interests and stampede her into embracing as her own the alien agenda of a renascent War Party. ? None of this is to suggest the Iranians are saintly souls seeking only peace and progress. Like South Korea, Japan and other nations with nuclear power plants, they may well want the ability to break out of the NPT, should it be necessary to deter, defend against or defeat enemies. ? But that is no threat to us to justify war. For decades, we lived under the threat that hundreds of Russian warheads could rain down upon us in hours, ending our national existence. If deterrence worked with Stalin and Mao, it can work with an Iran that has not launched an offensive war against any nation within the memory of any living American. ? Can we Americans say the same? From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Mar 4 13:30:04 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 12:30:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] U.S. influence in Iraq far from over Message-ID: <415572239.3714271236198604919.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2009/03/01/8575876-sun.html ? Edmonton Sun ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????????????? March 1, 2009 ? U.S. influence in Iraq far from over ? By ERIC MARGOLIS ? Barack Obama won the votes of many Americans by promising to swiftly end the Iraq War and bring U.S. troops home. He denounced George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq as a "violation of international law." ? So will U.S. troops leave Iraq? Will those responsible for this trumped-up war face justice? ? No, on both counts. ? President Obama says U.S. combat troops will leave Iraq by August 2010. However, the U.S. military occupation will not end. What we are seeing is a public relations shell game. ? The U.S. has 142,000 soldiers and nearly 100,000 mercenaries occupying Iraq. Obama's plan calls for withdrawing the larger portion of the U.S. garrison but leaving 50,000-60,000 troops in Iraq. ? To get around his promise to withdraw all "combat" troops, the president and his advisers are rebranding the stay-behind garrison as "training troops, protection for American interests, and counterterrorism forces." ? At a time when the U.S. is bankrupt and faces a $1.75 trillion deficit, the Pentagon's gargantuan $664 billion budget (50% of total global military spending) will grow in 2009 and 2010 by another $200 billion to pay for the occupation of Iraq and Obama's expanded war in Afghanistan. Throw in another $40 billion to $50 billion for the CIA and other intelligence agencies. ? Obama insists the U.S. will withdraw from Iraq. But his words are belied by the Pentagon, which continues to expand bases in Iraq, including Balad and Al-Asad, with 4,400-metre runways for heavy bombers and transports. ? AIR BRIDGE ? They are key links in the U.S. Air Force's new air bridge that extends from Germany to Bulgaria and Romania, Iraq and the Gulf, then onward to Afghanistan and Central Asia. ? Besides Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone and U.S. embassy (the world's largest), the Pentagon reportedly wants to retain 58 permanent bases in Iraq (by comparison, there are 36 in South Korea), total control of its air space and immunity from Iraqi law for all U.S. troops. ? The U.S. also will retain major bases in neighbouring Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Diego Garcia. U.S. oil companies are moving in to exploit Iraq's vast energy reserves, the Mideast's second largest after Saudi Arabia. ? U.S. troop levels will remain high during Iraq's December elections to ensure "security," according to the Pentagon. In other words, ensuring the U.S.-selected regime "wins" the vote. Iraqi parties, notably Baath, opposing the U.S. occupation, are banned from running. Many Iraqis believe the U.S. will never leave their nation. ? In short, contrary to all Obama's high-blown rhetoric about pulling out of Iraq, Washington clearly intends it will remain a U.S. military, political and economic protectorate. Washington is following exactly the same control model the British Empire used to rule Iraq, and exploit its oil: Install a figurehead ruler, keep him in power using a "native" army (read today 's Iraqis army and police). RAF units based in Iraq (read U.S. air bases) bomb any rebellious areas. Smaller British ground units based in non-urban areas are on call to put down attempted coups against the king. The U.S. plan for Iraq is identical. ? Obama made clear that officials responsible for the Iraq war, torture, kidnapping or assassination will not be prosecuted. The theft of over $50 billion in U.S. "reconstruction" funds sent to Iraq is being hushed up. ? By contrast, Britons are demanding release of cabinet documents leading to war that are likely to expose Tony Blair's lies and illegalities. ? BYGONES ? There is no corresponding call for justice in the United States. Obama tells the public, let bygones be bygones. Unless, of course, it's Osama bin Laden. ? Between 600,000 and one million Iraqis died as a result of President George W. Bush's aggression, which cost nearly $1 trillion and some 4,500 U.S. dead. Four million Iraqis remain refugees. The U.S. holds over 20,000 Iraqi political prisoners. ? Mr. President, this is not a bygone. It's a historic crime that demands justice. Keep your word about withdrawing from Iraq. Enough with the Bush doubletalk. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Mar 4 13:31:43 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 12:31:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Iran asks Interpol to arrest Israeli war criminals In-Reply-To: <1f9915474ebc8d4a8a26a172e15795bd@straight.com> Message-ID: <1149428466.3715581236198703792.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> RE: Iran asks Interpol to arrest Israeli war criminals -- Interpol: Iran not asking for Israeli arrests http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/03/02/Iran.Israel.Arrests/index.html From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Mar 4 13:37:52 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 12:37:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Wars, Endless Wars Message-ID: <187566053.3718881236199072036.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/opinion/03herbert.html?th&emc=th ? New York Times ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? March 2, 2009 ? Op-Ed ? Wars, Endless Wars ? By BOB HERBERT ? The singer Edwin Starr, who died in 2003, had a big hit in 1970 called "War" in which he asked again and again: "War, what is it good for?" ? The U.S. economy is in free fall, the banking system is in a state of complete collapse and Americans all across the country are downsizing their standards of living. The nation as we've known it is fading before our very eyes, but we're still pouring billions of dollars into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with missions we are still unable to define. ? Even as the U.S. begins plans to reduce troop commitments in Iraq, it is sending thousands of additional troops into Afghanistan. The strategic purpose of this escalation, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged, is not at all clear. ? In response to a question on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday , Mr. Gates said: ? "We're talking to the Europeans, to our allies; we're bringing in an awful lot of people to get different points of view as we go through this review of what our strategy ought to be. And I often get asked, 'Well, how long will those 17,000 [additional troops] be there? Will more go in?' All that depends on the outcome of this strategy review that I hope will be done in a few weeks." ? We invaded Afghanistan more than seven years ago. We have not broken the back of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. We have not captured or killed Osama bin Laden. We don't even have an escalation strategy, much less an exit strategy. An honest assessment of the situation, taking into account the woefully corrupt and ineffective Afghan government led by the hapless Hamid Karzai, would lead inexorably to such terms as fiasco and quagmire. ? Instead of cutting our losses, we appear to be doubling down. ? As for Iraq, President Obama announced last week that substantial troop withdrawals will take place over the next year and a half and that U.S. combat operations would cease by the end of August 2010. But, he said, a large contingent of American troops, perhaps as many as 50,000, would still remain in Iraq for a "period of transition." ? That's a large number of troops, and the cost of keeping them there will be huge. Moreover, I was struck by the following comment from the president: "There will surely be difficult periods and tactical adjustments, but our enemies should be left with no doubt. This plan gives our military the forces and flexibility they need to support our Iraqi partners and to succeed." ? In short, we're committed to these two conflicts for a good while yet, and there is nothing like an etched-in-stone plan for concluding them. I can easily imagine a scenario in which Afghanistan and Iraq both heat up and the U.S., caught in an extended economic disaster at home, undermines its fragile recovery efforts in the same way that societies have undermined themselves since the dawn of time - with endless warfare. ? We've already paid a fearful price for these wars. In addition to the many thousands of service members who have been killed or suffered obvious disabling injuries, a study by the RAND Corporation found that some 300,000 are currently suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, and that 320,000 have most likely experienced a traumatic brain injury. ? Time magazine has reported that "for the first time in history, a sizable and growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants to calm nerves strained by repeated and lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan." ? Suicides among soldiers rose in 2008 for the fourth consecutive year, largely because of the stress of combat deployments. It's believed that 128 soldiers took their own lives last year. ? Much of the country can work itself up to a high pitch of outrage because a banker or an automobile executive flies on a private jet. But we'll send young men and women by the thousands off to repeated excursions through the hell of combat - three tours, four tours or more - without raising so much as a peep of protest. ? Lyndon Johnson, despite a booming economy, lost his Great Society to the Vietnam War. He knew what he was risking. He would later tell Doris Kearns Goodwin, "If I left the woman I really loved - the Great Society - in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs... All my dreams..." ? The United States is on its knees economically. As President Obama fights for his myriad domestic programs and his dream of an economic recovery, he might benefit from a look over his shoulder at the link between Vietnam and the still-smoldering ruins of Johnson's presidency. From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Mar 4 15:19:52 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 14:19:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Two-state solution? Who's kidding whom? Message-ID: <1696249443.3775011236205191967.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Vancouver Sun ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Ma rch 4, 2009 ? Clinton?s two-state solution opposed ? Many Israelis say there are better paths to Mideast peace ? B y Alastair Macdonald ? A Palestinian state, Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday, is in Israel's best interests. ? Many Israelis, not least members of the likely incoming government, do not see it that way. And many Palestinians are giving up hope that continuing the U.S.-backed "peace process" can deliver them the independent state Clinton is talking about. ? On her first visit to Jerusalem as U.S. secretary of state, Clinton's assertion "a two-state solution is inescapable" and "in Israel's best interests" was pointed. ? Meanwhile, incoming prime minister Benjamin Netanayahu is strenuously avoiding committing to a Palestinian state as he tries to form a ruling coalition. ? Clinton's comments reflect near-unanimity among Western diplomats that there is no other way out of 60-odd years of bloodshed. But she needed look no further than Israel's top-selling newspaper for evidence of the vigorous debate swirling around the new government on alternative ideas. ? "Not only is this not the only solution, it is a bad solution," former general and national security adviser Giora Eiland wrote in an opinion piece in Yedioth Ahronoth Tuesday. "And it is unlikely that it will ever be possible to achieve it." ? Eiland, whose proposals are not widely endorsed but reflect a growing willingness to question U.S.-backed ideas, said a Palestinian state would pose too great a threat to Israel and Jewish settlers could not be easily forced from the West Bank. Instead, he proposed either Jordan taking on the Palestinian territories or a regional pact with Jordan and Egypt, in which they, Israel and the Palestinians would swap territory. ? "Netanyahu would do well not to make do with just rejecting the idea of 'two states' and to persuade the United States to examine other solutions," Eiland wrote. "Obama spoke of change. Here is a way to change the way Americans see the issues." ? Those particular options have long been rejected by Jordan, Egypt and Palestinians. They are certainly not on the public agenda of Netanyahu as he seeks to persuade the outgoing ruling centrists to join a national unity government. But the Likud leader, who will have to rely on a right-wing majority in parliament if his talks with centrist Kadima leader Tzipi Livni fail, has avoided endorsing the Palestinian state that Washington and his predecessors have committed to. ? Netanyahu is not opposed to Palestinian statehood, but says it should have limited sovereignty and not be the guaranteed outcome of negotiations. The formulation "two states for two peoples," used by Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. leaders who relaunched talks at Annapolis, Md., in 2007 is not one he favours. ? "The headline of 'two states for two peoples' may have to be interpreted in different ways," said Zalman Shoval, a former ambassador to Washington and foreign relations chief of Likud. He echoed Eiland's comments about Israel's security concerns. ? "Whether at the end of the day it's called a Palestinian state, or a state with limited sovereignty ... that is something that will have to come out of the negotiations," Shoval said. ? Many in Likud thought a Jordanian annexation of the West Bank "a good idea," he added. But one that would have to be the fruit of negotiation between the Palestinians and Jordan. ? Palestinians have grown disillusioned with a peace process that has made little progress. ? "There is no alternative to two states if peace is to be realized. But the practical possibilities of the two states are evaporating," said former cabinet minister Ghassan Khatib. ? Israelis point to the 2006 parliamentary election victory of Hamas, an Islamist group that rejects Israel's existence, and to Hamas's seizure of the Gaza Strip and its rocket fire on Israel, as obstacles to negotiations with the Western-backed Palestinian administration of President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. ? But Khatib, like many Western diplomats, said Israel's own policies, notably of pursuing Jewish settlement in the West Bank in spite of U.S.-sponsored agreements to the contrary, were also driving the rise of hardline violence among Palestinians. ? "Both Likud and Kadima are in agreement on practices that undermine the possibilities of a Palestinian state," he said. ? Many Palestinians, he concluded, are resigned to a bitter status quo under Israeli occupation for the foreseeable future. Such sentiments were echoed on the eve of Clinton's visit by the left-wing Israeli movement Peace Now, which issued a report condemning new Jewish settlement plans. ? The new government's choice, it said, was either "two states for two nations" or "continued conflict and violence which will result in a bi-national state." ? Such a unitary state, with Israel essentially annexing the West Bank and Gaza, is held up by Israeli centrists like Livni as a reason to push for a two-state solution -- the alternative, they say, is a state where Jews would end up as a minority. Yet for some on the Israeli right, that "demographic problem" should not have priority over a religious duty to incorporate Biblical Jewish lands into the state of Israel. ? Responding to Peace Now's forecast that settlement expansion could kill off the two-state solution, Yaakov Katz, a leader of the National Union, a potential right-wing ally in a Netanyahu coalition, was quoted as saying: "With God's help, this will all happen in the next few years. There will be one state." ? Clinton's visit, ending in the West Bank today, will leave her in little doubt about the obstacles on the path to a Palestinian state. But she is unlikely to offer an alternative. As one veteran Western diplomat in Jerusalem said: "There is only one answer -- a two-state solution. ? "Talk of a one-state solution is all very well -- the problem is that it's not really a solution, it's an outcome." ? Reuters From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Mar 4 17:51:33 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:51:33 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Proceeds of Crime Message-ID: <49AF2215.7020904@ashisuto.co.jp> The US and British governments have created a private prison industry which preys on human lives. by George Monbiot Guardian (March 03 2009) It's a staggering case; more staggering still that it has scarcely been mentioned on this side of the ocean. Last week two judges in Pennsylvania were convicted of jailing some 2000 children in exchange for bribes from private prison companies. Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan sent children to jail for offences so trivial that some of them weren't even crimes. A 15 year-old called Hillary Transue got three months for creating a spoof web page ridiculing her school's assistant principal. Mr Ciavarella sent Shane Bly, then 13, to boot camp for trespassing in a vacant building. He gave a 14 year-old, Jamie Quinn, 11 months in prison for slapping a friend during an argument, after the friend slapped her. The judges were paid $2.6 million by companies belonging to the Mid Atlantic Youth Services Corp for helping to fill its jails {1, 2, 3}. This is what happens when public services are run for profit. It's an extreme example, but it hints at the wider consequences of the trade in human lives created by private prisons. In the US and the UK they have a powerful incentive to ensure that the number of prisoners keeps rising. The United States is more corrupt than the UK, but it is also more transparent. There the lobbyists demanding and receiving changes to judicial policy might be exposed, and corrupt officials identified and prosecuted. The UK, with a strong tradition of official secrecy and a weak tradition of scrutiny and investigative journalism, has no such safeguards. The corrupt judges were paid by the private prisons not only to increase the number of child convicts but also to shut down a competing prison run by the public sector. Taking bribes to bang up kids might be novel; shutting public facilities to help private companies happens - on both sides of the water - all the time. The Wall Street Journal has shown how, as a result of lobbying by the operators, private jails in Mississippi and California are being paid for non-existent prisoners {4, 5}. The prison corporations have been guaranteed a certain number of inmates. If the courts fail to produce enough convicts, they get their money anyway. This outrages taxpayers in both states, which have cut essential public services to raise these funds. But there is a simple means of resolving this problem: you replace ghost inmates with real ones. As the Journal, seldom associated with raging anti-capitalism, observes, "prison expansion [has] spawned a new set of vested interests with stakes in keeping prisons full and in building more ? The result has been a financial and political bazaar, with convicts in stripes as the prize" {6}. Even as crime declines, law-makers are pressed by their sponsors to increase the rate of imprisonment. The US has, by a very long way, the world's highest proportion of people behind bars: 756 prisoners per 100,000 people {7}, or just over one per cent of the adult population {8}. Similarly wealthy countries have around one-tenth of this rate of imprisonment. Like most of its really bad ideas, the last Conservative government imported private jails from the US. As Stephen Nathan, author of a forthcoming book about prison privatisation in the UK, has shown, the notion was promoted by the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which in 1986 visited prisons run by the Corrections Corporation of America. When the corporation told them that private provision in the US improved prison standards and delivered good value for money, the committee members failed to check its claims. They recommended that the government should put the construction and management of prisons out to tender "as an experiment" {9}. Encouraged by the committee's report, the Corrections Corporation of America set up a consortium in Britain with two Conservative party donors, Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd and John Mowlem & Co, to promote privately financed prisons over here. The first privately-run prison in the UK, Wolds, was opened by the Danish security company Group 4 in 1992. In 1993, before it had had a chance to evaluate this experiment, the government announced that all new prisons would be built and run by private companies. The Labour party, then in opposition, was outraged. John Prescott promised that "Labour will take back private prisons into public ownership - it is the only safe way forward" {10}. Jack Straw stated that "it is not appropriate for people to profit out of incarceration. This is surely one area where a free market certainly does not exist." He too promised to "bring these prisons into proper public control and run them directly as public services" {11}. But during his first seven weeks in office, Jack Straw renewed one private prison contract and launched two new ones. A year later he announced that all new prisons in England and Wales would be built and run by private companies, under the private finance initiative (PFI). Today the UK has a higher proportion of prisoners in private institutions than the US {12}. This is the only country in Europe whose jails are run on this model. So has prison privatisation here influenced judicial policy? As we discovered during the recent lobbying scandal in the House of Lords, there's no way of knowing. Unlike civilised nations, the UK has no register of lobbyists; we are not even entitled to know which lobbyists ministers have met {13}. But there are some clues. The former home secretary, John Reid, previously in charge of prison provision, has become a consultant to the private prison operator G4S {14}. The government is intending to commission a series of massive Titan jails under PFI. Most experts on prisons expect them to be disastrous, taking inmates further away from their families (which reduces the chances of rehabilitation) and creating vast warrens in which all the social diseases of imprisonment will fester. Only two groups want them built: ministers and the prison companies: they offer excellent opportunities to rack up profits. And the very nature of PFI, which commits the government to paying for services for 25 or thirty years whether or not they are still required creates a major incentive to ensure that prison numbers don't fall. The beast must be fed. And there's another line of possible evidence. In the two countries whose economies most resemble the UK's - Germany and France - the prison population has risen quite slowly. France has 96 inmates per 100,000 people, an increase of fourteen per cent since 1992. Germany has 89 prisoners per 100,000: 25% more than in 1992 but nine per cent less than in 2001. But the UK now locks up 151 out of every 100,000 inhabitants: 73% more than in 1992 and twenty per cent more than in 2001 {15}. Yes our politicians have barely come down from the trees, yes we are still governed out of the offices of the Daily Mail, but it would be foolish to dismiss the likely influence of the private prison industry. This revolting trade in human lives creates a permanent incentive to lock people up; not because prison works; not because it makes us safer, but because it makes money. Privatisation appears to have locked this country into mass imprisonment. www.monbiot.com References: 1. Amy Goodman, 17th February 2009. How Two Former PA Judges Got Millions in Kickbacks to Send Juveniles to Private Prisons. Democracy Now! http://www.alternet.org/rights/127461/amy_goodman:_how_two_former_pa_judges_got_millions_in_kickbacks_to_send_juveniles_to_private_prisons/ 2. The Economist, 26th February 2009. Bad judges: the lowest of the low. 3. Stephanie Chen, 24th February 2009. Pennsylvania rocked by 'jailing kids for cash' scandal. CNN. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/23/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges/index.html 4. Bryan Gruley, 6th September 2001. Prison Building Spree Creates Glut of Lockups. Wall Street Journal. 5. Joseph T Hallinan, 6th November 2001. Going Backwards. Wall Street Journal. 6. Bryan Gruley, ibid. 7. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/worldbrief/wpb_country.php?country=190 8. The total prison population at the end of 2007 (see above) was 2,293,157. The most recent figure for the adult population I can find - 217.8 million - was produced by the US Census Bureau in 2004. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/001703.html 9. Stephen Nathan, 2003. Prison Privatization in the United Kingdom. Published in Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization & Human Rights. Clarity Press, Inc., Atlanta. 10. John Prescott, 1994, quoted by Stephen Nathan, ibid. 11. Jack Straw, 8th March 1995, quoted by Stephen Nathan, ibid. 12. 7.2% in the US, 11% in the UK. http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/subsection.asp?id=268 13. The Committee on Standards in Public Life, cited by the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee, 5th January 2009. Lobbying: Access and influence in Whitehall. Volume I, para 187. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmpubadm/36/36i.pdf 14. Security Oracle, 18th December 2008. G4S Appoints John Reid As Group Consultant. http://www.securityoracle.com/news/G4S-Appoints-John-Reid-As-Group-Consultant_14833.html 15. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/worldbrief/ Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/03/03/the-proceeds-of-crime/ 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 Mar 5 05:10:09 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:10:09 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] How Two Former Pennslyvania Judges Got Millions in Kickbacks to Send Juveniles to Private Prisons Message-ID: <49AFC121.8000107@ashisuto.co.jp> by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! AlterNet (February 17 2009) Amy Goodman: An unprecedented case of judicial corruption is unfolding in Pennsylvania. Several hundred families have filed a class-action lawsuit against two former judges who have pleaded guilty to taking bribes in return for placing youths in privately owned jails. Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan are said to have received $2.6 million for ensuring that juvenile suspects were jailed in prisons operated by the companies Pennsylvania Child Care and a sister company, Western Pennsylvania Child Care. Some of the young people were jailed over the objections of their probation officers. An estimated 5,000 juveniles have been sentenced by Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2002. In addition to the jailing of the youths, the judges also admitted to helping "facilitate" the construction of private jails. The attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Martin Carlson, unveiled the charges last month. Martin Carlson: These payments were made to the judges, it is alleged, in return for discretionary acts by the judges favoring these businesses, acts relating to the construction, expansion, operation of these juvenile facilities and acts relating to the placement of juveniles in these facilities. Amy Goodman: On Thursday, Judges Ciavarella and Conahan entered guilty pleas on charges of wire fraud and income tax fraud. They're currently free on a $1 million bail bond pending sentencing. Their plea agreements call for jail sentences of more than seven years. No charges have been filed against the private prisons that paid the bribes. Pennsylvania's Supreme Court has appointed an outside judge to review all the cases tried by Ciavarella and Conahan. But the case has prompted calls for broader reforms of the juvenile justice system in Pennsylvania and nationwide. We're joined now by two of the thousands of youths jailed by the corrupt judges. On the line with us from Scranton, Pennsylvania, eighteen-year-old Jamie Quinn is with us. She spent more than eleven months in a privately run juvenile prison camp after being sentenced by Judge Mark Ciavarella as a first-time offender. Also on the line in the nearby town of Wilkes-Barre is twenty-two-year-old Kurt Kruger. Another first-time offender, he spent more than four months in a privately run prison - juvenile prison camp after also being sentenced by Judge Ciavarella. And joining us in a studio in Philadelphia is Bob Schwartz. He is a co-founder and executive director of the Juvenile Law Center, which helped expose the corrupt judges and is now involved in the class-action suit brought on behalf of the jailed youths' families. We asked PA Child Care, the main private jail company linked to the bribes, to come on the broadcast. We were directed to an attorney who didn't respond to our request. Bob Schwartz, let's start with you. When did all this begin to be revealed? How did it all happen? Bob Schwartz: Thanks, Amy, and thanks for having Kurt, Jamie and me on your show. This has been going on, we believe, in Luzerne County since 2003. It came to Juvenile Law Center's attention a couple of years ago, when we heard from the mother of one of the girls whom we ended up representing, a young woman named Hillary Transue, who was brought into court, found guilty, sent away for an internet parody of an assistant principal at her high school. Her mother found us, and when we were able to bring a habeas corpus petition on Hillary's behalf, she told our attorneys that she wasn't the only one who had been locked up by Judge Ciavarella, that there were lots of other kids in the same situation. That was a couple of years ago. And we began investigating and found that Luzerne County had half of the waivers of counsel in Pennsylvania of all the cases in which lawyers were waived by young people in juvenile court. Hillary had, unknown to her, signed a paper, her mother had signed a paper, giving up her right to a lawyer. That made the ninety-second hearing that she had in front of Judge Ciavarella pretty much of a kangaroo court. So, she was sent away. We investigated and last year, about a year ago, brought a petition before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court asking them to take a look at all of the cases in which kids were tried and adjudicated delinquent and many sent away without a lawyer. We thought that was the problem. That turned out to be the tip of the iceberg. When we filed, it turned out that the FBI began its investigation and found the corruption that you spoke about at the top of this segment. AG: And just very briefly, Hillary - explain what she did. A cartoon? BS: She had done a - I think a MySpace parody ? of an assistant principal, a paragraph or two, with internet humor of an adolescent variety, finishing by saying, "I hope that Mrs Smith" - or Jones - "has a sense of humor". It turned out that the assistant principal didn't, we gather, at least, complained to the police, who filed a harassment petition against Hillary. This is the kind of case, like Kurt's and like Jamie's, that never should have been in court in the first place, let alone get to a trial. Juvenile court is not designed for this kind of adolescent misbehavior. The cases should have been diverted entirely. Instead, Hillary and Kurt and Jamie and thousands of others were used by the court for profit, while many people over many years stood by watching. AG: I want to go to Jamie Quinn right now. Jamie, welcome to Democracy Now! Jamie Quinn: Thank you. AG: It's good to have you with us. Are you speaking to us from your house? JQ: Yes. AG: So, you were in jail for almost a year. Where were you imprisoned? What was the name of this juvenile prison camp? JQ: Well, first, I was told that I was only going to be at PA Child Care for up to three days. I was there for a week and then got sent to a military boot camp called VisionQuest in Quincy Township. It's about an hour and a half away. And I spent most of my time there. And then I got FTA'ed from there and sent back to PA Child Care - AG: And "FTA'ed" means ? ? JQ: Failure to adjust. And then I got sent back to PA Child Care, was there for about two weeks, because they said they couldn't find a bed for me, and they didn't know where to place me. And then I went to a step-down program. They told me I needed to go there in order to be able to go back into the community. And I went to Wilkes-Barre, a place in Wilkes-Barre which is called Bridgeview. AG: Now, just step back for a second, Jamie. JQ: OK. AG: Tell us why you were convicted. JQ: Well, I was about fourteen years old, and I got into an argument with one of my friends. And all that happened was just a basic fight. She slapped me in the face, and I did the same thing back. There was no marks, no witnesses, nothing. It was just her word against my word. My only charges were simple assault and harassment. And I didn't even know that charges were pressed against me until I had to go down to the intake and probation and fill out a whole bunch of paperwork. AG: Wait. So that is what you went to jail for almost a year for? JQ: Yes. AG: How old were you? JQ: I was fourteen, turning fifteen, and my court hearing was December 20th, three days before my birthday. ... AG: We're talking about the case of two judges who have pled guilty to receiving $2.6 million in return for placing youths in privately owned jails. Today, we're speaking with two of those youths. Jamie Quinn just told us her story. We now turn to Kurt Kruger. Kurt, tell us how you ended up in one of these privately run juvenile prison camps for more than four months. How did you get there? Kurt Kruger: Well, first off, thank you for having us. Basically, I was with a girl who was shoplifting DVDs from a Wal-Mart, local Wal-Mart, and we were caught, and I was considered the lookout. And it was basically just stupid kid stuff. The police came to the Wal-Mart and then called our parents. A week after this happened at Wal-Mart, they sent us letters that we were to appear in the probation office for interviews so they could decide court dates. And I then, after that interview, moved out of my father's house because of personal problems. And at some point, a appearance in court did come to my house, a letter did come to my house, but I had no contact with my father, so I had no idea. The only idea I had of anything that was going on was that the girl who I was with, who was actually the one shoplifting, never received a letter of a court appearance or anything, never heard anything else about the case. So I thought that it was done and over with. I was living with a friend for awhile, and I started going to school in the fall. I was eighteen at the time when I started going to school. I was seventeen when the incident occurred at Wal-Mart. I was in school one day, and I was called up to the probation officer's office in the school, and there was a police officer there waiting for me, and he handcuffed me and led me out of the school and put me in the squad car and drove me up to PA Child Care in Pittston. Since it was a Friday, I had to wait over the weekend to go in front of Judge Ciavarella, so I spent three days in PA Child Care, thinking the entire time that I screwed up but I was just going to get probation, at the worst. And I was then sentenced in a ninety-second hearing. I was sentenced to Camp Adams for a minimum of ninety days. And I was never offered a lawyer, never explained my rights to a lawyer or what benefits it would have. I was just sent away to Camp Adams for at least ninety days, and I spent the better part of four-and-a-half months there. AG: And tell us about the judge, Mark Ciavarella, who sent you there and your reaction when you heard that he pled guilty. KK: Shock, I guess. I mean, it was expected that he was going to plead guilty for this last week, but when all of this first started coming up, it was just absolute shock, because I had thought that I had just gotten a raw deal, that, you know, maybe possibly he was in a bad mood that day or something. I had never thought that the scope and the scale of this entire - of this entire investigation and what has come of it. AG: How old were you when you went to jail? KK: I was eighteen at the time. AG: Jamie, how did going to jail for almost a year, after your fight with your friend - how did that affect your life? JQ: It affected me dramatically. I mean, you know, you think it wouldn't, but it really has. I mean, I've lost friends over this. People looked at me different when I came out, thought I was a bad person, because I was gone for so long. My family started splitting up, and in my personal opinion, I think it's because I was away and got locked up and was, I thought, getting, you know, punished for what I had did, which I don't think I should have. And I was just - I'm still struggling in school, because the schooling system in facilities like these places are just horrible. Everybody gets put in the same level, and it's just horrible. I'm still struggling. I'm graduating this year. And math is still not my favorite subject. I was like an A-B student before I went, and now I'm just struggling with Bs and Cs. AG: You began cutting yourself in jail? JQ: Yes. AG: Why do you think you started doing that? JQ: Honestly ? I didn't even know what it was until I was sent to VisionQuest. And I was never depressed, I was never put on meds before. I went there, and they just started putting meds on me, and I didn't even know what they were. They said if I didn't take them, I wasn't following my program. So, in my opinion, I think that it was the meds at the time. I mean, I was never medicated in my life nor diagnosed with depression. And that's what I believe happened. AG: You were sent to the hospital three times - JQ: Yes. AG: - during that almost year? JQ: Yeah, Chambersburg Hospital. AG: Bob Schwartz, the plan now, and how much representation do young people have in Pennsylvania? BS: Well, in most Pennsylvania counties, almost all kids have a lawyer all the time. Pennsylvania law requires all youth to have a lawyer at the time of the first hearing before a detention officer to a judge at every subsequent hearing. Pennsylvania has granted kids, in many ways, more rights to lawyers than many states. On the other hand, in Luzerne County, that was a right that was largely ignored. Lawyers doing their job would get in the way of this railroad from the bar or the court to Pennsylvania Child Care and other placements that was taking place in Luzerne County at the time. One of the things that we hope that will come out of this is that it will be much harder for any youth to appear before any judge without a lawyer in this state. Meanwhile, there are several proceedings that are happening at the same time. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has finally agreed to hear the case. They took the case after the attorney acted at the end of January, and there will now be an examination of all 5,000 or so cases that took place in Luzerne County from 2003 forward. There are also going to be multiple civil rights actions in federal court in Scranton, going after not only the judges but others who conspired with them to hurt kids like Jamie and Kurt. What happened to them should never happen to a child in the United States of America. AG: And the role of the police in the schools, very briefly, in this, Bob Schwartz? BS: Well, the police were ordered to make an arrest. You know, it really varies in so many ways. They were obviously told in Kurt's case to bring him to court, because there was a court warrant issued, because he had failed to appear for a hearing that he didn't know about. They might have acted differently, but certainly the probation department and the court should have acted differently. The probation department was intimidated by the judges. They are court employees. And one of the things that the information of the attorney claims is that Judge Ciavarella and Judge Conahan had probation officers change their recommendations, ordered them to change their recommendations, in order to make sure that they had enough kids to fill slots at these childcare facilities. AG: And the childcare facilities themselves? They paid the bribes. BS: They paid, and the federal proceedings will bring to light what their role actually was. Right now, they have not been charged criminally, but they are inevitably a defendant in every civil rights proceeding. AG: So, we're talking about 5,000 kids like Jamie, like Kurt. How much jail time do these judges face? BS: They've pled and are expecting to get eighty-seven months in federal prison. That's a little more than seven years, if the judge accepts the plea bargain. AG: Jamie, how do you feel about that? JQ: It just makes me really question other authority figures and people that we're supposed to look up to and trust. I mean, Ciavarella has been a judge for a long time, from what I know, and a well-respected one, is what I thought. And obviously not. It just really makes me question and not trust other people. I mean, if someone like Judge Ciavarella could do this, then it makes me believe that anyone can betray the law and - I don't know. AG: And Kurt, your final comment? KK: Well, basically, I just want to say that finally there's some sort of closure, for me, at least, coming from the lawsuits from the Juvenile Law Center. There's at least a little bit of closure for me, and I hope that's the same case for everyone who's involved. AG: Well, Kurt Kruger and Jamie Quinn, thanks so much for being with us, and Bob Schwartz, as well. I want to turn now to the commentary that alerted us to this story, of Mumia Abu-Jamal. He's been on Pennsylvania's death row for more than twenty-five years. Mumia Abu-Jamal: "With Judges Like These". In Pennsylvania's Luzerne County, there are nine judges of the Court of Common Pleas. Two of them just pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to convict and sentence juveniles to a private prison, so that they could get kickbacks from the prisons' builders and owners. According to published accounts, Judge Mark A Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael T Conahan sent hundreds of boys and girls to the private facility and pocketed some $2.5 million in kickbacks. This was accomplished not merely because of the venal greed of the judges, but because virtually none of the children were provided with legal representation. When the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center filed a petition in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, calling the county's practice of adjudicating and sentencing some 250 kids to jail without legal representation unconstitutional, the state's highest court denied the petition on January 8th. A month later, they changed their minds, vacating the denial. What transpired in the interim? Well, for one thing, the two judges pleaded guilty to federal charges of wire service fraud. Hundreds of children get sucked into jail after clearly unconstitutional proceedings with no legal representation, and the state supreme court doesn't even raise an eyebrow. The media reports on this outrage, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court expresses a little interest. This is the nature of judging these days, when even kids are expendable fodder for the prison-industrial complex. Luzerne County is the state's tenth largest county with just over 300,000 souls. At least 22 percent of their judges have admitted being corrupt in the sordid business of selling the freedom of poor children for profit. From fentona at shaw.ca Thu Mar 5 09:22:14 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 08:22:14 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Canada should bar or prosecute Bush: lawyer Message-ID: <2EE01E50-D000-4BA0-A592-31AA199F090E@shaw.ca> http://www.ffwdweekly.com/article/news-views/news/canada-should-bar-or-prosecute-bush-lawyer-3378/ Canada should bar or prosecute Bush: lawyer Foreign Affairs stays silent on upcoming Calgary visit Published March 5, 2009 by Jeremy Klaszus in News Mark Mushet Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson says that because Bush has been 'credibly accused' of war crimes, Canada should deny him entry As George W. Bush?s St. Patrick?s Day visit to Calgary draws near, the federal government is facing pressure from activists and human rights lawyers to bar the former U.S. president from the country or prosecute him for war crimes and crimes against humanity once he steps on Canadian soil. Bush is scheduled to speak at the Telus Convention Centre March 17, but Vancouver lawyer Gail Davidson says that because Bush has been ?credibly accused? of supporting torture in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Canada has a legal obligation to deny him entry under Canada?s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The law says foreign nationals who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity, including torture, are ?inadmissible? to Canada. ?The test isn?t whether the person?s been convicted, but whether there?s reasonable grounds to think that they have been involved,? says Davidson, who?s with Lawyers Against the War (LAW). ??It?s now a matter of public record that Bush was in charge of setting up a regime of torture that spanned several parts of the globe and resulted in horrendous injuries and even death. Canada has a duty.? In February, Davidson sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other cabinet ministers asking the Canadian government to either bar Bush from Canada, prosecute him once he arrives, or have the federal attorney general consent to a private prosecution by LAW against the Texan. She hasn?t received a response, and concedes she?s fighting ?an uphill battle? with ?terrific challenges.? Davidson laid torture charges against Bush during his visit to Vancouver in 2004, but a judge quashed them within days. The federal government is keeping silent on the upcoming visit. ?We have no comments to offer on the visit of Mr. George W. Bush to Calgary,? said Foreign Affairs spokesperson Alain Cacchione in an e- mail to Fast Forward. When told about Davidson?s letter, a spokesperson with the Canadian Border Services Agency said ?we wouldn?t comment on something like that.? Davidson is one of many voices around the world calling for Bush?s prosecution. Earlier this year, Manfred Nowak, the UN?s Special Rapporteur on Torture, said the U.S. has a ?clear obligation? to prosecute Bush and former secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld for authorizing torture ? a violation of the UN Convention on Torture. ?Obviously the highest authorities in the United States were aware of this,? Nowak told a German TV station in January. Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director for Human Rights Watch, says that while there?s legally ?all the reason in the world? to prosecute decision-makers in the Bush administration, ?it?s a different story? politically. ?The Obama administration certainly has not given much in the way of encouraging signals for such a prosecution,? says Mariner, who?s based in New York. ?Obama has consistently said that he wants to look forward.? Mariner says that while a U.S. justice department investigation is unlikely, a congressional investigation is more probable ? and ?that could lead to recommendations for prosecution.? Mariner?s not expecting a Canadian prosecution against Bush. ?Obviously the Canadian government would have to be in favour of it, and that seems rather unlikely,? she says. Calgary activists, meanwhile, are organizing a number of events for the week of Bush?s visit, culminating in a noontime rally outside the Telus Convention Centre during Bush?s speech. ?We want to give him the welcome that he deserves ? which is we want him to go back to the States, or we want him arrested,? says organizer Collette Lemieux. Activist Julie Hrdlicka, who visited Iraq twice during the American occupation, agrees. ?We need to send a clear message to him that he?s not welcome,? she says. Lemieux is hopeful that Bush will eventually be prosecuted. ?Do I think that it?s going to happen very soon? No,? she says. ?But I think that it?s very important that we keep the pressure up?. We have to make it clear that there?s accountability.? The Plaza Theatre, meanwhile, is screening three Bush-themed documentaries for a ?Bush Bash Film Fest? the night of the visit. Half the box office proceeds will go to the United Way. From fentona at shaw.ca Thu Mar 5 11:11:22 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 10:11:22 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Canada's next drones will carry bombs Message-ID: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Technology/Canada+next+drones+will+carry+bombs/1356414/story.html Canada's next drones will carry bombs By Archie McLean , Canwest News Service March 5, 2009 11:01 AM KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Unlike the drones currently patrolling the Afghan skies, Canada's next generation of pilotless aircraft will carry bombs or guided missiles, says Canada's top air force commander. ?Armed UAVs with air to ground weapons are a valuable capability and it's a good option to have,? said Lt.-Gen. Angus Watt, who was in Kandahar. It is the first time the chief of air staff has confirmed the military's intention to buy weaponized drones. Watt has expressed skepticism about armed UAVs in the past. He reiterated some of those concerns this week, but said the weapons are a worthwhile capability. ?Canada very much respects the law of armed conflict and you have to satisfy a number of conditions before you drop a weapon on anything,? he said. ?In the case of the UAV, those conditions will be very difficult to satisfy.? Watt's comments were under a security embargo until he left Afghanistan Wednesday. Canada is currently leasing several Heron UAVs that are flying over Afghanistan right now, conducting surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Under a program called JUSTAS - the Joint UAV Surveillance and Target Acquisition System - Canada is exploring weaponized models such as the United States is currently using to hunt and kill insurgents in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The program still needs government approval and could cost as much as $750 million. The next generation UAVs ?have a huge role to play in the future of the Canadian Forces,? Watt said. Pilots are already testing the Heron. They sit in front of screens, manipulating joysticks, trackballs and control boxes like an elaborate video game. Capt. Brent Peardon says it's actually pretty similar to a conventional aircraft except he has fewer senses to guide decision- making. ?You're not experiencing the three-dimensional realm the same as a pilot,? Peardon says. ?You have to pay extra close attention to our instrumentation and parameters.? The Heron looks like a cross between a glider plane and a 1,100 kilogram insect with a 16.6-metre wing span. It can fly for up to 24 hours at a time and carries equipment designed to detect IEDs or other explosive material on the ground. It has advantages, too, over the older Sperwer UAVs, which are smaller and sound like a flying lawn mower. ?The Heron can go further, it can stay up longer, it can do it without being detected and it provides very high fidelity image back to the operators here,? says Col. Christopher Coates, the air wing commander. But while Canadians are just starting to ramp up their robot fleet, the Americans have been using them for increasingly sophisticated jobs. According to P.W. Singer, the author of the book Wired for War: The robotics revolution and conflict in the 21st century, the U.S. has more than 5,300 unmanned aerial drones, including the heavily armed Reaper drone, which can carry four Hellfire missiles and a pair of 227 kilogram laser-guided bombs. The Americans also have thousands of ground-based robots, including one that can shoot down incoming rockets, artillery or mortar rounds. Here in Afghanistan, Canadian combat engineers use robots to diffuse IEDs in the same way police bomb squads do in Canada. UAVs may never eliminate conventional aircraft completely, but for some jobs - the dull, dirty or dangerous ones - they are particularly well suited. Darren Daigle, an operations manager with MDA, the company maintaining the Herons as part of the lease, envisions them being used for long cargo flights, search and rescue patrols or forest fire fighting. Canada's new UAVs could be flying as soon as February 2012. Edmonton Journal From fentona at shaw.ca Thu Mar 5 11:13:50 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 10:13:50 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Cdn Military Revamps Domestic Ops. Message-ID: http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=1353971 Military readies reservists for threats to 'domestic front' Adrian Humphreys, National Post Published: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 The Canadian military has embarked on a wide-ranging plan to turn its reserve soldiers into focused units trained and equipped to respond to a nightmarish array of domestic threats, including terrorist "dirty bomb" attacks, biological agent containment, Arctic catastrophes and natural disasters. The creation of seven units within each region of the country -- including unusual all-terrain vehicle (ATV) squadrons and perimeter security teams to cordon areas of potential devastation -- prepares reserve soldiers for operations on the "domestic front" while freeing regular force soldiers to concentrate on foreign battlefields. "There is a recognition, certainly within the military and we have heard the government say, that domestic security is the number one priority. A number of these conclusions come from the post-9/11 world we live in," said Brigadier-General Jean Collin, commander of the army in Ontario, during an exclusive interview with the National Post. "The reality is an army needs to train, an army needs to equip itself and an army needs to be ready." The remodeling of the reserves will see the development of specialist units in four of the military's regional divisions -- Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario and the West. The units will include perimeter security teams prepared to cordon off an area if there was an atomic detonation, nuclear accident or similar source of wide contamination and "Arctic response" groups that are trained and equipped to live and operate in the far north. The changes highlight both a renewed focus on domestic security and the increased role of reservists, who are part-time volunteer soldiers augmenting the ranks of full-time soldiers, who are referred to as the "regular" forces. The place of reserves in the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan was shown yesterday when one of three soldiers killed by a roadside bomb was a reservist from Ontario. "Some of the stuff we are now asking the reservists to do is because we need them; because the regular force simply does not have sufficient people, sufficient resources, to do it on their own," said Brig-Gen. Collin. "And the reservists have certainly demonstrated that they have the capability to do all this and more." Brig-Gen. Collin, who has served in Bosnia and Afghanistan, has also been a special advisor to the Chief of the Defence Staff on homeland security issues. The military divides operations into two broad divisions: away missions, such as the action in Afghanistan, called "expeditionary operations," and home missions, such as helping with floods in Winnipeg, called "domestic operations." "The lead -- the main contributor -- for expeditionary operation is the regular force. They form the core for expeditionary operations and are augmented by reservists," said Brig-Gen. Collin. "What we have now said is that for domestic operations, the core will actually be provided by the reserve force, augmented by the regular force. The reserves take a dominant role in domestic operations in the future, once they are properly equipped and trained to do so." The remodeling of the reserves, ordered at the start of 2009, is expected to take two to three years to complete. The remodeling will also likely see the reserves play a larger role in domestic security situations, including the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver and the G8 summit of world leaders that has been announced for 2010 at a resort in Huntsville, 220 kilometres north of Toronto, he said. The national plan places the reserves at the forefront of grim scenarios that are the stuff of apocalyptic Hollywood movies. "We all know the threat from dirty bombs, chemical contaminants. This is certainly one of the more dangerous situations that can arise," said Brig.-Gen. Collin. "You can certainly get it from a terrorist act. You can also get it from a man-made disaster. You can get nuclear contamination from a nuclear power plant -- Three Mile Island, Chernobyl. "We are training to establish a perimeter. Do I see a scenario when we might be obliged to keep people in? Probably. You need to be trained to be able to make sure that you don't become a casualty in the process of doing that security." The Arctic units -- companies of about 120 people in each region, that can come together as a single force if needed -- poses a challenge of a different sort, primarily training for the harsh conditions of the far north. "We are going to have up to an entire battalion of soldiers who are prepared to go live and operate in the north and that entire battalion will come from the reserves. We are having them trained now, as we speak, to operate in the north," said Brig.-Gen. Collin, who himself just returned from a visit to several remote aboriginal communities where he suffered though the deep cold in a military-issue tent. "It was bloody cold... But you can dress, equip and operate up there if you know what you're doing," he said. Currently, about 120 reservists from southern Ontario are involved in Exercise Polar Warrior, a week of training in Arctic warfare and survival in Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug, a First Nations community on Big Trout Lake. To equip the ATV Squadron, the first commercial vehicles are arriving in the coming months. They will not be armed or painted in camouflage and are not intended for combat use. They could be deployed in rural and remote areas to traverse wooded ravines or in an urban setting that has suffered devastation, such as an earthquake or massive explosion. The plans also call for turning over responsibility for the force's Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Units -- mobile, high-capacity machines for cleaning water to drinkable standards -- to the reserves. The machines have been used abroad, in Sri Lanka helping victims of the 2004 tsunami, and also domestically in Kashechewan, Ont., when the community's water supply was tainted by E. coli bacteria in 2005. David Bercuson, director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, said the changes make sense given the current global security situation. "Reserves are all local and spread out across the country. It seems to me the people best situated to help the first responders would be the reservists. It makes a lot of sense. Also, the regular force is so stretched and stressed right now," said Mr. Bercuson. Mr. Bercuson was surprised to hear, however, of envisioned scenarios that might require a form of constabulary or policing function for reserves in civilian containment and security. "People in Ottawa sometimes forget that the reserves are volunteers. If you try to change the reserves in ways they don't want to change, they just might not show up." National Post ahumphreys at nationalpost.com From fentona at shaw.ca Thu Mar 5 11:57:14 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 10:57:14 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Full Text of Human Rights Record of US in '08 Message-ID: <5D0CD87D-D822-4470-B357-E2825BA5974F@shaw.ca> http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-02/26/content_7517517.htm Full Text of Human Rights Record of US in '08 (Xinhua) Updated: 2009-02-26 23:50 Comments(33) PrintMail BEIJING -- The Information Office of the State Council published a report titled "The Human Rights Record of United States in 2008" here on Thursday. Following is the full text: The State Department of the United States released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2008 on February 25, 2009. As in previous years, the reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but mentioned nothing of the widespread human rights abuses on its own territory. The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2008 is prepared to help people around the world understand the real situation of human rights in the United States, and as a reminder for the United States to reflect upon its own issues. I. On Life and Personal Security Widespread violent crimes in the United States pose serious threats to its people's lives, property and personal security. According to a report published in September 2008 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the country reported 1.4 million violent crimes, including 17,000 murders (The Washington Post, June 10, 2008), and 9.8 million property crimes (The World Journal, September 16, 2008) in 2007. Throughout 2007, the estimated number of robberies counted 445,125, a 7.5 percent rise over the last five years (The Washington Post, September 16, 2008). In cities with 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, the number of murders increased by 3.7 percent than 2006 (The Washington Post, June 10, 2008). In those with populations of 10,000 to 30,000, the number of violent crimes rose 2.4 percent than 2006 (The Washington Post, September 16, 2008). US residents age 12 and older experienced an estimated 23 million crimes of violence or theft. The violent crime rate in 2007 was 20.7 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older; for property crimes it was 146.5 per 1,000 households. (Criminal Victimization, 2007, US Department of Justice,http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cv07.htm). Among cities with relatively high violence and murders rates, New Orleans reported 95 murders per 100,000 population, Baltimore 45, Detroit 44, St. Louis 40, Philadelphia 27.8, Houston 16.2, and Dallas 16.1 (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 10, 2008). In the United States, one murder is committed every 31 minutes, one rape in every 5.8 minutes, and one burglary every 14.5 seconds (The Washington Post, September 16, 2008). Guns are widespread in the United States. The US Supreme Court asserted that Americans had an individual right to possess and use firearms, even when the guns are not related to service in a government militia, the Christian Science Monitor reported on June 27, 2008. Statistics show that the US citizens own about 200 million private guns, including 60 to 65 million pistols. A total of 48 states in the United States allow its residents to bear guns (The China Press, October 16, 2008), while it is believed that one can buy a gun at gun shows in 35 states without a background check (United Press International, October 3, 2008). A gun store outside Nashville, Tennessee, sold 70 guns on November5, 2008 alone (http://www.usqiaobao.com ). More than 20 airports in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities allow people with gun permits to carry firearms in the general public areas of the terminal (The China Press, October 15, 2008). A local high school in north Texas even let some teachers carry concealed weapons (The New York Times, August 29, 2008). The Washington Post reported on December 5, 2007 that 10 states, including Virginia, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Mississippi, supplied 57 percent of the guns that were recovered in crimes in other states in 2007. The 10 states with the highest crime-gun export rates had nearly 60 percent more gun homicides than the 10 states with the lowest rates. The frequent occurrences of gun killings were a serious threat to the lives of US citizens. According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.35 million high school students in 2007 were either threatened or injured with a weapon at least once on school property (United Press International, October 3, 2008). Young people represent an expanding proportion of all shooting victims, from 13 percent in 2002 to more than 21 percent in 2007. According to a Harvard University survey of high school students in 2006, a fifth of the 1,200 questioned in schools across Boston had witnessed a shooting. More than 40 percent believed it was easy to get a gun, and 28 percent said they did not feel safe on the bus or train (The Boston Globe, September 18, 2008). In the 2007-08 school year, a record 34 Chicago Public School students were killed (The Chicago Tribune, April 2, 2008). Within a week from February 7, 2008, the United States had seven shooting incidents, leading to 23 deaths and dozens of injuries. On March 27, 2008, five people in Georgia and Kentucky were shot dead (The Associated Press, March 27, 2008, March 28, 2008). On the night of April 18, nine shootings were reported in a period ofless than two hours in Chicago (The Chicago Tribune, April 21, 2008). In November, Baltimore had 31 shootings (The Baltimore Sun, December 2, 2008). On December 24, 2008, a man dressed in a Santa costume shot at a Christmas Eve party at his ex-parents-in-law's house, causing eight deaths, three injuries and three missing persons (The China Press, December 26, 2008). II. On Civil and Political Rights In the United States, an increasing number of restrictions have been imposed on civil rights. According to a report on the Washington Post website on April 4,2008, the deep-packet inspection, a brand new surveillance technology, which has been applied, is able to record every visited web page, every sent email and every online search. Statistics indicated that at least 100,000 US Internet users had been tracked and the service providers had conducted tests on as many as 10 percent of the US netizens (The Washington Post, April 4, 2008). The FBI has been engaged in illegal surveillance launched by the US government nationwide, obtaining thousands of people's phone records, bank accounts and other personal information by unwarranted means. The Seattle Times reported on July 15, 2008 that President Bush signed a bill on July 10 that overhauls government eavesdropping and called it "landmark legislation that is vital to the security of our people." The new law grants legal immunity to telecommunication companies that take part in wiretapping programs and authorizes the government to wiretap international communications betweens parties outside the US for anti-terrorism purposes without court approval. The US Department of Homeland Security disclosed in July 2008 that as part of border search policies, federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing (The Washington Post, August 1, 2008). The New York Times reported on December 8, 2008 that the National Security Agency illegally wiretapped a Muslim scholar named Ali al-Timimi in Northern Virginia and intentionally withheld materials gained through eavesdropping during a 2005 trial, in which the scholar was convicted on terrorism charges. These materials may provide evidences that the US government's eavesdropping program has violated its citizens' civil rights. Police abuse of force infringed on the civil rights of Americans. According to a report by the Chicago Tribune on June 25,2008, Chicago witnessed eight shootings by police officers in two weeks in June, causing five with fatalities. Shapell Terrell, a 39-year-old sanitation worker, was fatally shot by police officers on June 22 at the entrance of a two-story building, where all four apartments were filled with family members (The Chicago Tribune, June 23, 2008). Luis Colon, an 18-year-old man in Chicago, was shot and killed by a plainclothes police officer on June 24, when he was walking with his girlfriend to meet friends and eat at a restaurant (The Chicago Tribune, June 25, 2008). Daryl Battle, 20, was shot dead in his Brooklyn apartment in New York City on the morning of August 2, 2008. Michael Mineo was sodomized by a police officer's baton on October 15, on a busy Brooklyn subway platform (The New York Times, December 10, 2008). Gilberto Blanco was shot and killed when he was swinging a folding chair in front of a policewoman named Dawn Ortiz in a parking lot near the Coney Island church (The New York Times, December 1, 2008). The proportion of US prisoners to its population has hit a new high. The Washington Post reported on July 11, 2008 that the United States has 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation in the world. A report issued by the US Department of Justice on December 11, 2008 said that over 7.3 million people were on probation, in jail or on parole at the end of 2007, equivalent to 3.2 percent of all US adult residents or one in every 31 adults. (The United Press International, December 11, 2008). For black men aged between 20-34, one in nine was in jail. (The Guardian, March 1, 2008). The rate of prisoners, higher than any period in the US history, was almost six times the world average (125 in every 100,000 people). According to statistics, the recidivism rate stayed high in the United States. Half the people of previous convictions were sentenced to prison again within three years. There is no proper protection of prisoners' basic rights. Information released in August 2008 by the US Department of Justice showed that the rate of conviction by US courts has been on a rise since 1993. Convicts who committed violent crimes accounted for more than 50 percent of the total. California had 172,000 inmates in its 33 prisons, which were designed for just over half that number, leaving each inmate a space of only 6 square foot (Prison overcrowding blamed for health woes, http:// www. sfgate.com, November 19, 2008). In Prince George of Maryland, the Upper Marlboro jail held an estimated 1,500 prisoners while it was designed for about 1,330 (The Washington Post, July 25, 2008).There were frequent reports inmates dying from prison officers' violence. An Amnesty International report in 2008 said Taser was widely used to control inmates in the US prisons and detention centers. It had tracked more than 300 cases since 2001 in which people died after being shocked by a Taser. Among them, 69 died in2008. According to a report by the Washington Post on July 25, more than 10 jail officers in Prince George of Maryland have arrest records. At least six officers were suspended in the past seven months and nine others still worked in the prison though they were accused of crimes or violence. Baron Pikes, arrested on a cocaine charge, died in January 2008 after a police officer had shocked him nine times with a Taser (The CNN website, on July 22, 2008). Ronnie L. White, 19, died of strangulation on June 29, 2008,when he was held in solitary confinement at a correction center in Prince George County, Maryland (The Washington Post, September 23,2008). According to the latest statistics released by the US Department of Justice in June 2008, 1,154 inmates in the federal and state prisons died of AIDS between 2001 and 2006 (Ming Pao Daily, July 3, 2008). Some US jails have become the "new asylums" for drug addicts and mental patients, with six out of 10 people in jail living with a mental illness (Jails bulging with people with mental illnesses, the homeless and people detained for immigration offenses; costing counties billions, http:// justicepolicy.org). The Economist reported on May 10, 2008 that the US was one of the few countries where the felons were deprived of rights. Some US states even forbid felons to vote. III. On Economic, Social and Cultural Rights American people's economic, social and cultural rights are not properly protected. There is a wide wealth gap in the American society. According to a New York Times report on October 5, 2008, the United States developed the most the most unequal distribution of income and wages of any high- income country over the past 30 years. The richest fifth of the Americans earn an average of 168,170 US dollars a year, about fifteen times the figure for the bottom fifth -- 11,352 US dollars. The top one percent of New York City tax filers received 37 percent of the city's adjusted gross income-- which includes wages, business income and capital gains, among other earnings (The New York Times, April 9, 2008). There are 64 billionaires in New York City with a combined net worth of 344 billion US dollars, 469 percent more than the collective worth of the city's billionaires two years ago (The Washington Post, September 29, 2008). A UN report released on October, 22, 2008 showed that the wealth gap in big American cities, including New York, Washington, Atlanta and New Orleans, was almost as wide as some African cities, and the ratio of income inequality in American cities was very high. The number of people who are homeless, in poverty and hunger increased in the United States in 2007. Figures released in August, 2008 by the US Census Bureau showed that 12.5 percent of Americans, or 37.3 million people, were living in poverty in 2007,up from 36.5 million in 2006. Eighteen percent of children (13.3 million) were impoverished in 2007, up from 17.4 percent (12.8 million) in 2006 (Reuters, August 27, 2008). Some 7.6 million American families, or 9.8 percent of the total, were living in poverty. In 2007, the annual income of 1.56 million American people, 41.8 percent of the country's population in poverty, reached only half of the poverty threshold. In New York City, latest study shows 23 percent of the people are living in poverty (The Washington Post, July 14, 2008). According to a report released on October 17, 2008 by Los Angeles- based Taiwan Times, a nationwide survey showed that under the influence of the financial crisis, about 80 percent of low-income workers could not afford to buy fuel or save for pension insurance. More than 60 percent of them could not afford medical insurance and 50 percent could not pay for food or housing. The Reuters reported that food stamps, the main US anti-hunger program which helps the needy buy food, set a record in September 2008, as more than 31.5 million Americans used the program, a year-on-year increase of 17 percent (Reuters, December 3, 2008). About 48 percent of New York City residents, had difficulty affording food for themselves and their families in 2008, doubling that of 2003. Already, 1.3 million New York City residents rely on emergency food organizations, up 24 percent from1 million in 2004 (The NYC Hunger Experience 2008 Update: Food Poverty Soars as Recession Hits Home). Some 68.8 percent of emergency food agencies reported that they did not have enough food to fulfill demand (Survey shows impact of hunger crisis, http://www.nyccah.org). More than 2 million American families were unable to pay back house loans. Statistics released on November 13,2008 showed that foreclosure filings grew 25 percent nationally in October 2008 over the same month in 2007. More than 84,000 properties were repossessed by banks in October (China Press, November 14, 2008). Statistics collected by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development showed that the number of chronically homeless people living in the nation's streets and shelters reached 123,833in 2007. About 1.6 million people experienced homelessness and found shelter between October 1, 2006 and September 30, 2007 (The New York Times, July 30, 2008). The number of requests for emergency shelter doubled from fiscal year 2007 to fiscal 2008 (World Journal, October 22, 2008). In Louisiana and Kentucky, the number of homeless families increased to 931. In December 2008, 19of the 25 American cities surveyed reported some kind of increase in homelessness between October 1, 2007 and October 30, 2008. And 16 cities reported an increase in family homelessness (Advocacy Groups Fear New Wave of Homeless, http://ipsnews.net). The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless estimated that more than 6,000 people were homeless in the District on an average day. Among them, 47 percent were "chronically homeless" (District agrees on homeless shelter access; Faces $5 million cost, The Washington Times, December 13, 2008). The rights of laborers are not properly protected. The unemployment rate in America keeps high. Statistics released by the US Department of Labor on January 9, 2009 showed that the unemployment rate increased from 4.6 percent in 2007 to 5.8 percent in 2008, the highest since 2003. A total of 2.6 million jobs were lost in 2008, the biggest loss since 1945. In December 2008 alone, 524,000 jobs were lost, driving the unemployment rate to a 16-year-high of 7.2 percent (The New York Times, January 10,2009). The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) reached 2.2 million in November, up by 822,000 over the past 12 months (Employment Summary, http://data.bls.gov ). According to a poll conducted by Harris Interactive, the median time Americans spent working in 2008, which included housekeeping and studying, was 46 hours, which was one hour more than that of 2007. One in every four Americans said their working hours increased in 2008. The median time Americans spent playing in 2008was 16 hours, a decline of four hours from a year ago and the lowest since 1973 (Agence France Presse, December 10, 2008). A survey of day-laborer sites in 25 states found that half of all workers had been underpaid or not paid at least once (The Washington Post, July 8, 2008). In July 2008, a Minnesota court ruled Wal-Mart Stores Inc violated state wage and hour laws, failing to give workers their full rest breaks and requiring hourly employees to work off-the-clock during training (The China Press, December 10, 2008). On July 23, 2008, New York's State Labor Department said a clothes factory called "Jin Shun" in Queens was found to have cheated its workers of 5.3 million US dollars in the past six years by paying them salaries far below the minimum wage and not paying for overtime work (World Journal, July 24, 2008). On September 6, about 27,000 machinists in Boeing went on strike, requiring the company to raise their salaries and welfares (http://news.bbc.co.uk/chinese/simp/hi/newsid-7600000 ). On October 20, US District Court in Manhattan of New York ordered Saigon Grill Restaurant to compensate 4.6 million US dollars to 36 delivery workers for violations of minimum wage and overtime laws (The China Press, December 23, 2008). Employees' pension plans shrank considerably. A senior budget analyst with the US Congress estimated in October 2008 that Americans' pension accounts lost 2 trillion US dollars in the past 15 months. More than half the people surveyed in an Associated Press-GfK poll said they would have to delay their retirement. A survey conducted by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) released in October 2008 said one out of five Americans above the age of 45 stopped putting money into a 401(k), IRA(Individual Retirement Account) or other retirement account (The China Press, October 8, 2008). A study by Hewitt Associates found the average US 401(k) plan balance was down 14 percent in 2008 to 68,000 US dollars from 79,000 US dollars in2007. 401(k) refers to a section of the US Tax Code that allows retirement plan investors to defer paying taxes (The China Press, November 25, 2008). The realization of Americans' education rights is not guaranteed. The American Human Development Report 2008-2009 showed that 14 percent of Americans (about 40 million), with inadequate ability to read or write, were not able to understand the articles on newspapers or user manuals (The China Press, July 17, 2008). A report published on December 3, 2008 by the US National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education said college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 percent. Tuition for the 2008 fall semester increased by 6.4 percent on average for state universities. Many states planned to sharply increase tuition for public universities in 2009. Florida and the Washington states were considering an increase of 15 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Among the poorest families -- those with incomes in the lowest 20 percent --the net cost of a year at a public university was 55 percent of median income, up from 39 percent in 1999-2000. At community colleges, that cost was 49 percent of the poorest families' median income in 2008, up from 40 percent in 1999-2000 (The New York Times, December 3, 2008). Only 11 percent of the children from the most impoverished families were college graduates. The figure for children from the top earning 20 percent families was 53 percent. (The New York Times, February 22, 2008). Americans without health insurance have been increasing. According to the American Human Development Report published in July 2008, despite spending 230 million US dollars an hour on healthcare, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed country, ranking 42nd in terms of life expectancy. One out of six Americans does not have health insurance. The Census Bureau said in a report published on August 26, 2008 that there are 45.7 million Americans without health insurance. Nineteen states had already made cuts or were planning to make cuts in Medicaid and/or State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) (The China Press, December 12, 2008). As medical expenses were rising, many companies quitted buying health insurance for their employees. A research conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business in March 2008 found that only 47 percent small-size companies provide health aids for their employees. Among companies of 50 employees or less, only 24 percent offer health aids. Many gave up seeing a doctor or receiving treatments as they couldn't afford it. Drugs, suicide and other social problems prevail in the United States. America has the largest population of cocaine and marijuana users in the world. A survey of 54,000 people from 17 countries found that 16 percent of US survey respondents had at least tried cocaine in their lifetime, and more than 42 percent had tried marijuana (WHO global drug survey finds high rates of cocaine, marijuana use in US, http://www.thebostonchannel.com ). The suicide rate among middle-aged white Americans had been on the rise. A research report issued on October 21, 2008 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said between 1999 and 2005, the overall suicide rate in the United States rose by 0.7 percent every year. The figure for white men aged 40 to 64 rose 2.7 percent and for middle-aged white women 3.9 percent. In 2007, a total of 138 people in the city of St. Louis committed suicide. As of June 2, 2008, 61 in the city committed suicide, up by 15 year-on-year (The Washington Post, June 2, 2008). The suicide rates in Baltimore, Detroit and New Orleans were all on the rise (The Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 2008). Many young Americans have personality disorders. Researchers found that almost one in five young American adults has a personality disorder that interferes with everyday life, and nearly half of young people surveyed have some sort of psychiatric condition. Fewer than 25 percent of college-aged Americans with mental problems get treatment (1 in 5 adults has personality disorder, http://www.archgenpsychiatyr.com ). IV. On Racial Discrimination In the United States, racial discrimination prevails in every aspect of social life. Black people and other minorities are still suffering from unequal treatment and discrimination. Black people and other minorities live at the bottom of the American society. A report issued by the US Bureau of Census on August 26, 2008 said the real median income for American households was 50,233 US dollars in 2007. That of the non-Hispanic White households was 54,920 US dollars, Hispanic households 38,679 US dollars, Black households 33,9160 US dollars. The median income of Hispanic and Black households was roughly 62 percent of that of the non-Hispanic White households. Poverty rate of Hispanics stood at 21.5 percent, higher than the 20.6 percent in 2006 (Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007, issued by the US Census Bureau in August 2008, http://www.census.gov ). According to The State of Black America issued by the National Urban League in March 2008, nearly one quarter of Black American households live below the poverty line, three times over that of White households. A report released by the Working Poor Families Project on October 14, 2008 said in 2006, among all non-Hispanic White Households, those with low income accounted for 20 percent, while among minorities, the proportion was 41 percent. In New York City, the poverty proportion of Hispanic, Asian, African Americans and non- Hispanic White people were 29.7 percent, 25.9 percent, 23.9 percent and 16.3 percent respectively (World Journal, July 14, 2008). Immigrants find it hard to own a house in the United States. The New York Immigrant Housing Collaborative and Pratt Center for Community Development said in a report issued on December 3, 2008 that around 25 percent of the native Americans spent half of their income on housing rent while the ratio was about 31.5 percent among immigrants. Immigrants from South America and Mexico spent 71.1 percent and 79.8 percent of their incomes on rent, respectively (The China Press, December 4, 2008). AIDS threatens life of African Americans. A study released by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in August 2008 said that among the newly infected HIV positive in the city in 2006, 46 percent were Blacks while 32 percent were Hispanics (New York Times, August 28, 2008). Black women are 15 times as likely to be infected with HIV as White women (Hot docs: AIDS in America, Criminalizing HIV, Obama's National Security Team,http:// www.usnews.com). Currently, there are at least 500,000 Black Americans infected with HIV/AIDS. Discrimination in employment is commonplace. According to statistics from the US Labor Department, the jobless rate in the United States was 6 percent in the third quarter of 2008. The jobless rate for Blacks was 10.6 percent, twice that of the Whites(5.3 percent) (The Employment Situation: November 2008. Issued by the US Department of Labor, http://www.bls.gov). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said it received 30,510 charges concerning employment discrimination in 2007 (Charge Statistics FY1997 Through FY 2007, http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/charges.html) . An accusation was filed by Oswald Wilson, an African American on February 11, 2008 against the American Broadcast Company (ABC) and its parent company Disney. He said a pattern of racial discrimination had caused him physical pain and emotional suffering (Black Worker Hits ABC in Racism Suit, http://www.nydailynews.com/news). On December 5, 2008, former New York state governor Eliot Spitzer's father Bernard Spitzer was found guilty of racial discrimination by a jury. Four African Americans, who had worked as doormen or porters at a 34-story building owned by Bernard Spitzer, claimed that they lost their jobs because of the color of their skins. They were fired a decade ago, replaced by someone with lighter skin colors (The China Press, December 8, 2008). The ugly head of racial discrimination emerges from time to time in the education sector. The State of Black America issued by the National Urban League in 2008 said African Americans' high school graduation rate and college entry rate still lingered at the level of the Whites two or three decades ago. Less African American students get college degrees than the Whites. A news report said that African American students in public schools were more likely to get physical punishment than White children, while African American girls were twice likely to get paddled than White girls (US: End Beating of Children in Public Schools, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/08/19). Racial segregation in schools is getting worse. A report by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California found that Blacks and Hispanics are more separate from white students than at any time since the civil rights movement. Some 39 percent of Black students and 40 percent of Hispanic students are isolated in schools in which there is little racial mixing. The report also found that the average Black and Latino students is now in a school that has nearly 60 percent of students from families who are near or below poverty line (Reuters, January 14, 2009). Racial discrimination in the judicial system is appalling. The US Department of Justice said on June 5, 2008 that jailed Black men were six times as many as the Whites by July 30, 2007. Nearly 11 percent of the Black men between 30 and 34 were in prison. The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report released in February 2008 that African American youth arrested for murder are at least three times more likely than their white peers to receive life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (US: Uphold Treaty Against Racial Discrimination,http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/02/06). In California, they are almost six times more likely to receive a sentence of LWOP (The United States was not Forthcoming and Accurate in its Presentation to CERD, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/02/06). The New York Times carried a report on May 6, 2008, saying that although most drug offenders are white, 54 percent of the drug offenders sent to prison are black. In 16 states, African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at rates between 10 and 42 times greater than the rate for whites. A study of 34 states shows that a black man is 11.8 times more likely than a white man to be sent to prison on drug charges, and a black woman is 4.8 times more likely than a white woman (US: "Drug War" Unjust to African Americans, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/05/04) . According to media reports, Sean Bell, a black youngster, died after being shot at 50 times the day he was to be married. But the three police officers were acquitted of all charges in his death (National Urban League Urges US Justice Department to Prosecute Acquitted Officers in Sean Bell Shooting Case, http://www/nul.org/PressReleases/2008/2008pr430.htm) . Statistics from the Los Angeles police showed that for every 100 Hispanics stopped by the police for questioning, there is only one White person being stopped. African Americans are even more likely to be intercepted by police. Blacks and Hispanics are also frequently ordered to get out of their vehicles, frisked, shoved and detained. In the past five years, the L.A. police received nearly 1,200 complaints against police officers over racial discrimination, but none was handled (The China Press, October 21,2008). Muslims, Arabic Americans and other minority groups are also targets for anti-terrorism investigation of FBI (Ming Pao, July 3, 2008). On the New Year's Day of 2009, an unarmed black man,22-year-old Oscar Grant was pressed facedown on an Oakland train platform by police officers and shot him in the back. Such atrocity aroused protest from local people, who took to streets on January 7 (Associated Press, February 13, 2009). The basic rights of indigenous Americans were infringed on. The United States erected a 18-feet-high wall along the US-Mexico border, which severely impaired life of local Apache people. Indigenous women fell victim to violence of American soldiers. In border cities and townships like Juarez, more than 4,000 Indigenous women were killed or reported missing. The population of Indigenous youth accounts less than 2 percent of the total youth population in the United States. But among those in jail, the Indigenous accounted for 15 to 20 percent and 30 percent of them received the toughest penalty. On April 15 2008, people of Yankton Siou ethnic group in South Dakota staged a peaceful demonstration against building a hoggery, which they considered as highly pollutant. More than 70 officers from the county, state and federal law enforcement agencies, with the help of special police squad, police dogs, snipers as well as helicopters, cracked down the peaceful protest. Thirty-eight people, including children and the elderly, were arrested. The United States deployed troops and built navy and air force bases in Guam, taking up one third of the land there. Local Chamoru people were victimized by the weapons left by US army during the World War II and nuclear tests. The incidence of rhino pharyngeal cancer among them is 1,999 percent higher than the average Americans. Immigrants received inhumane treatment. Harriett Olson, deputy general secretary of the Women's Division of the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, said that once arrested, the illicit immigrants were always mistreated. They were often jailed with criminals, and denied fundamental human rights and basic medical service. Each year, dozens of them die in jail (The China Press, December 14, 2008). The Human Rights Watch said in June 2008 that the Department of Homeland Security had more than 30,000 individuals in detention, and that more than 80 immigrants have died in the last five years while in the care of the department or immediately after their release from custody, due to inconsistent standards of care and inadequate oversight (US: Protect Health of Immigration, http://www.hrw.org/en/news) . According to a report by the New York Times, computer engineer Hiu Lui Ng who moved to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 was sent to detention center in 2007 after his visa expired, and was then jailed in three states in New England. He died in the custody in August 2008 with his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months (The New York Times, August 12, 2008). More than 2,900 illegal labors were detained since October, 2007, but only 75 employers or managers faced accusation. This number was just 2 percent of the labors (New York Times, July 1, 2008). There is serious racial hostility in the United States. According to a Voice of America report, a research report released by the US Department of Justice at the end of 2005 shows that United States reports about 191,000 hate crime each year (Voice of America's Chinese website, November 7, 2008). A FBI report released on October 27, 2008 indicated that 7,624 hate crime incidents were reported in the United States in 2007. Among them, 50.8 percent were motivated by a racial bias, 62.9 percent of the known offenders were white (FBI Releases 2007 Hate Crime Statistics,http://www.fbi.gov/hc2007/summary.htm). The Chicago Tribune reported on November 23, 2008 that there were 602 organization based on racial bias in the United States in 2000. The number surged to 888 by 2008. On the same day, the Boston Globe reported a survey by a professor from the Northwestern University, saying that the ratio of black men being murdered soared by 33 percent from 2002 to 2007. V. On the Rights of Women and Children The conditions of women and children in the United States are worrisome. Women account for 51 percent of the US population, but only 88 women serve in the 110th US Congress. Sixteen women serve in the Senate, or 16 percent of the seats, and 72 women serve in the House, or 16.6 percent of the seats. As of December 2007, 73 women held statewide elective executive offices across the country, or 23.2 percent of the available positions. The proportion of women in state legislature is at 23.7 percent. As of July 2008, among the 100 largest cities in the US, only 11 had women mayors (Women serving in the 110th Congress 2007-09. Center for American Women and Politics, http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu ). Gender-based discrimination in employment is quite serious. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said it received 24,826 charges on discrimination on the basis of sex in 2007, accounting for 30.1 percent of the total discrimination charges (Charge statistics FY 1997 Through FY 2007,http://eeoc.gov/stats/charges.html). A growing number of women are being treated unfairly by employers because they are pregnant or hope to be (Mom-to-be claim work bias, http://www.nydailynews.com ,May 19, 2008). According to statistics released by the US Census Bureau in August 2008, the real median earnings of women who worked full time in 2007 were 35,102 US dollars, 78 percent of those of corresponding men whose median earnings were 45,113 US dollars (Current population survey, http://www.census.gov/press-release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/012528.html) . The unemployment rate for adult women continued to trend up. It reached 5.5 percent as of November 2008 (The employment situation: November 2008, issued by the US Department of Labor on December 5, 2008, http://www.bls.gov). American women are victims of domestic violence and sexual violence. Statistics showed that among women receiving emergency treatment, one third of them are victims of domestic violence. Sexual violence poses a serious threat to American women. It is reported that the United States has the highest rape rate among countries which report such statistics. It is 13 times higher than that of England and 20 times higher than that of Japan (Occurrence of rape, http://www.sa.rochester.edu/masa/stats.php) . Sexual assault against Indigenous women in the United States is widespread. Some women interviewed by Amnesty International said they didn't know anyone in their community who had not experienced sexual violence (Maze of injustice: the failure to protect indigenous women from sexual violence in the USA, http://www.amnestyusa.org). Statistics showed that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 12,510 charges of sexual harassment in 2007, 84 percent of which were filed by females (Sexual Harassment Charges EEOC & FEPAs Combined: FY 1997-FY 2007, http//www.eeoc.gov). A USA Today report on October 28, 2008, citing a study, said about one out of seven female veterans of Afghanistan or Iraq who visit a Veterans Affairs center for medical care reported being a victim of sexual assault or harassment during military duty. More than half these women have post- traumatic stress disorder (15% of female veterans tell of sexual trauma, more than half of them experience stress disorder, http://global.factiva.com ). An increasing number of children are living in poverty. Children under 18 account for one third of the people in poverty in the United States. Statistics show that as at the end of 2007, the poverty rate of children younger than 18 was 18 percent, up from 17.4 percent in 2006. The poverty rate of children in single female-headed families reached as high as 43 percent (Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2007,issued by the US Census Bureau in August 2008, www.census.gov.).According to a report released on October 14, 2008 by the Working Poof Families Project, one third of children live in low-income working families in 2006. In New York City, 41.6 percent of children in single-parent families live under the poverty line. At the end of 2007, 8.1 million children under 18, or 11 percent of the total, were uninsured, (Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the united states: 2007, issued by the US Census Bureau in August 2008, www.census.gov). The conditions of American students are worrisome. According to the US Department of Education, more than 223,000 students were corporally punished in 2007. More than 200,000 public school students were punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year. In 13 states, more than 1,000 students were corporally punished per year (US: end beating of children in public schools, http://www.hrw.org/en/new/2008/08/19) . Corporal punishment is legal in 21 states, according to a report released by American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch on August 19, 2008. Alcohol abuse, gambling and drug use are pervasive on campus. Between 1999 and 2005, 157 college students died of alcoholism and750,000 youths were addicted to drugs. A report on teen drug use issued by University of Michigan researchers on December 11, 2008 shows that 11 percent of eighth graders, 24 percent of tenth graders and 32 percent of 12th graders reported using marijuana in the prior year. Use of any illicit drug in the prior year was reported by 37 percent of 12th graders, 27 percent of 10th graders and 14 percent of eighth graders (The China Press, December 12, 2008). There is no guarantee of children's security. The Children's Defense Fund said in its 2008 annual report that 3,006 children and teens died in 2005 from firearms. According to a survey by the Center for Children, Law and Policy, University of Houston, guns kill eight children and teens every day in America, which means the Virginia Tech shooting occurring every four days, or a child or teen being killed by guns every three hours (Children and teens firearm deaths increase for first time since 1994, http://www.childrenandthelawblog.come/ 2008/06/19). Each year about1.8 million children are reported lost. More than 3 million children are reported as victims of physical, sexual, verbal and emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment, and death (Facts you should know about violence against children, http://www.loveourchildrenusa.org ). There are about 1,500 child-abuse fatalities every year (Abuse more a risk in non-traditional families, http://usatoday.com). Sexual abuse against children is serious. One in five children were reportedly sexually abused by the age of 18 (Facts you should know about violence against children, http://www.loveourchildrenusa.org). In a Texas polygamist sect, some girls as young as 12 were forced into marriage with middle-aged men (The China Press, September 23,2008). A research by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one fourth of teenage American girls, or 3 million, had a sexually transmitted disease (STD). African-American teenage girls were mostly severely affected. Nearly half of the young African-American women were infected with an STD, compared with 20 percent of young white women (Sing Tao Daily, March 12, 2008). The United States is one of the few countries in the world where minors receive the same criminal punishments as adults do. It is the only country in the world that sentences children to life in prison without possibility of parole or release. There are2,381 such inmates in US prisons currently (The United States was not forthcoming and accurate in its presentation to CERD, http://www.hrw.org). Seventy- three of them are serving death-in-prison sentence for offenses at the age of 13 or 14. Among them, 49 percent are African-Americans, and most of them come from needy families, without enough legal aids. These children will die in prison without parole no matter how they are corrected (Equal Justice Initiative, http://eji.org). According to the general comments made by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in April 2007, sentencing minors to death or life in prison without possibility of release violates Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. When reviewing the human rights records of the United States in 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Council said sentencing minors to life in prison without possibility of release violates Article 7 and Article 24 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Thousands of innocent children have been put into prison by corrupt judges. According to a report of the Spanish newspaper Rebelion on February 20, 2009, among the 5,000 juvenile prisoners in Pennsylvania, an estimated 2,000 were wrongly put into prison by two bribe-taking judges. According to the report, Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan in the Luzerne County took more than 2.6 million US dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two private youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a Sister company, Western PA Child Care. Most of the teenagers did not have a lawyer to turn to. Jamie Quinn, 18, stayed in prison for one year when she was 14 after she and a friend quarreled and slapped each other's face. Jamie was taken to a juvenile detention center and later transferred to several other jails. In her captivity, Jamie was forced to take some medicines so she could be "obedient". The girl is just one of the thousands of innocent children. The use of child labors is serious in the United States. The Associated Press reported that the owner and managers of a meatpacking plant in Iowa was in September 2008 charged with more than 9,000 misdemeanors alleging they hired minors and in some cases had children younger than 16 handle dangerous equipment. The Iowa attorney general's office said the violations involved 32 illegal immigrant children under age 18, including seven who were younger than 16 (Iowa files child labor charges against meat plant, the Associated Press, September 10). VI. On the violation of Human Rights in other nations The United States has a string of records of trampling on the sovereignty of and violating human rights in other countries. The war in Iraq has led to the death of more than a million civilians, made the same number of people homeless and incurred huge economic losses. The Xe, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide and connected to the US Department of State, and the DynCorp hired 6,000 private security guards in Iraq. Victims of activities of the two companies are frequently Iraqi civilians. A report issued by a supervision team under the US House of Representatives in October 2007 said Xe employees had been involved in at least 196 shooting incidents in Iraq since 2005, which translates into 1.4 incidents a week. Xe employees fired first in 84 percent of these incidents. The United States established prisons across Iraq, where prisoners were routinely abused. Human Rights Watch said on April 27, 2008 that the US-led Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF) was holding 24,514 detainees at the end of 2007 (UN: tell us to end illegal detention practices in Iraq, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/04/27) . On average, detainees remain in custody for more than 300 days, and all Iraqi detainees are denied their basic rights (America's Iraqi prisoners, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/08/07). According to a Human Rights Watch report on May 19, 2008, the United States has detained some 2,400 children in Iraq, including those as young as 10, since 2003. US forces were also holding 513 Iraqi children as "imperative threats to security". Children in Iraqi custody are at risk of physical abuse (US: Respect rights of child detainees in Iraq, http//www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/05/19). The United States has maintained its economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba for nearly 50 years. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said the US blockade has caused an accumulated directed economic loss of more than 93 billion US dollars for Cuba. Seven out of 10 Cubans have spent their entire lives under the US embargo (Overwhelming International Rejection of US Blockade of Cuba at UN,www.cubanews.ain.cu/2008/1029votacion_onu.htm). On October 29, 2008, the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution entitled "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba" with a vote of 185 for, three against, urging the United States to immediately end its unilateral embargo against Cuba. It is the 17th consecutive year that an overwhelming majority in the assembly have supported the measure. It is a demonstration of the international community expressing their strong dissatisfaction over the United States acting against the international law and U.N. Charter by viciously violating Cuban peoples' rights to live and develop. The United States is the world's biggest seller of arms. Its arms sales greatly intensified instability across the world and severely violated human rights of foreign nationals. A report by the New American Foundation, US arms sales reached 32 billion US dollars in 2007, more than three times the level in 2001. The weapons were sold to more than 174 nations and regions (Study: US arms sales undermine global human rights, http://sfgate.com). The United States is haunted by scandals of prisoner abuses. The Washington Post reported on September 25, 2008 that US interrogators poking, slapping or shoving detainees would not give rise to criminal liability, according to an internal memo declassified by the Department of Defense. The same newspaper reported on April 22, 2008 that US interrogators used practices such as keeping detainees from sleeping, forced drugging, and coercing confession through torture during questioning detainees at the military prison in Guantanamo. The Human Rights Watch said in a February 6, 2008 report that about 185 of the 270 detainees are housed in facilities akin to "supermax" prisons in various "camps" at the detention center in Guantanamo even though they have not yet been convicted of a crime. These detainees have extremely limited contact with other human beings; spend 22 hours a day alone in small cells with little or no natural light or fresh air (News report finds treatment of detainees unnecessarily harsh, http//www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/06/10) . The Associated Press reported that more than 20 detainees under the age of 18 have been brought to the prison camp in Guantanamo since 2002 to fall victim to mistreatment from US army service people. In June 2008, Mohammed Jawad described his experience in May 2004 when he, less than 18 then, was brought to the detention center in Guantanamo and was denied his time for sleep. Jawad was moved from cell to cell 112 times in 14 days, usually left in one cell for less than three hours before being shackled and moved to another. He was moved more frequently between midnight and 2 a.m. to ensure maximum disruption of sleep (The war on teen terror, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/06/23) . The United States is inactive towards its international human rights obligations under the international treaties. The US signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 31 years ago, the Covenant on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women 28 years ago, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child 14 years ago, but none of the above treaties has been approved yet. The Convention on Rights of Disabled Persons is the most important progress the United Nations has achieved in protecting the rights of disabled persons in the new century, and the convention is highly valued by different nations. So far, 136 countries have signed the convention, and 41 already approved it. But the United States has yet to endorse and sign the convention. The US has refused a pledge to promote and protect the rights of indigenous people, and also failed to acknowledge their rights of self-governing, of land and of natural resources in the United Nations and in the international community. On September 13, 2007, the 61st session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration of Aboriginal Rights by a vote of 143 in favor, while the United States was one of the only four countries that voted against it. The United States has always obstinately followed double standards in dealing with international human rights affairs, and failed to fulfill its international human rights obligations. The Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants of the United Nations visited the United States in 2007. However, the original plans to visit the detention centers in Hutto, Texas and Monmouth, New Jersey were canceled with no satisfactory explanations from the US government, although the plans had been sanctioned by the US government in advance. In 2008, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants said in the US- visit report that the United States detained 230,000 migrants every year, more than three times the number nine years ago. The US deportation procedures lack proper procedures about "non-citizens", and non-citizens are rendered incapable of questioning whether they are detained lawfully, or whether for too long. The Special Rapporteur said the United States had failed to fulfill its international obligations, and also failed in adopting comprehensively coordinated national policies in light of explicit international obligations to prioritize the human rights of more than 37.5 million migrants living in the country. The outbound humanitarian aids offered by the United States are dwarfed by its status as the richest country in the world. According to a report from the Development Assistance Research Associates, a non- profit organization based in Spain, the United States is listed one of the countries with the worst records in providing independent, righteous, and unbiased humanitarian aids to other countries. The report said the US aids to other countries came frequently linked to its military or political ambitions. Respect to and protection of human rights is an important indication of civilization and progress of human society. Every government shoulders a common responsibility in committing itself to improvement of human rights conditions in the country. For years, the United States has positioned itself over other countries and released the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices annually to criticize human rights conditions in other countries, using it as a tool to interfere with and demonize other nations. In the meantime, the US has turned a blind eye to its own violations of human rights. The US practice of throwing stones at others while living in a glass house is a testimony to the double standards and hypocrisy of the United States in dealing with human rights issues, and has undermined its international image. We hereby advise the US government to begin anew, face its own human rights problems with courage, and stop the wrong practice of applying double standards on human rights issues. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Mar 5 11:56:04 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 10:56:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Obama to Single Payer Advocates: Drop Dead In-Reply-To: <759F64B032414AE9BAC7D0D122EAEDCD@twubby.com> Message-ID: <2078589790.4189671236279364577.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/03-15 Common Dreams ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ? ????????????????????????????????????????????????? March 3, 2009 Obama to Single Payer Advocates: Drop Dead by Corporate Crime Reporter President Obama's White House made crystal clear this week: a Canadian-style, Medicare-for-all, single payer health insurance system is off the table. Obama doesn't even want to discuss it. Take the case of Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan). Conyers is the leading advocate for single payer health insurance in Congress. Last week, Conyers attended a Congressional Black Caucus meeting with President Obama at the White House. During the meeting, Congressman Conyers, sponsor of the single payer bill in the House (HR 676), asked President Obama for an invite to the President's Marchy 5 health care summit at the White House. Conyers said he would bring along with him two doctors - Dr. Marcia Angell and Dr. Quentin Young - to represent the majority of physicians in the United States who favor single payer. Obama would have none of it. This week, by e-mail, Conyers heard back from the White House - no invite. Why not? Well, believe it or not, the Obama White House is under the thumb of the health insurance industry. Obama has become the industry's chief enforcer of its key demand: single payer health insurance is off the table. Earlier this week, Obama named his health reform leadership team - Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Nancy-Ann DeParle. Single payer advocates were not happy. Since leaving Medicare, DeParle cashed in as a director at major for profit health care corporations, including Medco Health Solutions, Cerner, Boston Scientific, DaVita, and Triad Hospitals. Now, what does the health insurance industry make of the Sebelius/DeParle team? Here is Karen Ignagni, president of the lead health insurance lobbying group, America's Health Insurance Plans: " Today the President is putting in place a team that is ready on day one to provide the leadership necessary to achieve health care reform. Governor Sebelius is the right person to move the President's health care agenda forward. She is a proven leader with extensive knowledge of health care issues and a long history of working effectively across the political aisle. As a former CMS administrator, Nancy-Ann DeParle brings considerable experience and a strong track record working on all of the health care issues facing the nation." Karen sounds really upset, right? Dr. David Himmelstein is a founder and spokesperson for Physicians for a National Health Program. Himmelstein's take - Obama is caving to the insurance industry. "The President once acknowledged that single payer reform was the best option, but now he's caving in to corporate healthcare interests and completely shutting out advocates of single payer reform," Himmelstein said. "The majority of Americans favor single payer, and it's the most popular reform option among doctors and health economists, but no single payer supporter has been invited to participate in the administration's health care summit. Meanwhile, he's appointed as his health reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle, a woman who has made her living advising health care investors and sits on the board of many for-profit firms that have made billions from Medicare. Her appointment - and the invitation list to the healthcare summit - is a clear signal that the administration plans to propose a corporate-friendly health reform that has no chance of actually solving our health care crisis." Obama to single payer advocates: drop dead. So What Happened to Transparency and Accountability? From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Mar 5 12:10:09 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 11:10:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Republican backs investigation of Bush-era crimes In-Reply-To: <387171594.4036531236278386345.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1457621386.4398251236280209803.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.welt.de/english-news/article3322083/Republican-backs-investigation-of-Bush-era-crimes.html Welt Online ?????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ? March 5, 2009 'Truth Commission' Republican backs investigation of Bush-era crimes Bush administration officials who knowingly approved faulty legal opinions to justify antiterrorism measures including torture should face prosecution, a leading Republican senator said on Wednesday. Senator Arlen Specter said there were signs authorities believe crimes may have been committed. Senator Arlen Specter, the top ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said investigating them would not require a special ?truth commission,? an idea gaining momentum among Democrats and rights advocates. ?If we have evidence of torture -- torture is a violation of our law -- go after them. If there is reason to believe that these (Bush-era) Justice Department officials have knowingly given the president cover for things they know not to be right and sound, go after them,? Specter said at a committee hearing on the truth commission proposal. Patrick Leahy, the committee?s Democratic chairman, has proposed a South African-style truth commission to expose and learn lessons from elements of former President George W. Bush?s war on terrorism. These include abusive interrogations of terrorism suspects and warrantless domestic eavesdropping. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Mar 5 12:10:35 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 11:10:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] WSJ: EU Rejects a Rescue of Faltering East Europe In-Reply-To: <1495023434.3849691236213695523.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1377807588.4403021236280235705.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123591435325503221.html Wall Street Journal ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ? ? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ? ? March 2, 2009 EU Rejects a Rescue of Faltering East Europe By Charles Forelle Brussels -- European Union leaders, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, rejected a call by Hungary for a sweeping bailout of Eastern Europe, as the bloc struggled to find consensus on an approach to the spiraling financial crisis at a summit Sunday . The global recession has greatly strained the bonds holding together the 27 nations that now make up the European Union, formed in the wake of World War II, and poses the most significant challenge in decades to its ideals of solidarity and common interest. Ms. Merkel said she couldn't see the need for a broad grant of aid to Eastern Europe. "The situation is very different" in Europe's economies. "We cannot compare Slovakia nor Slovenia with Hungary," she told reporters. Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, who proposed a bailout package of up to ?190 billion ($240.84 billion), warned that without aid a "new Iron Curtain" would descend on Europe and again separate East from West. Hungary has been battered by declining demand for its exports and a plummeting currency -- straining Hungarians who borrowed in euros to buy houses that have now sunk in value. The summit was originally called by Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek to discuss concerns about rising protectionism in stimulus plans being proposed by individual nations. With the recent collapse of the government in Latvia, Eastern Europe's growing problems became the main focus. But leaders left Brussels with few concrete decisions and no indication that the richer EU states of Western Europe would be white knights for the East. Consensus was hard to find even in Eastern Europe: leaders of relatively stronger countries -- fearful of appearing weak and being tarnished by international markets to which they need access for borrowing -- split with their neighbors over the wisdom of bailouts. "Our position is that we must differentiate between countries that are in difficulties and those that are not," Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski said. Poland, which benefited from years of healthy economic growth, is in better shape that some of its more-indebted neighbors. But it has seen a substantial fall in the value of its currency as investors scramble out of the region. Hungary also proposed speeding up adoption of the euro -- now generally used by the Western European countries -- in the East. Strict EU rules meant to maintain the euro's strength require that countries have strong fiscal positions before adopting the common currency. That has left out Eastern European nations grappling with budget deficits, inflation -- or both. The fall of Iceland -- whose banks failed in part because Iceland's currency collapsed -- has reinvigorated calls by a number of countries to make it easier to join the safety and stability of the euro. But both the bailout and calls for Eastern European countries to join the euro sooner were coolly received by Western European nations. Ms. Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy both separately suggested that Eastern countries should look elsewhere -- to the International Monetary Fund, for instance -- for help. Behind the tensions: The recession has struck the 27 EU nations with widely varying force. Large and steady economies such as Germany's are facing an inevitable slowdown, but smaller peripheral states such as Latvia, Bulgaria and even Ireland have been brutally whipsawed from an era of heady growth to shockingly fast decline. The impact on Eastern Europe, which boomed in recent years, has been especially intense. Latvia, which financed its own expansion by borrowing from abroad, is literally running out of money as the credit crunch shuts those spigots off. Last week, Standard & Poor's cut Latvia's credit rating to junk. And, as some in Eastern Europe warned, deep pain could well emerge elsewhere. All eyes are on Ireland, which is slashing public-sector pay as it scrambles to close a budget deficit that could reach nearly 10% of gross-domestic product. A protest last month in Dublin drew more than 100,000 people. Other large countries, such as France and the U.K., face substantial domestic troubles and have little desire to persuade their populations to add the East's problems to their own. The EU's disinclination to fund a regional bailout suggests that the IMF and other multilateral institutions will take on an even larger role in coming months -- a role that IMF officials have said they recognize. The IMF is looking to double its war chest for lending to $500 billion, and the EU is weighing whether or not to make a loan for that purpose. Last week, the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank said they would provide ?24.5 billion in financing for banks in Eastern Europe. The IMF has been active on Europe's periphery: Iceland, Hungary, Latvia and Ukraine have turned to the agency for aid. Most critical was the cold shoulder from Germany, which, as Europe's largest economy and the one with most access to borrowing, would play the largest role in financing any aid. Germany, the EU's strongest economy, is unwilling to unwind its own fiscal discipline to pay for the spending excesses of others. Admitting countries with weaker finances could hurt the strength of the euro or push up inflation across the euro zone. At present, 16 of the 27 EU members use the euro. In Eastern Europe, only Slovakia and Slovenia do. To join, countries must keep budget deficits, government debt and inflation below specified ceilings. The recession has complicated some of those aims, particularly as some governments take on more debt. Another requirement calls for countries to hold their currencies within a preset range to the euro for two years. That has wreaked havoc on euro-adoption plans in Hungary and Poland, where currencies have tumbled. Of the 11 EU members that don't use the euro, only Denmark could be reasonably close to adopting it. The misadventures of Iceland have provided an ample demonstration of the safety the euro offers in a storm. The North Atlantic island is not an EU member, though it shares many EU rules as part of the European Economic Area. Iceland's three big banks -- virtually the country's entire banking system -- had expanded abroad by borrowing heavily in euros and sterling. When the credit crunch cut off their funding and the Icelandic krona fell precipitously, Iceland found itself without enough foreign currency to bail out the banks, a situation possibly avoidable if Iceland had used the euro. All three banks collapsed, and some on the island are pushing for quick accession to the EU. Mr. Topolanek of the Czech Republic, whose country is among the strongest in Eastern Europe, said "the EU is going to leave no one in the lurch." Mr. Topolanek also said leaders had agreed to have further discussions about the EU rules for euro adoption, but that there was "broad agreement" that "it would be an error to change the rules of the game now." The EU resolved one contentious issue on the eve of the summit: It approved France's much-criticized plan to give ?6 billion in low-interest loans to domestic car makers. The French plan had drawn howls of protectionism -- particularly from the Czech Republic, where PSA Peugeot Citroen SA makes small cars -- since it made the aid contingent on the car makers keeping French factories open. ?Peppi Kiviniemi, Leos Rousek, Gabriele Parussini and Leila Abboud contributed to this article. Write to Charles Forelle at charles.forelle at wsj.com From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Mar 5 12:11:13 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 11:11:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Pilot hero blasts deregulation In-Reply-To: <1271867365.3795841236207382331.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <15308368.4410061236280273968.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/24/chesley-sully-sullenberge_0_n_169512.html Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger To Congress: My Pay Has Been Cut 40 Percent In Recent Years, Pension Terminated The air traffic controller who handled Flight 1549 thought ditching in the Hudson River amounted to a death sentence for all aboard. Now the veteran pilot who pulled off the ditching safely says harsh pay cuts are driving experienced pilots from the cockpit. "People don't survive landings on the Hudson River," 10-year veteran controller Patrick Harten told a House subcommittee Tuesday in his first public description of how he tried to land the jetliner that lost power in both jets when it hit Canada geese after takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport. "I thought it was his own death sentence," Harten said of the moment when US Airways pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger radioed that he was going into the river. Defying the odds, Sullenberger safely glided the Airbus A320 down and all 155 people aboard survived the Jan. 15 water landing. Sullenberger, a 58-year-old who joined a US Airways predecessor in 1980, told the House aviation subcommittee that his pay has been cut 40 percent in recent years and his pension has been terminated and replaced with a promise "worth pennies on the dollar" from the federally created Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. These cuts followed a wave of airline bankruptcies after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks compounded by the current recession, he said. "The bankruptcies were used by some as a fishing expedition to get what they could not get in normal times," Sullenberger said of the airlines. He said the problems began with the deregulation of the industry in the 1970s. The reduced compensation has placed "pilots and their families in an untenable financial situation," Sullenberger said. "I do not know a single professional airline pilot who wants his or her children to follow in their footsteps." The subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee heard from the crew of Flight 1549, the air traffic controller who handled the flight and aviation experts to examine what safety lessons could be learned from the accident. Sullenberger's copilot Jeffrey B. Skiles said unless federal laws are revised to improve labor-management relations "experienced crews in the cockpit will be a thing of the past." And Sullenberger added that without experienced pilots "we will see negative consequences to the flying public." Sullenberger himself has started a consulting business to help make ends meet. Skiles added, "For the last six years, I have worked seven days a week between my two jobs just to maintain a middle class standard of living." Controller Harten riveted the hearing with his account of the 3.5 minutes during which he spoke with the crippled jetliner after the bird strike at an altitute of 2,750 feet. When Sullenberger said he couldn't make it either back to LaGuardia or to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey and would ditch in the the Hudson River that separates New York and New Jersey, Harten testified, "I believed at that moment I was going to be the last person to talk to anyone on that plane alive." But Sullenberger delicately glided the jetliner into the river in one piece near ferry boats that picked the passengers off the planes wings before it sank in the icy waters. Harten, who has spent his entire career at the radar facility in Westbury, N.Y., that handles air traffic within 40 miles of three major airports, struggled vainly to help get the airliner safely to a landing strip. Making lightning-quick decisions, Harten communicated with 14 other entities in the three minutes after the bird strike as he diverted other aircraft and advised controllers elsewhere to hold aircraft and clear runways for 1549. First, Harten tried to return the plane to LaGuardia Airport, asking the airport's tower to clear runway 13. But Sullenberger calmly reported: "We're unable." Then Harten offered another LaGuardia runway. Again, Sullenberger reported, "Unable." He said he might be able to make Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. But when Harten directed Sullenberger to turn onto a heading for Teterboro, the pilot responded: "We can't do it .... We're going to be in the Hudson." "I asked him to repeat himself even though I heard him just fine," said Harten. "I simply could not wrap my mind around those words." At that moment, Harten said he lost radio contact with flight and was certain it "had gone down." Afterward, Harten said he told his wife, "I felt like I had been hit by a bus." NTSB investigators have said bird remains found in both engines of the downed plane have been identified as Canada geese. Sullenberger and Skiles said anyone who's spent much time in cockpits has encountered bird strikes but that this one was exceptionally severe in knocking out both engines. Some gulls don't even dent the airplane, Skiles said, but this "was a bigger bird than I've ever hit before." The bird problem has been growing, said John E. Ostrom, chairman of the Bird Strike Committee-USA and a manager at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Since 1990, the number of Canada geese that live year-round in the country rather than migrating has grown from 1 million to 3.9 million and the population of 24 of the 36 largest bird species has increased, Ostrom testified. The crew and passengers of a helicopter that crashed en route to an oil platform on Jan. 4 weren't as lucky. The National Transportation Safety Board reported Monday that investigators have found evidence birds were involved in the accident near Morgan City, La., that killed eight of nine people aboard. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Mar 5 12:10:55 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 11:10:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] The Iraqi Resistance Responds to President Obama In-Reply-To: <1104630946.3824821236210468781.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <456710315.4406851236280255383.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22130.htm Exclusive: The Iraqi Resistance Responds to President Obama Rafidan The Political Committee Baghdad The Republic of Iraq Statement in Response to President Obama?s Remarks made on the 27 th or February 2009 regarding the proclaimed ending to the occupation of The Republic of Iraq. ? Official English Transcript Release No: 57 March 02, 2009 " Information Clearing House " -- Good Evening, ? In Respect to the remarks of President Barak Hussain Obama, The president of the United States of America. The Political Committee of a number of factions in the Iraqi Resistance, mainly the factions present in our front, respond with our point of view on the contents of his speech.? Over the last four months, as the battle of our people continues to free Iraq of all foreign occupation. We have been studying the movements on the ground as well as analyzing the intelligence in order to assess the next strategy that the US administration will take under the leadership of the new presidency. ? We had formulated our own plan of action based on the above mentioned, but have chosen to give the new president enough time to gather his thoughts and have a suitable amount of reports & briefings that would give him also a good picture of the daily developments on the ground. ? President Obama, After listening to your speech on the 27 th of February 2009, in which you declared your general and public understanding of the ongoing war against our people, and gave your military and the honorable people of the United States brief points on your intentions in our country, we felt the spirit of the speech that your predecessor President JFK gave on the 20 th of January 1961, on his inaugural address. In this speech, he offered a turbulent world, a way out of tensions and paid with his own blood for challenging the interests of those in your consecutive governments who hold the true keys to power. Those who would do anything to preserve their interests, wealth, & power to create wars & conflict. ? We mention this with great honesty in hope to spread awareness and remembrance that a new Caesar may be betrayed, by his own, if he chooses to follow a different path. We do believe, on the other hand, that the spirit of the speech was well chosen. ? We have listened well to your economic plans for your country released before this speech as well, and as ambitious as it may seem, we believe that if intentions are genuine within your congress, a considerable number of ?what you seek will eventually be fulfilled, but in case of failure, the republicans will be looking for a scapegoat to relate all their failures to. In this case it would be your administration. This will guarantee them a fast comeback. ? You have inherited a nation at war, a failed economy, and a desperate people who are bearing the full brunt of an economic crisis that was not of their making. As well as thousands of young men dead and handicapped.?? We have inherited a foreign occupation, endless counts of innocent dead, injured, and handicapped, millions of refugees, in essence, Mr. President, the complete and planned disintegration of our nation and people. ? We believe that the funds wasted in this war would have been more useful if it were spent on research to develop alternative energy, which no doubt would have reduced energy conflicts, cures for cancer, agricultural solutions to prevent worldwide poverty, advancements to develop Africa, where people still die of starvation and intentional neglect. Endless causes, all in need of immediate attention.? By the will of God almighty, the resilience of our men, and the patience of our humble people, we have so far managed to halt and render useless all imperialist agendas set for Iraq and the region in whole. Simply by choosing to resist occupation, a right guaranteed by God first and then by international conventions to all men. A right your country?s policies continue to disrespect and dishonor, in clear example to state sponsored Terrorism. ? You have spoken to our people in part of your speech, and we thank you for these words, you have displayed a far better understanding our nation than your predecessor, who preferred to dive deep into the oceans of illiteracy and ignorance. Despite the fact that you did not mention the Iraqi resistance in your speech, and chose to label us as terrorists along with those who arrived with your troops, we will set that aside for now, and mention a few facts for the record.? 1- ???? The people of Iraq whom you addressed, in all their sects colors and religions, refuse your occupation, and those who accept it are those who benefit from it. 2- ???? The Iraqis you addressed, as we truly hope, are not the ones who bathe in the riches of treason, behind your walls of the green zone, nor are they the likes of Ahmed Al Chalabi, whom your previous government conspired with and his likes from the dark alleys of 5 star hotels in the US and Europe prior to your occupation. 3- ???? The Iraqi people you talked to, are those who never invited your occupation, and were trying their best to survive on what was possible, under the criminal sanctions that went on for 13 years only to be crowned with a foreign occupation, unmatched in criminal acts, in today?s modern world. President Obama, The suffering, that our people had to go through is beyond comprehension. And the endless crimes of your troops as well as that of neighboring countries, cannot simply be undone or dismissed, nor can they be brushed under the carpet. Your troops still occupy the land and kill the innocent, that is why we can only address you as the president of an occupying nation. ?? The Iraqi People are disappointed in your plan. They expect your troops to leave our country in full and not in part. Our people, seek a complete end of occupation and not the fulfillment of a strategic treaty that was rushed against the will of our people, in the last few days of your predecessor. ? Our people, as well as the majority of people around the world, and in your country, want to see the last president be presented to an international war crime tribunal for all the crimes he has committed in the name of your country, only to benefit those who brought him to power in the first place.? We have never invited your occupation, nor have we asked your country to steal our country?s resources to benefit your corporations and to those neighboring states which historically fall under your influence. We have never asked you for your precious blood or ours, to us, all blood is precious even that of the your soldiers sent by your government to die not knowing what they were truly fighting for. This has to be addressed to the man who started this war, and is hiding now in Texas, while you try to undo his damage. ? We the Iraqi People and their resistance demand the following:? 1- ???? The fulfillment of all the conditions presented to your government through the mediators you ????????? sent in 2006. 2- ???? The hand over of all the traitors & Collaborators in the green zone to the Iraqi people where?? ?? ?????? they will be dealt with as any nation would do with in cases of high treason.? 3- ???? The full & just compensation for our people for the losses they have suffered. 4- ???? The halting of all compensations paid to those who fall under your umbrella in the region from the resources of our people. 5- ???? The return of all land stolen from our country. 6- ???? The departure of all foreign corporations mainly in the sectors of energy, communication, & infrastructure rebuilding, specifically those linked to Neocon interests. Our people are more than qualified to rebuild and operate our institutions. 7- ???? The hand over of all mercenaries accused of killing innocent civilians mainly security contractors in Black Water and their CEO to be tried for murder. 8- ???? All foreign advisors are to leave Iraq with your troops.? 9- ???? The dismantling of all militias equipped by your country and Iran together to shift the nature of battle towards the sectarian nature in order to allow your troops to concentrate on the major resistance activities in the central region of Iraq. ?? 10- ? The halting of all support to the sectarian government elected in the orchestrated elections in the green zone. 11- ? The reduction of the influence of your Persian allies in Iraq which your previous government worked with in close conjunction and who continue to fund Al Qaeda on behalf of ?your intelligence agency?s behalf. 12- ? The return to the old constitution of a unified Iraq. And the Upholding of new elections ???????????? Within 6 months of the resistance taking power of the nation, this will be supervised, ?????????? ??By must be conducted in the presence of a number of credible international monitors. Not the ones ???????????? Sponsored by the CIA. 13- ? Cities and provinces are to be handed over one by one starting with the four main cities and airports of ?Baghdad, Basra, then Mosul and Kirkuk in the same order. The rest will fall immediately in our hands. The borders will have other arrangements. ? The list goes on, but the intention is to give you an idea of what we pledged our people to achieve. In return for our people?s demands, we will cease to attack all occupation forces withdrawing to the south and beyond the border post of Safwan.? ? Without these straightforward moves on your part, we regret to inform you that the resistance of the people of Iraq will continue until that last boot of US/British/Persian occupation is thrown across the borders of our country. ? If you choose change as you claim, then you must have reached the conclusion that to continue dealing with the same people your predecessor appointed to fulfill his dirty work, will fail to deliver positive results for both our people. It is not the thieves of the green zone who brought the defeat of your military. ? You must search further for the honest Iraqis and from the ranks of our people and not those of your collaborators to achieve a ?just solution. You can also recognize the right for the Iraqi people to resist and publicly ask for our advice and representation. The Iraqi people intend to be masters of their own house as they always have, and by following the plan you have declared, you have not yet fully understood Iraq well.? There are those who will claim, that a quick withdrawal from Iraq will cause civil war, and that is a possibility, but we would also like to clarify that the forces of the puppet government which has been equipped to defeat the resistance will not stand ground, nor will they block our efforts to liberate our cities one by one if we had to, and all the efforts of your collaborators to move to the north and south of the country and create their own federal states have been studied well for their weaknesses and will be crushed within a short period. This is a more realistic scenario. True there will be still the Persian occupation which will offer its militias support, but we know that the US cannot leave the oil rich south to be occupied by Iran, and they would rather see it fall in our hands instead. As it would be giving too much to a close yet not so trust worthy ally, and would deprive your military necessary funds that would support long-term military presence necessary in Iraq and throughout the region. Funds that? some in your government think they can still rely on. Funds that your economy can no longer bear in the midst of the turmoil in the globalized economy of your nation, to control the world.? ? The Iraqi resistance understands well that the US could not continue to sell oil at a high price of 120 USD/Barrel to cover the costs of it?s war, as this strengthens old adversaries. And it would be only a matter of time before this tactic backfires on the US foreign policy. But it also understands that the US cannot fund foreign occupation any more without depending on local resources and revenues to cover the expenses. This is the true cause of the change of ?Strategy? as you named it President Obama. ? With oil prices falling to their true realistic market values, & the winter ending in the consuming economies, the oil prices should fall to 30 USD plus mark, which is also effecting the local economies of your allies in the region, as anything below 55 USD per barrel, is already becoming a burden on these economies, which in turn can no longer assist to their full potential in funding and supporting the costs of US aggression in the Region. ? The Declining of oil revenues, which we truly thank you for mentioning in your speech, will make it more difficult to fund your military?s operations in Iraq, and that is why the numbers of your troops is to be reduced. To match the income predicted from the oil projects sponsored by your corporations in the south and the oil theft operations run by your agent, Hamid Jaffar in the north of Iraq in collaboration with NGO oil of Norway, is what your strategists think is possible. ? Yes President Obama, we do agree with you, that the US needs a smarter, more sustainable & comprehensive approach, but rest assured, that what your predecessor has failed to achieve with all the military might at his disposal, we will make sure that you will fail to achieve the same goals through the soft hand of the Democratic party. ? In fact, it is more logical and practical to follow the alternative energy programs that you have set wisely, to ensure the non reliance of your economy on oil as well as the utilization of? advancements and added fruits of R&D to employ the unemployed, and support a new and young market for the shift in energy dependence, and in turn end the monopolization of energy, practiced by the corporations that control it and control world political and social stability, than to merely dream of? expecting the Iraqi People to hand you over their resources. ? We on the other hand intend to nationalize and use our resources to build an alternative energy base our selves and offer our people a life of prosperity, & stability, as well as supporting the energy transition of other nations that are oil dependant, a task we truly believe is noble and worthwhile. ? The Iraqi Resistance will not accept any short term or long term energy contracts with the US until we ensure that the rights of our people are properly addressed. And within the parameters of relations based on mutual respect first and mutual interests second. ? President Obama, It is time that people in Washington understand that there are no shared interest between an occupying tyrant and an oppressed victim of occupation. ? Your government would have stayed forever in Iraq if the traitors who conspired with your consecutive administrations had their way in starving the Iraqi people into submission and force them to welcome your occupying troops with flowers as Chalabi promised you. But after three wars and over a decade of sanctions, there were enough honest men to defeat the world?s most powerful army & play a major role in destroying the most imperialistic Globalized economy ever developed by expansionary capitalism. These are the type of people you are speaking to Mr. Obama. And if you were not presented with this reality throughout the briefings that occurred, and understood the true scale of the economic disaster with all the social and geopolitical? implications of your military defeat in Iraq, then please allow us to mention a few of the major achievements that the Iraqi Resistance have promised it?s people and the free people of the world and has delivered:? 1- ???? We promised to pin down your troops in Iraq and drain your economy until you admit defeat and withdraw your troops. And this we fulfilled.? 2- ???? We promised to halt the US plan for Middle East in full, and prevent the loss of other innocent lives in other neighboring countries, and that we fulfilled.? ? 3- ???? We embraced the war and continue the fight on behalf of all the oppressed world, which not only stood still and watched the massacre of our people and the illegal occupation of our nation, but many of it?s leaders participated and continue in harming our people inside and outside Iraq and assist in the theft of our resources. This, apart from the support of honest people all around the world,? 4- ???? including citizens of your country, who marched day and night to support the cause of Iraq?s right to resist, marches that defied the weather, and weathered criminal defiance and ignorance of world politicians. Marches that we will ever be indebt to, and in gratitude & in appreciation for. May god bless those people wherever they are.? And this we fulfilled and continue to do so.? 5- ???? We have understood the nature of international balances of power and most importantly predicted the primitive mind of the occupation and played a major role in forcing the US to increase oil prices in clear desperation for cash. And use that to allow other powers to recover. And the numbers never lied, this we also fulfilled.? 6- ???? The Iraqi People wrote a new chapter in Urban warfare, and invented the art of remote combat, and in turn gave the world lessons and set a new standard in how to defeat the world?s most powerful army. In this, the most dangerous achievement that threatens US global influence is that all the oppressed people who suffer from negative US influence, can use this experience to free themselves as well. This also has been delivered. ? 7- ???? The Resistance has already drafted its 2, 5 and 10 year plan to engage Iraq in rebuilding programs that will set a new standard for development in the Region and restore Iraq to its rightfully earned place in world politics and positive human development. This while maintaining Iraq?s isolation from harmful neighboring countries at the same time, these plans was prepared and drafted in the early months of 2007 and are ready to implement once we see the end of your occupation. ?? 8- ???? The resistance created a new battle field and utilized every tool available to break free of the corporate media and tell, inform, and educate the world of the true nature of the struggle, and present every curious man and woman daily reports and videos of your military?s defeat and in every language possible. People from all over the world, chose out of their own free will and time, people of different religions and backgrounds chose to be soldiers? of the cyber wars and translated all what we had to tell, asking nothing in return but the truth. The true casualties of your war are yet to be declared. (We refer to the green card soldiers) ? 9- ???? The resistance has sparked not only the collapse of the US economy, but also caused the domino effect and the destruction of your fine tuned and delicate Globalized economy, and forced the return to national economic protection, and the rights of local and regional economies to grow and ensure a decent life and practice their right to develop as well.? All your efforts to restore the globalized economy will deliver nothing of value, and puppet governments that maintain your oversight of world resources will eventually fall, one after the other, as their faults will be more evident to their average citizens, and that is why you are now receiving daily reports, from the CIA about the world economy. ? ALL THE ABOVE, AND YOU STILL CHOOSE TO IGNORE THE RESISTANCE OF THE IRAQI PEOPLE AND THE RESISTANCE OF THE GLOBAL ALLIANCE OF THE FREE, WHICH WE INTENT TO PROPOSE TO THE WORLD AS THE NEXT STAGE OF FREEING THE PLANET FROM YOUR DOMINENCE WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT. ? ALL THIS SAID, AND THE GLOBAL MEDIA WHICH YOU STILL MAINTAIN CONTROL OVER STILL LABELS FREE PEOPLE AS TERRORISTS AND EQUALS THE RESISTANCE OF OCCUPATION WITH CRIMINAL ACTS OF STRIKING CIVILIANS IN BUILDING AND TERRORISING THE LIVES OF THE INNOCENT. ? TRULY IRONIC !! Nevertheless represents the true state of shock you policy makers have reached. But all can be reversed if you truly believe in Change Mr. President. ? The resistance along with the votes of the peace loving people in your country and choice of the world Who brought you to power, are more than capable to pull you down and defeat your new strategy, if you choose to lie to them and follow the plans of your predecessor.? ? You must understand that the time when your foreign policy bullied and bribed people into submission is over and for a considerable time. And your politicians and strategists have to understand that to be accepted as a superpower you must first learn to speak to the world with modesty and respect that others in this planet, also have the right to provide for their families a decent life, the right to food and water, the right to education and knowledge, the right to industry and employment, and free from your corporate despotism. ? We in the Iraqi resistance, renew our pledge to our people and to our brothers and sisters in the global family, to continue the fight and struggle to free Iraq and give our allies the chance to follow suite. ? While you were preparing your new strategy in leaving the streets and highways of Iraq to your collaborators, and hiding your troops behind the walls of the castles and green zones you have prepared for your minimized long term presence, we have been preparing to address your new tactics and will deal with them in the proper manner.? ?Remember, that hiding behind and holding castles is no longer sustainable in modern warfare!? ? Your finest fighting force as you name it, is up against the most witty, resilient & innovative self-propelled resistance honorable humanity has ever presented. Rest assured that we are not impressed with your plan and will follow your movements on the ground and cross examine them to your declared intentions and daily economic reports. There is no such thing as friendly occupation, and we advise you to revise your plans to vacate Iraq at a time suitable for our people and not suitable for your agents in the green zone. ? And if you need to talk to honest Iraqis, then you know very well, where to find them. John F Kennedy also said ?Let us never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate? ? You choose to negotiate with all the parties that worked for your predecessor and have caused all this harm, yet you choose to ignore the only true party that can offer you a decent outcome.? Good Luck President Obama!? Radfidan The Political Committee - Baghdad ? The Republic of Iraq? The 3 rd of ?Rabi' Awwal 1430 H The 28 th of February 2009 M From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Mar 5 12:14:33 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 11:14:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Billions Dished Out in the Shadows In-Reply-To: <2127710699.3840231236212217330.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <954320236.4435081236280473282.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090303_billions_dished_out_in_the_shadows/ Truthdig ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?? ? March 3, 2009 Billions Dished Out in the Shadows By Robert Scheer This is crazy! Forget the bleating of Rush Limbaugh; the problem is not with the quite reasonable and, if anything, underfunded stimulus package, which in any case will be debated long and hard in Congress. The problem is with what is not being debated: the far more expensive Wall Street bailout that is being pushed through -- as in the case of the latest AIG rescue -- in secret, hurried deal-making primarily by the unelected secretary of the treasury and the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Six months ago, we taxpayers began bailing out AIG with more than $140 billion, and then it went and lost $61.7 billion in the fourth quarter, more than any other company in history had ever lost in one quarter. So Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke huddled late into the night last weekend and decided to reward AIG for its startling failure with 30 billion more of our dollars. Plus, they sweetened the deal by letting AIG off the hook for interest it had been obligated to pay on the money we previously gave the company. AIG doesn't have to pay the 10 percent interest due on the preferred stock the U.S. government got for the earlier bailout funds because that interest will now be paid out only at AIG's discretion, which means never. The preferred stock, which got watered down, carried a cumulative interest, meaning we taxpayers would have recaptured some money if the company ever got going again, but that interest obligation was waived in the new deal. We've already given AIG a total of $170 billion -- an amount that dwarfs the $75 billion allocated to helping those millions of homeowners facing foreclosures. And more will be thrown down the AIG rat hole because President Barack Obama is blindly following the misguided advice of his top economic advisers, who insist that AIG is too big to fail. "AIG provides insurance protection to more than 100,000 entities, including small businesses, municipalities, 401(k) plans and Fortune 500 companies who together employ over 100 million Americans," the joint Treasury Department and Fed statement declared while insisting that for that reason, plus the "systemic risk AIG continues to pose and the fragility of markets today, the potential cost to the economy and the taxpayer of government inaction would be extremely high." What about the cost of inaction by Treasury and the Fed before this meltdown? If AIG were so important to the American economy, shouldn't government regulators have been looking more closely at its activities? They couldn't then, and even now they don't understand what AIG has been up to, because the company was allowed to operate in an essentially unregulated global economy in which multinational corporations have their way. As the Treasury/Fed statement concedes: "AIG operates in over 130 countries with over 400 regulators and the company and its regulated and unregulated subsidiaries are subject to very different resolution frameworks across their broad and diverse operations without an overarching resolution mechanism." Oh, really? And you're discovering that only now, when you're making us bail AIG out? It wasn't that long ago that a couple of hustlers operating out of an AIG office in London were going wild making money off selling insurance on credit default swaps that no one could understand, but the company execs loved those huge profit margins. To challenge their maneuvering, as some in Congress attempted, was said by their defenders, including Geithner, to put them at an unfair disadvantage in the world market. Ignorance was bliss ... until the bubble burst. This was all belatedly conceded by Bernanke in his Senate testimony on Tuesday: "AIG exploited a huge gap in the regulatory system. There was no oversight of the Financial Products division. This was a hedge fund, basically, that was attached to a large and stable insurance company, made huge numbers of irresponsible bets -- took huge losses. There was no regulatory oversight because there was a gap in the system." AIG used to be in the conventional insurance business, covering identifiable risks it knew something about, until it took advantage of deregulation and a lack of government surveillance to come up with contrived new financial products. Even Maurice Greenberg, the man who built AIG from the ground up over a span of 40 years before he was forced out amid corruption charges in 2005, admits that he didn't understand the newfangled financial gimmicks that the company was peddling. This week, claiming he too was swindled, Greenberg sued in federal court, charging the AIG execs who forced him out with "gross, wanton or willful fraud or other morally culpable conduct," over the credit default swap portfolio that was part of his settlement. U.S. taxpayers now have ownership of almost 80 percent of AIG, but with the company's once solid traditional insurance business now suffering a steep loss of consumer confidence, it's not likely that even the formerly healthy parts of the company will be worth much. What we have here is all pain and no gain for the taxpayers roped into this debacle, which is proving to be the story of the entire banking bailout. From fentona at shaw.ca Thu Mar 5 12:47:23 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 11:47:23 -0800 Subject: [R-G] The Rand Papers on Iraq and Afghanistan: The Banality of Occupation Message-ID: http://counterpunch.org/jacobs03042009.html March 4, 2009 The Rand Papers on Iraq and Afghanistan The Banality of Occupation By RON JACOBS Recently, the online site known as Wikileaks (which frequently publishes documents from government and corporate think tanks not meant to be seen by the general public) released a Rand Corporation report on Iraq and Afghanistan counterinsurgency operations titled Intelligence Operations and Metrics in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although unclassified, the document is marked "For Official Use Only" and was distributed to various high officials in the United States and other "Coalition" governments. In one respect, it can be argued that this paper, along with a series of three or four other Rand reports, could be considered in the same vein as the Pentagon Papers on their release in 1971. A more accurate appraisal, however, would characterize this 318 page report as a summation of what the US military and intelligence agencies could have done more effectively. This report is essentially an analyst's blueprint for perfecting the occupation of a country with the idea that the eventual result will be domination of the locals' minds, culture and economy, with the domination of the geography of secondary consideration or of no consideration at all. Like the television show Numbers that features a mathematician who works with the FBI by providing mathematical thinking to human endeavors like serial killing, drug smuggling, etc., the RAND study ignores the human and creative face of resistance by reducing ever element to a quantitative possibility with only so many possible outcomes. The numbers it quotes and the classifications it makes hide the true intent and outcome of the imperial military's actions much like the statistical sheets maintained by men like Adolf Eichmann hid the true nature of the crimes against humanity perpetrated in the removal of Jewish Germans from the fatherland. The report draws from counterinsurgency experiences in Vietnam,Northern Ireland, Malaya, and of course, Iraq and Afghanistan. The contradiction rampant throughout the report can be best phrased in the words of US Army Major Justin Featherstone who told the report's writers after his extensive work with the urban population in southeastern Iraq: ?Humanity is what it?s about, a genuine desire to do good by the good people, which can sit side-by-side with killing the people [whom you?re there to kill].? In other words, the task is to kill those who don't want you there and convince the others that they are either better off with the occupier or at least not as bad off as they would be without them. Despite the constant warnings throughout the report's recommendations to avoid killing noncombatants (without every providing a single definition of who composes this element), the report ultimately returns to this statement: War, however, is the realm of destruction. Here will be instances in which these men and women will have to put innocents and their property at risk. In such cases, there may be no good outcome, no alternative that promises to benefit all desired ends, but rather one only less undesirable than its alternatives. A pilot might select the alternative of engaging only a few rooms instead of destroying an entire building, with the appropriate airframe and munitions being called on for the task. In lieu of devastating a town, a ground-force commander could find that a limited number of enemy concentrations provide the opportunity to wreak destruction over only a few blocks. In other words, the occupier's job remains one that depends on its overwhelming force. Even if the suggestions and lessons learned that are described in this report were to be put into place, the deciding factor in favor of the US occupying forces is their ability to kill with overwhelming force. Naturally, the indigenous population is aware of this--a fact which causes many to go along with the occupier merely as a means to survive. This is not a report about operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and their often bloody results so much as it is a review of the perceived success or failure of those operations. The primary intent of the report is to repeat already familiar lessons about how to construct and maintain an occupation of a country that minimizes the occupiers casualties, maintains domination via fear, cajolery, and manipulation of the personal and tribal relationships of the occupied while simultaneously convincing at least a sizable minority of the population of the occupying nation that their military (in league with the occupier) is working in their interest. Written in what can best be described as something akin to a technical writing assignment, the report echoes the recent statements from US generals in the Iraq/Afghan theaters and is reflected in the recent decision by Barack Obama to reduce the numbers of US troops in Iraq to 50,000 over the next 16 months and escalate the battle to subdue Afghanistan. If there is one thing that this document makes clear, it is that the Pentagon and its civilian enablers have no intention of leaving Iraq or Afghanistan on their own. Furthermore, it is their intention to take the lessons they believe they have learned in those two countries and apply them to Pakistan and wherever else their manifest destiny compels them to subdue. This is not the Pentagon Papers of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations/wars. It is a document that hides the nature of the US operations in those countries behind an emasculated technospeak, rendering the true nature of the killing and destruction done in the name of the people of the US and the west. The contemporary version of the policy discussions that were revealed in the Pentagon Papers about the US operation in Vietnam are not here. Nor are the cables and directives that sent men off to kill and die. Those documents have yet to be uncovered. The usefulness of this report is in its look into the mindset of a modern imperial machine: a machine that never questions its mission or the human misery it causes but keeps its mind trained only on how to carry out that mission as efficiently as possible. The banality of the evil of modern warfare is contained in every neutered sentence of this document and the thousands of others like them. It is repeated in the newspeak of government officials and the sycophantic media that reports their words without challenging their consequences. The circle of complicity is completed when the public accepts the arguments made by those officials and media as being the only argument that exists. Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625 at charter.net From mstainsby at resist.ca Thu Mar 5 12:51:30 2009 From: mstainsby at resist.ca (Macdonald Stainsby) Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:51:30 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Healthy changes within the Council of Ministers Message-ID: <49B02D42.2090105@resist.ca> Healthy changes within the Council of Ministers (Taken from CubaDebate) IN response to changes made within the executive, certain news agencies are throwing up their hands in horror. Several of them are saying or echoing "popular" rumors about the substitution of "Fidel?s men" for "Ra?l?s men." The majority of those who have been replaced were never proposed by me. Almost without exception, they were proposed for their posts by other comrades within the leadership of the Party or the state. I never devoted myself to that task. I have never underestimated human intelligence or the vanity of men. I was consulted about the new ministers who have just been appointed even though there was no rule obliging those who proposed them to consult me, given that I renounced the prerogatives of power some time ago. They acted simply as genuine revolutionaries who carry within them loyalty to principles. There has been no injustice committed against certain cadres. Neither of the two individuals mentioned by news reports as the most affected have uttered a word to express any disagreement with the decision. It had nothing to do with an absence of personal value. It was another reason. The sweetness of power for which they had made no sacrifice awoke in them ambitions that led them to an unworthy role. The external enemy was filled with illusions about them. I don?t accept the gossip being mixed in with the Baseball Classic that is about to commence. I stated very clearly that our baseball players were first-rate young men, men who believe in "Patria o Muerte" (Homeland or Death). As I have stated on other occasions, we will return with the shield or on the shield. We will win because we know how to and we can combine something that only free men can, those who have no owners, not professional players. Leonel Fern?ndez was telling me yesterday afternoon that some of the excellent professional Dominican ballplayers didn?t want to take part in this competition; they would be absent, which would be sad for their people, who watched them grow. Ch?vez still doesn?t know why his magnificent pitchers and hitters will be defeated by our athletes. The Cuban national team that will measure its strength this year against the best professional players from the Major Leagues in the United States and Japan is much stronger and better prepared than the one of three years ago. Many of them are already veterans despite their youthful age. None of the players who made the team stayed behind, except for health reasons. I assume full responsibility for success or the opposite. The victories will be for all of us; defeat will never be bereft. Patria o Muerte! Venceremos! Fidel Castro Ruz March 3, 2009 11:32 a.m. Translated by Granma International From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Mar 5 13:01:54 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 12:01:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Anti-Empire Report, March 4, 2009 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <769651747.4575651236283314108.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Bill Blum's Anti-Empire Report, March 4, 2009 http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer67.html ? From intnsred at golgotha.net Thu Mar 5 13:05:52 2009 From: intnsred at golgotha.net (Intense Red) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 15:05:52 -0500 Subject: [R-G] Canada should bar or prosecute Bush: lawyer In-Reply-To: <2EE01E50-D000-4BA0-A592-31AA199F090E@shaw.ca> References: <2EE01E50-D000-4BA0-A592-31AA199F090E@shaw.ca> Message-ID: <200903051505.53149.intnsred@golgotha.net> Good luck on the attempt to keep Bush out. Somehow I think the Canadian gov't will find some way to weasel around their own laws and to allow Bush to come into Canada. -- "There ought to be limits to freedom." -- George W. Bush, May 21, 1999. From shniad at sfu.ca Thu Mar 5 13:05:21 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 12:05:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] The HITECH Act: Obama, Gingrich and $19 Billion for Health Care Technology In-Reply-To: <49B02A9C.6040308@uml.edu> Message-ID: <914649066.4577391236283521334.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> From: "Charley Richardson" Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2009 11:40:12 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: The HITECH Act: Obama, Gingrich and $19 Billion for Health Care Technology Friends and Colleagues: ?? ?Attached is a piece I've written on the HITECH Act, a part of the stimulus package that puts $19 billion toward the implementation of Electronic Medical Records and other new technologies in health care with essentially no role for the workforce. ??????????In solidarity and peace ??????????Charley Richardson From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Mar 5 17:25:35 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 09:25:35 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Global Collapse Message-ID: <49B06D7F.4000805@ashisuto.co.jp> A Non-Orthodox View by Walden Bello ZNet (February 22 2009) This is the longer version of an essay by the author released by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on February 06 2009. Week after week, we see the global economy contracting at a pace worse than predicted by the gloomiest analysts. We are now, it is clear, in no ordinary recession but are headed for a global depression that could last for many years. The Fundamental Crisis: Overaccumulation Orthodox economics has long ceased to be of any help in understanding the crisis. Non-orthodox economics, on the other hand, provides extraordinarily powerful insights into the causes and dynamics of the current crisis. From the progressive perspective, what we are seeing is the intensification of one of the central crises or "contradictions" of global capitalism: the crisis of overproduction, also known as overaccumulation or overcapacity. This is the tendency for capitalism to build up, in the context of heightened inter-capitalist competition, tremendous productive capacity that outruns the population's capacity to consume owing to income inequalities that limit popular purchasing power. The result is an erosion of profitability, leading to an economic downspin. To understand the current collapse, we must go back in time to the so-called Golden Age of Contemporary Capitalism, the period from 1945 to 1975. This was a period of rapid growth both in the center economies and in the underdeveloped economies - one that was partly triggered by the massive reconstruction of Europe and East Asia after the devastation of the Second World War, and partly by the new socioeconomic arrangements and instruments based on a historic class compromise between Capital and Labor that were institutionalized under the new Keynesian state. But this period of high growth came to an end in the mid-1970s, when the center economies were seized by stagflation, meaning the coexistence of low growth with high inflation, which was not supposed to happen under neoclassical economics. Stagflation, however, was but a symptom of a deeper cause: the reconstruction of Germany and Japan and the rapid growth of industrializing economies like Brazil, Taiwan, and South Korea added tremendous new productive capacity and increased global competition, while income inequality within countries and between countries limited the growth of purchasing power and demand, thus eroding profitability. This was aggravated by the massive oil price rises of the seventies. The most painful expression of the crisis of overproduction was global recession of the early 1980s, which was the most serious to overtake the international economy since the Great Depression, that is, before the current crisis. Capitalism tried three escape routes from the conundrum of overproduction: neoliberal restructuring, globalization, and financialization Escape Route #1: Neoliberal Restructuring Neoliberal restructuring took the form of Reaganism and Thatcherism in the North and Structural Adjustment in the South. The aim was to invigorate capital accumulation, and this was to be done by (1) removing state constraints on the growth, use, and flow of capital and wealth; and (2) redistributing income from the poor and middle classes to the rich on the theory that the rich would then be motivated to invest and reignite economic growth. The problem with this formula was that in redistributing income to the rich, you were gutting the incomes of the poor and middle classes, thus restricting demand, while not necessarily inducing the rich to invest more in production. In fact, it could be more profitable to invest in speculation. In fact, neoliberal restructuring, which was generalized in the North and south during the eighties and nineties, had a poor record in terms of growth: Global growth averaged 1.1 percent in the 1990s and 1.4 percent in the 1980s, compared with 3.5 percent in the 1960s and 2.4 percent in the 1970s, when state interventionist policies were dominant. Neoliberal restructuring could not shake off stagnation. Escape Route #2: Globalization The second escape route global capital took to counter stagnation was "extensive accumulation" or globalization, or the rapid integration of semi-capitalist, non-capitalist, or pre-capitalist areas into the global market economy. Rosa Luxemburg, the famous German radical economist, saw this long ago in her classic The Accumulation of Capital (1913) as necessary to shore up the rate of profit in the metropolitan economies. How? By gaining access to cheap labor, by gaining new, albeit limited, markets, by gaining new sources of cheap agricultural and raw material products, and by bringing into being new areas for investment in infrastructure. Integration is accomplished via trade liberalization, removing barriers to the mobility of global capital, and abolishing barriers to foreign investment. China is, of course, the most prominent case of a non-capitalist area to be integrated into the global capitalist economy over the last 25 years. By the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, roughly forty to fifty percent of the profits of US corporations came from their operations and sales abroad, especially in China. The problem with this escape route from stagnation is that it exacerbates the problem of overproduction because it adds to productive capacity. A tremendous amount of manufacturing capacity has been added in China over the last 25 years, and this has had a depressing effect on prices and profits. Not surprisingly, by around 1997, the profits of US corporations stopped growing. According to one calculation, the profit rate of the Fortune 500 went from 7.15 in 1960-69 to 5.30 in 1980-90 to 2.29 in 1990-99 to 1.32 in 2000-2002. By the end of the 1990s, with excess capacity in almost every industry, the gap between productive capacity and sales was the largest since the Great Depression. Escape Route #3: Financialization Given the limited gains in countering the depressive impact of overproduction via neoliberal restructuring and globalization, the third escape route - financialization - became very critical for maintaining and raising profitability. With investment in industry and agriculture yielding low profits owing to overcapacity, large amounts of surplus funds have been circulating in or invested and reinvested in the financial sector - that is, the financial sector is turning on itself. The result is an increased bifurcation between a hyperactive financial economy and a stagnant real economy. As one financial executive noted in the pages of the Financial Times, "there has been an increasing disconnection between the real and financial economies in the last few years. The real economy has grown ... but nothing like that of the financial economy - until it imploded". What this observer does not tell us is that the disconnect between the real and the financial economy is not accidental - that the financial economy exploded precisely to make up for the stagnation owing to overproduction of the real economy. One indicator of the super-profitability of the financial sector is that while profits in the US manufacturing sector came to one percent of US gross domestic product (GDP), profits in the financial sector came to two percent. Another is the fact that forty percent of the total profits of US financial and non-financial corporations is accounted for by the financial sector although it is responsible for only five percent of US gross domestic product (and even that is likely to be an overestimate). The problem with investing in financial sector operations is that it is tantamount to squeezing value out of already created value. It may create profit, yes, but it does not create new value - only industry, agricultural, trade, and services create new value. Because profit is not based on value that is created, investment operations become very volatile and prices of stocks, bonds, and other forms of investment can depart very radically from their real value - for instance, the stock of Internet startups may keep rising to heights unknown, driven mainly by upwardly spiraling financial valuations. Profits then depend on taking advantage of upward price departures from the value of commodities, then selling before reality enforces a "correction", that is a crash back to real values. The radical rise of prices of an asset far beyond real values is what is called the formation of a bubble. Profitability being dependent on speculative coups, it is not surprising that the finance sector lurches from one bubble to another, or from one speculative mania to another. Because it is driven by speculative mania, finance-driven capitalism has experienced about 100 financial crises since capital markets were deregulated and liberalized in the 1980s, the most serious before the current crisis being the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. Dynamics of the Subprime Implosion The current Wall Street collapse has its roots in the Technology Bubble of the late 1990s, when the price of the stocks of Internet startups skyrocketed, then collapsed, resulting in the loss of $7 trillion worth of assets and the recession of 2001 to 2002. The loose money policies of the Fed under Alan Greenspan had encouraged the Technology Bubble, and when it collapsed into a recession, Greenspan, trying to counter a long recession, cut the prime rate to a 45-year low of one percent in June 2003 and kept it there for over a year. This had the effect of encouraging another bubble - the real estate bubble. As early as 2002, progressive economists were warning about the real estate bubble. However, as late as 2005, then Council of Economic Advisers Chairman and now Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke attributed the rise in US housing prices to "strong economic fundamentals" instead of speculative activity. Is it any wonder that he was caught completely off guard when the Subprime Crisis broke in the summer of 2007? The subprime mortgage crisis was not a case of supply outrunning real demand. The "demand" was largely fabricated by speculative mania on the part of developers and financiers that wanted to make great profits from their access to foreign money - most of it Asian and Chinese in origin - that flooded the US in the last decade. Big ticket mortgages were aggressively sold to millions who could not normally afford them by offering low "teaser" interest rates that would later be readjusted to jack up payments from the new homeowners. How did problematic mortgages become such a massive problem? The reason is that these assets were then "securitized" - that is converted into spectral commodities called "collateralized debt obligations" (CDOs) that enabled speculation on the odds that the mortgage would not be paid. These were then traded by the mortgage originators working with different layers of middlemen who understated risk so as to offload them as quickly as possible to other banks and institutional investors. These institutions in turn offloaded these securities onto other banks and foreign financial institutions. The idea was to make a sale quickly, get your money upfront, and make a tidy profit, while foisting the risk on the suckers down the line - the hundreds of thousands of institutions and individual investors that bought the mortgage-tied securities. This was called "spreading the risk", and it was actually seen as a good thing because it lightened the balance sheet of financial institutions, enabling them to engage in other lending activities. When the interest rates were raised on the subprime loans, adjustable mortgage, and other housing loans, the game was up. There are about four million subprime mortgages which will likely go into default in the next two years, and five million more defaults from adjustable rate mortgages and other "flexible loans" that were geared to snag the most reluctant potential homebuyer will occur over the next several years. But securities whose value run into as much as $2 trillion had already been injected, like virus, into the global financial system. Global capitalism's gigantic circulatory system was fatally infected. And, as with a plague, we don't know who and how many are fatally infected until they keel over because the whole financial system has become so non-transparent owing to lack of regulation. For Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Bank of America, and Citigroup, the losses represented by these toxic securities simply overwhelmed their reserves. Iceland's banks and many European financial institutions have since joined the list of victims. Some, like Lehman Brothers, have been allowed to die, but most have been kept alive with massive injections of taxpayers' cash by governments that want the banks to lend to keep the real economy going. Collapse of the Real Economy But instead of performing their primordial task of lending to facilitate productive activity, the banks are holding on to their cash or buying up rivals to strengthen their financial base. Not surprisingly, with global capitalism's circulatory system seizing up, it was only a matter of time before the real economy would contract, as it has with frightening speed in the last few weeks. Woolworth, a retail icon, has folded in Britain, the US auto industry is on emergency care, and even mighty Toyota has suffered an unprecedented decline in its profits. With American consumer demand plummeting, China and East Asia have seen their goods rotting on the docks, bringing about a sharp contraction of their economies and massive layoffs. Globalization has ensured that economies that went up together in the boom would also go down together, with unparalleled speed, in the bust, the end of which is nowhere to be discerned. _____ Walden Bello is professor at the University of the Philippines, Diliman; senior analyst at Focus on the Global South; and president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition. He can be reached at waldenbello at yahoo.com . This article was first published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on February 11 2009, and it is reproduced here for educational purposes. Source: MR Zine http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bello200209.html http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/20638 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 Mar 5 23:26:16 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 22:26:16 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Russia outmaneuvered U.S. over air base, analysts say Message-ID: <45D35B6E-BABB-4641-AC70-7189CDA4FC7F@shaw.ca> http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/63357.html Russia outmaneuvered U.S. over air base, analysts say By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan ? When Kyrgyzstan announced last month that it was expelling a U.S. air base after Russia promised it $2 billion-plus in aid and loans, American officials said the decision wasn't final and a U.S. presence was still under discussion. After the Kyrgyz parliament ratified the accord with near unanimity and the country's Foreign Ministry issued a notice to vacate in 180 days, however, Russia's apparent advance at U.S. expense is almost certain. The aid package that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's government crafted was grounded in a hard-knuckled, realpolitik approach to this impoverished, landlocked Central Asian country. It appears to be an offer the Kyrgyz government couldn't refuse. All the elements, starting with what had seemed to be its most modest component ? a $150 million strings-free grant to Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev ? filled needs that the United States either didn't see or wouldn't match. While the Bush administration championed democratic reform in Central Asia, a policy that deeply alienates strongman rulers in the corruption-plagued region, Putin has focused on putting cash on the table and making deals. The Manas Air Base ? which is at the main airport outside the Kyrgyz capital and is used mainly to ferry troops in and out of Afghanistan ? became a sore spot for the Kremlin in the years after the U.S. set it up in late 2001, Russian and Kyrgyz officials acknowledge. Putin had smoothed the way for U.S. military installations to be built across Central Asia in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, but he felt that the Bush White House barely acknowledged the gesture. "What Bush offered Putin was a hat and a barbecue in Crawford, and that was it," said Alexei Pushkov, a prominent Russian TV commentator with extensive contacts in Moscow political circles. That anger turned to suspicion as the White House backed a series of pro-democracy revolutions in what Russia calls its "near abroad": Georgia in 2003, Ukraine the following year and Kyrgyzstan in 2005. Plans for a U.S. missile defense shield on Russia's borders followed those political upheavals. While the U.S. government said that those developments had nothing to do with Moscow, there was deep suspicion in the Kremlin that the Americans had begun a strategy of encircling Russia. Putin and his government began to push back against U.S. interests in Central Asia, wanting to be sure that they and not Washington were the ones calling the shots. "Russia enjoys the role of a gatekeeper. It's trying to defend this. It's eager to spend huge money in order to keep its geopolitical and geostrategic role," said Nikolai Petrov, scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center and a critic of Putin. The Kyrgyz, meanwhile, came to see advantage in the U.S.-Russia competition. "It's a political game," said Erik Arsaliyev, the chairman of the Kyrgyz parliament's foreign affairs committee. "No one is saying it, but everyone knows that's what's happening. We have become a puppet in the hands of these two countries." The small nation of just 5.3 million people, wedged between China and Kazakhstan, has long been a crossroads for great powers. Bishkek today is home to both faded Soviet monuments and the American University of Central Asia. The crucial element in the transaction was the $150 million grant, according to Topchubek Turgunaliev, an opposition leader in Bishkek. Even if Russia, which is facing serious financial trouble with low oil prices, doesn't come through with all $2 billion-plus, that $150 million will give Bakiyev's government deep pockets for presidential elections scheduled next year. Bakiyev's office and the Foreign Ministry in Bishkek declined to comment for this story. The bigger part of the aid, more than $1.5 billion earmarked for a planned hydroelectric project ? of which Russia reportedly will retain 50 percent control ? fits a pattern of the Kremlin consolidating its grip on the region's natural resources. _ In 2007, Russia struck an agreement with natural gas-rich Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to build a pipeline from the Caspian Sea to pump gas for Russia. In 2008, Russia and Uzbekistan agreed to build a pipeline through Uzbekistan to move Uzbek and Turkmen gas to Russia. _ South of Kyrgyzstan, Russia has invested about $700 million in a major Tajik hydroelectric station scheduled to open this year, of which Moscow owns 75 percent. The two hydroelectric projects could affect water and power supplies for much of Central Asia. "They (the Kremlin) will be able to decide how much water the different sides should have; this is a lot of power," said Nur Omarov, a political analyst in Bishkek who previously worked as a consultant for the Kyrgyz president's national security council. "That gives you control of the whole region." Marat Kazakpaev, who's also a Bishkek-based analyst, said that Russia had been much better than the United States at targeting the needs of countries in the area. However, the aid from Moscow comes with a high price, said Kazakpaev, whose research center has worked with Western groups. "Russia has been working openly in economic terms to trap them (Central Asian countries) so that they depend on Russia, and then they link this economic dependence to political goals," Kazakpaev said. "By that point, the countries have nowhere else to turn." Kazakpaev said he worried that his country was heading toward similar straits. When Bakiyev came to office after the U.S.-supported "Tulip Revolution" in 2005, there were hopes in the West that his administration would be a model for democracy in Central Asia, similar to the way Georgia and its "Rose Revolution" were viewed in the Caucasus. As Bakiyev sought to strengthen his political base, however, his allegiances drifted away from Washington toward the Kremlin. After a U.S. serviceman shot and killed a Kyrgyz truck driver at the air base in 2006, Russian-language newspapers and TV stations played the story big. "The Russian media was just waiting for this case," said Tursunbai Bakir Uulu, an opponent of the U.S. and Russian military presence in his country who served for six years as Kyrgyzstan's ombudsman, a human rights post. "The content of Russian- language mass media in Kyrgyzstan" ? especially influential in the capital ? "is of course controlled by Russia. They were saying how can a person be killed like this? . . . It was a very good public- relations campaign by Russia." Officials at the air base also were criticized for failing to reach out to the local population as Russian-backed media hyped any hint of a problem: the shooting, a plane crash or allegations of environmental damage. As Kyrgyz and Russian officials offered their explanations for the air base being removed last month, public affairs officers at the base didn't respond to McClatchy's requests for interviews. The U.S. Embassy in Bishkek declined any comment, even off the record. After the 2006 shooting, the estrangement between the Kyrgyz government and the West grew. Western organizations widely denounced alleged vote-rigging during Kyrgyzstan's 2007 parliamentary elections, in which Bakiyev's party took 71 out of 90 seats. At the same time, political opposition groups that Bakiyev had shoved out of the way began to threaten mass protests. There was widespread discontent about corruption. Transparency International's annual corruption rankings have shown Kyrgyzstan slipping from 118th best in the world in 2003 to 166th last year, below Angola. Chronic energy shortages and an economic downturn intensified the pressure on Bakiyev. The president pushed the United States for more rent for Manas Air Base, but he didn't receive a fast answer. So he turned to the Russians, who were eager to talk. From aiaif_2006 at yahoo.com Fri Mar 6 04:29:44 2009 From: aiaif_2006 at yahoo.com (aiaif_2006 at yahoo.com) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 16:59:44 +0530 (IST) Subject: [R-G] Statement on Sudan Message-ID: <213862.59527.qm@web94808.mail.in2.yahoo.com> Manik Mukherjee, General Secretary of the International Anti-imperialist and People?s Solidarity Coordinating Committee (IAPSCC), has issued the following statement condemning the indictment of President Omar Hasan Ahmad Al Bashir of the Republic of Sudan by the International Criminal Court. ? ? RESIST THE IMPERIALIST MANEUVER TO DESTABILIZE SUDAN BY INDICTING PRESIDENT OMAR HASAN AHMAD AL BASHIR ? The International Anti-imperialist and People?s Solidarity Coordinating Committee (IAPSCC) strongly condemns the recent action of the International Criminal Court of issuing a warrant of arrest of H.E. Omar Hasan Ahmad Al Bashir, President of the Republic of Sudan. This is an assault on the sovereignty of an independent state, and is nothing but an imperialist conspiracy against Sudan which is following a policy of development not guided by the imperialist dictates. Sudan has not granted the imperialist powers access to its rich oil resources and opposed the US-led war against Iraq and its subsequent occupation. This has infuriated USA and its allies who are bent on destabilizing the country. They fanned up ethnic conflicts in Sudan and militarily trained, aided and incited the rebel groups to fight against the Sudan Government. It is a common imperialist strategy to foment mistrust and division among the different ethnic groups in a country, to instigate civil wars, and to allow these to continue through direct intervention and supporting one group against the other. Afterwards they cry hoarse on ?war crimes? and ?crimes against humanity?, and demand that the perpetrators must be tried and punished. We witnessed it in Cambodia, in Rwanda, in Yugoslavia. And everywhere such charges were leveled against that side which was most opposed to the imperialists.. On an entirely motivated and false allegation about possession of weapons of mass destruction USA and its allies invaded and occupied Iraq and devastated the country. We witness a similar imperialist policy in action against Sudan - a conspiracy is being hatched against the country. After instigating the internal conflict the imperialist powers are now vocal about ?genocide? in Darfur. They have launched a propaganda blitz on the sufferings of the people in Darfur and are calling for direct military intervention and a permanent presence of Western powers in Sudan to monitor the situation. ??????????? The imperialist powers are using the International Criminal Court as their tool to destabilize independent countries and bring them under their control. They have done this in the past and they are doing it now. We emphasize that the Sudanese people are the sole custodians of their country. It is they alone who can chart out a course for tackling all their internal problems without any foreign interference or any external pressure. Sudanese people do not need to be taught by the imperialists how to protect human rights. The IAPSCC affirms its solidarity with the Sudanese people in their fight against imperialism to protect the sovereignty of their country. The IAPSCC calls upon the freedom-loving people all over the world to come out in protest against the imperialist maneuvers and organize movements to foil their conspiracy. ? ? Sent by: Office of International Anti-imperialist and People?s Solidarity Coordinating Committee (IAPSCC). e-mail ????? aiaif_2006 at yahoo.com Add more friends to your messenger and enjoy! Go to http://messenger.yahoo.com/invite/ From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Mar 6 05:07:06 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:07:06 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] A Planet at the Brink Message-ID: <49B111EA.9020702@ashisuto.co.jp> Will Economic Brushfires Prove Too Virulent to Contain? by Michael T Klare ZNet (March 01 2009) The global economic meltdown has already caused bank failures, bankruptcies, plant closings, and foreclosures and will, in the coming year, leave many tens of millions unemployed across the planet. But another perilous consequence of the crash of 2008 has only recently made its appearance: increased civil unrest and ethnic strife. Someday, perhaps, war may follow. As people lose confidence in the ability of markets and governments to solve the global crisis, they are likely to erupt into violent protests or to assault others they deem responsible for their plight, including government officials, plant managers, landlords, immigrants, and ethnic minorities. (The list could, in the future, prove long and unnerving.) If the present economic disaster turns into what President Obama has referred to as a "lost decade", the result could be a global landscape filled with economically-fueled upheavals. Indeed, if you want to be grimly impressed, hang a world map on your wall and start inserting red pins where violent episodes have already occurred. Athens (Greece), Longnan (China), Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Riga (Latvia), Santa Cruz (Bolivia), Sofia (Bulgaria), Vilnius (Lithuania), and Vladivostok (Russia) would be a start. Many other cities from Reykjavik, Paris, Rome, and Zaragoza to Moscow and Dublin have witnessed huge protests over rising unemployment and falling wages that remained orderly thanks in part to the presence of vast numbers of riot police. If you inserted orange pins at these locations - none as yet in the United States - your map would already look aflame with activity. And if you're a gambling man or woman, it's a safe bet that this map will soon be far better populated with red and orange pins. For the most part, such upheavals, even when violent, are likely to remain localized in nature, and disorganized enough that government forces will be able to bring them under control within days or weeks, even if - as with Athens for six days last December - urban paralysis sets in due to rioting, tear gas, and police cordons. That, at least, has been the case so far. It is entirely possible, however, that, as the economic crisis worsens, some of these incidents will metastasize into far more intense and long-lasting events: armed rebellions, military takeovers, civil conflicts, even economically fueled wars between states. Every outbreak of violence has its own distinctive origins and characteristics. All, however, are driven by a similar combination of anxiety about the future and lack of confidence in the ability of established institutions to deal with the problems at hand. And just as the economic crisis has proven global in ways not seen before, so local incidents - especially given the almost instantaneous nature of modern communications - have a potential to spark others in far-off places, linked only in a virtual sense. A Global Pandemic of Economically Driven Violence The riots that erupted in the spring of 2008 in response to rising food prices suggested the speed with which economically-related violence can spread. It is unlikely that Western news sources captured all such incidents, but among those recorded in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were riots in Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, and Senegal. In Haiti, for example, thousands of protesters stormed the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince and demanded food handouts, only to be repelled by government troops and UN peacekeepers. Other countries, including Pakistan and Thailand, quickly sought to deter such assaults by deploying troops at farms and warehouses throughout the country. The riots only abated at summer's end when falling energy costs brought food prices crashing down as well. (The cost of food is now closely tied to the price of oil and natural gas because petrochemicals are so widely and heavily used in the cultivation of grains.) Ominously, however, this is sure to prove but a temporary respite, given the epic droughts now gripping breadbasket regions of the United States, Argentina, Australia, China, the Middle East, and Africa. Look for the prices of wheat, soybeans, and possibly rice to rise in the coming months - just when billions of people in the developing world are sure to see their already marginal incomes plunging due to the global economic collapse. Food riots were but one form of economic violence that made its bloody appearance in 2008. As economic conditions worsened, protests against rising unemployment, government ineptitude, and the unaddressed needs of the poor erupted as well. In India, for example, violent protests threatened stability in many key areas. Although usually described as ethnic, religious, or caste disputes, these outbursts were typically driven by economic anxiety and a pervasive feeling that someone else's group was faring better than yours - and at your expense. In April, for example, six days of intense rioting in Indian-controlled Kashmir were largely blamed on religious animosity between the majority Muslim population and the Hindu-dominated Indian government; equally important, however, was a deep resentment over what many Kashmiri Muslims experienced as discrimination in jobs, housing, and land use. Then, in May, thousands of nomadic shepherds known as Gujjars shut down roads and trains leading to the city of Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, in a drive to be awarded special economic rights; more than thirty people were killed when the police fired into crowds. In October, economically-related violence erupted in Assam in the country's far northeast, where impoverished locals are resisting an influx of even poorer, mostly illegal immigrants from nearby Bangladesh. Economically-driven clashes also erupted across much of eastern China in 2008. Such events, labeled "mass incidents" by Chinese authorities, usually involve protests by workers over sudden plant shutdowns, lost pay, or illegal land seizures. More often than not, protestors demanded compensation from company managers or government authorities, only to be greeted by club-wielding police. Needless to say, the leaders of China's Communist Party have been reluctant to acknowledge such incidents. This January, however, the magazine Liaowang (Outlook Weekly) reported that layoffs and wage disputes had triggered a sharp increase in such "mass incidents", particularly along the country's eastern seaboard, where much of its manufacturing capacity is located. By December, the epicenter of such sporadic incidents of violence had moved from the developing world to Western Europe and the former Soviet Union. Here, the protests have largely been driven by fears of prolonged unemployment, disgust at government malfeasance and ineptitude, and a sense that "the system", however defined, is incapable of satisfying the future aspirations of large groups of citizens. One of the earliest of this new wave of upheavals occurred in Athens, Greece, on December 6 2008, after police shot and killed a fifteen year-old schoolboy during an altercation in a crowded downtown neighborhood. As news of the killing spread throughout the city, hundreds of students and young people surged into the city center and engaged in pitched battles with riot police, throwing stones and firebombs. Although government officials later apologized for the killing and charged the police officer involved with manslaughter, riots broke out repeatedly in the following days in Athens and other Greek cities. Angry youths attacked the police - widely viewed as agents of the establishment - as well as luxury shops and hotels, some of which were set on fire. By one estimate, the six days of riots caused $1.3 billion in damage to businesses at the height of the Christmas shopping season. Russia also experienced a spate of violent protests in December, triggered by the imposition of high tariffs on imported automobiles. Instituted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to protect an endangered domestic auto industry (whose sales were expected to shrink by up to fifty percent in 2009), the tariffs were a blow to merchants in the Far Eastern port of Vladivostok who benefited from a nationwide commerce in used Japanese vehicles. When local police refused to crack down on anti-tariff protests, the authorities were evidently worried enough to fly in units of special forces from Moscow, 3,700 miles away. In January, incidents of this sort seemed to be spreading through Eastern Europe. Between January 13th and 16th, anti-government protests involving violent clashes with the police erupted in the Latvian capital of Riga, the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, and the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. It is already essentially impossible to keep track of all such episodes, suggesting that we are on the verge of a global pandemic of economically driven violence. A Perfect Recipe for Instability While most such incidents are triggered by an immediate event - a tariff, the closure of local factory, the announcement of government austerity measures - there are systemic factors at work as well. While economists now agree that we are in the midst of a recession deeper than any since the Great Depression of the 1930s, they generally assume that this downturn - like all others since World War II - will be followed in a year, or two, or three, by the beginning of a typical recovery. There are good reasons to suspect that this might not be the case - that poorer countries (along with many people in the richer countries) will have to wait far longer for such a recovery, or may see none at all. Even in the United States, 54% of Americans now believe that "the worst" is "yet to come" and only seven percent that the economy has "turned the corner", according to a recent Ipsos/McClatchy poll; fully a quarter think the crisis will last more than four years. Whether in the Russia, China, or Bangladesh, it is this underlying anxiety - this suspicion that things are far worse than just about anyone is saying - which is helping to fuel the global epidemic of violence. The World Bank's most recent status report, Global Economic Prospects 2009, fulfills those anxieties in two ways. It refuses to state the worst, even while managing to hint, in terms too clear to be ignored, at the prospect of a long-term, or even permanent, decline in economic conditions for many in the world. Nominally upbeat - as are so many media pundits - regarding the likelihood of an economic recovery in the not-too-distant future, the report remains full of warnings about the potential for lasting damage in the developing world if things don't go exactly right. Two worries, in particular, dominate Global Economic Prospects 2009: that banks and corporations in the wealthier countries will cease making investments in the developing world, choking off whatever growth possibilities remain; and that food costs will rise uncomfortably, while the use of farmlands for increased biofuels production will result in diminished food availability to hundreds of millions. Despite its Pollyanna-ish passages on an economic rebound, the report does not mince words when discussing what the almost certain coming decline in First World investment in Third World countries would mean: "Should credit markets fail to respond to the robust policy interventions taken so far, the consequences for developing countries could be very serious. Such a scenario would be characterized by ... substantial disruption and turmoil, including bank failures and currency crises, in a wide range of developing countries. Sharply negative growth in a number of developing countries and all of the attendant repercussions, including increased poverty and unemployment, would be inevitable." In the fall of 2008, when the report was written, this was considered a "worst-case scenario". Since then, the situation has obviously worsened radically, with financial analysts reporting a virtual freeze in worldwide investment. Equally troubling, newly industrialized countries that rely on exporting manufactured goods to richer countries for much of their national income have reported stomach-wrenching plunges in sales, producing massive plant closings and layoffs. The World Bank's 2008 survey also contains troubling data about the future availability of food. Although insisting that the planet is capable of producing enough foodstuffs to meet the needs of a growing world population, its analysts were far less confident that sufficient food would be available at prices people could afford, especially once hydrocarbon prices begin to rise again. With ever more farmland being set aside for biofuels production and efforts to increase crop yields through the use of "miracle seeds" losing steam, the Bank's analysts balanced their generally hopeful outlook with a caveat: "If biofuels-related demand for crops is much stronger or productivity performance disappoints, future food supplies may be much more expensive than in the past". Combine these two World Bank findings - zero economic growth in the developing world and rising food prices - and you have a perfect recipe for unrelenting civil unrest and violence. The eruptions seen in 2008 and early 2009 will then be mere harbingers of a grim future in which, in a given week, any number of cities reel from riots and civil disturbances which could spread like multiple brushfires in a drought. Mapping a World at the Brink Survey the present world, and it's all too easy to spot a plethora of potential sites for such multiple eruptions - or far worse. Take China. So far, the authorities have managed to control individual "mass incidents", preventing them from coalescing into something larger. But in a country with a more than two-thousand-year history of vast millenarian uprisings, the risk of such escalation has to be on the minds of every Chinese leader. On February 2nd, a top Chinese Party official, Chen Xiwen, announced that, in the last few months of 2008 alone, a staggering twenty million migrant workers, who left rural areas for the country's booming cities in recent years, had lost their jobs. Worse yet, they had little prospect of regaining them in 2009. If many of these workers return to the countryside, they may find nothing there either, not even land to work. Under such circumstances, and with further millions likely to be shut out of coastal factories in the coming year, the prospect of mass unrest is high. No wonder the government announced a $585 billion stimulus plan aimed at generating rural employment and, at the same time, called on security forces to exercise discipline and restraint when dealing with protesters. Many analysts now believe that, as exports continue to dry up, rising unemployment could lead to nationwide strikes and protests that might overwhelm ordinary police capabilities and require full-scale intervention by the military (as occurred in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989). Or take many of the Third World petro-states that experienced heady boosts in income when oil prices were high, allowing governments to buy off dissident groups or finance powerful internal security forces. With oil prices plunging from $147 per barrel of crude oil to less than $40 dollars, such countries, from Angola to shaky Iraq, now face severe instability. Nigeria is a typical case in point: When oil prices were high, the central government in Abuja raked in billions every year, enough to enrich elites in key parts of the country and subsidize a large military establishment; now that prices are low, the government will have a hard time satisfying all these previously well-fed competing obligations, which means the risk of internal disequilibrium will escalate. An insurgency in the oil-producing Niger Delta region, fueled by popular discontent with the failure of oil wealth to trickle down from the capital, is already gaining momentum and is likely to grow stronger as government revenues shrivel; other regions, equally disadvantaged by national revenue-sharing policies, will be open to disruptions of all sorts, including heightened levels of internecine warfare. Bolivia is another energy producer that seems poised at the brink of an escalation in economic violence. One of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, it harbors substantial oil and natural gas reserves in its eastern, lowland regions. A majority of the population - many of Indian descent - supports President Evo Morales, who seeks to exercise strong state control over the reserves and use the proceeds to uplift the nation's poor. But a majority of those in the eastern part of the country, largely controlled by a European-descended elite, resent central government interference and seek to control the reserves themselves. Their efforts to achieve greater autonomy have led to repeated clashes with government troops and, in deteriorating times, could set the stage for a full-scale civil war. Given a global situation in which one startling, often unexpected development follows another, prediction is perilous. At a popular level, however, the basic picture is clear enough: continued economic decline combined with a pervasive sense that existing systems and institutions are incapable of setting things right is already producing a potentially lethal brew of anxiety, fear, and rage. Popular explosions of one sort or another are inevitable. Some sense of this new reality appears to have percolated up to the highest reaches of the intelligence community. In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on February 12th, Admiral Dennis C Blair, the new Director of National Intelligence, declared, "The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications ... Statistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one to two year period" - certain to be the case in the present situation. Blair did not specify which countries he had in mind when he spoke of "regime-threatening instability" - a new term in the American intelligence lexicon, at least when associated with economic crises - but it is clear from his testimony that officials are closely watching dozens of shaky nations in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central Asia. Now go back to that map on your wall with all those red and orange pins in it and proceed to color in appropriate countries in various shades of red and orange to indicate recent striking declines in gross national product and rises in unemployment rates. Without sixteen intelligence agencies under you, you'll still have a pretty good idea of the places that Blair and his associates are eyeing in terms of instability as the future darkens on a planet at the brink. _____ Michael T Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books, 2008). This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing, co-founder of the American Empire Project, author of The End of Victory Culture (2007), and editor of The World According to Tomdispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (2008). http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20728 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 Mar 6 08:59:20 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 07:59:20 -0800 Subject: [R-G] B.C. proposes aboriginal title and rights legislation Message-ID: <1854573F-751B-4435-8E64-9D371A44C909@shaw.ca> B.C. proposes aboriginal title and rights legislation Last Updated: Thursday, March 5, 2009 | 3:32 PM PT http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/03/05/bc-aboriginal-title-legislation.html B.C.'s Minister for Aboriginal Relations is hopeful the province's First Nations leaders will support his proposal to recognize aboriginal title and rights by enshrining the province's new relationship with their people into law. Minister Mike de Jong says his proposed legislation will help end 150 years of marginalization, but in order to move forward the minister needs a positive vote from the members of the First Nations Summit meeting in Victoria this week. On Thursday morning, de Jong made an impassioned plea to the chiefs attending the summit to support the principles laid out in a discussion paper he presented to them. Those principles included officially recognizing that "aboriginal rights and title exist in British Columbia throughout the territory of each Indigenous Nation that is the proper right and title holder, without requirement of proof of claim." Essentially, the proposed legislation would recognize the existence of First Nations, with their own laws, governments and territories and title to the land. "You shouldn't be required to stand in a court and call evidence of the rich history of your culture and your centuries of presence in this part of the world," de Jong told the summit. Positive reaction seen Many of the leaders reacted positively to the draft legislation. Guujaaw, president of the Council of Haida Nation, said the proposal was a significant step in First Nations' relations with the B.C. government. "Certainly it's a far cry from where we were, when the notion was to exchange all of our titles for treaties," he told CBC News. Chief Judith Sayers of the Hupacasath said the legislation would give the government a clear mandate to negotiate revenue-sharing with First Nations. "It's incredibly significant. We have been working on this for almost three years," she said. Members of the First Nations Summit were expected to vote Friday on the principles contained in the discussion paper. If they do vote to support the principals, de Jong then intends to draft the legislation within a month and present it for passage in the legislature before the coming provincial election in May. The legislation represents a significant step in a long political turnaround for Gordon Campbell's B.C. Liberal party. After winning the 2001 election, Campbell held a controversial referendum on treaty negotiations that threatened to deepen divisions between the province and First Nations. But instead, after winning the 2005 election Campbell kick-started stalled treaty negotiations with a promise to forge a new relationship with the province's First Nations, based on government recognition of aboriginal title and rights. Since that time, two significant treaties and several interim agreements have been signed with several First Nations, including one controversial deal with the Tsawwassen south of Vancouver. Critics have said the process has been to costly and has little to show for real results. Historically in British Columbia, unlike in other provinces, lands were never legally ceded by First Nations to the British colonial governments, with the exception of a few small areas near Victoria. From aaron.doncaster at gmail.com Fri Mar 6 09:26:53 2009 From: aaron.doncaster at gmail.com (aaron doncaster) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 12:26:53 -0400 Subject: [R-G] Vaccines as Biological Weapons? Live Avian Flu Virus Placed in Baxter Vaccine Materials Sent to 18 Countries Message-ID: <164236a30903060826w359249d0u356995cb4f4d78@mail.gmail.com> (NaturalNews) There's a popular medical thriller novel in which a global pandemic is intentionally set off by an evil plot designed to reduce the human population. In the book, a nefarious drug company inserts live avian flu viruses into vaccine materials that are distributed to countries around the world to be injected into patients as "flu shots." Those patients then become carriers for these highly-virulent strains of avian flu which go on to infect the world population and cause widespread death. There's only one problem with this story: *It's not fiction.* Or, at least, the part about live avian flu viruses being inserted into vaccine materials isn't fiction. It's happening right now. Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmaceutical company *Baxter International Inc.*has just been caught shipping *live avian flu viruses * mixed with vaccine material to medical distributors in *18 countries*. The "mistake" (if you can call it that, see below...) was discovered by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The World Health Organization was alerted and panic spread throughout the vaccine community as healthexperts asked the obvious question: How could this have happened? As published on LifeGen.de (http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/showne...), serious questions like this are being raised: *"Baxter International Inc. in Austria 'unintentionally contaminated samples with the bird flu virus that were used in laboratories in 3 neighbouring countries, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease'. Austria, Germany, Slowenia and the Czech Republic - these are the countries in which labs were hit with dangerous viruses. Not by bioterrorist commandos, but by Baxter. In other words: One of the major global pharmaceutical players seems to have lost control over a virus which is considered by many virologists to be one of the components leading some day to a new pandemic ."* Or, put another way, *Baxter is acting a whole lot like a biological terrorism organization these days*, sending deadly viral samples around the world. If you mail an envelope full of anthrax to your Senator, you get arrested as a terrorist . So why is Baxter -- which mailed samples of a far more deadly viral strain to labs around the world -- getting away with saying, essentially, "Oops?" But there's a bigger question in all this: How could this company have * accidentally* mixed LIVE avian flu viruses (both H5N1 and H3N2, the human form) in this vaccine material? Was the viral contamination intentional?The shocking answer is that *this couldn't have been an accident*. Why? Because Baxter International adheres to something called *BSL3* (Biosafety Level 3) - a set of laboratory safety protocols that prevent the cross-contamination of materials. As explained on Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosaf... ): "Laboratory personnel have specific training in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents, and are supervised by competent scientists who are experienced in working with these agents. This is considered a neutral or warm zone. All procedures involving the manipulation of infectious materials are conducted within biological safety cabinets or other physical containment devices, or by personnel wearing appropriate personal protective clothing and equipment. The laboratory has special engineering and design features." Under the BSL3 code of conduct, it is *impossible* for live avian flu viruses to contaminate production vaccine materials that are shipped out to vendors around the world. This leaves only two possibilities that explain these events: *Possibility #1*: Baxter isn't following BSL3 safety guidelines or is so sloppy in following them that it can make monumental mistakes that threaten the safety of the entire human race. And if that's the case, then why are we injecting our children with vaccinesmade from Baxter's materials? *Possibility #2*: A rogue employee (or an evil plot from the top management) is present at Baxter, whereby live avian flu viruses were *intentionally placed* into the vaccine materials in the hope that such materials might be injected into humans and set off a global bird flu pandemic . It just so happens that *a global bird flu pandemicwould sell a LOT of bird flu vaccines *. Although some naive people have a hard time believing that corporations would endanger human beings to make money, this is precisely the way corporationsnow behave in America's ethically-challenged free-market environment. (Remember Enron? Exxon? Merck? DuPont? Monsanto? Need I go on?) Make no mistake: Spreading bird fluis a clever way to create demand for bird flu vaccines, and we've all seen very clearly how drug companiesfirst *market the problem* and then "leap to the rescue" by selling the solution. (Disease mongering of ADHD, bipolar disorder, etc.) Why it all suddenly makes senseUntil today, I would not have personally believed such a story. I personally thought talk of bird flu vaccines being "weaponized" was just alarmist hype. But now, in light of the fact that LIVE bird flu viruses are being openly found in vaccine materials that are distributed around the world, I must admit the evidence is increasingly compelling that something extremely dangerous is afoot. Baxter, through either its mistakes or its evil intentions, just put *the safety of the entire human race at risk*. Given all the laboratory protocols put in place to prevent this kind of thing, it is difficult to believe this was just a mistake. There is some speculation, in fact, that the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed up to 50 million people worldwide ( http://images.google.com/images?hl=...), was intentionally started by injecting servicemen with "experimental" flu vaccines that actually contained live, "weaponized" flu material just like the material being distributed by Baxter today. Examine the historical record. You'll find that the 1918 flu originated with servicemen. Even more interestingly, *it began in multiple cities, simultaneously!* There is no single point of origin with the 1918 flu. It appears to have "spontaneously" sprung up across multiple cities all at once, including a military base in Kansas. (Kansas? Yep. So how did it get to Kansas in an era when air traffic was virtually non-existent? Vaccines, of course!) All those cities and servicemen have one thing in common: Flu shot vaccinations given to them by the military. If you put the pieces together on this, it's not too difficult to suspect that *influenza could potentially be used as a tool of control by governments or drug companies*to catalyze outrageous profit-taking or power grabbing agendas. A desperate, infected population will gladly give up anything or pay anything for the promise of being cured. Or was it just an innocent mistake? Oops!But for the skeptics who dismiss any such talk of conspiracy theories, let's examine the other possibility: That a global avian flu pandemic was nearly unleashed *unintentionally* due to the outrageous incompetence of the companies handling these viral strains. As we just saw, this is a very real possibility. Had this live bird flu virus not been detected, it could have very easily found its way into vaccines that were injected into human beings. And this, in turn, could have unleashed a *global avian flu pandemic*. If the drug companies making and handling these materials are so careless, then it seems like *it's only a matter of time before something slips through the safety precautions again and gets unleashed into the wild*. And that leads to essentially the same scenario: A global pandemic, widespread death, health care failures and a desperate population begging for vaccines. So either way -- whether it's intentional or not -- you essentially get the same result. Why a global pandemic is only a matter of timeI am on the record stating that a global pandemic is only a matter of time. The living conditions under which humans have placed themselves (crowded cities, suppressed immune systems, etc.) are ideal for the spread of infectious disease. But I never dreamed drug companies could actually be *accelerating the pandemic timeline* by contaminating vaccine materials with live avian flu viruses known to be highly infectious to humans. This, it seems, is a whole new cause for concern. You can believe what you will. Maybe you agree with the nefarious plot theory and you agree that corporations are capable of great evils in their quest for profits. Or perhaps you can't accept that, so you go with the "accidental contamination" theory, in which your beliefs describe a very dangerous world where biohazard safety protocols are insufficient to protect us from all the crazy viral strains being toyed with at drug companies and government labs all across the world. In either case, *the world is not a very safe place when deadly viral strains are placed in the hands of the inept*. We are like children playing God with Mother Nature, rolling the dice in a global game of *Viral Roulette* where the odds are not in our favor. With companies like Baxter engaged in behaviors that are just begging to see the human race devastated by a global pandemic wipeout, it might be a good time to question the sanity of using viral strains in vaccines in the first place. Vaccine-pushing scientists are so proud of their vaccines. They think they've conquered Mother Nature. Imagine their surprise when one day they learn they have actually killed 100 million human beings by unleashing a global pandemic. We came close to it this week. A global pandemic may have just been averted by the thinnest of margins. Yet people go on with their lives, oblivious to what nearly happened. What's inescapable at this point is the fact that the threat of a pandemic that looms for all of human civilization, and that drug companies may, themselves, be the source of that threat. Important ResourcesRead my book *How to Beat the Bird Flu* here: http://www.truthpublishing.com/bird... See a remarkable collection of quotes and accounts from authors writing about the 1918 influenza pandemic here: www.NaturalNews.com/025759.html *Stories about Baxter International, Inc. and its avian influenza "oops" moment* The Canadian Press: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ca... Bloomberg.com: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?... LifeGen.de: http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/showne... From fentona at shaw.ca Fri Mar 6 09:54:33 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 08:54:33 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Arctic summer ice could vanish by 2013, expert says Message-ID: <08F46276-B458-46DE-BAA1-FF7230229F56@shaw.ca> Arctic summer ice could vanish by 2013, expert says http://www.canada.com/news/national/Arctic+summer+could+vanish+2013+expert+says/1357287/story.html By David Ljunggren , ReutersMarch 5, 2009Compliments of TD Waterhouse The shifting polar ice created crevasses as well as towering ice ridges as it shifted across the Arctic Ocean. The shifting polar ice created crevasses as well as towering ice ridges as it shifted across the Arctic Ocean. Photograph by: Handout, Bill Donner OTTAWA - The Arctic is warming up so quickly that the region's sea ice cover in summer could vanish as early as 2013, decades earlier than some had predicted, a leading polar expert said Thursday. Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec, said recent data on the ice cover "appear to be tracking the most pessimistic of the models", which call for an ice free summer in 2013. The year "2013 is starting to look as though it is a lot more reasonable as a prediction. But each year we've been wrong ? each year we're finding that it's a little bit faster than expected," he told Reuters. The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and the sea ice cover shrank to a record low in 2007 before growing slightly in 2008. In 2004 a major international panel forecast the cover could vanish by 2100. Last December, some experts said the summer ice could go in the next 10 or 20 years. If the ice cover disappears, it could have major consequences. Shipping companies are already musing about short cuts through the Arctic, which also contains enormous reserves of oil and natural gas. Vincent's scientific team has spent the last 10 summers on Ward Hunt Island, a remote spot some 4,000 kilometres northwest of Ottawa. "I was astounded as to how fast the changes are taking place. The extent of open water is something that we haven't experienced in the 10 years that I've been working up there," he said after making a presentation in the Canadian Parliament. "We're losing, irreversibly, major features of the Canadian ice scape and that suggests that these more pessimistic models are really much closer to reality." In 2008 the maximum summer temperature on Ward Hunt hit 20 C compared to the usual 5 degrees. Last summer alone the five ice shelves along Ellesmere Island in Canada's Far North, which are more than 4,000 years old, shrunk by 23 per cent. Vincent told Reuters last September that it was clear some of the damage would be permanent and that the warming in the Arctic was a sign of what the rest of the world could expect. He struck a similarly gloomy note in his presentation. "Some of this is unstoppable. We're in a train of events at the moment where there are changes taking place that we are unable to reverse, the loss of these ice shelves, for example," he said. "But what we can do is slow down this process and we have to slow down this process because we need to buy more time. We simply don't have the technologies as a civilization to deal with this level of instability that is ahead of us." From fentona at shaw.ca Fri Mar 6 09:57:37 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 08:57:37 -0800 Subject: [R-G] U.S. sees lessons for Afghan war in Colombia Message-ID: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/05/AR2009030502747.html U.S. sees lessons for Afghan war in Colombia By Patrick Markey Reuters Thursday, March 5, 2009; 5:51 PM BOGOTA (Reuters) - Lessons from Colombia's U.S.-backed war against insurgents and drug traffickers could be applied to Washington's expanding military campaign in Afghanistan, the top U.S. military officer said on Thursday. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Bogota the Andean country's ideas on counterinsurgency, building governance in areas once abandoned by the state and economic development were fundamental. "There are parts of it that would be very applicable to other parts of the world, especially Afghanistan," he said. President Barack Obama's administration is currently reviewing U.S. policy for Afghanistan as Washington prepares to send in a further 17,000 troops to try to turn around an increasingly violent conflict. Once a powerful rebel force of 17,000 fighters that controlled large areas, Colombia's FARC insurgency movement has been driven back into the jungles and mountains. Bombings and kidnappings have dropped sharply under President Alvaro Uribe. Better troop training, more mobility with helicopters and improved intelligence have helped the army cut off rebel communications and supplies and isolated units from leadership. Washington has supplied more than $5 billion to Colombia to help combat guerrillas and the cocaine trade fueling the conflict but critics question the success of the anti-narcotics program. The U.N. estimates 27 percent more land was used for coca production at the end of 2007 than a year before. U.S. officials have said the Plan Colombia aid package could be an "overarching" model for Pakistan and Afghanistan, where poppy cultivation for opium is helping finance a determined Taliban militant insurgency. Afghan police have already trained with their Colombian counterparts and Bogota is studying sending troops to Afghanistan to help out in eradication and de-mining. Colombia, which supplies about 600 tonnes of cocaine a year, once relied almost entirely on fumigation to destroy coca, but has stepped up manual eradication which is considered to have a more lasting impact. Colombia and U.S. authorities now hope a pilot program that better combines tough security with immediate economic development and alternatives for coca farmers can be used to keep violence in check and attack drug output. Despite a drop in production last year, Afghanistan still supplies more than 90 percent of the world's opium, a raw ingredient of heroin. The drug trade injects $3 billion a year in the Afghan economy and helps fund the Taliban. (Editing by David Storey) From fentona at shaw.ca Fri Mar 6 11:18:50 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 10:18:50 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Author rips the Alberta tar sands Message-ID: <3CFD63DE-6B03-4EE3-83AC-BC32283E441A@shaw.ca> http://www.montrealmirror.com/2009/030509/news3.html Big dumb oil Author and journalist William Marsden rips the Alberta tar sands projects and the stupidity behind it by CHRISTOPHER HAZOU In recent weeks, debate over the environmental destruction caused by the extraction of oil from Alberta?s tar sands has intensified once again. This month?s issue of National Geographic magazine caused a stir with a multi-page spread depicting in disturbing detail the environmental impact of the tar sands, and the House of Commons environment committee announced this week that it will investigate the effect on fresh water resources. William Marsden, the award-winning author and investigative journalist for The Gazette, raised the hackles of the oil industry back in 2007 with his expose of the oil sands, Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn?t Seem to Care). The Mirror talked to Marsden in advance of a Wednesday, March 11, speaking engagement at Concordia. Mirror: Your book has been out for almost a year and a half now?what kind of response have you had? William Marsden: In Canada, we have this reputation for protecting the environment, which I?ve always contended was nothing more than a lie. Before the book came out, Canadians viewed the oil sands as this great endeavour, that it was a good thing in all its quarters, wealth, technology, ingenuity and all the rest of it. I took a completely different view, and I think it opened everyone?s eyes. Not that I was the first. There were organizations in Alberta that have been screaming about it for a long time, but nobody listened. M: The Alberta government recently laid charges against Syncrude after 500 birds died in one of their tailings ponds. Do you think this will be a wake up call to the oil companies? WM: There?s no question that the companies are becoming far more defensive than they ever were before. Before my book came out, they didn?t care. Then when things started to roll, and various organizations internationally and in the U.S. and Europe began to take up the charge and lobby their politicians to not accept this oil, it became a serious economic issue for them. But they?ve always looked at it from the same point of view: that it?s a PR problem. They don?t understand that the fundamentals of this whole project are wrong. You can?t get the oil out with present-day technology without tremendous destruction, which is unacceptable. The footprint is just too big. Where to, now? M: With tar sands oil becoming less attractive to the Americans because of environmental concerns, do you see China becoming a bigger player? WM: It could, but you need a pipeline to go from Alberta across the mountains to Prince Rupert [on the B.C. coast]. One of the major pipeline companies wants to build it, but I read recently that they?ve decided not to for the moment because the costs are so high and they can?t get the banks to fork out the money. You now have about $99- billion worth of future investment that?s been cancelled or delayed in the tar sands because of the current economic situation. M: And do you think that might be the saving grace, if it?s economically unviable to produce the stuff? WM: That will be a saving grace for the moment, there?s no question about it. But we have to look at the long term and we also have to deal with the situation as it exists. Companies like Syncrude, Shell and Suncor are still churning the stuff out like mad because they can still make money when oil is in the $15?$25 per barrel. They?re pumping CO2 into the air like there?s no tomorrow and expanding the oil sands and the tailings ponds. M: Your book is titled Stupid to the Last Drop. Is it stupidity or is it greed, or both? WM: It?s a combination of greed, hubris [and] absolute stupidity. But in the end, it comes down to stupidity, because the facts are all there. You just have to go and look at the oil sands to see what?s happening. They?ve essentially surrendered the province to the oil companies and, in the end, even the financial aspect of it doesn?t make any sense. Alberta is now at the point where it?s going to go into a deficit budget. They?re in a situation where the oil boom in the sands could very well be over and they look at their coffers and they find out that they?ve spent all the money. What do they have to show for the last 10 years of growth and expansion and billions upon billions of dollars in investment? Nothing. WILLIAM MARSDEN SPEAKS AT CONCORDIA?S HALL BUILDING (1455 DE MAISONNEUVE W., ROOM 1220), ON WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 7 P.M., FREE. FOR MORE INFO, CALL (514)-846-0644 OR E-MAIL NADIA.ALEXAN at SYMPATICO.CA From suzannedk at gmail.com Fri Mar 6 11:33:54 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 19:33:54 +0100 Subject: [R-G] Vaccines as Biological Weapons? Live Avian Flu Virus Placed in Baxter Vaccine Materials Sent to 18 Countries In-Reply-To: <164236a30903060826w359249d0u356995cb4f4d78@mail.gmail.com> References: <164236a30903060826w359249d0u356995cb4f4d78@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: With permanent war powers and no habeous corpus one has a breeding ground for those of us humans who are repressed homocidals, as in G.W. Bush and Richard Cheney. G.W. Bush enthusiasticly aqpproved torture and secret renditions and Cheney voted many times that the rights of US elders' Meals on wheels was a luxury they should not enjoy, also voting at least twelve times that Nelson Mandela stay in prison, and, yes, that torture and rendition are procedures so valuable and excellent that no habeous corpus was a unimportant loss, necessitated by 'the evil empire times'. Human use of mass or individual homocides by poison to be less detected that outright massacre goes back surely to the dawn of human time. The determined destruction of all laws by the US has created a probelm of unpresidented vastness (since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) of unfettered solution of political problems by mass assination. Not unrelated to the Final Solutions of Hitler! Suzanne suzanedk at gmail On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 5:26 PM, aaron doncaster wrote: > (NaturalNews) There's a popular medical thriller novel in which a global > pandemic is intentionally set off by an evil plot designed to reduce the > human population. In the book, a nefarious drug company inserts live avian > flu viruses into vaccine materials that are distributed to countries around > the world to be injected into patients as "flu shots." Those patients then > become carriers for these highly-virulent strains of avian flu which go on > to infect the world population and cause widespread death. > > There's only one problem with this story: *It's not fiction.* Or, at least, > the part about live avian flu > viruses being inserted into > vaccine materials isn't fiction. It's happening > right now. > > Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmaceutical company *Baxter International > Inc.*has just been caught shipping > *live avian flu viruses * mixed > with vaccine material to medical distributors in *18 countries*. The > "mistake" (if you can call it that, see below...) was discovered by the > National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The World Health Organization > was alerted and panic spread throughout the vaccine community as > healthexperts asked the > obvious question: How could this have happened? > > As published on LifeGen.de > (http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/showne...< > http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/shownews.php4?getnews=2009-02-26-5323&pc=s01 > >), > serious questions like this are being raised: > > *"Baxter International Inc. in Austria 'unintentionally contaminated > samples > with the bird flu virus > that were used in > laboratories in 3 neighbouring countries, raising concern > about the potential spread of the deadly disease'. Austria, Germany, > Slowenia and the Czech Republic - these are the countries in which labs > were > hit with dangerous viruses. Not by bioterrorist commandos, but by Baxter. > In > other words: One of the major global pharmaceutical players seems to have > lost control over a virus which is considered by many virologists to be one > of the components leading some day to a new > pandemic > ."* > > Or, put another way, *Baxter is acting a whole lot like a biological > terrorism organization these days*, sending deadly viral samples around the > world. If you mail an envelope full of anthrax to your Senator, you get > arrested as a terrorist . So > why > is Baxter -- which mailed samples of a far more deadly viral strain to labs > around the world -- getting away with saying, essentially, "Oops?" > > But there's a bigger question in all this: How could this company have * > accidentally* mixed LIVE avian flu viruses (both H5N1 and H3N2, the human > form) in this vaccine material? > > Was the viral contamination intentional?The shocking answer is that *this > couldn't have been an accident*. Why? Because Baxter International adheres > to something called *BSL3* (Biosafety Level 3) - a set of laboratory safety > protocols that prevent the cross-contamination of materials. > > As explained on Wikipedia ( > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosaf...< > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_level_3> > ): > > "Laboratory personnel have specific training in handling pathogenic and > potentially lethal agents, and are supervised by competent scientists who > are experienced in working with these agents. This is considered a neutral > or warm zone. All procedures involving the manipulation of infectious > materials are conducted within biological safety cabinets or other physical > containment devices, or by personnel wearing appropriate personal > protective > clothing and equipment. The laboratory has special engineering and design > features." > > Under the BSL3 code of conduct, it is *impossible* for live avian flu > viruses to contaminate production vaccine materials that are shipped out to > vendors around the world. > > This leaves only two possibilities that explain these events: > > *Possibility #1*: Baxter isn't following BSL3 safety guidelines or is so > sloppy in following them that it can make monumental mistakes that threaten > the safety of the entire human race. And if that's the case, then why are > we > injecting our children with > vaccinesmade from Baxter's > materials? > > *Possibility #2*: A rogue employee (or an evil plot from the top > management) > is present at Baxter, whereby live avian flu viruses were *intentionally > placed* into the vaccine materials in the hope that such materials might be > injected into humans and set off a global bird flu > pandemic > . > > It just so happens that *a global bird flu > pandemicwould sell a LOT > of bird flu > vaccines *. Although some > naive people have a hard time believing that corporations would endanger > human > beings to make money, this > is > precisely the way > corporationsnow behave > in America's ethically-challenged free-market environment. > (Remember Enron? Exxon? Merck? DuPont? Monsanto? Need I go on?) > > Make no mistake: Spreading bird > fluis a clever way to create > demand for bird flu vaccines, and we've all seen > very clearly how drug > companiesfirst > *market the problem* and then "leap to the rescue" by selling the solution. > (Disease mongering of ADHD, bipolar disorder, etc.) > > Why it all suddenly makes senseUntil today, I would not have personally > believed such a story. I personally thought talk of bird flu vaccines being > "weaponized" was just alarmist hype. But now, in light of the fact that > LIVE > bird flu viruses are being openly found in vaccine materials that are > distributed around the world, I must admit the evidence is increasingly > compelling that something extremely dangerous is afoot. > > Baxter, through either its mistakes or its evil intentions, just put *the > safety of the entire human race at risk*. Given all the laboratory > protocols > put in place to prevent this kind of thing, it is difficult to believe this > was just a mistake. > > There is some speculation, in fact, that the 1918 influenza > pandemic, > which killed up to 50 million people worldwide ( > http://images.google.com/images?hl=...< > http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_en-USUS294US304&q=1918%20influenza&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi > >), > was intentionally started by injecting servicemen with "experimental" flu > vaccines that actually contained live, "weaponized" flu material just like > the material being distributed by Baxter today. > > Examine the historical record. You'll find that the 1918 flu originated > with > servicemen. Even more interestingly, *it began in multiple cities, > simultaneously!* There is no single point of origin with the 1918 flu. It > appears to have "spontaneously" sprung up across multiple cities all at > once, including a military base > in Kansas. (Kansas? Yep. So how did it get to Kansas in an era when air > traffic was virtually non-existent? Vaccines, of course!) > > All those cities and servicemen have one thing in common: Flu shot > vaccinations given to them by the military. > > If you put the pieces together on this, it's not too difficult to suspect > that *influenza could > potentially be used as a tool of control by governments or drug > companies*to catalyze outrageous profit-taking or power grabbing > agendas. A desperate, > infected population will gladly give up anything or pay anything for the > promise of being cured. > > Or was it just an innocent mistake? Oops!But for the skeptics who dismiss > any such talk of conspiracy theories, let's examine the other possibility: > That a global avian flu pandemic was nearly unleashed *unintentionally* due > to the outrageous incompetence of the companies handling these viral > strains. > > As we just saw, this is a very real possibility. Had this live bird flu > virus not been detected, it > could have very easily found its way into vaccines that were injected into > human beings. And this, in turn, could have unleashed a *global avian flu > pandemic*. > > If the drug companies making and handling these materials are so careless, > then it seems like *it's only a matter of time before something slips > through the safety precautions again and gets unleashed into the wild*. And > that leads to essentially the same scenario: A global > pandemic, > widespread death, health care failures and a desperate population begging > for vaccines. > > So either way -- whether it's intentional or not -- you essentially get the > same result. > > Why a global pandemic is only a matter of timeI am on the record stating > that a global pandemic is only a matter of time. The living conditions > under > which humans have placed themselves (crowded cities, suppressed immune > systems, etc.) are ideal for the spread of infectious > disease. > But I never dreamed drug companies could actually be *accelerating the > pandemic timeline* by contaminating vaccine materials with live avian flu > viruses known to be highly infectious to humans. This, it seems, is a whole > new cause for concern. > > You can believe what you will. Maybe you agree with the nefarious plot > theory and you agree that corporations are capable of great evils in their > quest for profits. Or perhaps you can't accept that, so you go with the > "accidental contamination" theory, in which your beliefs describe a very > dangerous world where biohazard safety protocols are insufficient to > protect > us from all the crazy viral strains being toyed with at drug companies and > government labs all across the world. > > In either case, *the world is not a very safe place when deadly viral > strains are placed in the hands of the inept*. > > We are like children playing God with Mother Nature, rolling the dice in a > global game of *Viral Roulette* where the odds are not in our favor. With > companies like Baxter engaged in behaviors that are just begging to see the > human race devastated by a global pandemic wipeout, it might be a good time > to question the sanity of using viral strains in vaccines in the first > place. > > Vaccine-pushing scientists are so proud of their vaccines. They think > they've conquered Mother Nature. Imagine their surprise when one day they > learn they have actually killed 100 million human beings by unleashing a > global pandemic. > > We came close to it this week. A global pandemic may have just been averted > by the thinnest of margins. Yet people go on with their lives, oblivious to > what nearly happened. > > What's inescapable at this point is the fact that the threat of a pandemic > that looms for all of human civilization, and that drug companies may, > themselves, be the source of that threat. > > Important ResourcesRead my book *How to Beat the Bird Flu* here: > http://www.truthpublishing.com/bird...< > http://www.truthpublishing.com/birdflu_p/yprint-cat21336.htm> > > See a remarkable collection of quotes and accounts from authors writing > about the 1918 influenza pandemic here: > www.NaturalNews.com/025759.html > > *Stories about Baxter International, Inc. and its avian influenza "oops" > moment* > > The Canadian Press: > http://www.google.com/hostednews/ca...< > http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jJ4CmDnp1pP1ZqHShBeayzTuzsEA > > > > Bloomberg.com: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?...< > http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aiqmSoL6sVbk&refer=home > > > > LifeGen.de: http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/showne...< > http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/shownews.php4?getnews=2009-02-26-5323&pc=s01> > _______________________________________________ > 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 Fri Mar 6 12:06:59 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 11:06:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Juan Cole -- IAEA Inspectors: Iran not Producing Weapons-grade Uranium In-Reply-To: <1516743738.73701236299127282.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <536489009.287031236366419997.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Juan Cole --?IAEA Inspectors: Iran not Producing Weapons-grade Uranium As I mentioned yesterday, Iran is not producing weapon-grade uranium, and could not easily do so without detection. The Hindu, which despite its name is left of center (and which is one of India's finest newspapers) writes: 'Iran has not converted the low-grade uranium that it has produced into weapon-grade uranium, inspectors belonging to the International Atomic Energy Agency have said. The Austrian Press Agency quoted an IAEA expert as saying that the uranium substances that Iran has produced at its Natanz enrichment facility have been carefully recorded and remote cameras have been installed to supervise part of the stockpile. "If the Iranians intend to transport these uranium substances to a secret location for further processing, agency's inspectors will find out," he said. The expert added that "so far, Iran has carried out good cooperation with us in relevant verifications". IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei has said that Iran has slowed down its uranium enrichment programme.' US newspapers are complaining that they are losing money and may not survive. After they put all sorts of falsehoods about Iraq on their front pages, it may be that they fatally wounded their credibility with the US public. In any case, the above report does not show up anywhere on the web or in Lexis that I can find, except here in The Hindu, which tells me that someone is not doing their job. -- Posted By Juan Cole to Informed Comment at 2/22/2009 12:03:00 AM From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Mar 6 12:04:06 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 11:04:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] A 'fraud' bigger than Madoff In-Reply-To: <1679256762.87021236301636640.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1783455001.285581236366246017.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-fraud-bigger-than-madoff-1622987.html The Independent?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? 16 February 2009 A 'fraud' bigger than Madoff Senior US soldiers investigated over missing Iraq reconstruction billions By Patrick Cockburn in Sulaimaniyah, Northern Iraq In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (?88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme. "I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad," said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003. In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in "pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills" to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money. He is among the few US officials who were in Iraq to be convicted of fraud and money-laundering. Despite the vast sums expended on rebuilding by the US since 2003, there have been no cranes visible on the Baghdad skyline except those at work building a new US embassy and others rusting beside a half-built giant mosque that Saddam was constructing when he was overthrown. One of the few visible signs of government work on Baghdad's infrastructure is a tireless attention to planting palm trees and flowers in the centre strip between main roads. Those are then dug up and replanted a few months later. Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption. In 2004-05, the entire Iraq military procurement budget of $1.3bn was siphoned off from the Iraqi Defence Ministry in return for 28-year-old Soviet helicopters too obsolete to fly and armoured cars easily penetrated by rifle bullets. Iraqi officials were blamed for the theft, but US military officials were largely in control of the Defence Ministry at the time and must have been either highly negligent or participants in the fraud. American federal investigators are now starting an inquiry into the actions of senior US officers involved in the programme to rebuild Iraq, according to The New York Times, which cites interviews with senior government officials and court documents. Court records reveal that, in January, investigators subpoenaed the bank records of Colonel Anthony B Bell, now retired from the US Army, but who was previously responsible for contracting for the reconstruction effort in 2003 and 2004. Two federal officials are cited by the paper as saying that investigators are also looking at the activities of Lieutenant-Colonel Ronald W Hirtle of the US Air Force, who was senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004. It is not clear what specific evidence exists against the two men, who have both said they have nothing to hide. The end of the Bush administration which launched the war may give fresh impetus to investigations into frauds in which tens of billions of dollars were spent on reconstruction with little being built that could be used. In the early days of the occupation, well-connected Republicans were awarded jobs in Iraq, regardless of experience. A 24-year-old from a Republican family was put in charge of the Baghdad stock exchange which had to close down because he allegedly forgot to renew the lease on its building. In the expanded inquiry by federal agencies, the evidence of a small-time US businessman called Dale C Stoffel who was murdered after leaving the US base at Taiji north of Baghdad in 2004 is being re-examined. Before he was killed, Mr Stoffel, an arms dealer and contractor, was granted limited immunity from prosecution after he had provided information that a network of bribery ? linking companies and US officials awarding contracts ? existed within the US-run Green Zone in Baghdad. He said bribes of tens of thousands of dollars were regularly delivered in pizza boxes sent to US contracting officers. So far, US officers who have been successfully prosecuted or unmasked have mostly been involved in small-scale corruption. Often sums paid out in cash were never recorded. In one case, an American soldier put in charge of reviving Iraqi boxing gambled away all the money but he could not be prosecuted because, although the money was certainly gone, nobody had recorded if it was $20,000 or $60,000. Iraqi ministers admit the wholesale corruption of their government. Ali Allawi, the former finance minister, said Iraq was "becoming like Nigeria in the past when all the oil revenues were stolen". But there has also been a strong suspicion among senior Iraqis that US officials must have been complicit or using Iraqi appointees as front-men in corrupt deals. Several Iraqi officials given important jobs at the urging of the US administration in Baghdad were inexperienced. For instance, the arms procurement chief at the centre of the Defence Ministry scandal, was a Polish-Iraqi, 27 years out of Iraq, who had run a pizza restaurant on the outskirts of Bonn in the 1990s. In many cases, contractors never started or finished facilities they were supposedly building. As security deteriorated in Iraq from the summer of 2003 it was difficult to check if a contract had been completed. But the failure to provide electricity, water and sewage disposal during the US occupation was crucial in alienating Iraqis from the post-Saddam regime. Senior US soldiers investigated over missing Iraq reconstruction billions By Patrick Cockburn in Sulaimaniyah, Northern Iraq In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (?88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme. "I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad," said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003. In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in "pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills" to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money. He is among the few US officials who were in Iraq to be convicted of fraud and money-laundering. Despite the vast sums expended on rebuilding by the US since 2003, there have been no cranes visible on the Baghdad skyline except those at work building a new US embassy and others rusting beside a half-built giant mosque that Saddam was constructing when he was overthrown. One of the few visible signs of government work on Baghdad's infrastructure is a tireless attention to planting palm trees and flowers in the centre strip between main roads. Those are then dug up and replanted a few months later. Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption. In 2004-05, the entire Iraq military procurement budget of $1.3bn was siphoned off from the Iraqi Defence Ministry in return for 28-year-old Soviet helicopters too obsolete to fly and armoured cars easily penetrated by rifle bullets. Iraqi officials were blamed for the theft, but US military officials were largely in control of the Defence Ministry at the time and must have been either highly negligent or participants in the fraud. American federal investigators are now starting an inquiry into the actions of senior US officers involved in the programme to rebuild Iraq, according to The New York Times, which cites interviews with senior government officials and court documents. Court records reveal that, in January, investigators subpoenaed the bank records of Colonel Anthony B Bell, now retired from the US Army, but who was previously responsible for contracting for the reconstruction effort in 2003 and 2004. Two federal officials are cited by the paper as saying that investigators are also looking at the activities of Lieutenant-Colonel Ronald W Hirtle of the US Air Force, who was senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004. It is not clear what specific evidence exists against the two men, who have both said they have nothing to hide. The end of the Bush administration which launched the war may give fresh impetus to investigations into frauds in which tens of billions of dollars were spent on reconstruction with little being built that could be used. In the early days of the occupation, well-connected Republicans were awarded jobs in Iraq, regardless of experience. A 24-year-old from a Republican family was put in charge of the Baghdad stock exchange which had to close down because he allegedly forgot to renew the lease on its building. In the expanded inquiry by federal agencies, the evidence of a small-time US businessman called Dale C Stoffel who was murdered after leaving the US base at Taiji north of Baghdad in 2004 is being re-examined. Before he was killed, Mr Stoffel, an arms dealer and contractor, was granted limited immunity from prosecution after he had provided information that a network of bribery ? linking companies and US officials awarding contracts ? existed within the US-run Green Zone in Baghdad. He said bribes of tens of thousands of dollars were regularly delivered in pizza boxes sent to US contracting officers. So far, US officers who have been successfully prosecuted or unmasked have mostly been involved in small-scale corruption. Often sums paid out in cash were never recorded. In one case, an American soldier put in charge of reviving Iraqi boxing gambled away all the money but he could not be prosecuted because, although the money was certainly gone, nobody had recorded if it was $20,000 or $60,000. Iraqi ministers admit the wholesale corruption of their government. Ali Allawi, the former finance minister, said Iraq was "becoming like Nigeria in the past when all the oil revenues were stolen". But there has also been a strong suspicion among senior Iraqis that US officials must have been complicit or using Iraqi appointees as front-men in corrupt deals. Several Iraqi officials given important jobs at the urging of the US administration in Baghdad were inexperienced. For instance, the arms procurement chief at the centre of the Defence Ministry scandal, was a Polish-Iraqi, 27 years out of Iraq, who had run a pizza restaurant on the outskirts of Bonn in the 1990s. In many cases, contractors never started or finished facilities they were supposedly building. As security deteriorated in Iraq from the summer of 2003 it was difficult to check if a contract had been completed. But the failure to provide electricity, water and sewage disposal during the US occupation was crucial in alienating Iraqis from the post-Saddam regime. From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Mar 6 12:06:27 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 11:06:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] War Comes Home to Britain - John Pilger In-Reply-To: <625983997.82441236300721084.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1952358377.286791236366387413.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2009/03/war-comes-home-to-britain/ Dissident Voice ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? March 4th, 2009 War Comes Home to Britain by John Pilger Freedom is being lost in Britain. The land of Magna Carta is now the land of secret gagging orders, secret trials and imprisonment. The government will soon know about every phone call, every e-mail, every text message. Police can willfully shoot to death an innocent man, lie and expect to get away with it. Whole communities now fear the state. The foreign secretary routinely covers up allegations of torture; the justice secretary routinely prevents the release of critical cabinet minutes taken when Iraq was illegally invaded. The litany is cursory; there is much more. Indeed, there is so much more that the erosion of liberal freedoms is symptomatic of an evolved criminal state. The haven for Russian oligarchs, together with corruption of the tax and banking systems and of once-admired public services such as the Post Office, is one side of the coin; the other is the invisible carnage of failed colonial wars. Historically, the pattern is familiar. As the colonial crimes in Algeria, Vietnam and Afghanistan blew back to their perpetrators, France, the United States and the Soviet Union, so the cancerous effects of Britain?s cynicism in Iraq and Afghanistan have come home. The most obvious example is the bombing atrocities in London on 7 July 2005; no one in the British intelligence mandarinate doubts these were a gift of Blair. ?Terrorism? describes only the few acts of individuals and groups, not the constant, industrial violence of great powers. Suppressing this truth is left to the credible media. On 27 February, the Guardian?s Washington correspondent, Ewen MacAskill, in reporting President Obama?s statement that America was finally leaving Iraq, as if it were fact, wrote: ?For Iraq, the death toll is unknown, in the tens of thousands, victims of the war, a nationalist uprising, sectarian in-fighting and jihadists attracted by the US presence.? Thus, the Anglo-American invaders are merely a ?presence? and not directly responsible for the ?unknown? number of Iraqi deaths. Such contortion of intellect is impressive. In January last year, a report by the respected Opinion Research Business (ORB) revised an earlier assessment of deaths in Iraq to 1,033,000. This followed an exhaustive, peer-reviewed study in 2006 by the world-renowned John Hopkins School of Public Health in the US, published in The Lancet, which found that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the invasion. US and British officials immediately dismissed the report as ?flawed? ? a deliberate deception. Foreign Office papers obtained under Freedom of Information disclose a memo written by the government?s chief scientific adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, in which he praised The Lancet report, describing it as ?robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to ?best practice? given [the conditions] in Iraq.? An adviser to the prime minister commented: ?The survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.? Speaking a few days later, a Foreign Office minister, Lord Triesman, said, ?The way in which data are extrapolated from samples to a general outcome is a matter of deep concern.? The episode exemplifies the scale and deception of this state crime. Les Roberts, co-author of the Lancet study, has since argued that Britain and America might have caused in Iraq ?an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide.? This is not news. Neither is it a critical reference in the freedoms campaign organized by the Observer columnist Henry Porter. At a conference in London on 28 February, Lord Goldsmith, Blair?s attorney-general, who notoriously changed his mind and advised the government the invasion was legal, when it wasn?t, was a speaker for freedom. So was Timothy Garton Ash, a ?liberal interventionist.? On 9 April, 2003, shortly after the slaughter had begun in Iraq, a euphoric Garton Ash wrote in the Guardian: ?America has never been the Great Satan. It has sometimes been the Great Gatsby: ?They were careless people, Tom and Daisy ? they smashed up things. . . .? One of Britain?s jobs ?is to keep reminding Tom and Daisy that they now have promises to keep.? Less frivolously, he lauded Blair for his ?strong Gladstonian instincts for humanitarian intervention? and repeated the government?s propaganda about Saddam Hussein. In 2006, he wrote: ?Now we face the next big test of the west after Iraq: Iran.? (my emphasis). This also adheres precisely to the propaganda; David Milliband has declared Iran a ?threat? in preparation for possibly the next war. Like so many of New Labour?s Tonier-than-thou squad, Henry Porter celebrated Blair as an almost mystical politician who ?presents himself as a harmoniser for all the opposing interests in British life, a conciliator of class differences and tribal antipathies, synthesiser of opposing beliefs.? Porter dismissed as ?demonic nonsense? all analysis of the 9/11 attacks that suggested there were specific causes: the consequences of violent actions taken by the powerful in the Middle East. Such thinking, he wrote, ?exactly matches the views of Osama bin Laden . . . with America?s haters, that?s all there is ? hatred.? This, of course, was Blair?s view. Freedoms are being lost in Britain because of the rapid growth of the ?national security state.? This form of militarism was imported from the United States by New Labour. Totalitarian in essence, it relies upon fear mongering to entrench the executive with venal legal mechanisms that progressively diminish democracy and justice. ?Security? is all, as is propaganda promoting rapacious colonial wars, even as honest mistakes. Take away this propaganda, and the wars are exposed for what they are, and fear evaporates. Take away the obeisance of many in Britain?s liberal elite to American power and you demote a profound colonial and crusader mentality that covers for epic criminals like Blair. Prosecute these criminals and change the system that breeds them and you have freedom. John Pilger is an internationally renowned investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker. His latest film is The War on Democracy. His most recent book is Freedom Next Time (Bantam/Random House, 2006). Read other articles by John, or visit John's website. From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Mar 6 12:07:41 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 11:07:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] The Great Regression? In-Reply-To: <1658154117.18931236292093961.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <766353319.287541236366461184.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> The Great Regression? We have depended on foreigners buying our public debt in order to finance a murderous foreign policy, while denying housing, health care and education to millions of our people. Meanwhile, workers with falling wages have been consuming things they often don't need and can?t afford except by going into deeper private debt. None of this can continue, and if we don't radically change our social behavior, material reality will deal with us the same way the ocean dealt with the Titanic. Further problems are being created by the proposed solutions to an economic crisis more serious than the Great Depression. As in the 1930s, government employees of great wealth are attempting to bail out the failing system at public expense, thereby making things worse and avoiding what is for the good of humanity. Capitalism has achieved massive private profits for a minority only by generating staggering loss for a majority burdened with unpayable debt. Perpetuation of this system could lead to total disaster. But its failure presents an opportunity to bring on an age of equality and social justice such as the world has never known. The question is whether this collapsing economy will take us down with it, or whether we will transform it into a life enhancing system to advance all humanity, before it destroys everything. A ruling power so obsessively blinded by wealth, greed and violence that it can see neither the forest nor the trees, is in process of tearing down the natural and human made structure of the world. If the majority does not act to acknowledge what the earth and political economics have been telling us for a long time now, civil society may pay the ultimate price for this barbarically uncivil and perversely anti social system. As Bernard Madoff explained to an intently listening congregation of believers in his Ponzi scheme, a profit on one side of the ledger means a loss on the other. This is a hard and fast rule of the collapsing economy, which may yet fall on our heads unless we see that he and his ilk profit because we are all absorbing the loss. And we may pay the ultimate price unless we change the system that brings us to this critical juncture. The indecisive billion dollar steps being taken on the multi trillion dollar path to a bail out of capital amount to applying a gigantic wad of bubble gum to patch the gaping hole in the Titanic. It will work for a while, but eventually water will come rushing in and the photogenic new captain and his family will go down along with the crew and passengers who have been made to pay for a colossal shipwreck. Whether the call is to abandon ship, mutiny or create social revolution, it should be obvious that radical change, not minor reform is necessary. This is not simply a crisis of finance capitalism: Capitalism itself is the crisis. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can help transform global society into one that assures liberty and justice for all, and is in environmental balance with nature. Another world is not only possible, but absolutely necessary. And it must be one in which the human development of the whole community is far more important than the creation of private profits for a few. The acquisition of capital for some can no longer be allowed to threaten the dissipation of society for all. Repeating past attempts at reform of a crippled system, even if applying new names or labels, will only bring short term progress. Whether the economic product is called a new deal, a great society or a free market, like all drugs it will only provide temporary relief. Each reform pleases a part of society by creating gains for them, but always at the expense of the rest who eventually respond to calls for more reform to benefit another group, which continues the cycle. But this divide and conquer game has now run its course, and we need to understand that to succeed only by guaranteeing another?s failure is what?s leading us to political, economic and moral ruin. And anti or pro government passion isn?t the answer if it doesn?t identify a state controlled by minority wealth as the real problem. It needs to become passion that sees the only real solution through recreating government to become a democratic expression of the majority. Massive consumer debt incurred while earnings declined has enriched a minority with imaginary money, but that is presently vanishing from an electronic fairyland. While working people became a middle class only by absorbing hundreds of billions in private debt, capital?s governing class has been borrowing tens of billions of dollars every week for years now, creating a public debt so large it has more zeros than normal calculators can record. We have depended on foreigners buying our public debt in order to finance a murderous foreign policy, while denying housing, health care and education to millions of our people. Meanwhile, workers with falling wages have been consuming things they often don't need and can?t afford except by going into deeper private debt. None of this can continue, and if we don't radically change our social behavior, material reality will deal with us the same way the ocean dealt with the Titanic. Instead of private non-profit organizations attempting to provide service for people victimized by the system, we need a public non-profit organization, truly democratic government, to see to those services. This would allow private for-profit organizations to perform in a market not dependent on them for survival, but only for the things that make life more pleasant once survival has been assured. But none of that can happen if we continue increasing our burdens, and that of the earth itself, in order to go on destroying other societies in the name of a degenerate definition of freedom, while we destroy our own in the process. All we?re being offered now is a great regression that will do nothing but make this great depression worse. In the words of a famous philosopher ? the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.? Progress demands we save ourselves by creating a cooperative, democratic, and socially responsible world. That?s the only real way out of this mess. frank scott email: frankscott at comcast.net -- Posted By frank scott to legalienate at 2/27/2009 :34:00 PM From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Mar 6 12:10:48 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 11:10:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] [COAT] Canada's Arms Exports to Israel: Aiding & Abetting War Crimes In-Reply-To: <537426441.4584771236284415607.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1547664701.289141236366648847.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Canadian Military Exports to Israel: Aiding & Abetting War Crimes in Gaza (2008-2009) The Ottawa-based Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade ( COAT ) has just released an online report containing ten detailed tables of data about Canadian military companies with direct or indirect export links to Israel: Canadian Military Exports to Israel: Aiding and Abetting War Crimes in Gaza (2008-2009) (Click above for an annotated list linking to the report's ten data tables, or use the quick links provided below.) Summary Article ? (This article sums up the issues in COAT's report.) "Canadian Military Exports, War Crimes in Gaza and Ottawa's Arms Bazaar" CANSEC and CADSI (Click above for an annotated list linking to the report's ten data tables, or use the quick links provided below.) Summary Article ? (This article sums up the issues in COAT's report.) "Canadian Military Exports, War Crimes in Gaza and Ottawa's Arms Bazaar" CANSEC and CADSI COAT's report is part of a campaign to oppose CANSEC, Canada's top military industry trade show. CANSEC 2009 is organized by the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI) . In an apparent conflict of interest, the federal government handed over $200,000 in grants to this arms industry lobby group, between 2006 and 2008.? These "contributions" were explicitly to support CADSI's "international trade," "export marketing" and "international business development activities." ???? CADSI's CANSEC arms bazaar -- a closed, private event -- will be hosted by the City of Ottawa at its prime publicly-funded facility, Lansdowne Park, May 27-28, 2009. ???? COAT's report on Canadian military exports to Israel exposes details about more than 100 corporate members of CADSI that have export links to Israel. Many of these exporters will be exhibiting their wares at CANSEC this spring to potential buyers from many Ottawa embassies. Stop Ottawa Arms Shows CAMPAIGN : ? ? Please join us in exposing and opposing the CANSEC arms bazaar! In 1989, in response to COAT's first campaign , the City Ottawa banned ALL arms shows from municipal property. But now they're coming back! This May is the 20th anniversary of COAT's mass rally -- led by former Mayor Marion Dewar -- when many thousands took to Ottawa's streets to peacefully protest against the ARMX weapons bazaar at Lansdowne Park. Sign Petition Online ,? Print the Petition ,? Attend Upcoming Events ,? Letter from Ottawa Presbytery of the United Church ,? Contact City Council & Mayor Quick Links to Data Tables in COAT's Report on Canada's Military Exports to Israel Table 1:?? Master Table: CADSI CADSI CADSI members, current or former, with Direct or Indirect Export Links to Israel Table 2a:?? F-15 "Eagle" Tactical Fighter/Bomber Canadian War Industries supplying Parts and/or Services to the USA for the F-15 (a major Weapons System used by Israel) Table 2b:?? F-16 "Fighting Falcon"? Fighter/Bomber Canadian War Industries supplying Parts and/or Services to the USA for the F-16 (a major Weapons System used by Israel) Table 2c:? AH-64 "Apache" Helicopter Gunship Canadian War Industries supplying Parts and/or Services to the USA for the AH-64 (a major Weapons System used by Israel) Table 2d:?? F-15, F-16 and AH-64 Canadian War Industries Supplying Parts and/or Services for three Major US Weapons Systems used by Israel Table 3:?? Canada Pension Plan Investments in Weapons Makers CPP Investments (2003-2008) in Prime Contractors for three Major US Weapons systems used by Israel against Lebanon (2006) and Gaza (2008-2009) Table 4a:? Direct Exports: CADSI members Exports to Israel by Canadian military companies that are corporate members, current or former, of CADSI. Table 4b:? Direct Exports: non-CADSI Canadian Exports to Israel by Military Companies that are NOT linked to CADSI. Table 5a:?? Actively Pursuing Exports: CADSI members Canadian military companies that are current or past members of CADSI reporting that they are "actively pursuing" exports to Israel. Table 5b: ? Actively P ursuing Exports: non-CADSI Canadian Military companies "actively pursuing" exports to Israel that are not current or past members of CADSI. Events If you are in Ottawa, we hope to see you at some upcoming events: (1)? Information and Strategy Session to Oppose CANSEC ????? Tuesday, March 24, 7 pm ????? Southminster United Church, ?????? 15 Aylmer Ave at Bank Street. ?????? (Just south of the Rideau Canal.? Enter from the Galt St. entrance at the back of the complex.) (2)? Rally to Expose and Oppose CANSEC ???? Speakers, Music and Candlelight Vigil ???? Wednesday, May 27 ???? Speakers, Music and Candlelight Vigil ???? Wednesday, May 27 (evening - exact time to be announced) ???? Southminster United Church (see address above) ???? Speakers and Music in the church sanctuary will be followed by a Candlelight Procession just across the Bank St. bridge to Lansdowne Park, the site of CANSEC. (3) ?? Documentary - OTTAWA PREMIERE MYTH FOR PROFIT:? CANADA'S ROLE IN INDUSTRIES OF WAR AND PEACE?? ????????????? Hintonburg Community Centre Wednesday, March 18, 2009, 7 pm 1064 Wellington Street (3 blocks west of Somerset) More info and a trailer ? The documentary will be followed by a discussion with the film makers, Amy Miller and Boban Chaldovich, who are on a whirlwind Cross Canada Tour in March and April.? Click here to find a film showing near you. Note: One of the people interviewed in the above documentary is Richard Sanders, coordinator of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT), editor of COAT's magazine Press for Conversion! and author of COAT's report entitled Canadian Military Exports to Israel: Aiding and Abetting War Crimes in Gaza (2008-2009) . Learn more about COAT COAT on Facebook Join COAT's Listserve Join, Subscribe or Donate to CO AT . Learn more about COAT COAT on Facebook Join COAT's Listserve Join, Subscribe or Donate to CO AT From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Mar 6 12:10:06 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 11:10:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Et Tu Daniel? The Sandinista Revolution Betrayed* In-Reply-To: <390032292.4595111236285607257.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <571691566.288831236366606301.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://globalalternatives.org/node/102 March 2009 Et Tu Daniel? The Sandinista Revolution Betrayed* By Roger Burbach Upon his inauguration as Nicaraguan president in January 2007, Daniel Ortega asserted that his government would represent ?the second stage of the Sandinista Revolution.? His election was full of symbolic resonance, coming after 16 years of electoral failures for Ortega and the party he led, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN). The Sandinistas? road to power was paved with a series of previously unthinkable pacts with the old somocista and Contra opposition. The FSLN?s pact making began in earnest in 2001, when, in the run-up to that year?s presidential election, Ortega forged an alliance with Arnoldo Alem?n, an official during the Somoza regime who had been elected president in 1997. But even with Alem?n?s backing, Ortega was unable to win the presidency. So, before the 2006 election, he publicly reconciled with his old nemesis, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, a potent symbol of the counterrevolutionary movement in the 1980s. Ortega and his longtime companion, Rosario Murillo, announced their conversion to Catholicism and were married by the cardinal. Just before his election Ortega supported a comprehensive ban on abortion, including in cases in which the mother?s life is endangered, a measure ratified by the legislature with the crucial votes of Sandinista deputies. To round out his pre-election wheeling and dealing, Ortega selected Jaime Morales, a former Contra leader, as his vice presidential candidate. Even with these concessions to the right, Ortega won the presidency with just 37.9% of the votes. Once in power, he announced a series of policies and programs that seemed to hark back to the Sandinista years. Educational matriculation fees were abolished, an illiteracy program was launched with Cuban assistance, and an innovative Zero Hunger program established, financed from the public budget and Venezuelan aid, that distributed one cow, one pig, 10 hens, and a rooster, along with seeds, to 15,000 families during the first year. Internationally, Nicaragua joined the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a trade and economic cooperation pact that includes Cuba, Bolivia, and Venezuela. But the Ortega government?s clientelistic and sectarian nature soon became evident when Ortega, by presidential decree, established Councils of Citizen Power under the control of the Sandinista party to administer and distribute much of the social spending. Even more importantly, under the rubric of ALBA, Ortega signed an accord with Venezuela that provides an estimated $300 million to $500 million in funds personally administered by Ortega with no public accountability. As M?nica Baltodano, the leader of Resacte, a dissident Sandinista organization, argued in a recent article, Ortega?s fiscal and economic policies are, in fact, continuous with those of the previous governments, despite his anti-imperialist rhetoric and denunciations of neoliberalism.(1) The government has signed new accords with the International Monetary Fund that do not modify the neoliberal paradigm, while the salaries of government workers remain frozen and those of teachers and health workers are the lowest in Central America. According to the Central Bank of Nicaragua, the average salary has dropped the last two years, retrogressing to 2001 levels.(2) Moreover, the government and the Sandinista party are harassing and repressing their opponents. During an interview in January, Baltodano told me the right to assembly has been systematically violated during the past year, as opposition demonstrations are put down with goon squads. ?Ortega is establishing an authoritarian regime, sectarian, corrupt, and repressive, to maintain his grip on power, betraying the legacy of the Sandinista revolution,? she said. The core of this legacy was the revolution?s commitment to popular democracy. Seizing power in 1979 from the dictator Anastasio Somoza, the Sandinista movement comprised Nicaragua?s urban masses, peasants, artisans, workers, Christian base communities, intellectuals, and the muchachos?the youth who spearheaded the armed uprisings. The revolution transformed social relations and values, holding up a new vision of society based on social and economic justice that included the poor and dispossessed. The revolution was muticlass, multiethnic, multidoctrinal, and politically pluralistic. While socialism was part of the public discourse, it was never proclaimed to be an objective of the revolution. It was officially designated ?a popular, democratic, and anti-imperialist revolution.? Radicalized social democrats, priests, and political independents as well as Marxists and Marxist-Leninists served as cabinet ministers of the Sandinista government. Images of Sandino, Marx, Christ, Lenin, Bol?var, and Carlos Fonseca, the martyred founder of the Sandinista movement, often hung side by side in the cities and towns of Nicaragua. A central attribute of the revolution that has made its legacy so powerful is that it was a revoluci?n compartida, a revolution shared with the rest of the world.(3) As Nicaragua, a country with fewer than 3 million inhabitants, defied the wrath of the U.S. imperium, people from around the world rallied to the revolution?s support. In a manner reminiscent of the Spanish civil war half a century earlier, the Sandinista revolution came to be seen as a new political utopia, rupturing national frontiers. It marked a generation of activists around the globe who found in the revolution a reason to hope and believe. With the deepening of the U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary war from military bases in Honduras, activists from the United States came to be the largest contingent to support the Sandinista revolution. An estimated 100,000 people from the United States visited Nicaragua in the 1980s, many as simple political tourists. Some came as part of delegations, but most of them arrived on their own. It was an experience totally different from that of Cuba, where the prohibition of U.S. travel to the island meant that only organized delegations arrived via Mexico or Canada with assigned accommodations and structured tours. But it was not just the travel arrangements that were different. Those going to Nicaragua found an ?open door? society: They could talk with anyone, travel to the countryside, and stay where they pleased with no interference from the government. The Sandinista revolution?s commitment to democracy led it down a new political path. This was not a revolutionary government conducted, in the classical sense, by a dictatorship of the proletariat. While the National Directorate of the FSLN oversaw the revolutionary process, it was not dictated by a single strongman but by nine people who reached consensus decisions with input from popular organizations. The Nicaraguan Revolution thus responded to internal and external challenges by deepening its democratic and participatory content, rather than by declaring a dictatorship. In October 1983, when a U.S. assault appeared imminent in the aftermath of the invasion of Grenada, the National Directorate adopted the slogan ?All Arms to the People? and distributed more than 200,000 weapons to the militias and popular organizations. I was there as U.S. aircraft flew over Managua, breaking the sound barrier, trying to ?shock and awe? the populace. Bomb shelters and defensive trenches were hastily built as the country mobilized for war. We may never know whether the threatened invasion was a ruse or if the popular mobilization forestalled a U.S. attack. But it did reaffirm the revolution?s commitment to democracy. In 1984, in the midst a deteriorating economy and the escalating Contra war, the country held an election in which seven candidates vied for the presidency. The election was monitored by ?at least 460 accredited observers from 24 countries,? who unanimously described it as fair.(4) A reported 83% of the electorate participated, and Ortega won with almost 67% of the votes.(5) The election demonstrated that a revolutionary government can solidify its hold on power in the midst of conflict, not by adopting increasingly dictatorial powers but by building mass democratic support. The adoption of a new constitution in 1986 marked yet another step forward in the democratic process. The constitution, which established separation of powers, directly incorporated human rights declarations, and abolished the death penalty, among other measures, was drafted by constituent assembly members elected in 1984 and submitted to the country for discussion.(6) To facilitate these debates, 73 cabildos abiertos, or town meetings, were attended by an estimated 100,000 Nicaraguans around the country. At these meetings, about 2,500 Nicaraguans made suggestions for changes in the constitution. But this bold Sandinista experiment in revolutionary democracy was not destined to persevere. As occurred in the Spanish civil war, the tide of history ran against the heroic people of Nicaragua, sapping their will in the late 1980s as the Contra war waged on and the economy unraveled. Often as I departed from the San Francisco airport on yet another flight to the Central American isthmus, I would look down on the Bay Area, with its population roughly the same size as Nicaragua?s and an economy many times larger, and wonder how the Sandinista revolution could possibly survive a war with the most powerful nation on earth. Perhaps the die was cast in neighboring El Salvador with the failure of the guerrillas there to seize power as the United States mounted a counterinsurgency war. The inability to advance the revolution in Central America seemed to confirm Leon Trotsky?s belief that a revolution cannot survive and mature in just one nation?especially in small countries like Nicaragua with porous borders, which, unlike island Cuba, lend themselves to infiltration and repeated forays from well-provisioned military bases. To end the debilitating war, the Sandinista leaders turned to peace negotiations. Placing their faith in democracy, they signed an accord that called for a ceasefire and elections to be held in February 1990, in which the Contras as well as the internal opposition would be allowed to participate. Once again the popular organizations mobilized for the campaign, and virtually all the polls indicated that Ortega would win a second term as president, defeating the Contra-backed candidate, Violeta Chamorro, whose campaign received generous funding from the United States. Nicaraguans and much of the world were shocked when Chamorro defeated Ortega with 55% of the vote. Even people who were sympathetic to the Sandinistas voted for the opposition because they wanted the war to end, as the threat of more U.S.-backed violence remained looming. The day after the election, a woman vendor passed me by sobbing. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, ?Daniel will no longer be my president.? After exchanging a few more words, I asked whom she had voted for. ?Violeta,? she said, ?because I want my son in the Sandinista army to come home alive.? During the next 16 years, three Nicaraguan presidents backed by the United States implemented a series of neoliberal policies, gutting the social and economic policies of the Sandinista era and impoverishing the country. Ortega ran in every election, drifting increasingly to the right, while exerting an iron hand to stifle all challengers and dissenters in the Sandinista party. Surprisingly, Orlando Nu?ez, with whom I wrote a book with on the revolution?s democratic thrust, remained loyal to Ortega while most of the middle-level cadre and the National Directorate abandoned the party.(7) Many of these split off to form the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS), the largest dissident Sandinista party, founded in 1995. When I asked Nu?ez about his stance, he argued that only the Sandinista party has a mass base. ?Dissident Sandinistas and their organizations,? he said, ?cannot recruit the poor, the peasants, the workers, nor mount a significant electoral challenge.? Nu?ez, who works as an adviser on social affairs to the president?s office, went on to argue that Ortega allied with Alem?n not out of political cynicism, but for the sake of building an anti-oligarchic front. According to this theory, Alem?n and the somocistas represent an emergent capitalist class that took on the old oligarchy, which had dominated Nicaraguan politics and the economy since the 19th century.(8) A major thrust of Ortega?s rhetoric is bent on attacking the oligarchy, which is clustered in the opposition Conservative Party. But it is also true that some of the most famous Sandinistas, many of whom are in the dissident camp today?like Ernesto Cardenal, Gioconda Belli, Carlos Fernando Chamorro, and others?are descendents of oligarchic families. Accordingly, Ortega and Murillo have accused them of being in league with conservatives in an effort to reimpose the old order on Nicaragua. While the dissident Sandinistas have yet to mount a significant electoral challenge, the Ortega administration has nonetheless gone after them with a particular vehemence. Case in point: Chamorro, the onetime director of the Sandinista party newspaper, Barricada. In June 2007, Chamorro aired an investigative report on Esta Semana, the popular news show he hosts. According to the report, which included tape-recorded conversations, FSLN functionaries tried to extort $4 million from Armel Gonz?lez, a partner in a tourist development project called Arenas Bay, in exchange for a swift end to the project?s legal woes, which included challenges from campesino cooperatives over land disputes. The government?s response to the bad publicity was swift and ruthless. While the district attorney buried the case, Gonz?lez was charged and convicted of slander. National Assembly deputy Alejandro Bola?os, who backed the denunciation, was arbitrarily removed from his legislative seat. And Chamorro was denounced in the Sandinista-controlled media as a ?delinquent,? a ?narco-trafficker,? and a ?robber of peasant lands.? The harassment of Chamorro and other government critics continued during the run-up to Nicaragua?s November 2008 municipal elections, which were widely viewed as a referendum on the Ortega administration. The Ministry of Government launched a probe into NGOs operating in the country, accusing the Center for Communications Research (Cinco), which is headed by Chamorro, of ?diverting and laundering money? through its agreement with the Autonomous Women?s Movement (MAM), which opposes the Ortega-endorsed law banning abortion. This agreement, financed by eight European governments and administered by Oxfam, aims to promote ?the full citizenship of women.? First lady Murillo called it ?Satan?s fund? and ?the money of evil.? Cinco?s board of directors were interrogated, and a prosecutor accompanied by the police raided the Cinco offices with a search warrant. Warned in advance of the visit, some 200 people gathered in the building in solidarity, refusing the police entry. Then as night fell, the police established a cordon around the building and, in the early morning, police broke down the door. After kicking out the protesters, the police stayed in the office for 15 hours, with supporters and onlookers gathered outside, shutting down traffic for blocks around. The police rummaged through offices, carting off files and computers. Since then, no formal charges have been filed, but Chamorro remains under official investigation. Along with MAM, the broader women?s movement in Nicaragua, which firmly opposes the Ortega government, was among the first to experience its repressive blows. In 2007 the government opened a case against nine women leaders, accusing them of conspiring ?to cover up the crime of rape in the case of a 9-year-old rape victim known as ?Rosita,? who obtained an abortion in Nicaragua in 2003.?(9) In August, Ortega was unable to attend the inauguration of Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo because of protests by the country?s feminist organizations; from then on, women?s mobilizations have occurred in other countries Ortega has visited, including Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Peru.(10) Charges were levied against other former Sandinistas who dared to speak out against the Ortega government, including 84-year-old Catholic priest Ernesto Cardenal, the renowned poet who once served as minister of culture. In August, after Cardenal criticized Ortega at Lugo?s inauguration, a judge revived an old, previously dismissed case involving a German citizen who sued Cardenal in 2005 for insulting him.(11) In addition to harassing critics, the Ortega government also displayed its penchant for electoral fraud during the run-up to the November municipal balloting. Protests erupted in June, after the Ortega-stacked Supreme Electoral Council disqualified the MRS and the Conservative Party from participation. Dora Maria Tellez, a leader of the renovation movement, began a public hunger strike that led to daily demonstrations of support, often shutting down traffic in downtown Managua. Meanwhile, bands of young Sandinista-linked thugs, claiming to be the ?owners of the streets,? attacked demonstrators while the police stood idly by. Then, to prevent more demonstrations, Ortega supporters set up plantones, permanent occupation posts at the rotundas on the main thoroughfare running through Managua. Those who camped out there were known as rezadores, or people praying to God that Ortega be protected and his opponents punished. Besides the FSLN, two major political parties remained on the ballot, the Liberal Constitutionalist Party and the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance. While independent surveys indicated that the opposition candidates would win the majority of the seats, the Supreme Electoral Council, which had prohibited international observers, ruled that the Sandinista candidates won control of 105 municipalities, the Liberal Constitutionalist Party won 37, and the Alliance won the remaining six. An independent Nicaraguan group, Ethics and Transparency, organized tens of thousands of observers but was denied accreditation, forcing them to observe the election from outside polling stations. But the group estimates that irregularities took place at a third of the polling places. Their complaints were echoed by Nicaraguan Catholic bishops, including Managua?s archbishop, who said, ?People feel defrauded.?(12) After the election, militant demonstrations erupted in Nicaragua?s two largest cities, Managua and Le?n, and were quickly put down with violence. The European Economic Community and the U.S. government suspended funding for Nicaragua over the fraudulent elections. On January 14, before the election results were even officially published by the electoral council, Ortega swore in the new mayors at Managua?s Plaza de la Revoluci?n. He declared: ?This is the time to strengthen our institutions,? later adding, ?We cannot go back to the road of war, to confrontation, to violence.? Along with the regular police, Ortega stood flanked by camisas rosadas, or redshirts, members of his personal security force. A huge banner hung over the plaza depicting Ortega with an up-stretched arm and the slogan, ?To Be With the People Is to Be With God.? ?This despotic regime is bent on destroying all that is left of the Sandinista revolution?s democratic legacy,? Chamorro told me in January. ?Standing in the way of a new dictatorship,? he continued, ?are civil society organizations, the independent media, trade unions, opposition political parties, women?s organizations, civic leaders and others?many of whom can trace their roots back to the resistance against Somoza.? As the Nobel-winning novelist Jos? Saramago put it: ?Once more a revolution has been betrayed from within.? Nicaragua?s revolution has indeed been betrayed, perhaps not as dramatically as Trotsky depicted Stalin?s desecration of what was best in the Bolshevik revolution. But Ortega?s betrayal is a fundamental political tragedy for everyone around the world who came to believe in a popular, participatory democracy in Nicaragua. ________________________________________ 1. M?nica Baltodano, ?El ?nuevo sandinismo? es de la izquierda? Democracia pactada en Nicaragua,? Le Monde diplomatique, Southern Cone edition (December 2008): 16?17. 2. Ibid. 3. The concept of revoluci?n compartida is developed in Sergio Ram?rez, Adios muchachos: una memor?a de la revoluci?n sandinista (Mexico City: Aguilar, 1999). 4. Rosa Marina Zelaya, ?International Election Observers: Nicaragua Under a Microscope,? Env?o 103 (February 1990), envio.org.ni/articulo/2582. 5. BBC, ?1984: Sandinistas Claim Election Victory,? available at news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday. 6. Harry E. Vanden and Gary Prevost, Democracy and Socialism in Sandinista Nicaragua (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), 84?85. 7. Roger Burbach and Orlando Nu?ez, Fire in the Americas, Forging a Revolutionary Agenda (Verso, 1987). 8. Nu?ez develops this argument in his book La Oligarquia en Nicaragua (Managua: Talleres de Grafitex, 2006). See also Nu?ez, ?La Agon?a pol?tica de la oligarquia,? El 19 no. 14, November 27?December 3, 2008, available at sepres.gob.ni. 9. Human Rights Watch, ?Nicaragua: Protect Rights Advocates from Harassment and Intimidation,? October 28, 2008, available at hrw.org. 10. Baltodano, ?El ?nuevo sandinismo? es de la izquierda?? 11. CBC News, ?Latin American Artists Protest Persecution of Nicaraguan Poet,? September 6, 2008, available at cbc.ca. 12. ?How to Steal an Election,? The Economist, November 13, 2008. *This article appears in the NACLA Report on the Americas, ?Revolutionary Legacies in the 21st Century,? March/April, 2009. See the full Report for additional articles on Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia and Haiti. http://nacla.org/currentissue From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Mar 6 13:30:01 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 12:30:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Wall Street's Best Investment II: 12 Deregulatory Steps to Financial Meltdown In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1892199371.329891236371401153.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2009/000312.html March 6, 2009 Wall Street's Best Investment II: 12 Deregulatory Steps to Financial Meltdown By Robert Weissman What can $5 billion buy in Washington? Quite a lot. Over the 1998-2008 period, the financial sector spent more than $5 billion on U.S. federal campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures. This extraordinary investment paid off fabulously. Congress and executive agencies rolled back long-standing regulatory restraints, refused to impose new regulations on rapidly evolving and mushrooming areas of finance, and shunned calls to enforce rules still in place. "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," a report released by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation (and which I co-authored), details a dozen crucial deregulatory moves over the last decade -- each a direct response to heavy lobbying from Wall Street and the broader financial sector, as the report details. (The report is available at: ? www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm .) Combined, these deregulatory moves helped pave the way for the current financial meltdown. Here are 12 deregulatory steps to financial meltdown: 1. The repeal of Glass-Steagall The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 formally repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and related rules, which prohibited banks from offering investment, commercial banking, and insurance services. In 1998, Citibank and Travelers Group merged on the expectation that Glass-Steagall would be repealed. Then they set out, successfully, to make it so. The subsequent result was the infusion of the investment bank speculative culture into the world of commercial banking. The 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall helped create the conditions in which banks invested monies from checking and savings accounts into creative financial instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps, investment gambles that led many of the banks to ruin and rocked the financial markets in 2008. 2. Off-the-books accounting for banks Holding assets off the balance sheet generally allows companies to avoid disclosing ?toxic? or money-losing assets to investors in order to make the company appear more valuable than it is. Accounting rules -- lobbied for by big banks -- permitted the accounting fictions that continue to obscure banks' actual condition. 3. CFTC blocked from regulating derivatives Financial derivatives are unregulated. By all accounts this has been a disaster, as Warren Buffett's warning that they represent "weapons of mass financial destruction" has proven prescient -- they have amplified the financial crisis far beyond the unavoidable troubles connected to the popping of the housing bubble. During the Clinton administration, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sought to exert regulatory control over financial derivatives, but the agency was quashed by opposition from Robert Rubin and Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. 4. Formal financial derivative deregulation: the Commodities Futures Modernization Act The deregulation -- or non-regulation -- of financial derivatives was sealed in 2000, with the Commodities Futures Modernization Act. Its passage orchestrated by the industry-friendly Senator Phil Gramm, the Act prohibits the CFTC from regulating financial derivatives. 5. SEC removes capital limits on investment banks and the voluntary regulation regime In 1975, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) promulgated a rule requiring investment banks to maintain a debt to-net capital ratio of less than 15 to 1. In simpler terms, this limited the amount of borrowed money the investment banks could use. In 2004, however, the SEC succumbed to a push from the big investment banks -- led by Goldman Sachs, and its then-chair, Henry Paulson -- and authorized investment banks to develop net capital requirements based on their own risk assessment models. With this new freedom, investment banks pushed ratios to as high as 40 to 1. This super-leverage not only made the investment banks more vulnerable when the housing bubble popped, it enabled the banks to create a more tangled mess of derivative investments -- so that their individual failures, or the potential of failure, became systemic crises. 6. Basel II weakening of capital reserve requirements for banks Rules adopted by global bank regulators -- known as Basel II, and heavily influenced by the banks themselves -- would let commercial banks rely on their own internal risk-assessment models (exactly the same approach as the SEC took for investment banks). Luckily, technical challenges and intra-industry disputes about Basel II have delayed implementation -- hopefully permanently -- of the regulatory scheme. 7. No predatory lending enforcement Even in a deregulated environment, the banking regulators retained authority to crack down on predatory lending abuses. Such enforcement activity would have protected homeowners, and lessened though not prevented the current financial crisis. But the regulators sat on their hands. The Federal Reserve took three formal actions against subprime lenders from 2002 to 2007. The Office of Comptroller of the Currency, which has authority over almost 1,800 banks, took three consumer-protection enforcement actions from 2004 to 2006. 8. Federal preemption of state enforcement against predatory lending When the states sought to fill the vacuum created by federal non-enforcement of consumer protection laws against predatory lenders, the Feds -- responding to commercial bank petitions -- jumped to attention to stop them. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision each prohibited states from enforcing consumer protection rules against nationally chartered banks. 9. Blocking the courthouse doors: Assignee Liability Escape Under the doctrine of ?assignee liability,? anyone profiting from predatory lending practices should be held financially accountable, including Wall Street investors who bought bundles of mortgages (even if the investors had no role in abuses committed by mortgage originators). With some limited exceptions, however, assignee liability does not apply to mortgage loans. Representative Bob Ney -- a great friend of financial interests, and who subsequently went to prison in connection with the Abramoff scandal -- worked hard, and successfully, to ensure this effective immunity was maintained. 10. Fannie and Freddie enter subprime At the peak of the housing boom, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were dominant purchasers in the subprime secondary market. The Government-Sponsored Enterprises were followers, not leaders, but they did end up taking on substantial subprime assets -- at least $57 billion. The purchase of subprime assets was a break from prior practice, justified by theories of expanded access to homeownership for low-income families and rationalized by mathematical models allegedly able to identify and assess risk to newer levels of precision. In fact, the motivation was the for-profit nature of the institutions and their particular executive incentive schemes. Massive lobbying -- including especially but not only of Democratic friends of the institutions -- enabled them to divert from their traditional exclusive focus on prime loans. Fannie and Freddie are not responsible for the financial crisis. They are responsible for their own demise, and the resultant massive taxpayer liability. 11. Merger mania The effective abandonment of antitrust and related regulatory principles over the last two decades has enabled a remarkable concentration in the banking sector, even in advance of recent moves to combine firms as a means to preserve the functioning of the financial system. The megabanks achieved too-big-to-fail status. While this should have meant they be treated as public utilities requiring heightened regulation and risk control, other deregulatory maneuvers (including repeal of Glass-Steagall) enabled them to combine size, explicit and implicit federal guarantees, and reckless high-risk investments. 12. Credit rating agency failure With Wall Street packaging mortgage loans into pools of securitized assets and then slicing them into tranches, the resultant financial instruments were attractive to many buyers because they promised high returns. But pension funds and other investors could only enter the game if the securities were highly rated. The credit rating agencies enabled these investors to enter the game, by attaching high ratings to securities that actually were high risk -- as subsequent events have revealed. The credit rating agencies have a bias to offering favorable ratings to new instruments because of their complex relationships with issuers, and their desire to maintain and obtain other business dealings with issuers. This institutional failure and conflict of interest might and should have been forestalled by the SEC, but the Credit Rating Agencies Reform Act of 2006 gave the SEC insufficient oversight authority. In fact, the SEC must give an approval rating to credit ratings agencies if they are adhering to their own standards -- even if the SEC knows those standards to be flawed. From fentona at shaw.ca Fri Mar 6 13:57:19 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 12:57:19 -0800 Subject: [R-G] (Gaza) Suddenly, Home Was Gone Message-ID: <81DA5495-6A3C-4D0C-BB6C-B0B83BF387DC@shaw.ca> MIDEAST: Suddenly, Home Was Gone By Eva Bartlett http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46002 BEIT HANOUN, Gaza, Mar 6 (IPS) - Dates in the calendar to mark the rights of women mean little to Manwa Tarrabin (56) and her two daughters. They have lost home, and any rights to it. Until Jan. 17, they were living in a small bungalow in the Al-Amal quarter of Beit Hanoun, within 200 metres of Gaza's eastern border, in a region declared by the Israeli authorities a 'closed military zone'. Prior to the three weeks of Israeli air, sea and land attacks on Gaza it had been a tidy home at the top of a slight rise, surrounded by open fields and a smattering of olive and fruit trees. Following the withdrawal of Israeli troops, the house is a pancake of angles and debris, one of 80 homes demolished in the Beit Hanoun border area. A dirt path leading to the Tarrabin house crosses agricultural land torn up by tank and bulldozer tracks, and passes numerous former homes, likewise demolished on the day before Israel unilaterally declared a ceasefire. A farming and herding family, the Tarrabins lived off what their sheep and goats produced, and what they could sow in the fertile agricultural land around them. After the attacks began Dec. 27, they continued to stay in the house. On the afternoon of their forced eviction, Manwa and her daughter Sharifa (22) were in the house. "I was so scared when I saw the tanks. My heart dropped to my feet," Tarrabin said, recounting how the Israeli army demolished her house. "It was around 2.30 pm on Jan. 17, and we were inside our house when I heard the tanks. There were four of them and two bulldozers, one of them very, very large. The Israeli soldiers shouted at us over a megaphone to leave the house. "They told me our house was now in a closed military zone," Manwa said. "They said it was a 'decision from the top' and that we had to leave immediately and walk towards Gaza. I refused, and tried to negotiate with them for time to gather our belongings. They refused." Tarrabin said she and her daughter were forced from the house with only the clothes they were wearing, without even time to take their identity cards or personal items. "We walked down the track from our house and when we were far enough away, I stopped to watch the soldiers." At approximately 5 pm, less than 12 hours before Israel declared a ceasefire, Israeli soldiers bulldozed the Tarrabins' house. This demolition came in an area that had been under Israeli military control since early January after Israeli tanks rolled over the border. Since 2000, areas all along the Green Line border have been off limits to Palestinians. The area was unilaterally declared a "buffer zone" by Israeli authorities. This zone was expanded from 150 metres to 300 metres, with Israeli soldiers shooting at farmers and residents in the region as far as 600 metres away. In tandem, Israeli bulldozers and tanks have deliberately destroyed thousands of dunams (one dunam equals 1,000 square metres) of Palestinian farmland within and well beyond the buffer zone, as well as the poultry and other farms in the region, some even 2.5 kilometres from the border with Israel. On Jan. 17 Israeli authorities again unilaterally extended the buffer zone, increasing the off-limits area to a kilometre from the Green Line. The 80 houses levelled in the Beit Hanoun 'buffer zone' rendered an approximate 400 residents homeless and landless. The Tarrabin family had already lost much of their grazing and agricultural land to the buffer zone, yet like the majority of those living within its limits, they have no option but to risk injury and possible death in returning to live and work on the land. On Jan. 29, for the first time since the demolition, Manwa and Sharifa returned to their destroyed house in the now very high-risk region, accompanied by international human rights observers and a film crew. To either side of the ruddy dirt path to the Tarrabin home, recently demolished and uninhabitable houses littered the landscape. "That house belonged to the Khadera family," said Manwa, pointing to the remains. "The mother was killed in the shelling. "There were goats and sheep at the bottom level of this house. Soldiers bulldozed the house with the animals inside," said Manwa, pointing to a house where its elderly owner was tending a small fire for tea next to the broken structure. Down the track a little further, the Wahadan family house was now rubble. "They destroyed the house, the water well and its pump too," said Saber Al- Zaneen, a local aid worker. Not far from the Tarrabin house, the Abu Jeremi family house stands intact. Revisiting their home for the first time since they were evicted by Israeli soldiers Dec. 27, Freije Abu Jeremi said their rabbits, chicken and sheep were slaughtered when Israeli soldiers demolished the animal shed. According to Al-Zaneen, Beit Hanoun region is one of the most fertile areas in Gaza. "These flat fields around us once held around 750 dunams of olive, lemon and palm trees," he said, gesturing towards the land rendered desolate since the encroachment of the 'buffer zone'. "People from all over Gaza had work here." At her ruined home, Manwa Tarrabin quickly realised that her hopes of retrieving a change of clothing, identification papers, and her cash were futile: they all lay buried beneath an unmovable slab of concrete. To reach them will require a bulldozer, impossible because no non-Israeli bulldozer can enter the region under Israeli military control. Among the crimes of war Israel is being accused of are the intentional destruction of civilian property, illegal under international human rights law and humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention. Such destruction has been common also in areas outside Beit Hanoun, such as the Abed Rabbo region east of Jabaliya and the Attatra region in the north-west of Gaza, besides Gaza City itself. The organisation Save the Children estimates that 100,000 people (56 percent of them children) are homeless following the attacks. Sharifa and Manwa Tarrabin left swiftly after they arrived at what was home after Israeli soldiers fired four shots in the direction of the group digging through the rubble of her house. "They were close," said Al-Zaneen. "I heard the bullets whiz past." The family has since relocated to a relative's home in Khan Younis, far from their broken home. (END/2009) From intnsred at golgotha.net Fri Mar 6 14:28:18 2009 From: intnsred at golgotha.net (Intense Red) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 16:28:18 -0500 Subject: [R-G] Juan Cole -- IAEA Inspectors: Iran not Producing Weapons-grade Uranium In-Reply-To: <536489009.287031236366419997.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> References: <536489009.287031236366419997.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <200903061628.18816.intnsred@golgotha.net> > After they [newspapers] put all sorts of falsehoods about Iraq on their > front pages, it may be that they fatally wounded their credibility > with the US public. In any case, the above report does not show up > anywhere on the web or in Lexis that I can find, except here in The > Hindu, which tells me that someone is not doing their job. I disagree. The corporate mass media *is* doing its job -- it just depends on what you consider their job to be. Several commentators have noted that the US' war agenda with Iran has bipartisan support and Iranian fear-mongering has become an institutional part of Washington politics and US foreign policy. Realizing that, the US corporate newspapers are doing their job splendidly. :-( -- "I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my lifetime." -- Albert Einstein, 1947. From fentona at shaw.ca Fri Mar 6 15:13:38 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 14:13:38 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Israel, apartheid, anti-Semites Message-ID: Israel, apartheid, anti-Semites By Rick Salutin | March 6, 2009 http://rabble.ca/columnists/israel-apartheid-anti-semites What is the sound of one side condemning? It's the media rendering of Israel Apartheid Week, now under way. B'nai Brith ran full-page newspaper ads asking universities to "prevent" it and the attendant "anti-Semitism on campus." There were no ads from organizers, so we didn't hear them being anti-Semitic in their own words -- or denying the charge. Here's the Toronto Star's Rosie DiManno: "That detestable, despicable annual campus hate-fest ... Jew-bashing cloaked in self- righteousness ... students who don't recognize racism when they're spewing it." I don't know if she meant to be ironic, spewing hate at the spewers. But I've talked with friends, Jewish and non, about these claims. They're disturbed, they don't want to witness the rise of a new horror. Here's my take. Cabinet minister Jason Kenney calls Israel Apartheid Week "a systematic effort to delegitimize the democratic homeland of the Jewish people" by linking it to racism, a line virtually mouthed by Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff. That is way too cute. Any "settler state," such as Canada, which took someone else's land, can be seen as illegitimate. But it's an abstract point. "Apartheid" became widely used in this context only when Israel began building what came to be called an apartheid wall, looming over Palestinians, sequestering more land, cutting them off from each other. The usage grew as Israel expanded settlements, built Israeli-only roads and set up checkpoints so Palestinians would at best be left with "Bantustans," such as those that apartheid South Africa offered blacks, rather than a true state of their own. A small but real Palestinian state would be accepted by almost everyone. The Arab League has offered peace in return for Israel just leaving the West Bank. Even Hamas has a (nuanced) position on living with Israel. You can look it up. What of the "new anti-Semitism" that Jason Kenney says is "based on the notion that the Jews alone have no right to a homeland"? Well, who are these new anti-Semites? I never see names or quotations. Canada has always had anti-Semites, but they've felt no need to hide their hate behind a screen of anti-Israel criticism. Think of David Ahenakew. A cartoon banned from hallways at the University of Ottawa showed a helicopter marked Israel rocketing a kid in Gaza holding a teddy bear. It's crude, but that's cartooning. There's no anti- Semitism in it. A front-page National Post cartoon showing CUPE Ontario's Sid Ryan offering David Ahenakew a job was far more scurrilous. No one can say Sid Ryan embraces anti-Semites, though he criticizes Israel strongly. Opposition to Israel seems well delineated from anti-Semitism to me. Most of the specifics come down to shouts at protests. As in: "Cries of 'Die, Jew' and 'Get the hell off campus' were heard." The Canadian Jewish Congress's Bernie Farber says he's "never" seen it this bad "on the streets of Toronto and university campuses." Well, I spend lots of time on streets in Toronto and it doesn't look like Kristallnacht to me. But wait, that's glib. It's these images that scare my friends: They evoke Nazi Germany. I know that. But Nazi Germany wasn't about name-calling and group hate. Those will persist, perhaps always. The Holocaust occurred largely because anti- Semitism was historically rooted and respectable there: religiously, socially, intellectually, politically. Writers and politicians were proudly anti-Semitic. Here, anti-Semitism is unacceptable in all those ways. This whole debate proves it. We should be glad for that, and keep it in perspective. From fentona at shaw.ca Fri Mar 6 15:18:12 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 14:18:12 -0800 Subject: [R-G] The gift that keeps on giving: Colombia's magic laptops and the war against social movement Message-ID: <3DF374E4-CCE1-409E-8AE6-71643F7934CE@shaw.ca> http://www.killingtrain.com/node/695 The gift that keeps on giving: Colombia's magic laptops and the war against social movements Justin Podur March 6, 2009 One of Colombia's major magazines, Cambio, published a story quoting from the magic laptops that survived bombing in the Ecuadorian jungle and were retrieved after the Colombian government assassinated Raul Reyes just about a year ago (March 3/08). This particular story concerns my friends Hollman Morris and Manuel Rozental. Since last year, supposed documents from these magic laptops have appeared at politically convenient times for the regime to provide public accusations against social movement activists. In August 2008, for example, I quickly responded to an accusation against my friend and mentor Hector Mondragon. I wrote the following: The legality of Uribe's second term in office is itself in question, since there are accusations that bribery was involved in the vote in Congress when it passed the constitutional change to allow Uribe's re-election. The evidence that his party was heavily involved with the death squads is available in spades. He is isolated from his neighbours, in the region, and in the world - except for the US. And recent events in Pakistan show, as the fate of US clients from Manuel Noriega in Panama to Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada in Bolivia that while authoritarian regimes are useful to the United States, any individual head of a regime is expendable if the costs of supporting him are too high. But against all this, Uribe has a weapon that has served him well: tremendous popularity in Colombia as expressed in the polls. This has to do with various economic tricks that have been used to keep Colombia afloat (even as the underlying economic basis is being eroded) and Uribe's ability to polarize the country between his regime and the guerrillas of FARC and to capitalize on the unpopularity of the latter, in recent months by pulling off spectacular operations against them, from the assassination of their most visible commander Raul Reyes to the rescue of their most visible hostage Ingrid Betancourt. Colombian regimes have always attacked social movements by claiming they are of the FARC. In Hector Mondragon, they attacked a pacifist and an economist with a history of work with indigenous movements. Manuel Rozental, like Hector, has a history of work with indigenous movements, and works with the indigenous movement in Cauca as part of its communication team, the "Tejido de Comunicaciones". It is thanks to Manuel that I was able to visit these communities and because he is a part of their movement and processes that they were willing to work with me at his recommendation. Likewise Hollman Morris, who I have toured with here in Toronto and translated for, is one of Colombia's best journalists and one who has covered the indigenous movements with the greatest depth and sympathy. The Tejido de Comunicaciones of the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN) has been recognized as the best alternative media in the country. Competing with virtually no resources with a centralized corporate media, it has become one of the most popular and credible voices in the Colombian landscape (Hollman Morris is another such voice). The role of the Tejido was particularly important during the recent Minga, a massive mobilization that lasted 61 days and arrived in Bogota with a five point popular agenda for social change in Colombia. Its slogan was "From a country with owners and without peoples to a country of the people without owners". By attacking Morris and Rozental together, the regime hopes to silence two very important voices that are exposing it. Using the exact same trick as before, the Colombian regime has leaked some supposed emails from the assassinated FARC commander, with the ultimate goal of accusing and threatening activists and journalists. Mondragon was supposedly being introduced to a FARC leader in Canada. Rozental and Morris are supposedly touring the mountains with FARC. Here's Canadian journalist Dawn Paley's translation : In October, "Sara" says to "Reyes" that "An?bal" - the apparent leader of the front - is worried because the ELN is taking his territory and because some of his recruits are touring around with [Hollman] Morris and Manuel Rozenthal [sic], a friend of [Morris]. In these moments, the FARC and the ELN are waging a bloody battle for territorial control in Cauca and Arauca. Paley points out that the magazine, Cambio, that published this supposed email, is owned by the same group that owns El Tiempo, which published the earlier supposed email about Mondragon. In Colombia, the turnaround time from an accusation like this to a death threat is remarkably short. Manuel Rozental has had to live with threats to his safety for some time. Indeed, I have written about whisper campaigns and death threats against Manuel in the past: They followed the predictable pattern. They focused on Manuel. There was mud slung from diverse directions, and of many kinds. From friends and allies they consisted of trying to hold Manuel to standards to which they would not hold any human being, let alone themselves. From those less familiar with our work, the accusations got filthier, in concentric circles. At the outer circle were the filthiest accusations, made by those with the least knowledge. Manuel was a CIA agent (something there could be no proof for). Manuel denounced other activists in public (though no public record could be found). Manuel supported terrorism. Manuel used the indigenous cause to personally enrich himself. No one, of course, would stand behind such statements in public ? if evidence was asked for, another "source" for them would be found. Ask that "source", and get sent off to the next source. But the whisper campaign worked... When he left Canada in 2003, Manuel didn't announce his departure or where he was going. Sometimes, in those years, people in Canada who I suspected of being part of the rumor mill would ask me about him, pretending nonchalance. Worried about his safety, I was vague. Rumors in Canada were difficult enough. Rumors in Colombia can be a death sentence. They caught up with him there, in late 2005, transmuting into death threats, and he was forced to return to the place where the rumors started, where the technique of slander for demobilization was perfected, where "solidarity movements" can chew up and spit out the best and most decent people. The threats forced Manuel out of Colombia at a time when the Nasa organizations wanted him to be there. National elections are coming up. The indigenous sparked a campaign for "Freedom for Mother Earth", recovering land in a process similar to that of the MST in Brazil and in a context that is even deadlier for activists. As in the past, these attacks are not coincidental. The regime is militarily confident and attempting to take the offensive politically against social movements. A few weeks before the magic laptops found evidence against Hollman Morris, Colombia's Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos denounced him as a "collaborator" of FARC as part of a general denunciation of the militarily devastated FARC's attempts to talk peace, unilaterally release kidnap victims, and make other such gestures that threaten to end the long civil war. Morris defended himself publicly (see this interview ), and a few weeks later, "evidence" emerges from the magic laptop! Meanwhile Rozental had been working with the indigenous in Cauca, who most recently have been preparing to remove an armed faction from their lands . While the Colombian government is mired in scandals over human rights abuses and its relations with paramilitarism, the indigenous movement is trying to advance a popular agenda. As an activist who helps connect different groups, Rozental was pushing the popular agenda in Colombia's democratic left political party, the Polo Democratico Alternativo (PDA). Rozental was recently elected to the National Directorate of the PDA as part of the list that obtained the largest support. The agenda of peace, democratic transformation, and of "freedom for mother earth" that Morris, Rozental, the PDA, and the indigenous movement have been working for, is the real threat to the regime. In Rozental's case, the content of the accusations this time is completely different from the last round (last time he was supposedly CIA, this time he's touring with FARC), but the content is irrelevant. All that matters is the denunciation, preferably repeated, but offered without evidence (or provided wholesale from magic laptops), to try to break the movement apart by isolating activists from one another. It's the same vile tactic that failed on Manuel in the past, failed on Hector last summer, and will fail again. Justin Podur is a Toronto based writer. He is part of the Pueblos en Camino collective (www.en-camino.org) with Manuel Rozental. From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Mar 6 15:36:10 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 14:36:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] The war that cannot speak its name Message-ID: <1960305399.388931236378970334.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/937/op12.htm ? Al Ahram 5 - 11 March 2009 Issue No. 937 ? The war that cannot speak its name ? Despite pre-election promises of change, the Obama administration is continuing the security policies of the discredited Bush presidency, writes Abdus Sattar Ghazali * ? The war that cannot speak its name ? Since his inauguration earlier this year, US President Barack Obama has virtually embraced his predecessor George Bush's "war on terror" policies without mentioning them by name. Asked in a CNN interview why he had not used the oft-repeated "war on terror" phrase coined by the Bush administration, Obama said he believed that the US could win over moderate Muslims if the correct language were used. ? "Words matter in this situation because one of the ways we're going to win this struggle is through the battle of hearts and minds," Obama said. It seems that the "war on terror" catchphrase, burned into the American lexicon soon after the 9/11 attacks, is now being deliberately replaced by the Obama administration in a bid to repair America's negative image in the Muslim world. ? Obama's executive orders on his first day in office on 22 January 2009 closing the infamous Guantanamo Bay military detention camp and outlawing torture have been interpreted in some circles as closing the door on Bush's so-called "war on terror". However, on the same day that Obama signed the orders he also appointed Richard Holbrooke as his special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke is the man who, after 9/11, championed military action against Afghanistan, ruled out any role for diplomacy to deal with the Taliban, labelled all the Taliban as extremists, and viewed the Taliban and Al-Qaeda as one and the same entity. ? One day later on 23 January, Obama also gave the green light to missile attacks from Pakistan-based and CIA-operated unmanned drone aircraft on targets in Pakistan's tribal areas. About 20 civilians were killed in two missile attacks. Tellingly, the new White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, then declined to answer questions about the air strikes, saying "I'm not going to get into these matters." ? On 14 February, at least 28 people were killed in two drone attacks in the Waziristan region. And two days later, on 16 February, a US drone fired three missiles at a target in the Kurram Agency, killing 30 people. As usual, the attacks were said to be against Taliban targets, but not a single body of a local or foreign militant, who were claimed to be in the area by Pakistani or American officials, was produced. Instead, it was claimed that the militants had cordoned off the area after the attack and taken away their dead and wounded. Ironically, these two US missile attacks within three days of each other came as Holbrooke was visiting the region. ? The US and the Afghan government both blame Pakistan's NWFP region for the surge in Afghan Taliban operations in different parts of Afghanistan, including in the capital, Kabul. In an interview aired on CNN on 13 February, the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose writ does not extend much beyond his presidential palace, claimed that the Taliban had no hiding places in Afghan villages, asserting that "the war on terrorism is not in Afghan villages and Al-Qaeda will not have and does not have a hiding place in Afghanistan since the Taliban were driven out in 2001." ? However, a recent report by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS), a European think-tank, refutes Karzai's assertion. According to the report, released on 8 December, the Taliban now have a presence in 72 per cent of Afghanistan, up from 54 per cent a year ago. According to the ICOS, Taliban forces have advanced from their southern heartlands, where they are now the de facto governing power in a number of towns and villages, to Afghanistan's western and north-western provinces, as well as to provinces north of Kabul. Within a year, the Taliban's presence in the country has increased by a startling 18 per cent, according to ICOS research on the ground. ? The ICOS report also documents the advance of the Taliban on Kabul, where three out of the four main highways into the city are now affected by Taliban activity. Security in the capital has plummeted to minimum levels, with the Taliban and criminal elements infiltrating the city at will. In short "the Taliban now control the political and military dynamic in Afghanistan," according to Norine McDonald, president and lead field researcher of ICOS. ? As if to underline their strength in the city, just one day ahead of Holbrooke's visit to Kabul the Taliban made their presence felt in the Afghan capital with a daring attack that claimed the lives of at least 26 people and injured dozens more. The insurgents stormed heavily guarded ministries near the presidential palace, including the Ministry of Justice building in a crowded downtown area, the Education Ministry and a prison affairs office. ? Three decades of war have apparently hardened the Afghan militant groups, putting them in a better position than the US-led foreign occupying forces. With organic social links to society, the insurgents are seen by the Afghan people as a real power and one that is fighting for a cause: the liberation of their country, once again, from foreign occupation. This belief is strengthened by the presence of torture cells in the country and the massive civilian casualties inflicted by US and other foreign forces. According to the latest UN report, a record 2,118 civilians were killed last year, with more than 500 deaths blamed on air strikes. ? To borrow from the words of Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of the treasury in the Reagan administration, the Taliban is not a terrorist organisation, but rather is a movement that is attempting to unify Afghanistan. In this context, the US-led "war on terror" is a front for American control of the oil pipelines in neighbouring Central Asia and is supported by profits from the military-security complex, by the fomenters of a police state, and by those supporting Israel's territorial expansion. ? As a result, the US-led war in Afghanistan is more than just a "war on terrorism". Beneath the rhetoric of US officials about their intention of smashing the so-called Al-Qaeda network led by Osama bin Laden in the name of "freedom and civilisation" there lies a deeper reason: Central Asia's oil and gas reserves and other natural resources. Afghanistan, which has virtually no oil reserves, nevertheless has long held a key place in US plans to secure control of the vast but landlocked oil and gas reserves of Central Asia, which has the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world. The US has been endeavouring to fill the power vacuum in Central Asia created by the collapse of the Soviet Union, in order to assert its domination over the region. ? As the Afghan war has continued for the last seven years without success, the US Army in Afghanistan has asked for 30,000 more troops, and in February Obama authorised the deployment of an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan. This surge in US troops will bring the total to 60,000, while the combined forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), including troops from Germany, Canada, Britain and the Netherlands, amount to over 32,000. When in full strength, US-NATO forces in Afghanistan could reach close to 100,000 by the end of this year. ? The US is currently building eight new military bases in southern Afghanistan for a prolonged war, one which has already been dubbed "a long war" by experts from the Rand Corporation, a semi-official US think-tank. It seems that Obama's promises of change will not bring anything positive for the people of Afghanistan or for those in the border regions of neighbouring Pakistan, where missile attacks from US drones continue to kill, causing more anti-American sentiment and weakening the civilian government in Islamabad. ? SIMILARLY, IN THE MIDDLE EAST the US has branded Hamas and Hizbullah "terrorist organisations" for no other reason than that the US is on Israel's side in the conflict. Hizbullah represents the Shias of southern Lebanon, another area in the Middle East that Israel seeks for territorial expansion. ? Hamas, on the other hand, is the democratically elected government of Gaza. In an effort to bring Hamas under Israeli hegemony, Israel has been employing terror bombing and assassination against Palestinians. The US backed the 22-day Israeli carnage in Gaza late last year and earlier this massacred about 1,400 Palestinians, of whom 412 were children and 100 were women. More than 5,000 people were injured, 1,855 of whom were children and 795 were women, according to UN sources. ? Hamas replied to the Israeli terror with homemade and ineffectual rockets, these being little more than a sign of defiance. If Hamas had been armed by Iran, as Israel claims, its assault on Gaza would have cost Israel its helicopter gunships, its tanks, and hundreds of its soldiers' lives. But Hamas is a small organisation armed only with small calibre rifles that are incapable of penetrating body armour. It has been unable to stop bands of Israeli settlers from descending on West Bank Palestinian villages, driving out the inhabitants, and appropriating their land. ? To quote again from Paul Craig Roberts, the unsupported assertion that Iran is supplying sophisticated arms to the Palestinians is like the earlier assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. "These assertions are propagandistic justifications for killing Arab civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure, in order to secure US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East." ? These developments mean that US policy will continue in the direction indicated by the Bush-era "war on terror" even after Bush's own departure. In fact, according to the US Attorney-General Eric Holder, not only is the US at war now, it was at war even before the September 2001 attacks, as is evidenced by the earlier attacks on the USS Cole and on American embassies abroad. The US just "did not realise we were at war", Holder told a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on 5 January. ? As a further indication of this continuity, the US Justice Department has embraced Bush administration policy on detainees in Afghanistan, with the Obama administration contending on 20 February this year that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights. In a two-sentence court filing, the department said it agreed that detainees at the Bagram airforce base in Afghanistan cannot use the US courts to challenge their detention. ? While the US Supreme Court last summer gave Al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay the right to challenge their detention, no similar rights were given to the some 600 detainees at the Bagram airforce base in Afghanistan, or to the thousands more held in Iraq, and the courts have been grappling with the question of whether they, too, can challenge their detention. Three months after the Supreme Court's ruling on Guantanamo, four Afghan citizens detained at the Bagram base tried to challenge their detention in the US District Court in Washington. Court filings made by the defendants alleged that they had been held without charge and repeatedly interrogated without access to a lawyer. ? The Obama administration has also maintained the Bush position on "extraordinary rendition", whereby citizens of various countries could be flown to third countries where, it is alleged, they could be tortured. On 9 February, the Obama administration announced that it would maintain the Bush administration position in the case of Mohamed et al v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., which involves five men who claim to have been the victims of extraordinary rendition, including the current Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, another plaintiff in jail in Egypt, one in jail in Morocco, and two who are now free. ? The men are suing a subsidiary of Boeing, Jeppesen Dataplan, accusing the flight-planning company of aiding the CIA in flying them to other countries where, it is alleged, they were tortured. The case was thrown out last year on the basis of national security, but on 9 February this year the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals heard an appeal, with the US network ABC News quoting a court source as saying that a representative of the justice department had stood up to say that its position had not changed and that the new administration stood behind the arguments of the previous administration. ? Under executive orders issued by Obama, the CIA still has the authority to carry out such renditions, a programme that has attracted international condemnation as details have emerged of botched captures, mistaken identity and allegations of torture. The European parliament, for example, has condemned the US policy of extraordinary renditions, and an investigation by the European Union concluded that the CIA had operated more than 1,200 flights in European airspace after the 11 September attacks. ? In one of the most notorious instances, a German citizen named Khaled Al-Masri was arrested in Macedonia in 2003 and whisked away by the CIA to a secret prison in Afghanistan. He was quietly released in Albania five months later after the agency determined it had mistaken Al-Masri for an associate of the 11 September hijackers. Al-Masri later described being abducted by "seven or eight men dressed in black and wearing black ski masks". He said he was stripped of his clothes, placed in a diaper and blindfolded before being taken aboard a plane in shackles -- an account that matches other descriptions of prisoners captured in the renditions programme. ? In another prominent case, an Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar was abducted in Italy in 2003 and secretly flown to an Egyptian jail, where he said he was tortured. The incident became a major source of embarrassment to the CIA when Italian authorities, using mobile-phone records, identified agency operatives involved in the abduction and sought to prosecute them. ? TO THE DISAPPOINTMENT of US civil right groups, the Obama administration is also defending Bush administration decisions to keep secret many documents about US domestic wiretapping, data collection on travellers and US citizens, and the interrogation of suspected terrorists. According to the Associated Press, in half a dozen lawsuits Justice Department lawyers have opposed formal motions or spurned out-of-court offers to delay court action until the new administration rewrites Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) guidelines. ? In only one case has the department agreed to suspend a FOIA lawsuit until the disputed documents can be evaluated under the yet-to-be-rewritten guidelines. That case involves negotiations on an anti-counterfeiting treaty, not the more controversial, secret anti-terrorism tactics that spawned the other lawsuits as well as Obama's promises of greater openness. ? Civil rights groups that advocate open government, civil liberties and privacy were overjoyed that Obama on his first day in office reversed the FOIA policy imposed by Bush's first attorney-general, John Ashcroft, pledging "an unprecedented level of openness in government" and ordering new FOIA guidelines to be written with a "presumption in favour of disclosure". However, since then the Justice Department's actions have cast doubt on the administration's intentions. ? According to Jonathan Turley, professor of law at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, the Obama administration appears to be trying to dispel the notion that Obama will fight for civil liberties or war crimes investigations. "After Eric Holder allegedly assured a senator that there would be no war crimes investigation and seemed to defend Bush policies, Harvard University Law School Dean Elena Kagan, Obama's solicitor-general nominee, reportedly told a Republican senator that the administration agreed with Bush that we are at war and therefore can hold enemy combatants indefinitely." ? "Since the solicitor-general is required to apply the law, Kagan's reply is extremely alarming," Turley said. ? When asked if someone captured in the Philippines and suspected of helping to finance Al-Qaeda would be considered to have been captured on the battlefield, Kagan also replied that she agreed with the Bush administration that such a person could be considered an enemy combatant. ? With Kagan's response, the identification of the Obama administration with Bush-era policies was complete, Turley commented. ? * The writer is executive editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective (www.amperspective.com). From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Mar 6 16:34:13 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 07 Mar 2009 08:34:13 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Playing the Banking Game Message-ID: <49B1B2F5.5020006@ashisuto.co.jp> How Cash Starved States Can Create their Own Credit by Ellen Brown Global Research (March 03 2009 ) "He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator". --- Francis Bacon On February 19 2009, California narrowly escaped bankruptcy, when Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger put on his Terminator hat and held the state senate in lockdown mode until they signed a very controversial budget {1}. If the vote had failed, the state was going to be reduced to paying its employees in IOUs. California avoided bankruptcy for the time being, but 46 of fifty states are insolvent and could be filing Chapter Nine bankruptcy proceedings in the next two years {2}. One of the four states that is not insolvent is an unlikely candidate for the distinction - North Dakota. As Michigan management consultant Charles Fleetham observed last month in an article distributed to his local media: "North Dakota is a sparsely populated state of less than 700,000, known for cold weather, isolated farmers and a hit movie - Fargo. Yet, for some reason it defies the real estate cliche of location, location, location. Since 2000, the state's GNP has grown 56%, personal income has grown 43%, and wages have grown 34%. This year the state has a budget surplus of $1.2 billion!" What does the State of North Dakota have that other states don't? The answer seems to be: its own bank. In fact, North Dakota has the only state-owned bank in the nation. The state legislature established the Bank of North Dakota in 1919. Fleetham writes that the bank was set up to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. By law, the state must deposit all its funds in the bank, and the state guarantees its deposits. Three elected officials oversee the bank: the governor, the attorney general, and the commissioner of agriculture. The bank's stated mission is to deliver sound financial services that promote agriculture, commerce and industry in North Dakota. The bank operates as a bankers' bank, partnering with private banks to loan money to farmers, real estate developers, schools and small businesses. It loans money to students (over 184,000 outstanding loans), and it purchases municipal bonds from public institutions. Still, you may ask, how does that solve the solvency problem? Isn't the state still limited to spending only the money it has? The answer is no. Certified, card-carrying bankers are allowed to do something nobody else can do: they can create "credit" with accounting entries on their books. A License to Create Money Under the "fractional reserve" lending system, banks are allowed to extend credit (create money as loans) in a sum equal to many times their deposit base. Congressman Jerry Voorhis, writing in 1973, explained it like this: "[F]or every $1 or $1.50 which people - or the government - deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up". {3} That banks actually create money with accounting entries was confirmed in a revealing booklet published by the Chicago Federal Reserve titled Modern Money Mechanics {2}. The booklet was periodically revised until 1992, when it had reached fifty pages long. On page 49 of the 1992 edition, it states: "With a uniform ten percent reserve requirement, a $1 increase in reserves would support $10 of additional transaction accounts [loans created as deposits in borrowers' accounts]" {4}. The ten percent reserve requirement is now largely obsolete, in part because banks have figured out how to get around it with such devices as "overnight sweeps". What chiefly limits bank lending today is the eight percent capital requirement imposed by the Bank for International Settlements, the head of the private global central banking system in Basel, Switzerland. With an eight percent capital requirement, a state with its own bank could fan its revenues into 12.5 times their face value in loans (100 ? 8 = 12.5). And since the state would actually own the bank, it would not have to worry about shareholders or profits. It could lend to creditworthy borrowers at very low interest, perhaps limited only to a service charge covering its costs; and it could lend to itself or to its municipal governments at as low as zero percent interest. If these loans were rolled over indefinitely, the effect would be the same as creating new, debt-free money. Dangerously inflationary? Not if the money were used to create new goods and services. Price inflation results only when "demand" (money) exceeds "supply" (goods and services). When they increase together, prices remain stable. Today we are in a dangerous deflationary spiral, as lending has dried up and asset values have plummeted. The monopoly on the creation of money and credit by a private banking fraternity has resulted in a malfunctioning credit system and monetary collapse. Credit markets have been frozen by the wildly speculative derivatives gambles of a few big Wall Street banks, bets that not only destroyed those banks' balance sheets but are infecting the whole private banking system with toxic debris. To get out of this deflationary debt trap requires an injection of new, debt-free money into the economy, something that can best be done through a system of public banks dedicated to serving the public interest, administering credit as a public utility. Some experts insist that we must tighten our belts and start saving again, in order to rebuild the "capital" necessary for functioning markets; but our markets actually functioned quite well so long as the credit system was working. We have the same real assets (raw materials, oil, technical knowledge, productive capacity, labor force, et cetera) that we had before the crisis began. Our workers and factories are sitting idle because the private credit system has failed. A system of public credit could put them back to work again. The notion that "money" is something that has to be "saved" before it can be "borrowed" misconstrues the nature of money and credit. Credit is merely a legal agreement, a "monetization" of future proceeds, a promise to pay later from the fruits of the advance. Banks have created credit on their books for hundreds of years, and this system would have worked quite well had it not been for the enormous tribute siphoned off to private coffers in the form of interest. A public banking system could overcome that problem by returning the interest to the public purse. This is the sort of banking system that was pioneered in the colony of Pennsylvania, where it worked brilliantly well. Restoring Michigan to Solvency Among other advantages to a state of owning its own bank are the substantial sums it could save in interest. As Fleetham notes of his own ailing state of Michigan: "According to recent financial reports (available online), the State of Michigan, the City of Detroit, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, the Wayne County Airport, the Detroit Public Schools, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State University pay over $800 million a year in interest on long term debt. If you add interest paid by Michigan cities, school districts, and public utilities, the cost to our taxpayers easily tops a billion [dollars] a year. What does Wall Street do with our billion plus dollars? They decorate their offices like kings." Interestingly, the projected state budget deficit for 2009 is also $1 billion. If Michigan did not have to pay over a billion dollars in interest to Wall Street, the budget could be balanced and the state could be restored to solvency. A state-owned bank could not only provide interest-free credit for the state but could actually generate revenues for it. Fleetham notes that in 2007, the Bank of North Dakota earned a net profit of $51 million on a loan volume of $2 billion. He comments: "Last year, Michigan citizens paid over $5 billion dollars in personal income tax. With a state bank like North Dakota's we could reduce this burden, fund new businesses, and restore our crumbling water and sewer systems. And we don't have to feel sorry about Wall Street losing our business. They didn't 'earn' the money they lent us. They created it in computers and charged us interest to boot. Let's follow North Dakota's lead and get free from Wall Street's web." Taking the Initiative in California California could do this as well. Robert Ellis is a Tucson talk show host who once worked on Wall Street and has been involved in setting up several banks and financial institutions. In January of this year, he proposed in a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger that California could resolve its financial woes by setting up a bank on the model of the Bank of North Dakota. Ellis wrote to the governor: "I admire your tenacity in dealing with California's financial problems. Your idea of using IOUs was ingenious but there is a better way. The State of California can charter its own bank and issue its own checks to all state employees ... It can also pay all its vendors, contracts and contractors through the bank ... Additionally, once the bank is operational, you can fund your own state projects and you determine the interest rate paid as opposed to being at the mercy of the banks you currently deal with or the interest rates the investment bankers make you pay to issue bonds. By doing this, you will put the state in control of its own destiny and make it the benefactor of its own money. "... What I am proposing is not new. It has been done by one other state in the nation [North Dakota]. Why should you continue to pay the banks for services and interest on loans when you can receive that interest for the benefit of the state of California? Wouldn't it be better if you could fund your own infrastructure projects without having to get the approval of independent banks or investment bankers? Additionally, you set the interest rate on your own projects. You can even set it at zero if you deem the project worthy enough." Ellis offered his services in setting up the bank, which he thought could be chartered in a few short months. The Governor has not replied, but some pressure from constituents might encourage a response. Failing that, there is the initiative and referendum process pioneered in California. It allows state laws to be proposed directly by the public, and the state's Constitution to be amended either by public petition (the "initiative") or by the legislature submitting a proposed constitutional amendment to the electorate (the "referendum"). The initiative is done by writing a proposed constitutional amendment or statute as a petition, which is submitted to the California Attorney General along with a submission fee, which was a modest $200 in 2004. The petition must be signed by registered voters amounting to eight percent (for a constitutional amendment) or five percent (for a statute) of the number of people who voted in the most recent election for governor. {5} As Gandhi said, "When the people lead, the leaders will follow". We the people can beat the Wall Street bankers at their own game, by moving our legislators to set up publicly-owned banks that create credit using the same banking principles that are accepted as standard and usual in the trade by bankers themselves. _____ Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt (2007), her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust". She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from "the money trust". Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine (2008), Nature's Pharmacy (1998), co-authored with Dr Lynne Walker, and The Key to Ultimate Health (2000), co-authored with Dr Richard Hansen. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. Notes: {1} Anne Davies, "Lockdown Vote Saves California from Bankruptcy", theage.com.au (February 21 2009). http://www.theage.com.au/world/lockdown-vote-saves-california-from-bankruptcy-20090220-8do1.html?page=2 {2} John Mitchell, "46 of 50 States Could File Bankruptcy in 2009-2010", Freedom Arizona (January 30 2009). {3} Jerry Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (1973), excerpted at http://www.sonic.net/~doretk/ArchiveARCHIVE/ECONOMICSPOLITICS/FEDERAL%20RESERVE/Jerry%20VoorhisFedReserve.html. {4} Modern Money Mechanics: A Workbook on Bank Reserves and Deposit Expansion (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Public Information Service, 1992, available at http://www.rayservers.com/images/ModernMoneyMechanics.pdf ). {5} "California Ballot Proposition", Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_ballot_proposition _____ Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BRO20090303&articleId=12522 TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From shniad at sfu.ca Fri Mar 6 18:14:06 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 17:14:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Israel annexing East Jerusalem, says EU Message-ID: <258177305.457501236388446095.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/07/israel-palestine-eu-report-jerusalem ? The Guardian ???????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? 7 March 2009 ? Israel annexing East Jerusalem, says EU ? ? Confidential report attacks 'illegal' house demolitions ? Government accused of damaging peace prospects ? Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem ? A confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of "actively pursuing the illegal annexation" of East Jerusalem. ? The document says Israel has accelerated its plans for East Jerusalem, and is undermining the Palestinian Authority's credibility and weakening support for peace talks. "Israel's actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making," says the document, EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem. ? The report, obtained by the Guardian, is dated 15 December 2008. It acknowledges Israel's legitimate security concerns in Jerusalem, but adds: "Many of its current illegal actions in and around the city have limited security justifications." ? "Israeli 'facts on the ground' - including new settlements, construction of the barrier, discriminatory housing policies, house demolitions, restrictive permit regime and continued closure of Palestinian institutions - increase Jewish Israeli presence in East Jerusalem, weaken the Palestinian community in the city, impede Palestinian urban development and separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank," the report says. ? The document has emerged at a time of mounting concern over Israeli policies in East Jerusalem. Two houses were demolished on Monday just before the arrival of the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and a further 88 are scheduled for demolition, all for lack of permits. Clinton described the demolitions as "unhelpful", noting that they violated Israel's obligations under the US "road map" for peace. ? The EU report goes further, saying that the demolitions are "illegal under international law, serve no obvious purpose, have severe humanitarian effects, and fuel bitterness and extremism." The EU raised its concern in a formal diplomatic representation on December 1, it says. ? It notes that although Palestinians in the east represent 34% of the city's residents, only 5%-10% of the municipal budget is spent in their areas, leaving them with poor services and infrastructure. ? Israel issues fewer than 200 permits a year for Palestinian homes and leaves only 12% of East Jerusalem available for Palestinian residential use. As a result many homes are built without Israeli permits. About 400 houses have been demolished since 2004 and a further 1,000 demolition orders have yet to be carried out, it said. ? City officials dismissed criticisms of its housing policy as "a disinformation campaign". "Mayor Nir Barkat continues to promote investments in infrastructure, construction and education in East Jerusalem, while at the same time upholding the law throughout West and East Jerusalem equally without bias," the mayor's office said after Clinton's visit. ? However, the EU says the fourth Geneva convention prevents an occupying power extending its jurisdiction to occupied territory. Israel occupied the east of the city in the 1967 six day war and later annexed it. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. ? The EU says settlement are being built in the east of the city at a "rapid pace". Since the Annapolis peace talks began in late 2007, nearly 5,500 new settlement housing units have been submitted for public review, with 3,000 so far approved, the report says. There are now about 470,000 settlers in the occupied territories, including 190,000 in East Jerusalem. ? The EU is particularly concerned about settlements inside the Old City, where there were plans to build a Jewish settlement of 35 housing units in the Muslim quarter, as well as expansion plans for Silwan, just outside the Old City walls. ? The goal, it says, is to "create territorial contiguity" between East Jerusalem settlements and the Old City and to "sever" East Jerusalem and its settlement blocks from the West Bank. ? There are plans for 3,500 housing units, an industrial park, two police stations and other infrastructure in a controversial area known as E1, between East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, home to 31,000 settlers. Israeli measures in E1 were "one of the most significant challenges to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process", the report says. ? Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said conditions for Palestinians living in East Jerusalem were better than in the West Bank. "East Jerusalem residents are under Israeli law and they were offered full Israeli citizenship after that law was passed in 1967," he said. "We are committed to the continued development of the city for the benefit of all its population." From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Mar 7 02:35:30 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 07 Mar 2009 18:35:30 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Federal Reserve Message-ID: <49B23FE2.7050406@ashisuto.co.jp> by Jerry Voorhis {1} from his Beyond Victory (1944) {2} The Constitution of the United States says: "Congress shall have power to coin money and regulate the value thereof". Congress does no such thing, which is the heart of our trouble. Private banks coin our money and regulate its value. In doing so they take from the government and people of the United States a large chunk of their sovereignty, a large chunk of the taxing power, and the key to a prosperous economy without inflation. For example, in testimony before the Banking and Currency Committee of the House of Representatives in 1935, Marriner Eccles, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board itself, said: "In purchasing offerings of Government bonds, the banking system as a whole creates new money, or bank deposits. When the banks buy a billion dollars of Government bonds as they are offered - and you have to consider the banking system as a whole as a unit - the banks credit the deposit account of the Treasury with a billion dollars. They debit their Government bond account a billion dollars; or they actually create, by a bookkeeping entry, a billion dollars." Mr Eccles' statement is exactly as true today as when he made it. Here is how it works: The private banking system of our country creates our money in the form of demand deposits on the banks' books. The reason it is able to do this is because no bank is required to have in its vault anything like the amount of money which its depositors think they have in the banks. Banks are only required by the Federal Reserve System, which the banks are sure they own, to have in their vaults anywhere from $1 to $1.50 for every $10 of demand deposits on their books. Thus for every $1 or $1.50 which people - or the government - deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up. This is, of course, the "fractional reserve system" of banking. It is more or less controlled by the Federal Reserve System, whose only stock is held by the private banks of the Federal Reserve System. Not a single share of such stock is held by the government or people of the United States, although if "national sovereignty" means anything at all, these banks of issue should be the property of the nation. But what actually happens when our government engages in deficit financing? The obvious way the government can get more buying power into the people's hands is by itself putting more money into the stream of commerce than it takes out in taxes. The tragedy of the situation is that, up to date, the only way our government has enabled itself to spend more money than it takes in has been by forcing this sovereign nation to borrow its own credit from private sources. This has been true, despite the fact that if deficit financing accomplishes its purpose at all it will increase production and trade, enhance tax revenues, and broaden the base of government credit. To the extent that government bonds are sold for cash to individuals or to institutional purchasers other than banks the government is taking out of circulation approximately as many dollars as it will put back in when it spends the money. To accomplish its purpose, deficit financing must result in the creation of new money, and the use of it to increase mass buying power. Only if this happens will there be any stimulation of idle plants to go back into production, or more employment. Under these circumstances what ought to happen is that the credit of this great nation should be drawn upon directly by the government - not that it should go more deeply into debt. For the credit of this or any nation is squarely based upon and derived from the production of wealth by the nation plus the power of the government to tax. A nation like the United States thus possesses an almost unlimited amount of credit. Otherwise it could not possibly have persuaded investors to buy $480 billion of government securities. By whatever percentage it can be anticipated that production and hence potential tax revenues will increase as a result of deficit spending, by that same amount the credit of the nation and its government will be increased. This same percentage of the volume of money previously in circulation should appear on the books of the Treasury as a credit entry to be drawn upon just like tax revenues. To do that would be nothing more than rational and proper bookkeeping. It would also be morally right bookkeeping. And it would make some sense of Mr Nixon's "full employment budget" idea. But this is not what happens at all. Instead the sovereign government of the United States goes hat in hand to the private banking system and asks it to create the new money that the economy needs. The government gives - the word is used advisedly - it gives to the banking system, including the Federal Reserve banks, government bonds, the debt of all the people. Interest-bearing bonds, that is, bonds bearing as high an interest rate under today's regime as the banks decide to demand. Else they won't buy the bonds. The banks "buy" the bonds with newly created demand deposit entries on their books -nothing more. It is fountain-pen money and considerably more inflationary than would be the same amount of dollar bills created by the government. The deposits the banks create with which to own the people's debt are backed by nothing except the bonds themselves! In other words, they are backed by the credit of the American people. What the government has "borrowed" from the banks, what the people must for years pay interest on, is nothing more nor less than the credit of the nation, which obviously the nation possessed in the first place or the bonds themselves would be no good! At long last, a few years ago the Federal Reserve made tacit acknowledgment of these facts. As a direct result of logical and relentless agitation by members of Congress, led by Congressman Wright Patman as well as by other competent monetary experts, the Federal Reserve began to pay to the US Treasury a considerable part of its earnings from interest on government securities. This was done without public notice and few people, even today, know that is being done. It was done, quite obviously, as acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve Banks were acting on the one hand as a national bank of issue, creating the nation's money, but on the other hand charging the nation interest on its own credit - which no true national bank of issue could conceivably, or with any show of justice, dare to do. But this is only part of the story. And the less discouraging part, at that. For where the commercial banks are concerned, there is no such repayment of the people's money. When the commercial banks create money, as they do when they acquire government bonds, they levy a tax on every person in the United States. This is so because every new dollar that is created makes every dollar previously in existence worth somewhat less than it was worth before. This is the very heart of inflation. It is also taxation without representation with a vengeance. Until this system is changed, our debt will continue to skyrocket without limit and the fixing of debt limits by the Congress will continue to be an exercise in utter futility. What ought to be done? Banks should lend existing money. But, as the Constitution clearly requires, the money (or credit) of the nation should never be created by any private agency, but by an agency of the nation itself. It is the duty of Congress to provide for this by a carefully drawn statute. The stock in Federal Reserve Banks should be purchased by the government from their present private bank owners. The Federal Reserve should then become our national bank of issue. It should create reserve Bank Credit as it does now. But that credit should be credited to the United States Treasury, not charged against it and the people as debt. As much such new credit should be created each year as is needed to keep our economy running at or near capacity - and no more than that. A stable price level could result. Then and only then can we expect to overcome recessions, to put our people to work, and do this without the danger of inflation and the ever-increasing debt which are inescapable under the present monetary system. --- Jerry Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (1973) HOW TO NATIONALIZE CREDIT Congress [could] provide for governmental purchase of the capital stock of the twelve central Federal Reserve Banks from the member banks which now own it. This would cost $144,000,000 in round figures, and would correct the present anomalous situation of a privately owned bank of issue. The Federal Reserve Banks could then create money in the form of "Federal Reserve Bank credit" entries on their books just as they do now. A "National Credit Account" (in contrast to present national debt) could be established on the central banks' books in favor of the United States Treasury. To such an account would be credited each year such amounts of newly created "Reserve Bank credit" as would provide the increased purchasing power needed to maintain economic balance and a stable price level. The Treasury would draw checks against their account and pay them out to those to whom the government owed money, thus getting it into the purchasing power stream. In this way the whole nation would derive the benefit from the creation of the additional supply of money which its own growth had made necessary. No interest bearing debt would be incurred, but only a bookkeeping transaction between two public agencies. Should inflation threaten so that it was desirable to reduce the volume of money in circulation, the process could be reversed and the Treasury could transfer a portion of its tax revenues to the central banks for cancellation and retirement of the requisite amount of money to restore stability. Links: {1} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Voorhis {2} http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Victory-Jerry-Voorhis/dp/B001JKN3KE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236334566&sr=1-3 http://www.sonic.net/~doretk/ArchiveARCHIVE/ECONOMICSPOLITICS/FEDERAL%20RESERVE/Jerry%20VoorhisFedReserve.html TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat Mar 7 06:58:55 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 08:58:55 -0500 Subject: [R-G] Obama, Your Package Is Too Small Message-ID: Yoshie From realiteee1 at yahoo.com Sat Mar 7 07:29:27 2009 From: realiteee1 at yahoo.com (james m nordlund) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 06:29:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] International Womens Day Actions :) Message-ID: <923027.82810.qm@web111508.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Intn'l Womens Day Actions: Actions and Contacts for this issue and others that relate, on Change.org, the url?? :) http://globalhealth.change.org/actions/view/intnl_womens_day_actions ? Voices Communique - International Women's Day. It happens every year on the same day-March 8. International Women's Day is a global celebration to acknowledge women in all aspects of their lives-work, economics, political and social. http://voiceseducation.org/ Find out more about the origin of the day and its history in the International Women's Day Education Packet on our Resources site. You'll also find poetry on women written by women, notable quotes and some important historical events that helped catapult the day in the United States. Visit the International Women's Day official website. http://www.internationalwomensday.com/ ? BREAKING: Obama moves to overturn Bush rule. But it's not over yet. We still need your help! http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/hhsorcp_ppol/xkwgn6r1kketwd?qp_source=hhsorcp%5fe1%5fppol ? Calling on All ReproWrites Readers to Submit Comments on Harmful Bush HHS Rule. http://www.reproductiverights.org ? International Women's Day: Join Our New Tele-Conference Series!? Announcing Our National Tele-Conference Series: Save the Date! http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/840/t/6749/event/index.jsp?event_KEY=47736 Poll: Majority in All Countries Favor Equal Rights for Women. http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/btjusticehuman_rightsra/453.php?lb=bthr&pnt=453&nid=&id= Other International Women's Day Events. http://womenthrive.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=622&Itemid=152 ? [NOW Actions] Paid Parental Leave -- Urge Senators to Support This First Step.? Take Action NOW! http://www.capwiz.com/now/issues/alert/?alertid=12845061 TAKE ACTION:?????????? http://www.now.org/ ? Demand Seats for Women at the Tables of Power. Women at the Tables of Power. March 8, International Women's Day, is a day to acknowledge the need for women's equal participation in economic and political decision-making, to celebrate the extraordinary accomplishments of women, and to denounce gender discrimination and gender violence. Click here to continue reading the WILPF Statement on International Women's Day. http://www.wilpf.int.ch/statements/2009/IWD.html Click here to continue reading about local WILPF activities. http://wilpf.org/branchactivity ? The next step for fair pay, Our fight isn't over yet! Please urge your Senators to quickly pass the Paycheck Fairness Act: http://action.nwlc.org/site/R?i=de3aorhGiZE1_gsWvCLzbA.. For more details on the movement for pay equity, visit the Fair Pay Campaign website: http://action.nwlc.org/site/R?i=f_zfBcfkZFxym5RvmrhJzw.. ? We Need Universal Healthcare Now, Actions on Change.org, the url?? :) Universal Healthcare Now?? :) http://globalhealth.change.org/actions/view/universal_healthcare_now ? Healthcare in Every Pot, Universal Healthcare Now, Healthcare in Every Pot: These Actions on Change.org, the url?? :) http://healthcare.change.org/actions/view/healthcare_in_every_pot ? Good Women's History Month To All, Please Act, Actions and Contacts for this issue and others that relate, on Change.org: Womens History Month Acts?? :) http://womensrights.change.org/actions/view/womens_history_month_acts ? Click To Donate Free: This Pledge on Change.org, the url?? :) http://globalwarming.change.org/actions/view/click_to_donate_free ? For this Valentine Day, be your love in action, give the gift that keeps on giving, a hand to a sister and/or brother; give all your Change.org coin away, etc.?? :) Valentine Day Coin Drop: This Action on Change.org?? :) http://womensrights.change.org/actions/view/valentine_day_coin_drop From fentona at shaw.ca Sat Mar 7 09:59:50 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 08:59:50 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Demonstrators condemn killing civilians by troops in E Afghanistan Message-ID: <951D5A75-80B1-4411-869D-6B1BA1FFB3C3@shaw.ca> http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-03/07/content_10962344.htm Demonstrators condemn killing civilians by troops in E Afghanistan www.chinaview.cn 2009-03-07 14:42:00 KABUL, March 7 (Xinhua)-- Hundreds of Afghans came to the street in Khost, the capital of Khost province in east Afghanistanon Saturday to protest against what they called arbitrary killing of civilians by international troops. The protesters who brought four bodies to the street said that the troops at mid night entered two houses outside the Khost city and killed four persons and took away five others. "The U.S. soldiers entered two houses in Shiga village outside the Khost city at 3 a.m. today and after killing four innocent people arrested five others," Talawat Khan, owner of the raided house told Xinhua. Meantime, an official with the press department of the international troops in east Afghanistan denied killing the civilians but confirmed the operation in a village saying the troops returned fire after coming under attacks. Harming civilians during operations against Taliban insurgents has strained the relations between Kabul and Washington and President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly called on the troops to coordinate operation with Afghan troops in order to avoid civilian casualties. From fentona at shaw.ca Sat Mar 7 10:32:08 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 09:32:08 -0800 Subject: [R-G] US military chief backs counter-insurgency for Mexico Message-ID: http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSN06397194 US military chief backs counter-insurgency for Mexico Fri Mar 6, 2009 9:47pm EST WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. military is ready to help Mexico in its deadly war against drug cartels with some of the same counter-insurgency tactics used against militant networks in Iraq and Afghanistan, the top U.S. military officer said on Friday. Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, also said the Defense Department was moving quickly to provide the Mexican military with equipment, including helicopters, under a $1.4 billion U.S. aid initiative. "They have an urgent need. We all have a sense of urgency about this. And so we're all going to push pretty hard to deliver that capability as rapidly as possible," Mullen told reporters in a conference call as he returned from his first official visit to Mexico as Joint Chiefs chairman. Drug violence has killed thousands of people in Mexico as the government of President Felipe Calderon wages war against drug cartels that earn some $10 billion a year trafficking narcotics destined for consumers in the United States. Mexico's bloodiest drug war city is Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, where the Mexican government this week sent hundreds of heavily armed soldiers to take over anti-drug efforts from police tainted by corruption and links to drug traffickers. Mullen, who visited Mexico on Friday as part of a five-nation Latin American tour, said the U.S. military is already providing some intelligence support to Mexico. He gave no specifics. In talks with top Mexican defense and military officials, he said he emphasized the Pentagon's readiness to provide new intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance help, such as unmanned drones to spy on armed drug gangs, especially along the U.S. border. "They need intelligence support, capabilities and tactics that have evolved for us in our fight against networks in the terrorist world," Mullen said. "There are an awful lot of similarities." He said the Mexican leadership is taking steps to eliminate problems posed by official corruption that could compromise counter-narcotics efforts. "Best I can tell, the leadership in Mexico is aware of the problem and is addressing it," Mullen said. "I haven't seen anything on the military side at this point that would indicate that that's a limiting factor." The admiral said he and his Mexican hosts did not discuss the possibility of placing U.S. troops on the U.S.-Mexican border, an idea suggested by Texas Gov. Rick Perry. He also visited Brazil, Peru, Chile and Colombia. (Reporting by David Morgan, editing by Anthony Boadle) From fentona at shaw.ca Sat Mar 7 11:29:12 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 10:29:12 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Israel Boycott Movement Gains Momentum Message-ID: <626A1F02-B84E-4BDD-B8BD-B30F58CDE893@shaw.ca> MIDEAST: Israel Boycott Movement Gains Momentum By Mel Frykberg http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45951 RAMALLAH, Mar 3 (IPS) - "Standing United with the People of Gaza" is the theme of this week's Israel Apartheid Week (IAW), which kicked off in Toronto and another 39 cities across the globe Sunday. A movement to boycott Israeli goods, culture and academic institutions is gaining momentum as Geneva prepares to host the UN's Anti-Racism Conference, Durban 2 next month amidst swirling controversy. Both Canada and the U.S. are boycotting the Durban 2 conference in protest over what they perceive as a strongly anti-Israel agenda. The first UN Anti-Racism conference, held in the South African city Durban in 2001, saw the Israeli and U.S. delegates storm out of the conference, accusing other delegates of focusing too strongly on Israel. U.S. and Canadian support might have offered some comfort for Israel. However, international criticism of Israel's three-week bloody offensive into Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and thousands more wounded, most of them civilian, has breathed fresh life into a Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The BDS campaign followed a 2005 appeal from over 170 Palestinian civil society groups to launch a divestment campaign "as a way of bringing non- violent pressure to bear on the state of Israel to end its violations of international law." In the wake of the BDS campaign, critics of Israel have lashed out at what they see as parallels between South Africa's former apartheid system and Israeli racism. They point to Israel's discriminatory treatment of ethnic Palestinians within Israel who hold Israeli passports, and the extensive human rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied territories by Israeli security forces. During the apartheid era, ties between Israel and South Africa were extremely strong, with the Jewish state helping to train South Africa's security forces as well as supplying the regime in Pretoria with weapons. Meanwhile, Toronto, where the Israel Apartheid Week movement was born, will hold forums, film shows, cultural events and street protests to mark IAW week. One of the guest speakers is former South African intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils. Kasrils is no stranger to controversy. His parents fled from Tzarist Russian pogroms carried out against Jews, and immigrated to South Africa at the beginning of the last century. During white rule, as a member of the African National Congress (ANC), working both in exile and underground in South Africa, he was reviled by many white South Africans as a "terrorist". He has also been labelled a self-hating Jew by many Israelis and South African Jews due to the strong stand he and the ANC have taken against Israel's policies. Meanwhile, in New York, prominent IAW activist Nir Harel, a member of Israel's Anarchists Against the Wall, will also be courting controversy. His group regularly protests against Israel's separation barrier, which divides Israel proper from the Palestinian West Bank. The barrier deviates significantly from the Green Line, the internationally recognised border, into Palestinian territory where it has swallowed huge amounts of land, dispossessing farmers from their agricultural crops. Another Israeli activist, Matan Cohen, has been central in the first U.S. college implementing a divestment campaign against Israel. Hampshire College in Massachusetts called for divestment from over 200 companies that the college says is responsible for violating its socially responsible investment policies in Israel. The companies which provide the Israeli military with equipment and services in the occupied West Bank and Gaza include Caterpillar, United Technologies, General Electric, ITT Corporation, Motorola and Terex. A Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) petition for divestment was supported by more than 800 students, professors, and alumni at the college, that has only 1,350 students. Hampshire college may be small but it has been big in social activism. It was also the first U.S. educational institution to divest from South Africa, ten years before other universities and colleges followed suit. U.S. campus activism is spreading. The University of Rochester in New York and members of the community are also involved in boycott activities. Students from Macalester College, a liberal arts college located in St. Paul, Minnesota, occupied the Minnesota Trade Office in January and then picketed there Feb. 6, demanding that the state end all trade with Israel. New York University students too began a divestment campaign. Professors and university employees in Quebec, Canada, endorsed the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees' call to boycott Israel. SJP's actions at Hampshire College follow similar moves by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education in the UK. In London, students held sit-ins at Goldsmith University and the London School of Economics, among other institutions. Similar protests have spread throughout the U.K., with some winning concessions from university officials. At Manchester University, about a thousand students joined a campaign equating Israel with apartheid-era South Africa, and called on the administration and student union to boycott Israeli companies and support Gaza and the BDS movement. In Australia the University of Western Sydney's Student Association recently joined the international BDS campaign. International trade union support for political action against Israel has been seen from Spain to South Africa. The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, under directive of the Council of South African Trade Unions, refused recently to unload an Israeli ship which docked in Durban, despite threats and pressure from both management and the Israeli lobby. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, with 600,000 members in 55 unions, is preparing to start a boycott of Israeli goods. Meanwhile, the biggest trade union in Canada's Ontario province, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), was forced under pressure to moderate its call for a boycott of all academic institutions in Israel. Instead it called for a boycott of Israeli institutions engaged in research which aided the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). (END/ 2009) From fentona at shaw.ca Sat Mar 7 12:12:00 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 11:12:00 -0800 Subject: [R-G] Shooting Film and Crying (Review of Waltz with Bashir) Message-ID: http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/lindseyINT.html Shooting Film and Crying Ursula Lindsey March 2009 (Ursula Lindsey is an M.A. candidate in Near Eastern studies at New York University. She writes on Middle Eastern arts and culture on the blog www.arabist.net.) Waltz with Bashir (2008) opens with a strange and powerful image: a pack of ferocious dogs running headlong through the streets of Tel Aviv, overturning tables and terrifying pedestrians, converging beneath a building?s window to growl at a man standing there. It turns out that this man, Boaz, is an old friend of Ari Folman, the film?s director and protagonist. Like Folman, he was a teenager in the Israeli army during its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. And the pack of menacing dogs is his recurring nightmare, a nightly vision he links to the many village guard dogs he shot -- so they wouldn?t raise the alarm -- as his platoon made its way through southern Lebanon. The pack of growling dogs -- animal Furies -- is a striking embodiment of the violence of repressed memories, the fear and anger involved in confronting a shameful past. The rest of the film tries to answer the question posed by this opening nightmare -- what memories is this former soldier, and by extension Israeli society, pursued by? What is he guilty of? In the film, Ari and Boaz, middle-aged men now, ponder this question over drinks, seemingly nonplussed. Ari finds that, while he can?t remember most of his service in Lebanon, he is also haunted by a vision: of himself and two friends, emerging naked from the Beirut sea, their skinny teenaged bodies bathed in the golden glow of night flares. He can?t tell if this vision is a memory or a dream. He can?t tell what it means. And he can?t remember where he was, or what he was doing, during the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the killings of Palestinian refugees (and other poor people living in the camps) that marked the tragic nadir of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and came to symbolize it thereafter for the Arab world. He embarks on a journey to interview old comrades and reconstruct the past. Ari?s inability to remember is clearly not to be taken at face value: It?s a convenient framing device and a reference to the conscious or unconscious obfuscation of the past. It allows the film to move gradually toward the ?discovery? of what happened in Sabra and Shatila, and of what role the protagonist played. Israeli invaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982. The immediate trigger was an attempted assassination of an Israeli ambassador in London by members of a Palestinian militant group. But Israel had been itching to rid Lebanon of the Palestinian resistance movements that had established bases there. Israel was already fighting the Palestine Liberation Organization in southern Lebanon, and was supporting the Christian Lebanese Forces militia in the bloody civil war that had broken out between them and the PLO and its supporters. The Israeli invasion initially targeted only southern Lebanon, but Israeli forces pushed on northward until they reached the capital of Beirut. By September 1, Palestinian fighters had been evacuated from Beirut as part of a ceasefire agreement. On September 14, the newly elected president, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated, infuriating his supporters among the Phalange, the political party of which the Lebanese Forces is the military wing. On September 15, 1982, Israeli forces, contravening the truce agreement, occupied West Beirut and surrounded the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), under the command of then Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon, allowed Lebanese Forces militiamen -- the Israelis? allies in Lebanon, and the Palestinians? opponents in the civil war -- to enter the camps, supposedly to ?mop up? the last remaining ?terrorists.? While Israeli forces maintained their positions around the camps and on surrounding rooftops, the Phalangists proceeded to shoot camp residents dead -- including women and children. Despite reports of what was happening trickling out, for 48 hours nothing was done to stop the massacre, which involved the killing of at least 1,000 people in the camps.[1] (Both the official IDF estimate of 700-800 and the 3,500 long cited by journalists and others have been discredited.) There will never be an exact accounting of the carnage, because in addition to the roughly 1,000 people who were interred in mass graves by the Red Cross or in cemeteries by family members, an unknown number were buried by their Phalangist murderers.[2] The total death toll, however, is probably considerably more than 2,000, for after Israeli officers on loudspeakers ordered the shooting stopped in Sabra and Shatila, the Phalangists herded surviving men, women and children out of the camps and handed them over to the IDF. The Israelis transported them to a sports stadium, where, according to numerous survivors, the women and children were separated from the men, most of whom ?disappeared,? never to be seen again.[3] Phalangist militiamen were present at the stadium, and eyewitnesses saw many Palestinians taken away by them after being handed back over by the IDF. It is possible, therefore, that more people were killed on September 17-18, after even journalists on the scene thought the massacre was over, than during the sanguinary initial 48 hours. The Israeli government initially denied any role whatsoever in the massacre, but under intense international and domestic pressure it set up an investigating committee, the Kahan Commission, which found that Israeli forces were ?indirectly responsible? for the massacre and that Ariel Sharon was ?personally responsible? and should resign. The Kahan Commission report contains an oblique, one-line reference to hundreds of camp residents having vanished, but no hint of the direct Israeli role reported by survivors. Almost none of this context is present in the film, though some of the events are. It is barely clear why Israeli forces are in Lebanon in the first place. The young Israeli soldiers in the film, starting with the slouching, scowling hero -- Folman at 19 -- range from the disinterested to the confused to the naive. They?re young men with no ideological convictions or animosities, thrust into traumatic surroundings. This, of course, may not be too far from the truth: Nineteen-year old soldiers, generally, may well be little more than blithe kids with machine guns, going to war with their girlfriends on their minds and no sense of what lies ahead. By not giving any background on the war, Folman may wish to thrust his viewers into the conflict as unprepared as he was. But it?s hard to believe that there were no discussions, no opinions, in the Israeli army. And it wouldn?t have taken much to get across a bare-bones account of how the war started. Palestinians and Lebanese, meanwhile, are almost entirely absent from the film. There are distant, silent, undifferentiated images of them. They?re fighters, snipers, dead bodies, targets as seen from Israeli planes. They?re a child in the shadows of an orchard, holding a rocket grenade launcher. Again, this may be true to the experience of war, to the way in which the enemy remains physically and psychologically at a great remove. Folman has said that it wasn?t his place to depict the Palestinian point of view, telling an interviewer: ?Who am I to tell their stories? They have to tell their own stories.?[4] This attitude seems a little glib, considering that film production isn?t exactly booming in the Occupied Territories. One-sidedness and self-absorption may be inevitable in any nation?s reckoning with its military history. And the glamorization of the fighting may be inevitable too -- Francois Truffaut once famously remarked that it?s impossible to make an anti-war film because any film about a war can?t help visually celebrating it. In scenes that are very reminiscent of American films about the Vietnam war, montages of casual violence are set to thumping rock and roll music. The film?s general ?anti-war? message is partly undercut by this thrilling presentation of military might and youthful recklessness. Yet the fact remains that these scenes are visually and aurally thrilling, and the soundtrack is just one strong point of Waltz with Bashir. It?s a clever, original, mesmerizing film. It imaginatively melds a variety of genres: autobiography, documentary, animation. Folman uses the rotoscope technique pioneered by Richard Linklater in his films A Waking Life and Through a Scanner Darkly -- in which scenes are first filmed with real actors and then overlaid with drawings, preserving the realistic features and movements of the actors. The animation allows the story to move between different times and different realities; between the characters? inner and outer lives; between vision, dreams, flights of fancy and reconstructions of the war. There are many evocative and extremely memorable images, which will stay with viewers? long afterwards. But reviewers around the world have come together in applauding Waltz with Bashir not just for its aesthetic value but also for its supposed moral courage. Jason Harsin writes in Bright Lights Film Journal, ?Paradoxically, as horrific as those events were and are, there's something magnanimous about Folman?s determination to investigate them -- and his role in them -- from a dream ?suggestion? and a friend?s question.?[5] In the New York Times, A. O. Scott writes, ?Waltz with Bashir is a memoir, a history lesson, a combat picture, a piece of investigative journalism and an altogether amazing film.? He calls it a work of ?astonishing aesthetic integrity and searing moral power.?[6] A reviewer in Israel?s highbrow liberal daily, Ha?aretz, goes further: ?If I had to choose one Israeli film that represents Israeli cinema?this is the film I would choose.?[7] Waltz with Bashir is best appreciated as a rumination on the personal experience of war, on the way images and memories are erased or created in the mind. As such, it arguably shouldn?t be burdened with too much political deconstruction -- it?s art, and art is under no obligation to take clear-cut positions. Yet the film also aspires to be a documentary work, an intervention in the historical account of the 1982 Lebanon war. It has reaped the benefits -- critical and commercial -- of being a morally and intellectually ?serious? work, one that takes a war and a civilian massacre as its subject. The film won a slew of Israeli film awards and a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film; it was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars. Most recently, Folman took home the top film industry honor in France, the Cesar, again for Best Foreign Film. And although the film is banned in Lebanon (which has never signed a peace agreement with Israel), a small screening in Beirut by Umam (the Lebanese Association for Cultural and Artistic Exchange) was widely covered in the press. ?The subject of this film is a crucial moment in the history of Lebanon, for the history of Israel, for the history of the Palestinians and for the history of Palestinian life in Lebanon,? Umam founder Monika Borgmann told Ha?aretz.[8] The film deplores war and wishes to register its horror at the Sabra and Shatila massacres. The final scene, in which we are suddenly confronted with documentary footage of piles of dead bodies and of survivors screaming and cursing in front of TV cameras, is wrenching. Yet we almost all deplore war, and wars and other atrocities happen nonetheless. The fundamental question in Waltz with Bashir is that of collective and individual responsibility. And to this question the film never gives a satisfying answer. Ariel Sharon?s role is touched upon, but the film ultimately indicts the IDF less forcefully than the Kahan Commission did 25 years ago. One character may compare the Palestinians emerging from Sabra and Shatila to Jews coming out of the Warsaw Ghetto, and state: ?We were the Nazis.? That is not the film?s final message. Ari sums the situation up by saying (in the face of troubling evidence): ?The penny never dropped. We never realized they were carrying out a genocide.? (Folman has also maintained in interviews that he and his fellow soldiers ?had no clue what was going on: We didn?t know there was a massacre.?[9]) ?They? are the Phalangists, whose brutality is depicted, justly, as horrifying, but also as a counterpoint to the ethically anguished position of the Israeli onlookers. Yet as the title of the film should clearly suggest, the Israelis were the Phalangists? willing partners in this deadly pas de deux. Arguably, they led the dance. In Waltz with Bashir, the challenge posed by the fierce opening scene is left unanswered. The unvoiced accusation of the growling dogs is paralleled, at the end, by the collective scream of Palestinian women who emerge from the camps. But as Naira Antoun has pointed out in one of the few critical reviews of the film, published by the Electronic Intifada website,[10] the non-Israeli victims are never given a voice: They snarl and they wail, but they do not speak. Israelis are the only subjects: They interrogate themselves, confront themselves and ultimately congratulate themselves for their moral courage in doing so. Folman is the child of Holocaust survivors and his psychiatrist friend tells him that his concern with Sabra and Shatila is really about ?those other camps.? Marked by the victimization of his parents, he must confront the possibility that he has been a victimizer in his turn. But this is an entirely inward, therapeutic journey -- what he never confronts are the victims themselves. The film is, in Antoun?s worlds, ?a story of Israeli self-discovery and redemption,? and ?an act not of limited self-reflection but self-justification.? Or, as Tom Segev puts it, less gently, in Ha?aretz, ?The film Waltz with Bashir belongs to the kvetch genre: ?Oy, how traumatic that massacre in Sabra and Chatila was for us.??[11] When asked in an interview whether his film belongs to the ?shooting and crying? genre, Folman insisted, ?When you watch this film, you have no doubt who the victims are.? It?s ?impossible,? he continued, to sympathize with the Israeli soldiers. I beg to differ, as I think would most viewers of the film -- one is most definitely led to sympathize with the soldiers, young men who when stranded think of their mothers, who are appalled by wounded horses, who are never shown engaging in any sort of up-close brutality. There is a final irony. Waltz with Bashir holds a redemptive message, celebrating the necessity and the ability to confront one?s past. Yet the film and its reception exemplify the strictly enforced boundaries of any debate on Israel?s past and present transgressions. That many are made nervous by the idea of even discussing this chapter in Israel?s military past is made evident by the website of the Foundation for Jewish Culture, which partly funded the film. The Foundation has made available a detailed ?Viewer?s Guide,? with frequently asked questions, links to articles on the issue and suggestions for how to lead discussions of the film after screenings. Among the advice offered is: ?The film is neither for nor against Israel. It portrays Israelis in neither a good nor a bad light. The film demands an acknowledgment that life in modern Israel is far, far more complicated than ?good or bad.? There may be a temptation to treat the film as a commentary on current events in Gaza. We urge Jewish organizations not be sidetracked into a political battle that would strip art of its multi-valency. Rather, we hope to address the film in all its complexity and take the opportunity it offers to share the mixed emotions and ideas it sets flying.?[12] This desire to avoid moral judgments and to emphasize the film?s universal, humanistic message is paralleled by the director?s own remarks. Upon winning the Golden Globe in January, as Israel was bombing Gaza?s captive civilian population, his only comment was: ?My film is anti-war, and therefore, sadly, will always be relevant.? In an interview with the International Herald Tribune, Folman also said that his film ?doesn?t deal with the other side, or what we do or not do to them. The basic statement is: War is useless. But there?s nothing you haven?t seen before or that we didn?t know: Sharon lost his job because of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila.?[13] As a matter of fact, Sharon was forced, after much resistance, to become a minister without portfolio, and as we all know his role in the massacre didn?t impede his eventual rise in Israeli politics. But it?s not just that the outrage over Sabra and Shatila never led the Israeli military political establishment to reexamine its most bellicose proclivities. It?s startling to see how careful almost every reviewer of Waltz with Bashir has been to avoid linking the film with the massive Israeli bombing of Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009, which killed well upwards of 1,300 people, mostly civilians. There is, as Antoun says, something ?perverse? in this disconnect. The film is applauded for its courage in confronting a complicity that has long been part of the historical record. This confrontation ends up leading to redemption much more than to condemnation. And hardly anyone suggests that Israel?s current military operations should also be bravely examined. I suppose that we will have to wait for another award-winning film, a quarter-century from now, to do that. [1] The researcher Mahmoud Kallam, a son of the camps, puts the number at just over 1,000. Of these, Kallam says, just over half were Palestinians; the remainder were Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians and others living in the camps, as do many working poor of non-Palestinian nationality today. Mahmoud Kallam, Sabra wa Shatila, dhakirat al-damm (Beirut: Beisan Press, 2003). [2] For details, see the legal document prepared for the ill-fated war crimes case against ex-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Belgian courts: http://www.indictsharon.net/cmptENft.pdf . For more on that case, see Laurie King-Irani, ?Does International Justice Have a Local Address? Lessons from the Belgian Experiment,? Middle East Report 229 (Winter 2003). [3] See Julie Flint, ?Vanished Victims of Israelis Return to Accuse Sharon,? Observer, November 25, 2001; and Robert Fisk, ?Sabra and Shatila Massacres: After 19 Years, the Truth at Last?? Counterpunch, November 28, 2001. [4] Jonathan Freedland, ?Lest We Forget,? Guardian, October 25, 2008. [5] Jason Harsin, ?The Responsible Dream,? Bright Lights Film Journal 63 (February 2009). [6] A. O. Scott, ?Inside a Veteran?s Nightmare,? New York Times, December 26, 2008. [7] Quoted in Hamida Ghafour, ?In Search of a Brutal Truth,? The National (Abu Dhabi), January 24, 2009. [8] Ha?aretz, January 21, 2009. [9] Freedland, op cit. [10] Naira Antoun, ?Film Review: Waltz with Bashir,? Electronic Intifada, February 19, 2009. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10322.shtml [11] Tom Segev, ?Waltz with History,? Ha?aretz, February 5, 2009. [12] The Viewer?s Guide is accessible online at http://www.jewishculture.org/attachments/waltz/waltz_guide_packet.pdf . [13] Deborah Solomon, ?The Peacemaker,? New York Times Magazine, January 6, 2009. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Mar 7 13:53:20 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 12:53:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Anyone expecting great things from the rise of Barack Obama 'will be sadly disappointed' -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti In-Reply-To: <1975955286.534821236458967469.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <133368391.535231236459200605.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Globe and Mail March 7, 2009 THE FOCUS INTERVIEW: LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI, ICONOCLAST 'He's no revolutionary. Obama is a centrist' Half a century after the fact, one of the Beat movement's few surviving stalwarts is turning 90 - and still in no mood to join the herd. For example, anyone expecting great things from the rise of Barack Obama 'will be sadly disappointed,' he tells Calvin White CALVIN WHITE SAN FRANCISCO -- Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were the Beat Generation's most famous figures, but without the supportive and stabilizing intellect of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, it wouldn't have been nearly as influential as a literary movement. A D-Day veteran (he commanded a vessel that guarded the invasion against submarines) with a PhD from the Sorbonne, he is a painter, a writer of plays, novels and poetry, and a translator of works from French and Italian. In 1998, he became San Francisco's first poet laureate. As well, he has helped other artists find an audience since 1953, when he co-founded City Lights, the local bookstore and publishing house that vaulted to fame when it put out the poetic (to some, obscene) Ginsberg opus, Howl. Today, of course, Mr. Gins- berg and Mr. Kerouac are long gone, but the acerbic wit and incisive observations of Mr. Ferlinghetti are alive and well. The upper windows of City Lights are plastered with hand-painted signs that declare: "Bring back the New Deal", "Single payer health care for all" and "U.S. out of Iraq now." Print Edition - Section Front Section F Front Enlarge Image The Globe and Mail The owner is about to turn 90, but the Beat goes on. I got a copy of A Coney Island of The Mind at a second-hand bookstore and was startled to see how prescient your poems were. It's remarkable how something 50 years old could be right on the money for today. Yeah, there's this little poem in there called And The Arabs Ask Horrible Questions [laughs]. You've been through the Vietnam era, D-Day before that, communism falling. You've been through 9/11 and now Iraq. Where does your direction come from, the meaning in your life? I didn't go through it. I was out here on the sidelines. But you were involved. You were an activist. Your store today is an activist statement. Did you see the signs in the windows? They say San Francisco is supposed to be the "Left Coast," but you don't see any political signs in any of the windows. I think ours is the only one. Like, "Indict and jail Bush and Cheney." ... I hope they don't let them get away with it, just say, "Let the past be bygones," that they have more important stuff to do .... let them get away with breaking international law and the U.S. Constitution and a few other things. More philosophically, what sense of meaning or purpose has directed your life? I don't know. This is like a graduate seminar. ... That's kind of impossible to answer. I'm trying to find out myself. ... No, seriously I'm more interested in my own creative work than being a social or political leader. Politics is a drag. It's a big bore. I write political poems or paint political paintings only when there's no alternative, when it has to be done. Though I'd rather not. For one thing, if you write a political poem, you more or less condemn yourself to obscurity in a few years because the issue goes away. People don't even remember what the issue was and they read the poem and it doesn't mean anything to them. Quite often. Do you think that's happened with your poems? Yeah. I mean, my poem A Tentative Description of a Dinner To Impeach President Eisenhower, people wouldn't get it today. They say, "Well, he was a good guy - he looks like an angel compared to Bush." You have a new President. Do you have hopes for him? You know, just because he is black, everyone thought he was a revolutionary. He's no revolutionary. Obama is a centrist. And as far as any on the left who thought he was a revolutionary, I think the air is going out of his revolutionary balloon daily. If there were three things you could have him do ... Well, like some of the signs I have in the window. The direction he's already going wrong on is the total support of Israel and having appointed Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State. This is more of the same. This isn't change. He said long ago during the campaign, you had to change the set of mind about things like war. Well, with Hillary Clinton, you're getting the old set of mind. One of the things Obama has done, he's captured the interest of the young. I'm afraid a lot of the young who think he is a revolutionary will be sadly disappointed. ... I was in France this spring and summer and there were newspapers like our own Life magazine, complete issues devoted to Obama. On the covers they had "Obamamania" and "Revolution Obama." I was at a literary conference and they had one after another speaker praising Obama, so I had to get up and say, "Well, I'm from the Left Coast and we have a different view of Obama and, if you notice, the word revolution is never used by the Obama campaign, and in fact, no matter how many bad things the government does, the American people do not want to be disturbed in their pursuit of happiness. They're not going to have a revolution." The young of the Sixties gave it a shot. Well, the cultural revolution happened. The cultural revolution was ingested into middle-class mores, into the lifestyle of the middle class, but the political revolution never happened. It almost happened in France, came much closer to happening. They almost took over the government in France in 1968. So, is there hope for the future? I don't know. It's pretty dim these days. Well, there's some hope with Obama. He's going to be a centrist and he might get some stuff done. Obama should try to rewrite the law on corporations. It really needs to be done. They have too much power over the people. Also, we need to have elections by popular vote; in other words, abolish the Electoral College. The Electoral College was set up by the founders of the United States to protect the interests of the landowning class. ... If you want true democracy, we need to have elections by popular vote. And it's possible that, if Obama gets two terms, some time in the second term, we might be able to change things like that. FDR was not at all radical when he first took office. He actually said to people who wanted radical change, "Well, make me do it." I hope that's what happens with Obama, that they'll make him do it. It depends on the youth to do it though. The whole new generation's got to do that. Where do you think the young are going? Can they be engaged? Well, that remains to be seen. If the blog generation that was turned on to Obama are going to stick to it and really be activists in his favour, or whether they're just going to retreat into their cubbyholes with their computers ... That's why Obama won, on account of the blog generation. So many of your comrades, kindred spirits, have passed on and you're still here. What is it like when you watch them leave? Well, some I miss more than others. Some I don't miss at all. I never had much empathy with William Burroughs. And I could have published Naked Lunch. I had an early version of the manuscript ... before William Burroughs had written anything else, so we had no idea at City Lights that he would develop into a great writer with his other books. But Naked Lunch itself was a junkie vision of existence, junkie consciousness. And generally junkie consciousness was a death consciousness. I didn't want to publish a book with that consciousness. Buddhism has been directly connected to Ginsberg, but in some of your poems you refer to Buddhist terminology. What is your view of death? I prefer the Buddhist idea of reincarnation. It's only an idea. It can't be proved. I much prefer that to Christian ideology because as far as Christianity goes, there's lots of fairy tales in the world. There's Grimm's fairy tales, Cinderella and then there's the Bible, among others. If you want to believe in myth, in that fairy tale, okay, but I think the Buddhist concept is much more profound. Do you think about death much? Well, no use thinking about it. You can't do anything. Do you fear it at all? I don't know. Naturally you fear the unknown. A friend of mine just died in his sleep, which is the way to go. What are your thoughts on God? Who? [laughs] Let me go back to your political poems. I haven't found your poems out of date at all. You're almost 90 and you've been through all these different stages and it's all still appropriate. Remember the Sixties? There was a popular slogan in the hippie consciousness: Be here now. In fact, it was the name of a book by Baba Ram Dass. And now with the computer and with e-mail and with fax and cellphones and TV, it's "be somewhere else." You go to a restaurant, see a couple dining and they're both on their cellphones, so they're being somewhere else now - the opposite of the Sixties. Getting back to hope, you've been through all these eras ... What, errors? [laughs] Yes, I've been through all these different errors. That reminds me: I was on the stage with Allen Ginsberg in the [1967] Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park and we're sitting there looking out at 10,000 people and the sun is setting and there's a parachutist coming down. ... Timothy Leary is on the stage and Gary Snyder, and Allen turns to me and he whispers, "What if we're all wrong?" Calvin White is a poet and counsellor in Salmon Arm, B.C. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Mar 7 13:56:36 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 12:56:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Nader: How Credit Unions Survived the Crash In-Reply-To: <2113348622.381801236378123890.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <259464986.535891236459396166.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.counterpunch.org/nader02232009.html CounterPunch February 23, 2009 The Cooperative Model How Credit Unions Survived the Crash By RALPH NADER While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated glacier day by day, the nation's credit unions are a relative island of calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism. Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer people "teaser rates" to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford. Ninety one percent of the 8,000 credit unions are reporting greater overall growth in mortgage lending than any other kinds of consumer loans they are extending. They are federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for up to $250,000 per account, such as the FDIC does for depositors in commercial banks. They are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to increase stock values and the value of the bosses' stock options as do the commercial banks. Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are responsible to their owner-members who are their customers. There are even some special low-income credit unions, though not nearly enough to stimulate economic activities in these communities and to provide "banking" services in areas where poor people can't afford or are not provided services by commercial banks. According to Mike Schenk, an economist with the Credit Union National Association, there is another reason why credit unions avoided the mortgage debacle that is consuming the big banks. Credit Unions, Schenk says, are "portfolio lenders. That means they hold in their portfolios most of the loans they originate instead of selling them to investors, so they care about the financial performance of those loans." Mr. Schenk allowed that with the deepening recession, credit unions are not making as much surplus and "their asset quality has deteriorated a bit. But that's the beauty of the credit union model. Credit unions can live with those conditions without suffering dire consequences," he asserted. His use of the word "model" is instructive. In recent decades, credit unions sometimes leaned toward commercial bank practices instead of strict cooperative principles. They developed a penchant for mergers into larger and larger credit unions. Some even toyed with converting out of the cooperative model into the shareholder model the way insurance and bank mutuals have done. The cooperative model, whether in finance, food, housing or any other sector of the economy, does best when the owner-cooperators are active in the general operations and directions of their co-op. Passive owners allow managers to stray or contemplate straying from cooperative practices. The one area that is now spelling some trouble for retail cooperatives comes from the so-called "corporate credit unions", a terrible nomenclature, which were established to provide liquidity for the retail credit unions. These large wholesale credit unions are not exactly infused with the cooperative philosophy. Some of them gravitate toward the corporate banking model. They invested in those risky mortgage securities with the money from the retail credit unions. These "toxic assets" have fallen $14 billion among the 28 corporate credit unions involved. So the National Credit Union Administration is expanding its lending programs to these corporate credit unions to a maximum capacity of $41.5 billion. NCUA also wants to have retail credit unions qualified for the TARP rescue program just to provide a level playing field with the commercial banks. Becoming more like investment banks the wholesale credit unions wanted to attract, with ever higher riskier yields, more of the retail credit union deposits. This set the stage for the one major blemish of imprudence on the credit union subeconomy. There are very contemporary lessons to be learned from the successes of the credit union model such as being responsive to consumer loan needs and down to earth with their portfolios. Yet in all the massive media coverage of the Wall Street barons and their lethal financial escapades, crimes and frauds, little is being written about how the regulation, philosophy and behavior of the credit unions largely escaped this catastrophe. There is, moreover, a lesson for retail credit unions. Beware and avoid the seepage or supremacy of the corporate financial model which, in its present degraded overly complex and abstract form, has become what one prosecutor called "lying, cheating and stealing" in fancy clothing. Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and three-time presidential candidate. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Mar 7 13:57:16 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 12:57:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Iran, the Jews and Germany In-Reply-To: <491739892.337971236372554502.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <316839263.535981236459436518.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/opinion/02cohen.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=Roger%20Cohen&st=cse New York Times March 2, 2009 Op-Ed Columnist Iran, the Jews and Germany By Roger Cohen So a Jerusalem Post article says that I?m ?hardly the first American to be misled by the existence of synagogues in totalitarian countries.? The Atlantic Monthly?s Jeffrey Goldberg finds me ?particularly credulous,? taken in by the Iranian hospitality and friendliness that ?are the hallmarks of most Muslim societies.? (Thanks for that info, Jeffrey.) A conservative Web site called American Thinker, which tries to prove its name is an oxymoron, believes I would have been fooled by the Nazis? sham at the Theresienstadt camp. The indignation stems from my recent column on Iranian Jews, which said that the 25,000-strong community worships in relative tranquillity; that Persian Jews have fared better than Arab Jews; that hostility toward Jews in Iran has on occasion led to trumped-up charges against them; and that those enamored of the ?Mad Mullah? caricature of Iran regard any compromise with it as a rerun of Munich 1938. This last point found confirmation in outraged correspondence from several American Jews unable to resist some analogy between Iran and Nazi Germany. I was based in Berlin for three years; Germany?s confrontation with the Holocaust inhabited me. Let?s be clear: Iran?s Islamic Republic is no Third Reich redux. Nor is it a totalitarian state. Munich allowed Hitler?s annexation of the Sudetenland. Iran has not waged an expansionary war in more than two centuries. Totalitarian regimes require the complete subservience of the individual to the state and tolerate only one party to which all institutions are subordinated. Iran is an un-free society with a keen, intermittently brutal apparatus of repression, but it?s far from meeting these criteria. Significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist. Anything but mad, the mullahs have proved malleable. Most of Iran?s population is under 30; it?s an Internet-connected generation. Access to satellite television is widespread. The BBC?s new Farsi service is all the rage. Abdullah Momeni, a student opponent of the regime, told me, ?The Internet is very important to us; in fact, it is of infinite importance.? Iranians are not cut off, like Cubans or North Koreans. The June presidential election pitting the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, against Mohammad Khatami (a former president who once spoke in a synagogue) will be a genuine contest as compared with the charades that pass for elections in many Arab states. No fire has burned the Majlis, or parliament, down. If you?re thinking trains-on-time Fascist efficiency, think again. Tehran?s new telecommunications tower took 20 years to build. I was told its restaurant would open ?soon.? So, it is said, will the Bushehr nuclear power plant, a project in the works for a mere 30 years. A Persian Chernobyl is more likely than some Middle Eastern nuclear Armageddon, if that?s any comfort. For all the morality police inspecting whether women are wearing boots outside their pants (the latest no-no on the dress front) and the regime zealots of the Basiji militia, the air you breathe in Iran is not suffocating. Its streets at dusk hum with life ? not a monochrome male-only form of it, or one inhabited by fear ? but the vibrancy of a changing, highly educated society. This is the Iran of subtle shades that the country?s Jews inhabit. Life is more difficult for them than for Muslims, but to suggest they inhabit a totalitarian hell is self-serving nonsense. One Iranian exile, no lover of the Islamic Republic, wrote to me saying that my account of Iran?s Jews had brought ?tears to my eyes? because ?you are saying what many of us would like to hear.? Far from the cradle of Middle Eastern Islamist zealotry, she suggested, ?Iran ? the supposed enemy ? is the one society that has gone through its extremist fervor and is coming out the other end. It is relatively stable and socially dynamic. As my father, who continues to live there, says, ?It is the least undemocratic country in the region outside Israel.? ? This notion of a ?post-fervor? Iran is significant. The compromises being painfully fought out between Islam and democracy in Tehran are of seminal importance. They belie the notion of a fanatical power; they explain Jewish life. That does not mean fanaticism does not exist or that terrible crimes have not been committed, like the Iran-backed bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires 15 years ago. But the equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic. Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel over-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures. I return to this subject because behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one ? the U.S. propensity to fixate on and demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens, with a sometimes disastrous chain of results. It?s worth recalling that hateful, ultranationalist rhetoric is no Iranian preserve. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel?s race-baiting anti-Arab firebrand, may find a place in a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. He should not. Nor should racist demagoguery ? wherever ? prompt facile allusions to the murderous Nazi master of it. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Mar 7 13:57:44 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 12:57:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Emphasis on Afghanistan ignores burgeoning crisis in Pakistan In-Reply-To: <1824727943.315031236369502986.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1702290300.536041236459464280.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/concoughlin/4945286/If-we-win-the-war-in-Afghanistan-we-could-lose-a-battle-in-Pakistan.html Daily Telegraph 5 March 2009 If we win the war in Afghanistan, we could lose a battle in Pakistan The Taliban now have more support from their restless neighbours than ever before Con Coughlin If you think Afghanistan is a mess, just look across the border to Pakistan. It is a country teetering on the brink of total collapse. For much of the past eight years, since Central Asia became the epicentre of the global campaign against Islamist-inspired terrorism, the coalition's attention has focused on Afghanistan. Apart from being the launch-pad of the original al-Qaeda attacks, the chaotic security situation there and lack of effective government made it a fertile breeding ground for Islamist-minded malcontents. Pakistan, by contrast, has been viewed as a necessary, but unreliable, partner in the West's campaign to isolate and disrupt the operational effectiveness of Islamist terror groups. Washington may have spent billions of dollars propping up, firstly, the military dictatorship of President Pervez Musharraf, and, now, the democratically-elected government of President Asif Ali Zardari, but it has shown little enthusiasm for taking much notice of Islamabad's own concerns. When Mr Musharraf cautioned Washington that pushing too hard against Pakistan's home-grown Islamic militants could make an explosive situation even worse, the Americans simply withdrew their support, with the result that Mr Musharraf was ousted from power. Mr Zardari, who was elected president following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, his wife, and Washington's most favoured Pakistani politician, has fared little better. Mr Zardari's government has constantly warned Washington and its allies of the dangers of acting too aggressively against Taliban strongholds in the lawless tribal areas of the North-West Frontier. But the Americans have simply continued with their surgical strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda targets. As a result, they have alienated vast swathes of the Pakistani population ? those who were previously non-committal about their government's collusion in Washington's war on terror. The US missile attacks, launched by remotely-piloted Predator drones, successfully took out several key al-Qaeda figures, such as Abu Khabab al-Masri, who oversaw the terror group's quest for chemical and biological agents, and Abu Laith al-Libi, the number three in al-Qaeda's hierarchy. But they also killed a number of innocent civilians. It may have been inadvertent, but it has increased support for the Taliban and its allies among ordinary Pakistanis. As this week's attacks against the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team graphically illustrated, the main consequence of the West's heavy-handed treatment of Pakistan has been to severely weaken Islamabad's control over large parts of the country. Irrespective of which of Pakistan's numerous Islamist groups was responsible for the carefully-executed assault on the Sri Lankans, it is a fair bet that they will be based in the vast, ungoverned tribal regions that straddle the mountainous border with Afghanistan. In the six decades since Pakistan's creation, Islamabad has rarely shown much interest in controlling the Federally Administered Tribal Areas ? an arrangement that has suited the fiercely independent Pashtun tribesmen that dominate the region. But their mounting anger at Islamabad's support for the coalition's military intervention has acted to the Taliban's advantage, which in turn has resulted in Islamabad being obliged to surrender the Swat valley. Unlike the tribal areas, the Swat valley is a settled part of Pakistan proper. Islambad's decision last month to relinquish control of the region to the Taliban, in return for a ceasefire is arguably the most serious abrogation of national sovereignty in the country's history. The Taliban has wasted no time in implementing the uncompromising form of Islamic government that terrorised Afghanistan in the years preceeding September 11. This week, it was announced that girls living in the Swat valley would have to wear veils covering their faces if they wanted to attend local schools. Add the loss of control of the Swat valley to the continuing agitation in neighbouring Baluchistan for independence from Islamabad and you can see why many coalition officials are now openly talking about the possibility of Pakistan becoming a failed state, even though this claim is vigorously contested by Pakistani officials. Pakistan is a country in crisis, which is not good news for all those coalition forces risking their lives across the border in neighbouring Afghanistan. The main thrust of the coalition campaign is still to bring security and stability to Afghanistan. But that could prove impossible if all they achieve is the death of Pakistan as we know it. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Mar 7 13:59:16 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 12:59:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] =?utf-8?q?What_Iran=E2=80=99s_Jews_Say?= In-Reply-To: <140656841.81271236300431731.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1739692898.536221236459556447.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/opinion/23cohen.html?th&emc=th New York Times February 23, 2009 Op-Ed Columnist What Iran?s Jews Say The reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran than all the inflammatory rhetoric... I?m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran. By Roger Cohen Esfahan, Iran At Palestine Square, opposite a mosque called Al-Aqsa, is a synagogue where Jews of this ancient city gather at dawn. Over the entrance is a banner saying: ?Congratulations on the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution from the Jewish community of Esfahan.? The Jews of Iran remove their shoes, wind leather straps around their arms to attach phylacteries and take their places. Soon the sinuous murmur of Hebrew prayer courses through the cluttered synagogue with its lovely rugs and unhappy plants. Soleiman Sedighpoor, an antiques dealer with a store full of treasures, leads the service from a podium under a chandelier. I?d visited the bright-eyed Sedighpoor, 61, the previous day at his dusty little shop. He?d sold me, with some reluctance, a bracelet of mother-of-pearl adorned with Persian miniatures. ?The father buys, the son sells,? he muttered, before inviting me to the service. Accepting, I inquired how he felt about the chants of ?Death to Israel? ? ?Marg bar Esraeel? ? that punctuate life in Iran. ?Let them say ?Death to Israel,? ? he said. ?I?ve been in this store 43 years and never had a problem. I?ve visited my relatives in Israel, but when I see something like the attack on Gaza, I demonstrate, too, as an Iranian.? The Middle East is an uncomfortable neighborhood for minorities, people whose very existence rebukes warring labels of religious and national identity. Yet perhaps 25,000 Jews live on in Iran, the largest such community, along with Turkey?s, in the Muslim Middle East. There are more than a dozen synagogues in Tehran; here in Esfahan a handful caters to about 1,200 Jews, descendants of an almost 3,000-year-old community. Over the decades since Israel?s creation in 1948, and the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the number of Iranian Jews has dwindled from about 100,000. But the exodus has been far less complete than from Arab countries, where some 800,000 Jews resided when modern Israel came into being. In Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Iraq ? countries where more than 485,000 Jews lived before 1948 ? fewer than 2,000 remain. The Arab Jew has perished. The Persian Jew has fared better. Of course, Israel?s unfinished cycle of wars has been with Arabs, not Persians, a fact that explains some of the discrepancy. Still a mystery hovers over Iran?s Jews. It?s important to decide what?s more significant: the annihilationist anti-Israel ranting, the Holocaust denial and other Iranian provocations ? or the fact of a Jewish community living, working and worshipping in relative tranquillity. Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran ? its sophistication and culture ? than all the inflammatory rhetoric. That may be because I?m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran. Or perhaps I was impressed that the fury over Gaza, trumpeted on posters and Iranian TV, never spilled over into insults or violence toward Jews. Or perhaps it?s because I?m convinced the ?Mad Mullah? caricature of Iran and likening of any compromise with it to Munich 1938 ? a position popular in some American Jewish circles ? is misleading and dangerous. I know, if many Jews left Iran, it was for a reason. Hostility exists. The trumped-up charges of spying for Israel against a group of Shiraz Jews in 1999 showed the regime at its worst. Jews elect one representative to Parliament, but can vote for a Muslim if they prefer. A Muslim, however, cannot vote for a Jew. Among minorities, the Bahai ? seven of whom were arrested recently on charges of spying for Israel ? have suffered brutally harsh treatment. I asked Morris Motamed, once the Jewish member of the Majlis, if he felt he was used, an Iranian quisling. ?I don?t,? he replied. ?In fact I feel deep tolerance here toward Jews.? He said ?Death to Israel? chants bother him, but went on to criticize the ?double standards? that allow Israel, Pakistan and India to have a nuclear bomb, but not Iran. Double standards don?t work anymore; the Middle East has become too sophisticated. One way to look at Iran?s scurrilous anti-Israel tirades is as a provocation to focus people on Israel?s bomb, its 41-year occupation of the West Bank, its Hamas denial, its repetitive use of overwhelming force. Iranian language can be vile, but any Middle East peace ? and engagement with Tehran ? will have to take account of these points. Green Zoneism ? the basing of Middle Eastern policy on the construction of imaginary worlds ? has led nowhere. Realism about Iran should take account of Esfehan?s ecumenical Palestine Square. At the synagogue, Benhur Shemian, 22, told me Gaza showed Israel?s government was ?criminal,? but still he hoped for peace. At the Al-Aqsa mosque, Monteza Foroughi, 72, pointed to the synagogue and said: ?They have their prophet; we have ours. And that?s fine.? From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Mar 7 13:59:36 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 12:59:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Leo Panitich on the Financial Crisis and American Power In-Reply-To: <1118970964.35251236294248675.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <135786238.536281236459576640.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet186.html#continue The B u l l e t [Ontario] Socialist Project ? E-Bulletin No. 186 February 16, 2009 The Financial Crisis and American Power: An Interview with Leo Panitch What is your assessment of the relationship between this serious financial crisis emerging foremost in the U.S. and American power and economic decline? I don't think that U.S. hegemony has waned, and I don't think it's about to wane in the very near future, despite the current financial crisis. In my view, the better term for the U.S. role in the world is Empire. That captures in my mind the way in which the American state plays a role of coordination and oversight and crisis-managing for global capitalism, in the absence of a global state. It managed to do that in my hemisphere, on this side of the Atlantic, by penetrating other, independent states, in South America and North America, before the Second World War. Its capital penetrated those states and encouraged the restructuring of those states in a way that was consistent with fostering trade and the protection of the property rights of U.S. capitalists, or in fact of foreign capitalists in general. That became generalised after the Second World War, not so much with the Third World as with Europe and Japan, which became increasingly Canadianised. European and Japanese capital, in different ways, were penetrated by American capitalists. Conditions for that were established politically. That penetration was very deep, and it was done in collaboration with the ruling classes of those countries. This was imperialism by invitation. The ruling classes saw the American state as the safest guarantor of capital's rights, especially in the countries where the labour movement was strong. From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Mar 7 14:05:33 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 13:05:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Interview with former MP Tony Benn: How the world can stop Israeli crimes In-Reply-To: <49B1D23F.9030906@edcorrigan.ca> Message-ID: <232150076.536811236459933427.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.presstv.ir/Detail.aspx?id=82795§ionid=3510302 18 January 2009 How the world can stop Israeli crimes by Roshan Muhammad Salih, Press TV, London The following is an exclusive Press TV interview with Tony Benn -- British socialist, former Labour MP and Cabinet Minister -- on the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip: Press TV: Tony Benn, you just gave a speech a few minute ago. Could you summarize what you said, and what your message is to Israel? Benn: What is happening in Gaza is a crime against humanity. It is a moral issue and we are all morally responsible now, wherever we live, to help the people of Gaza. I am suggesting that there is something that we could do, for example, there is a British naval base in Cyprus. We should use Royal Navy warships to escort the ship carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza. We should use the Royal Air Force to fly into Gaza doctors, medical supplies, and also journalists, whom Israel keeps out. We should tell the Israeli airlines EL Al that until they abide by the United Nations' decisions, no Israeli aircraft would be allowed to fly into any British airport. We should tell the British ambassador to withdraw from Israel, and the Israeli ambassador to withdraw from here. We should recognize that Palestine is a state. We should also talk to Hamas ourselves, and we should get better, fairer coverage from media in Britain, that does not cover our demonstrations but at least through the help of Press TV what we are saying in Britain today can get around the world. Press TV: Yes. What you are enumerating are practical solutions, practical things that the UK government could do. They have been accused of not taking these practical steps. They might have condemned what is going on, they might have called for a ceasefire, but some people are saying those are words, they are not concrete actions. Benn: I agree. That's why I came up with some "practical" suggestions; what any human being would do. If children, women, civilians are dying under a murderous air attack our responsibility is to react in every way we can, wherever we live. And I think the British government should take this up and deal with it in a practical way. Press TV: And the British government has been trying very hard to say that its response to the crisis in Gaza has been different from its response to the crisis in Lebanon a few years ago, when it didn't call for an immediate ceasefire. And they are saying that they are trying to get the message across that maybe young Muslims in this country might be getting radicalized by seeing those images. Do you think that is a fair point, that we should cut the British government a bit of slack, that they are doing their best? Benn: Well, if they do think differently from the past, I welcome that, but it is not enough. The fact is they could do more. And public opinion in Britain has changed dramatically. I think the support for Palestinians now in Britain is on a huge scale as you can see from these big demonstrations. But I am not insisting on criticizing anyone, I just want action now to prevent the slaughter from going on. Press TV: The public opinion does seem to be behind the Palestinians here in the UK. These massive demonstrations, they are huge in terms of numbers. Are they achieving anything? I mean Israel seems to be ignoring international opinion. Does it care about what is going on in here? Benn: Well South African whites ignored the demonstrations about the apartheid and the apartheid ended. I mean the truth is, well in 2003, we had a million and half against the Iraq war. And who would have imagined then that the next president of the United States, Barack Obama, would be a man who voted against the Iraq war. Never underestimate the power of public opinion and demonstrations; never underestimate it. Press TV: What do you make of the diplomatic efforts currently going on in Egypt, and elsewhere, to put an end to this conflict? Benn: Well, I have not seen the outcome, but nothing can be done to assist the Israelis in their determination to destroy Hamas, the alleged government of Palestine. So they have got to be very careful. But the fact is that the slaughter must be stopped, Palestine must be recognized, and Hamas must be seen as the agent of the Palestinian people. And I think that is what will happen. The Israelis, however many weapons they have, are going to lose this war. And I think the greatest enemy of the Jewish people is the Israeli government itself. ZHD/HGH/AA From shniad at sfu.ca Wed Mar 4 13:11:43 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 12:11:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] PLEASE GIVE........ In-Reply-To: <495A61A4-BC60-4B22-BFBE-706CE5BB7E30@telus.net> Message-ID: <2046662237.3704251236197503551.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Mar 7 13:56:19 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 12:56:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] Free Trade for Labor - A Zero-Sum Game for Working People In-Reply-To: <1720097139.420841236383181897.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <472919347.535781236459379610.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> From shniad at sfu.ca Sat Mar 7 14:54:10 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 13:54:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [R-G] U.S. posts worst rate of job loss since 1945 In-Reply-To: <524151153.541161236462729359.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <9174695.541361236462850391.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Globe and Mail Report on Business March 6, 2009 U.S. posts worst rate of job loss since 1945 PAUL WALDIE Unemployment in the United States has reached a 26-year high and the recession is claiming jobs at a pace not seen since 1945, with no end in sight. A total of 651,000 jobs were lost last month in the U.S. and the unemployment rate increased from 7.6 per cent to 8.1 per cent, the highest level since December, 1983, according to figures released Friday by the Labour Department. Canada's unemployment rate is 7.2 per cent. The U.S. job numbers were worse than many analysts expected, and came at the end of a week of steep stock-market losses in Canada and the U.S. that took investors to multiyear lows. ?The U.S. economy is in freefall,? said Nigel Gault, an economist at IHS Global Insight. ?This recession is becoming in some ways deeper than anything we've seen since the Great Depression.? U.S. unemplyment has soared in the recession. The net loss of 651,000 jobs in February came after even deeper payroll reductions in the prior two months, according to revised figures. The U.S. economy lost 681,000 jobs in December and another 655,000 in January. The report contained more bad news about job losses in the previous two months. Figures for both months were revised upward to 655,000 job cuts in away from building war machines. About 12.5-million Americans are now out of work, and the number of unemployed increased by five million in the past 12 months. Some economists expect the pace of job cuts to continue for several more months, pushing the unemployment rate above 10 per cent, a rate that only a few months ago seemed a worst-case scenario. U.S. President Barack Obama, who has proposed a $787-billion (U.S.) stimulus plan, called the job figures ?astounding.? ?This recovery plan won't turn our economy around or solve every problem,? Mr. Obama said Friday. ?All of this takes time and it will take patience.? Kelly Peach has seen the breadth of the job losses firsthand. She works at the St. Patrick Center in downtown St. Louis, which has long offered services to homeless people, drug addicts and the impoverished. Last month the centre started helping a new group ? unemployed professionals. The non-profit organization holds seminars every Tuesday on r?sum? writing, interview techniques and networking for out-of-work white-collar workers. About 200 people turn out each week. ?This is a little bit of a different audience for us,? said Ms. Peach, the centre's communications director. ?But it's serving a need.? Maybe we're all one paycheque away from being homeless.? White-collar jobs have been among the most severely hit in recent months as the recession spreads throughout the economy. Roughly 180,000 professional and business jobs were lost in February, according to the Labour Department. That compared with a 168,000 drop in manufacturing employment and 104,000 in construction. Problems in the U.S. financial sector have contributed most of the cuts, and no city has been more affected than New York, which is expected to see more than 50,000 Wall Street jobs vanish. Unemployment insurance claims illustrate much of the job destruction. The number of people with a university degree claiming unemployment insurance in New York has doubled in the last year. By contrast, the number of claimants who had less than a high-school education increased by half as much. ?We've never had anything quite like what we are seeing now in terms of the impact [of the recession] on well-educated people,? said James Parrott, chief economist at the New York-based Fiscal Policy Institute. Damian Birkel knows all about being laid off from white-collar positions. He's been laid off four times during his career, including just six months ago. He now runs Professionals in Transition, a non-profit group in Winston-Salem, N.C., that helps unemployed white-collar workers. Attendance at the group's weekly meetings has recently jumped from around 20 to about 100. ?It is unbelievable,? he said Friday. He and others noted that many workers have been forced to take part-time jobs to make ends meet. According to the Labour Department, the number of these underemployed people is rising almost as fast as the number of unemployed. The department said Friday the number of ?involuntary part-time workers? rose by 3.7 million in the last 12 months. If they were included in the overall unemployment figure, the unemployment rate would increase to 14.8 per cent, the highest since the underemployment figures were first used in 1994. Joel Sarfati said he is seeing professionals from all walks of life seek help at 40 Plus, a Washington organization that provides employment services for out-of-work white-collar workers. ?Normally in the past we would see people from a particular industry, now it's across the board,? said Mr. Sarfati, a retired executive who volunteers at the centre. During the recession in the early 1990s, Mr. Sarfati lost his job as a vice-president at a credit union. He said it took him nine months to find work. ?It's harder now,? he said Friday. ?It takes longer and there is more competition.? From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Mar 7 19:47:57 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2009 11:47:57 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Monetize This! Message-ID: <49B331DD.3080009@ashisuto.co.jp> A Better Way to Fund the Stimulus Package by Ellen Brown webofdebt.com (February 22 2009) "Diseases desperate grown are by desperate appliances relieved, or not at all". --- Shakespeare, "Hamlet" Moody's credit rating agency is warning that the US government's AAA credit rating is at risk, because it has taken on so much debt that there are few creditors left to underwrite it. Foreigners have bought as much as two-thirds of US debt in recent years, but they could be doing much less purchasing of US Treasury securities in the future, not so much out of a desire to chastise America as simply because they won't have the funds to do it. Oil prices have fallen off a cliff and the US purchase of foreign exports has dried up, slashing the surpluses that those countries previously recycled back into US Treasuries. And domestic buyers of securities, to the extent that they can be found, will no doubt demand substantially higher returns than the rock-bottom interest rates at which Treasuries are available now. {1} Who, then, is left to buy the government's debt and fund President Obama's $900 billion stimulus package? The taxpayers are obviously tapped out, so the money will have to be borrowed; but borrowed from whom? The pool of available lenders is shrinking fast. Morever, servicing the federal debt through private lenders imposes a crippling interest burden on the US Treasury. The interest tab was $412 billion in fiscal year 2008, or about one-third of the federal government's total income from personal income taxes ($1,220 billion in 2008). The taxpayers not only cannot afford the $900 billion; they cannot afford to increase their interest payments. But what is the alternative? How about turning to the lender of last resort, the Federal Reserve itself? The advantage for the government of borrowing from its own central bank is that this money is virtually free. This is because the Federal Reserve rebates any interest it receives to the Treasury after deducting its costs, and the federal debt is never actually paid off but is just rolled over from year to year. Interest-free loans that are never paid off are basically free money. In 2008, 85% of the interest collected by the Federal Reserve (or "Fed") was returned to the Treasury. The average interest rate on Treasury securities today is only about three percent; fifteen percent of three percent is less than a half percent - such a negligible interest as to make the money nearly free. The Fed does not have to worry about interest, because it does not actually have to acquire the money before lending it, and it knows the government will not default. The Fed originates the money it lends, either on a printing press or with accounting entries. It can purchase Treasury debt simply by writing credits into the "reserve account" of the seller's bank, which then credits the seller's account. The Fed's ability to write numbers into an account is obviously unlimited; but it has normally restricted its purchase of government securities to only so much as is necessary to provide the liquidity needed for banks to cash and clear checks. Funding the government's budget shortfall has usually been left to private lenders; but those loans are drying up, and servicing them is proving expensive. Both this interest burden and the need to continually attract new lenders could be avoided by tapping into the government's credit line at its own central bank. But wouldn't that be dangerously inflationary? Not in today's economic climate, as will be shown. And if the notion of funding the government through its own central bank seems too radical and unprecedented to be entertained, consider the radical moves the Fed has already been taking in the last year. Without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, the Fed just "monetized" $1.2 trillion in private debt, turning commercial loans into money. If private banks and private corporations now have multi-billion dollar credit lines with the Federal Reserve, then Congress should have one too. In fact Congress, which gave the Fed its charter to create the national money supply, should have been the first in line. If the Fed Can "Monetize" Private Debt, It Can Monetize Public Debt. The Fed has been a hotbed of radical, experimental activity in the past year. Ben Gisin is a former banker who has long been tracking the Fed's statistical releases. He says he has never seen anything like it. Assets have been magically appearing on the Fed's balance sheet, and they are not coming from any traditional source. {2} In May 2007, the Fed reported assets of about $850 billion, and 92% of them were the usual federal securities (government IOUs). A year later, the Fed's stash of federal securities had dropped to $500 billion, but its total assets remained substantially unchanged. The federal securities had just been swapped for other forms of debt. In January of 2009, however, the Fed reported assets of $2.1 trillion, an increase of $1.2 trillion from a year earlier. {3} Where did this new money come from? The Fed's liabilities also went up by $1.2 trillion, indicating that it was creating "credit" simply by double-entry bookkeeping. Loans were being created by entering them as assets on one side of the Fed's books and as corresponding liabilities on the other. Creating money by double-entry bookkeeping is not actually unique to the central bank. It is how all commercial banks come up with the money they lend, as many authorities have attested. In a revealing booklet called Modern Money Mechanics, the Chicago Federal Reserve explained how banks expand the money supply (or create money) using double-entry bookkeeping. The booklet stated: "Of course, [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. Loans (assets) and deposits (liabilities) both rise [by the same amount]." {4} Congressman Jerry Voorhis, writing in 1973, explained how monetary expansion is built on the ten percent reserve requirement imposed by the Fed: "[F]or every $1 or $1.50 which people - or the government - deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up." {5} That means that if the Federal Reserve were operating like a commercial bank, it could take its $500 billion in US securities and fan them into $5 trillion in loans; and that appears to be exactly what it has been doing. What is extraordinary is that the money is being used to make commercial loans. If the Fed can come up with $1.2 trillion to "monetize" private promissory notes, argues Ben Gisin, there is no reason it could not come up with $900 billion to monetize Obama's stimulus package. In fact, Congress could mandate its captive central bank to buy the bonds needed to fund the stimulus package. The Advantage of Borrowing from the Federal Reserve For the government, the difference between borrowing credit created with accounting entries from a private bank and borrowing the same sort of credit from the Federal Reserve is that borrowing from the Fed is nearly interest-free. That is true today, but it has not always been true. Congressman Wright Patman, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, wrote in a 1964 treatise called A Primer on Money: "The Federal Reserve Banks create money out of thin air to buy Government Bonds from the US Treasury ... [creating] out of nothing a ... debt which the American people are obliged to pay with interest". Patman was outraged at the inequity of this practice and boldly agitated for Congress to nationalize the privately-owned Federal Reserve, a move that would have allowed the government to issue the national money supply directly. Needless to say, however, this proposal met with strong opposition. Nationalization did not happen, but the Fed did have to compromise. According to Jerry Voorhis: "As a direct result of logical and relentless agitation by members of Congress, led by Congressman Wright Patman as well as by other competent monetary experts, the Federal Reserve began to pay to the US Treasury a considerable part of its earnings from interest on government securities. This was done without public notice and few people, even today, know that it is being done. It was done, quite obviously, as acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve Banks were acting on the one hand as a national bank of issue, creating the nation's money, but on the other hand charging the nation interest on its own credit - which no true national bank of issue could conceivably, or with any show of justice, dare to do." Voorhis went on, "But this is only part of the story. And the less discouraging part, at that. For where the commercial banks are concerned, there is no such repayment of the people's money." Commercial banks, he explained, do not rebate the interest, although they also "'buy' the bonds with newly created demand deposit entries on their books - nothing more" {6}. Voorhis noted that the Constitution provides, "Congress shall have the power to coin money [and] regulate the value thereof". Whether "to coin money" means "to issue money" has been debated; but as President Andrew Jackson observed, if anyone was given the power to issue money, it was Congress, not a private banking elite. For a full century before the American Revolution, the colonists funded a period of unprecedented prosperity and productive enterprise with paper money issued directly by their own local governments or government-owned banks. According to Benjamin Franklin, it was chiefly to get that power back after King George halted the practice that the colonists fought the Revolution {7}. They won the war but lost the money-creating power to a private banking cartel. We the people now have an opportunity to get that innovative funding system back, and we can do it without having to convince a faction-ridden Congress that they need to do anything so controversial as nationalizing the Federal Reserve or even passing new legislation. All that is required is a shift in emphasis, a shift the Federal Reserve has been making lately itself. The Fed routinely turns government bonds into dollars in order to expand the amount of currency in circulation; it has now begun doing that with corporate debt; and Fed officials are talking about doing it with long-term federal securities. According to a January 28 2009 Associated Press report: "With its key lending rate to banks already near zero, the Fed pledged anew to use 'all available tools' to revive the economy. Specifically, the Fed said it is 'prepared' to buy longer-term Treasury securities if the circumstances warrant such action." {8} Traditionally, government debt has been "monetized" by the Fed only to provide the bank reserves necessary to cover check cashing and clearing. This tool is now being recommended "to revive the economy". Obama's stimulus package is also intended to revive the economy. Combine the two and you have a package that stimulates the economy without adding to the impossible burden of an exponentially-increasing debt. But Wouldn't That Be Inflationary? The usual objection to funding the government with credits drawn on its own central bank is that the result would be inflationary. However, the scenario most feared today is actually deflation - a lack of available dollars to fuel the economy. Asset values have collapsed, and savings have collapsed along with them. People with only half as much money in their brokerage accounts have less to spend; people whose houses have plummeted in value cannot take out consumer loans against equity as was done in the boom years. Funding a "stimulus" package with existing money that is merely recycled through the banking system as loans will not stimulate the economy but will only add to the problem, by adding to the collective burden to service debt. Money that should have gone into more productive endeavors will wind up going into interest payments. To bolster demand and stimulate production, recovery requires an infusion of new dollars - dollars that can be used to pay wages and salaries, which can then be used to buy goods and services. In any case, adding new money to the money supply will not inflate prices if the money is used in the production of new goods and services. Price inflation results only when "demand" (dollars) exceeds "supply" (goods and services). If the new dollars are used to create new goods and services, demand and supply will rise together and prices will remain stable. If the goods being produced are income-generating assets - railroads, bridges, alternative energy sources, low-cost housing, medical services - so much the better. The projects can be "monetized" in the same way that banks monetize mortgages - by entering them as assets on one side of their books and as liabilities on the other. The funds received from the central bank can then be repaid to the central bank from the income the assets produce, extinguishing the debt and avoiding inflation. Ideally, the projects would actually turn a profit, generating income for the government and reducing the tax burden on the public. The bottom line is that we cannot borrow our way out of debt. Only new money will stimulate a debt-ridden economy - money that is interest-free and does not have to be paid back. The direct road to that result would have been to nationalize the Federal Reserve and return the power to create money to Congress; but as Wright Patman found, that solution is controversial and could be a difficult piece of legislation to get passed. In the meantime, the same result can be achieved by tapping into the government's nearly-interest-free credit line at the Federal Reserve. Nearly-interest-free loans of accounting-entry money that never has to be paid back are a source of debt-free liquidity that can be used to fund projects that put people back to work, without increasing the interest burden on the government or the tax burden on the public. _____ Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt (2007), her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust". She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from "the money trust". Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine (2008), Nature's Pharmacy (1998), co-authored with Dr Lynne Walker, and The Key to Ultimate Health (2000), co-authored with Dr Richard Hansen) Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. Notes: 1. Aaron Task, "Another $3T of US Debt: Don't Count on Foreigners to Pay for Our Bailouts" (citing John Ryding, chief economist of RDQ Economics), Finance.Yahoo.com (February 13 2009). 2. Benjamin Gisin, Michael Krajovic, "Rescuing the Physical Economy", Conscious Economics (January 2009). 3. Federal Reserve Board, "Annual Report 2007", "Statistical Tables, "No 9: Statement of Condition of Federal Reserve Banks", & "No 10: Income and Expenses of the Federal Reserve Banks", www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongress/default.htm; "Current Release", www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41. 4. Modern Money Mechanics: A Workbook on Bank Reserves and Deposit Expansion (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Public Information Service, 1992, available at http://www.rayservers.com/images/ModernMoneyMechanics.pdf), page 6. 5. J Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (1973), excerpted at http://www.sonic.net/~doretk/ArchiveARCHIVE/ECONOMICSPOLITICS/FEDERAL%20RESERVE/Jerry%20VoorhisFedReserve.html. 6. Jerry Voorhis, op. cit. 7. Quoted by Congressman Charles Binderup in a 1941 speech, "How America Created Its Own Money in 1750: How Benjamin Franklin Made New England Prosperous", reprinted in Unrobing the Ghosts of Wall Street, http://reactor-core.org/america-created-money.html. 8. Jeannine Aversa, "Fed Ready to Provide Fresh Aid to Revive Economy", Associated Press (January 28 2009). www.webofdebt.com/articles/monetizethis.php TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/ From fentona at shaw.ca Sat Mar 7 22:18:01 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 21:18:01 -0800 Subject: [R-G] =?windows-1252?q?Chavez_Tells_Obama_He_Should_Follow_Venezu?= =?windows-1252?q?ela=92s_Socialist_Path?= Message-ID: <655AE2CF-7CE4-4C9C-BE5B-AC63073587F9@shaw.ca> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aB6yw1ihGZ2k&refer=latin_america Chavez Tells Obama He Should Follow Venezuela?s Socialist Path By Daniel Cancel March 6 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez comments on U.S. President Barack Obama and the state of the U.S. economy. He made the remarks today on Venezuelan state television. ?It?s regrettable the crisis that the U.S. is living through. Millions of workers are being left in the street, thousands of companies are closing, in the U.S. there isn?t a single new infrastructure project. Go look for a highway there, the country has gone bust.? ?Now President Obama arrived with some announcements, hopefully, but the capitalist model and its perverse values have failed.? ?I recommend to Obama -- they?re criticizing him because they say he?s moving towards socialism -- come Obama, ally with us on the path to socialism, it?s the only road.? ?Imagine a socialist revolution in the U.S. Nothing is impossible.? To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Cancel in Caracas at dcancel at bloomberg.net . Last Updated: March 6, 2009 14:33 EST From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Mar 8 07:04:46 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:04:46 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] How Benjamin Franklin Made New England Prosperous Message-ID: <49B3C26E.1020004@ashisuto.co.jp> America Created Its Own Money in 1750 by Congressman Charles G Binderup The following historical story is taken from a radio address given by Congressman Charles G Binderup of Nebraska, some fifty years ago and was reprinted in Unrobing the Ghosts of Wall Street {1}. Colonies More Prosperous Than The Home Country Before the American War for Independence in 1776, the colonized part of what is today the United States of America was a possession of England. It was called New England, and was made up of thirteen colonies, which became the first thirteen states of the great Republic. Around 1750, this New England was very prosperous. Benjamin Franklin was able to write: "There was abundance in the Colonies, and peace was reigning on every border. It was difficult, and even impossible, to find a happier and more prosperous nation on all the surface of the globe. Comfort was prevailing in every home. The people, in general, kept the highest moral standards, and education was widely spread." When Benjamin Franklin went over to England to represent the interests of the Colonies, he saw a completely different situation: the working population of this country was gnawed by hunger and poverty. "The streets are covered with beggars and tramps", he wrote. He asked his English friends how England, with all its wealth, could have so much poverty among its working classes. His friends replied that England was a prey to a terrible condition: it had too many workers! The rich said they were already overburdened with taxes, and could not pay more to relieve the needs and poverty of this mass of workers. Several rich Englishmen of that time actually believed, along with Malthus, that wars and plague were necessary to rid the country from man-power surpluses. Franklin's friends then asked him how the American Colonies managed to collect enough money to support their poor houses, and how they could overcome this plague of pauperism. Franklin replied: "We have no poor houses in the Colonies; and if we had some, there would be nobody to put in them, since there is, in the Colonies, not a single unemployed person, neither beggars nor tramps". Thanks To Free Money Issued By The Nation His friends could not believe their ears, and even less understand this fact, since when the English poor houses and jails became too cluttered, England shipped these poor wretches and down-and-outs, like cattle, and discharged, on the quays of the Colonies, those who had survived the poverty, dirtiness and privations of the journey. At that time, England was throwing into jail those who could not pay their debts. They therefore asked Franklin how he could explain the remarkable prosperity of the New England Colonies. Franklin replied: "That is simple. In the Colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called 'Colonial Scrip'. We issue it in proper proportion to make the goods and pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to no one." The Bankers Impose Poverty The information came to the knowledge of the English Bankers, and held their attention. They immediately took the necessary steps to have the British Parliament to pass a law that prohibited the Colonies from using their scrip money, and then ordered them to use only the gold and silver money that was provided in sufficient quantity by the English bankers. Then began in America the plague of debt-money, which has never since brought so many curses to the American people. The first law was passed in 1751, and then completed by a more restrictive law in 1763. Franklin reported that one year after the implementation of this prohibition on Colonial money, the streets of the Colonies were filled with unemployment and beggars, just like in England, because there was not enough money to pay for the goods and work. The circulating medium of exchange had been reduced by half. Franklin added that this was the original cause of the American Revolution - and not the tax on tea nor the Stamp Act, as it has been taught again and again in history books. The financiers always manage to have removed from school books all that can throw light on their own schemes, and damage the glow that protects their power. Franklin, who was one of the chief architects of the American independence, wrote it clearly: "The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament, which has caused in the Colonies hatred of England and the Revolutionary War." This point of view of Franklin was confirmed by great statesmen of his era: John Adams, Jefferson, and several others. A remarkable English historian, John Twells, wrote, speaking of the money of the Colonies, the Colonial Scrip: "It was the monetary system under which America's Colonies flourished to such an extent that Edmund Burke was able to write about them: 'Nothing in the history of the world resembles their progress. It was a sound and beneficial system, and its effects led to the happiness of the people.'" John Twells adds: "In a bad hour, the British Parliament took away from America its representative money, forbade any further issue of bills of credit, these bills ceasing to be legal tender, and ordered that all taxes should be paid in coins. Consider now the consequences: this restriction of the medium of exchange paralyzed all the industrial energies of the people. Ruin took place in these once flourishing Colonies; most rigorous distress visited every family and every business, discontent became desperation, and reached a point, to use the words of Dr Johnson, when human nature rises up and asserts its rights." Another writer, Peter Cooper, expresses himself along the same lines. After having said how Franklin had explained to the London Parliament the cause of the prosperity of the Colonies, he wrote: "After Franklin gave explanations on the true cause of the prosperity of the Colonies, the Parliament exacted laws forbidding the use of this money in the payment of taxes. This decision brought so many drawbacks and so much poverty to the people that it was the main cause of the Revolution. The suppression of the Colonial money was a much more important reason for the general uprising than the Tea and Stamp Act." Today, in America as well as in Europe, we are under the regime of the Scrip of the Bankers instead of the scrip of the nation. Hence the public debts, everlasting interest charges, taxes that plunder purchasing power, with the only result being a consolidation of the financial dictatorship. There is only one cure for America's ultimate financial collapse and that is for Congress to exercise Clause Thirty of the "Federal" Reserve Act, buy the outstanding shares of stock, shut down this unconstitutional system and sell off their assets to reimburse the people of this nation for this unspeakable theft of their wealth. This is the first installment of postings on this issue, new ones will be put up as soon as manpower allows. Additional reading: http://www.members.shaw.ca/theultimatescam/index.htm Link {1}: http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6452000M http://www.planetization.org/prosperity.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 shniad at sfu.ca Sun Mar 8 14:11:14 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 13:11:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] A New New Deal under Obama? In-Reply-To: <1530318402.28291236543035386.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1401003197.28341236543074949.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.monthlyreview.org/090201foster-mcchesney.php Monthly Review February 2009 A New New Deal under Obama? John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney With U.S. capitalism mired in an economic crisis of a severity that increasingly brings to mind the Great Depression of the 1930s, it should come as no surprise that there are widespread calls for ?a new New Deal.?1 Already the new Obama administration has been pointing to a vast economic stimulus program of up to $850 billion over two years aimed at lifting the nation out of the deep economic slump.2 The possibility of a new New Deal is to be welcomed by all of those on the left, as promising some relief to a hard-pressed working population. Nevertheless, it raises important questions. What are the real prospects for a new New Deal in the United States today? Is this the answer to the current economic crisis? What should be the stance of the left? A full analysis of all the issues would require a large volume. We shall confine ourselves here to a few points that will help to illuminate the challenges ahead. The New Deal was not initially an attempt to stimulate the economy and generate recovery through government spending, an idea that was scarcely present in the early 1930s. Rather it consisted of ad hoc salvage or bailout measures, principally aimed at helping business, coupled with work relief programs. The lion?s share of New Deal expenditures at the outset were devoted to salvage operations. As Harvard economist Alvin Hansen, Keynes?s leading early follower in the United States, explained in 1941 in his Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles, For the most part, the federal government [in the New Deal era] engaged in a salvaging program and not in a program of positive expansion. The salvaging program took the form of refinancing urban and rural debt, rebuilding the weakened capital structure of the banks, and supporting railroads at or near bankruptcy? [T]he Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Home Owners? Loan Corporation, and the Farm Credit Administration poured $18 billions into these salvaging operations. The federal government stepped into the breach and supported the hard-pressed state and local governments?again a salvage operation? That a salvaging program of this magnitude was necessary was, of course, due to the unprecedented depth of the depression reached by early 1933....Under such circumstances the economy dries up like a sponge. Vast governmental expenditures, designed to float the ?sponge? to a high level of prosperity, are instead absorbed by the sponge itself. The expenditures seemingly run to waste. This is the salvaging operation. Only when the economy has become thoroughly liquid can further funds float it to higher income levels. A deep depression requires vast salvaging expenditures before a vigorous expansionist process can develop.3 Federal spending on public works, which has become almost synonymous with the New Deal in popular culture, expanded nearly every year from 1929 to 1938 (see table 1). Yet, total government spending on public works did not regain its 1929 level until 1936, due to drops in state and local public works spending that undercut the federal increases. At first, state and local governments had responded to the deep slump by increasing their public works outlays. However, within a couple of years their resources were largely exhausted and their spending on public works dropped below that of 1929. By 1936, state and local public works expenditures were less than half their 1929 level. Hence, for most of the depression decade ?the federal government,? as Hansen observed, ?only helped to hold back the receding tide.? Despite the fact that federal outlays in this area had increased by almost 500 percent, total government public works expenditures rose only 12 percent over the period, not enough to offer much of a stimulus to the overall economy. It was only later on in the depression decade, in what historians have called the ?second New Deal,? culminating in Roosevelt?s landslide 1936 election victory, that the emphasis shifted decisively from salvage operations to work relief programs, and other measures that directly benefited the working class. This was the era of the Works Progress Administration, headed by Harry Hopkins, along with other progressive programs and measures, such as unemployment insurance, Social Security, and the Wagner Act (giving the de jure right to organize). These advances were made possible by the great ?revolt from below? of organized labor in the 1930s.4 The WPA spent $11 billion and employed 8.5 million people. It paid for the building of roads, highways, and bridges. But it did much more than that. The federal school lunch program got its start with WPA dollars. Indeed, what distinguished the WPA from other work programs was that it employed people to do the things that were needed in all areas of society, working at jobs they were already equipped to do. The WPA financed over 225,000 concerts. It paid artists to paint murals and actors to do stage productions.5 Table 1. Outlays for public works (millions of dollars), 1929?38 None of this conformed to the later precepts of Keynesian economics. As late as 1937, Roosevelt?s New Deal administration had still not given up the goal of balancing the federal budget?a core aim of Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr.?even in the midst of the Great Depression. It thus clamped down on federal spending, with expenditures being reduced in the budgets for fiscal years 1937 and 1938. Meanwhile the new Social Security program, passed in 1935, began taxing workers in fiscal year 1936 based on regressive payroll taxes, with no payouts for old age insurance supposed to occur until 1941, thereby generating a massive deflationary effect.6 These and other contradictions came to a head in the recession of 1937?38, during which the recovery that had been taking place since 1933 suddenly came to a halt prior to a full recovery, with unemployment jumping from 14 to 19 percent. It was only in response to deepening economic stagnation that the Roosevelt administration was at last induced to move decisively away from its attempt to balance the federal budget, turning to the strategy promoted by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Marriner Eccles of utilizing strong government spending and deficit financing to lift the economy. These actions corresponded to the publication of An Economic Program for American Democracy, signed by Richard V. Gilbert, George H. Hildebrand Jr., Arthur W. Stuart, Maxine Y. Sweezy, Paul M. Sweezy, Lorie Tarshis, and John D. Wilson?a group of young Harvard and Tufts economists representing the Keynesian revolution. This work was a Washington D.C. bestseller and immediately became the intellectual defense after the fact for the New Deal expansionary policies of 1938?39.7 Nevertheless, the stimulus measures adopted at this stage were too meager to counter the conditions of depression that prevailed at the time. What rescued the capitalist economy was the Second World War. ?The Great Depression of the thirties,? John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, ?never came to an end. It merely disappeared in the great mobilization of the forties.?8 But this raises further questions. As Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy asked in Monopoly Capital in 1966: ?Why was such an increase [in government spending] not forthcoming during the whole depressed decade? Why did the New Deal fail to attain what the war proved to be within easy reach? The answer to these questions,? they contended, ?is that, given the power structure of United States monopoly capitalism, the increase of civilian [government] spending had about reached its outer limits by 1939. The forces opposing further expansion were too strong to be overcome.? Baran and Sweezy?s thesis that civilian government spending had ?about reached its outer limits? by the end of the New Deal was directed primarily at total non-defense government purchases as a percentage of GDP. This constitutes almost the entire direct contribution of government to the welfare of the population, encompassing public education, roads and highways, health, sanitation, water and electric services, commerce, conservation, recreation, police and fire protection, courts, prisons, legislators, the executive branch, etc. By 1939, Baran and Sweezy contended, these critical elements of government taken together had reached their maximum share of GDP, given the power structure of U.S. monopoly capitalism.9 Remarkably, Baran and Sweezy?s civilian government ceiling thesis has been borne out in the more than forty years since it was formulated (see chart 1). Civilian government consumption and investment purchases as a percentage of GDP rose to 14.5 percent of GDP in 1938 (14.4 percent in 1939), fell during the 1940s due to the great expansion of military spending during the Second World War, and then regained their lost ground in the 1950s, 1960s, and early ?70s. Civilian government spending on consumption and investment reached its highest point of 15.5 percent of national income in 1975 (dropping in 1976 to its second highest level of 14.9 percent), and then stabilized at around 14 percent from the late 1970s to the present. In 2007 non-defense government consumption and investment purchases constituted 14.6 percent of GDP, almost exactly the same level as in 1938?39! Chart 1. Non-defense government (federal, state and local) consumption and gross investment as percentage of GDP, 1929?2007 The reasons for this are straightforward. Beyond some minimal level, real estate interests oppose public housing; private health care interests and medical professionals oppose public health care; insurance companies oppose public insurance programs; private education interests oppose public education; and so on. The big exceptions to this are highways and prisons within civilian government spending, together with military spending. ?The point can be elucidated,? Baran and Sweezy wrote, by considering two budget items simultaneously, say housing and health. Very few people nowadays are opposed to a modest public housing program, and of course everyone is in favor of at least enough spending on health to control epidemic diseases. But beyond a certain point, opposition begins to build up in each case, at first from real estate interests to housing and from the medical profession to public programs of medical care. But real estate interests presumably have no special reasons to oppose medical care, and doctors no special reasons to oppose housing. Still, once they have each gone into opposition to further increases in their own spheres, they may soon find it to their joint interest to combine forces in opposing both more housing and more public health. The opposition to each individual item thus builds up faster when two items are under consideration, and fastest of all for across-the-board increases in the whole budget. We might say figuratively that if one item is being considered, opposition grows in proportion to the amount of the increase; while if all items are being considered, opposition grows in proportion to the square of the increase.10 The fact that the ceiling to government expenditures in the U.S. system is a political rather than an economic barrier is demonstrated by the very different levels of government spending as a share of GDP in advanced capitalist countries. Table 2 provides comparative data for the G-7 countries plus Sweden for 2007. Total government spending (column 1) includes both (a) direct government purchases, which add directly to total aggregate demand, and (b) expenditures which reallocate income and capital within the economy, such as interest payments, social insurance transfer payments, farm subsidies, and investment subsidies.11 Final consumption expenditures of government (column 2) make up the largest component of the government purchases portion of column 1, and include consumption for military purposes. Social security transfers (column 3) encompass the totality of social insurance schemes covering the community as a whole, the major component of social welfare spending. Military expenditure data (column 4) are taken from the Military Expenditure Database of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (data are for 2006). (Note: columns 2, 3, and 4 do not add up to column 1, but rather show selected components of the latter. Some of the other components of total government spending not included are capital formation, interest payments, and other transfer payments.) Examining these figures, it is clear that the United States has the lowest government final consumption (which includes military consumption) as a percentage of GDP, and is near the bottom in government spending and social security transfer payments as a percentage of GDP. The United States also expends a greater share of its national income on the military. U.S. government consumption expenditures, minus military consumption, came to only 11.8 percent of GDP in 2007. It is obvious then that there is ample room for the United States to expand its civilian government spending and social insurance transfers. The ceiling on such expenditures as a share of national income is rather a reflection of the power structure of U.S. society, including the relative weak organization of labor and the relative strength of big capital. The United States, despite its formally democratic character, is firmly in the hands of a moneyed oligarchy, probably the most powerful ruling class in history. Table 2. Selected components of government spending as percentage of GDP, G-7 countries plus Sweden, 2007 All of this is inseparable from the U.S. role as an imperial power and the effects that this has on its domestic power structure. Acknowledged (Office of Management and Budget) U.S. military expenditures in 2007 were $553 billion (4 percent of GDP), while actual U.S. military expenditures were $1 trillion (7.3 percent of GDP). Federal non-defense consumption and investment purchases in 2007 were, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, less than half federal defense consumption and investment purchases.12 Our argument therefore is simple. Given that a political ceiling on U.S. civilian government purchases as a percentage of GDP has persisted for more than seven decades, it is unlikely that this will change without a massive, indeed social-transformative, struggle, despite a relatively progressive administration and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Even the greatest environmental crisis in the history of civilization, threatening life throughout the planet, is unlikely to result in a sufficiently massive response by government without the U.S. system first being turned upside down. The forces holding down civilian government spending are too strong to be affected by anything but a major upsurge in society. Of course, the history of U.S. capitalism since the Second World War might suggest that the most likely recourse of those in charge in these dire circumstances would be to attempt to stimulate the economy through an extraordinary increase in military spending. That the incoming Obama administration has already announced plans to maintain the current war budget and expand the war in Afghanistan only fuels this concern.13 For this reason it is imperative for the left to redouble its efforts to oppose militarism and demand that resources be put to civilian use. At the same time, the notion that military spending can provide an effective economic stimulus under present circumstances is dubious, even to sectors of the ruling class. For starters, U.S. military spending is already at active-war levels and accounts for half (or more) of global military spending. One would arguably have to return to ancient Rome to find a comparable situation of military dominance. This is not 1939?41 where U.S. military spending had to be built up virtually from scratch. To double or triple military spending at this point would mean that the United States would be spending two or three times as much as the rest of the world on war and war preparation (assuming that other nations maintained their current levels of military spending). This would be politically difficult, both globally, with the other major powers that the United States needs to work with already alarmed by U.S. unilateralism, and domestically, where even the lapdog U.S. news media would have difficulty explaining the rationale for diverting more of the economy to militarism as the quality of life crumbles. Perhaps most important, the notion that increased military spending would effectively stimulate the balance of the economy has been repudiated by economists, even within the mainstream, who note that marginal increases in ?defense? expenditures have far less of a positive employment impact than most civilian government spending, given the technology-intensive nature of modern military spending and the fact that a very large share of the purchases take place abroad. Hence, the main impact of a doubling of U.S. military spending would be to increase greatly the likelihood of bigger and wider wars, and the destruction of human civilization. As C. Wright Mills wrote, ?the immediate cause of World War III is the military preparation of it.?14 Even members of the ruling class may balk in the face of the threat of a rising recourse to war and war preparation in an age of nuclear proliferation. If we are right on this, and we hope we are, then government spending increases in response to this crisis will be mainly a question of expanding civilian expenditures. Such spending will, initially, be dedicated primarily to salvage or bailout operations. These salvage efforts, so crucial to capital, will be legitimated by smaller public works programs directed at the underlying population. Government spending increases as a whole will in the main be conceived as temporary, pump-priming measures rather than permanent increases in the level of government. Although federal spending increases are likely to loom large in budgetary terms, they are unlikely to come anywhere near compensating for the declines in consumption, investment, and state and local government spending. With the economy as a whole drying up like a sponge, a great deal of government spending designed to float the sponge to higher levels of income will likely be absorbed, as in the 1930s, by the sponge itself, leaving little visible effect. Consequently, recovery will be held down, and the economy, already deeply mired in problems of stagnation and financial de-leverage, will continue to be weak.15 A return to the kind of social programs associated with the real or second New Deal can be expected to come, if at all, only later, after the initial salvage effort. Moreover, this is unlikely to materialize to any considerable extent apart from a revolt from below on the scale at least of the mid-1930s. Labor must rise again from its ashes. Only a very radical shift in U.S. politics resulting from a major groundswell from below will be able significantly to budge the ceiling on civilian government spending. Under these circumstances, it is the specific responsibility of the left to urge not only the militant organization of the underlying population, but also the kinds of change, going against the logic of the system and relying on an expansion of government, that will contribute substantially to bettering the conditions of those at the bottom. In terms of demands this should include, for starters, that: (1) government assume the responsibility for providing useful work at a livable wage to all who need it, utilizing existing skills; (2) unemployment compensation be extended beyond its present inadequate limits; (3) those in danger of losing their homes be granted government assistance; (4) a crash housing program be initiated on behalf of those who are homeless or wretchedly housed (including mortgage relief and support to renters); (5) a truly progressive tax system, incorporating a wealth tax, be established; (6) food stamps and food programs for the poor be expanded along with other welfare provisions and easier access; (7) national health insurance (a single-payer system) be provided for the entire population; (8) pension funds be guaranteed by government; (9) Social Security be augmented and regressive payroll taxes eliminated; (10) restrictive laws on unionization be removed; (11) the federal minimum wage be raised; (12) a thirty-hour working week be introduced; (13) a nationwide program of mass transit be promoted; (14) publicly owned and controlled communications systems be greatly enlarged and extended throughout the nation; (15) public education funding be enormously elevated; and (16) environmental protection be vastly increased, in line with the ecological revolution now necessary to save the planet.16 Of course, given the existing power structure of U.S. society and the seven-decades-long ceiling on civilian government purchases as a percentage of GDP, all of this may appear to be pie in the sky. And our message is that it is, unless the power structure of U.S. society can be altered. Only a reform movement so radical that it would appear revolutionary within the context of the existing U.S. economic and social order, fundamentally reducing the field of operation of the capitalist market, holds any chance of substantially improving the conditions of most people in society. Needless to say, for such a struggle to succeed people will have to have a sense of real things to struggle for that will materially affect their lives. These gains will only be made through an enormous class struggle from below. If won, they will not, we underscore, eliminate the evils of capitalism, or the dangers it poses for the world and its people. In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles. This is something that the great majority of the population will undoubtedly learn in the course of their struggles for a more equal, more humane, more collective, and more sustainable world. In the meantime, it is time to begin to organize a revolt against the ruling class?imposed ceiling on civilian government spending and social welfare in U.S. society. ?December 21, 2008 John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. He is coauthor, with Fred Magdoff, of The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (Monthly Review Press, January 2009) among numerous other works. Robert W. McChesney is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. His most recent book is The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas (Monthly Review Press, 2008). The authors would like to thank Hannah Holleman and Fred Magdoff for their assistance in relation to this article. Notes: 1. The question of a ?new New Deal? in the face of the deepening stagnation of U.S. capitalism is not a new one. See Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy, ?A New New Deal?,? Monthly Review 33, no. 9 (February 1982), 1?10. On the present economic crisis see John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008). Go Back 2. Associated Press, ?Obama Team Weighs Up to $850 billion Economic Jolt,? December 18, 2008. Go Back 3. Alvin H. Hansen, Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles (New York: W.W. Norton, 1941), 85?87. Go Back 4. David Milton, The Politics of Labor: From the Great Depression to the New Deal (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1982). Go Back 5. Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy, ?The Responsibility of the Left,? Monthly Review 34, no. 7 (December 1982), 6?9;Nick Taylor, American-Made (New York: Bantam, 2008); ?FDR?s New Deal Blueprint for Obama,? CBS News, December 14, 2008, http://www.cbsnews.com. Go Back 6. Allan H. Meltzer, A History of the Federal Reserve, vol. 1(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 521; Dean L. May, From New Deal to New Economics (New York: Garland, 1981), 91?113, 122; Hansen, Fiscal Policy and Business Cycles, 88. Partly in response to the recession of 1937, Social Security was put on a ?pay as you go? basis. Go Back 7. May, From New Deal to New Economics, 147?48; John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence It Came, Where it Went (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 232?36; Richard V. Gilbert, George H. Hildebrand, Jr., Arthur W. Stuart, Maxine Y. Sweezy, Paul M. Sweezy, Lorrie Tarshis, and John D. Wilson, An Economic Program for American Democracy (New York: Vanguard Press, 1938). There were other authors of An Economic Program for American Democracy, who were not able to sign it for various reasons, such as government jobs, including Alan Sweezy and Emile Despres. ?Interview of Paul M. Sweezy,? The Coming of Keynesianism to America, ed., David C Collander and Harry Landreth (Brookfield, Vermont: Edward Elgar, 1996), 81. Go Back 8. John Kenneth Galbraith, American Capitalism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), 69. Go Back 9. Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966), 151?61. Go Back 10. Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 164. Go Back 11. These two categories of government spending are referred to as exhaustive and nonexhaustive expenditures. On this see Francis M. Bator, A Question of Government Spending (New York: Collier Books, 1960), 17?46. On the construction of OECD accounts see Fran?ois Lequiller and Derek Blades, Understanding National Accounts (Paris: Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006). Go Back 12. See John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman, and Robert W. McChesney, ?The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending,? Monthly Review 60, no. 5 (October 2008): 9?13; Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Income and Product Accounts, Table 3.9.5. Go Back 13. ?A Fighter Jet?s Fate Poses a Quandary for Obama,? New York Times, December 10, 2008. Go Back 14. C. Wright Mills, The Causes of World War Three (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958), 85. Go Back 15. It should be pointed out that the other G-7 countries (and Sweden) referred to here face analogous problems, starting out at higher levels of government spending as a percentage of GDP. They too are caught in the stagnation trap and could use increases in government spending to lift their economies, but face powerful class forces at the top of the society that limit the magnitude and direction of such spending. Go Back 16. See Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy, ?The Coming Crisis and the Responsibility of the Left,? Monthly Review 39, no. 2 (June 1987): 5. Go Back From shniad at sfu.ca Sun Mar 8 14:35:27 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 13:35:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Israel Lobby's Call to "Resist and Deter" Nuclear Iran Gains Key Support In-Reply-To: <54703412.542431236463269068.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <608625590.32641236544527666.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46019 Call to "Resist and Deter" Nuclear Iran Gains Key Support By Jim Lobe* WASHINGTON, Mar 6 (IPS) - A new report on how the United States should "resist and deter" Iran's alleged ambitions to acquire a nuclear-weapons capability by a think tank closely tied to the so-called "Israel Lobby" has been endorsed by two key officials who are expected to exercise major influence on Iran policy in the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama. The 10-page report, which was released here Wednesday by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), argues that the United States should engage with Iran diplomatically but at the same time ratchet up pressure on many other fronts if it fails to heed demands to suspend and eventually abandon its uranium enrichment programme. Among the carrots Washington should be prepared to offer Tehran for that goal are co-operation on "shared problems, such as piracy and smuggling in the Persian Gulf," and "participation in a regional security dialogue," according to the report. At the same time, however, the report stressed that failure to stop Iran's nuclear progress may well result in a decision by Israel to carry out a military attack within the next two years. Such a decision, it warned, could be hastened if Russia goes through with the sale and delivery of sophisticated S-300 surface-to-air missile systems which "are seen by Israel as seriously limiting its military options." "Whatever Americans may think, Israeli leaders seem convinced that at least for now, they have a military option," the report asserts, adding that if Tehran deploys such systems, Washington "should promptly provide Israel with the capabilities to continue to threaten high-value Iranian targets - for instance, with more modern aircraft." "Time is short if diplomatic engagement is to have a chance of success," it asserts. The new report, which comes amid a major administration review of U.S. policy toward Iran, is likely to be very closely read in European and Middle Eastern capitals due to its endorsement by Dennis Ross, who serves as Special Adviser on the Gulf and Southwest Asia to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Robert Einhorn, the senior State Department official on non-proliferation matters. While both men resigned from the 17-member task force that helped draft the report after they were asked to join Obama's presidential transition team, WINEP stressed that they had formally endorsed an early draft which was not substantially different from the final product. Other members of the task force, which was convened by WINEP's director, Robert Satloff, and its deputy director of research, Patrick Clawson, included a number of prominent neo-conservatives, such as Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and some who served in senior posts under President George W. Bush, including former under secretary of state for arms control and international security, Robert Joseph; his immediate subordinate, Stephen Rademaker; and the former chairman of the Defence Science Board, William Schneider. Rep. Gary Ackerman, a liberal Democrat who heads the House Subcommittee in the Middle East and South Asia, and Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, a member of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees who has been a reliable supporter of the "Israel Lobby", also signed on to the report. Ross's endorsement, however, is particularly notable. While the State Department has been vague about what his precise responsibilities will be, it is understood that he is responsible for developing a diplomatic strategy for dealing with Iran, particularly in how to marshal regional and international pressure on Tehran in support of Washington?s positions. Ross is expected to co-ordinate with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns, and Puneet Talwar, who has the Iran portfolio on the National Security Council. Both Burns and Talwar are considered less hawkish on Iran than Ross, former President Bill Clinton?s top Middle East negotiator who himself has held senior positions in WINEP and who last September signed on to another report by the Bipartisan Policy Centre drafted by hard-line neo-conservatives. Among other things, that report called for Washington to be prepared to launch military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and conventional military infrastructure if Tehran did not accede to demands that it abandon its nuclear programme. WINEP, which was founded some 25 years ago as a spin-off of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is one of Washington?s most influential think tanks on Middle East policy, although, like AIPAC itself, its views and perspectives rarely deviate far from those of the Israeli government or national-security establishment. Indeed, the major message of the latest report is that Iran?s acquisition of a military nuclear capability, the prevention of which is characterised as a "vital national priority" for the U.S., would set off a "cascade of destabilizing reactions by other states," which, it argues, would seek to emulate Tehran?s achievement, thus weakening the global nuclear non-proliferation regime and increasing the risks of "...a nuclear confrontation, with horrible consequences." Yet the report omits any mention of the universally accepted view - accidentally confirmed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in a December 2006 interview - that Israel already has nuclear weapons which may have had destabilising consequences of their own. The report, which coincided with Secretary of State Clinton?s first Middle East trip during which she reportedly expressed scepticism about the likelihood that diplomatic engagement with Iran would succeed but also invited Tehran to a conference on Afghanistan at the end of this month, offers a number of hints for how Ross hopes to carry out his diplomatic strategy. It stresses that any offer on the nuclear issue should come from the Permanent Five Security Council members plus Germany - the group that has negotiated with Iran over its nuclear programme to date - "not from the United States alone." "Arab countries, Turkey, and Israel" must also be involved so as to assure a unified voice. It also emphasises that any deal should not permit Tehran to enrich uranium on Iranian territory, arguing that such a precedent would itself contribute to proliferation. Moreover, "the international community ...should not foster debate among its members about what a compromise (on enrichment) acceptable to Iran might be." The report calls for a policy of "resist and deter" rather than "acquiesce and deter." Instead, Washington should "respond to Iranian worries about ensuring access to fuel for its civilian nuclear power plant" by following through on its "announced intention to bring to fruition the international nuclear fuel bank (and) ...on the U.S. commitment to negotiate a fissile material cutoff treaty." While it does not raise the possibility of gaining Russian support for U.S. efforts by offering to cancel Washington?s deployment of missile-defence systems to Poland and the Czech Republic - a deal that was reportedly alluded to in a letter from Obama to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev last month - it suggests that China could be brought along through pressure from "the Gulf states - especially Saudi Arabia" due to Beijing?s dependence on their "export markets and energy supplies." The U.S. should also consider offering a "nuclear guarantee (or ?umbrella?)" to its allies in the region as part of a deterrence strategy and should, in any case, build up their defensive capabilities if Iran persists in its nuclear programme. In such a case, the report also calls for a rapid build-up in economic sanctions, including efforts to discourage countries and companies from building oil refineries in Iran or exporting refined petroleum products to the country. *Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/. From shniad at sfu.ca Sun Mar 8 14:36:49 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 13:36:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] The Challenge of Faust In-Reply-To: <764465482.38381236294671787.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1891148883.32871236544609142.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/281/5377/640 Science (July 31 1998) Volume 281 Number 5377, pages 640 - 641 The Challenge of Faust by Hans Christoph Binswanger In Part II of his greatest play, Faust (1832) {1}, Goethe confronts the promises and pitfalls of the Industrial Revolution and the economic growth that it generated. As finance minister at the Court of Weimar he was well placed to comment on these developments, and his insights remain astonishingly relevant today . Goethe's protagonist is representative of modern man who, through science, seeks to subjugate nature and to build up a new economic realm of freedom and prosperity. Faust's exultation at the "lovely moment" (verweile doch, du bist so sch?n) that this would bring expresses the delight of modern man at the sheer cornucopia of these new riches. But not all is rosy in this economic garden, for Goethe warns that these riches may be built upon an unsustainable illusion. After all, Mephistopheles, who is "the spirit, that evermore denies", is Faust's business partner! As we ponder whether the new riches that we have amassed are real or illusory, it is worth taking a closer look at how Goethe dramatizes this issue. Faust declares his aims as he looks out upon the sea and its ceaseless ebb and flow. Onward it sweeps by courses numberless, Barren itself, to squander barrenness; Now swelling, growing, rolling on, it drowns In desolation leagues of wasted downs; There riots, wave on wave, with wanton force, Then ebbs - and nothing's been achieved, of course. I might despair, to see the aimless way Such lawless elements exert their sway. Yet no despair shall my resolve benumb; Here I might struggle, here might overcome! Subsequently Goethe shows how, through a combination of economic activity and technological progress, the subjugation of nature and of natural forces - symbolized by ebb and flow - is effected. The section of coastline that Faust had observed is enclosed by a dyke and transformed into a garden "like an Eden". This subjugation seems miraculous, like an alchemical process: What had hitherto been economically worthless has been transmuted into something economically valuable. Faust is a vigorous entrepreneur who drives his workers to their utmost. Yet Goethe realizes that entrepreneurial vision and human labor are not enough to achieve the great project. Money is required to pay the workers who, now far from home, have lost their means of subsistence. However, the limited supply of gold that can be mined is insufficient to supply the monetary requirement of the project. Faust has taken care of this with the help of the emperor, that is, the state, by founding a bank that issues paper money, a currency not convertible into gold: 'Twere hopeless now the flying leaves to stop; With lightning speed they spread through-out the land. The state profits from the invention of paper money by using it to pay its debts. But Faust invests the money in the production of real goods and through this transaction creates an equivalence between manufactured goods and paper money, thereby turning valueless paper into an instrument of real buying power. The potency of this buying power derives from both traditional and new sources of energy. Faust no longer relies on human labor alone, but also on newly created, energy-driven machines because these are more efficient. The change seems almost magical: Vain all day is their hacking, tearing, Pick and shovel, stroke on stroke! Where night-long great fires were flaring, Stood a bank when morning broke. The prerequisite for this is the renewed establishment of the laws of property which grants mankind the right of absolute power over nature, and now Faust unabashedly proclaims, "Property and dominion I want to gain". In Faust Goethe thus describes, with historical accuracy, the establishment of three crucial instruments that enabled economic growth and served as a motor for further development: (i) The creation of paper money, which began with the issuance of bank notes by the Bank of England at the end of the 17th century and forms the basis of our global system of currency, with its potential for constant expansion; (ii) James Watt's invention of the steam engine at the end of the 18th century and the use of coal, which marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution; (iii) the Roman property law of "dominium", the ius utendi et abutendi re sua (the right not merely to use, but also to consume, one's private property) in the Code Napoleon - the new civil code created by Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th century. This concept of ownership provides the necessary legal sanction for the increasing subordination of nature to the requirements of economic exploitation. Goethe not only reveals how Faust, the representative modern man, realizes this massive project of economic progress, but also shows the existing and potential dangers associated with it. Human progress entails curbing nature by constructing an artificial world consisting of cities, industry, transport, and intensified agriculture, symbolized in Faust by land reclamation through building of the dyke. With great insight Goethe tells us that the intervention into the natural environment that this demands may have unforeseen consequences because nature reacts according to its own laws, which humans can never entirely predict. Unintended or unanticipated consequences may wipe out wholly or in part the successes gained by earlier interventions or cast retrospective doubt upon them. In Faust Goethe draws attention to three dangers, in particular: (i) Environmental damage may ensue, exemplified by a "foul morass" in the reclaimed land, because there is no outflow for the stinking water. This is a consequence of the short-sighted construction of the dyke, which has led to the formation of algae and the silting up of drainage channels. As attempts are made to correct these problems, new ones are created, which in their turn require further corrections. Thus Faust's megalomanic project is never-ending! (ii) To realize his plans Faust needs more and more land. So he drives out the established population - exemplified in Faust by the old couple, Baucis and Philemon - from the dunes above the newly embanked land. The beauty of the natural landscape, which had evolved and been carefully maintained over centuries - everything we associate with the idea of "home" - is now ruined. (iii) New risks arise that could completely destroy Faust's entire project. For example the dam, which Faust sets against the might of the ocean, could break! Faust knows this, but he believes that if all available forces are coordinated, then all possible dangers can be overcome: Howe'er may rage the angry baffled tide, Striving to sap, to force an entrance, each And all rush swiftly to close up the breach. But Mephistopheles disagrees: Yet all your labor's spent for us alone. With your fine dams and bulwarks vast, You're but preparing a superb repast For Neptune, the sea-fiend, to feast upon. You're trumped and done for every way, Into our hands the elements play, Destruction onwards is striding fast. The real danger is that Faust - modern man - will not acknowledge the need for careful planning to forestall such damage as he pushes on relentlessly, not seeing what is going on around him. Goethe symbolizes this blind irresponsibility by Faust's loss of eyesight. In other words, Faust is so obsessed with his plans to subdue nature that he loses sight of the realities that may require careful reflection and possibly a total rethinking of the project. Hence mankind compounds its natural limitations - its inability to fully understand nature's complexity - with a blindness induced by hubris. The Rio conference on "Sustainable Development" (1992) demonstrated that we live in a finite, limited world and that development is only sustainable if we take account of these limitations. This is a challenge for Faust, a challenge for modern man. Here, too, Goethe was prophetic. In his comments on "Contemplative Judgement" he writes: "Our aim must be, through contemplation of the ceaseless processes of nature, to make ourselves worthy to share spiritually in her productions" {2}. In other words, we must be careful observers of nature's parameters and allow ourselves, more than ever before, to be guided by them. Instead of continuing our attempt to dominate nature with linear thinking, we must cultivate an intuitive sensitivity and responsiveness to her complexities. Science must respond to this reorientation by developing the corresponding technology. We need to develop products - consumer goods, machines, buildings - that produce less waste, last longer, are recyclable, consume less energy, and fit gracefully into the landscape and/or model themselves on natural forms (bionics). This is only possible if economists, too, understand that less can be more, that in economic production what matters is not so much the amount produced but its increased utility, and that, accordingly, both quantitative and qualitative growth can benefit mankind without damaging nature. Perhaps Faust, or modern man, may never, as Goethe once hoped, achieve a moment so lovely that he would want to hold on to it forever. But if we strive to develop a more respectful relationship with nature, we may very well come closer to creating just such a moment. Notes: {1} Translations of Faust in this essay are from Goethe's Faust, Parts I and II, translated by T Martin [Dent, London, (Dutton, New York), 1954, reprinted 1971]. This translation was originally published as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, A Dramatic Poem, translated by T Martin (Blackwood, Edinburgh, London, 1865). {2} Goethe's Samtliche Werke, in dreissig Banden (Cotta'scher Verlag, Stuttgart und Tubingen, 1851), 30 Band, S 345. _____ Hans Christoph Binswanger is professor emeritus in economics at the University of Saint Gallen, Switzerland. His research has concentrated on monetary theory, and environmental and resource economics, for which he has received several prizes. He has authored numerous books including Money and Magic: A Critique of the Modern Economy in Light of Goethe's Faust, translated by J E Harrison (University of Chicago Press, 1994). Institut f?r Wirtschaft und Okologie, Universitat Saint Gallen, Tigerbergstrasse 2, CH-9000 Saint Gallen, Switzerland. From shniad at sfu.ca Sun Mar 8 14:36:59 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 13:36:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Hollywood's New Censors In-Reply-To: <790855674.33001236293955070.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1022021124.32921236544619924.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3780 Z Net February 19, 2009 Hollywood's New Censors By John Pilger When I returned from the war in Vietnam, I wrote a film script as an antidote to the myth that the war had been an ill-fated noble cause. The producer David Puttnam took the draft to Hollywood and offered it to the major studios, whose responses were favourable - well, almost. Each issued a report card in which the final category, "politics", included comments such as: "This is real, but are the American people ready for it? Maybe they'll never be." By the late 1970s, Hollywood judged Americans ready for a different kind of Vietnam movie. The first was The Deer Hunter which, according to Time, "articulates the new patriotism". The film celebrated immigrant America, with Robert de Niro as a working class hero ("liberal by instinct") and the Vietnamese as sub-human Oriental barbarians and idiots, or "gooks". The dramatic peak was reached during recurring orgiastic scenes in which GIs were forced to play Russian roulette by their Vietnamese captors. This was made up by the director Michael Cimino, who also made up a story that he had served in Vietnam. "I have this insane feeling that I was there," he said. "Somehow... the line between reality and fiction has become blurred." The Deer Hunter was regarded virtually as documentary by ecstatic critics. "The film that could purge a nation's guilt!" said the Daily Mail. President Jimmy Carter was reportedly moved by its "genuine American message". Catharsis was at hand. The Vietnam movies became a revisionist popular history of the great crime in Indo-China. That more than four million people had died terribly and unnecessarily and their homeland poisoned to a wasteland was not the concern of these films. Rather, Vietnam was an "American tragedy", in which the invader was to be pitied in a blend of false bravado-and-angst: sometimes crude (the Rambo films) and sometimes subtle (Oliver Stone's Platoon). What mattered was the strength of the purgative. None of this, of course, was new; it was how Hollywood created the myth of the Wild West, which was harmless enough unless you happened to be a native-American; and how the Second World War has been relentlessly glorified, which may be harmless enough unless you happen to be one of countless innocent human beings, from Serbia to Iraq, whose deaths or dispossession are justified by moralising references to 1939-45. Hollywood's gooks, its Untermenschen, are essential to this crusade - the dispatched Somalis in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down and the sinister Arabs in movies like Rendition, in which the torturing CIA is absolved by Jake Gyllenhal's good egg. As Robbie Graham and Mark Alford pointed out in their New Statesman enquiry into corporate control of the cinema (2 February ), in 167 minutes of Steven Spielberg's Munich, the Palestinian cause is restricted to just two and a half minutes. "Far from being an 'even-handed cry for peace', as one critic claimed," they wrote, "Munich is more easily interpreted as a corporate-backed endorsement of Israeli policy." With honourable exceptions, film critics rarely question this and identify the true power behind the screen. Obsessed with celebrity actors and vacuous narratives, they are the cinema's lobby correspondents, its dutiful press corps. Emitting safe snipes and sneers, they promote a deeply political system that dominates most of what we pay to see, knowing not what we are denied. Brian de Palma's 2007 film Redacted shows an Iraq the media does not report. He depicts the homicides and gang-rapes that are never prosecuted and are the essence of any colonial conquest. In the New York Village Voice, the critic Anthony Kaufman, in abusing the "divisive" De Palma for his "perverse tales of voyeurism and violence", did his best to taint the film as a kind of heresy and to bury it. In this way, the "war on terror" - the conquest and subversion of resource rich regions of the world, whose ramifications and oppressions touch all our lives - is almost excluded from the popular cinema. Michael Moore's outstanding Fahrenheit 911 was a freak; the notoriety of its distribution ban by the Walt Disney Company helped to force its way into cinemas. My own 2007 film The War on Democracy, which inverted the "war on terror" in Latin America, was distributed in Britain, Australia and other countries but not in the United States. "You will need to make structural and political changes," said a major New York distributor. "Maybe get a star like Sean Penn to host it - he likes liberal causes - and tame those anti-Bush sequences." During the cold war, Hollywood's state propaganda was unabashed. The classic 1957 dance movie, Silk Stockings, was an anti-Soviet diatribe interrupted by the fabulous footwork of Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire. These days, there are two types of censorship. The first is censorship by introspective dross. Betraying its long tradition of producing gems, escapist Hollywood is consumed by the corporate formula: just make 'em long and asinine and hope the hype will pay off. Ricky Gervais is his clever comic self in Ghost Town, while around him stale, formulaic characters sentimentalise the humour to death. These are extraordinary times. Vicious colonial wars and political, economic and environmental corruption cry out for a place on the big screen. Yet, try to name one recent film that has dealt with these, honestly and powerfully, let alone satirically.. Censorship by omission is virulent. We need another Wall Street, another Last Hurrah, another Dr. Strangelove. The partisans who tunnel out of their prison in Gaza, bringing in food, clothes, medicines and weapons with which to defend themselves, are no less heroic than the celluloid-honoured POWs and partisans of the 1940s. They and the rest of us deserve the respect of the greatest popular medium. www.johnpilger.com From shniad at sfu.ca Sun Mar 8 14:37:59 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 13:37:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] U.K. "ready to talk to Hezbollah" In-Reply-To: <514144867.4587551236284668791.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1436747548.33131236544679909.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/03/200935122446775120.html UK 'ready to talk to Hezbollah' The British government has said it is open to talks with the political wing of Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia Muslim organisation. Bill Rammell, Britain's foreign office minister, told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday: "We have reconsidered the position ... in light of more positive developments within Lebanon ... and for that reason we have explored establishing contacts." Britain has had no formal contact with Hezbollah since 2005, and last July it added the group's military wing to its list of banned organisations. Hezbollah became part of a Lebanese national unity government last year after months of wrangling with their opponents in the March 14 political bloc. 'Discussions under way' A "first meeting" has already taken place between a delegation from Britain's Conservative opposition party and a Lebanese parliamentary committee that included one Hezbollah member, Rammell said. "We will look to have further discussions and our overriding objective within that is to press Hezbollah to play a more constructive role, particularly to move away from violence," he said. But he said the change in policy would not pave the way for talks with the Palestinian faction Hamas, saying: "I don't think there's an analogy." Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, said: "Over the past few months, we've been living in an atmosphere of diplomatic engagement, where behind us was an eight-year period of violence in the Middle East. "Now that the US, under the Obama administration, is trying to engage with Syria and Iran, it's all too normal that countries like England and France would start talking with parties like Hezbollah, and perhaps in the future with Hamas. "It's an understanding based on the logic of diplomacy and political engagement and everyone knows this when it comes to the case of Lebanon. "Now that Lebanon is at the door of elections, Hezbollah has a good chance of winning. Hence, Hezbollah could be part of the governing coalition and Britain is preparing for that". 'Party of God' Hezbollah, which means "Party of God" in Arabic, was formed after Israeli troops invaded Lebanon in 1982. In 2006 it fought Israel in a month-long war, but has not since been involved in conflict with its neighbour. The group has MPs in the Lebanese parliament and a minister in the national unity government, which was formed last year following an accord that saved the country from the brink of civil war. From shniad at sfu.ca Sun Mar 8 14:35:39 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 13:35:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] It's time for a serious look at our drug policy In-Reply-To: <654167534.540911236462616473.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1944825290.32671236544539689.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Vancouver Sun March 7, 2009 It's time for a serious look at our drug policy By Dan Gardner The illicit drug trade is, despite its illicitness, a trade. It is an economic activity. "It's like in any marketplace," RCMP Supt. Pat Fogarty told the Globe and Mail this week. The only difference is that "these guys don't resolve things through a court process." The guys in question are the Vancouver-region gangsters whose spree of bloodshed has shocked Canadians and prompted the federal government to promise tougher laws. And Fogarty is right. Fundamentally, the drug trade is best understood not in terms of criminal law. It's economics that count. Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard University, has been studying the drug trade for 15 years. He stresses that "drug-related violence" has little to do with drugs. Prohibition of "any commodity for which there's demand leads to violence because the market is driven underground," he said in an interview. "It has relatively little to do with the commodity that is prohibited. It has almost everything to do with the fact that if you make it illegal, people are going to resolve their disputes with violence, not lawyers. If we banned coffee, we'd have a huge black market in coffee." And thugs in the coffee trade would be blasting away at each other in the street. Miron stresses that prohibition is not, as most people assume, like an on-off switch -- either a commodity is illegal or it is not. It is a matter of degree. Drugs like cocaine are illegal everywhere, but the extent to which the law is enforced and offenders are punished varies widely from country to country. It also varies over time. That fact is important to researchers like Miron. If prohibition is causing violence, countries that are less strict in enforcing the law should see less violence, while those that take a harder line should see more. Changes in law enforcement over time should be correlated with violence as well. And that's just what Miron and two colleagues found in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Examining data spanning countries and decades, they found things like arrest rates, capital punishment and gun laws didn't explain the numbers. But "the hypothesis that drug prohibition generates violence," they concluded, "is generally consistent with the long time-series and cross-country facts." This conclusion is sobering: If governments respond to gang violence with tougher laws and crackdowns, they will ultimately produce more violence. Among western nations, none has fought the drug trade harder than the United States. And none has a murder rate close to that of the U.S. Miron thinks that's not a coincidence. "I have one set of estimates that maybe 50 per cent of homicides in the U.S. are due to the prohibition of drugs." The best way to make a significant and lasting reduction in gang violence, Miron contends, is to remove drugs from the black market. They can be strictly regulated using any of a hundred different policy models. But they must be legalized. The most spectacular example can be seen in the American homicide rate through the 1920s and 1930s. Through the first 13 years of that two-decade period, the murder rate rises steadily -- from seven per 100,000 population to almost 10. But then, in 1933, it begins a steep decline -- hitting six per 100,000 population by 1940. So a 40-per-cent rise in murders until 1933 is followed by a 40-per-cent decline. What changed in 1933? It wasn't the economy. It was terrible before and terrible after. Anything else? No. There were no significant changes in 1933 that could explain the turnaround -- nothing except the legalization of alcohol and the end of the 13-year mistake known as Prohibition. Canada spends an estimated $2 billion a year enforcing the drug laws and yet we have little solid research examining the effectiveness of what we're doing. Not since the LeDain commission issued its report in 1972 has the government taken a serious look at drug policy. Surely we can all agree that's irresponsible. Drug policy is a critical factor in issues ranging from crime to disease, mental health, civil liberties and international development. At this very moment, Canadian soldiers are dying in a narco-state. Surely it is time for a serious examination of drug policy, from top to bottom. So let's have a commission of inquiry that can gather the best evidence from all over the world, analyse it properly, and draw conclusions without regard to political expediency. Let the evidence decide. If the police and other supporters of the status quo are confident they are right, they should welcome an inquiry as a chance to silence the critics. Canwest News Service From shniad at sfu.ca Sun Mar 8 14:37:39 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 13:37:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Sermon from the Corporate Church In-Reply-To: <845287475.14411236291622243.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1437443337.33061236544659709.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.daily.pk/world/americas/9552-sermon-from-the-corporate-church.html Pakistan Daily 28 February 2009 Sermon from the Corporate Church Peter Chamberlin Hurricane winds pound at the gates of Fortress America and our leaders send out the order for more straw and sand to pound into the widening cracks. The harder the winds of change blow the more apparent it becomes that our "leaders" cannot lead, when they themselves await orders from above. As our house of cards flies apart at the seams, the master planners send their minions scrambling to salvage their disintegrating investments, worrying only about their "property," caring less about the human life that is huddled in fear within. This belief, that property is more valuable than human life itself, is the basis of humanity's current problems. Capitalism, the embodiment of this belief, is in its death throes. The multiple crises which proponents of the capital faith have engineered were not unanticipated events; in fact, they were foreseen very clearly, as they have always been key elements of the planned grand finale to be implemented. The plan has always been to turn the coming catastrophe into the grandest opportunity of all time for men with no souls, having been consumed by greed. Human nature itself has become the enemy of the master class. Only the indomitable human spirit and the eternal will to resist stands in the way of the global empire which promises limitless potential profits for a handful of the most heartless individuals. The most powerful of this select few foresee the coming opportunity and its dreadful unimaginable cost of the elimination of a sizeable portion of the human race, and yet, they remained undisturbed by its inhumanity and malevolence. The master planners do not believe it is possible to save the whole human race, so why waste resources (money) on those who cannot survive on their own. To try to do more would surely doom the system, the cornerstone of the religion of avarice. In their minds, preserving the fittest, most successful individuals is the best way to ensure the survival of the faith and the species. Faith in the infallibility of capitalism and the belief that it is the answer to mankind's problems permeates American culture, wherever it has taken root around the world. It is extremely unnerving to suggest to a true believer that capitalism is a doomed religion or that it is intrinsically harmful to mankind, comparable to cursing God to a faithful Muslim or Christian. But the hard truth is that trying to save capitalism from its own contradictions is an impossible task that will waste all the money spent trying, while the world reels from the multiple crises spun-off by the imposter "god" in its death throes. The masters of deception have interwoven faith in capital with patriotic belief, while painting critics of either with the same brush of "communist." Following their pseudo logic, all those who resist the plan for a global empire built on the graves of billions of "useless eaters" are considered to be enemies of mankind, no better than communists, terrorists, or other common criminals. Even though resistance to a plan of mass genocide is obviously an act of self-defense, those who dare to do so are marked as extremists and terrorists, targeted for death or incarceration in the war on terror. In the end, real patriots will seethe with righteous anger when they realize that America itself is the final target marked for destruction in the envisioned New Order. The destruction of the banks is a planned event, as was the elimination of American industry. The wise men who plan the wars and move the grand chess pieces for their imaginary humanitarian reasons have developed their own scientific methods for persuading the human race into accepting their master plan. In their cold calculations they have arrived at a working hypothesis, whereby they have concluded that they only have to manipulate a small portion of the human race located in America, in key Western countries and in the Middle East, which stands in the way of their plans of conquest. All available resources are focused on this small segment of humanity, especially upon the leadership of this small select group, seeking to persuade them by the power of the purse or through sheer fear of military force to accept the takeover. The leadership in every zone of conflict (including potential leaders) is assessed and targeted to either co-opt or to destroy. Group leadership manipulation techniques are used to build-up the useful groups who will accept the corporate domination, while tearing-down those that are thought to be impediments to the conquest. This process has advanced the empire's agenda all over the planet, while strewing a trail of human wreckage in its wake. Entire countries have been destabilized and laid to waste in the service of the empire's grand design. For the most part, the targeted individuals do not realize that they are being manipulated by forces hostile to their own desires or agendas. The fortunate few who do understand the forces allayed against the human race are effectively quarantined by corporate constrictions placed on all available mediums of communication, thereby limiting their ability to spread their infectious knowledge (truth) to others. The infectious truth is that there exists a small powerful group of men who consider themselves to be gods, intent upon ruling the world. The global economic collapse is a product of their machinations, as is the "war on terror" we wage to save the global economy. We have decimated Afghanistan and Iraq as part of their plan to save capitalism and avert their eventual total ruin. We savage these countries thinking that we are saving our own country, which these men have sacrificed on the altar of "globalism" for their own enrichment. In the end, nothing is being saved, as the economic order is collapsing and our military begins to escalate the resource war in Asia. Our sons fight and die to finalize the world takeover for these false gods. The Afghan/Pakistani quagmire, the focus of this plan, has been made worse by the sheer ignorance, neglect and brutality of the previous American administration. This policy was custom made for driving entire populations into taking-up arms in self-defense, with the only other path to "victory" given serious consideration being the complete decimation of those targeted populations. There is no room at the top for discussions of possible solutions of the impending intersecting world crises that involve moving resources from the accounts of the master class into the hands of the suffering masses. I was recently very surprised to hear one of the master strategists of the empire, adviser to President Obama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, advocating just that in an interview, when he called for creation of a National Solidarity Fund. Another of Obama's advisers, Richard Holbrooke, recently explained that the idea in Afghanistan/Pakistan was to separate the "reconcilables from the irreconcilables," a call taken-up by Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi. The "reconcilables" (those who will submit and become collaborators to the empire) could either be bought or brought into submission by a process of coercion. In the grand design those who prove to be immune to the fear tactics are coerced by more lethal persuasion. Surely Obama himself is in the dark about the depth of the depravity of the plan he has been hand-picked to administer. The actual cost of the truly extremist "plan-to-takeover-the-world" is not to be measured in dollars, but in innocent lives claimed. The price tag for saving the collapsing capitalist system is much greater than the trillions of dollars now being cited in descriptions of the continuing bailout; it will be remembered simply as world war III, which claimed billions of lives. The horror that has been planned for us has been described best as the apocalypse or "Armageddon (a period of upheaval marked by famine and war of such ferocity that divine intervention will be required to save a remnant of the human race) by the ancient prophets who foresaw our era of false gods, describing the economic empire created as "The Beast". It is not possible to save the super-capitalists from the world crisis that they have brought on themselves. No amount of money poured down the drain, nor sacrifice of innocent multitudes will save the personal fortunes of the world's richest most powerful men, but the correct expenditure of their massive fortunes would turn the situation around, saving the entire human race and setting the foundations for a new humane economic order. Obama must realize when the time comes that under the emergency powers of his office he not only has the authority to seize our assets, but he also has access to all the assets of America's richest men for meeting those emergencies that threaten the common good. Very soon it will become obvious to all that the national emergency that we have begun to enter truly threatens everything. Let capitalism pass away peacefully. Prepare to embrace a new humane economic order. If it is inevitable that the people must bailout the banks to preserve some semblance of the American way of life, then shouldn't the people then own the banks? If, in the end, a choice must be made between a few men owning everything at the people's expense, or the people owning their own means of production, then we all must choose to be our own masters. From fentona at shaw.ca Sun Mar 8 15:37:47 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 14:37:47 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Hollywood's New Censors In-Reply-To: <1022021124.32921236544619924.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> References: <1022021124.32921236544619924.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <333CBC82-37BD-47BC-924C-0B3D83CB48A6@shaw.ca> - The Graham & Alford piece cited by Pilger ... http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2009/01/disney-hollywood-interests The power behind the screen Robbie Graham and Matthew Alford Published 29 January 2009 The output of Hollywood is intrinsically pro-establishment, and to understand why you have to follow the money Baz Luhrmann's epic film Australia has been criticised by many, and most vociferously by Germaine Greer, for sanitising the country's colonial history. At the same time it has served the purpose of making Australia look like a great place to go on holiday - its release was accompanied by reams of coverage in the travel sections of newspapers and a lavish advertising campaign by the Australian tourist board. This kind of marketing is hardly new - throughout cinematic history, films have served political and social ends. But in order to understand the influences at play in Hollywood today it is still worth asking in more detail: what prompted 20th Century Fox to produce this kind of material? The answer becomes clearer when we learn that the studio's parent company is Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which worked hand in hand throughout the film's production with the Australian government. The arrangement works well for both parties: the government benefits from the increase in tourism, and in turn Murdoch will receive tens of millions of dollars in tax rebates. This is just one example of how the content of Hollywood movies is determined not only by the demands of the box office and the vision of studio "creatives", but also by those higher up the economic food chain. Indeed, in its cinema power list the Hollywood Reporter placed Rupert Murdoch at number one. Steven Spielberg, at number three, was the only director in the top ten. The economic structure of the film industry is built around the dominant Hollywood studios ("the majors"), each of which is a subsidiary of a much larger corporation. Each studio is therefore not a separate or independent business, but rather just one of a great many sources of revenue in its parent company's wider financial empire. So, just as 20th Century Fox is owned by News Corp, Paramount is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Viacom. Universal is owned by General Electric/Vivendi, Disney by the Walt Disney Corporation, and so on. These parent companies are huge corporations, and their economic interests are sometimes closely tied to politicised areas, such as the armaments industry. They also depend on governments, which have the power to regulate in their favour and grant them tax breaks. This is not to say that the content of a studio's films is determined entirely by the political and economic interests of its parent company; studio CEOs typically have considerable leeway to make the pictures they want to make, without any direct interference. But it is important to understand how and why Hollywood studios are tied into these wider corporate interests. At best, such interests contribute to a culture of conservative film-making. At worst, it is certainly not unknown for parent companies to take a conscious and deliberate interest in certain films. To take one example: in 1969, Haskell Wexler - the cinematographer for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - had considerable trouble releasing his classic Medium Cool, which riffed on the anti-war protests at the Democrat convention the previous year. According to Wexler, documents he has received under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that on the eve of the film's release, Chicago's mayor and others in the Democratic Party let it be known to Gulf & Western (then the parent company of Paramount) that if Medium Cool was released, certain tax benefits and other perks would be withheld. In a telephone interview, Wexler told us that Hollywood's business leaders "have no conscience". He explained how this corporate agreement was made discreetly: "Paramount called me and said I needed releases from all the [protesters] in the park, which was impossible to provide. They said if people went to see the movie and left the theatre and did a violent act, then the offices of Paramount could be prosecuted." Although Paramount was obliged to release the film, it successfully pushed for an X rating, advertised it feebly, and forbade Wexler from taking it to film festivals. Hardly the way to make a profit on a movie, but certainly the way to protect the broader interests of the parent company. More recently, the Walt Disney Company tried to withhold Miramax's Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), the Michael Moore blockbuster. Miramax insisted Disney had no right to block it from releasing the film since its budget was well below the level requiring Disney's approval. Disney representatives responded that they could veto any Miramax film if it appeared that its distribution would be counterproductive to the interests of the company. Ari Emanuel, Moore's agent, alleged that Disney's boss Michael Eisner had told him he wanted to back out of the deal due to concerns about political fallout from conservative politicians, especially regarding tax breaks given to Disney properties, including Walt Disney World in Florida (Florida's governor was the then-president's brother, Jeb Bush). Disney denied any such high political ball game, explaining that they were worried about being "dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle" and alienating customers. Disney has a strongly conservative tradition: Walt himself was a virulent anti-communist (though some of the more salacious rumours about him being a secret fascist and FBI informer are decidedly speculative). Corporate and government sponsors helped Disney make films promoting President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" policy as well as the infamous Duck and Cover documentary which suggested to schoolchildren that they could survive an atomic attack by hiding under their desks. Even now, a longtime member of Disney's board of directors is John E Bryson, who is also a director of the Boeing Company, one of the world's largest aerospace and defence contractors. Boeing received $16.6bn in Pentagon contracts in 2002, in the aftermath of the US invasion of Afghanistan. Certain Disney films do appear to have been given preferential treatment for political reasons. When Disney released Pearl Harbor - a simplistic mega-budget movie which celebrated the American nationalist resurgence following that "day of infamy"- it received lamentable reviews. Nevertheless, Disney unexpectedly decided in August 2001 to extend the film's nationwide release window from the standard two to four months to seven months, meaning that this "summer" blockbuster would be screening until December. In addition, Disney expanded the number of theatres in which the film was showing from 116 to 1,036. While such fare finds an easy route into the world's multiplexes, more politically challenging films are left to flounder for funding. Oliver Stone's Salvador (1986) was a graphic expos? of the Salvadorian civil war; its narrative was sympathetic to the leftist guerrillas and explicitly critical of US foreign policy, condemning the United States support of Salvador's right-wing military and infamous death squads. Stone's film was turned down by every major Hollywood studio, and was eventually financed by British and Mexican investors. More recently, controversial counterculture documentaries such as Loose Change, which argued that 9/11 was an "inside job", and Zeitgeist, which presents a frightening picture of global economics, have been viewed by millions through the internet when corporate media wouldn't touch them. Universal Studios has backed a number of socially and politically critical films including Children of Men, Jarhead, and The Good Shepherd. However, at times it has been evident that the interests of the studio's parent company, General Electric, have played a part in decision-making. GE's most lucrative interests relate to weapons manufacturing, producing crucial components for hi-tech war planes, advanced surveillance technology, and essential hardware for the global oil and gas industries, notably in post-Saddam Iraq. Both GE's former and current CEOs had links to the Bush administration: Jack Welch (CEO from 1981 to 2001) is a declared Republican who announced his disdain for "protocol, diplomacy and regulators" and was even accused by the California congressman Henry Waxman of pressuring his NBC network to declare Bush the winner prematurely in the 2000 "stolen election" when he turned up unannounced in the newsroom during the poll count. Welch's successor, the current CEO Jeff Immelt, is a neoconservative and was a significant financial contributor to the Bush election campaign. GE/Universal's United 93 was billed as the "true account" of how heroic passengers pn the plane "foiled the terrorist plot" by forcing it to crash prematurely in rural Pennsylvania. At the time, Bush's official 9/11 story was being seriously interrogated by America's independent news media; according to the results of a 2004 Zogby poll, half of New Yorkers believed "US leaders had foreknowledge of impending 9/11 attacks and 'consciously failed' to act"; and just one month prior to the release of United 93, 83 per cent of CNN viewers confirmed their belief "that the US government covered up the real events of the 9/11 attacks". With the official narrative under attack, the US government welcomed the release of United 93 with open arms: the film was a faithful audiovisual translation of the 9/11 Commission Report. Soon after its nationwide release date, President Bush invited representatives of Universal to the White House for congratulatory handshakes, followed by a private screening. Munich, Steven Spielberg's exploration of Israeli vengeance following the Palestinian terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics, could also be understood to reflect the interests of General Electric. Israel is one of GE's most loyal customers, buying Hellfire II laser missiles as well as propulsion systems for the F-16 Falcon fighter, the F-4 Phantom fighter, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, and the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. Spielberg ends his film with a lingering shot of the World Trade Center, its twin towers standing as monolithic reminders as to "why we fight", and casting a shadow over the 167 minutes of running time, the voice of the Palestinian cause is restricted to just two and a half minutes of dialogue. Far from being an "even-handed cry for peace", as one critic claimed, Munich is more easily interpreted as a corporate-backed endorsement of Israeli policy. To understand what might happen if big business interests were less prevalent in the film industry, consider the independent distributor Lions Gate Films. Lions Gate was formed in Canada by an investment banker, but is not beholden to a multi-billion dollar parent corporation with multifarious interests. The result has been some of the most daring and original popular political cinema of the past ten years: American Psycho, which criticised corporate capitalism; Hotel Rwanda, which highlighted the fail ings of US foreign policy, and Lord of War, which focused on the arms trade. Jim Hightower, the radio commentator fired by Disney after criticising its policies on issues including tobacco advertising, once said that "the real political spectrum is not left to right, it's top to bottom, and the vast majority of people aren't even in shooting distance of the economic and political powers at the top". As we peer up from our popcorn, it is worth remembering that behind the magic of the movies lurks the darker power of corporate public relations. Matthew Alford is author of the forthcoming book "Projecting Power: American Foreign Policy and the Hollywood Propaganda System" Robbie Graham is associate lecturer in film at Stafford College From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Mar 8 18:28:21 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2009 09:28:21 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The End of Retirement Message-ID: <49B462A5.5050906@ashisuto.co.jp> by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (March 04 2009) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by the flurry of responses to last week's Archdruid Report post on the twilight of investment. "Men will forgive the murder of their fathers sooner than the loss of their patrimony", Machiavelli wrote a long time ago, and the principle can be applied more generally: if you really want to rile people, threaten the money and property they think is securely theirs. Unfortunately the word "security" can be applied to any financial asset in today's economy only in the most ironic of senses. The entire system of economic value that underlies the possibility of investment broke down completely in the speculative excesses of the last thirty years, drowned in a flood of unpayable debts - public, corporate, and private - that were mistakenly classified and then sold as financial assets. The face value of these paper debts vastly exceeds the value of all human economic activities on Earth; the huge majority of them can thus never be paid off, and so they are effectively worthless. That awkward fact, if honestly faced, would likely bring the world's economies to a shuddering halt. Thus we can be confident that it will not be honestly faced. Instead, governments around the world are playing a high-stakes game of make-believe, pretending that the global economy is not bankrupt in the hope that the losses can be spread out over years rather than hitting all at once. For all I know, they may succeed - but even so, the downside will not be pretty. One aspect of that downside was on many of my readers' minds last week, to judge by the comments and emails I fielded. People nowadays invest for many reasons, but one of the most common is retirement. Ever since the American pension system and its government equivalent, Social Security, began to shed their reputation for stability and adequate funding, a growing number of Americans - pushed that way by large and lavishly funded ad campaigns - have placed their hopes for a comfortable old age on investments. The result is a huge fraction of Americans who are emotionally as well as financially invested in the hope that a big payoff from their assets will enable them to have the retirement of their dreams. If you are among the people who cling to that belief, I'm sorry to say I have bad news. Over the next decade or so, the huge overhang of paper wealth that now floods the world economy is going to lose nearly all its value. As it goes, it will take your retirement funds with it. It's anyone's guess exactly how the process will play out. One possibility is a long deflationary spiral in which markets slump, bankruptcies soar, and the legacy of bad debt suffers the death of a thousand cuts. Another is hyperinflation, in which the dollar value of the bad debt still holds good but a cheeseburger costs US$150,000 and workmen take their salaries home in wheelbarrows. Another is a credit crisis in which efforts by governments to fund deficits via borrowing exhaust the world's dwindling pool of credit, and nations are forced into default. Still another is a political decision on the part of a major debtor nation to default on its foreign debt, leading to panic selling of offshore assets and the collapse of international trade and investment. What makes this devastating for those who hope to retire on their current investments is that most current asset classes are part of that overhang of unpayable debt, and the rest are priced at levels that assume that much of the unpayable debt is still boosting the global economy's net worth. One way or another, those assets will sooner or later move toward their real value, which in the case of most financial assets is nothing, and in the case of most nonfinancial assets is a lot less than they're worth on paper right now. This means that no matter where you put your investments, you're likely to lose most of your money. Interestingly, this is likely to be true even of commodities such as crude oil which are subject to declining production curves for hard geological reasons. Last year's price spikes in oil and other energy resources were only partly a product of geological limits on production. The soaring demand growth of an overheating economy, and speculative money flooding into any asset that was gaining in price, both played major parts. Prices collapsed when the speculative money flowed back out, and slumping demand has helped keep prices low since then. As the economy unravels further, the chance of further downside action can't be dismissed. It has, I think, too rarely been noticed in peak oil circles that there are at least two ways to price oil out of the market; the first is for the price per barrel to soar out of reach, the second is for the economy to contract so sharply that even a modest price per barrel is more than most people can pay. For the next decade or so, then, there's unlikely to be any asset class that will give prospective retirees the income they've come to expect. Nor will private pensions, most of which are dependent on investments and vulnerable to corporate bankruptcies, fare much better during that time. Nor are government pensions immune; most governments are hemmorrhaging red ink right now, adding to unsupportable debt loads, and the pool of credit available for government borrowing is far from limitless. What about after that, when the overhang of debt has been cleared one way or another and this crisis, like all economic crises, finally comes to an end? Well, once again, I have bad news. Retirement as a social habit was entirely a product of the zenith of the age of abundance now sliding backwards in our collective rear view mirror. For a brief window of time - rather less than a century - it made financial and political sense for nations in the developed world to pay their elderly citizens to stay out of the work force, in order to keep unemployment down to politically bearable levels. All this unfolded, in turn, from an industrial economy so lavishly supplied with cheap energy that human labor was worth replacing with machines wherever the state of technology permitted, and so greedy for new markets that every part of human life was made subject to market forces. Before that period began, something less than half of all economic activity even in the industrial world had anything to do with the market at all. Most women, and many men outside the age of regular employment, worked in a household economy governed by custom and intrafamily exchange rather than market forces. This included essentially everyone who would be eligible for retirement by the standards of the age that has just ended. Outside the market but not outside the demand for skilled human labor, elderly people typically provided household goods and services to a household somewhere in their extended family. That was their full-time job; by contributing the value of their labor and skills, they earned their keep. The end of the age of cheap energy means that such household economies will once again be viable. It also means that they will once again be necessary. When the limited energy and resources of a contracting, deindustrial society have to be prioritized for urgent needs, takeout meals and convenience foods will sooner or later draw the short straw; in their absence, most food will once again be made at home from raw materials. When the energy cost of the global network of sweatshops that keeps Americans clothed can no longer be met, a great deal of clothing will once again be made at home from raw fiber, as it was not so long ago, and so on. All this requires human labor. Thus a society no longer supplied with nearly unlimited amounts of cheap abundant energy will have every incentive to keep elderly people in the household labor force, and neither the incentive nor the resources to keep them in comfortable idleness. Now of course it's true that we will not be landing in such a society overnight. It's also true that the clout of the retiree lobby in most industrial nations is such that public and private pensions will be gutted only when every other option has been exhausted - though in the United States, at least, the vast tide of red ink currently flooding out of Washington DC is likely to bring about this eventuality sooner rather than later. Still, it's quite possible that at least some of today's retirees and soon-to-be-retirees will manage to cling to that status, at least for a while. If I were asked for advice about retirement, then, it would probably go something like this. If you're already retired, or within a few years of retirement, it's probably worth your while to try to get any investment money you have left into a stable investment, if you can find one. Still, it's probably unwise to assume that your investments will be worth anything in the long terms, and having a Plan B in place would be a very good idea. If you're more than a decade or so out from retirement, having a Plan B in place is essential. If you're thirty years out or more out, as I am, forget about Plan A for now; you can look into the options for investment later, once the wreckage of the last few decades has been hauled away and a new economic order has begun to take shape, but you probably will never retire. What sort of Plan B might work best for you depends on so many local and personal variables that specifics would almost certainly be misleading. If you've got a large family with whom you're on good terms, bone up on your home ec skills; ten years from now, when four of your grandkids, their spouses, and their children all live in one rundown McMansion, having Grandma and Grandpa there to cook the meals, tend the children, and keep the garden going will likely be worth much more than your keep. If you don't have a family or can't stand them, cultivate relationships with younger friends, or get ready to take up a second career that you can continue into advanced old age. No matter what you choose, it's not going to be as fun as sitting on a lawn chair in a Sun Belt trailer park. Still, history is under no obligation to give the options we'd prefer, and a great many pleasant options are going away for a time, or forever, as the industrial age draws to a close. _____ ?John Michael Greer has been active in the alternative spirituality movement for more than 25 years, and is the author of a dozen books, including The Druidry Handbook (2006) and The Long Descent (2008). He lives in Ashland, Oregon. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/03/end-of-retirement.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 Mar 8 18:55:35 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 17:55:35 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Global Media Managers References: Message-ID: <221D5F80-7F31-4A07-9A6E-C71D09D92D89@shaw.ca> Global Media Managers, Swans Commentary, March 9, 2009. (Swans - March 9, 2009) On January 13, 2009, the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), a recently formed international media manipulator, released a report titled, "Soft Censorship: How Governments Around the Globe Use Money to Manipulate the Media." The report documents the manner in which various governments manipulate media systems within their own countries (e.g., the Ukraine and Chile). Significantly the report fails to identify the US government's extensive efforts to manipulation of media systems in those same countries or the conduct of CIMA itself. When it is revealed that CIMA is a project of the US government's CIA-inspired National Endowment for Democracy (NED) this failure is contextualised.For example, by providing strategic support to local media projects the NED played a key role in facilitating Ukraine's Orange Revolution (in 2005), and in catalysing the ouster of Chile's resident dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1987. (1) The first sentence of the executive summary of CIMA's report notes, without irony, that: "As once openly authoritarian regimes have moved toward more democratic societies -- or at least toward the appearance of democratic ones -- an insidious form of censorship has arisen." Such a statement expresses the anti-democratic function of the media in the United States itself. (2) That is, the media empire in the U.S. operates to bring pressures upon mainstream US journalists to self- censor and conform to capitalist ideology. Such pressure facilitates the transition from pseudo democratic forms of governance to openly authoritarian (media-backed) regimes. This short article does not critique the content of CIMA's latest report; however, it is necessary to point out that almost all of the "independent" media groups referred to within the report have secured support from the National Endowment for Democracy at some point of their operations. (3) Instead this article scrutinizes a number of rarely mentioned democracy-manipulators whose work can be indirectly connected to Don Podesta, the author of the CIMA report. The point of this scrutiny is to demonstrate how deeply such media manipulators have insinuated themselves into global civil society, so that concerned activists can more effectively resist their hegemonic influence. ... CONTINUED HERE http://www.swans.com/library/art15/barker15.html From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Mar 9 07:13:29 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:13:29 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Anti-Empire Report Message-ID: <49B515F9.90803@ashisuto.co.jp> by William Blum www.killinghope.org (March 04 2009) Being serious about torture. Or not. In Cambodia they're once again endeavoring to hold trials to bring some former senior Khmer Rouge officials to justice for their 1975-79 war crimes and crimes against humanity. The current defendant in a United Nations-organized trial, Kaing Guek Eav, who was the head of a Khmer Rouge torture center, has confessed to atrocities, but insists he was acting under orders {1}. As we all know, this is the defense that the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected for the Nazi defendants. Everyone knows that, right? No one places any weight on such a defense any longer, right? We make jokes about Nazis declaring: "I was only following orders!" ("Ich habe nur den Befehlen gehorcht!") Except that both the Bush and Obama administrations have spoken in favor of it. Here's the new head of the CIA, Leon Panetta: "What I have expressed as a concern, as has the president, is that those who operated under the rules that were provided by the Attorney General in the interpretation of the law [concerning torture] and followed those rules ought not to be penalized. And ... I would not support, obviously, an investigation or a prosecution of those individuals. I think they did their job." {2} Operating under the rules ... doing their job ... are of course the same as following orders. The UN Convention Against Torture (first adopted in 1984), which has been ratified by the United States, says quite clearly, "An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture". The Torture Convention enacts a prohibition against torture that is a cornerstone of international law and a principle on a par with the prohibition against slavery and genocide. Of course, those giving the orders are no less guilty. On the very day of Obama's inauguration, the United Nation's special torture rapporteur invoked the Convention in calling on the United States to pursue former president George W Bush and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners {3}. On several occasions, President Obama has indicated his reluctance to pursue war crimes charges against Bush officials, by expressing a view such as: "I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards." This is the same excuse Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has given for not punishing Khmer Rouge leaders. In December 1998 he asserted: "We should dig a hole and bury the past and look ahead to the 21st century with a clean slate" {4}. Hun Sen has been in power all the years since then, and no Khmer Rouge leader has been convicted for their role in the historic mass murder. And by not investigating Bush officials, Obama is indeed saying that they're above the law. Like the Khmer Rouge officials have been. Michael Ratner, a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy. "The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don't see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable." {5} One reason for the non-prosecution may be that serious trials of the many Bush officials who contributed to the torture policies might reveal the various forms of Democratic Party non-opposition and collaboration. It should also be noted that the United States supported Pol Pot (who died in April 1998) and the Khmer Rouge for several years after they were ousted from power by the Vietnamese in 1979. This support began under Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and continued under Ronald Reagan. {6} A lingering bitterness by American cold warriors toward Vietnam, the small nation which monumental US power had not been able to defeat, and its perceived closeness to the Soviet Union, appears to be the only explanation for this policy. Humiliation runs deep when you're a superpower. Neither should it be forgotten in this complex cautionary tale that the Khmer Rouge in all likelihood would never have come to power, nor even made a serious attempt to do so, if not for the massive American "carpet bombing" of Cambodia in 1969-70 and the US-supported overthrow of Prince Sihanouk in 1970 and his replacement by a man closely tied to the United States {7}. Thank you Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Well done, lads. By the way, if you're not already turned off by many of Obama's appointments, listen to how James Jones opened his talk at the Munich Conference on Security Policy on February 8: "Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr Kissinger." {8} Lastly, Spain's High Court recently announced it would launch a war crimes investigation into an Israeli ex-defense minister and six other top security officials for their role in a 2002 attack that killed a Hamas commander and fourteen civilians in Gaza {9}. Spain has for some time been the world's leading practitioner of "universal jurisdiction" for human-rights violations, such as their indictment of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet a decade ago. The Israeli case involved the dropping of a bomb on the home of the Hamas leader; most of those killed were children. The United States does this very same thing every other day in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Given the refusal of American presidents to invoke even their "national jurisdiction" over American officials-cum-war criminals, we can only hope that someone reminds the Spanish authorities of a few names, names like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Feith, Perle, Yoo, and a few others with a piece missing, a piece that's shaped like a conscience. There isn't even a need to rely on international law alone, for there's an American law against war crimes, passed by a Republican-dominated Congress in 1996 {10}. The noted Israeli columnist, Uri Avnery, writing about the Israeli case, tried to capture the spirit of Israeli society that produces such war criminals and war crimes. He observed: "This system indoctrinates its pupils with a violent tribal cult, totally ethnocentric, which sees in the whole of world history nothing but an endless story of Jewish victimhood. This is a religion of a Chosen People, indifferent to others, a religion without compassion for anyone who is not Jewish, which glorifies the God-decreed genocide described in the Biblical book of Joshua." {11} It would take very little substitution to apply this statement to the United States - like "American" for "Jewish" and "American exceptionalism" for "a Chosen People". Hell hath no fury like an imperialist scorned Hugo Chavez's greatest sin is that he has shown disrespect for the American Empire. Or as they would say in America's inner cities - He's dissed the Man. Such behavior of course cannot go unpunished lest it give other national leaders the wrong idea. Over the years, the United States has gotten along just fine with brutal dictators, mass murderers, torturers, and leaders who did nothing to relieve the poverty of their population - Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot, the Greek Junta, Ferdinand Marcos, Suharto, Duvalier, Mobutu, the Brazil Junta, Somoza, Saddam Hussein, South African apartheid leaders, Portuguese fascists, et cetera, et etera, terrible guys all, all seriously supported by Washington at one time or another; for none made it a regular habit, if ever, to diss the Man. The latest evidence, we are told, that Hugo Chavez is a dictator and a threat to life as we know it is that he pushed for and got a constitutional amendment to remove term limits from the presidency. The American media and the opposition in Venezuela often make it sound as if Chavez is going to be guaranteed office for life, whereas he of course will have to be elected each time. Neither are we reminded that it's not unusual for a nation to not have a term limit for its highest office. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, if not all of Europe and much of the rest of the world, do not have such a limit. The United States did not have a term limit on the office of the president during the nation's first 162 years, until the ratification of the 22nd Amendment in 1951. Were all American presidents prior to that time dictators? In 2005, when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe succeeded in getting term limits lifted, the US mainstream media took scant notice. President Bush subsequently honored Uribe with the American Presidential Medal of Freedom. But in the period leading up to the February 15 referendum in Venezuela, the American media were competing with each other over who could paint Chavez and the Venezuelan constitutional process in the most critical and ominous terms. Typical was an op-ed in the Washington Post the day before the vote, which was headlined: "Closing in on Hugo Chavez". Its opening sentence read: "The beginning of the end is setting in for Hugo Chavez" {12}. For several years now, the campaign to malign Chavez has at times included issues of Israel and anti-Semitism. An isolated vandalism of a Caracas synagogue on January 30th of this year fed into this campaign. Synagogues are of course vandalized occasionally in the United States and many European countries, but no one ascribes this to a government policy driven by anti-semitism. With Chavez they do. In the American media, the lead up to the Venezuelan vote was never far removed from the alleged "Jewish" issue. "Despite the government?s efforts to put the [synagogue] controversy to rest", the New York Times wrote a few days before the referendum vote, "a sense of dread still lingers among Venezuela?s 12,000 to 14,000 Jews" {13}. A day earlier, a Washington Post editorial was entitled: "Mr Chavez vs the Jews - With George W Bush gone, Venezuela's strongman has found new enemies" {14}. Shortly before, a Post headline had informed us: "Jews in South America Increasingly Uneasy - Government and Media Seen Fostering Anti-Semitism in Venezuela, Elsewhere" {15}. So commonplace has the Chavez-Jewish association become that a leading US progressive organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) in Washington, DC, recently distributed an article that reads more like the handiwork of a conservative group than a progressive one. I was prompted to write to them as follows: Dear People, I'm very sorry to say that I found your Venezuelan commentary by Larry Birns and David Rosenblum Felson to be remarkably lacking. The authors seem unable, or unwilling, to distinguish between being against Israeli policies from anti-semitism. It's kind of late in the day for them to not have comprehended the difference. They are forced to fall back on a State Department statement to make their case. Is that not enough said? They condemn Chavez likening Israel?s occupation of Gaza to the Holocaust. But what if it's an apt comparison? They don't delve into this question at all. They also condemn the use of the word "Zionism", saying that "in nine times out of ten involving the use of this word in fact smacks of anti-Semitism". Really? Can they give a precise explanation of how one distinguishes between an anti-Semitic use of the word and a non-anti-semitic use of it? That would be interesting. The authors write that Venezuela's "anti-Israeli initiative ... revealingly transcends the intensity of almost every Arabic nation or normal adversary of Israel". Really. Since when are the totally gutless, dictator Arab nations the standard bearer for progressives? The ideal we should emulate. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are almost never seriously and harshly critical of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Therefore, Venezuela shouldn't be? The authors state: "In a Christmas Eve address to the nation, Chavez charged that, 'Some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ ... took all the world?s wealth for themselves'. Here, Chavez was not talking so much about Robin Hood, but rather unquestionably dipping into the lore of anti-Semitism." Well, here's the full quote: "The world has enough for all, but it turns out that some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ, descendants of the same ones who threw Bolivar out of here and also crucified him in their own way at Santa Marta there in Colombia ..." Hmm, were the Jews so active in South America? The ellipsis after the word "Christ" indicates that the authors consciously and purposely omitted the words that would have given the lie to their premise. Truly astonishing. After Chavez won the term-limits referendum with about 55% of the vote, a State Department spokesperson stated: "For the most part this was a process that was fully consistent with democratic process". Various individuals and websites on the left have responded to this as an encouraging sign that the Obama administration is embarking on a new Venezuelan policy. At the risk of sounding like a knee-reflex cynic, I think this attitude is at best premature, at worst rather naive. It's easy for a State Department a level-or-so above the Bushies, that is, semi-civilized, to make such a statement. A little more difficult would be accepting as normal and unthreatening Venezuela having good relations with countries like Cuba, Iran and Russia and not blocking Venezuela from the UN Security Council. Even more significant would be the United States ending its funding of groups in Venezuela determined to subvert and/or overthrow Chavez. You've got to be carefully taught I've been playing around with a new book for awhile. I don't know if I'll find the time to actually complete it, but if I do it'll be called something like "Myths of US foreign policy: How Americans keep getting fooled into support". The leading myth of all, the one which entraps more Americans than any other, is the belief that the United States, in its foreign policy, means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are honorable, if not divinely inspired. Of that most Americans are certain. And as long as a person clings to that belief, it's rather unlikely that s/he will become seriously doubtful and critical of the official stories. It takes a lot of repetition while an American is growing up to inculcate this message into their young consciousness, and lots more repetition later on. Think of some of the lines from the song about racism from the Broadway classic show, "South Pacific" - "You've got to be taught" ... You've got to be taught from year to year. It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear. You've got to be taught before it's too late. Before you are six or seven or eight. To hate all the people your relatives hate. You've got to be carefully taught. The education of an American true-believer is ongoing, continuous. All forms of media, all the time. Here is Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military officer in the United States, writing in the Washington Post recently: "We in the US military are likewise held to a high standard. Like the early Romans, we are expected to do the right thing, and when we don't, to make it right again. We have learned, after seven years of war, that trust is the coin of the realm - that building it takes time, losing it takes mere seconds, and maintaining it may be our most important and most difficult objective. That's why images of prisoner maltreatment at Abu Ghraib still serve as recruiting tools for al-Qaeda. And it's why each civilian casualty for which we are even remotely responsible sets back our efforts to gain the confidence of the Afghan people months, if not years. It doesn't matter how hard we try to avoid hurting the innocent, and we do try very hard. It doesn't matter how proportional the force we deploy, how precisely we strike. It doesn't even matter if the enemy hides behind civilians. What matters are the death and destruction that result and the expectation that we could have avoided it. In the end, all that matters is that, despite our best efforts, sometimes we take the very lives we are trying to protect ... Lose the people's trust, and we lose the war ... I see this sort of trust being fostered by our troops all over the world. They are building schools, roads, wells, hospitals and power stations. They work every day to build the sort of infrastructure that enables local governments to stand on their own. But mostly, even when they are going after the enemy, they are building friendships. They are building trust. And they are doing it in superb fashion." {16} How many young servicemembers have heard such a talk from Mullen or other officers? How many of them have not been impressed, even choked up? How many Americans reading or hearing such stirring words have not had a lifetime of reinforcement reinforced once again? How many could even imagine that Admiral Mullen is spouting a bunch of crap? The great majority of Americans will swallow it. When Mullen declares: "What matters are the death and destruction that result and the expectation that we could have avoided it", he's implying that there was no way to avoid it. But of course it could have been easily avoided by not dropping bombs on the Afghan people. You tell the true-believers that the truth is virtually the exact opposite of what Mullen has said and they look at you like you just got off the Number 36 bus from Mars. Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights in a row. His military and political policies destroyed one of the most progressive countries in Europe. And he called it "humanitarian intervention". It's still regarded by almost all Americans, including many, if not most, "progressives", as just that. Now why is that? Are all these people just ignorant? I think a better answer is that they have certain preconceptions; consciously or unconsciously, they have certain basic beliefs about the United States and its foreign policy, most prominent amongst which is the belief that the US means well. And if you don't deal with this basic belief you'll be talking to a stone wall. Notes 1. Associated Press (August 01 2007) 2. Press conference (February 25 2009), transcript by Federal News Service 3. Agence France Presse (AFP) (January 20 2009) 4. New York Times (December 29 1998) 5. Associated Press (November 17 2008) 6. See William Blum, "Rogue State", chapter 10 ("Supporting Pol Pot") 7. See William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 20 ("Cambodia, 1955-1973") 8. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/jones_munich_conference.html ? 9. Reuters news agency (January 30 2009) 10. The War Crimes Act (18 USC 2441) 11. Haaretz, leading Israeli newspaper (January 30 2009) 12. Washington Post (February 14 2009), column by Edward Schumacher-Matos 13. New York Times (February 13 2009) 14. Washington Post (February 12 2009) 15. Washington Post (February 08 2009) 16. Washington Post (February 15 2009) page B7 William Blum is the author of:- Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War Two (Common Courage Press, 1995) Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Zed Books, 2002) West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir (Soft Skull Press, 2002) Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (Common Courage Press, 2004) Portions of the books can be read, and copies purchased, at http://www.killinghope.org and previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website. To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 at aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area. Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite. Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned. http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer67.html 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 Mar 9 09:52:42 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 08:52:42 -0700 Subject: [R-G] The Iggy We Know Message-ID: <882223F3-852D-44D7-886A-99225BEA0336@shaw.ca> March 9, 2009 http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/2509 The Iggy We Know Liberal leader backed Israeli assaults on Lebanon, Gaza by Jon Elmer The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca Even Micheal Ignatieff couldn?t pass up a chance for a photo op with Barack Obama during his recent visit to Ottawa. Photo: J.M. Carisse VANCOUVER?Confronted by his first international crisis as the newly- anointed leader of the Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff?s handling of Israel?s 22-day assault on Gaza marked a continuation of the current Liberal-Conservative consensus on Canadian foreign policy in the Middle East and Central Asia. On December 27, 2008, without warning and at the height of the midday bustle in the overcrowded Gaza Strip, Israel unleashed the single most devastating aerial attack in its 41-year occupation of Gaza, killing 230 people and overwhelming hospitals with more than 750 wounded in a single day. Many of those who died were killed in the first five minutes of the bombings, as Israel used a ?shock and awe?-style massacre intended to, in the words of Defence Minister Ehud Barak, ?totally change the rules of the game.? Three days after the attack was launched, Ignatieff broke his silence with a written statement. Despite a death toll that had risen to 350 Palestinians along with two Israelis after 72 hours, Ignatieff began his message by expressing concern for the victims ?on all sides,? before ?unequivocally? condemning Hamas and ?affirm[ing] Israel's right to defend itself.? For their part, the Conservatives were pointedly silent on Israel?s assault as well; when they did speak, it was only to blame Hamas and its rocket fire from Gaza and back Israel?s bombardment. ?Canada maintains that the rocket attacks are the cause of this crisis,? Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said. The statements by both parties once again staked Canada?s position as unreserved support for Israel, well beyond norms in the diplomatic community, and out of all proportion to the scale of Israel?s long- running devastation of Gaza. Since 2000, Palestinian rocket fire has killed 16 people in Israel, according to Israeli government numbers; during that same time, more than 4,400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza alone. The Economist noted during the invasion that ?Gazans have long felt they lived in an open prison; now they are trapped in a shooting gallery.? Following Israel?s shelling of a United Nations shelter on January 6, calls for a ceasefire grew louder. The head of the UN agency that oversees Gaza?s 1.1 million refugees, John Ging, appealed emphatically to the international community to intervene. ?There's nowhere safe in Gaza. Everyone here is terrorized and traumatized,? Ging said. When Ignatieff spoke publicly for the first time, on January 8 at a town hall in Halifax, he was unwilling to concede that the bombardment should end. He offered only that perhaps ?we are approaching the time when a ceasefire will be appropriate,? according to a transcript published in the Canadian Jewish News. Indeed, Ignatieff went so far as to cast doubt on the gruesome images of civilian carnage coming from Gaza, particularly children, which had shocked the world. ?We have to understand that many of the images we see out of Gaza are structured and created and organized by Hamas,? the former human rights professor said when asked about Israel?s shelling of a United Nations elementary school-turned-shelter, which killed 42 people. Ignatieff offered no evidence for his remarkable claim, which - though indistinguishable from Conservative Party official statements - was more than even Israel?s spokespersons were willing to assert in the hours and days before the army finally admitted to shelling the school. ?What happened in the UN school was not a mistake,? foreign minister Tzipi Livni told Der Spiegel, one week after the attack. Ignatieff also used the crisis to reiterate his support for Israel?s punitive and devastating siege of Gaza which followed Hamas? decisive election victory in the winter of 2006. ?Canada can't touch Hamas with a 10-foot pole,? he said, casting Canada?s significant diplomatic support for the extraordinarily cruel blockade into a cheap sound bite. None of this is new territory for Ignatieff. When Israel attacked Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Ignatieff, then a leadership contender, notoriously broke a three-week silence only to characterize Israel?s brutal massacre of 28 civilians in the village of Qana, most of whom were children, as ?frankly, inevitable.? At the time of Ignatieff?s statements on Israel?s bombing of the civilian shelter, news reports indicated a toll of more than 50 dead. To that, Ignatieff observed: ?This is the kind of dirty war you?re in when you have to do this and I?m not losing sleep about that.? Ignatieff?s message was clear: these terrible crimes are part and parcel of diplomatic support for Israel?s dirty wars. Indeed, the Liberal party made no effort to distance themselves from Ignatieff?s statements on Qana as ?inevitable.? The record clearly shows that Ignatieff ? however vulgar his phrasing ? had simply stated the effect of party policy. In both invasions, Israel?s principle diplomatic concern was avoiding an immediate ceasefire; in both cases, the Liberals and the Conservatives actively pursued Israel?s objectives as the terrible civilian toll mounted ? 1,200 dead in Lebanon and 1,400 in Gaza. While the Liberal-Conservative consensus on foreign policy in the Middle East predates Ignatieff, the crises in Gaza and Lebanon show that the new Liberal leader intends to strengthen it. Jon Elmer is an independent journalist and researcher who covers the Israel-Palestine conflict. From suzannedk at gmail.com Mon Mar 9 10:15:17 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 17:15:17 +0100 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The End of Retirement In-Reply-To: <49B462A5.5050906@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <49B462A5.5050906@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: The living techniques of the Middle Ages will become necessary to study, the techniques of the mountain poor of the Alleghenies, of the mountains of Tennessee, of Arkansas, ..the living skills of preindustrial Europe. The living skills of the precommunist China, never fully replaced, will become extremely valuable to study and to learn. Eastern preventative medicine of India, Asia will have millions of new adherants. Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com On 3/9/09, Bill Totten wrote: > > > by John Michael Greer > > The Archdruid Report (March 04 2009) > > Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society > > > I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by the flurry of responses to > last week's Archdruid Report post on the twilight of investment. "Men > will forgive the murder of their fathers sooner than the loss of their > patrimony", Machiavelli wrote a long time ago, and the principle can be > applied more generally: if you really want to rile people, threaten the > money and property they think is securely theirs. > > Unfortunately the word "security" can be applied to any financial asset > in today's economy only in the most ironic of senses. The entire system > of economic value that underlies the possibility of investment broke > down completely in the speculative excesses of the last thirty years, > drowned in a flood of unpayable debts - public, corporate, and private - > that were mistakenly classified and then sold as financial assets. The > face value of these paper debts vastly exceeds the value of all human > economic activities on Earth; the huge majority of them can thus never > be paid off, and so they are effectively worthless. > > That awkward fact, if honestly faced, would likely bring the world's > economies to a shuddering halt. Thus we can be confident that it will > not be honestly faced. Instead, governments around the world are playing > a high-stakes game of make-believe, pretending that the global economy > is not bankrupt in the hope that the losses can be spread out over years > rather than hitting all at once. For all I know, they may succeed - but > even so, the downside will not be pretty. > > One aspect of that downside was on many of my readers' minds last week, > to judge by the comments and emails I fielded. People nowadays invest > for many reasons, but one of the most common is retirement. Ever since > the American pension system and its government equivalent, Social > Security, began to shed their reputation for stability and adequate > funding, a growing number of Americans - pushed that way by large and > lavishly funded ad campaigns - have placed their hopes for a comfortable > old age on investments. The result is a huge fraction of Americans who > are emotionally as well as financially invested in the hope that a big > payoff from their assets will enable them to have the retirement of > their dreams. > > If you are among the people who cling to that belief, I'm sorry to say I > have bad news. Over the next decade or so, the huge overhang of paper > wealth that now floods the world economy is going to lose nearly all its > value. As it goes, it will take your retirement funds with it. > > It's anyone's guess exactly how the process will play out. One > possibility is a long deflationary spiral in which markets slump, > bankruptcies soar, and the legacy of bad debt suffers the death of a > thousand cuts. Another is hyperinflation, in which the dollar value of > the bad debt still holds good but a cheeseburger costs US$150,000 and > workmen take their salaries home in wheelbarrows. Another is a credit > crisis in which efforts by governments to fund deficits via borrowing > exhaust the world's dwindling pool of credit, and nations are forced > into default. Still another is a political decision on the part of a > major debtor nation to default on its foreign debt, leading to panic > selling of offshore assets and the collapse of international trade and > investment. > > What makes this devastating for those who hope to retire on their > current investments is that most current asset classes are part of that > overhang of unpayable debt, and the rest are priced at levels that > assume that much of the unpayable debt is still boosting the global > economy's net worth. One way or another, those assets will sooner or > later move toward their real value, which in the case of most financial > assets is nothing, and in the case of most nonfinancial assets is a lot > less than they're worth on paper right now. This means that no matter > where you put your investments, you're likely to lose most of your money. > > Interestingly, this is likely to be true even of commodities such as > crude oil which are subject to declining production curves for hard > geological reasons. Last year's price spikes in oil and other energy > resources were only partly a product of geological limits on production. > The soaring demand growth of an overheating economy, and speculative > money flooding into any asset that was gaining in price, both played > major parts. Prices collapsed when the speculative money flowed back > out, and slumping demand has helped keep prices low since then. As the > economy unravels further, the chance of further downside action can't be > dismissed. It has, I think, too rarely been noticed in peak oil circles > that there are at least two ways to price oil out of the market; the > first is for the price per barrel to soar out of reach, the second is > for the economy to contract so sharply that even a modest price per > barrel is more than most people can pay. > > For the next decade or so, then, there's unlikely to be any asset class > that will give prospective retirees the income they've come to expect. > Nor will private pensions, most of which are dependent on investments > and vulnerable to corporate bankruptcies, fare much better during that > time. Nor are government pensions immune; most governments are > hemmorrhaging red ink right now, adding to unsupportable debt loads, and > the pool of credit available for government borrowing is far from > limitless. > > What about after that, when the overhang of debt has been cleared one > way or another and this crisis, like all economic crises, finally comes > to an end? Well, once again, I have bad news. > > Retirement as a social habit was entirely a product of the zenith of the > age of abundance now sliding backwards in our collective rear view > mirror. For a brief window of time - rather less than a century - it > made financial and political sense for nations in the developed world to > pay their elderly citizens to stay out of the work force, in order to > keep unemployment down to politically bearable levels. All this > unfolded, in turn, from an industrial economy so lavishly supplied with > cheap energy that human labor was worth replacing with machines wherever > the state of technology permitted, and so greedy for new markets that > every part of human life was made subject to market forces. > > Before that period began, something less than half of all economic > activity even in the industrial world had anything to do with the market > at all. Most women, and many men outside the age of regular employment, > worked in a household economy governed by custom and intrafamily > exchange rather than market forces. This included essentially everyone > who would be eligible for retirement by the standards of the age that > has just ended. Outside the market but not outside the demand for > skilled human labor, elderly people typically provided household goods > and services to a household somewhere in their extended family. That was > their full-time job; by contributing the value of their labor and > skills, they earned their keep. > > The end of the age of cheap energy means that such household economies > will once again be viable. It also means that they will once again be > necessary. When the limited energy and resources of a contracting, > deindustrial society have to be prioritized for urgent needs, takeout > meals and convenience foods will sooner or later draw the short straw; > in their absence, most food will once again be made at home from raw > materials. When the energy cost of the global network of sweatshops that > keeps Americans clothed can no longer be met, a great deal of clothing > will once again be made at home from raw fiber, as it was not so long > ago, and so on. All this requires human labor. Thus a society no longer > supplied with nearly unlimited amounts of cheap abundant energy will > have every incentive to keep elderly people in the household labor > force, and neither the incentive nor the resources to keep them in > comfortable idleness. > > Now of course it's true that we will not be landing in such a society > overnight. It's also true that the clout of the retiree lobby in most > industrial nations is such that public and private pensions will be > gutted only when every other option has been exhausted - though in the > United States, at least, the vast tide of red ink currently flooding out > of Washington DC is likely to bring about this eventuality sooner rather > than later. Still, it's quite possible that at least some of today's > retirees and soon-to-be-retirees will manage to cling to that status, at > least for a while. > > If I were asked for advice about retirement, then, it would probably go > something like this. If you're already retired, or within a few years of > retirement, it's probably worth your while to try to get any investment > money you have left into a stable investment, if you can find one. > Still, it's probably unwise to assume that your investments will be > worth anything in the long terms, and having a Plan B in place would be > a very good idea. If you're more than a decade or so out from > retirement, having a Plan B in place is essential. If you're thirty > years out or more out, as I am, forget about Plan A for now; you can > look into the options for investment later, once the wreckage of the > last few decades has been hauled away and a new economic order has begun > to take shape, but you probably will never retire. > > What sort of Plan B might work best for you depends on so many local and > personal variables that specifics would almost certainly be misleading. > If you've got a large family with whom you're on good terms, bone up on > your home ec skills; ten years from now, when four of your grandkids, > their spouses, and their children all live in one rundown McMansion, > having Grandma and Grandpa there to cook the meals, tend the children, > and keep the garden going will likely be worth much more than your keep. > If you don't have a family or can't stand them, cultivate relationships > with younger friends, or get ready to take up a second career that you > can continue into advanced old age. > > No matter what you choose, it's not going to be as fun as sitting on a > lawn chair in a Sun Belt trailer park. Still, history is under no > obligation to give the options we'd prefer, and a great many pleasant > options are going away for a time, or forever, as the industrial age > draws to a close. > _____ > > ?John Michael Greer has been active in the alternative spirituality > movement for more than 25 years, and is the author of a dozen books, > including The Druidry Handbook (2006) and The Long Descent (2008). He > lives in Ashland, Oregon. > > http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/03/end-of-retirement.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/ > > > _______________________________________________ > Rad-Green mailing list > Rad-Green at lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green > From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Mar 9 11:19:34 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 10:19:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Worldwide Jewish Appeal to the Israeli government In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <2055792955.227441236619174630.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Jewish Appeal addressed to the Israeli Government At a press conference held in Berne (Switzerland) on Monday, March 2, 2009 a worldwide appeal launched by concerned Jews for an Israel that respects human rights has been presented. "Out of a sense of shared responsibility and in the spirit of Jewish tradition ? because the occupation is destroying the lives of the occupied and the souls of the occupiers" the following appeal is addressed to the Israeli Government: "We the undersigned Jews want the Israeli occupation, settlements and blockade of Palestinian territories to come to an end. We call for humane living conditions and security for all the people in Israel and Palestine?. It is the wish of the twenty three personalities from Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Israel who first signed the appeal that in the coming three years as many as possible of the estimated 13 millions Jews of the world sign this appeal, which will be available in eight languages on www.humanrights-in-israel.ch . They would expect that the Israeli Government will gradually implement the initiative. The appeal was initiated by Jochi Weil-Goldstein (Zurich). Together with former Ambassador Philippe L?vy (Berne) and Shelley Berlowitz (Zurich) of the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace between Israel and Palestine (Switzerland) he explained at the press conference the motivation and the background of the initiative. The 23 first signatories are. Rochelle Allebes (Zurich, CH), Rachel Babecoff (Geneva, CH), Gaby Belz (St. Gall, CH), Shelley Berlowitz (Zurich, CH), Judith Bernstein (Munich, D), Guy Bollag (Zurich, CH), Michel Bollag (Zurich, CH), Tsafrir Cohen (Jerusalem, IL / Berlin, D), Dr. Ernest Goldberger (Tel Aviv, IL), Batja und Chanan Guggenheim-Ami (St. Gall, CH), Evi Guggenheim Shbeta (Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, IL), Dorrie Iten-Gilden (Uster, CH), Philippe L?vy (Berne, CH), Prof. Ren? L?vy (M?zi?res, CH), Dr. Rachel Livn?-Freudenthal (Jerusalem, IL), Hanno Loewy (Hohenems, A), Miriam Victory Spiegel (Zurich, CH / New York, USA), Raffael Ullmann (Zurich, ZH), Prof. Rolf Verleger (L?beck, D), Jochi Weil-Goldstein (Z?rich, CH), Dr. Samuel Wiener-Barraud (Hombrechtikon, CH), Prof. Moshe Zuckermann (Tel Aviv, IL). Organisation: Jewish Voice for a Just Peace between Israel and Palestine (Switzerland) Contact Person: Jochi Weil-Goldstein, Goldbrunnenstrasse 131, CH-8055 Zurich, phone 0041 44 462 20 03 (p) /0041 44 242 72 44 (office, afternoon) , j.weil at bluewin.ch To sign go to www.humanrights-in-israel.ch From fentona at shaw.ca Mon Mar 9 12:52:27 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 11:52:27 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Talking to the Taliban Message-ID: Talking to the Taliban By Imran Khan in Islamabad http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/03/200939102529353355.html Islamabad has been accused of caving in to Pakistani Taliban demands [EPA] Barack Obama, the US president, has hinted at holding talks with "moderate" elements of the Taliban, but are they willing to engage? The Pakistani Taliban, black-turbaned and bearded, stand in full view of the public. One grips a rocket launcher, and casually leans against a wall. Another, his AK 47 assault rifle slung underneath his arm with the safety trigger off, smiles. These are men who would like you to think, at least, that they are prepared for anything. But are they prepared for peace? This was the scene I saw on a recent trip to the Swat valley. Once a tourist haven, it is now controlled by the Pakistani Taliban and visited, very rarely, by journalists. But more than anything else, this ancient valley and what happens here could have crucial effect on the US?s fortunes in neighbouring Afghanistan. Barack Obama, the US president, has said success in Afghanistan involves more than just troops. He talks of reaching out to people who are, in his words, "Islamic fundamentalists". That is exactly what has happened in the Swat valley and Bajaur; key battlegrounds in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. The Pakistanis, involved in a bitter battle with the Taliban for a number of years, have began to realise that military force alone will not win the war. Stalemate According to most experts in Pakistan, the battle was at a stalemate. So, in a move that surprised and concerned Pakistan's friends in Washington, they reached out to the Taliban in the Swat Valley through the use of intermediary Mullah Sufi Mohammed. It was a risky gesture. The mullah had spent time in jail for commanding fighters in cross-border raids into Afghanistan. He is avowedly pro-Taliban and religiously conservative - exactly the type of man who has made life difficult for the Americans in the past. Yet the Pakistanis took the decision to engage. They found in Sufi Mohammed a moderate cleric they could do business with. He in turn sat down with Mullah Fazlullah, leader of the Pakistani Taliban in the Swat valley, and talked. Sufi Mohammed had an advantage; Mullah Fazlullah was his son in law and here that relationship matters. However, according to General Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani army lieutenant, the Pakistanis had little choice. They had to do something as their war in the Swat Valley was losing support domestically, as well as draining resources for very little return. "At least three times the Pakistan launched a major offensive in the Swat Valley, but it was the follow up that was poor and after each offensive when the army left the Taliban came back, and came back in major strength," he says. After intense negotiations a peace deal was signed and Pakistan breathed a little more easily. Fragile truce The Taliban have waged war with the Pakistani army over control of the North West Frontier So far it has been a fragile truce with one journalist killed and the government?s top administrator kidnapped briefly. It could yet fall apart over a key sticking point - the implementation of Sharia, or Islamic law, in the valley and what form that could take. The peace deal has also attracted criticism from those who believe Pakistan has given up too much and that the armed group has won. Crucially, though, the ceasefire is holding. The markets are busier and people forced to flee their homes are returning slowly to rebuild lives. The Pakistani army is now in a reactive, rather than aggressive, mode and policemen are back out on the streets. According to Swati resident Nawab Ali the peace deal is welcome: "It?s something. If the Taliban stick to it then yes, I am hopeful, I hope it lasts." It is a hope shared by many. Moderates' fears The US has been watching this deal closely. But can they replicate it in Afghanistan? Are there "moderate" Taliban they can reach out to? Talat Masood, the retired army lieutenant, is sceptical: "The leadership of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan is in the hands of people who are not moderate. "There are moderate Taliban but they won't talk for fear of offending the senior leadership, and this is the problem the Americans face." There is also mounting evidence that the peace deal struck in the Swat valley and the neighbouring Bajaur agency may conceal another - for the US at least - dangerous agenda. Three of Pakistan's top Taliban leaders have come together to form what they have called a The Council of United Holy Warriors. The men were once bitter rivals: Baitullah Mehsud, Hafiz Gul Bahudar and Maulvi Nazeer fought Pakistani troops and favoured their Jihad against them. Together they control huge swathes of North and South Waziristan, The lawless tribal region that sits next to the Paktia, Paktika and Khost Provinces in Afghanistan. That is a region that has seen some of the most intense fighting between the Taliban and US and Coalition forces. Exporting the fight In Bajuar, Maulvi Faqir Mohammed, a Taliban spokesman, has told Al Jazeera that they will take their fight to Afghanistan instead of the Pakistani army. The reason for this change in tactics? Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Omar has reportedly been watching events in Pakistan with concern. He is said to have dispatched a high-level delegation to Taliban fighters with a simple message: "Unite and fight not your own people, but the occupiers of Afghanistan." It would appear that message has now being heeded and that may be the real reason the Taliban have decided to engage in the Swat valley and Bajuar. This is a real issue for the Americans who want to reach out to the Taliban. According to Masood, the US is weak. "It's in no position to negotiate with anyone. The Taliban have made it clear that peace talks cannot take place without the occupier first leaving Afghanistan." Perceptions It is that perceived weakness that many say has led the US president to talk of alternative strategies. It may not be that easy, however. Any peace deal with the Taliban has to include men like Mullah Omar and Baitullah Mehsud. Hardliners who are no mood to compromise. By wondering aloud whether there are moderates he can talk to, the US president has shown he is taking advice from those who have long advocated a more reconciliatory approach. But, rather predictably, peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan is more complicated than just talking to the Taliban. It is a widely held view here that Pakistan needs the Taliban to remain strong in Afghanistan in order to thwart any plans their traditional rival India has in the region. The US has long accused Pakistan of playing a double game when it comes to the Taliban - one that sees them publicly back the so called "war on terror" but privately need the Taliban as a strategic asset. It is a charge the Pakistanis deny. Experts also say the Pakistanis are well aware that one day the US and coalition forces will leave Afghanistan. Pakistan will need all the influence it can muster if it is to have a say in future Afghan affairs. Sources have also told Al Jazeera that despite the peace deal in the Swat Valley, the Taliban still have training camps and are sending young men into Afghanistan to fight. That is something the US has long feared would happen under any peace deal. Facing challenges The US now has a serious challenge on its hands. Finding moderates to talk to will be difficult and the US may well be asking for too much. It will want the Taliban to lay down arms, drop its support for al- Qaeda and participate in the democratic process it hopes will take root in Afghanistan. All things the Taliban on both sides of the border may not be willing to do. As the drone attacks continue in Pakistan and Taliban fighters mount raids on US forces and both Pakistan and Afghanistan face political crises at home, domestic conditions for dealing with the Taliban are rapidly deteriorating. It would seem the US has made a bold leap in its thinking. Translating that into action, however, may prove to be difficult. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Mar 9 13:03:30 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 12:03:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Corporations Step Up Drive Against Bill to Ease Unionization In-Reply-To: <24BF429E769D478D9F06DC8AC0CDEDE9@twubby.com> Message-ID: <879710344.294201236625410392.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB123638372783358077-lMyQjAxMDI5MzA2NzMwODczWj.html Wall Street Journal ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? March 6, 2009 Corporations Step Up Drive Against Bill to Ease Unionization By KRIS MAHER President Barack Obama's public backing this past week of a bill that would make union organizing easier is driving companies to step up opposition. Mr. Obama embraced the Employee Free Choice Act, a top legislative priority for unions, in a video address to the AFL-CIO winter meeting on Tuesday in Miami. It was one of his most vocal statements in support of the bill, which would let workers opt for unionization simply by signing cards, rather than through secret-ballot elections. An election gives an employer the opportunity to campaign against a union. Many companies have said the bill, likely to be introduced in coming weeks by congressional Democrats, would add to their costs while hurting their ability to boost productivity and keep their work forces flexible enough to respond to changing markets. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has said it will spend at least $10 million this year fighting it. The bill would "effectively eliminate freedom of choice and the right to a secret-ballot election," said Daphne Moore, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. "We believe every associate or employee should have the right to make a private and informed decision regarding union representation." It would be a "job killer," said Harry Kazazian, chief executive of Exxel Outdoors, a Haleyville, Ala., maker of sleeping bags and tents. He said he shut a unionized plant in Mexico in 2000 despite low labor costs, because union rules hampered productivity, and moved the work to a nonunion plant in Alabama. Mr. Kazazian, who also has a nonunion plant in China, said the bill "would be like putting the brakes" on his plans and profit. Another opponent, Joni Paladino, president of MIF Inc., a trucking company in Brockway, Pa., said her 10 drivers earn between $11 and $16 an hour, without health-care or retirement benefits. The "most irritating" part of the bill, she said, is a provision that would have government arbitrators set contract terms if a newly formed union and a company can't agree within 120 days. "Somebody else is going to tell me how profitable or unprofitable I'm going to be," she said. "It ticks me off." The bill creates a special dilemma for executives who supported Mr. Obama's candidacy, particularly in the technology industry. Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association in Arlington, Va., said more than 60% of the group's members supported Mr. Obama in an October poll. But its 2,000 member companies are "universally" against the bill, he said, and some have said they would move factories overseas if it were to pass. "It would have a devastating impact on technology companies," said Loyd Ivey, chief executive of Mitek USA, a Rockford, Ill., maker of speakers and amplifiers. Tech giants including Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Google Inc., said they haven't taken a position on the bill and declined to comment further. Mr. Shapiro said many companies fear becoming a target of unions if they speak out against the measure. Unions are expected to focus on the tech sector, where they see strong potential to increase membership. Labor officials counter the criticism by saying unions can contribute to productivity, safety and training. "The lie is that it's bad for business to have collective bargaining," said Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, who is leading the AFL-CIO's efforts on the measure. At the AFL-CIO meeting this past week, unions pledged to spend $2.50 a member, or roughly $25 million, to support the bill this year. Stewart Acuff, national organizing director for the AFL-CIO, acknowledged that most companies are opposed to the bill, but said the labor federation continues to sign on corporate supporters. A small number of employers that already have unionized work forces are backing the measure or agreeing not to oppose it -- largely at the request of unions. Ed Smith, CEO of Hartman-Walsh Paining Co., a St. Louis industrial-coatings company, backs the bill, as does the Finishing Contractors Association, which has 1,500 unionized painting, drywall and other contractors. About 150 of Mr. Smith's employees belong to the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. If the bill helps the union organize more companies, it would help the contractors association "by leveling the playing field," he said. Write to Kris Maher at kris.maher at wsj.com From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Mar 9 13:25:47 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 12:25:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Depression Dynamic Ensues as Markets Revisit 1930s In-Reply-To: <2D975CD5E8B74D42AA55EDBD93A9387F@twubby.com> Message-ID: <1286569593.307191236626747620.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a1ItlrP4MeQQ&refer=home Bloomberg? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? March 9, 2009 Depression Dynamic Ensues as Markets Revisit 1930s By Rich Miller The U.S. economy?s vital signs may not confirm a diagnosis of depression. The symptoms increasingly point to one. As in the Great Depression, world trade is collapsing, wealth is evaporating and the banking system is broken. Deflation is a growing threat as companies slash production , pay and prices. And leaders worldwide are having difficulty making headway in halting the self-perpetuating decline. ?We are tracking 1929-1930,? says Barry Eichengreen , a professor of economics and political science at the University of California, Berkeley. The result: This contraction may leave a lasting imprint on the economy and society, just as the Depression did. In the wake of the devastation of the 1930s, Americans swore off stocks, husbanded their own resources and looked to the government for help. Now, another generation might draw some of the same lessons from the deepest economic collapse of their lifetime. ?This is going to scar the collective psyche,? says Mark Zandi , chief economist at Moody?s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania. ?People will become much more conservative in borrowing, lending and investing.? There?s no official definition of what qualifies as a depression. In the 1930s, the unemployment rate rose to 25 percent and the economy shrank by more than a quarter. Not ?Great? No economist forecasts a return to the breadlines and shantytowns of that era, even as the economy gets closer to some of the metrics academics cite as constituting a depression, if not a ?great? one. Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Barro defines a depression as a 10 percent fall in per-capita gross domestic product and consumption. The Harvard University professor sees roughly a 30 percent chance of that occurring now. Billionaire Warren Buffett said today the economy ?has fallen off a cliff? and is unlikely to turn around soon. The Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chief Executive Officer also said, in an interview with the CNBC television network, that efforts to stimulate recovery may lead to inflation higher than the 1970s. The economy contracted at a 6.2 percent annual rate in the last quarter of 2008 and will shrink at a 7 percent rate in the first three months of 2009, projects Jan Hatzius , chief U.S. economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York. Defining Depression Bradford DeLong , a former Treasury official who is now a professor at Berkeley, says a depression is a two-year period with unemployment at 10 percent or above. He says that?s possible, though not likely. The jobless rate rose to 8.1 percent in February, a 25-year high. Some industries are already in a depression, led by housing, where the decline accelerated in recent months as the credit crisis intensified. During the last four years, residential investment is down by 37 percent. That compares with an 80 percent drop in spending on home building from 1929 to 1932. ?The past five months have been among the most difficult in U.S. economic history,? Robert Toll , chief executive of Horsham, Pennsylvania-based Toll Brothers Inc. , said Feb. 11, after the largest U.S. luxury homebuilder reported a 51 percent sales drop. In the auto industry, U.S. sales have fallen 55 percent from their July 2005 peak. Production of cars and trucks plunged in January to an annual rate of 3.9 million, the lowest since the Federal Reserve began keeping records in 1967, and 67 percent below the January 2005 level. GM?s Survival Things are so bad that auditors have questioned the ability of General Motors Corp., the biggest U.S. automaker, to continue as a going concern. U.S. motor vehicle output slumped 75 percent from 1929 to 1932, according to statistics in the book ?American Automobile Workers 1900-1933,? by Joyce Shaw Peterson. ?We are in an automotive depression,? said Efraim Levy , an equity analyst for Standard & Poor?s in New York. The financial-services industry has also been decimated. Since the crisis began in the middle of 2007, institutions worldwide have racked up $1.2 trillion in credit losses and writedowns. Announced job cuts have topped 280,000. ?You?ve had a major disruption of the financial system, just like the 1930s,? says Mark Gertler , a New York University professor who collaborated on research about the Depression with Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke . In the 30s, more than 10,000 banks went bust. Hoarding Capital That disruption is making it hard for Bernanke and his fellow policy makers to get much traction in their efforts to stop the economic decline. Strapped with losses, banks are hoarding capital rather than lending. This type of breakdown happens only two or three times a century and can lead to a ?downward vortex? in which weaknesses in the economy and the financial industry feed on each other and are difficult to break, Lawrence Summers , director of the White House?s National Economic Council, said Feb. 26. ?It?s the kind of vicious cycle Franklin Roosevelt talked about,? he told a forum in Arlington, Virginia. Particularly worrying, says Stanford University professor Robert Hall , is the collapse of the jobs market. Over the past four months, payrolls have plunged 2.6 million. Summers has also voiced concern about a return of deflation, which wreaked havoc on the economy during the Great Depression. As wages fell back then, workers had a harder time paying their debts, aggravating the banking industry?s woes. Pay Cuts In an echo of those troubles, GM, FedEx Corp. and casino company Wynn Resorts Ltd. are among businesses slashing pay for more than 100,000 workers as they cut costs to counter declining demand. There are other echoes. Since hitting a peak in October 2007, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen 54 percent. Over a similar length of time -- from 1929 to 1931 -- the average fell 55 percent. It ultimately dropped 89 percent from its 1929 high before beginning to recover in mid-1932. Combined with collapsing house prices , the free-fall in the stock market will destroy $23 trillion worth of U.S. wealth, reckons Lawrence Lindsey , a former senior White House official who now heads his own consulting company in Arlington, Virginia. Like the Great Depression, the current economic decline is global. The International Monetary Fund says this will be the first time since World War II that the U.S. and other industrial nations will suffer a simultaneous decline in their economies. Trade Contracts Worldwide trade is falling fast as the credit crunch curbs financing for exporters and importers. The volume of merchandise trade plunged at an annual rate of 22 percent in the fourth quarter from the third, according to the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis . The peak-to-trough decline from 1929 to 1932 was 35 percent, as countries slapped big tariffs on imports. ?We?re in a depression, and we need policy makers to make the right decisions to ensure that it does not become great,? says Kevin H. O?Rourke , a professor at Trinity College in Dublin, who has studied the trade issue. Government officials, especially in the U.S., are moving more rapidly to tackle the turmoil than their counterparts did during the early years of the Great Depression. Bernanke has cut the benchmark interest rate to as low as zero, while President Barack Obama won congressional approval of a $787 billion stimulus package. Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Peter Temin says the trouble is that the economy seems to be collapsing faster than policy makers are reacting. ?They?ve only done enough to cushion the downturn,? says Temin, author of the book ?Lessons from the Great Depression.? Prolonged Slump That leaves the U.S. -- and the rest of the world economy -- in danger of being mired in an extended period of little or no growth, much like that which afflicted Japan during the 1990s. Eichengreen says such an outcome would be equivalent to a depression. Whatever it?s called, the economy?s continuing deterioration will likely leave enduring marks. U.S. households are already rebuilding savings in response to the crisis. The savings rate rose to 5 percent in January, the highest in almost 14 years. ?They?re buying what they need, and they?re being very smart about how they spend their money,? Myron Ullman , chief executive officer of Plano, Texas-based J.C. Penney Co. , said on Feb. 20, after the third largest U.S. department-store chain forecast its first quarterly loss in almost five years. In a Feb. 27 memo, ?The Return of the Frugal Consumer,? Goldman Sachs economist Andrew Tilton projected a savings rate exceeding 8 percent by the end of 2010. Americans may also turn more conservative about where they keep their money. Merrill Lynch & Co. says U.S. bonds owned by individuals likely will account for 2 percent of households? financial assets by 2013, up from 0.2 percent now. ?We?re in the midst of a massive economic and financial crisis,? former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker said at a Columbia University conference on Feb. 20. ?We?re going to hear reverberations about this for a long time.? To contact the reporter on this story: Rich Miller in Washington rmiller28 at bloomberg.net From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Mar 9 13:36:10 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 12:36:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Krugman: The Big Dither In-Reply-To: <1011215595.310301236627120994.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <1524546602.312631236627370525.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/opinion/06krugman.html?th&emc=th New York Times????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? March 5, 2009 Op-Ed The Big Dither The Bernanke-Geithner plan isn't going to fly. O fficials don't want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue an The Big Dither The Bernanke-Geithner plan isn't going to fly. O fficials don't want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue an The Bernanke-Geithner plan isn't going to fly. O fficials don't want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue an essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. And temporary nationalization is apparently considered unthinkable. By PAUL KRUGMAN Last month, in his big speech to Congress, President Obama argued for bold steps to fix America's dysfunctional banks. "While the cost of action will be great," he declared, "I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade." Many analysts agree. But among people I talk to there's a growing sense of frustration, even panic, over Mr. Obama's failure to match his words with deeds. The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the Obama administration is dithering. Policy is stuck in a holding pattern. Here's how the pattern works: first, administration officials, usually speaking off the record, float a plan for rescuing the banks in the press. This trial balloon is quickly shot down by informed commentators. Then, a few weeks later, the administration floats a new plan. This plan is, however, just a thinly disguised version of the previous plan, a fact quickly realized by all concerned. And the cycle starts again. Why do officials keep offering plans that nobody else finds credible? Because somehow, top officials in the Obama administration and at the Federal Reserve have convinced themselves that troubled assets, often referred to these days as "toxic waste," are really worth much more than anyone is actually willing to pay for them - and that if these assets were properly priced, all our troubles would go away. Thus, in a recent interview Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, tried to make a distinction between the "basic inherent economic value" of troubled assets and the "artificially depressed value" that those assets command right now. In recent transactions, even AAA-rated mortgage-backed securities have sold for less than 40 cents on the dollar, but Mr. Geithner seems to think they're worth much, much more. And the government's job, he declared, is to "provide the financing to help get those markets working," pushing the price of toxic waste up to where it ought to be. What's more, officials seem to believe that getting toxic waste properly priced would cure the ills of all our major financial institutions. Earlier this week, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, was asked about the problem of "zombies" - financial institutions that are effectively bankrupt but are being kept alive by government aid. "I don't know of any large zombie institutions in the U.S. financial system," he declared, and went on to specifically deny that A.I.G. - A.I.G.! - is a zombie. This is the same A.I.G. that, unable to honor its promises to pay off other financial institutions when bonds default, has already received $150 billion in aid and just got a commitment for $30 billion more. The truth is that the Bernanke-Geithner plan - the plan the administration keeps floating, in slightly different versions - isn't going to fly. Take the plan's latest incarnation: a proposal to make low-interest loans to private investors willing to buy up troubled assets. This would certainly drive up the price of toxic waste because it would offer a heads-you-win, tails-we-lose proposition. As described, the plan would let investors profit if asset prices went up but just walk away if prices fell substantially. But would it be enough to make the banking system healthy? No. Think of it this way: by using taxpayer funds to subsidize the prices of toxic waste, the administration would shower benefits on everyone who made the mistake of buying the stuff. Some of those benefits would trickle down to where they're needed, shoring up the balance sheets of key financial institutions. But most of the benefit would go to people who don't need or deserve to be rescued. And this means that the government would have to lay out trillions of dollars to bring the financial system back to health, which would, in turn, both ensure a fierce public outcry and add to already serious concerns about the deficit. (Yes, even strong advocates of fiscal stimulus like yours truly worry about red ink.) Realistically, it's just not going to happen. So why has this zombie idea - it keeps being killed, but it keeps coming back - taken such a powerful grip? The answer, I fear, is that officials still aren't willing to face the facts. They don't want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue an essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. And temporary nationalization is still, apparently, considered unthinkable. But this refusal to face the facts means, in practice, an absence of action. And I share the president's fears: inaction could result in an economy that sputters along, not for months or years, but for a decade or more. Op-Ed The Big Dither The Bernanke-Geithner plan isn't going to fly. O fficials don't want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue an The Big Dither The Bernanke-Geithner plan isn't going to fly. O fficials don't want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue an essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. And temporary nationalization is apparently considered unthinkable. By PAUL KRUGMAN Last month, in his big speech to Congress, President Obama argued for bold steps to fix America's dysfunctional banks. "While the cost of action will be great," he declared, "I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade." Many analysts agree. But among people I talk to there's a growing sense of frustration, even panic, over Mr. Obama's failure to match his words with deeds. The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the Obama administration is dithering. Policy is stuck in a holding pattern. Here's how the pattern works: first, administration officials, usually speaking off the record, float a plan for rescuing the banks in the press. This trial balloon is quickly shot down by informed commentators. Then, a few weeks later, the administration floats a new plan. This plan is, however, just a thinly disguised version of the previous plan, a fact quickly realized by all concerned. And the cycle starts again. Why do officials keep offering plans that nobody else finds credible? Because somehow, top officials in the Obama administration and at the Federal Reserve have convinced themselves that troubled assets, often referred to these days as "toxic waste," are really worth much more than anyone is actually willing to pay for them - and that if these assets were properly priced, all our troubles would go away. Thus, in a recent interview Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, tried to make a distinction between the "basic inherent economic value" of troubled assets and the "artificially depressed value" that those assets command right now. In recent transactions, even AAA-rated mortgage-backed securities have sold for less than 40 cents on the dollar, but Mr. Geithner seems to think they're worth much, much more. And the government's job, he declared, is to "provide the financing to help get those markets working," pushing the price of toxic waste up to where it ought to be. What's more, officials seem to believe that getting toxic waste properly priced would cure the ills of all our major financial institutions. Earlier this week, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, was asked about the problem of "zombies" - financial institutions that are effectively bankrupt but are being kept alive by government aid. "I don't know of any large zombie institutions in the U.S. financial system," he declared, and went on to specifically deny that A.I.G. - A.I.G.! - is a zombie. This is the same A.I.G. that, unable to honor its promises to pay off other financial institutions when bonds default, has already received $150 billion in aid and just got a commitment for $30 billion more. The truth is that the Bernanke-Geithner plan - the plan the administration keeps floating, in slightly different versions - isn't going to fly. Take the plan's latest incarnation: a proposal to make low-interest loans to private investors willing to buy up troubled assets. This would certainly drive up the price of toxic waste because it would offer a heads-you-win, tails-we-lose proposition. As described, the plan would let investors profit if asset prices went up but just walk away if prices fell substantially. But would it be enough to make the banking system healthy? No. Think of it this way: by using taxpayer funds to subsidize the prices of toxic waste, the administration would shower benefits on everyone who made the mistake of buying the stuff. Some of those benefits would trickle down to where they're needed, shoring up the balance sheets of key financial institutions. But most of the benefit would go to people who don't need or deserve to be rescued. And this means that the government would have to lay out trillions of dollars to bring the financial system back to health, which would, in turn, both ensure a fierce public outcry and add to already serious concerns about the deficit. (Yes, even strong advocates of fiscal stimulus like yours truly worry about red ink.) Realistically, it's just not going to happen. So why has this zombie idea - it keeps being killed, but it keeps coming back - taken such a powerful grip? The answer, I fear, is that officials still aren't willing to face the facts. They don't want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue an essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. And temporary nationalization is still, apparently, considered unthinkable. But this refusal to face the facts means, in practice, an absence of action. And I share the president's fears: inaction could result in an economy that sputters along, not for months or years, but for a decade or more. From shniad at sfu.ca Mon Mar 9 13:49:15 2009 From: shniad at sfu.ca (Sid Shniad) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 12:49:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [R-G] Scary Movie - The Horror of the Employee Free Choice Act In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <1503101606.321191236628155523.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Scary Movie - The Horror of the Employee Free Choice Act http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOM0AMUqviY&eurl=http://www.facebook.com/home.php ?ref=home From hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org Mon Mar 9 16:16:16 2009 From: hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org (Hunter Gray) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 16:16:16 -0600 Subject: [R-G] The continuing fight for Federal recognition of the Lumbee Indian Nation Message-ID: <000601c9a104$ad465aa0$0400a8c0@computer> Our Hunterbear Lumbee page http://www.hunterbear.org/lumbee_indians_of_north_carolina.htm Push for tribal recognition faces challenges By Venita Jenkins Fayetteville [NC] Observer March 8 2009 Staff writer For more than a century, the Lumbees have fought to be recognized by the federal government as an Indian tribe. The road has been difficult. Like the Tiguas, the Lumbees have had their history questioned. They have faced opposition from other tribes and a government that, at times, seemed to drag its feet on the issue. Today, tribal members say, the fight is about pride, dignity and honor. "We know who we are, but getting the validation from the United States government is what this battle is about," said Jimmy Goins, chairman of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. "So our people can finally be treated as first-class Indians and not second-class." The Lumbee Recognition Bill has been introduced in Congress three times over the past four years. In June 2007, the House passed the measure 256 to 128. Leading up to the House vote, the tribe agreed to an amendment that prohibits the Lumbees from opening casinos or participating in other gaming activities. The tribe made the concession to garner more support for the bill. U.S. Rep. Mike McIntyre, a Democrat from Lumberton, resubmitted a similar bill in January. The challenge for the tribe has always been in the Senate. The bill has died on the Senate floor each time it has made it out of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. The 2007 Lumbee bill did not even make it to the floor for a vote. North Carolina's senators have been strong backers of Lumbee recognition. Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who submitted bills in the Senate, was defeated by Democrat Kay Hagan in November. Hagan has pledged her support for the tribe. Day 1 Video Slideshow Share your thoughts Related story: Lumbees learn from travails of Texas tribe Day 2 stories Federal aid a boom to Tigua tribe Recognition could bring Robeson economic boom Texas tribe's businesses struggle in tough economic times Day 3 Coming Tuesday Day 4 Coming Wednesday Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican from Winston-Salem, plans to sponsor a bill seeking recognition for the Lumbees. Burr has been a supporter of the Lumbee bill in previous years and championed the tribe's cause in hearings in the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Burr no longer serves on the committee. However, he plans to lobby support from his former committee members during this session. Congressional leaders have faced an uphill battle to win support for the Lumbee bill, Burr said. "No one, no one is in the same situation as the Lumbee tribe," he said. "The only two tribes that were in the same situation as the Lumbees had their situation corrected legislatively. So there is precedent to what we are trying to do." The Tigua Indians in Texas were one of those tribes. Tribal opposition Opposition to the Lumbee bill extends beyond Capitol Hill. Several tribes have questioned the lineage of the Lumbees and expressed concerns about their large tribal enrollment and the cost to provide services to their members. "Indian country doesn't necessarily want more Indian tribes," Burr said. "There lies the problem." The tribes opposing the Lumbee bill prefer that the Lumbees go through the federal acknowledgement process established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. If the tribe could go through the federal recognition process, the outcome would more than likely not be positive, Goins said. "We have some enemies in the Department of Interior. We know for a fact that if our bill goes back to the Department of the Interior, unless it's clearly defined their duties for what they have to look at for the Lumbee tribe, it would be thrown in the trash can," he said. "The Department of the Interior has stated its position. They are going to turn us down as soon as they get their hands on it." Emma Locklear, who is 68, said she feels the tribe has paid its dues. The tribe, she said, has been studied to death. The Department of the Interior has conducted at least 11 studies since the 1930s. "We went through the federal recognition process. We also tried to get it legislatively," Emma Locklear said. "We are still coming up empty. I feel that we are running around in circles. We are always coming up short with time running out or someone not bringing it to the floor before it was too late." Emma Locklear's grandfather was among the first group of Lumbees who petitioned the federal government in 1888. She continued the fight by traveling to Washington in the late 1980s to lobby for support. "I think my grandfather thought they would get recognition in their lifetime," Locklear said. "I hope I will be able to see it in my lifetime." She doesn't believe the tribe should give up. It has invested more than a century in the battle. "I believe if you try and you don't succeed, try again," she said. "I think we will continue until we are granted federal recognition." HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk Protected by Na?shdo?i?ba?i? and Ohkwari' Check out our Hunterbear website Directory http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm [The site is dedicated to our one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray: http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands. http://hunterbear.org/WHEN%20THE%20RED%20LEAVES%20FALL.htm And for a good feel for some of the civil liberties challenges faced by an effective organizer, see this cluster of four related pages covering late '50s to late '70s: http://hunterbear.org/a_bizarre__1979_fbi_smear_effort.htm From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Mar 9 18:21:02 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:21:02 +0900 Subject: [R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Forget About "Recovery" Message-ID: <49B5B26E.7090402@ashisuto.co.jp> Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (2005) www.kunstler.com (March 09 2009) At the risk of confirming my critics' dumbest charge - that I am a "doomer" - the mandate of clarity requires me to ask: to what state of affairs do we expect to recover? If the answer is a return to an economy based on building ever more suburban sprawl, on credit card over-spending, on routine securitized debt shenanigans in banking, and on consistently lying to ourselves about what reality demands of us, then we are a mortally deluded nation. We're done with that, we're beyond that now, we've crossed the frontier and left that all behind, and we'd better get our heads straight about it. I maintain that there are countless constructive tasks waiting to occupy us on a long national "to do" list for rebuilding a national economy, but they are way different than the ones currently preoccupying government and the mainstream media. The Obama White House, Congress, and The New York Times are hung up on exercises in futility - "rescuing" banks and insurance companies that cannot be rescued (because they are hopelessly trapped in "black hole" credit default swaps contracts), and re-starting a "consumer" binge that was completely crazy in the first place, based, as it was, on a something-for-nothing standard-of-living. Meanwhile, if the buzz on the blogosphere is a measure of anything - and I think it is - then a new consensus is forming out there about where to start doing things differently. Unfortunately after less than two months in office, President Obama finds himself awkwardly behind-the-curve on this. It begins with the understanding that a general bank rescue is hopeless and, going a step further, that the people who caused the train wreck of "innovative" securities have to be prosecuted. The public's collective voice on this is muted but growing. It has been muted by the general air of blackmail that the banks have used to enthrall policy and opinion - the "too big to fail" idea - in effect holding the nation's future for ransom. Last week, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo hauled Bank of America chief Ken Lewis into his office to explain who, exactly, received an aggregate several billion dollars in bonuses late in 2008 after the US Treasury forked over billions of dollars in TARP money to his bank. That was a good start. Mr Lewis, being lawyered-up to the max, had the temerity to reply that answering the question would compromise his ability to keep talented people in his employ. For that impertinence alone, Mr Lewis ought to be dragged over fifteen miles of broken chardonnay bottles behind a GMC Yukon - but that is not how we do things in American jurisprudence. To be more realistic, a simple indictment would be in order, and then Mr Lewis can answer this question, and a few others, in the comfort of an air-conditioned courtroom. Ultimately, that might lead to Mr Lewis becoming the wife of a bodybuilder in one of New York State's houses of correction - a just outcome that would go far in rejiggering the nation's expectations about how people in authority ought to behave. And such an outcome might lead to the conviction of many other brides-to-be from the Wall Street debutante pool. Now it has come to light, just last week in the wake of AIG's latest bail-out, that previous AIG bail-out money to the tune of $50 billion was distributed to a set of banks including Goldman Sachs (former employer of then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and then New York Federal Reserve Governor Tim Geithner), plus Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Mr Lewis's Bank of America, and a long list of European banks with operations in the USA. Since the transactions took place in New York State, the investigation of these irregularities alone could solve the unemployment problem here if NY Attorney General Cuomo were given a free hand in hiring staff to depose everyone involved - including the hiring of caterers to bring in coffee and meals for round-the-clock proceedings. All of this raises another awkward question: where is United States Attorney General Eric Holder in this situation? Surely the federal statutes offer some grounds for inquiring about the misuse of Treasury funds - and many other issues arising from Wall Street's stupendous orgy of misbehavior. What I'm hearing out in the blogosphere is a growing clamor to call people to account before we are really able to move on to the massive task-list that awaits us in rebuilding our economy. The bigger question for now is whether any of these authorities will act effectively before the public simply goes apeshit and starts burning down Greenwich, Connecticut. The dangerous shift in public mood is liable to occur with shocking swiftness, in the manner of "phase change," where one moment you see a bewildered bunch of flabby clown-citizens vacuously enraptured by "American Idol", and the next moment they are transformed into a vicious mob hoisting flaming brands to the window treatments of a hedge funder's McMansion. The moment of opportunity for avoiding that outcome is looking sickeningly slim right now. Another thing that President Obama can set into motion anytime - and pull himself back to the head of the curve of leadership - is to either by executive order or by proposal to congress, shut down the credit default swap system for a period of time while procedures are drawn up to place all these dubious contracts in a "clearing" market, where the holders of them will have to come clean about what they're sitting on. The lack of this procedure is allowing zombie banks to hold the United States hostage for never-ending bail-out ransoms. None of these banks are going to survive another six months anyway, so the basic blackmail motif that the whole money system will collapse if ransoms are not paid is a bluff that has to be called sooner or later in any case. So Mr Obama might as well get on with it. Once these two matters are dealt with - an earnest start-up of prosecutions and disabling the credit default swap blackmail racket - then perhaps a stressed-out and impoverished public might be induced to not go apeshit and instead get on with the mighty task of rebuilding our nation along lines that have a plausible future. _____ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2009/03/forget-about-recovery.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 Mar 9 22:15:05 2009 From: fentona at shaw.ca (Anthony Fenton) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 21:15:05 -0700 Subject: [R-G] Oil and water don't mix at RBC Message-ID: <62689721-4CAC-4A6E-B6DB-10478C84438A@shaw.ca> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090309.WBnobodysbusiness20090309195849/WBStory/WBnobodysbusiness Oil and water don't mix at RBC Patricia Best, today at 7:58 PM EDT At Royal Bank of Canada's annual meeting in Vancouver recently, executives faced more than grumblings from depressed shareholders and unhappy customers. A group of environmental and native activists made their way into the meeting to question the bank's involvement with oil sands development. The Rainforest Action Network (RAN), with offices in Edmonton and San Francisco, also staged a demonstration outside the annual meeting ? and, at the same time, another one at RBC's Toronto headquarters. The activists say the bank's status as a prominent Olympics sponsor and its 10-year, $50-million Blue Water philanthropic program (which funds fresh-water projects internationally) is incompatible with its role as a top financier of the Alberta oil sands, which many believe is a significant source of water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Three activists inside the meeting room took the opportunity during a question-and-answer session to make statements about this. One, Melina Laboucan-Massimo, who is a member of the Lubicon Cree Nation, said in a statement after the meeting: ?If RBC is serious about supporting clean water, why are they financing projects that are contaminating the lakes and rivers around my community?? Her band is fighting a TransCanada pipeline to the oil sands through its territory. Two other RAN representatives in the meeting asked RBC chief executive officer Gordon Nixon to come to Fort Chipewyan, in northern Alberta, a community affected by oil sands pollution, to see the situation for himself. At first, Mr. Nixon ignored the request. But when pressed a second time, he told them that while he wouldn't promise anything, he would consider it. From hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org Tue Mar 10 06:24:00 2009 From: hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org (Hunter Gray) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:24:00 -0600 Subject: [R-G] When the Red Leaves Fall [Natives, Wobblies and Communists on Seattle's Skid Road] Message-ID: <004a01c9a17b$631f3a10$0400a8c0@computer> NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR: [March 10 2009] This is an older -- 2002 -- piece of mine which some may have initially seen. But many have not. It may be indicative of the fact that I have Lupus on the run that my old wanderlust blood is stirring significantly. When that happens, I not only think of personally very sacred places, like the Sycamore Canyon Wilderness in Northern Arizona, but also some "radical roots" settings such as Seattle and Tacoma. Since this is a longer page, I've omitted the bottom section -- a colloquy between myself and my good friend, Bill Mandel, but you can easily see that by going to our website and http://hunterbear.org/WHEN%20THE%20RED%20LEAVES%20FALL.htm If you missed my recent piece on our very encouraging counter-attack against Lupus, see http://hunterbear.org/shooting_lupus.htm And if you missed this recent piece -- a good feel for some of the civil liberties challenges faced by an effective organizer [if I may be permitted a note of immodesty], see this cluster of four related pages covering the late '50s to late '70s and the FBI -- with links to a few samples from the old and nefarious Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. [When one fishes for trout, expect to be bitten my mosquitoes.]: http://hunterbear.org/a_bizarre__1979_fbi_smear_effort.htm In Solidarity, Hunter [Hunter Bear] WHEN THE RED LEAVES FALL [NATIVES IN THE RADICAL CULTURE OF SEATTLE] HUNTER GRAY September 11 2002 [And Added Material September 13, 2002] UPDATED See also http://hunterbear.org/wobbly_mentor.htm "When the Red Leaves Fall" is simply lovely, hard as it is for me, old once-CP Red, to accept that bar scene with the sap hurled at you. But fine writing is a rare gift." -- Bill Mandel "Wow! Compelling story!" -- Morton Skorodin I saw them just as soon as they came in from the lower door on the far other side of the vast old Seattle train station that Sunday afternoon in late October, down in what was left of the increasingly Urban Renewed and Yuppie-Invaded old Skid Road district below the totem poles on Yesler Way. Humanity numbered a few billion by that fall of 1985 -- and many many years had come and gone -- but, joltingly and with a sharp eerie chill, I knew immediately that it was Her. And there was something familiar -- very familiar -- about the young and slender man of around 29 or 30 who followed her, sometimes gently guiding. They turned right, moving very slowly along the wall. An old Black shoe shine man rose from his chair, smiling and shaking hands. Visiting briefly with him, they then resumed what was obviously some sort of regular walk routine. She was a Native woman in an old dress and sweater, erect, walking with stiff rigidity, short and halting steps. And even from the distance across the great wide floor she looked to be old with her very grayish/whitish hair -- maybe even hitting her seventies. But I knew -- I knew very well -- that she wasn't much older than my 51 years. And the young guy following her, though at first glance Black, was also as much Indian as African, and obviously her son. It had been a long, long time -- Another Age. But only an hour or so before, she had been much on my mind -- very heavily so. To an Indian, there are no coincidences in the Creation. But I still felt the eerie chills. Based at that point in North Dakota, I had been in the Pacific Northwest -- mostly at Tacoma -- for a week, renewing those old Left contacts who still remained. I was doing research on radical industrial unionism over several great epochs. Now, in Seattle and killing a few hours before I headed train-wise back to the Northern Plains, I'd been wandering around the old Skid Road area in a mild drizzling rain. And, as I hoofed it along, I'd been doing a great deal of Remembering in what had once been the wide open land of hell-raising working-stiffs. For a little while, as I had walked that afternoon on the many rainy streets below Yesler Way, I was once again hardly 21, a big husky Indian kid, barely out of the Army, not yet ready to go back home to Northern Arizona. It was the very early Spring, 1955. And it was a gray and grim and awful time with the Red Scare in full swing. I was a fresh Red Card Wobbly, a member of the old Industrial Workers of the World -- very recently signed up at the ancient Seattle Wobbly Hall on Skid Road. Many years after '55, in 1967-68, we had lived in Seattle -- myself and Eldri and our little developing family. We came there right after we'd left the Deep South -- to which I and Eldri had gone in 1961 for six extremely turbulent years in the Civil Rights Movement. At Seattle, we'd driven around the old Skid Road from time to time, looking for my landmarks and memories while I noted the invasive changes even then being wrought by urban renewal and the new human colonizers. As we junketed, now and again down there, it was clear that much was gone from the old scene, including the Wobblies. Some traditional buildings and other geography still remained. But during that year, though only a little more respectable and much involved in many solid social justice causes, I never actually walked around the old Skid Road. And now, in '85 and a long generation after even that, I did walk the turf in the old rip-roaring district of long ago. The turbulent saloons were gone, no Salvation soup kitchens remained, a rather drab Asian marketing firm was in the building that had housed the I.W.W. hall of yore. A short distance from that, I walked north up a very short hill to a small park. And there, with tallish Washington-type trees all around me, I sat down in the drizzling rain. And I remembered when I last seen her, late one afternoon -- walking down into that very park in the early Spring of '55 when the trees were still very small. And very young And so were we -- she and I. Very young indeed. And now -- in the Native world of no coincidence -- here she was more than an Age later in the close-by train station. It was heavy emotionally to watch them. Continuing their walk along the wall, they stopped and visited with the man who sold magazines, and then, turning left along the next stretch of wall, stopped briefly in front of the couple who hustled pre-fab sandwiches and weak coffee. I noticed by this time that her son did almost all the talking. And by now, as they drew closer along that wall, her bronze features seemed old, dried and sunken in a face with sharp canyon lines. Her hair was obviously very gray white. And she was now moving very slowly. When I had first seen her, not much older than I, the face was a Face of Vibrant Fire and the Hair was Jet Black. I had come that evening to a bar that for me was new -- Hank's Place -- and the curtained front window had a large, partially-raised slightly glowing red sheet of cardboard with a bright light under it. From inside, I could hear on a juke box a Weavers' song -- one of my great favorites, Darlin' Corey. I went inside. Although it was dim, I could see about 30 people, many of whom seemed surprisingly well-dressed. But it was She who seized my eyes and heart. She was vigorously wiping a bar table. And her eyes flashed Hot Light when she saw me come in -- and that was very mutual. She motioned over to a bar stool. I sat down. A burly rough-hewn Anglo in his forties was sitting next to me. "This is Matt," she said. "From Great Falls. Montana. Copper miner. Just come over from Butte." "I'm from Northern Arizona," said I. I gave my full name. "Just a drifter. For now." The miner grinned, stuck out his big hand. "Well, me too," he said. "I'm Matt Rough." He spelled his last name. We shook hands. "You're new here," she said. "I guess so," I replied. "You're Indian?" She smiled all over, "Sure am. Blackfeet. Montana." "I'm Wabanaki and Mohawk," I told her. "Micmac, St. Francis Abenaki, St Regis Mohawk." "Now that's a mouthful," she grinned. "I could sure tell you're Indian," she said. "Just as soon as you walked in." She moved off to carry drinks to the tables. Matt Rough and I shot the breeze briefly about the Big City. The heavy bartender came over and smiled. His eyes were steel-cold and his mouth looked like a jagged gash in a rough rock wall. He poured me a drink -- "on us." Then she came back toward the bar. But instead of going behind it, she sat down by me -- very close indeed. Now I felt pure excitement. She put her head close to mine, looked deeply into my eyes. And she asked, "What do you think of John Foster Dulles?" The tree began to fall. I felt dazed. Finally, I said, "I don't like him at all." She smiled approvingly. For a few minutes, we talked about the Secretary of State. I still felt dazed. Then she asked, "Where are you politically?" I told her. "I'm an I.W.W." Matt Rough looked at me, sharply. I reached in my pocket and held up my Dark Red Card -- the little Wobbly membership book. There was, momentarily, a glint in her eyes. Then the earnestness returned. She looked at me carefully. "That's good," she replied. "But, and she paused, then went on. "But it's not enough. We need to put something else behind that, something stronger than it's ever had by itself." The tree crashed, hard. "You're a Bolshevik, aren't you?" I asked. "A Communist." She said nothing, still looking intently at me. Matt Rough, staring straight ahead over the bar itself, was nursing his drink. I stood up sharply. "I don't think much of that at all," I said. "I'm a Wobbly." Her face was suddenly icy. And her eyes were narrowed and the glint was back. "The Wobblies don't huddle in a darkened bar," I finished tersely. Then she jumped up and yelled, "Why Goddamn you!" The lights went on. Quickly I surveyed the faces at the bar and at the table. Matt Rough was still staring silently and dead ahead. But elsewhere I saw storm clouds. Step by step, I began to back out, very slowly, turning my head from side to side. Then something -- suddenly -- and it may have been a flash of psychic intuition or the expression on the faces of the people at the tables, led me to look quickly over my shoulder to the bar. The bartender, his gash of a mouth tightly closed and his face glowing the grimness of determination, was swinging a huge leather-covered sap at me. I ducked away and it grazed my neck. Then I was out on the sidewalk. The illuminated red poster looked at me. And someone banged the door shut very hard behind me. I hung around in front, for a minute or two. But no one came out. The next morning, I mentioned the incident to the regulars at the Wobbly Hall. They all looked up immediately from cards and cribbage, books and coffee and soup. And they were all extremely interested. Old O.N. Peterson, a former lumberjack, dressed in an ancient and very proper black suit, headed the Local. "Mostly Communists at that place," he said. "Pretty tough outfit." Looking at me sternly like a grandfather, he finished, "A few are OK -- maybe. But don't go back to try to settle any scores." I assured him I would not. Late that afternoon, I walked north to the little park and sat down. The early Spring sun was warm. Then, suddenly, I saw Her -- coming into the park from the other end, walking in my direction. She saw me and our eyes locked -- hard. She stopped with a jerk. There was fear in her face and she moved, almost stumbling, sharply off to the side -- and then out of the park. And Beyond. And then I felt a very deep, poignant sadness. A few days later, on a Sunday afternoon, O.N. Peterson, like most Wobblies a stickler for super-precise financial accuracy, appointed a periodic ad-hoc committee to spend an hour or so going over the financial books for the past month. He named me, Andrew Hatch [whose trail had started in New Mexico ages ago and who was a veteran of several historic IWW lumber struggles], and a colorful migratory "snow bird" hard-rock miner named Stevens who I later knew down in Arizona. We went over the dues payments, name by name, line by line -- and then, suddenly, I saw the name of Matt Rough. He from Great Falls, he of Hank's Place, And an obvious friend of Her. I almost said something. The Wobblies wanted no Communists. But I said nothing. Politics and possible political differences aside, I was an Indian and a Westerner. Whatever Rough was, it was Rough's business. So I let it pass. The I.W.W. had inherited the large radical library maintained for years by the Pacific Northwest Labor School -- which had accumulated books since the Thirties. Attacked from the earliest stages of the Red Scare onward by the Washington State Un-American Activities Committee and then by HUAC and other Federal witch-hunting outfits, the School -- formally listed as "subversive" by the U.S. Attorney General -- finally went under. A general council of the spokespersons for those regional radical organizations still extant eventually agreed consensus-wise that the I.W.W. would be the recipient of the School's library -- with the understanding that the Wobblies would check things out to all. And the I.W.W. -- formally listed as "subversive" as well by the United States A.G. but for damn sure keeping on keeping on -- brought in the very large library indeed. To the letter, they faithfully carried out the all-around radical consensus agreement. And I did a great deal of reading in that super-congenial setting with the photos of the old Wobbly martyrs on the wall above. And, when I wasn't reading, I was listening to stories -- class war stories, old and new -- and learning much that I've always treasured to this very moment. Only a day or so after I'd seen Matt Rough's name on the membership dues-record, a young Black man entered the Wobbly Hall to check out books. In his mid-twenties, he was slender with a sharply quiet intensity underlying his pleasantness. The I.W.W. was always totally egalitarian in all respects -- and had been all the way through from its hatch in 1905. The young Black man was greeted cordially, given coffee. When he'd checked out a stack of books and left, O.N. Peterson commented to me, "He's a Commie. But he's young. Seems good." And Andrew Hatch added, "He always brings the books back." Not long after that, I left Seattle with my I.W.W. card and the lessons I'd learned -- and went eastward into the Rockies for more adventures before heading back to Northern Arizona. I always remembered all of the old Wobblies at Seattle -- and kept in touch with them by letter over many, many years until almost all were gone. By 1967-68, none of the old-timers remained. And Hank's Place had been leveled for some sort of non-descript and slick-looking business building. But I always remembered Her. And sometimes I thought of Matt Rough as well -- and the young Black man. I knew the Communist Party was totally egalitarian. It was a tough and brutal and racist time. Hard as Hell for Indian people. However she'd gotten to Seattle from the Montana mountains, the Communists had obviously given her home and purpose. And the young Black guy -- whoever he was -- had found a refuge there as well. Matt Rough? Well, I figured -- and always have -- that he went back to Montana Copper. And now, a long, long Age ahead in the Fall of '85, here she was, with her son -- in the train station. And this only an hour or so after I'd hunched in the rain in the little park surrounded by the tall trees which had been so small more than thirty years before. And remembered her with such vital clarity. I continued to feel eerie twinges. The two had now turned left once again and were coming along directly toward me. And now I saw so absolutely clearly the burned out eyes and the ragged face and the gray white hair. They were moving very, very slowly and her son was regularly and gently nudging her forward. When they came almost abreast of me, no more than a dozen feet away, she looked straight into my face. And I at her. And under the many, many tearing decades, I saw, in a deep down illuminating flash, the beautifully vibrant face as I had first seen her -- quickly wiping a bar table at Hank's on that long ago Spring evening. And then the ravages covered it all again. From suzannedk at gmail.com Tue Mar 10 09:14:32 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:14:32 +0100 Subject: [R-G] Krugman: The Big Dither In-Reply-To: <1524546602.312631236627370525.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> References: <1011215595.310301236627120994.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> <1524546602.312631236627370525.JavaMail.root@jaguar8.sfu.ca> Message-ID: Yesterdah CNBC stock program a German analyst said that 97% of the worlds positive stock etc activity was from US derivitives as they spead like syrup over the globe. The last six words are mine....nevertheless, that means that the total losses and the total costs will never ever be added up! The dithering of Obama and Geitner are because they have been totally out of the loop og information. As Obam exclaimed day before yesterday, ? am astounded"" by the fall. In short far more than he quessed or was told it would be. Yet many knew and prepapred. The US response now is what they want! Total confusion. World wide depression! Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 8:36 PM, Sid Shniad wrote: > > > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/opinion/06krugman.html?th&emc=th > > New York > Times > March 5, 2009 > > > > Op-Ed > > > > The Big Dither > > The Bernanke-Geithner plan isn't going to fly. O fficials don't want to > face up to the > dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue > an > > The Big Dither > > The Bernanke-Geithner plan isn't going to fly. O fficials don't want to > face up to the > dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue > an > > The Bernanke-Geithner plan isn't going to fly. O fficials don't want to > face up to the > dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue > an > > essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. > And temporary > > nationalization is apparently considered unthinkable. > > > By PAUL KRUGMAN > > Last month, in his big speech to Congress, President Obama argued for bold > steps to fix America's dysfunctional banks. "While the cost of action will > be great," he declared, "I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be > far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not > months or years, but perhaps a decade." > > Many analysts agree. But among people I talk to there's a growing sense of > frustration, even panic, over Mr. Obama's failure to match his words with > deeds. The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the > Obama administration is dithering. Policy is stuck in a holding pattern. > > Here's how the pattern works: first, administration officials, usually > speaking off the record, float a plan for rescuing the banks in the press. > This trial balloon is quickly shot down by informed commentators. > > Then, a few weeks later, the administration floats a new plan. This plan > is, however, just a thinly disguised version of the previous plan, a fact > quickly realized by all concerned. And the cycle starts again. > > Why do officials keep offering plans that nobody else finds credible? > Because somehow, top officials in the Obama administration and at the > Federal Reserve have convinced themselves that troubled assets, often > referred to these days as "toxic waste," are really worth much more than > anyone is actually willing to pay for them - and that if these assets were > properly priced, all our troubles would go away. > > Thus, in a recent interview Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, tried to > make a distinction between the "basic inherent economic value" of troubled > assets and the "artificially depressed value" that those assets command > right now. In recent transactions, even AAA-rated mortgage-backed > securities have sold for less than 40 cents on the dollar, but Mr. Geithner > seems to think they're worth much, much more. > > And the government's job, he declared, is to "provide the financing to help > get those markets working," pushing the price of toxic waste up to where it > ought to be. > > What's more, officials seem to believe that getting toxic waste properly > priced would cure the ills of all our major financial institutions. Earlier > this week, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, was asked about the > problem of "zombies" - financial institutions that are effectively bankrupt > but are being kept alive by government aid. "I don't know of any large > zombie institutions in the U.S. financial system," he declared, and went on > to specifically deny that A.I.G. - A.I.G.! - is a zombie. > > This is the same A.I.G. that, unable to honor its promises to pay off other > financial institutions when bonds default, has already received $150 billion > in aid and just got a commitment for $30 billion more. > > The truth is that the Bernanke-Geithner plan - the plan the administration > keeps floating, in slightly different versions - isn't going to fly. > > Take the plan's latest incarnation: a proposal to make low-interest loans > to private investors willing to buy up troubled assets. This would certainly > drive up the price of toxic waste because it would offer a heads-you-win, > tails-we-lose proposition. As described, the plan would let investors > profit if asset prices went up but just walk away if prices fell > substantially. > > But would it be enough to make the banking system healthy? No. > > Think of it this way: by using taxpayer funds to subsidize the prices of > toxic waste, the administration would shower benefits on everyone who made > the mistake of buying the stuff. Some of those benefits would trickle down > to where they're needed, shoring up the balance sheets of key financial > institutions. But most of the benefit would go to people who don't need or > deserve to be rescued. > > And this means that the government would have to lay out trillions of > dollars to bring the financial system back to health, which would, in turn, > both ensure a fierce public outcry and add to already serious concerns about > the deficit. (Yes, even strong advocates of fiscal stimulus like yours > truly worry about red ink.) Realistically, it's just not going to happen. > > So why has this zombie idea - it keeps being killed, but it keeps coming > back - taken such a powerful grip? The answer, I fear, is that officials > still aren't willing to face the facts. They don't want to face up to the > dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue > an essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. > And temporary nationalization is still, apparently, considered unthinkable. > > But this refusal to face the facts means, in practice, an absence of > action. And I share the president's fears: inaction could result in an > economy that sputters along, not for months or years, but for a decade or > more. > > > > Op-Ed > > > > The Big Dither > > The Bernanke-Geithner plan isn't going to fly. O fficials don't want to > face up to the > dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue > an > > The Big Dither > > The Bernanke-Geithner plan isn't going to fly. O fficials don't want to > face up to the > dire state of major financial institutions because it's very hard to rescue > an > > essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. > And temporary > > nationalization is apparently considered unthinkable. > > > By PAUL KRUGMAN > > Last month, in his big speech to Congress, President Obama argued for bold > steps to fix America's dysfunctional banks. "While the cost of action will > be great," he declared, "I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be > far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not > months or years, but perhaps a decade." > > Many analysts agree. But among people I talk to there's a growing sense of > frustration, even panic, over Mr. Obama's failure to match his words with > deeds. The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the > Obama administration is dithering. Policy is stuck in a holding pattern. > > Here's how the pattern works: first, administration officials, usually > speaking off the record, float a plan for rescuing the banks in the press. > This trial balloon is quickly shot down by informed commentators. > > Then, a few weeks later, the administration floats a new plan. This plan > is, however, just a thinly disguised version of the previous plan, a fact > quickly realized by all concerned. And the cycle starts again. > > Why do officials keep offering plans that nobody else finds credible? > Because somehow, top officials in the Obama administration and at the > Federal Reserve have convinced themselves that troubled assets, often > referred to these days as "toxic waste," are really worth much more than > anyone is actually willing to pay for them - and that if these assets were > properly priced, all our troubles would go away. > > Thus, in a recent interview Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, tried to > make a distinction between the "basic inherent economic value" of troubled > assets and the "artificially depressed value" that those assets command > right now. In recent transactions, even AAA-rated mortgage-backed > securities have sold for less than 40 cents on the dollar, but Mr. Geithner > seems to think they're worth much, much more. > > And the government's job, he declared, is to "provide the financing to help > get those markets working," pushing the price of toxic waste up to where it > ought to be. > > What's more, officials seem to believe that getting toxic waste properly > priced would cure the ills of all our major financial institutions. Earlier > this week, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, was asked about the > problem of "zombies" - financial institutions that are effectively bankrupt > but are being kept alive by government aid. "I don't know of any large > zombie institutions in the U.S. financial system," he declared, and went on > to specifically deny