From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Sun Aug 1 05:25:36 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Sun Aug 1 07:42:59 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] The Disturbing Words of John Edwards Message-ID: "Hope is on the Way" The Disturbing Words of John Edwards By JOHN CHUCKMAN http://www.counterpunch.org/chuckman07312004.html I heard several lines from John Edwards' convention speech on the radio before I clicked it off. Anymore and I would have vomited. As it was, I experienced a horrible flashback to being a twelve-year old at the Midwest Baptists' Camp Sycamore, sitting in the sweltering cinderblock meeting hall, shirt stuck to the back of a card-table chair, while a strutting little preacher sprayed beads of sweat and globs of spit into the twilight yelling about hell. John Edwards is pure Elmer Gantry. Well, what would you expect from a guy who spent twenty years chasing ambulances, looking for deep pockets to sue, always waving his arms and smiling like a chipmunk? America's litigation lawyers and its evangelists-for-profit have a lot in common, and when they come from places like Dog Bite, North Carolina, it's almost impossible to tell them apart. There's always a syrupy sweet exterior, the beneficent smile--just think of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson--in the ruthless pursuit of things that human society would be better off without. Here's a few lines from John's official site on how he sees his career: For 20 years, John dedicated his career to representing families and children hurt by the negligence of others. Standing up against the powerful insurance industry and their armies of lawyers, John helped these families through the darkest moments of their lives to overcome tremendous challenges. His passionate advocacy for people like the folks who worked in the mill with his father earned him respect and recognition across the country. That sounds like a promo for the next episode of "Rescuing Little Nell from the Clutches of Snidely Whiplash." Of course, it's what the words don't say that is often important. Why did John only stand up for "families and children"? Is there something wrong with representing people without families or children? Of course not, but his language is reclaimed manure from the Republican family-values compost heap. John stood against armies of lawyers? No, actually John swelled the ranks of lawyers who now swarm America like the aftereffect of a lab-accident release of killer bees, spreading conflict and fear everywhere they appear. The blurb doesn't say that in twenty years John had made himself a very rich man through litigation, that is by helping to raise insurance premiums for everyone, but that's the truth. "Standing up against the powerful insurance industry" could just as well read, "Mining the huge revenues of the insurance industry for all he could haul away." Like any of America's current crop of crocodile-tear evangelists hoping to witness a repeat of the miracle of the loaves and fishes from a collection plate, John helped families through their "darkest moments," just managing to accumulate a fortune by the time he was in his forties. Well, I'm not against success, just against misrepresenting what it is you did. Since most litigation is socially disruptive and economically unproductive, there is something particularly disturbing about one of its predatory practitioners seeking high office. After all, it is the abject failure of American legislators to provide sufficient enlightened laws and decent regulations that makes the threatening jungle where litigation flourishes. Reading the balance of John's speech on the Internet had the advantage of not having to hear his backwoods, folksy tone and watch his flamboyant, well-practiced gestures, but I still quickly grasped why John was so successful at litigation. People would settle just to escape having to hear him for months in court. My favorite passage of his speech is this: When you wake up and sit with your kids at the kitchen table, talking to them about the great possibilities in America, you make sure that they know that John and I believe at our core that tomorrow can be better than today. Like all of us, I have learned a lot of lessons in my life. Two of the most important are that first, there will always be heartache and struggle-you can't make it go away. But the other is that people of good and strong will can make a difference. One lesson is a sad lesson and the other's inspiring. We are Americans and we choose to be inspired Apart from the fact that half of all America's marriages end in divorce, you could never convince me that there are many of the remaining families who sit around a breakfast table talking up "the great possibilities of America." Can't you just see squirming kids, screaming about how someone ate all the Lucky Charms or what a jerk the math teacher is, falling silent as a father decides to lift his Lincolnesque brows, perhaps having offered the blessing for the morning's Pop Tarts, to invoke the great possibilities of America? Doesn't that sound just a little bizarre? If this is what happens at John's house, you should be afraid of his holding office. If this isn't what happens at John's house, why is he saying it? The truth is, and I'm sure John knows this, few families even sit together at the breakfast table in America, and, if they do, there's a better-than-even chance that a television is mindlessly blaring the whole time. As for millions of poor families, there is no breakfast on the table. Isn't that why Head Start supplies the kids with food at school? Even in suburban middle-class families, it's all they can do to each make it out of the door on time with rush-hour commutes and drop-offs for the privileged kids' heavy schedule of activities. And how do like that injunction about adding to the breakfast-table sermon, "you make sure that they know that John and I believe at our core that tomorrow can be better than today." John and I believe at our core? Why can't they just believe? Why must it be at their core, whatever that means? The word suggests a nuclear reactor rather than a human being. Anyway, more than a few disturbed personalities in history lay claim to some kind of mystical core something-or-other. Frankly, this statement is so patronizing and ridiculous, it makes me wonder about John's rationality. And what does John mean about tomorrow being better than today? It resembles the words of a certain old American religious huckster who used to open his pitch for money by saying "Something GOOD is going to happen to YOU!" But it is worse than that, because it is so utterly implausible and silly. He is giving you an injunction to talk seriously to your kids about the fatuous advertising claims of two bought-and-paid-for politicians. John has one or more mini-sermons in almost every brief passage. You'd think he was running for church deacon instead of high political office. I like his great first lesson, "there will always be heartache and struggle-you can't make it go away." Is that what the leaders of a great nation are supposed to talk about? Do we need national elections to hear lines borrowed from Oprah Winfrey? Then there's, "But the other is that people of good and strong will can make a difference. One lesson is a sad lesson and the other's inspiring. We are Americans and we choose to be inspired." John probably has in mind the kind of "inspired" a preacher talks about, as the inspired Word of God. That kind of inspired allows of no mistakes, because God can't make any. It also allows of no questions or critics. Nice stuff for a politician to embrace--feel self-righteous while effectively telling people to shut-up. In the real world, and it is the job of politicians to deal with the real world, inspired is not always a sound state of mind. Inspired about what? Inspired to do what? People are just as likely to be inspired to do terrible things as good things. The word is often used by the flunkies of great tyrants. Germans regularly used the word to describe Der F?hrer. The ghastly blood-letting of Vietnam was inspired by a loopy, religious-like belief in the need to stop communism. Would you say that that smiling humbug, Pat Robertson, was inspired when he recently advocated America's invading Iran to overthrow the heathens? The passage is full of question-begging phrases. Make a difference to what? I can't help thinking of the cliche about the path to hell being paved with good intentions. Sorry, John, but there's no shortage of leaders with strong wills in the world, and each of them believes in his own goodness. That fact is almost certainly one of the human race's true curses. The rest of John's speech is sprinkled with soul-deadening cliches and even contradictions. At one point, he said, "I stand here tonight ready to work with you and John [Kerry] to make America strong again." Well, I think the last thing any thinking person on the planet wants are people working to make America stronger. America has destabilized two countries, killed tens of thousands of innocent people, tortured, and improperly imprisoned simply because it had the power to do so. Power is like that, as Lord Acton so wisely said, it corrupts. Chase after enough of it, and you get absolute corruption. John's speech takes on the theme of two Americas, and were he to deal with the genuine problem of two distinct and separate societies in America (actually, I think it is three, including the wealthy class represented by all the Presidential candidates)), he might have said something worthwhile. John tells us: "Because the truth is, we still live in two different Americas: one for people who have lived the American Dream and don't have to worry, and another for most Americans who work hard and still struggle to make ends meet. It doesn't have to be that way." But it was John himself who already told us how struggle and difficulties won't go away, so what's he saying? On education, John says: "We shouldn't have two public school systems in this country: one for the most affluent communities, and one for everybody else. None of us believe that the quality of a child's education should be controlled by where they live or the affluence of their community." John must know perfectly well that education is not primarily a responsibility of the federal government under America's 18th-century Constitution, so what's he talking about? What does he propose to do to change a situation where some suburban high schools have PhDs teaching and classes enjoy trips to Europe, while urban schools have labs with rusted taps and Bunsen burners that don't work? The truth is that all good things in America, including medical care and political influence, are rationed according to ability to pay. So why would education be any different? John adds: "We shouldn't have two different economies in America: one for people who are set for life, their kids and grandkids will be just fine, and then one for most Americans who live paycheck to paycheck." What does that mean, beyond populist hot air? I have no idea, and I suspect John doesn't either. Here's Preacher John on adversity and hardship: "and you know what happens if something goes wrong-a child gets sick, somebody gets laid off, or there's a financial problem, you go right off the cliff. And what's the first thing to go? Your dreams." Your dreams? I really think dreams are the last thing people experiencing hardship worry about. They are worried about getting through with a shred of dignity, perhaps about surviving. Is John offering them genuine help or an airy hand-out of dreams and inspiration? Here's a few selected gems from Preacher John on 9/11: We will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to make sure that never happens again, not to our America. We will strengthen our homeland security and protect our ports, safeguard our chemical plants, and support our firefighters, police officers and EMT's. We will always use our military might to keep the American people safe.And we will have one clear unmistakable message for al Qaida and the rest of these terrorists. You cannot run. You cannot hide. And we will destroy you. Does John think there are people in America--other than its substantial population of militia types, survivalists, millenarianists, and those looking forward to Armageddan--who want that to happen again? Does he think there's people, other than the two million or so in America's prisons, who don't support police? John's promise to hunt down terrorists is pure comic-book superhero, and isn't it exactly what the delusional Bush believes he's been doing all along? What does John propose that is different? He says absolutely nothing about using proper diplomatic and legal channels to hunt down violent criminals or about strengthening international institutions. No, it's all America this and America that, the same totally narcissistic stuff that's making the world sick of hearing from America. Nobody wants a friend who only talks about himself and refuses to help anyone except on his own terms, but Americans like John think those same qualities somehow become attractive traits in world relations. Like his partner-candidate, Kerry, he promises only more threats about not hesitating to use the military to kill more people. Keep in mind that John, sitting as he does on a Senate intelligence committee, has an extremely high intelligence clearance and ask yourself what he was able to forecast or advocate either before or after 9/11. Not much is the answer. John's pet project now is to start a new domestic spy agency--still another multi-billion-dollar agency on top the vast existing network of intrusive agencies and one dedicated specifically to spying on the homeland's residents. Does that sound like someone genuinely concerned about rights and freedoms? Someone should ask John if he is committed to rescinding the execrable Patriot Act, but I doubt he'd receive an honest answer. Having Preacher John teamed up with Kerry--that drearily ambitious man whose concept of bravery ran to shooting civilians safely from a riverboat in Vietnam--leaves me with a bleak outlook for America and thereby the world. That this dishonest pair and the insipid Bush are the best America offers as leaders says something terrible about that frighteningly-powerful nation: it suffers a devastating poverty of imagination and spirit. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 1 10:15:58 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 1 10:16:01 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] A different voice -- The meaning of the Dems convention Message-ID: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jul2004/dnc-j31.shtml Kerry, Edwards vow to continue war and social reaction By Bill Van Auken 31 July 2004 The following is a statement by the Socialist Equality Party's presidential candidate Bill Van Auken. The Democratic National Convention in Boston this week provided the most powerful refutation of claims that the party's victory in November will yield a change in course from Washington's present policy of military aggression abroad and attacks on fundamental social and democratic rights at home. The speeches delivered by the party's presidential candidate John Kerry and his running mate John Edwards, in particular, spelled out in no uncertain terms the sharp lurch to the right by the Democratic Party over the past year as the US ruling oligarchy has conditioned it for the potential assumption of power. Both speeches were directed not so much to the cheering delegates or television viewers as to the financial-corporate elite and its media representatives. Their rhetoric was aimed at reassuring this select audience that a Kerry-Edwards administration will deny any influence to the antiwar sentiments to which elements of the party appealed during this year's primaries, and that it will make no attempt to resurrect the " liberal" reformist policies with which the Democrats were identified during an earlier period. The convention's glorification of militarism and the party's subservience to big business were summed up in the presidential candidate's opening line: " I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty." Kerry presented his campaign not so much as a run for the presidency as a bid to be tapped as the new US " commander-in-chief." An observer unfamiliar with the US political scene could be forgiven for mistaking the Democrats' convention as an assembly called to select the new civilian figurehead for a military regime. More than a dozen retired generals and admirals crowded the stage. General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was brought in to address the delegates. General Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander and erstwhile Democratic candidate, delivered a bellicose speech telling the convention: " I am an American soldier. Our country has been attacked. We are at war. Our nation is at risk. And we are engaged in a life-and-death struggle against terrorists.... As we are gathered here tonight, our armed forces are in combat." Indeed, during the four days the Democrats spent celebrating in Boston, another five US soldiers were killed and scores more wounded in Iraq. As Kerry spoke from the podium Thursday night, the US military was launching air strikes against the city of Fallujah, destroying homes and killing dozens of Iraqi men, women and children. The overriding argument put forward for Kerry's nomination was that as a combat veteran of the Vietnam War he is better qualified to direct the armed forces in Iraq and new military interventions abroad. Both Edwards and Kerry returned again and again to the candidate's service in Vietnam. Citing an incident in which Kerry shot and killed a fleeing Vietnamese fighter, Edwards declared: " Decisive, strong. Is this not what we need in a commander in chief?" The vice-presidential candidate even managed to work the populist demagogy he employed in his primary stump speech about " two Americas" into a militarist appeal for national unity. " We must be one America, strong and united for another very important reason," he said. " Because we are at war." " We will strengthen and modernize our military, we will double our Special Forces, we will invest in the new equipment and technologies so that our military remains the best equipped and best prepared in the world," said Edwards. " This will make our military stronger, it will make sure that we can defeat any enemy in this new world." Kerry echoed the same themes, declaring that the election was the most important in living memory because " We are a nation at war -- a global war on terrorism against an enemy unlike any we've ever known before." He went on to invoke once again his Vietnam service and promise: " As president, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war." But what were the lessons that Kerry learned from Vietnam? In his convention speech the candidate declared: " I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as president. Let there be no mistake, I will never hesitate to use force when it is required." He pledged to build " a stronger military" by adding 40,000 active-duty troops. Yet, when he returned from Vietnam more than three decades ago he described the war not as a defense of the US, but a crime against humanity. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, he said the war was the result of a people " seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever." He further declared: " There is nothing in Vietnam ... that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such a loss to the preservation of freedom ... is to us the height of hypocrisy." It was just such this hypocrisy that oozed from every pore of the Democratic Party during its Boston convention. There was no suggestion from any of the speakers that the war in Iraq is a criminal venture, that the deaths of nearly 1,000 US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis had no justification or that the revelations of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq constituted a national disgrace. Rather, the Democratic candidates made it clear that they view the war and occupation as legitimate and necessary. That they will not tolerate any opposition to this war was spelled out in their embrace of the extraordinary security measures taken in Boston to suppress antiwar protests as well as in the functioning of the convention itself. When one person on the convention floor tried to unfurl a banner calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq, she was dragged away by police officers and thrown out of the convention center. The incident provides an insight into the attitude a Kerry administration would take toward antiwar dissent. A passage in Edwards' speech could have been lifted directly from those made by George W. Bush, cloaking the predatory Iraqi intervention in democratic pretensions, while threatening new unprovoked wars: " We can ensure that Iraq's neighbors, like Syria and Iran, don't stand in the way of a democratic Iraq. We can help Iraq's economy.... We can do this for the Iraqi people, we can do it for our own soldiers. And we will get this done right. A new president will bring the world to our side, and with it a stable Iraq, a real chance for freedom and peace in the Middle East, including a safe and secure Israel." Kerry likewise vowed to " get the job done," declaring: " I know what we have to do in Iraq. We need a president who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden." In short, a Democratic administration will continue the occupation of Iraq for years to come. This is not " Bush's war," but a war waged on the basis of a fundamental strategy embraced by the most powerful sections of the American ruling elite. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse, a consensus emerged among both Democrats and Republicans that Washington should use its unrivaled military supremacy to press for US dominance over the world economy and its strategic markets and resources, most importantly oil. Iraq represents the implementation of that strategy. To the extent that Kerry and Edwards criticized the Bush administration, it was for botching this operation. These arguments are directed to the ruling elite: that the Bush administration is too discredited to continue the war; it has unnecessarily alienated valuable allies with an ideologically driven and reckless unilateralism; it has lost credibility with the American people. Therefore, a new " commander-in-chief" is required to get the job done right. Who better than a Vietnam veteran who can invoke his own military service in demanding " sacrifice" from others, including, if necessary, a reinstitution of the draft? Vague appeals to more popular anti-Bush sentiments over the war only serve to rebound on the Democrats themselves. " Saying there are weapons of mass destruction does not make it so," declared Kerry, adding, " As president, I will ask the hard questions and demand the hard evidence." Yet, as Senators, neither he nor Edwards did any such thing before voting to grant Bush blank-check authorization to launch an unprovoked war against Iraq. Nor did either of them show any inclination to pose " hard questions" before casting their votes for the USA Patriot Act and its sweeping attacks on democratic rights. At one point, Kerry obliquely denounced the Bush administration by declaring that he would not " mislead us into war," that his vice president would not " conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite environmental laws" and that his attorney general " will uphold the Constitution of the United States." The unmistakable implication is that the president, vice president and top aides are criminals who violated the laws, their oaths of office and the US Constitution. Yet there is no proposal to fundamentally change course or to bring the criminals to justice. Rather, the promise is to prosecute their criminal policies more effectively. The Democratic convention's adoption of the Bush administration's rhetoric about a " global war on terrorism" and the strengthening of " homeland security" are the clearest indication that a Kerry-Edwards administration will represent an essential continuity of the policies of Bush. Not even the most " left" sections of the Democratic Party dared to question the validity of this " war" or suggest that it has been foisted upon the American people as a means of justifying military aggression abroad and repression at home. The specter of omnipotent terrorism has come to serve as a new ideological glue for a country riven by social and political contradictions, supplanting the supposed threat of " communist aggression" invoked during the Cold War. It is used to foment fear and political disorientation as a means of pushing through policies that were previously politically unthinkable. This will continue under the Democrats, whose platform declares that " Bush's actions against terrorism have fallen far short." On domestic policy, Kerry went out of his way to portray himself as a fiscal conservative. He touted his vote in 1985 for the Gramm-Rudman act that, in the name of balancing the budget, mandated automatic cuts in social programs already ravaged by the attacks of the Reagan administration. While promoting vague remedies for the crisis in health care and education, Kerry insisted that his administration would cut the federal deficit in half in four years and would " make the government live by the rule that every family lives by: Pay as you go." Given that his platform includes proposals for a further increase in the massive US military budget, this is a prescription for the destruction of what little remains of a social safety net in America. On the question of jobs, the Democrats offered the rhetoric of economic nationalism. Kerry called for further tax cuts for the corporations on the grounds that this will " revitalize manufacturing" and " reward companies that create jobs where they belong in the good old USA." " If you give the American worker a fair playing field, there's no one in the world that the American worker can't compete against," the candidate said. The underlying conception here is that American workers should be pitted in a self-defeating contest with workers of every other country to see who can provide the cheapest labor and most profitable conditions for transnational corporations able to move their operations from country to country at will. It is a policy embraced by the trade union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO, which serves as an agent of these corporations, pressuring workers for more and more concessions to attract employer investment. The logic of this economic nationalism is to unite workers with their " own" capitalist rulers against foreign competition, a perspective that fuels chauvinism and militarism. There are those on the so-called left -- like the Nation magazine -- who try to delude themselves, and others, into believing that the right-wing orgy in Boston is merely a case of political calculation, a pose adopted by the Democrats in order to appear " centrist" and win the election. In reality, the carefully staged convention has revealed the political essence of the Democratic Party, It is a party that is controlled by and defends the interests of the American oligarchy. This is what unites it, tactical differences notwithstanding, with the Republicans. Its real social base can be seen in those it puts forward as its candidates: Kerry, who sits on top of one of the largest family fortunes in the country, and Edwards, whose worth is measured in the tens of millions. Former president Clinton set the tone for the convention by noting that he is one of the " top one percent" and recommending that tactical changes must be made to defend the essential interests of his social class. In this sense, the convention and the evolution of the Democratic Party itself is the expression of the profound socioeconomic polarization that has intensified uninterruptedly over the past 30 years in the United States. The vast gulf separating the financial elite from the masses of working people has led to the disintegration of American bourgeois democracy. There are indeed " two Americas," and the division between them is so great that not a single significant social or political issue can be resolved on a democratic basis. As reactionary as the convention was, there is no doubt that the ruling elite will push Kerry and the Democrats even further to the right in the three months leading up to the election. This was spelled out by the Washington Post, the voice of the Washington political establishment, which published a highly critical editorial on Kerry's speech Friday entitled " Missed Opportunity." It upbraided him for failing to " celebrate" the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and for suggesting that Bush's policy of " preemptive war" was wrong. " Mr. Kerry should have spoken the difficult truth that US troops will be needed in Iraq for a long time," declared the Post. " In economics as in national security Mr. Kerry missed an opportunity for straight talk," the editorial continued. He " failed to acknowledge the fiscal challenge posed by the imminent retirement of the baby boom generation.... To the contrary, he raised the issue of Social Security only to reaffirm that he would not cut benefits -- a promise that a President Kerry might come to regret." Kerry has already demonstrated his extreme sensitivity to such criticism. It was the Post that in the wake of the Democratic primaries demanded that the Democratic candidate proclaim his support for the continued occupation of Iraq. He quickly obliged. The policies advanced by the Democrats in Boston vindicate in the most powerful fashion the political perspective elaborated by the Socialist Equality Party and our decision to run in the 2004 election. The Democratic convention has made it abundantly clear that working people cannot take a single step forward on any of the vital issues that confront them -- war, jobs, democratic rights, living standards and social conditions -- within the straitjacket of the two-party system. The most burning issue in the coming election is not " anybody but Bush," but rather the preparation for the inevitable social and political struggles that will erupt in the United States, whether the Democrats or the Republicans control the White House come 2005. Our party's campaign is directed towards this necessary preparation. It is initiating a broad discussion within the working class, among students, youth and professionals aimed at laying the foundations for the emergence of the independent mass political movement that will be required for this struggle. The struggle against war and the defense of basic rights will be possible only through a break with the two-party system and the development of a new perspective based upon socialism, internationalism and the political independence of the working class. I urge all those who want to carry forward this struggle to participate in our campaign, help place myself and my running mate Jim Lawrence on the ballot along with our congressional candidates and make the decision to join the Socialist Equality Party. From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 1 14:29:05 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 1 14:29:07 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] DOCTORS AND TORTURE Message-ID: Thanks LD: =================== http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/351/5/415 The New England Journal of Medicine Volume 351:415-416 July 29, 2004 Number 5 Robert Jay Lifton, M.D. Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston. There is increasing evidence that U.S. doctors, nurses, and medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Such medical complicity suggests still another disturbing dimension of this broadening scandal. We know that medical personnel have failed to report to higher authorities wounds that were clearly caused by torture and that they have neglected to take steps to interrupt this torture. In addition, they have turned over prisoners' medical records to interrogators who could use them to exploit the prisoners' weaknesses or vulnerabilities. We have not yet learned the extent of medical involvement in delaying and possibly falsifying the death certificates of prisoners who have been killed by torturers. A May 22 article on Abu Ghraib in the New York Times states that "much of the evidence of abuse at the prison came from medical documents" and that records and statements "showed doctors and medics reporting to the area of the prison where the abuse occurred several times to stitch wounds, tend to collapsed prisoners or see patients with bruised or reddened genitals."1 According to the article, two doctors who gave a painkiller to a prisoner for a dislocated shoulder and sent him to an outside hospital recognized that the injury was caused by his arms being handcuffed and held over his head for "a long period," but they did not report any suspicions of abuse. A staff sergeantmedic who had seen the prisoner in that position later told investigators that he had instructed a military policeman to free the man but that he did not do so. A nurse, when called to attend to a prisoner who was having a panic attack, saw naked Iraqis in a human pyramid with sandbags over their heads but did not report it until an investigation was held several months later. A June 10 article in the Washington Post tells of a long-standing policy at the Guantanamo Bay facility whereby military interrogators were given access to the medical records of individual prisoners.2 The policy was maintained despite complaints by the Red Cross that such records "are being used by interrogators to gain information in developing an interrogation plan." A civilian psychiatrist who was part of a medical review team was "disturbed" about not having been told about the practice and said that it would give interrogators "tremendous power" over prisoners. Other reports, though sketchier, suggest that the death certificates of prisoners who might have been killed by various forms of mistreatment have not only been delayed but may have camouflaged the fatal abuse by attributing deaths to conditions such as cardiovascular disease.3 Various medical protocols -- notably, the World Medical Association Declaration of Tokyo in 1975 -- prohibit all three of these forms of medical complicity in torture. Moreover, the Hippocratic Oath declares, "I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing." To be a military physician is to be subject to potential moral conflict between commitment to the healing of individual people, on the one hand, and responsibility to the military hierarchy and the command structure, on the other. I experienced that conflict myself as an Air Force psychiatrist assigned to Japan and Korea some decades ago: I was required to decide whether to send psychologically disturbed men back to the United States, where they could best receive treatment, or to return them to their units, where they could best serve combat needs. There were, of course, other factors, such as a soldier's pride in not letting his buddies down, but for physicians this basic conflict remained. American doctors at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere have undoubtedly been aware of their medical responsibility to document injuries and raise questions about their possible source in abuse. But those doctors and other medical personnel were part of a command structure that permitted, encouraged, and sometimes orchestrated torture to a degree that it became the norm -- with which they were expected to comply -- in the immediate prison environment. The doctors thus brought a medical component to what I call an "atrocity-producing situation" -- one so structured, psychologically and militarily, that ordinary people can readily engage in atrocities. Even without directly participating in the abuse, doctors may have become socialized to an environment of torture and by virtue of their medical authority helped sustain it. In studying various forms of medical abuse, I have found that the participation of doctors can confer an aura of legitimacy and can even create an illusion of therapy and healing. The Nazis provided the most extreme example of doctors' becoming socialized to atrocity.4 In addition to cruel medical experiments, many Nazi doctors, as part of military units, were directly involved in killing. To reach that point, they underwent a sequence of socialization: first to the medical profession, always a self-protective guild; then to the military, where they adapted to the requirements of command; and finally to camps such as Auschwitz, where adaptation included assuming leadership roles in the existing death factory. The great majority of these doctors were ordinary people who had killed no one before joining murderous Nazi institutions. They were corruptible and certainly responsible for what they did, but they became murderers mainly in atrocity-producing settings. When I presented my work on Nazi doctors to U.S. medical groups, I received many thoughtful responses, including expressions of concern about much less extreme situations in which American doctors might be exposed to institutional pressures to violate their medical conscience. Frequently mentioned examples were prison doctors who administered or guided others in giving lethal injections to carry out the death penalty and military doctors in Vietnam who helped soldiers to become strong enough to resume their assignments in atrocity-producing situations. Physicians are no more or less moral than other people. But as heirs to shamans and witch doctors, we may be seen by others -- and sometimes by ourselves -- as possessing special magic in connection with life and death. Various regimes have sought to harness that magic to their own despotic ends. Physicians have served as actual torturers in Chile and elsewhere; have surgically removed ears as punishment for desertion in Saddam Hussein's Iraq; have incarcerated political dissenters in mental hospitals, notably in the Soviet Union; have, as whites in South Africa, falsified medical reports on blacks who were tortured or killed; and have, as Americans associated with the Central Intelligence Agency, conducted harmful, sometimes fatal, experiments involving drugs and mind control. With the possible exception of the altering of death certificates, the recent transgressions of U.S. military doctors have apparently not been of this order. But these examples help us to recognize what doctors are capable of when placed in atrocity-producing situations. A recent statement by the Physicians for Human Rights addresses this vulnerability in declaring that "torture can also compromise the integrity of health professionals."5 To understand the full scope of American torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and other prisons, we need to look more closely at the behavior of doctors and other medical personnel, as well as at the pressures created by the war in Iraq that produced this behavior. It is possible that some doctors, nurses, or medics took steps, of which we are not yet aware, to oppose the torture. It is certain that many more did not. But all those involved could nonetheless reveal, in valuable medical detail, much of what actually took place. By speaking out, they would take an important step toward reclaiming their role as healers. References 1. Zernike K. Only a few spoke up on abuse as many soldiers stayed silent. New York Times. May 22, 2004:A1. 2. Slevin P, Stephens J. Detainees' medical files shared: Guantanamo interrogators' access criticized. Washington Post. June 10, 2004:A1. 3. Squitieri T, Moniz D. U.S. Army re-examines deaths of Iraqi prisoners. USA Today. June 28, 2004. 4. Lifton RJ. The Nazi doctors: medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New York: Basic Books, 1986. 5. Statement of Leonard Rubenstein, executive director, Physicians for Human Rights, June 2, 2004. (Accessed July 9, 2004, at http://www.aclu.org/news/NewsPrint.cfm?ID=13965&c=36.) From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 1 19:05:59 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 1 19:05:59 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Granny D for U.S. Senate Message-ID: From: "Granny D for U.S. Senate" Subject: Granny D & Joe Trippi Reply-To: Dennis@HaddockforSenate.org Dear Friends, The rumor is true: We have Joe Trippi on our team. The Granny D for U.S. Senate campaign in New Hampshire has been quietly laying the foundation for victory. We waited until after the DNC in Boston to do some of our recruiting. We have a great team! Last night we had our third meeting with our newest volunteer addition: Joe Trippi. Joe, the mastermind behind Dean's internet technology, has already made a great contribution to our strategic planning. He will be coming back to New Hampshire on a regular basis for us as a volunteer. The fact is, this year's election is a great emergency for our democracy, and people like Joe understand that very well and are doing everything they can to tip the balance away from the Neo-cons in the U.S. Senate. It is also a critical matter as it regards future Supreme Court appointments. So we are set on winning, and we have put together quite a team. We now ask you to again step up to the plate with us. Our volunteer link is at http://grannyd.com/volunteering.htm and our donation link is at http://grannyd.com/donations.htm (Because she is who she is, she is not taking PAC donations. Therefore, even if you are giving through the MoveOn pac or other progressive PACs, she will need your help.) Joe Trippi, you may know, has led the way in bottom-up politics. In his speeches and now in his new book, he describes the amazing dimensions of the political revolution that we are embarking upon. Madison warned that our nation would someday face the moment when economic interests combined to take over the government. He prayed that the American people would, by that time, have the information and the tools by which they might defend themselves. Joe says that Madison was praying for the future development of the Internet, and indeed it gives us great power just when we need it to renew the American Revolution--a rise of the people against oppressive interests. As the Dean Campaign was one of the first awkward moments in that revolution, so is ours. If we join together, if we share messages like this with our friends, and if we do the shoeleather and living room work necessary to spread the word--each of us a Paul Revere in no less dangerous times--then we will do this thing. I hope you will do everything you can to support us. I also hope you will read Joe's new book, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, which is a roadmap for our campaign and for this time of crisis. We all need to renew and deepen our understanding of what is happening and how we might yet win. Sincerely, Dennis Burke for Doris Ps. PLEASE, even if you cannot volunteer or make a donation, go to the campaign website http://grannyd.com/volunteering.htm and sign up for the weekly newsletter--it will be helpful wherever you are. ALSO! Go to http://JoeTrippi.com to learn more about Joe and read his weblog. While you're there, please buy his book. It is a critical manual for us all. And a little spike in his sales would be a nice thank you for his help from the friends of Granny D. From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 1 19:27:16 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 1 19:27:19 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] ROBERT FISK: two pieces --- Iraq about to explode Message-ID: http://globalecho.org/view_article.php?aid=1030 'Can't Blair See that this Country is About to Explode? Can't Bush?' The Independent (London) Sunday 01 August 2004 By Robert Fisk The Prime Minister has accused some journalists of almost wanting a disaster to happen in Iraq. Robert Fisk, who has spent the past five weeks reporting from the deteriorating and devastated country, says the disaster has already happened, over and over again. The war is a fraud. I'm not talking about the weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. Nor the links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida which didn't exist. Nor all the other lies upon which we went to war. I'm talking about the new lies. For just as, before the war, our governments warned us of threats that did not exist, now they hide from us the threats that do exist. Much of Iraq has fallen outside the control of America's puppet government in Baghdad but we are not told. Hundreds of attacks are made against US troops every month. But unless an American dies, we are not told. This month's death toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone has now reached 700 - the worst month since the invasion ended. But we are not told. The stage management of this catastrophe in Iraq was all too evident at Saddam Hussein's "trial". Not only did the US military censor the tapes of the event. Not only did they effectively delete all sound of the 11 other defendants. But the Americans led Saddam Hussein to believe - until he reached the courtroom - that he was on his way to his execution. Indeed, when he entered the room he believed that the judge was there to condemn him to death. This, after all, was the way Saddam ran his own state security courts. No wonder he initially looked "disorientated" - CNN's helpful description - because, of course, he was meant to look that way. We had made sure of that. Which is why Saddam asked Judge Juhi: "Are you a lawyer? ... Is this a trial?" And swiftly, as he realised that this really was an initial court hearing - not a preliminary to his own hanging - he quickly adopted an attitude of belligerence. But don't think we're going to learn much more about Saddam's future court appearances. Salem Chalabi, the brother of convicted fraudster Ahmad and the man entrusted by the Americans with the tribunal, told the Iraqi press two weeks ago that all media would be excluded from future court hearings. And I can see why. Because if Saddam does a Milosevic, he'll want to talk about the real intelligence and military connections of his regime - which were primarily with the United States. Living in Iraq these past few weeks is a weird as well as dangerous experience. I drive down to Najaf. Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq. Westerners are murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police vehicles and American trucks. Every police post for 70 miles has been abandoned. Yet a few hours later, I am sitting in my room in Baghdad watching Tony Blair, grinning in the House of Commons as if he is the hero of a school debating competition; so much for the Butler report. Indeed, watching any Western television station in Baghdad these days is like tuning in to Planet Mars. Doesn't Blair realise that Iraq is about to implode? Doesn't Bush realise this? The American-appointed "government" controls only parts of Baghdad - and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government authority. Iyad Allawi, the "Prime Minister", is little more than mayor of Baghdad. "Some journalists," Blair announces, "almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq." He doesn't get it. The disaster exists now. When suicide bombers ram their cars into hundreds of recruits outside police stations, how on earth can anyone hold an election next January? Even the National Conference to appoint those who will arrange elections has been twice postponed. And looking back through my notebooks over the past five weeks, I find that not a single Iraqi, not a single American soldier I have spoken to, not a single mercenary - be he American, British or South African - believes that there will be elections in January. All said that Iraq is deteriorating by the day. And most asked why we journalists weren't saying so. But in Baghdad, I turn on my television and watch Bush telling his Republican supporters that Iraq is improving, that Iraqis support the "coalition", that they support their new US-manufactured government, that the "war on terror" is being won, that Americans are safer. Then I go to an internet site and watch two hooded men hacking off the head of an American in Riyadh, tearing at the vertebrae of an American in Iraq with a knife. Each day, the papers here list another construction company pulling out of the country. And I go down to visit the friendly, tragically sad staff of the Baghdad mortuary and there, each day, are dozens of those Iraqis we supposedly came to liberate, screaming and weeping and cursing as they carry their loved ones on their shoulders in cheap coffins. I keep re-reading Tony Blair's statement. "I remain convinced it was right to go to war. It was the most difficult decision of my life." And I cannot understand it. It may be a terrible decision to go to war. Even Chamberlain thought that; but he didn't find it a difficult decision - because, after the Nazi invasion of Poland, it was the right thing to do. And driving the streets of Baghdad now, watching the terrified American patrols, hearing yet another thunderous explosion shaking my windows and doors after dawn, I realise what all this means. Going to war in Iraq, invading Iraq last year, was the most difficult decision Blair had to take because he thought - correctly - that it might be the wrong decision. I will always remember his remark to British troops in Basra, that the sacrifice of British soldiers was not Hollywood but "real flesh and blood". Yes, it was real flesh and blood that was shed - but for weapons of mass destruction that weren't real at all. "Deadly force is authorised," it says on checkpoints all over Baghdad. Authorised by whom? There is no accountability. Repeatedly, on the great highways out of the city US soldiers shriek at motorists and open fire at the least suspicion. "We had some Navy Seals down at our checkpoint the other day," a 1st Cavalry sergeant says to me. "They asked if we were having any trouble. I said, yes, they've been shooting at us from a house over there. One of them asked: 'That house?' We said yes. So they have these three SUVs and a lot of weapons made of titanium and they drive off towards the house. And later they come back and say 'We've taken care of that'. And we didn't get shot at any more." What does this mean? The Americans are now bragging about their siege of Najaf. Lieutenant Colonel Garry Bishop of the 37th Armoured Division's 1st Battalion believes it was an "ideal" battle (even though he failed to kill or capture Muqtada Sadr whose "Mehdi army" were fighting the US forces). It was "ideal", Bishop explained, because the Americans avoided damaging the holy shrines of the Imams Ali and Hussein. What are Iraqis to make of this? What if a Muslim army occupied Kent and bombarded Canterbury and then bragged that they hadn't damaged Canterbury Cathedral? Would we be grateful? What, indeed, are we to make of a war which is turned into a fantasy by those who started it? As foreign workers pour out of Iraq for fear of their lives, US Secretary of State Colin Powell tells a press conference that hostage-taking is having an "effect" on reconstruction. Effect! Oil pipeline explosions are now as regular as power cuts. In parts of Baghdad now, they have only four hours of electricity a day; the streets swarm with foreign mercenaries, guns poking from windows, shouting abusively at Iraqis who don't clear the way for them. This is the "safer" Iraq which Mr Blair was boasting of the other day. What world does the British Government exist in? Take the Saddam trial. The entire Arab press - including the Baghdad papers - prints the judge's name. Indeed, the same judge has given interviews about his charges of murder against Muqtada Sadr. He has posed for newspaper pictures. But when I mention his name in The Independent, I was solemnly censured by the British Government's spokesman. Salem Chalabi threatened to prosecute me. So let me get this right. We illegally invade Iraq. We kill up to 11,000 Iraqis. And Mr Chalabi, appointed by the Americans, says I'm guilty of "incitement to murder". That just about says it all. ============================== http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2004%20opinions/Au gust/1%20o/Baghdad%20is%20a%20city%20that%20reeks%20with%20the%20stench%20of%20 the%20dead%20By%20Robert%20Fisk.htm Opinion Editorials, August 2004, To see today's opinion articles, click here: www.aljazeerah.info BAGHDAD IS A CITY THAT REEKS WITH THE STENCH OF THE DEAD August 1, 2004 Independent (London) July 28, 2004, Wednesday By Robert Fisk The smell of the dead pours into the street through the air-conditioning ducts. Hot, sweet, overwhelming. Inside the Baghdad morgue, there are so many corpses that the fridges are overflowing. The dead are on the floor. Dozens of them. Outside, in the 46C (114F) heat, Qadum Ganawi tells me how his brother Hassan was murdered. "He was bringing supper home for our family in Palestine Street but he never reached our home. Then we got a phone call saying we could have him back if we paid $ 50,000 pounds 27,500 . We didn't have $ 50,000. So we sold part of our home and many of our things and we borrowed $ 15,000 and we paid over the money to a man in a car who was wearing a keffiyeh scarf round his head. "Then we got another phone call, telling us that Hassan was at the Saidiyeh police station. He was. He was blindfolded and gagged and he had two bullets in his head. They had taken our money and then they had killed him." There is a wail of grief from the yard behind us where 50 people are waiting in the shade of the Baghdad mortuary wall. There are wooden coffins in the street, stacked against the wall, lying on the pavement. Old men - fathers and uncles - are padding them with grease-proof paper. When the bodies are released, they will be taken to the mosque in coffins and then buried in shrouds. There are a few women. Most stare at the intruding foreigner with something approaching venom. The statistics of violent death in Baghdad are now beyond shame. Almost a year ago, there were sometimes 400 violent deaths a month. This in itself was a fearful number to follow the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. But in the first 10 days of this July alone, the corpses of 215 men and women were brought to the Baghdad mortuary, almost all of them dead from gunshot wounds. In the second 10 days of this month, the bodies of a further 291 arrived. A total of 506 violent deaths in under three weeks in Baghdad alone. Even the Iraqi officials here shake their heads in disbelief. "New Iraq" under its new American- appointed Prime Minister is more violent than ever. Qadum Ganawi puts his hand on my arm. "Listen," he says. "My brother had two tiny children. One is only a year old. We have sold our house and borrowed $ 15,000. How can we ever pay this back? And we have nothing for it but the grief of losing my dear brother. "He was a car importer so they thought he was rich. He wasn't. And, you know, his wife is Syrian. She went to Syria for a holiday with the two babies. She is there now. She doesn't know what has happened to her husband." Trucks are arriving in the street beside us, a pick-up and a small lorry with corpses for autopsy. Tony Blair says it is safer here. He is wrong. Every month is a massacre in Baghdad. Thieves, rapists, looters, American troops at checkpoints and on convoys, revenge killers, insurgents, they are shooting down the people of this city faster than ever. One man was shot dead by a US soldier as he overtook their convoy on the way to his Baghdad wedding. We found out only because his marriage was to have been celebrated in a hotel occupied by journalists. Another death I discovered only when an old Iraqi friend called on me last week. He wanted me to help him leave Iraq. Quickly. Now. "I work for the Americans at the airport but I think I'm done for if I stay." Why? "Because my uncle worked at the airport for the Americans, just like me. My uncle was Abdullah Mohi. He was driving home the other night but they stopped him a hundred metres from his house. Then they took a knife and cut his throat. We found him drenched in blood at the steering wheel." Abbas looks at me with dead eyes. "Should I go to Jordan? Help me." At the mortuary, a big, tall man, Amr Daher, walks up to me. "They killed one of our tribal leaders from the Dulaimi tribe," he says. "This morning, right in the middle of Al-Kut Square, just a couple of hours ago." Selman Hassan Salume was driving with his two teenage sons when three gunmen came alongside in a car and shot him dead. Both his sons were wounded, one seriously. Hospital records tell only part of the story. In the blazing heat of an Iraqi summer, some families bury their dead without notifying the authorities. Some remain unidentified for ever, unclaimed. The Americans bring in corpses. When they do, there are no autopsies. The morticians will not say why. But the Ministry of Health has told doctors there should be no autopsies in these cases because the Americans will already have performed the operation. Not long ago, six corpses arrived at the Baghdad mortuary after being brought in by US forces. Three were unidentified. Three had names but their families could not be found. All had suffered, according to the American records, "traumatic wounds to the head", the normal phrase for gunshot wounds. There were no autopsies. Death is now so routine even the most tragic of deaths becomes a footnote. A US tank collides with a bus north of Baghdad. Seven civilians are killed. The Americans agree to open an investigation. It makes scarcely a paragraph in the local press. Four days ago, a US M1A1 Abrams tank crossing the motorway at Abu Ghraib collided with a car carrying two girls and their mother, all of whom were crushed to death. It did not even make the news in Baghdad. No wonder the occupying powers - or the "international forces" as we must now call them - steadfastly refuse to reveal the statistics of Iraqi dead, only their own Even the deaths we do know about during the past 36 hours make shocking reading. At Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, gunmen killed two Iraqi police officers travelling to their station. In Kirkuk, an Iraqi policeman, Luay Abdullah, was shot as he waited for a lift home after guarding an oil pipeline. A Kurdish woman and her two children were killed when someone sprayed their home in Kirkuk with gunfire. A Kurdish peshmerga guerrilla was murdered in a drive-by shooting. A former government official was killed in Baghdad. Then yesterday afternoon, a senior civil servant at the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad was shot dead. In the town of Buhriz, hours of fighting between insurgents and US troops left 15 dead, according to the Americans. All, they said, were gunmen, although it almost always transpires that civilians are among the dead in such battles. American documents say insurgent groups "have become more sophisticated and may be co-ordinating their anti-coalition efforts, posing an even more significant threat". There is an increase in drive-by shootings. And, a chilling remark this, for all would-be travellers in and out of Baghdad, the Americans believe "recent attacks on air assets suggest that all type of aircraft, civilian, fixed-wing and military ... are seen as potential targets of opportunity". So the war is getting worse. The casualties are growing by the week. And Mr Blair thinks Iraq is safer. From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 1 21:09:36 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 1 21:09:35 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] FORT DETRICK -- BURIED SECRETS OF BIOWARFARE Message-ID: http://cryptome.org/bio-secrets.htm Thanks to P. _________________________________________________________________ The Baltimore Sun, August 1, 2004 By Scott Shane -- Sun Staff During the Cold War, top Army scientists toiled stealthily in rural Maryland to make covert weapons coveted by new enemies. For years, in total secrecy, they studied the black art of bioterrorism. They designed deadly, silent biological dart guns and hid them in fountain pens and walking sticks. They crunched lethal bacteria into suit buttons that could be worn unnoticed across borders. They rigged light fixtures and car tailpipes to loose an invisible spray of anthrax. They practiced germ attacks in airports and on the New York subway, tracking air currents and calculating the potential death toll. But they weren't a band of al-Qaida fanatics -- or enemies of any kind. They were biowarriors in the U.S. Army's Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick. >From 1949 to 1969, at the jittery height of the Cold War, the division tested the nation's vulnerability to covert germ warfare -- and devised weapons for secret biological attacks if the United States chose to mount them. A few years ago, its story -- never before told in detail -- would have seemed a macabre footnote to U.S. history. Now, after the Sept. 11 attacks, the anthrax mailings and a steady stream of government warnings on terrorism, the fears of the 1950s have returned -- and the experiments of Fort Detrick's covert bioweapons makers suddenly resonate in a new era. In the biological realm, there is little that any terrorist group could concoct that Fort Detrick's "dirty tricks department," as veterans call it, didn't think up decades ago. But because of the division's scant recordkeeping and the fast-disappearing ranks of its aged scientist-warriors, the knowledge it acquired is being lost to history. One of the few survivors is Wallace Pannier, 76, who remembers standing in a Frederick County field watching sheep shot with what the Army called a "nondiscernible bioinoculator" -- a dart gun. The bosses demanded a dart so fine that it could penetrate clothing and skin unnoticed, then dissolve, leaving no trace in an autopsy. "If the sheep jumped, that meant people were going to jump, too," said Pannier, now living a quiet life tending his flowers and shrubs in Frederick. Once perfected, the dart gun astonished those who saw it in action. Charles Baronian, a retired Army weapons official, recalls a demonstration at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. "Twenty-five seconds after it was shot, the sheep just fell to the ground," said Baronian, 73. "It didn't bleat. It didn't move. It just fell dead. You couldn't help but be impressed." The rest of the Army's offensive biological weapons program thought big: 500-pound anthrax bombs that could contaminate entire cities. But the Special Operations Division -- known at Fort Detrick by its initials, SO -- studied biowarfare on a more intimate scale, figuring ways to kill an individual, disable a roomful of people or touch off an epidemic. 'ARMY HAS NO RECORDS' The existence of the SO Division was revealed only six years after it shut down, in a 1975 Senate investigation into CIA abuses. Senators wanted to know why the CIA had retained a lethal stock of shellfish toxin and cobra venom after President Richard M. Nixon's 1969 order to destroy all biological weapons stocks. They found that the poisons had come from the SO Division under a CIA-Army project code-named MKNAOMI. But records show that even CIA bosses were stymied as they tried to get the facts on the SO Division. "The practice of keeping little or no record of the activity was standard MKNAOMI procedure," a CIA investigator wrote. The military offered little help, he added: "The Army has no records on MKNAOMI or on the Special Operations Division." In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Sun, the Army said no records of the Special Operations Division could be found. Nor is there any mention at the National Archives, which reclassified Fort Detrick's old biowarfare records after the Bush administration ordered agencies to withhold anything that might aid terrorists. Few SO Division veterans are still alive. Fewer still are willing to describe their work. They are not sure what is still classified and don't relish leaving biological horror tales for their grandchildren. "I just don't give interviews on that subject," said Andrew M. Cowan Jr., 74, the division's last chief, who is retired and living near Seattle. "It should still be classified -- if nothing else, to keep the information the division developed out of the hands of some nut." But it is possible to assemble a patchwork portrait from documents obtained by The Sun under the Freedom of Information Act, Senate investigative files and private document collections, including the National Security Archive in Washington and even the Church of Scientology, which long collected material on government mind-control research. And a few Detrick retirees who worked in the SO Division or collaborated with it spoke sparingly about what they know. Most are proud of their work, pointing out that the Soviet biological program was much larger and also developed assassination tools. UNSUCCESSFUL ATTACKS The veterans still slip into biowarrior-speak, in which "good" means good-and-lethal. "It made a real nice aerosol," they'll say, or "That would give you real good coverage." All say that if the biological devices they made were used against humans, they never learned about it. But it is impossible to be certain, they say, because the program was strictly compartmented: One worker didn't know what another was doing, let alone what CIA or Special Forces did with the bioweapons. The 1975 Senate investigation revealed that the SO Division supplied biological materials for several planned CIA attacks, none of which were successful. In 1960, the CIA's main contact with the SO Division, Sidney Gottlieb, carried a tube of toxin-laced toothpaste to Africa in a plot to kill Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. But the CIA station chief balked and pitched the poison into a river, a congressional investigation later revealed. Records suggest, though they do not prove, that the SO Division also supplied germs for CIA schemes to kill or sicken Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and that it came up with the poisoned handkerchief that the agency's drolly-named Health Alteration Committee sent to Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qasim in 1963. (He survived.) Army Special Forces also asked the SO Division to design biological assassination weapons. Fort Detrick's engineers delivered five devices -- including the dart gun -- collectively known as the "Big Five." But records of what Special Forces did with the weapons remain classified, said Fort Bragg archivist Cynthia Hayden. If the work sounds sinister today, there were doubters at the time, too. A 1954 Army document says high-ranking officials -- including George W. Merck, the pharmaceutical executive and top government adviser on biowarfare -- wanted to shut down the SO Division because they considered it "un-American." But Fort Detrick's rank and file rarely voiced such doubts. "We did not sit around talking about the moral implications of what we were doing," said William C. Patrick III, a Fort Detrick veteran who worked closely with the SO Division. "We were problem-solving." And if the orders came to unleash the weapons, Fort Detrick's biowarriors were ready. During the Vietnam War, William P. Walter, who supervised anthrax production at Fort Detrick and worked with the SO Division on projects, asked British intelligence agents for blueprints of the office occupied by North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. Plotting a covert germ assault is easier if the room's cubic footage and ventilation system are known, he says. "We thought if the president of the United States wants to kill somebody, we want to be able to do it," said Walter, now 78 and retired in Florida. OPENING OF THE DIVISION A gun or a bomb leaves no doubt that a deliberate attack has occurred. But if someone is stricken with a sudden, fatal illness -- or an epidemic slashes across a crowded city -- there is no way of knowing whether anyone attacked, much less who. That was the key conclusion of the Pentagon's Committee on Biological Warfare in a secret October 1948 report on covert biowarfare. At the time, the United States feared a shadowy global enemy, organized in secret cells overseas and on U.S. soil --Communists. Echoing today's fears, the report said the United States "is particularly vulnerable" to covert germ attack because enemy agents "are present already in this country [and] there is no control exercised over the movements of people." Although it emphasized the threat to America, the report called for offensive capability. "Biological agents would appear to be well adapted to subversive use since very small amounts of such agents can be effective," the report said. "A significant portion of the human population within selected target areas may be killed or incapacitated." Setting an imaginative tone for what would follow, the report listed potential targets: "ventilating systems, subway systems, water supply systems ... stamps, envelopes, money, biologicals and cosmetics ... contamination of food and beverages." Seven months later, in May 1949, the Special Operations Division quietly opened at Fort Detrick. The other divisions there, created during and after World War II, focused on large-scale biological attack, said Walter, who completed a quadruple major at Mount St. Mary's College in Emmittsburg and went to work at Fort Detrick in 1951. At the time, planners regarded bioweapons as a valuable military option -- more devastating than chemical weapons, but more selective than a nuclear attack. "Biological agents can really cover more territory than nuclear weapons," Walter said. "Biological's better than nuclear because it doesn't destroy the buildings." SHROUDED IN SECRECY Fort Detrick's other divisions had diabolical tricks of their own. For instance, Walter said, their scientists bred antibiotic-resistant bacteria to make standard Soviet and Chinese treatments useless against U.S. weapons. Still, the veterans say, Special Operations stood apart. You didn't apply for SO, you were chosen. And even within the tight-lipped world of Fort Detrick, the SO Division's secrecy was extraordinary. "Most of the people [at Fort Detrick] didn't know what was going on in SO," Pannier said. "And they got angry because you wouldn't tell 'em what was going on." When Pannier hitchhiked to Fort Detrick to take up his new assignment in 1946, he saw so many guard towers that he thought he had been sent to a prison. After three years there, he went home to Utah and completed a degree in bacteriology. When he returned, his former boss recommended him to the SO Division, "sort of a little Detrick within Detrick." SO Division personnel -- about 75 at the unit's peak -- didn't get the usual parking stickers. They had metal tags that could be removed from their cars when they traveled undercover. Pannier spent a night on the roof of the Pentagon taking air samples to rule out a bioattack before a visit by President John F. Kennedy. He was also assigned to see what germs were leaking from a Merck pharmaceutical plant on the Susquehanna River, observations that would be crucial to U.S. spies trying to identify Soviet bioweapons facilities. Pannier posed variously as a fisherman, an air-quality tester and a driver with a broken-down car. When East Bloc officials who were suspected of working in biowarfare labs traveled abroad, U.S. agents secretly swabbed their clothes so the SO Division could test for germs. Fanning out across the country, SO Division officers also played the role of bioterrorists in an era before the word had even been coined. Their usual mock weapons were two forms of bacteria, Bacillus globigii (BG) and Serratia marcescens (SM). Scientists thought both were harmless, though later research found that SM could cause illness or death in people with weakened immune systems. In an elaborate 1965 attempt to assess how travelers might be used to spread smallpox, SO Division officers loosed BG in the air at Washington National Airport and at bus stations in Washington, Chicago and San Francisco, then tracked its movement using air samplers disguised as suitcases. Tracking travelers' routes, Fort Detrick scientists plotted on a U.S. map the smallpox cases that would result from a real release. The germ-spreaders were never challenged, the report noted: "No terminal employee, passenger or visitor gave any outward indication of suspicion that something unusual was taking place." The next year, without alerting local officials, SO Division agents staged a mock attack on the New York subway, shattering light bulbs packed with BG powder on the tracks. "People could carry a brown bag with light bulbs in it and nobody would be suspicious," Pannier said. "But when [a bulb] would break, it would burst. ... The trains swishing by would get it airborne." The SO Division's report concluded that "similar covert attacks with a pathogenic agent during peak traffic periods could be expected to expose large numbers of people to infection and subsequent illness or death." Understanding U.S. vulnerability may have been the main purpose of such experiments. But defensive findings had offensive implications. No one had to tell experimenters that Moscow, too, had a subway. 'BIG FIVE' ARSENAL If the subway tests could be explained as defensive, there was no such ambiguity in the SO Division's development of covert biological weapons. Mysterious characters from Fort Bragg and the CIA came and went at the SO Division, leaving wish-lists and checking progress. For cover, CIA visitors often wore military uniforms and said they worked for "Staff Support Group." No one mentioned aloud the name of the agency financing so much of the division's work. "It was never really said, except that probably by the middle '60s it became obvious," Pannier said. Army bosses "would ask: 'Are you keeping them happy?' " Most CIA records on the SO Division were apparently destroyed in 1973 by Gottlieb, the agency's liaison to Fort Detrick. But declassified invoices the division submitted to the CIA give a sense of the work. Germ dispensers could be concealed in many objects, such as the exhaust system on a 1953 Mercury. ("It might look like a smoky, oil-burning car," Pannier said.) There were invoices for fountain pens, even "1 Toy Dog, 98 cents." There are receipts for books with suggestive titles: The Assassins, The Enemy Within, Dictionary of Poisons. There are rent bills for cabins at state parks -- a favorite site for secret meetings. And there is much ado about dogs, including supplies for a "Buster Project." One plan for the dart guns was to knock out guard dogs so U.S. agents could sneak into foreign facilities. But dogs were not the primary target of the SO Division's creative efforts. "The requirements of the Army Special Forces were the driving force defining SOD activities, and ... Special Forces' interest included a number of weird things, definitely among which was assassination," a CIA retiree told an agency investigator in 1975, according to a declassified report. The former CIA man referred to the arsenal that came to be called the Big Five. "The Big Five program was devoted to assassination," said Patrick, who worked closely with the SO Division as chief of product development at Fort Detrick. He calls it "the most sensitive program we ever created at Detrick," and says its details should still be kept secret because they might be useful to terrorists and "embarrassing to the United States." Walter, the former Detrick anthrax maker, calls the Big Five "hair-raising. We really kept that thing hush-hush," he said. Detailed descriptions of the Big Five remain classified. But documents show that they included at least one version of the biological dart, dipped in shellfish toxin and fired from a rifle using a pressurized air cartridge. Walter recalled that colleagues were sent overseas to collect the mussels that produced the poison, into which the darts would be dipped. Tiny grooves guided the dose: "You could time a death by the load [of toxin] you shot," he said. Among the other Big Five weapons: a 7.62 mm rifle cartridge packed with anthrax or botulinum toxin that would disperse in the air on impact; a time-delay bomblet that would release a cloud of bacteria when a train or truck convoy passed; and a pressurized can that sprayed an aerosol of germs. The fifth is described in unclassified documents only as an "E-41 disseminator." Walter recalls an effort to package the spray device in a food can for smuggling into the Soviet Union and planting in a target's office or apartment. "We had a hell of a time with that because we had to get Russian cans," he said. "It had to look exactly like an ordinary can." 'NOTHING HAS CHANGED' Of all the old bioweaponeers, Patrick is the only one who still has ties to U.S. biodefense programs, working as a consultant and trainer. But he said the government has made little effort to learn from the work of the Special Operations Division and the larger biowarfare program. Although bioengineering today could produce more virulent pathogens, "nothing has changed" in the most challenging part of covert biological attack: delivering germs so that they infect people, Patrick said. "The problem today is there's a huge disconnect between what us old fossils know and what the current generation knows," Patrick said. "The good doctors at CDC [the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] don't have a clue about aerosol dissemination, and the military is not much better." Walter, in Florida, agreed with Patrick's diagnosis. But he said it's fine with him if the dark lessons of Fort Detrick's early days are lost forever. "When we all die off, that's it," he said. "If anybody with bad intentions got hold of the things we had, it would be disastrous." From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Mon Aug 2 04:54:55 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Mon Aug 2 04:55:07 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Polling puts Chavez in front in referendum Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040802195117.02bf6450@central.murdoch.edu.au> I obtained this good news from Janice, who will be on line soon but is snowed under with uni work for a while. Dion Giles Western Australia VENEZUELA: New poll shows Chavez will win referendum Roberto Jorquera http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/592/592p17.htm A new opinion poll, conducted on July 15-22 by the US opinion research firm Evans McDonough Company (EMC), indicates that Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's radical left-wing president, could win the August 15 recall referendum with a comfortable margin. The survey found that 49% of voters were opposed to recalling Chavez, compared with 41% supporting the capitalist-backed opposition's call for his removal. However, among those who said they would actually cast a ballot in the recall referendum, 51% were opposed to recalling Chavez. Among Venezuela's poor, who make up almost 80% of the electorate, only 35% support Chavez's recall. Fifty-five per cent of those surveyed said that Chavez cares about the poor, while 49% believe that his opponents "only care about the rich". EMC concluded that unless there is a drastic change in the attitude of Venezuela's poor toward Chavez, he would win the recall referendum. Perhaps recognising that Chavez will win the referendum, former president and leading opposition figure Carlos Perez stated in an interview printed on July 25 in El Nacional, one of Venezuela's main daily newspapers: "Violence will allow us to remove him. That's the only way we have." Speaking from Miami, Perez said Chavez "must die like a dog, because he deserves it". Like the rest of the opposition, Perez denounced Chavez as a "dictator" while making it clear he believes democracy must be crushed in Venezuela if Chavez and his supporters are to be defeated. "We can't just get rid of Chavez and immediately have a democracy", Perez said. After Chavez is violently ousted, Perez said a transition period of "two or three years" would be needed in which the country would be ruled by "a collegiate body (junta)" before popular elections could be held. Support for Chavez within Venezuela's working class and poor farmers is based on the fact that he has not just promised radical improvements in their lives but with their participation, implemented such improvements. David Raby, a research fellow at the University of Liverpool's Institute of Latin American Studies, reported in a July 28 article for the Venezuelanalysis.com website that over "the past 15 months, the government has begun to redistribute uncultivated land from private estates or public lands to poor peasants and landless labourers... some 2.2 million hectares (5.5 million acres) has already been distributed to 116,000 families organised in cooperatives. "This alone would be remarkable in today's globalised world, where the very idea of cooperative or collective agriculture has been dismissed as outdated and inefficient, and countries like Mexico have dismantled long-established rural cooperatives and opened their agricultural sectors to the unfettered play of the free market and the consequent domination of private agribusiness." "But the Venezuelan agrarian reform", Raby added, "goes beyond satisfying peasant land hunger and alleviating poverty. It is based as far as possible on organic practices and is intended as the foundation stone of an entirely new social and economic model, oriented towards self-sufficiency, sustainability and endogenous development ... development from within and from below, with popular participation. The leading role of women, blacks and indigenous people is also explicitly promoted. "This new model will take years to develop, but it is already under way and being promoted with great enthusiasm. It does not exclude possible nationalisation of some major industries, but it points in a direction which challenges both globalised capitalism and state socialism of the traditional variety. It is also the foundation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA in its Spanish acronym), which Venezuela is proposing as a progressive alternative to the ALCA [the US-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas]. This is why Washington hates Chavez: not because of his revolutionary rhetoric, not because of any threat to `democracy', but because the Venezuelan process offers a real alternative to US plans for the hemisphere." In an interview with Venezuelanalysis.com while visiting Venezuela, well-known British left-wing writer Tariq Ali explained why the US rulers are so hostile to Chavez: "Venezuela is an example which the Americans wish to wipe out. Because if this example exists, and gets stronger and stronger and stronger, then people in Brazil, in Argentina, in Ecuador, in Chile, in Bolivia will say 'if Venezuelans can do it, we can do it'. So Venezuela, from that point of view, is a very important example. That's why they're so worked up. That's why the Americans pour in millions of dollars to help this stupid opposition in this country; an opposition which is incapable of offering any real alternative to the people, except what used to exist before: a corrupt, a servile oligarchy. "That's what Venezuela means, and I think that one weakness, till recently, of the Bolivarian Revolution has been that it has not done more towards the rest of Latin America, because it's been under siege at home. But I think, once Chavez wins the referendum, and then the local elections I hope, and the mayoralty of Caracas in September, I hope then a big offensive is made for the rest of Latin America too." >From Green Left Weekly, August 4, 2004. Visit the Green Left Weekly home page. From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Mon Aug 2 09:24:23 2004 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Mon Aug 2 09:24:42 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] The Unbearable Costs of Empire By Mark Weisbrot [Business Week July 29] Message-ID: <410E4087.15586.81A1CA@localhost> ..what most analysts have missed ?- whether or not they support the idea of an American empire -- is that the U.S. simply can't afford the role of global cop. First, the U.S. is entering this new age of empire with a gross federal debt that is the highest in more than 50 years ...America can ?- just barely -- afford this deficit right now, but that's about to change. ... The combination of unsustainable public debt and foreign debt is a deadly and explosive mix .....Sometime within a decade, and most likely in the next couple of years, foreign investors will see that a steep decline of the dollar is unavoidable and will begin to unload them and U.S. Treasury securities. The post-9/11 age of American empire will close not with a bang but a whimper, suffocated by the laws of arithmetic, the constraints of public financing, and the limits of foreign borrowing. What remains to be determined is how much the U.S. will pay -- in lost and ruined lives, as well as bills for future generations -- and how many enemies it will make throughout the world, before coming to grips with reality. -- Mark Weisbrot, Co-director of the Center for Economic & Policy Research, Washington, DC fyi-janet jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca ====================================================================== http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jul2004 /nf20040729_9971_db 045.htm JULY 29, 2004 COMMENTARY By Mark Weisbrot http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0729-02.htm The Unbearable Costs of Empire - Establishment types are trumpeting America's role as global police force. Too bad the U.S. just can't afford the job Since September 11, 2001, the phrases "American empire" and "America as an imperial power" are being heard a lot more. But in contrast to the 1960s and 1970s, when such terms were brandished by an angry domestic anti-war movement or by developing nations in U.N. debates, the concept they represent has now at least partially entered the mainstream. However much it has incurred hostility throughout most of the world, including European and other countries usually allied with the U.S., the "new imperialism" has gained ground among the Establishment here. Advertisement The post-9/11 rationale is that America has terrorist enemies and rogue states that will do it serious harm -- maybe even with weapons of mass destruction -- if it doesn't police the world to stop them. "Being an imperial power is more than being the most powerful nation," writes Michael Ingatieff at Harvard's Kennedy Center. "It means enforcing such order as there is in the world and doing so in the American interest." But what most analysts have missed ?- whether or not they support the idea of an American empire -- is that the U.S. simply can't afford the role of global cop. THE REAL DEBT. First, the U.S. is entering this new age of empire with a gross federal debt that is the highest in more than 50 years as a percentage of gross domestic product. For fiscal 2005, which begins in October, the U.S. gross federal debt is projected to be $8.1 trillion, or 67.5% of GDP. By the time 100,000 U.S. troops were in Vietnam in 1965, it was 46.9% and falling. One technical point that's vitally important here: It's the gross federal debt and deficits that matter, not the smaller "debt held by the public" and "unified budget deficit" that are generally cited in the press. For example, the most commonly reported estimate of the annual federal budget deficit is $478 billion for 2004. But this number is misleading, because it doesn't include borrowing from federal trust funds -- mostly Social Security and Medicare. But the money the government is borrowing from Social Security and other trust funds will, with nearly 100% certainty, be paid back -- just like the money it borrows when it sells bonds to Bill Gates or the Chinese government. The annual federal budget deficit is, therefore, $639 billion, according to the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office. This is 5.6% of GDP, a near-record level for the post-World War II era. BORROWING FROM ABROAD. America can ?- just barely -- afford this deficit right now, but that's about to change. First, the interest burden on the debt is currently manageable because of extremely low interest rates. But the Fed is expected to raise short-term rates to 2% by yearend. More important, long-term rates will almost certainly rise even more because inflation has accelerated to 4.9% over the last six months -- a big jump from 2003's 1.9%. If Kerry wins and takes back the tax cut for households earning more than $200,000 a year, as promised, that won't even reduce the deficit by 1% of GDP. And if he keeps his spending promises, then the monies realized by repealing the tax cut would be canceled out. The Bush budget, which the conservative CATO Institute's Chairman Bill Niskanen recently described as "a fraud" put together by "borrow and spend Republicans," would make the deficit and debt problem even worse. Then there's the problem of the U.S. ?- both the government and the private sector ?- borrowing from foreign countries. Most government borrowing is now being financed from overseas -- especially the central banks of China, Japan, and other countries. These institutions are deliberately buying dollars in order to keep their currencies from rising against the greenback. But they won't keep doing this indefinitely. The U.S. is borrowing more than $600 billion a year from the rest of the world, and it can't go on much longer. THE BIG BANG. Sometime within a decade, and most likely in the next couple of years, foreign investors will see that a steep decline of the dollar is unavoidable and will begin to unload them and U.S. Treasury securities. As with any bubble, it will be better if this one bursts sooner rather than later, when it would be even bigger. But adjustment and pain will still occur, including higher interest rates and consequently slower growth. Slower growth will also mean larger federal budget deficits. And one event that will certainly slow growth and increase federal government borrowing well beyond current projections is the bursting of the housing bubble. Housing prices have seen an unprecedented run-up since 1995 of more than 35 percentage points above the rate of inflation. That has created more than $3 trillion in paper wealth that ?- just like the illusory wealth of the stock-market bubble -- is programmed to disappear. This, too, is almost certain to happen in the next few years. The economic impact will be at least equivalent to that of equities popping in 2000-02, which caused the last recession. Another slump is, therefore, likely in the near future, and with it a further ballooning of the federal budget deficit, as tax revenues fall and automatic countercyclical spending rises. CHINA RISING. The combination of unsustainable public debt and foreign debt is a deadly and explosive mix by itself. Rising real interest rates and a looming housing bubble bursting make it all the more dangerous. Financial markets will exert the necessary discipline if politicians refuse to do so, but either way the U.S. can't afford even the $486 billion a year that it's currently spending annually on the military and homeland security. And even these spending levels are a lot less than would be necessary to maintain America's power in the world. Over the next decade or so, the Chinese economy will actually surpass the U.S. in size. America has 100,000 troops in East Asia. If the U.S. were to try to maintain its current dominance of the region -- something that will probably prove impossible -- it would boost our military spending even further. The bottom line is that the American empire just isn't affordable. Within a decade or so, the U.S. will be forced to be much less preemptive and outward-looking and to engage in scaled-back foreign policy -- even if the foreign-policy Establishment never changes its views or ambitions. REALITY CHECK. In the meantime, the segment of American society that would like to see advances in health care, education, poverty alleviation, or any other positive economic or social goals will get bad news. The foreseeable future is a lot different from most of the post-World War II era, during which the U.S. added such programs as Medicare and Medicaid while spending literally trillions of dollars on cold and hot wars. This time, little or no federal money will be available for any of these things until U.S. foreign policy changes. The most likely scenario is that most areas of nonmilitary discretionary spending will be squeezed relentlessly before anything gives in the realm of superpower ambitions. The post-9/11 age of American empire will close not with a bang but a whimper, suffocated by the laws of arithmetic, the constraints of public financing, and the limits of foreign borrowing. What remains to be determined is how much the U.S. will pay -- in lost and ruined lives, as well as bills for future generations -- and how many enemies it will make throughout the world, before coming to grips with reality. Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic & Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. Edited by Patricia O'Connell ==================================== From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Mon Aug 2 11:51:16 2004 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Mon Aug 2 11:51:17 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Americas Social Forum Quito -> Explosive Mix of Oil and Free Trade [IPS July 29] Message-ID: <410E62F4.16460.1081C9C@localhost> Ecuador and other Andean nations should not accept international trade tribunal rulings on their tax policy for foreign oil companies, as this implies renouncing sovereignty, said activists at the first Social Forum of the Americas, meeting in Quito. "Demands are being put on Ecuador to accept international arbitration as the best way to resolve disputes. This implies renouncing legal sovereignty and submitting to trade tribunals which answer to private interests and seek to leave unpunished the environmental, economic and social damage that oil companies leave in their wake in our countries," said Cecilian Ch?rrez of Ecological Action of Ecuador. This week's Social Forum in the Ecuadorian capital has drawn some 8,000 activists, according to the organisers. The gathering forms part of the World Social Forum (WSF), which will return to the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in January 2005 after this year's edition, which was held in Mumbai, India. fyi-janet ======================================== http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=24854 IPS News Agency Americas Social Forum By Kintto Lucas Explosive Mix of Oil and Free Trade QUITO, Jul 29 (IPS) - Ecuador and other Andean nations should not accept international trade tribunal rulings on their tax policy for foreign oil companies, as this implies renouncing sovereignty, said activists at the first Social Forum of the Americas, meeting in Quito. On Jul. 1, an international trade arbitration panel in London ruled that the Ecuadorian state must pay the California-based Occidental Petroleum 75 million dollars in value added tax (VAT) refunds that were deemed ''wrongfully withheld''. Ecuador has until Aug. 11 to appeal the verdict. According to activists and officials, the possibility of arbitration was set by Washington as one condition for a free trade agreement currently under negotiation with Ecuador. This recent ruling is only one example of many similar cases brought by foreign companies running oil operations in Ecuador, said Cecilia Ch?rrez with Ecological Action of Ecuador, Esperanza Mart?nez with Oilwatch, Sara Larra?n, the coordinator of the Programme for a Sustainable Southern Cone and other activists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Under Ecuadorian law, exporters have the right to claim refunds on VAT paid on purchases of supplies used in the manufactured products they export. The companies argue that since crude oil must undergo treatment before it can be sold, the VAT paid in buying the inputs for the treatment should be refunded. However, activists, backed by the head of Ecuador's tax office (SRI) Elsa de Mena, say crude oil is a natural resource, not a manufactured product. A large proportion of the VAT receipts presented by Occidental -- which were seen by IPS -- are for dinners in restaurants, theatre and artistic performances, purchases of items like tennis and volley balls and bathroom tiles, and even bills for buying pets. Campaigners say the United States pressed for the matter to go to international arbitration and that it aims to do the same in other cases. Former foreign minister of Ecuador Heinz Moeller told the press he had accepted the arbitration, as otherwise the United States would eliminate Ecuador from the Andean Trade Preferences Act (ATPA), which gives privileged access to the U.S. market for products from Andean nations in compensation for the expenses incurred in their fight against drug trafficking. "Demands are being put on Ecuador to accept international arbitration as the best way to resolve disputes. This implies renouncing legal sovereignty and submitting to trade tribunals which answer to private interests and seek to leave unpunished the environmental, economic and social damage that oil companies leave in their wake in our countries," said Ch?rrez. The Spanish oil company Repsol-YPF also called for arbitration, seeking a refund of 15 million dollars. And the U.S. company ChevronTexaco has threatened to turn to an international tribunal if a case against them for environmental damage in the Amazon jungle ends in a ruling that orders the firm to pay compensation to the indigenous people and small farmers who were affected. ChevronTexaco announced that if it loses the case it will turn to an international tribunal to decide whether reparations are the company's responsibility or should be met by the state-owned oil firm Petroecuador, the U.S. company's partner at the time. "Arbitration has been discussed as a condition in the negotiations for a free trade agreement between the United States and Ecuador," said Ch?rrez. "The negotiations involving the United States, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru have made pretty clear the hidden intentions behind the trade offers" from Washington, she added. Other oil companies are also planning to seek arbitration against Ecuador to demand VAT refunds, which according to the SRI total more than 250 million dollars . Activists and NGOs used the opportunity of the Jul. 25-30 Social Forum to complain that this type of conditions demonstrate what the future holds for countries signing trade agreements with the United States. The possibility of international arbitration forms part of the negotiations between the three Andean nations and Washington. U.S. Ambassador in Ecuador, Kristie Kenney, told the press no free trade treaties would be signed until all conflicts with U.S. oil companies were resolved. This demand is one of the conditions in the "investors' rights" section of the bilateral agreements. "In Colombia, conditionalities have been eroding the legal system in order to favour U.S. companies responsible for serious environmental and social impacts. Something similar has been happening in Chile following the (implementation of) the free trade agreement with the United States," on Jan. 1, said Hildebrando V?lez, a campaigner with Friends of the Earth Colombia. "The United States has not signed any international treaty which obliges it to take any responsibility for the environment or (to respect) the rights of native peoples," said Larra?n. Free trade agreements "constitute mechanisms to impose the weak regulations of that country, forcing our own to disappear," argued the environmentalist. This week's Social Forum in the Ecuadorian capital has drawn some 8,000 activists, according to the organisers. The gathering forms part of the World Social Forum (WSF), which will return to the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in January 2005 after this year's edition, which was held in Mumbai, India. From gdy52150 at spiritone.com Mon Aug 2 19:13:12 2004 From: gdy52150 at spiritone.com (gdy52150) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:35:19 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Drawing a Line in the Sand Bush and the Election Message-ID: <410EF4B8.3040308@spiritone.com> http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/lineinsand.html Drawing A Line In The Sand: Bush & The Election August 2, 2004 From the Streets of Little Beirut Glen Yeadon Shortly after Bush stole the 2000 election, I wrote an article in which I suggested that it might be wise to consider the purchase of an AK47 as an investment. Today those words sound strangely prophetic, yet eerie alien. Its like my first reaction to seeing the airliner crash into the World Trade Center---this has to be a video game. My mind knew what my eyes had seen was real, but it refused to believe it. Indeed it is hard to believe that in the short span of four years Bush has turned the citadel of democracy into a third world banana republic. Never in my life did I expect I would ever see requests for poll watchers in this country. Yet many of my fellow countrymen are calling for poll watchers. There is good reason for the concerns of citizens about Bush stealing another election. Indeed, there already is an abundance of evidence that they already are well advanced in stealing the second election. Brother Jeb is already defying a court order about former prisoners being informed about the procedure to regain their full civil rights, including the right to vote. Florida is once again purging its voter rolls of names of suspected felons. Nearly every week another flaw is discovered in the computerized voting machines particularly those in Florida. Clearly Bush and the Republican Party no longer believe in democracy and detest elections. Before the 2000 election Bush feared that he would win the popular vote but lose the electoral and had planned an elaborate system of what amounted to nationwide riots and court challenges until he was appointed president. Its clear from the Texas gerrymandering in which Democratic members of legislator fled to neighboring states to prevent this abuse of political power. It certainly was evident that the Republicans refuse to accept defeat at the ballot box in the recall election in California resulting in the election of Governor Arnold. However, Governor Arnold maybe part of the plan to steal the election by delivering California's 54 electoral votes to Bush. At anytime during Election Day if Bush was leading Arnold could declare a state of emergency and close the polls and then certify the results as valid. The greatest concern among voters as the election approaches is the Bush administration may cancel the election by declaring a red alert or declaring martial law because of a potential terrorist attack. The Bush regime is guilty of instilling this fear in the voters by issuing terrorist warnings of an impending attach. Like Saddam's weapons of mass destruction these warnings are based on nothing more than thin air and a lot of bushshit. The warnings are becoming increasing transparent that they are nothing more than a political gambit. The latest warning came from John Ashcroft on the day Kerry gave his acceptance speech. The intent was clear to distract as much attention as possible from Kerry. The previous warning the week before the Democratic Convention suggested the terrorist would target the media during the convention, again the intent was clear to limit coverage of the convention and the Democratic Party. The real danger of these phony warnings is that after reaping a lie often enough many people begin to believe it. The Republicans in congress are now set to propose a bill outlining the steps to be taken if an election is canceled. Any such bill will provide the Bush administration with enough loopholes to cancel the election on little or no evidence of a threat. Furthermore, Aschroft has begun to use the FBI as his private political Gestapo and has targeted various protesters and protest groups. Various groups and individuals have been singled out for questioning and intimidation. All of these groups have one thing in common ---they oppose Bush. Aschroft is clearly trying to revoke their first amendment rights of free speech. His false claim that these groups are violent and have made terroristic threats is ludicrous unless one believes in machine gun toting grannies. With the increasing frequency of terrorist warnings and Aschroft's attacks on individual's free speech rights that this administration is growing more desperate as frantic as the election approaches. This is a direct result of the internal Republican polls. As reported earlier this week the Republican internal polls show Kerry winning the election by a substantial electoral margin at this time. This result confirms the many online polls that can be found on politically neutral websites. Most of these web polls show Bush losing by 20 percent, yet the polls reported by the media shows the race to be nearly even. While the web polls are nonscientific, the results should parallel the scientific polls. Such a wide disparity suggests the media is deliberately keeping the results close for the Bush administration. The more it appears the election is close the easier it will be for Bush to steal the election. This desperation by Bush and his administration is manifested in the increasing bizarre behavior of Bush. Unable to satisfactory answer a persistent news reporter, Bush stomped offstage and backstage screamed at aides ?Keep those motherfuckers away from me.? This confirms previous reports of Bush screaming at aides, and undergoing violent mood swings. It has now been reported that he is suffering from depression and is under medication. It isn't the most comforting thought to know the man with his finger on the button that could release a nuclear attack is strung out on happy pills to keep him from going totally nuts. A senior Republican strategist is advising Republican candidates to keep their distance from Bush because he is loony tunes. There are a number of increasing reports by psychoanalysts suggesting Bush is a person with sadistic, paranoid and megalomaniac tendencies. All of which indicate America's "War President" is a madman strung out on happy pills unable to handle the stress when his war suffers setbacks---once a chickenhawk always a chickenshit. This writer is no psychoanalyst, but feels that depression is too simplistic of a diagnosis to explain Bush's behavior. Perhaps the best way to state it clinically would be depression brought on by a deep-seated phobia. This administration is guilty torturing prisoner, executing prisoners, bombing civilians, war mongering and a host of other war crimes. They are also guilty of mass murder in ordering the stand down of the air force on 9/11. The PNAC document certifies to the need of a Pearl Harbor so they would be free to wage war on oil rich nations. Allowing the terrorist attack of 9/11 to proceed unhindered would inflict the maximum number of casualties and damage, creating a new Pearl Harbor. There are charges of prisoners at Camp X-ray being given medications against their will one of which, caused spots to appear. Was this a test of genome specific bioweapons, which the PNAC refers to as useful political tools? Moreover, there is a myriad of other crimes committed by members of this administration, including Cheney padding his retirement account at Haliburton. Conviction of any of the more serious crimes would condemn the guilty party to death by hanging. Perhaps, the Texas Executioner has a deep-seated phobia of the executioner being executed and is feeling the noose tighten around his neck. Once before the world faced a madman with plans for world dominion who during one adverse meeting threw himself on the floor and wildly kicking and pound the floor with his fist began chewing on the carpet. Behind his backs his aides began derisively referring to him as the carpet eater. His name was Adolf Hitler. Like a giant phoenix the ghost of the Third Reich has risen from the ashes of 9/11. It remains to be seen if it can unleash another holocaust on the world. During the 1933 election, the Nazis assassinated thousands of leaders of the opposition. The Nazis were supplied with guns from the United States shipped aboard Hamburg-Amerika liners under the direction of Prescott Bush. The Nazi's intimidation of voters and the opposition is legendary. We have already seen the Republican Party use the same tactics: jamming phones lines for those needing rides to the polls, funding the Green Party to split the liberal vote, the disenfranchising of thousands of Black votes, the use of police roadblocks to intimidate Black voters, the use of a rioting mob to stop the recount of ballots, while the police were under the orders of brother Jeb to stand down, the use of subliminal ads, spreading deliberate lies and finally the unexplained deaths of Paul Wellstone and Mel Carnahan. Today they issued another terrorist threat for New York City in a transparent effort to limit anti-Bush demonstrations during the Republican Convention. Count on the demonstrators being brutalized by the Bush Gestapo. All it takes for Bush to unleash another world holocaust and bring about his plans for regime change in 60 nations is for good men to do nothing. Hitler could have been removed easily in the first few years of the Nazi regime if good men had acted. If you live in an area that uses electronic voting machines request an absentee ballot. The Republican Party already is advising their members in Florida to use absentee ballots. If you plan to vote against Bush vote early in the event polls are closed early due to another phony threat especially if you live in California. Finally, in the event of martial law, a red alert or the canceling of the election, it is time all Americans look into their very inner self and draw a line in the sand defining a point at which their limit to restrictions on our freedoms and liberties has been reached. While many may naively blame the Germans for allowing Hitler to rise to power, the wolf is once again at the door, don't make the same mistake the Germans did. Use what time there is left to make plans and to stockpile some provisions and any material you need for total opposition. Your freedom and life depends on it. For more information concerning the Bush Family's Nazi connections click the link below. http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/nazihydra.html From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Mon Aug 2 20:34:57 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:35:19 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Subway gets super-sized headache Message-ID: Subway gets super-sized headache Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me joins Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ as a controversial, successful and much-criticized film http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=17397 When patrons of Subway sat down to eat at one of the international sandwich company's restaurants in Germany recently, their food was delivered on trays with brightly colored tray liners promoting the European premiere of Morgan Spurlock Sundance Film Festival prize-winning film, Super Size Me, a humorous takedown of McDonald's. For years, product tie-ins and teasing/taunting the competition have been time-tested advertising strategies that have worked wonders for the bottom lines of films and fast food eateries. Why then is the conservative Center for Individual Freedom charging Subway with perpetrating "a shameless anti-American effort"? There are three things that Spurlock's film now has in common with Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ: controversy, unexpected box office success, and they've all come under attack. While Moore's documentary, a blistering condemnation of President George W. Bush and his handling of the War on Iraq and the war against terrorism, and Gibson's film, a spare-no-details look at the last hours of Jesus Christ, were attacked even before they hit the theatres, Spurlock's documentary, an amusing examination of how over-indulging in fast food can cost you your health, is now getting deep-fried by the fast food industry and its right wing surrogates. As usual, this year's crop of movies was designed to entertain and make oodles of money for their producers and distributors. But it was clear from the outset that both Moore and Gibson had more on their minds than that: Their films were motivated by a set of political and/or spiritual ideals. Moore clearly intended that Fahrenheit 9/11 be used to help defeat President Bush in November, while Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was released on Ash Wednesday to maximize the religious impact it might have. Morgan Spurlock, the producer/director/star of Super Size Me, a documentary in which Spurlock documented his weight gain while engaging in a 30-day experimental diet consisting exclusively of eating at McDonald's -- and super-sizing portions every time he was given the opportunity -- likely hoped his film would cause a little stir and be successful enough to allow him to make more movies. While Moore, who won an Oscar for Bowling at Columbine, and Gibson, who won several Oscars for Braveheart, are no strangers to controversy and criticism, such notoriety is new to Spurlock. Now, however, the success of Super Size Me -- as of the end of July it had taken in $11 million, out-grossing nearly every other art house film this summer -- and its upcoming European premiere has brought the film, and a corporate sponsor, into the right's crosshairs. The Center for Individual Freedom and Frontiers of Freedom are spearheading a campaign against Subway, the international sandwich chain, claiming that it is promoting the German premier of Super Size Me by using a "tray liner... in their restaurants in Germany and across Europe," displaying "an obese Statue of Liberty holding a burger and fries in her hands," with the headline "Why are Americans so fat?" The promotion is a "shameless and anti-American effort to increase sales in Europe," Jeff Mazzella, the Executive Director of the Center for Individual Freedom, charged. In a statement, Mazzella also claimed that "the headline uses the German word 'Amis' -- a derogatory term for Americans." "It is appalling that Subway, a U.S. company, would attack Americans and the Statue of Liberty, our most recognizable symbol of freedom, in a time of war just to gain market share," Mazzella said in a statement. "Subway's advertising strategy amounts to nothing more than a shameless and irresponsible marketing scheme," he added. "The company is exploiting cultural tensions and inflaming anti-American sentiment abroad just to sell more sandwiches." Even the ethically-challenged House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) got into the act, criticizing the company's promotion as "anti-American." The Center for Individual Freedom is countering the Supersize message through promoting an upcoming film by Soso Whaley who, according to the industry front group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, ate breakfast, lunch and dinner at McDonald's for two months and managed to lose weight. Fred DeLuca, the president and founder of Subway -- the largest restaurant chain in the U.S. with more than 13,000 outlets, as well as an additional 7,000 in 76 countries, adamantly denied the group's allegations. "Why would someone join Subway, bring American food over there, and then have a single thought of something negative about America?" DeLuca asked during a press conference at Subway's international headquarters in Milford, Connecticut. DeLuca pointed out that he thought the protest might be politically motivated considering that filmmaker Michael Moore was in Spurlock's film and is mentioned twice in the tray liner copy. "I suspect they are furious about Michael Moore," said DeLuca. "In terms of being anti-American, that's wrong," he added. "Our German franchisees are about the most pro-American people you can find. They found an American product, liked it and brought it back to their country." When Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was released earlier this year, predictions from pundits, religious activists and movie critics ranged from the apocalyptic -- a wave of anti-Semitism would be unleashed -- to the optimistic -- a Christian revival would take place. The film has grossed more than $370 million, yet neither prediction has really panned out. The Dallas Morning News recently reported that a survey by the Barna Group, "a polling company that specializes in issues of interest to evangelical Christians, indicated that less than one-tenth of 1 percent of those who saw the movie were moved to become Christians as a result. And fewer than five Christians in 1,000 who saw the movie were moved to increase their proselytizing." While Fahrenheit 9/11 has broken box office records for documentaries -- passing the $100 million mark in mid-July -- it remains to be seen whether it will have any effect on November's election. It did, however, engender an enormous right wing backlash. Even before the film's release, conservatives banded together to cow theater-owners into not running the film. When that strategy failed -- more than 2,000 screens showed the film at the height of its success -- right wing "truth squads" fanned out across the country, filling the media with allegations of Moore truth-fudging. Recently, a showing of the film in George W. Bush's hometown of Crawford, Texas, not only drew some two to three thousand people to an outdoor screening, it also brought out several hundred pro-Bush supporters. Non-fiction filmmaking certainly has hit its stride in 2004. As Stephanie Bunbury writes in the Australian newspaper The Age, "nobody would have imagined the new millennium would see documentary become so hot it sizzles." This year's documentaries (or docudramas in the case of the Gibson film) are unabashedly personal, make bold political statements, show a flash of humor (except for the Gibson film), and have been financially successful (especially the Gibson film). In the entertainment industry success begets more of the same. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Mon Aug 2 20:46:34 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:35:19 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] progressives could be braver Message-ID: On both sides of the Atlantic, progressives could be braver Americans are less polarised than their politicians would have us believe Martin Kettle Tuesday August 3, 2004 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1274756,00.html Six years ago, the American sociologist Alan Wolfe published a strikingly important book. Entitled One Nation, After All, and subtitled What Middle-Class Americans Really Think About, it is an essential text for understanding the pulse of modern America. What makes it both important and essential is that Wolfe painted a picture radically at odds with the exaggerated perception, both in the US and abroad, of America as a nation of entrenched and embattled ideological extremes. In fact, Wolfe argued that middle America was not so much a land of culture wars as of cultural pragmatism. "I have found little support for the notion that middle-class Americans" - a category within which three quarters of all Americans define themselves - "are engaged in bitter cultural conflict with each other over the proper way to live," he observed. "Reluctant to pass judgment, [Americans] are tolerant to a fault," he concluded. "Not about everything - they have not come to accept homosexuality as normal and they intensely dislike bilingualism - but about a surprising number of things, including rapid transformations in the family, legal immigration, multicultural education and the separation of church and state. Above all moderate in their outlook on the world, they believe in the importance of leading a virtuous life, but are reluctant to impose values they understand as virtuous for themselves on others; strong believers in morality, they do not want to be considered moralists." Wolfe's book came out at the height of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and his findings were vindicated by the response of public opinion to the president's misdemeanours. While Republican fanatics used the affair to try to drive the president from the White House, moderate middle America failed to rise to their bait. Instead they kept Clinton's wrongdoings in proportion and rallied behind him, just as a reading of Wolfe's book suggested they might. But that was then. Today, in election year, the talk is of a deeply divided nation, of a Disraelian Two Americas, to quote the title of a recent book by the pollster Stanley Greenberg. Six years on, in the wake of the split-down-the-middle presidential election of November 2000, in the light of the ideological drivings of the Bush administration and, above all, in the confrontational aftermath of Iraq, how does Wolfe's late-1990s vision of a tolerant consensual America stand up? When I put this question to him last week, Wolfe argued that the past four years have confirmed rather than destroyed the essential thesis of his book. By any standard, he reckons, Americans are less divided in their view of life, the nation and the world, than they were in the past. One nation, after all, again. The essence of Wolfe's case is that the great wedge issues of the late 20th-century culture wars have simply shrunk in significance. The most important of these, as always, is affirmative action on race, where the supreme court has managed to strike a sensible compromise. Nor, he argues, does abortion still have the divisive potential of the past, though if a re-elected Bush attempts to nominate a supreme court dedicated to overturning the landmark pro-abortion Roe vs Wade judgment of 1973, that could change. Having won the political argument over what it calls partial birth abortion, though, Wolfe reckons the right is less angry than it was. There's much about America in 2004 that bears this out. Over the past couple of months, the president has spent $50m on campaign ads designed to promote his opposition to gay marriage. As Wolfe's original research found, gay equality remains one of the issues on which middle America remains to be convinced; yet you would have to search long and hard to find many people who believe that gay marriage is the great dividing issue in America. At the margins, Bush's advertising may help to motivate some social conservatives to vote Republican, but mostly it has sunk without trace. Which brings us to the paradox. If Wolfe is right, even in 2004, and most Americans are indeed part of the shared values of One America, then how does this square with an electorate that, according to most of the current opinion polling, is now so sharply polarised into Two Americas? A possible explanation is that the polarisation of 2000 and 2004 is simply untypical - most US presidential elections are not nearly so close as the last one was and the next one promises to be. In that case, some special factor - the disabling effect of the Clinton scandals on the Democratic cause in 2000, perhaps, or the mistrust towards Bush's Iraq policy and his tax cuts this time around - may have made these two contests more impassioned than they might otherwise have been. A second is that the practices of modern campaigning and media - giving voters a relentlessly inaccurate picture of the choices they face, presenting their own candidate in an unbelievably favourable light and their opponent in an equally unbelievably negative light - conspire to create a polarised contest between core electorates and to drive down participation. As US journalist Jack Germond says in his new memoir, the Republicans do not have a monopoly on such tactics - they just seem better at it. There is, of course, a third possibility: that Wolfe's "one nation" theory is just wrong. In the end, though, a complete explanation surely also involves a critical assessment of the tactics of the Democrats, in particular the intellectual defensiveness that EJ Dionne, in another necessary new book, Stand Up Fight Back, dubs "the politics of accommodation" and which Garry Wills, in a brilliant essay in the New York Review of Books, describes as Clinton's legacy of "omnidirectional proneness to pusillanimity and collapse". Dionne's answer has lessons not just for the Democrats but for the Labour party. His argument is that progressive parties must not be so fearful about affirming the traditions from which they come, while simultaneously recognising that the tradition is "pragmatic, experimental and open to new approaches". In the US, writes Dionne, this means being more explicit about government's role to help the worse off, protecting the courts from rightwing judges, reforming the campaign finance laws, promoting "tolerant traditionalism" in social policy while, in international affairs, adopting a vigilant optimistic "Lockean" strategy based on alliances, democracy and justice. Reading Wolfe, there is little doubt that this meshes with the "mature patriotism" and "tempered internationalism" which characterise middle-class America's view of the world and that a campaign based on such approaches would make Bush's re-election much more difficult. Will it happen? There were signs in Boston last week that John Kerry has begun to embrace some of this. But the picture is incomplete, there is a long way to go and - as Germond reminds us - the Republicans are very good, and very ruthless, campaigners. martin.kettle@guardian.co.uk -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Tue Aug 3 08:40:09 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Tue Aug 3 09:21:09 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Reading the script Message-ID: 'Reading the script' Date: Tuesday, August 03 @ 09:58:42 EDT Topic: Media By Paul Krugman, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/03/opinion/03krug.html A message to my fellow journalists: check out media watch sites like campaigndesk.org, mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com. It's good to see ourselves as others see us. I've been finding The Daily Howler's concept of a media "script," a story line that shapes coverage, often in the teeth of the evidence, particularly helpful in understanding cable news. For example, last summer, when growth briefly broke into a gallop, cable news decided that the economy was booming. The gallop soon slowed to a trot, and then to a walk. But judging from the mail I recently got after writing about the slowing economy, the script never changed; many readers angrily insisted that my numbers disagreed with everything they had seen on TV. If you really want to see cable news scripts in action, look at the coverage of the Democratic convention. Commercial broadcast TV covered only one hour a night. We'll see whether the Republicans get equal treatment. C-Span, on the other hand, provided comprehensive, commentary-free coverage. But many people watched the convention on cable news channels - and what they saw was shaped by a script portraying Democrats as angry Bush-haters who disdain the military. If that sounds like a script written by the Republicans, it is. As the movie "Outfoxed" makes clear, Fox News is for all practical purposes a G.O.P. propaganda agency. A now-famous poll showed that Fox viewers were more likely than those who get their news elsewhere to believe that evidence of Saddam-Qaeda links has been found, that W.M.D. had been located and that most of the world supported the Iraq war. CNN used to be different, but Campaign Desk, which is run by The Columbia Journalism Review, concluded after reviewing convention coverage that CNN "has stooped to slavish imitation of Fox's most dubious ploys and policies." Seconds after John Kerry's speech, CNN gave Ed Gillespie, the Republican Party's chairman, the opportunity to bash the candidate. Will Terry McAuliffe be given the same opportunity right after President Bush speaks? Commentators worked hard to spin scenes that didn't fit the script. Some simply saw what they wanted to see. On Fox, Michael Barone asserted that conventioneers cheered when Mr. Kerry criticized President Bush but were silent when he called for military strength. Check out the video clips at Media Matters; there was tumultuous cheering when Mr. Kerry talked about a strong America. Another technique, pervasive on both Fox and CNN, was to echo Republican claims of an "extreme makeover" - the assertion that what viewers were seeing wasn't the true face of the party. (Apparently all those admirals, generals and decorated veterans were ringers.) It will probably be easier to make a comparable case in New York, where the Republicans are expected to feature an array of moderate, pro-choice speakers and keep Rick Santorum and Tom DeLay under wraps. But in Boston, it took creativity to portray the delegates as being out of the mainstream. For example, Bill Schneider at CNN claimed that according to a New York Times/CBS News poll, 75 percent of the delegates favor "abortion on demand" - which exaggerated the poll's real finding, which is that 75 percent opposed stricter limits than we now have. But the real power of a script is the way it can retroactively change the story about what happened. On Thursday night, Mr. Kerry's speech was a palpable hit. A focus group organized by Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, found it impressive and persuasive. Even pro-Bush commentators conceded, at first, that it had gone over well. But a terrorism alert is already blotting out memories of last week. Although there is now a long history of alerts with remarkably convenient political timing, and Tom Ridge politicized the announcement by using the occasion to praise "the president's leadership in the war against terror," this one may be based on real information. Regardless, it gives the usual suspects a breathing space; once calm returns, don't be surprised if some of those same commentators begin describing the ineffective speech they expected (and hoped) to see, not the one they actually saw. Luckily, in this age of the Internet it's possible to bypass the filter. At c-span.org, you can find transcripts and videos of all the speeches. I'd urge everyone to watch Mr. Kerry and others for yourself, and make your own judgment. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Reprinted from The New York Times: -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Tue Aug 3 08:42:58 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Tue Aug 3 09:21:09 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Eisenhower's 1956 message lost on today's misguided GOP Message-ID: 'Eisenhower's 1956 message lost on today's misguided GOP' Date: Tuesday, August 03 @ 09:55:22 EDT Topic: Republicans By Bill Gallagher, Niagara Falls Reporter http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/gallagher174.html DETROIT -- John Kerry and the Democrats are off to a good start and their convention provided some fine speeches and messages that should resonate with the American people. But the most intriguing and perhaps best speech I heard last week came from a Republican, President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The joys of channel-surfing and C-Span brought me to Ike's acceptance speech when nominated for a second term at the 1956 Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Eisenhower spoke eloquently about the future of his party in that year when the GOP was marking its 100th anniversary. Many sensible themes Eisenhower offered that night could provide the Democrats of today with messages appealing especially to independent voters and older Americans. Kerry did well in his speech, pointing to the need to depart from Bush's disastrous deceptions. "We have it in our power to change the world again, but only if we're true to our ideals and that starts by telling the truth to the American people," the Democratic nominee said in his acceptance speech. "That is my first pledge to you tonight. As president, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House." Other Democrats offered views on the truth-challenged Bush administration and how the serial lying has eroded the quality of our democracy and insults the nature of our republic. Former President Jimmy Carter pointed right at Bush's misleading the American people into a war of choice. "Truth is the foundation of our global leadership, but our credibility has been shattered," Carter said. "Without truth, without trust, America cannot flourish. Trust is at the very heart of our democracy, the sacred covenant between the president and the people. When that trust is violated, the bonds that hold our republic together begin to weaken." Barack Obama, the keynote speaker and Democratic candidate for the Senate from Illinois, did a fine job of describing the poisonous political atmosphere Bush and company have created. "In the end, that's what this election is all about: Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? ... This country will reclaim its promise and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come," he said. Former President Bill Clinton reminded delegates that both candidates are strong men who love their country but have markedly different views of the world. "Our nominee, John Kerry, favors shared responsibility, shared opportunities, and more global cooperation, and their president and their party in Congress favor concentrated wealth and power, leaving people to fend for themselves and more unilateral action," Clinton said. He also reminded us that national unity is poison for Republican plans: "They need a divided America." Dwight Eisenhower's view was that the Republican Party should be inclusive and inviting for all Americans. He said, "The Republican Party is the party of the future because it is the party that draws people together, not drives people apart." Karl Rove, President Bush's political brain, and the right-wing religious wackos he uses as his surrogates for division would drive Eisenhower right out of their Republican Party. Ike also said on that night in San Francisco, "Our party detests the technique of pitting group against group for cheap political advantage." That strategy, sadly, has become the mantra of a Republican Party Ike certainly did not envision and would find repugnant. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is playing the division game in earnest. According to a report in "The Hill," Gingrich is out drumming up wedge issues and encouraging Republicans in Congress to pounce on anything that will divide to gain temporary advantage over the Democrats. One GOP legislator told "The Hill" that "Gingrich encouraged Republicans to pick issues such as school prayer, strengthening work requirements for welfare recipients, and barring the United Nations from monitoring U.S. elections." Gingrich and his comrades are looking for anything where they can show a contrast. They'll include with the above gay rights and gay marriage, flag-burning, and anything else they can come up with to paint the Democrats as out of touch with mainstream America on a variety of cultural and social issues. This politics of desperation is an attempt to divert the public's attention from the mess in Iraq, the sputtering economy and Bush's horrific record on job creation. Dwight Eisenhower was everything George W. Bush is not. Ike was self-made, accomplished, worldly and thoughtful. He would find George W.'s impetuous, visceral, bullying approach to the world reckless and foolhardy. Bush's disdain for the United Nations, our NATO allies, and really any nation that took issue with his obsession with Iraq would leave Ike chilled. In his acceptance speech at the 1956 Republican National Convention, Eisenhower spoke of the heart of collective security resting on the principle that strength is not military strength alone. He said, "It lies rather in the unity that comes of the voluntary association of nations which, however diverse, are developing their own capacities and asserting their own national destinies in a world of freedom and mutual respect." And with the experience of a man who had seen the horrors of war firsthand and knew the limitations of military actions, he added, "There can be no enduring peace for any nation while other nations suffer privation, oppression and a sense of injustice and despair." And in words that would make George W. cringe, Eisenhower urged that the Republican Party of the future "must be completely dedicated to peace, as indeed must all Americans. For without peace there is no future." Eisenhower, who classically reminded us of the dangers of the military-industrial complex as he left office, would find the Bush-Cheney melding of foreign policy and military action for the profit of their corporate clients appalling and dangerous. It would grieve him that the very unholy alliances he warned us of had literally taken control of the Republican Party. As Bush and company look for more weapons systems and reasons to justify their use, Eisenhower provided us with a far more restrained, prudent and realistic vision of the use of armaments as instruments of America's dominant role in the world. He told the 1956 GOP Convention, "We have worked unceasingly for the promotion of effective steps in disarmament so that the labor of men could with confidence be devoted to their own improvement rather than wasted in the building of engines of destruction." A line like that at George Bush's second nominating convention would get the speaker booed off the podium. All Americans would do well to heed Eisenhower's vision and reflect again on the great sense he made nearly half a century ago. The youngest Americans who actually voted for Ike are now 70 and over, but that's one of the fastest-growing segments of our population. They and other Americans who find the sensible moderation of the great warrior who became president appealing can still find a political voice. Eisenhower protected our nation and kept us strong during some of the most difficult days of the Cold War, but he did that soberly and intelligently. The Republican Party under George W. Bush has ventured far away from what Eisenhower envisioned. "I like Ike" was one of the favorite GOP slogans in the '50s. Those who feel like that this year can find a home with John Kerry and the Democrats. Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@aol.com. Reprinted from Niagara Falls Reporter: -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Tue Aug 3 08:49:22 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Tue Aug 3 09:21:10 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] The other war Message-ID: 'The other war' Date: Tuesday, August 03 @ 09:50:29 EDT Topic: Economic Policy By Marc Krug, CounterBias http://www.counterbias.com/082.html The war in Iraq is not the only one America is fighting. The other war concerns the non-violent, yet undeniably virulent, struggle in which those already rich are becoming even richer-often at the expense of those who are not even remotely prosperous. This class war has led to the further aggrandizement of wealth in the hands of those who need it least-the richest five percent. For without spilling any blood, firing any weapons, or manning any barricades, the richest five percent of Americans have improved their wealth and increased their power since 2000, while many of the remaining population has seen theirs dwindle. Over 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson stated, "Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; I can think of no milder term to apply to the general prey of the rich on the poor." Currently, one of the wealthiest men in America, Warren Buffet, puts it this way: "If there's a class war going on, my class is winning." Unfortunately, he's right. The losers are the 95 percent of Americans who live on less than $200,000 a year-namely, those not among the top five percent. Most strongly affected are those in the lower 40 percent of the population who have witnessed the programs from which they once benefited being either substantially curtailed or abandoned entirely. They are the ones enduring the greatest hardship. Bush created this economic hardship by producing mountainous debt-transforming a surplus to a deficit in record time-thus leaving little or no money for what would have benefited most Americans. Step one in creating this deficit consisted of tax cuts-40 percent of whose benefits went to the richest one percent; 90 percent went to the richest 5 percent. Step two consisted in financing the pre-emptive war in Iraq, from which no one seems to have benefited, except defense contractors like Halliburton. Step three consisted in corporate welfare given out to the rich, such as subsidies to farmers whose annual income averages $250,000, and tax cuts to corporations whose annual income averages in the millions. But for the chosen few, the already wealthy, these hardships passed them by, leaving them entirely unscathed. In fact, they became even wealthier. Although no one has been quite the champion of the wealthy that Bush has, a good part of this redistribution of wealth began with Reagan. For it was in 1980 that this ever-widening disparity between the rich and the middle class actually began. Reagan started his tenure in office by cutting the maximum tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent. Reagan also began what was referred to as trickle-down economics, in which all of us were supposed to gain by first making the rich a little bit richer. Although it did little for the poor, this plan worked quite nicely for the rich; in the next 20 years, income for the wealthiest one percent rose nearly 70times as much as did the income for the poorest 20 percent. Unfortunately, Bush is making the same tax cutting, trickle-down mistakes. And, in the process, he is creating a crippling deficit-although it still does not yet equal in size the one created by Reagan and Bush Senior. Unfortunately, both Bush Junior and Reagan handled the deficit's deprivations in the same way: they both cut programs that helped the poor and the politically disconnected. In part because of Reagan's actions, 1980 witnessed the beginning of a marked disparity between the rich and the middle class, between the rates at which income grew for different segments of the American population. In 1980, something new and slightly sinister started and, with it, there ended the dream for most Americans of doing better than their parents - although no one knew it at the time. But this wasn't always the case. Before 1980, particularly during the period between 1947 and 1979, incomes of all five quintiles, or groups of 20 percent of the American population-from the very poor to the very rich-marched upwards in near lockstep. They all went up nearly the same. With very little disparity between them, the income for each quintile rose an average of 100 percent. Actually, income for the lowest quintile rose the most - 116 percent - while income for the richest 5 percent rose the least - 86 percent. This would definitely change: between 1980 and 2000, income for the lowest quintile rose 3 percent; for the richest 5 percent, income rose 201 percent. There was also far more mobility between 1947-79; the class into which you were born was not always the one in which you remained. The opposite is true today - people tend to stay in the quintile they were born in - unless you want to count downward mobility. Currently, members of the middle quintile are far more likely to move down to the bottom quintile than they are to the top. But unlike 1947-79, between 1980 and 2000 a far less attractive picture of American society emerged. In those 20 years, real wages remained largely stagnant - with the exception of the last five years under Clinton, when they went up three to four percent annually. During the Bush administration, wages have stayed similarly stagnant - although for the first two years they declined. So, it would seem that income increases of 100 percent over 20-plus years for all groups of Americans have become just another historical remnant. Specifically speaking, between 1980 and 2000, the bottom quintile moved up a miniscule three percent, while the middle quintile ascended by a meager 17 percent - an increase that amounts to less than one percent per year. The richest quintile, on the other hand, moved up 53 percent, while the top five percent moved up 81 percent. To heap insult upon injury, the richest one percent saw its fortunes grow by 201 percent. So the richer you were, the richer you became. Since 2000, the income of most quintiles has not risen at all-actually, the bottom two quintiles saw their real income drop. On the other hand, the fortunes of the richest five percent and one percent, respectively, have gone up prodigiously. We are now not so much the richest country anymore - many European and Scandinavian countries have higher standards of living - as we are the country with the richest rich people. Perhaps one reason is that in 1980, the average American CEO was paid about 50 times what the average worker was paid then; now that CEO is paid about 400 times what the average worker earns today. What makes this calculation so easy to do is that since 1980, real wages for the average worker have remained relatively unchanged. But what no one seemed prepared for was the "kindness" to the rich of George Bush. Nor could anyone have predicted what harm he would do to the average working person - an entity he knows only at a distance, never having been one himself. In effect, the class war is one between multi-millionaire Bush - whose Cabinet consists exclusively of millionaires and whose Vice President is far richer than he - and those of us who work for a living: who pound the pavement looking for a job, who experience indignities and abuse from our bosses, who suffer physical injury and often chronic pain, yet return to work day after day. These are all things George Bush has never had to do; his last name and the power it brought him have made doing them unnecessary. But his lack of real work experience is not sufficient justification for the harm he has caused. Franklin Delano Roosevelt never did any of those things either, but the working person rarely had a better champion than he. But Bush was far luckier than Roosevelt: the economy Bush inherited from Clinton was substantially better than the one Roosevelt inherited from Hoover. In fact, Bush inherited one of the strongest economies in history: it had expanded for nine straight years and unemployment stood at a 30-year low of 3.9 percent. In January 2001, when Bush assumed office, the fiscal surplus was a staggering $127 billion. That was all to change. Unfortunately, it changed for the worst: by 2003, personal bankruptcies reached an all-time high of $1.6 million. By that same year, household debt stood at a record $8.9 trillion, which would perhaps explain why credit card defaults rose more than 55 percent since Bush took office. Also within that same time span, home mortgage foreclosures went up some 45 percent. Hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs had long since been exported abroad to cheaper labor markets. Millions lost their jobs altogether - but if they were lucky, they at least replaced them with part-time jobs that had no benefits. Thus, they left the ranks of the unemployed for those of the under-employed. According to a recent CNN poll, more people are now living from paycheck to paycheck - just one step away from poverty - than at any other time since these statistics were kept. Unfortunately, very few, if any, of these individuals can improve their financial status by working overtime - Bush has made sure that gambit will no longer work. Even worse for most people, that massive surplus he inherited has since been transformed into a crippling deficit. For many people, more important than the deficits is that Bush's administration will be the first since Herbert Hoover's in which there will be a net loss of jobs. Keep in mind that it was during Hoover's administration that the Great Depression began. Admittedly, there has been some job creation lately, but what's never mentioned is that much of the growth has been in government jobs and in lower-level service jobs, which pay, on average, 13 percent less than those they replaced. Many of the high-wage manufacturing jobs have since been exported overseas, where labor is considerably cheaper. To counter this trend, Bush has come up with a very interesting strategy. He wants jobs such as flipping burgers at your local McDonald's to be re-classified as manufacturing jobs. But coming up with deceptive strategies to obscure the reality of job losses and creating the conditions under which those jobs were lost-as in giving tax breaks to companies exporting jobs-does not represent the sum total of how Bush has harmed the working class. His efforts to diminish the role, if not threaten the very existence, of labor unions has frightened many, since it is these stalwart institutions that got workers their health insurance-something which 43 million Americans now lack. Unions also got them their right to collectively bargain for better, safer, healthier conditions in the workplace. And to bargain for higher wages, better pensions, greater job security, and a host of other benefits. Even so, the "compassionate conservative" is not a fan of unions. In December of 2002, he induced the Labor Department to issue new union reporting requirements, which would entail that unions itemize every expense over $2,000 spent on organizing and strike services, lobbying and other related political activities. Meeting this requirement has cost unions millions. Furthermore, should they fail to meet these requirements, unions would be subject to substantial civil penalties. Unions seem to be very much on Bush's mind. Most of us can remember when our "pro-security" President stalled passage of the Homeland Security Bill - whose primary purpose was the establishment of an agency bearing the same name - until it was written into law that the Agency's 180,000 new employees would not have Civil Service status and the rights that go with it, specifically the right to collectively bargain. Bush also saw to it that workers in the Transportation Security Authority, which oversees the hundreds of baggage screeners at airports all across the U.S., were similarly excluded from Civil Service status and denied the right to join a union. Another means by which Bush might do an end run around unions can be found in his plan to transfer 850,000 Civil Service jobs to non-union private employees. The states have adopted this concept by also taking the jobs previously held by unionized state employees and giving them to non-union private employees. But the states have their own problems. With a war to pay for and a massive amount of debt to service, the federal government is not giving them the funds they used to. As a result, many states have cut numerous programs that aided the poor and others. Actually, some states are now on the verge of bankruptcy. Unions do not, however, represent the entire span of intuitions that Bush doesn't seem to support. He seems to no longer support the veterans whose bravery he so recently praised and whose valor he so publicly lauded. At the same time Bush was declaring "Mission Accomplished," his FY 2004 Budget was circulating through Congress. Unbeknownst to most, that budget contained substantial cuts in veterans' benefits - including pensions, hospitalization, health insurance, and drug co-payments. Additionally, the war these soldiers had fought in was blamed repeatedly by Bush for the deficit, although the fact remains that the deficit began before the war did. And what created most of the deficit were the tax cuts, not the war. Tax cuts, which primarily benefited the rich, represent Bush's panacea for whatever ails America. Should the problem be economic despair, Bush cuts taxes. Should the problem be loss of manufacturing jobs, Bush cuts taxes. Should the problems be war, famine, pestilence, or death, Bush continues to cut taxes. And should the problems be an excess of crab grass, the heartbreak of psoriasis, or America's propensity for eating French fries, Bush cuts taxes some more. Actually, Bush became the first President to cut taxes during wartime, something his fellow Republican, John McCain, deemed "irresponsible." Despite the cavernous absence of any cogent evidence that tax cuts create jobs or stimulate the economy in any significant way - other than by benefiting the rich - Bush has responded to any and all situations by cutting them with an avidity and single-mindedness that would have made Pavlov's dogs proud. Unfortunately, the immense and ever-growing deficit created by these tax breaks gives Bush the excuse - and to some extent, the need-to cut programs that benefit working America, particularly those who now populate the ever-increasing ranks of the working poor. Among the programs cut are 38 in the educational area alone: including resources for dropout prevention, opportunities for gifted children, and funds for guidance counselors. The President who vowed to leave no child behind is leaving countless behind. It's also likely that Bush's proposal for the federal government's housing voucher program could cut assistance for some 250,000 low-income families, in addition to many disabled and elderly individuals. Also on the chopping block are job-training programs, as well as healthcare programs. One effect of such misplaced priorities is something truly frightening: more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other Industrial country. Another effect is a seemingly endless, charnel-abundant war whose immense cost burdens nearly all Americans and handicaps nearly every program that might help them. With so many needs that should be filled, with so many people facing years of enforced penury, what we find instead of help for them is relief for the rich-cuts in taxes on the largest incomes, cuts in taxes on investment income, and cuts in taxes on multi-million dollar inheritances. As Bill Moyers put it: "Let's face reality: if distributing tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the country into deficits deliberately to starve social benefits; if requiring states to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor; if squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force resembles a nation of serfs - if this isn't class war, what is?" It most certainly is class war. And let's face another reality: Warren Buffet was right. The rich have won it. ? 2004 CounterBias.com -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Tue Aug 3 09:17:58 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Tue Aug 3 09:21:10 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Is The Media 'Retarded' or Guilty of 'Group Think'? Message-ID: Is The Media 'Retarded' or Guilty of 'Group Think'? By Wilson Ray http://www.southerner.net/blog/weeklyblog035.html BIRMINGHAM, Ala., July 25 (SDN) - On Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" the other night, Jon Stewart asked CNN's Wolf Blitzer if the media failed the country by not asking tough questions of the Bush administration prior to Sept. 11, 2001, and in the run up to war in Iraq last year. Borrowing a line from the 9/11 Commission report, he asked, was the press also guilty of "group think," or just "retarded?" LOL. Putting aside the politically incorrect term "retarded," Blitzer said no one in the national press corps is afraid to ask tough questions, even though Bush comes up with nicknames for everyone as a way to make them cower. But he admitted the national press corps may be guilty of the same kind of "group think" the commission said held back the U.S. intelligence agencies from connecting the dots from al Qaeda suicide attackers to American Airlines to the World Trade Center. So where is the call for a national commission on the failure of the news media on 9/11 and the run up to war in Iraq? As far as I can tell from googling and surfing the Web, not even the bloggers are asking that question. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press in America is believed to be sacrosanct. And with the increasing trend in corporate ownership and control of the news media, no one would call for independent or, dog forbid, government oversight of the media. The only anti-media movements that have gained steam over the past 25 years or so stem from right wing talk radio and cable news attacks on the liberal media, although there is an attempt in this presidential election cycle to also attack the newly risen "conservative media" embodied in the cable talk news on Fox. Only serious thinkers like Noam Chomsky and Jeff Cohen at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and the liberal Jewish newspaper The Nation, have the chutzpah to take on the corporate media on questions like these. Their criticism is totally lost on the vast majority of Americans, however, who hear nothing about it on local TV news and read nothing about it in their local newspaper. Is it any wonder why? The chain newspapers are so concerned about dropping below a 20 percent return on investment and losing circulation to the Internet that management will go to great lengths to avoid offending anyone by doing stories that might suggest there is corruption in America on par with the rise of Nazi Fascism in Germany in the run up to World War II. In communications research, there is a theory called "the spiral of silence" that attempts to explain why the German people went along with genocide. It's not my favorite theory, but something like it could be constructed to explain where we are now in America. If you don't believe me, consider this. We are already being bombarded with the story of the week planted by the FBI and Attorney General John Ashcroft that there is "credible intelligence" that terrorists are planning to blow up media trucks at the Democratic Convention in Boston. For most TV news viewers, I suspect it was easy to miss the line in the announcement that the Boston threat is not from Islamic jihadists linked with al Qaeda. This threat is said to come from an unnamed group of "radical domestic terrorists." Why, afterall, would al Qaeda hit the Democratic convention? It's the Republicans, Bush, New York and Washington they are after. But the national news media moved the story without asking any tough, critical questions about its varacity. In trying to check out the report myself, I did one of the logical things. I hit the Southern Poverty Law Center Web site to see if they have any new information about such a group. Nothing there, although there is an interesting story about the rise in hate violence by suburban teens. Could it be that this trumped up threat on Boston is simply a cynical attempt to funnel more pork barrel law enforcement money to Republican constituencies around the country? Or was it just designed to scare the press? If you think this question is out of the mainstream and dismissible as a "conspiracy theory," consider another trial balloon launched by Republican Congressman John Culberson of Texas last week. It seemed so ridiculous to me I didn't even bother to post the headline on the Southerner Daily News front page. But there he was on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, saying someone in local law enforcement tells him there is a "growing trend" in Muslim terrorists taking Hispanic sir names and sneaking across the border into Texas. The implication is, we need to spend another billion dollars or so to protect El Paso from them "evil terrorists," in addition to "them pot smoking Mexians." Law enforcement officials from every small city and county around the country are getting into the anti-terrorism game, looking for new grant money to prop up their operations from the Homeland Security Department. Does anyone seriously think al Qaeda would consider hitting Wetumpka, Alabama? LOL. I can't find on the Web at least a single shred of evidence to support this story, but there it is. One of the sites I did find, with a number of articles linked showing that America is increasingly becoming a police state, is the Unknown News. Go there and scan a few of the headlines and you may see the trend I'm talking about. Spreading the fear of "terrorism" may work to boost law enforcement budgets, but it remains to be seen if it will work for the president in his reelection bid. It might, if the American media doesn't start demanding answers to some important questions. For starters, what is the name of this new radical domestic "terrorist" group that wants to kill TV reporters covering the Democratic Party's convention in Boston? Is the acronym by any chance CREEP? Is it funded by black-budget money from the Saudi's? Or maybe opium or hashish proceeds from Afghanistan? Or is it a figment of Karl Rove and Ashcroft's imagination? If so, why would they lie to the American press and the people without consequence? If there is a real threat, we will know soon enough. If not, will some smart, or dare I say liberal news reporter, editor or news director ask why we take these stories without some proof? -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Tue Aug 3 10:54:11 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Tue Aug 3 11:28:42 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Good Show Message-ID: Good Show by William Greider http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040816&s=greiderweb Having burned out on political conventions long ago, I approached this year's festival of Democrats with very low expectations and--surprise--found myself enjoying it a lot. Maybe this is because I wasn't in Boston. Watching the spectacle from the deep quiet of the Vermont woods on satellite TV changes one's perspective. I found suspense in a simple question: Can I actually watch the political talk-talk without experiencing deeper disgust, anger, boredom? Can I resist the temptation to step outdoors and listen to the owls. The pols did well in these terms. They were entertaining--some of them, anyway--despite the low nutritional value of the rhetoric. In olden days, one covered a convention for the fights, the animated showdowns over substantive governing issues, and hoped the nominating roll calls might produce a few surprises. Today, we are all reduced to the roll of TV critics. We judge the performances from our own peculiar angles, since we do not expect to learn anything new or useful from the content. Political junkies have been consigned to cable so the rest of he country can continue to enjoy the real thing. Yet I found myself informed in minor ways. Barack Obama is a natural star because he has mastered a new style for crossover politics--sounding cool and deliberate as you would expect from a Harvard Law School graduate, yet summoning tides of rising emotion with the biblical cadences of a black preacher. This is new and important. I expect a generation of aspiring politicians (white, black and otherwise) to emulate his technique. Reverend Al Sharpton still does it the old-fashioned way and he is still great fun to watch. Yet his pungent perorations actively angered the learned pundits. MSNBC cut off Sharpton so Chris Matthews and sidekick Howard Fineman could indulge in a self-important (and borderline racist) rant about the Rev's inappropriate remarks. Likewise commentators put down Teresa Heinz Kerry for not talking gooey about her husband. What country do these guys live in? I thought she was intriguingly real--herself and proud of it--which says something implicitly worthy about the man (he's comfortable in the presence of a strong woman). The point is, the political reporters are the ones who no longer understand the ritual they are covering. They keep searching for political meanings in the tepid events when a convention is now essentially a human drama and only that. Overproduced and not as compelling as it could be, but it is still mildly educational in those terms. My favorite performers were Vanessa and Alexandra Kerry. In a few warm moments, they gave us more genuine insight into their father than poor, old uptight Kerry could ever convey about himself. The man dove off the dock to rescue his daughter's drowning hamster! How real is that? It makes me feel better about him. Dreading Kerry's potential for dragging down the high spirits generated by his daughters, I was actually exhilarated by his performance. Leave aside his militaristic theme, the occasional awkward smile. He delivered his strategic message--I'm no girlie-man liberal--with impressive energy and compelling one-liners. My wife and I were feeling good, optimistic about November, when the phone rang. A young friend called in anguish. She and her husband were appalled, actually devastated by watching Kerry. They were going to vote for him, of course, but she had no idea how terrible he was as a speaker, how wooden and empty is his agenda. No, no, no I insisted, the candidate's speech was terrific. Our difference in perceptions was easily explained. I had seen and heard Kerry many times before, but this was her first experience. Which John Kerry did Americans see? The answer is personal and idiosyncratic. Do not trust polls or professional analysis. They don't know either. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From papadop at peak.org Tue Aug 3 22:06:15 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Tue Aug 3 22:06:17 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] U.S. SOLDIERS ABUSED IRAQIS "FOR FUN" Message-ID: http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=558766&src=rss/uk/topNews§ion=news Wed 4 August, 2004 04:26 FORT BRAGG, North Carolina (Reuters) - U.S. troops who abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison did it "just for fun", a military investigator has testified in a hearing for a female soldier photographed holding a naked Iraqi on a leash. Private Lynndie England, visibly pregnant, appeared on the opening day of the military-court hearing, which will determine whether she will be tried for the prisoner abuse that outraged the Arab world. England wore a camouflage uniform, black boots and beret as she entered the Fort Bragg courthouse moments before the hearing began on Tuesday, ignoring dozens of media cameras and reporters. Inside the courtroom, she answered "Yes Ma'am" and "No Ma'am" to simple questions from Colonel Denise Arn, the investigating officer, about the charges. England did not appear in court for the afternoon session. Her lawyer said she had made an unscheduled visit to the doctor but would not discuss her condition. Chief Warrant Officer Paul Arthur, the lead investigator into the Abu Ghraib abuse, told the court England said in a sworn statement in January that one of her superiors, Specialist Charles Graner, put the leash on the naked Iraqi prisoner and told her to pose for the infamous photograph. But in an effort to shoot down defence claims that the abusers were acting on orders from above, Captain Crystal Jennings, the lead prosecutor, asked if Arthur had determined why the troops had abused the prisoners. "Basically it was just for fun ... and to vent their frustration," Arthur said. BUSH APOLOGY England, 21, was charged along with six other U.S. military police reservists in a scandal that prompted an apology from U.S. President George W. Bush, who placed the blame on a small group of soldiers. England has said she was following orders when she appeared in the pictures, which also included one in which she pointed at a prisoner's genitals, a cigarette dangling from her lips. England returned from Iraq after becoming pregnant and is due to give birth in the fall. Media reports have said Graner, who is also charged with prisoner abuse, is the father, but her lawyers declined to confirm that. Special Agent Warren Worth, another military criminal investigator, said he found no evidence that orders came from higher in the chain of command than Graner and Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick, another of the seven soldiers charged. But England's lawyer, Captain Jonathan Crisp, repeatedly asked Worth what role military intelligence personnel had played in the abuse, as he sought to bolster the notion that troops were urged to rough up prisoners before questioning. "Some of the soldiers alluded to military intelligence possibly saying to 'give them the treatment' or soften them up," Worth said. Most of the abused prisoners had no military intelligence value, Worth said. The Pentagon has denied sanctioning rough treatment. Worth said more than 1,000 photographs had been found on CDs and computers and about 280 had evidence of prisoner abuse. He described the widely publicised "naked pyramid" of prisoners, photos of prisoners being forced to masturbate, of a prisoner who was bitten by a military dog and others of England and Graner engaged in sex acts. The two witnesses said England never raised any objections to the treatment of the prisoners. Defence lawyer Richard Hernandez told a news conference that Tuesday's testimony bolstered his belief that the Abu Ghraib abuse was part of a wider pattern of U.S. military behaviour. "All of the information out there points to a systemic problem," he said. "These tactics are being used at places my client has never been." From papadop at peak.org Wed Aug 4 00:22:58 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed Aug 4 00:23:04 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] CASSEL: 2 items - WHY I AM SCARED TO DEATH OF GEORGE BUSH Message-ID: http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/ecassel/2004/08/01 Send Comments to Elaine Cassel ecassel1@cox.net Sunday, August 1, 2004 WHY I AM SCARED TO DEATH OF GEORGE BUSH--And Why You Should Be, Too In the past almost four years, I have come to fear almost everything the Bush administration does. In one way or the other, it has harmed, perhaps irreparably, virtually every aspect of American life. From raising the acceptable arsenic levels in water (a little arsenic is good for us all) to logging and snowmobiling in Americas formerly treasured parks, to ripping apart the bill of rights and trampling it underfoot, to using the threat of terrorist attacks for political gain, to going to war on a lie and not just spending our money outrageously but being responsible forand proud ofthe deaths of hundreds of American soldiers, the maiming of thousands more (a deep and dirty secret) and the slaying of thousands (but whos counting?) Iraqi civilians. All of this and much, much more literally keeps me awake at night, sick with fear and worry. But nothing disturbs me more than the case of Ahmed Abu Ali. Abu Ali is an American citizen, born in Texas in 1981. He is a resident of Falls Church, Virginia, where he lives with his parents. He was valedictorian of his 1999 graduating class in a northern Virginia high school. He attends a Saudi university where he is studying for a degree. Last June, Ahmed was taking an exam at the International University of Medina. In stormed Saudi police who took him away to a Saudi prison where he has been since that day. It has taken a year for the story to make any sense, and during this time his family and lawyer have kept me informed about the case. However, they asked me not to write about it, for fear that it may jeopardize his potential for release. Now that it appears their son may never come home, at least not if the Bush administration can help it, they have filed a law suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asking that their son be given the same rights as the Supreme Court recently gave Guantanamo prisoners and American citizen Yaser Hamdithe right to, at a minimum, challenge his detention. They have also given me permission, through their attorney, to write about their sons case. Here is the abbreviated version of the undisputed facts, according to court records and discussions with the family and attorney: Ahmed was acquainted with some of the men charged in the notorious case of the Alexandria 11, men who pled guilty or were convicted (all but one of them, and that is important, as you will see) of conspiring to fight for the Muslim cause in the constant battle between India and Pakistan over the territory of Kashmir. The interest in fighting for Kashmir is one that is promoted by many Muslims. The men were friends, and in the course of their friendship play paintball and shoot at targets with guns, all perfectly legal in Northern Virginia. In fact, gun use is so legal in Virginia that the legislature recently passed a law affirmatively making it acceptable (indeed promoting) the carrying of weapons into bars and restaurants. Initially charged under the seldom-used Neutrality Act, which forbids an American from taking sides with an enemy of the United States, those who pled to conspiring to aid Muslims were given sentences of four to ten years in exchange for testifying against the others; the men who did not pled guilty were indicted with aiding and abetting terrorism, upping the ante to life prison terms. Of the four men who did not plead guilty to the new charges, three were convicted by Judge Leonie Brinkema and sentenced to 85 to 115 years in prison. These were men who were not a threat to the U.S., who were not anti-American, who never took up arms against any one, but who, it is true, were sympathetic to the Muslim cause. They would have fought for the Muslim cause in Kashmir, if the occasion presented itself (India and Pakistan declared a cease fire early in 2004). One of the men who pled not guilty had been in Saudi Arabia at the same time that Abu Ali was detained. He was extradited to the United States, and Judge Brinkema found him not guilty. Though he is free at the moment, he expects to be harassed by prosecutors. Surely, he will be arrested and charged with something -- anything to avenge his acquittal by Judge Brinkema. Abu Ali has been visited in Saudi Arabia by the FBI and perhaps by Alexandria prosecutors. From what little we know (he has been denied an attorney, and the State Department and the Saudi government have conspired to insure that he receives no mail or visits), he was urged to confess to being part of the Alexandria 11, he refused, likely being tortured and mentally and physically abused. He was urged to renounce his U.S. citizenship, in exchange for the promise of being taken to Sweden. (He was smart not to do that; last week it was reported in the Washington Post that the U.S. government aided Swedish officials in rendering Saudi citizens back to Saudi Arabia where they were tried for terrorism crimes and are serving lengthy prison terms. Both maintain their innocence. ) If prosecutors had any case at all against Abu Ali, they would surely have had him extradited at the same time as Sabri Benkhala, who was acquitted by Judge Brinkema. Abu Ali has been threatened with being named an enemy combatant, but that would also mean that he would be brought to the U.S., held like Americans Padilla and Hamdi and, now, entitled to an attorney and the right to file a habeas corpus petition challenging his relief. But that is not going to happen. The day Abu Alis parents filed a petition for habeas corpus and other relief, the U.S. State Department informed them that the Saudis were going to charge Abu Ali with unspecified crimes of terror. Days before the case was filed, the Saudis told the family that they were ready to release Abu Ali, but had to have approval from the U.S. to do so. The Saudis said they had no interest in him. The State Department, at that time, it was up to the Saudis. Clearly, no one is telling the truth. The State Department now says it cannot comment on anything, because Abu Ali never signed privacy forms, forms that the Saudis refused to give him (no doubt told to refuse to deliver them by the same State Department that claims they cant obtain them from their detainee). Here is why I am scared to death of this administration: Abu Ali will surely never come home. There is no way the U.S. government is going to let a man live to tell the tale of his capture by Saudis at the request of the U.S., his incarceration without a charge, without a lawyer, without access to his family, and, no doubt, his being subject to torture during long periods of interrogation. Maybe Kromberg wanted him at some time, found there was nothing to get him on, then told the Saudis to torture him into confession of anything that would make him extraditable. For the present time, it still takes an actual criminal charge to indict someone. But it takes nothing but the whims of the government, to render an American citizen to another country and demand that that country imprison the American until it says to release him or her. But then the U.S. cannot tolerate the word getting out about the whole story, so it will have to silence Abu Ali by keeping him locked up forever (or worse) in a Saudi jail. Lets be clear about thisthe Saudis insist that they are holding him only because the U.S. demands it. Remember Nicholas Berg, who was beheaded shortly after his release by the U.S. government in Iraq? Remember how the U.S. insisted that it never had him in custody but that that Iraqi police held him? Forget for a time that the Iraqi police did nothing without the permission of and payment by the U.S. governmentthe police said that they had seized Berg at the demand of the U.S. and they released Berg to its custody. Finally, after Berg died, the State Department admitted the U.S. had detained him. When Berg refused the request of the U.S. government that it take him out of Iraq, when Berg insisted that he was going to leave Iraq on his own, he was murdered. You connect the dots. Or not. But dont turn away from the frightening truth of what your government is up tosuccessfully, without accountability, violating every right and privilege Americans have under U.S. and international law. Even if the federal court orders that Abu Ali be brought to the U.S. to have a hearing, dont expect it to happen. Accidents happen in prison, dont they? Especially in foreign prisons. The Pentagon is even now making it near impossible for attorneys for the Guantanamo prisoners to meet their clients and file the petitions the Supreme Court gave them the right to file. Face it. Our government is imprisoning its citizens without cause and without process. Welcome to George Bushs America. ================= http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/ecassel/2004/08/02 Monday, August 2, 2004 When Searches and Seizures Become Commonplace Since September 11, 2001, the federal government has led the way in searching citizens in many public venues--all in the name of preventing acts of "terror." First airports, then Fourth of July celebrations, then subways, then shopping malls, then political conventions--where will it end? Never, as long as citizens keep putting up with it. I have more than once walked away from a public event because I was ordered to pass through "security." A former police officer turned professor penned this thoughtful op-ed on how the government has all but blotted out the Fourth Amendment from the Bill of Rights. What are you doing to resist the thugs who have taken over your everyday life in the hopes not of finding an instrumentality of terror, but a marijuana joint, a pirated CD, a book (like mine?) that raises suspicion and may lead to your imprisonment (skipping the niceties like probable cause to search, arrest, counsel, due process, etc.)? In the words of the inimitable Nancy Reagan, "Just say no." BALANCING SECURITY AND LIBERTY By Peter Moskos Monday, August 2, 2004; The writer, a former Baltimore police officer, is professor of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. # -- Posted 8/2/04; 6:12:04 PM When you board a plane, both you and your carry-on bags are searched. A civilian employee of the Transportation Security Administration may open and search your checked luggage as well. Although primarily looking for security threats, workers report any illegal or suspicious objects to a supervisor or law enforcement agent, even if the object represents no danger to the flight. Two legal concepts allow both you and your bags to be searched despite the Constitution's protection against unreasonable search and seizure. By being in an airport and trying to board a plane, the Supreme Court says, you have given "implied consent" to being searched. The "plain view" principle, according to the court, states that whatever law enforcement legally finds, feels or sees -- even if unrelated to the original investigation or search -- is fair game for arrest and prosecution. Using security and terrorism as justification, the government is beginning to extend airport-like implied consent zones to more and more of the public sphere, including the entire Boston subway system. Before the Democratic convention, daily commuters, anybody approaching a national political convention, and drivers on vital bridges and tunnels were told to expect random searches without a warrant. Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure does not apply. When police are granted greater rights to search without probable cause, they will use these rights. Therefore it's essential to consider the implications of implied consent and plain view searches in the public sphere. Fear of increased government repression is shared by both ends of the political spectrum. But many others understand that a necessary element of freedom is security. Airline passengers should be screened. The Democratic and Republic national conventions need to be bomb-free. Few people object to bomb searches on airplanes. And many would be willing to waive their constitutional rights (if such rights were negotiable) to guarantee their security. But what starts as a necessary security measure will quickly become standard law enforcement procedure even for crimes that are nonviolent and not related to terror. These expanding implied consent zones have staggering implications for American life and freedom far beyond al Qaeda. Police officers are experts at bending rules, particularly in the "war on drugs." As a police officer, I was taught to push the rules of the "Terry search," which meant that if I articulated fear that a suspect might harm me, I could legally frisk suspects for weapons without probable cause. I know officers who towed cars, again legally, simply so they could "inventory" the contents (technically for safekeeping). In both cases, the real goal was to find illegal drugs and make an arrest. One must expect law enforcement to use all its available tools. As a law enforcement officer, why deal with the tedious process of probable cause, judicial approval and paperwork? In order to stop and search any suspect, not just a terrorism suspect, law enforcement need only wait for a person to enter an implied consent area such as a subway or a shopping mall. Their action justified by the "war on terror," police may then conduct a full search. The true object of the search -- most likely drug possession, but any contraband will do -- is unrelated to terrorism. Of course people shouldn't break the law or carry illegal objects. But the difference between civilian employees searching for bombs in airports and government agents conducting random searches for suspicious objects is the difference between preserving a free society and creating a police state. In airport security today, items deemed suspicious are not necessarily dangerous: Large amounts of cash, pirated CDs, pornography and, of course, drugs -- not just illegal drugs but even prescription drugs in certain circumstances. In fact, controversial books can be grounds for further investigation and arrest. Such a standard, even if established in airports, is unacceptable and must not be allowed to spread to our streets and subways. The solution -- the balancing of public safety with constitutional liberties -- is surprisingly simple. The only way to prevent creeping use of implied consent is to limit the doctrine of plain view. Before searching a person, the government must choose either plain view or implied consent. If the government must search without probable cause, let it search, but only for illegal weapons or bombs. If security outweighs the Fourth Amendment, the scope of such searches must be limited to objects representing a clear and present danger to public safety. Any unrelated suspicious or illegal objects found must be ignored. It is the job of our courts and legislature to strike the balance between security and liberty. By limiting the plain view doctrine, lawmakers or Supreme Court justices have the rare opportunity to be tough on terrorism while guaranteeing the rights and freedom of citizens. ============== From papadop at peak.org Wed Aug 4 00:36:02 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed Aug 4 00:36:07 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] 3 brits - victims of Gitmo abuse Message-ID: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/World/guantanamo_bay_abuse_0408 03-1.html Former prisoners claim they were victims of abuse at Guantanamo Bay. Three former detainees held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay are issuing the first detailed allegations of abuse in a written account. Abuse at Gitmo? Detainees' Account Offers Most Detailed Allegations of Abuse By John Berman ABCNEWS.com Aug. 3, 2004 Three Britons who were held for more than two years at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay are alleging, in a written account obtained by ABC News, that they were humiliated and brutally beaten while they were in U.S. custody. The three men Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed have provided an account that is the most detailed description to date of life inside the prison and issues the first detailed allegations of abuse. The men who were released from Guantanamo in March and flown home to England, where police freed them without charge describe an experience of isolation and brutality at the U.S. base. Their account alleges that they were "kept in cages infested with rats." One said he was put in a "cell smeared with excrement." All say they were subjected to beatings. Ahmed claims a guard "kicked me about 20 times to my left thigh and punched me as well. I had a large bruise on my leg and couldn't walk for nearly one month." Iqbal said guards "would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet, and generally disrespect it." The men declined to talk to ABC News directly about their account, but their attorney Gareth Peirce said they hope it illuminates the plight of the 586 detainees still held at Guantanamo. "It's to try to break through that wall of silence, to make a judgment about the legitimacy and legality of what is going on in Guantanamo Bay," Peirce said. Unlike the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, there are no photographs showing the alleged beatings at Guantanamo and no way to independently verify the claims. U.S. military officials today said there is simply no foundation to the men's stories of abuse. They said that while a guard did once kick a Koran, guards are now given extensive training in religious sensitivity and added that conditions in general have greatly improved at Guantanamo. Abuse Yields False Confessions? But the former prisoners say that after a year and a half of confinement, the harsh treatment led them to make false confessions during interrogations. All three admitted to appearing in a video with Osama bin Laden, despite the fact that all three were in England at the time the video was taped, a fact later confirmed by British intelligence. Rasul said, "I was going out of my mind and did not know what was going on. I was desperate for it to end and therefore, eventually, I just gave in and admitted to being in the video." "There is absolutely no doubt that there wasn't a single method that wasn't used to break their will, to make them confess to something they were not guilty of and all three did," Peirce said. The Pentagon said today it will not comment about what is said in interrogations. After British intelligence confirmed the men were not in the video, all three were flown from Guantanamo Bay to London in March. Within 29 hours, the men were released; the British government said they had no evidence to hold them. From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Wed Aug 4 03:19:50 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Wed Aug 4 22:27:17 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Diverse Economy Key to Long-Term Growth Message-ID: Diverse Economy Key to Long-Term Growth By Laza Kekic http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/08/04/006.html Economists have identified a strong, negative empirical link between long-term economic growth and the share of the economy that originates in the natural resources sector. Since World War II, not a single natural resource dependent economy has managed to sustain respectable growth over several decades in average real GDP per capita. Astonishingly, few such economies have seen even positive growth. The evidence, though much disputed, is clear. The causal mechanisms include: vulnerability to fluctuations in the terms of trade; the Dutch disease of an overvalued exchange rate; and various institutional pathologies that are associated with natural resource dependence. The government sees economic diversification as a priority and wants to shift the relative tax burden onto the energy sector. The multilaterals' endorsement of this goal is largely rhetorical, however, because key elements of their advice would serve to perpetuate primary-sector dependence. The International Monetary Fund's strong advice that the Central Bank should prioritize inflation reduction and allow stronger ruble appreciation is clearly inimical to increased diversification. Other multilaterals have seconded this call for a shift in monetary policy, most recently the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in its review of the economy published in early July. The OECD, a club of 30 wealthy nations including the United States and Britain but not Russia, argues that Russian growth over the medium term will inevitably depend on the natural resources sector and that policymakers should accept this fact. To underpin its case, the OECD downplays the role that high oil prices play in Russia's strong economic recovery. Instead, the OECD emphasizes -- in part on the basis of a highly dubious growth-accounting exercise -- the role of allegedly oil price-insensitive efficiency improvements, especially in the private oil sector. If this were correct, and Russian growth were insensitive to the level of oil prices, then the inevitable decline in international oil prices would have far less of an impact on growth than is usually supposed. The OECD accepts that Russian growth is sensitive to changes in oil prices, but argues that growth is not -- or is only very weakly -- dependent on the level of oil prices. The distinction is not esoteric. It is of fundamental significance for future prospects. For example, Russian growth next year should fall as a result of a likely sharp fall in the average oil price from the high 2004 average. If oil prices more or less stabilize at a permanently lower level, however, there is nothing as such that affects subsequent output growth. The OECD accepts that growth is sensitive to the price of oil only at very low price levels that render oil production completely unprofitable. But this relationship operates along a continuum. The empirical link between levels of oil prices and output dynamics in Russia has been extremely strong for the last decade. It is not difficult to trace some of the channels through which oil price levels have most likely affected growth. High oil prices have facilitated improved fiscal policy, which is emphasized by the OECD as a prime source of improved economic performance since 1998, and not merely through the direct effect of oil prices on budget revenue. High prices offset high-risk premiums and encouraged measures to extract more oil from the ground; removed any balance-of-payments constraint on growth; and facilitated sharp reductions in external debt (the OECD itself appeals to recent evidence that links growth to debt/GDP levels). The OECD concludes that high oil prices accounted at most for only one percentage point of the average annual real GDP growth since 2000 of 6.8 percent. It is not clear exactly how the OECD arrives at such a modest estimate. Furthermore, the organization compares the outcome under actual prices since 2000 to estimated outcomes under a $19 long-term average price for Urals Blend, not the much lower $17 average price in the four to five years before 2000 -- arguably a more appropriate counterfactual. The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates that the contribution of high oil prices to growth after 2000 was 2 to 3 percentage points, depending on which of the counterfactual price assumptions is used. This is in line with other estimates. It would be one thing to argue for a strategy to favor the oil sector if present prices persisted for some time. But prices will fall fairly soon, and since growth is linked to oil price levels, the opportunity cost of a slow rate of diversification is far higher than the OECD allows. All the multilaterals agree that Russia needs a prudent fiscal policy, tighter than in other circumstances. The government thus needs to aim for a large fiscal stabilization fund and spurn the temptation to engage in possibly pro-cyclical spending of budgetary receipts even after the fund is filled to the currently targeted level. While the role of fiscal rectitude in Russia's circumstances is obvious, there are some clear trade-offs in an assessment of the balance of risk and potential reward. The OECD points to the serious degradation of human capital: the declining health of the population (a paradox as this is getting worse despite recent growth). One could also add deteriorating education and technological capacity, which will stymie hopes of long-term growth. Thus it is not at all clear that the recommended degree of fiscal tightening, which would preclude heavy spending on health, education and infrastructure, is the best policy. The multilaterals are also ambivalent toward proposed heavier taxation of the natural resources sector combined with tax cuts for other sectors. There are strong warnings that raising the tax burden will endanger the role of the energy sector as the driver of growth. Another argument invoked to support a policy that favors the natural resources sector is the threat of a balance-of-payments constraint. Export growth will depend on growth in energy and metals exports over the medium term. Import growth projections depend in part, however, on assumed strong real appreciation. Second, even at much lower oil prices, and assuming only modest export growth, it would be some years before Russia's current account surplus disappears. And it would take even longer for any balance-of-payments crunch to occur, given reduced external debt service and increasing levels of foreign direct investment. The OECD notes the political economy implications of resource dependence: the institutional pathologies, such as greater inequality of incomes, corruption and a bias toward rent-seeking over entrepreneurship. The recommendations on how to deal with this are circular -- it is said that Russia needs a noncorrupt state apparatus to tax fairly and efficiently -- and/or amount to mere exhortation to promote transparency and the rule of law. For the multilaterals diversification is a worthy aim, but one to be postponed for the long term. The government should in the meantime gradually lay some of the groundwork through institutional improvements. Time optimization problems are not recognized, and in key policy areas the advice is skewed to ensure continued natural resource dominance. Long-term growth in Russia will not be achieved on the basis of natural resource dependency. In the context of falling oil prices, medium-term growth will be seriously constrained. The state's present apparent dominance over vested interests may be fleeting. The government should seize the present opportunity to pursue policies that maximize the chances (which are uncertain at best) of diversification: prioritizing the exchange rate in monetary policy; use of oil windfalls to increase spending on health and education; measures to reduce industrial concentration levels; and curbing the power of vested interests in the natural resources sector. Not for the first time during its transition, Russia would be very foolish to follow the multilaterals' advice. Laza Kekic, director for Central and Eastern Europe at the Economist Intelligence Unit, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Wed Aug 4 15:53:31 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Wed Aug 4 22:27:17 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] The end of Republican rule Message-ID: 'The end of Republican rule' Date: Wednesday, August 04 @ 10:23:29 EDT Topic: The Democrats Righteous populism holds the key to vanquishing Bush forever By Rick Perlstein, Village Voice http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0431/perlstein.php BOSTON -- The Democrats are the party of ideological whiplash. At the Boston Social Forum, a left-wing hootenanny before the national convention, you could find enthusiastic John Kerry voters attending a "hemposium" and hawking "Holy Land Olive Oil" (slogan: Support Palestinian Farmers). And at the palatial Wang Theatre downtown, you could find Democrats who don't think corporations should pay taxes. It was there that I sipped cocktails with Patty, a securities industries lobbyist who claims to be a Democrat. I asked her about a plank in the platform: "Under John Kerry and John Edwards, 99 percent of American businesses will pay lower taxes." Since 60 percent of American corporations already pay no taxes, I asked, does that mean they'll get free money shoveled back to them from the treasury? She responded by questioning the premise. "I was an econ major in college, so I don't think it's an efficient tax. I think there are better ways to raise revenue." In the last few decades we've seen a structural shift as tectonic in its way as the sectional crisis that preceded the Civil War. Where in the 30 years or so following World War II, a period of Democratic dominance, the real income of the average American literally doubled -- meaning that rural families who once kept outhouses on their property were now able to keep a garage -- in the 30 years that followed that same average income stagnated, the amount of individual debt exceeding that of individual savings. It happened coincident with a slow and steady rise in Republican dominance, now nearly complete, as corporations were awarded more and more prerogatives. It's gotten worse. From 2000 to 2002, according to the IRS, the average American income dropped 9.2 percent -- and the last time incomes fell in this way for even one year was 1953. A visionary party of opposition -- you might even say a competent party of opposition -- would place fixing inequality and stagnating incomes at the center of its political appeal. For all the talk of swing voters, of NASCAR dads and soccer moms, this is the way to beat George Bush -- and to recover the Democrats' former status as the ruling party in American politics. Instead, the party invites within its folds securities lobbyists who want to repeal the corporate tax. How do the decisions get made that produce this state of affairs? How, in this party of the people, do the corporations become the mainstream and the liberals become the insurgents? In Boston, I hoped to find some clues. Mary Rasmussen is the kind of delegate to the Democratic convention who keeps returning to the free T-shirt booth to sign up for a credit card, because she wants to give away shirts to each of the maids back at her hotel. A reading teacher and for 10 years a member of the Democratic National Committee -- she calls herself the most "populist" of Wisconsin's four members -- she is so emotionally committed to the Democratic party that back when she was an alcoholic, her friends arranged for her intervention to be the day after the 1988 presidential election. "They all knew it was going to be awful, and they knew that I would be hung over and depressed and suicidal." The intervention worked. "So every time there's a presidential election, God willing and the creek don't rise, I can celebrate another four years of sobriety." Mary is also the kind of loyal soldier some in the Democratic establishment seem to relish stepping on. In 2000 she received a call at school from Terry McAuliffe, the master fundraiser and Clinton operative who was running unopposed for DNC chairman. He wanted to make sure he had her support. "I was less than forthcoming," recalls Mary, "and asked him some question about why I should vote for him. I needed more than that he was a great fundraiser. I needed to know what his vision was. And he couldn't tell me." She told him that her formative moment in politics had come at a time where visionary politics were of utmost importance. "And he laughed! He said, 'Oh, I have an older brother like that.' He was very dismissive. Like, 'Oh, that is so cute.' " Mary and I run together throughout convention week. Most times she is jovial. Now, she is cutting. "I'm tired of it. I'm tired of being treated by corporate white guys as if my issues are amusing." We have just repaired from a breakfast meeting of the Wisconsin delegation where John Nichols, the editorial page editor of the Madison, Wisconsin, Capital Times, told me how frustrated it made a lot of insiders to see Mary -- "the last liberal" -- accede to the DNC. One of the speakers was Al Franken. Another was an environmentalist who talked about what a bonanza he's yielded organizing voters in four swing states against mercury poisoning in lakes and rivers: Potential voters can't hear enough about this issue. And a third speaker was an executive from the sponsor of the Wisconsin delegation's sumptuous breakfast, a company called Xcel Energy. As a premium, they gave out fancy water bottles, the kind that retail at camping stores for $10, with their logo on it. Except that these underwriters of Democrats, forgot to remove the sticker at the bottom of each one: "Made in China." On the elevator, I asked the executive whether there might be at least the appearance of impropriety in a company with business before the government sponsoring one of the government's constituent parties. His shrug suggests a question so odd he had never given it a thought. "It's just a way of giving back to our customers," he finally says. If you Google "Xcel Energy" and "mercury poisoning," the impropriety becomes less abstract: "In a report titled 'Toxic Neighbors,' a group called Clear the Air said Minnesota's coal-fired power plants dumped 2,300 pounds of mercury into the environment in 2001. More than a third of that, 840 pounds, came from a single plant, Xcel Energy's 1,947-megawatt Sherco facility . . . " When Mary Rasmussen started getting involved in Democratic politics, her goal was to join the DNC, ostensibly the party's policy-making body -- "to be a participant in formulating party goals, party objectives, party strategies," she recalls. "It didn't take long to discover that being there is just part of the window dressing." Her wake-up call came at the first meeting, at the Michigan resort town of Mackinac Island. She asked a party executive if his kids wanted to join hers to play in the swimming pool. "Well, the look on his face! It was so shriveling: that it was entirely inappropriate. Because, like, he's the executive director of the DNC! And I was just a DNC member!" She says it with bemusement, not bitterness; she's long past holding on to her illusions. "I envisioned that we would all get together and dialogue," she says, with a laugh -- this was, after all, the Age of Clinton, whose White House was bursting over with the intellectual energy of a college seminar room. "But instead, we go, and they give us talking points -- and send us out to say those things. We get together to rubber stamp decisions that have been made somewhere else," she says, before correcting herself: "No, not just rubber stamp: We get together to cheer and celebrate those decisions." What were the decisions? She wanted more populism. She saw more and more corporations. And it wasn't just her idealism speaking. An insistent, consistent, commitment to populism would make for a stellar electoral strategy for beating George Bush, and, four or eight years from now, for beating George Bush's brother, or any Republican. Recently the Democratic consultant Stanley Greenberg published findings that, asked to chose from a list of issues they considered serious, only 30 percent of Americans picked "high taxes" as a problem (77 percent chose health care). "High taxes" are not only the Republicans' signature issue, but a "problem" that Kerry has placed at the center of his campaign as well, promising a tax cut to everyone who makes less than $200,000 a year. Greenberg also found that a large majority of Americans want government to fight income inequality. When he asked focus groups what they thought about "big corporations," he wrote, "They spit out, 'money,' 'greed,' and 'Enron' " -- a "revulsion formerly reserved for Hollywood." And this from a predominantly Republican crowd. The pollster Celinda Lake gave a stunning presentation one afternoon in Boston -- though it wasn't the sort of thing the pundits would tend to notice. She provided a statistical portrait of America's 22 million single American women, who are alienated enough to be hugely underrepresented on the voting rolls: If single women voted at the same rate as married ones, there would have been 6 million more voters in 2000 -- 200,000 in Florida alone. Why are they alienated? One reason might be how liberal they are. On every single issue, these voters lean left, especially on economics. Eighty-eight percent worry their incomes might not keep up with rising prices (only 68 percent worry about being the victim of a crime); they are sufficiently environmentalist that only 12 percent are "cool" toward environmental groups. The Democrats, if they stopped talking corporate and spoke to these people's issues, would have won that election, and just about every other one besides. The speaker after Lake was a young woman who organizes voters from poor rural backgrounds like her own. She drawled out a story about the time she asked a friend out for a beer, who said she couldn't drink because she's still nursing her young toddler. "Well, how long are you gonna do that?" "Until it runs out. Because it's free." Me, when I heard that, I thought of mercury poisoning. Mercury gets into breast milk. My kind of thinking is not about giving conveners of hemposiums more voice in the Democratic party. That's the kind of ostentation that just turns voters off. But tamping down corporations like Xcel, ostentatiously enough so that alienated nonvoters start taking notice, instead of letting them use our party as a branding opportunity (another thing Greenberg found is that voters think both parties are dominated by corporations) -- that would only be practical. It is the kind of dare that could turn the Democrats into America's ruling party again. Some scenes from Boston: Blue-suited thirtysomethings with $100 haircuts stomping around in hotel lobbies, telling the cell phones sprouting from their ears, "I'll keep my ear to the ground." On acceptance-speech night, Alexandra Kerry telling the story about the family's pet hamster, a reporter next to me making a Richard Gere joke; there follow backslaps all around. Talking heads flap their mouths: about whether and how the Clintons will "overshadow" the nominee; about how (in the absurd, astonishing words of New Republic editor Peter Beinart) "liberalism is on tap virtually every night," stuffing up an activist-run party's "self-congratulatory echo chamber." About how many sentences of his speech John Kerry wrote himself. This is the audience the convention planners seem to play to. They respond predictably to words like "safer" and "first responder" and "daughter"; a keyword search reveals the phrases showing up 30, eight, and 23 times. Not so much to words having to do with official government malfeasance -- which is why, strangely, John Kerry's single greatest achievement as senator, forcing Congress to face up to the Reagan administration's crimes negotiating with Iranian hostage-takers and sending the proceeds to death squads in Central America, was not mentioned at all. No, this convention was supposed to make us feel good, be relentlessly positive. The theme was unity: national unity, party unity. Niceness is nice. It makes a body feel good about himself. But it's no strategy with which to win a presidential election. Adlai Stevenson was nice; he lost two presidential elections for the Democrats. Michael Dukakis, Jimmy Carter: They were nice. And look what happened to them. These days, talking about things like the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us is judged not very nice. Fixing it might require breaking some eggs. The pundits would call it "class warfare." So whenever a concession is demanded in the interests of unity, it will be demanded of the party's left wing, never of the corporate types. Like the time, Tuesday night, one party liberal -- this one -- returned to find his seat occupied by one of those blue-suited thirtysomethings. I asked him to give it up. He refused. "We gave lots of money to the Democratic Party," he said, and demanded I sit in the aisle. "It would be shameful if I couldn't get a seat." It was on behalf of all those poor single women who don't vote and who really hold the explosive power for beating George Bush on November 2, 2004, that I refused to give up my seat. Copyright ? 2004 Village Voice Media, Inc. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Wed Aug 4 15:58:10 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Wed Aug 4 22:27:17 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] A matter of context Message-ID: 'A matter of context' Date: Wednesday, August 04 @ 10:20:27 EDT Topic: Media By Ed Naha http://mkanejeeves.com/ I miss TV news reporters. You remember that breed, don't you? Folks like Murrow and Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley; newspeople who could do interviews and put a quote or an event in context without resorting to "nyah, nyah, nyah" ruminations? Alas, they seem to be as dead as dinosaurs these days, replaced by spewing heads and ideologists who never let the facts get in the way of what their planned screed is. Case in point: CNN's bow-tied Tucker Carlson, a nice enough lad, but fact and context challenged. On Tuesday's "Crossfire" on CNN, Tucker was aghast at Teresa Heinz Kerry alluding to a Bush re-election as "four more years of hell." And, of course, he didn't describe what led up to that comment, since that would make the Bush brigade look bad. As temp co-host Donna Brazile watched in awe, young Tuck got the vapors, a' fluttering about: even if you don't like Bush, even if you don't like his policies, even if you don't like him personally, could anyone describe the last three and a half years as hell? Unfortunately, at that point, the audience burst into a round of cheers and applause at Tucker's accurately hellish description of Bush's tenure and Donna just chuckled as Tucker's bow-tie wilted. Now, the context. What led to that comment from Teresa Heinz Kerry was a Kerry rally at Pere Marquette Park in Milwaukee. During the speeches, a small group of young and Morlockish Bush supporters tried to drown out the event via the use of air horns and bullhorns. While Teresa was speaking, the bullhorn artists started chanting "four more years." She responded: "They want four more years of hell." The Kerry supporters began chanting "three more months" (before Dubya is ousted). Later, when Kerry was speaking and the air horns and the bullhorns blasted over him, Kerry commented on their attempts to drown him out. "We don't want to be drowned out," Kerry quipped. "I want to thank George Bush for sending the goons here tonight to excite us to do a little more work! Thank you!" Now, as to the Republican numbnuts who tried to drown out Kerry? As reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, uber-intellectual Tom Lange, 18-year-old ace of an air horn stated: "We want them to hear us and not hear what he has to say." Lange admitted his actions were "probably not nice, but it's my beliefs." Get that boy into the DeLay camp! Quick! Before DeLay is convicted on that ethics thaing. Michael Gasper, also 18, of Waukesha, Wisconsin, and an equally eloquent bullhorn user during the rally (welcoming attending Democrats to "Bush-Cheney country"), said he was heading up the braying Bush bunch "to show my support for President George W. Bush. ...I have the right to speak, also. I'm just attempting to get my voice heard." Welcome to Moron Nation. Now, try to imagine young Democrats attempting to do this during a Dubya/Darth rally. Aside from being arrested - like for wearing a t-shirt- they probably never would have gotten near the rallying spot, having been shipped to a "Free Speech Zone" an entire state away. In the last week, it's been reported that, in fear of random Dems sneaking into a Cheney speech, all folks applying for tickets had to sign a "Dubya/Darth" loyalty oath. At another Cheney speech, a local newspaper (The Arizona Daily Star) was asked to divulge their assigned photographer's RACE before the snapster was allowed clearance. ("Security. 9-11. Boo!") Now, I really don't know what is more idiotic, barely post-pubescent Repug punks taking time from zit-popping to disrupt a rally or a right-wing pundit denying that the zit-poppers existed in the first place, concentrating, instead, on the Heinz Kerry remark. We're running out of fun-house mirrors on cable, folks. It's getting way too screwy. F'rinstance, on "Crossfire," when Brazile asked young Tuck to comment on Cheney's "racial profiling" of the news photog? He replied: "I'm interested to hear that, because it's the Democrats who keep track of racial data more assiduously than Himmler ever did. I'm totally for abolishing all of it." For the Republicans, when in doubt? Get thee to a Nazi. (The Repugs even have a Kerry/Hitler riff on the Bush election web-site!) I mean, really, isn't this getting tiresome? Isn't this getting way too moronic? We want the news. We get a tenth of it. We want serious discussions on the topics. We get blowhards spouting. We want facts. We get views that don't matter. We get Republicans spinning about Nazis and terrorists under the covers and flag burning. We want reporters reporting in a fair and balanced manner, 24/7. We get Fox. As Oscar Wilde said, long ago, "There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community." Behold, Amerika. You have cable news! -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Wed Aug 4 21:32:00 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Wed Aug 4 22:27:17 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Oil threat to world economy Message-ID: Couple of points here: 1) Without oil, industrial societies like USA become instant junkyards. 2) Economists seem to have a very weak idea of the importance of oil. Why? I have no idea. After all, the experiences of the 1970s should have demonstrated the point that oil is critical to the economy beyond ALL reasonable doubt. To any sentient being, the notion the increased energy prices would devastate the rest of the economy is obvious. ******************************** Oil threat to world economy Ashley Seager Thursday August 5, 2004 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,1276393,00.html Fears that the world economy could be derailed by higher energy costs intensified last night after the price of oil set fresh records on both sides of the Atlantic. With petrol prices set to reach record levels within days, the chancellor, Gordon Brown, was said to be monitoring the situation from his holiday in Scotland. Oil cartel Opec last night tried to soothe the market, saying it could - and would - pump more oil. Brent futures leapt 35 cents to $40.99 (?22.50) a barrel, outstripping the previous high of $40.95 set in 1990 in the runup to the Gulf war. In New York, US light crude prices set a record of $44.30 a barrel, the highest in 21 years of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Both contracts subsequently slipped back, but few analysts expect this to be the peak, with some saying that $50 oil is a possibility. Motoring organisations reacted swiftly, warning of big price rises at the pumps. "That is some move. This is markets in mid-summer madness mood. If oil prices stay at these levels, we could potentially see another 4p-5p on a litre very soon. It does not look good," said Ray Holloway of the Petrol Retailers Association. Petrol prices have risen from about 75p a litre at the start of the year to about 82p now. When the latest oil price rise feeds through to the pumps in a week or so, petrol will cost more than 85p, the price that prompted the fuel protests of September 2000. Although oil prices have risen by a third this year, petrol prices have risen far less sharply because about 85% of the pump price is accounted for by tax and only about 15% by oil prices. Treasury officials said Mr Brown remained concerned that enough oil be pumped to meet record world demand. "With the UK and world economy strengthening, we must continue to be vigilant to the risks. It is important for the world economy that we maintain the pressure on all oil producing nations to take the action required to reduce prices to a sustainable level," said a Treasury spokesman. Last month, Mr Brown postponed a 1.42p rise in petrol duty originally scheduled for September, saying he would review it in his pre-budget report in November or December. The spokesman said that remained his position. The German finance minister, Hans Eichel, said he, too, was concerned about high oil prices. "It could slow world economic growth," he said. Purnomo Yusgiantoro, the president of Opec, who had sparked price rises on Tuesday by saying the cartel could not pump more oil, tried to calm the market yesterday by saying that it could pump another 1m-1.5m barrels a day within weeks. But, despite Opec's reassurance, the Freight Transport Association called on Mr Brown to cut fuel duties on diesel to help truckers through a difficult period. Prices have been driven higher each day of the past week, first as Russian oil giant Yukos said it faced bankruptcy and might have to cease pumping oil, then as the US announced a terror alert and, finally, by an attack on an Iraqi oil pipeline. Economists have calculated that a $10 a barrel rise in oil prices knocks about 0.5 percentage points off world growth after 12 to 18 months. Brent has averaged around $25 a barrel in recent years, so a sustained price above $40 could knock the world economy hard. "Oil prices matter enormously for the world economy and will continue to do so for at least our lifetimes," said Andrew Oswald, professor of economics at Warwick University. "A $15 a barrel rise, such as we have seen, will add one percentage point to unemployment in the US, for example." -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From papadop at peak.org Wed Aug 4 22:43:18 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed Aug 4 22:43:18 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Candidates divert IOWA police from bank homeland security task ? Message-ID: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/08/04/politics1849EDT0739.DTL Three Davenport banks robbed during Bush and Kerry events DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) -- Wednesday, August 4, 2004 Bank robbers struck three times Wednesday while President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry were stumping for votes in this eastern Iowa town. No one was injured in the robberies, and police are releasing few details. But thousands of political supporters attended the two events and officers from several local agencies and the Iowa State Patrol were tasked to the area to help with motorcade traffic. Police already have one suspect in custody and a description of a second. "I'm sure they were counting on the fact that we were short-handed, but we weren't," Davenport police Capt. David Struckman said. Struckman said he didn't think the robberies were related. The Ralston Credit Union was robbed first at 10:45 a.m. as the president's event was under way at LeClaire Park and Kerry's economic forum started at River Center. The next robbery happened at 11:23 a.m. at the First National Bank, followed by a third at 11:45 a.m. at Southeast National Bank, Struckman said. From ax490 at ncf.carleton.ca Thu Aug 5 03:52:02 2004 From: ax490 at ncf.carleton.ca (Mike Dirienzo) Date: Thu Aug 5 04:08:16 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Oil threat to world economy Message-ID: <41121152.7020909@ncf.carleton.ca> Jonathan, A little perspective, please... > Couple of points here: > 1) Without oil, industrial societies like USA become instant junkyards. The oil isn't being turned off tomorrow, it is just getting a little more expensive. In case you haven't noticed, the USA is post-industrial. It imports most manufactured goods. Its biggest use of oil is to power single-occupancy motor vehicles, which are hardly essential. > > 2) Economists seem to have a very weak idea of the importance of oil. > They know it's important. They also know that the sky is not falling. Today's "record" price is only a record if you don't adjust for inflation. Paying more will be good for us. It will promote conservation and the development of alternative energy. > Why? I have no idea. After all, the experiences of the 1970s should have > demonstrated the point that oil is critical to the economy beyond ALL > reasonable doubt. To any sentient being, the notion the increased energy > prices would devastate the rest of the economy is obvious. > ******************************** Prices rose much more dramatically in the 70s and we adapted. Devastation is not at hand. Chicken Little is wrong again. From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Thu Aug 5 04:23:20 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Thu Aug 5 04:23:31 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Oil threat to world economy In-Reply-To: <41121152.7020909@ncf.carleton.ca> References: <41121152.7020909@ncf.carleton.ca> Message-ID: >Prices rose much more dramatically in the 70s and we adapted. > We did?? You could have fooled me. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From papadop at peak.org Thu Aug 5 05:17:47 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Thu Aug 5 05:17:54 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Giggles Message-ID: Thanks LP - for sharing REPUBLICAN CONVENTION SCHEDULE, New York, NY 6:00 PM Opening Prayer led by the Reverend Jerry Falwell 6:30 PM Pledge of Allegiance 6:35 PM Burning of Bill of Rights (excluding 2nd amendment) 6:45 PM Salute to the Coalition of the Willing 6:46 PM Seminar #1: Iraq Strategies: Voodoo/DooDoo WMD 7:30 PM First Presidential Beer Bong 7:35 PM Serve Freedom Fries 7:40 PM EPA Address #1: Mercury: It's what's for dinner! 8:00 PM Vote on which country to invade next 8:10 PM Call EMT's to revive Rush Limbaugh 8:15 PM John Ashcroft Lecture: The Homos are after your Children!! 8:30 PM Round table discussion on reproductive rights (MEN ONLY) 8:50 PM Seminar #2 Corporations: The Government of the Future 9:00 PM Condi Rice sings "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" 9:05 PM Second Presidential Beer Bong 9:10 PM EPA Address #2 Trees: The Real Cause of Forest Fires 9:30 PM Break for secret meetings 10:00 PM Second prayer led by Cal Thomas 10:15 PM Lecture by Carl Rove: Doublespeak made easy 10:30 PM Rumsfeld demonstration of how to squint and talk macho 10:35 PM Bush demonstration of trademark "deer in headlights" stare 10:40 PM John Ashcroft demonstrates new mandatory Kevlar chastity belt. 10:45 PM Clarence Thomas reads list of Black Republicans 10:46 PM Third Presidential Beer Bong 10:50 PM Seminar #3 Education: A Drain on our Nation's Economy 11:10 PM Hillary Clinton Pinata 11:20 PM Second Lecture by John Ashcroft: Evolutionists: The Dangerous Cult 11:30 PM Call to EMT's to revive Rush Limbaugh again. 11:35 PM Blame Clinton 11:40 PM Laura serves milk and cookies 11:50 PM Closing Prayer led by Jesus Himself 12:00 PM Nomination of George W. Bush as Holy Supreme Planetary Overlord "As you may have heard, the U.S. is putting together a constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? Think about it -- it was written by very smart people, it's served us well for over two hundred years, and besides, we're not using it anymore." --Jay Leno From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Thu Aug 5 03:14:44 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Thu Aug 5 07:26:40 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right Message-ID: Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right by Jim Lobe http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=3248 Why did the Bush administration invade Iraq? Most left-wing critics - epitomized perhaps by Michael Moore's blockbuster documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11- have rather reflexively argued that the economic factor, particularly the interests of Big Oil or "the ruling class," must have been decisive. But many right-wing critics, who know the ruling class from the inside, lean to a different explanation, in part by pointing out that Big Oil, to the extent it took any position at all on the war, opposed it. As evidence, they cite the unusual public opposition to a unilateral invasion voiced quite publicly by such eminent, oil and ruling class-related influentials as the national security adviser under former President George H.W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, and his secretary of state, James Baker. While they do not deny that some economic interests - construction giants, like Halliburton and Bechtel, and high-tech arms companies - might have given the push to war some momentum, the decisive factor in their view was ideological, and the ideology, neoconservative." Powered by both Jewish and non-Jewish neoconservatives centered in the offices of Pentagon Chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney and by White House deference to the solidly pro-Zionist Christian Right, the neoconservative worldview - dedicated to the security of Israel and the primacy of military power in a world of good and evil - emerged after 9/11 as the driving force in the foreign policy of current President George W Bush, as well as the dominant narrative in a cowed and complacent mass media. Neoconservatives - their worldview, history, networks, strategic alliances, and their role in moving Washington to war in Iraq, as well as the dangerous consequences of their policy prescriptions - are the subject of America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge University Press), by far the best study of the neoconservative movement and its relevance to Bush's "war on terror" in the flood of critical books that have poured forth in the aftermath of the Iraq War. The two authors, Stefan Halper, a U.S. policy-maker under past Republican administrations who teaches at Cambridge, and Jonathan Clarke, a retired British diplomat currently based at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank here, describe their political perspective as "center-right." The fortuitous combination of their nationalities and politics helps make their critique particularly compelling in light of the neoconservatives' exaltation of the special "Anglo-American" alliance as the great redemptive force in the world, as it was under British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in World War II. "We set out to demystify the neoconservatives," the authors write at the outset of the book, and over the following 369 pages, including some 1,300 footnotes, they largely succeed. Their motivation is clear from the outset: while consistently measured and reasoned in their tone, Halper and Clarke are clearly outraged that the neoconservative foreign policy pursued by this administration has put Washington's greatest strategic asset - its "moral authority" - at risk. The book includes well-told, if somewhat familiar, accounts of how the neoconservatives used their many institutional bases, such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board (DPB), their formidable political savvy in Congress; their bureaucratic skills within the administration; their ties to the mainstream media, particularly those outlets - such as Rupert Murdoch's media empire led by Fox News and the Weekly Standard, right-wing radio talk shows, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page - that eagerly recycled their ideas; and their longstanding alliance with the Christian Right to create an "echo chamber" that succeeded in moving public debate after the 9/11 attacks toward the threats allegedly posed by Iraq and the necessity of war against it. Where the book breaks new ground, however, is in its efforts to describe the origins of the neoconservative movement, its ups and downs over the course of the past 40 years, its core beliefs and why it poses serious threats to both U.S. interests as traditionally defined by conservatives and to the health of U.S. democracy itself. To Halper and Clarke, the neoconservative worldview revolves around three basic themes: that "the human condition is defined as a choice between good and evil"; that military power and the willingness to use it are the fundamental determinants in relations between states; and that the Middle East and "'global Islam" should be the primary focus in U.S. foreign policy. These core beliefs create certain predispositions: analyzing foreign policy in terms of "black-and-white, absolute moral categories"; espousing the "unipolar" power of the U.S. and disdaining conventional diplomacy, multilateral institutions or international law; seeing international criticism as evidence of "American virtue"; regarding the use of military power as the first, rather than last, resort in dealing with the enemy, particularly when anything less might be considered "appeasement"; and harking back to the administration of former President Ronald Reagan as the exemplar of "moral clarity" in foreign policy. This last tendency particularly galls the authors, not only because it ignores the fact that neoconservatives expressed bitter and well-documented disenchantment with Reagan, known as the "Great Communicator," over his distancing the United States from Israel after the Lebanon invasion in the early 1980s and his eager grasp after 1985 of the outstretched hand of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, but also because they see Reagan as a fundamentally optimistic leader who, in the words of his secretary of state, George Shultz, "appealed to people's best hopes, not their fears." By contrast, according to Halper and Clarke, "the neoconservative vision is one of fear cantered around (Thomas) Hobbes' doomsday vision of man in his primitive state" and "extreme pessimism" reflected in the political philosophy of Leo Strauss, whose thought exercised a strong influence on the neoconservative movement through its godfather Irving Kristol and assorted disciples, some of whom have risen to prominence within and around the Bush administration, particularly in the national-security arena. Indeed, the authors join a number of other critics, particularly on the right, in rejecting the notion that neoconservatives can really be considered "conservative" at all. Not only are they reckless in favoring the use of military power, but their advocacy of "nation-building" or "transforming the Middle East" belies an arrogance that is entirely foreign to the core conservative conviction that free or democratic societies are the product of centuries of organic development, the basis for which can neither be imposed from outside nor built overnight. Similarly, and consistent with their view of the world as a moral battleground, neoconservatives pay little attention to such notions as "stability" and "normalcy," or even, the "economic implications of their policies." This should be of particular concern to U.S. corporations, a traditional conservative political constituency, the authors argue, because the "U.S. business world - multi-polar, multilateral, cooperative, interdependent, consumer-driven and rule-based ... is as different from the neoconservative world as night from day." As for neoconservative claims to be "idealists" and driven by the desire to spread democracy and freedom to the countries - claims far too readily accepted as genuine in mainstream foreign-policy circles - the authors dismiss them as "little more than window-dressing" designed to rally public support behind them and put their foes on the defensive. Their early history - as arch-foes of the anti-Vietnam War faction of the Democratic Party and later of President Jimmy Carter's human rights policies, as well as their selective indignation with regard to the human rights performance of allies and enemies in the "war on terrorism," makes a mockery of their democratic pretensions. So why did neoconservatives want to take the United States to war in Iraq? On this question, the authors tend to be frustratingly elusive (despite an early promise "not ... to pull any punches"), at one point suggesting an "unspoken agenda" that is focused on "the Middle East and military power, most of all military power in the Middle East" related to both Israel's security and access to the region's energy resources. While it is difficult to argue with these two answers, one wishes the authors had been more direct about which factor they believed was more important in the neoconservative worldview and the drive to war, particularly in light of the abundant evidence they present - especially in relation to neoconservative ties to the Christian Zionists and the focus of their own networks of think tanks and foundations - that Israel's fate has been the central passion of all those who identify themselves as "neoconservative." In that respect, the authors did indeed pull their punches in order no doubt to avoid being labeled "anti-Semitic," a common neoconservative tactic against their critics, and to avoid fueling stereotypes that are both incorrect and dangerously anti-Semitic, such as the notion that "Jews" control the media, if not the world. While predominantly Jewish, the neoconservative movement is by no means exclusively so, and most U.S. Jews, it is important to point out, are not neoconservatives. As the authors themselves write, "Today, it should not be considered legitimate to imply that any criticism of neo-conservatism is necessarily tainted by anti-Semitism." That said, the horrific experience of European Jewry in the 20th century, culminating as it did with the Nazi Holocaust, is critical to understanding the neoconservative mindset. It is that experience - and the failure of the "international community" to do anything about it - that helps explain the good-and-evil moral categories, the obsession with military force, the disdain for multilateral institutions and international law and, ultimately, the necessity for the United States to be permanently engaged against foreign enemies lest it withdraw into isolationism which, like appeasement, helped pave the way for Hitler and the Holocaust, that make up the neoconservative worldview. (Inter Press Service) -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Thu Aug 5 03:44:06 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Thu Aug 5 07:26:41 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] The Washington Post's creeping hawkishness Message-ID: The Washington Post's creeping hawkishness Once it challenged Nixon. Now the supposedly liberal paper is attacking Kerry for not fully embracing Bush's Iraq war - - - - - - - - - - - - By James P. Pinkerton http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/salon23.html Aug. 4, 2004 | Remember the days when the Washington Post was the enemy of the Republican administration in the White House? Those days are gone. Today, the neoconservative voice of the Post's editorial page is one of President Bush's most valuable allies. It's possible, of course, to find more hawkish voices than that of the Post, but none have the same wide circulation or impact -- and none have the Post's liberal reputation. Which is a gift to the neocons, who can say, "Even the liberal Washington Post agrees with us!" What a difference a few decades make. Back in 1971, the Post, along with the New York Times, began publishing the leaked Pentagon Papers, the documents that proved that America's entry into Vietnam in the previous decade had been predicated on lies. The Nixon administration took both newspapers all the way to the Supreme Court in an effort to squelch the publication of the documents -- and lost. That same year, the Nixon hard men, spearheaded by Chuck Colson in his pre-prison, pre-Christian days, put together an enemies list that mentioned simply "the Washington Post" -- presumably the entire newspaper, from publisher Katharine Graham down to the lowliest news aide. In the days when officials of the White House and Justice Department openly contemplated murder and arson as "rat-fucking" tactics, the Post showed no small amount of courage. In 1972, John Mitchell, the former U.S. attorney general, then serving as Nixon's reelection campaign manager, memorably warned Post reporter Carl Bernstein about a forthcoming article: "Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published." That was then. Now the Post's editorial page is helping the current Republican president win reelection. To be sure, the Post rarely praises Bush, but it frequently pokes at John Kerry. Which amounts to the same difference. Exhibit A is the Post's lead editorial on July 30, the morning after Kerry's acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention, titled "A Missed Opportunity." The editorial takes Kerry to task for not embracing Bush's war in Iraq. That nonembrace made Kerry's speech "a disappointment," according to the paper. The Post fretted that "Kerry last night elided the charged question of whether, as president, he would have gone to war in Iraq. He offered not a word to celebrate the freeing of Afghans from the Taliban, or Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, and not a word about helping either nation toward democracy." At a time when even conservatives such as William F. Buckley, Bill O'Reilly and Tucker Carlson have backed away from their once rock-solid support for the war, surely the Democratic nominee's waning enthusiasm for the war in Iraq is not a shock. The Post spotted creeping dovishness in Kerry's speech -- and that's the plumage the paper wanted to pluck. The editorial continued, "Kerry could have spoken the difficult truth that U.S. troops will be needed for a long time. He could have reaffirmed his commitment to completing the task of helping build democracy." In other words, Kerry could have completely signed on to the Bush policy, but instead, the paper lamented, "he chose words that seemed designed to give the impression that he could engineer a quick and painless exit." The horror! If I didn't know better -- the Washington Post is, after all, by great reputation, a liberal newspaper -- I would think that the Post was trying to sabotage the Democratic candidate by seeking to talk him into upholding an open-ended war policy that antagonizes most Democrats and independents. It was in another wartime election year, 1968, that such misplaced hawkishness arguably cost Democrat Hubert Humphrey the White House. In clinging to LBJ's war policy, the Minnesotan, once the icon of liberal Democrats, depressed his own turnout in dovish states like Iowa, New Jersey and Vermont, all of which he lost to Nixon. But in fact, the Post is seemingly doing its best to undo its port-side editorial reputation. The July 30 editorial was followed by one on July 31 that laid out the neocon marching orders for Iraq. Adopting the peremptory style that has worked so well for U.S. diplomats in the past few years, the paper declared, "The United Nations ... must step up to the job" of providing peacekeeping forces for Iraq. But then, the Post quickly added, if other nations "won't provide the troops ... the United States should fill the gap." Which is to say, the Post's editorial war stance is about the same, these days, as that of the Wall Street Journal. And while the Post doesn't join in the Journal's generalized right-wingery, it does seem determined to keep up with the Dow Joneses on advocating additional foreign adventures. The July 30 editorial argued that "for many in the hall last night, the intelligence lapses in Iraq prove the wrongness of Mr. Bush's preemption strategy, and Mr. Kerry seemed to agree, saying that 'the only justification for going to war' would be 'a threat that was real and imminent.' Yet a President Kerry, too, would face momentous decisions based on inevitably imperfect information, whether about Iran or North Korea or dangers yet to emerge. How would he respond? Will it always be safe to wait?" The Post doesn't mention, or seem to mind, that many top Bush appointees, still securely in their jobs, pressured the intelligence community to cough up such "imperfect information" -- and to further tout such dreck a "slam-dunk" casus belli. Yet the Post is ahead of the Journal in advocating robust action against Sudan. On Aug. 1 the paper rehashed familiar neocon arguments: It's wrong to consider "realism" or "national interest" in deciding whether to intervene militarily; those words are code for prudence, for looking before you leap -- exactly what the neocons hate. And it's equally wrong to accept the idea that the United States might be perceived as launching a "crusade" against Muslims; they will greet us, of course, as humanitarian liberators. No, the correct line, the Post insists, is to think that national sovereignty is "a less useful principle than it once was." So maybe in Sudan we'll find out -- again -- whether Muslims and others around the world agree with this bold-strokes neocon view of intervention. To be sure, the Post's editorial voice is not neoconservative in the same sense as is, say, Charles Krauthammer, one of the Op-Ed page's aces. But to the degree to which the word "neoconservative" evokes a new kind of "internationalist" militarism, the editorial positions of today's Washington Post surely meet that definition. If the bugle-blowing Post of today had been around in the '60s, the war in Vietnam might have taken a different turn. And in the '70s, the presidency of Richard Nixon might have taken a different turn, too. - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer James P. Pinkerton is a columnist for Newsday. From 1979 to 1984, he worked in the election and reelection campaigns of Ronald Reagan and in the Reagan White House. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Thu Aug 5 17:49:36 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Thu Aug 5 17:52:57 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Bruce Springsteen's bid to restore the USA Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040806083335.02e46f68@central.murdoch.edu.au> Bruce Springsteen, who wowed the world with "Born in the USA", has written to explain why he and many other artists will be touring America in October as an umbrella group: "Vote for Change". It's a reminder of what's good, beneath the surface, in the USA -- an America with which it really would be worth retaining a good relationship. The article is at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/opinion/05bruce.html Dion Giles From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Thu Aug 5 18:12:58 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Thu Aug 5 18:13:04 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040806085318.02de9450@central.murdoch.edu.au> There are some good insights in this article, but it is not surprising that -- as Lobe points out -- "On this question [why the neoconservatives wanted war with Iraq] the authors tend to be frustratingly elusive . . ." . Lobe seems to overemphasise ideology as a prime mover and to separate it from economics, but without the backing of the grabbing classes neither the neocons nor their predecessors the Nazis and the Jap warrior caste could ever have amounted to a row of beans. What Lobe seems to be describing is the growing panic when the monster starts to break out of the control of those who created and nurtured it. Lobe gives a good and convincing description despite his weak interpretation. Dion Giles Western Australia At 18:14 05/08/2004, Jonathan wrote: >Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right >by Jim Lobe >http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=3248 > >Why did the Bush administration invade Iraq? From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Thu Aug 5 17:25:17 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Thu Aug 5 18:20:50 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] VCR alert Message-ID: Controversial Political Filmmakers NOW with Bill Moyers t r u t h o u t | Programming Note PBS Airdate: Friday, August 06, 2004 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html) With the national discussion being fueled by one of the most polarizing elections in decades, documentaries like Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," which has broken records for ticket sales, has heightened America's taste for politically charged documentaries, feature films and theater. Can original thinkers at the intersection of art, politics, and truth-telling help us connect the dots between the complicated issues facing the nation? On Friday, August 6, 2004 at 9:00 p.m. on PBS (check local listings) in a special edition of NOW with Bill Moyers, David Brancaccio probes the minds, methods, and motivations of three important artists feeding America's increasing appetite for politics: John Sayles, one of America's most celebrated independent filmmakers whose Silver City, a tale of a corrupt candidate for governor, is due out this Fall; Jehane Noujaim, whose controversial documentary "Control Room" about Al-Jazeera called into question the prevailing images and positions offered up by the U.S. news media about Iraq; and Sarah Jones, activist, playwright and star of "bridge & tunnel," a one-woman show focusing on the realities of America's immigrant experience. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From papadop at peak.org Thu Aug 5 21:11:57 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Thu Aug 5 21:11:58 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] FEC DISMISSES "FAHRENHEIT 9/11" COMPLAINT Message-ID: http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=560266&src=rss/uk/entertainmentNews§ion=news AP --Fri 6 August, 2004 04:36 U.S. PANEL DISMISSES "FAHRENHEIT 9/11" COMPLAINT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A U.S. regulatory agency has dismissed the petition of a conservative advocacy group to bar TV ads for Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" documentary as a breach of federal restrictions on "electioneering" activity. In a unanimous decision made public on Thursday, the Federal Election Commission found no evidence that the movie's ads had broken the law or that distributors of the film intended any violations in the future. The commission said it agreed with the recommendation of its general counsel that the FEC "cannot entertain complaints based upon mere speculation that someone might violate the law." Moore has said he intended for the film, a blistering critique of President George W. Bush and his conduct of the war in Iraq, to help persuade Americans vote against a second term for Bush in November. The group Citizens United filed its complaint against the "Fahrenheit 9/11" ad campaign in June, saying TV spots for the film which then included images and sound clips of Bush would be illegal if aired after July 30. Federal election law prohibits companies and unions from advertising for or against political candidates 60 days before an election and 30 days before a political convention. The distributors argued that the "Fahrenheit 9/11" ads broadcast after July 30 were permissible because they focused on audience and critical reaction to the film, and that no federal candidate for public office is identified. The distributors -- Lions Gate Films, IFC Films and the Fellowship Adventure Group spearheaded by Miramax Films co-chairman Harvey and Bob Weinstein -- issued a statement applauding the FEC ruling. "The distributors feel that this was the correct and proper response under the circumstances, and applaud the commission for its timely and appropriate decision," they said. Citizens United, which had also took part in a failed court challenge against a campaign finance reform law enacted to curb the influence of money in politics, could not be immediately reached for comment. "Fahrenheit 9/11," which won top honours at the Cannes film festival in May, has grossed more than $100 million, making it an unprecedented commercial success for a political documentary. From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Thu Aug 5 19:26:06 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Thu Aug 5 22:12:34 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] {Possible Spam?} Foreigners own half US debt Message-ID: Foreigners own half US debt, tipping point unclear Wed Aug 4, 2004 04:23 PM ET By Laura MacInnis http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=bondsNews&storyID=5874706 WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Data showing foreigners own half the U.S. debt has raised concerns about a possible tipping point for America's reliance on foreign capital, though the U.S. Treasury Department sees little risk from the holdings. A graph in a Treasury Department report this week on borrowing needs showed foreign holdings made up 50 percent of total privately held U.S. public debt, which excludes Federal Reserve holdings, as of May 31. Foreign holdings accounted for just 20 percent of U.S. debt in 1993 but they have swelled in recent years as Asian banks loaded up on U.S. Treasuries, seeking to depress their currencies against the dollar to boost exports. Economists say the influx of offshore capital has helped support the U.S. economy by lowering market interest rates and bridging the country's large budget and trade deficits. Some, however, see the high foreign holdings level as a vulnerability. "It shows you the increased dependence of the U.S. on foreign capital. It certainly is a risk factor going forward," said Stefane Marion, assistant chief economist at National Bank Financial. "It is very difficult to tell at one point we are at the tipping point. But we are getting closer," Marion said. "You would need to see a significant slowing of U.S. economic growth or a sharp deterioration of the productivity outlook in the U.S. to have a significant run on U.S. assets," he said, adding: "so far, so good." With the presidential election less than three months away, the high foreign debt level has also bled into politics. Former President Bill Clinton said last week the Bush administration was borrowing from foreign governments, "mostly Japan and China," to bridge its deficit. "Sure, they're competing with us for good jobs but can we enforce our trade laws against our bankers?," he said in an address to the Democratic National Convention. BUY AND HOLD A Treasury-commissioned panel of investment banking executives concluded that foreign buyers are generally "buy-and-hold" investors and unlikely to sell their securities en masse. "The committee overwhelmingly felt that broad foreign ownership of Treasury securities was beneficial, in that it lowered domestic interest rates," minutes of the Borrowing Advisory Committee meeting released on Wednesday said. "The idea that foreign investors would rapidly 'dump' bonds is not consistent with historical experience and illogical, since it would be detrimental to foreign holders' markets." At a media briefing on Wednesday, Treasury's Acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets Tim Bitsberger said the United States should be more engaged with foreign buyers. "In the same way we try to have an open dialogue with market participants domestically, we at Treasury feel we need to have an open dialogue, as much as we possibly can, with the international holders," Bitsberger said. "We strive to have a broad diversified ownership. What we are trying to do ... is just to make sure to understand their motivations and needs so that the marketplace continues to function as well as it has," he said. Bitsberger also said the Treasury has encouraged foreign holders to be more active in the repurchase market, which would entail lending notes for short periods to help boost liquidity in the overall debt market. Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital Markets, said while the current foreign holdings level is not a problem in and of itself, "you'd like to think it's not going to go too far above 50 (percent)." However, Stanley did not anticipate a run on Treasuries. "Obviously there may come a point in time when foreigners are less willing to hold our debt, but it's not like a light switch that gets turned from on to off," he said. "This happens gradually over time, it happens at different prices ... I don't think there has to be necessarily a single cataclysmic event." Charles Lieberman, chief economist at Advisors Financial, said the current foreign holdings level had ignited debate over how large the portion could become. "I don't think it matters if it's at 50 or 45 or 55. But there are are longer-term trends here that are unsustainable," Lieberman said. "You can't continue to sell your bonds to foreign investors at a higher and higher rate, because at some point they'll own 100 percent. Obviously that's a constraint," he said. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From thinker at uniserve.com Thu Aug 5 22:26:56 2004 From: thinker at uniserve.com (Ed Deak) Date: Thu Aug 5 22:26:46 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Diverse Economy Key to Long-Term Growth In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040805222459.027fade0@pop.uniserve.com> Cripes !!!!! If these clever economists keep on improving their mental capacities with such brilliant ideas, one day they may just reinvent the wheel . But that would be far too logical. Cheers, Ed. =========================================================================================== At 05:19 AM 04/08/2004 -0500, Jonathan Larson wrote: >Diverse Economy Key to Long-Term Growth >By Laza Kekic >http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/08/04/006.html > >Economists have identified a strong, negative empirical link between >long-term economic growth and the share of the economy that originates in >the natural resources sector. Since World War II, not a single natural >resource dependent economy has managed to sustain respectable growth over >several decades in average real GDP per capita. Astonishingly, few such >economies have seen even positive growth. The evidence, though much >disputed, is clear. The causal mechanisms include: vulnerability to >fluctuations in the terms of trade; the Dutch disease of an overvalued >exchange rate; and various institutional pathologies that are associated >with natural resource dependence. > > >The government sees economic diversification as a priority and wants to >shift the relative tax burden onto the energy sector. The multilaterals' >endorsement of this goal is largely rhetorical, however, because key >elements of their advice would serve to perpetuate primary-sector >dependence. The International Monetary Fund's strong advice that the >Central Bank should prioritize inflation reduction and allow stronger >ruble appreciation is clearly inimical to increased diversification. Other >multilaterals have seconded this call for a shift in monetary policy, most >recently the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in its >review of the economy published in early July. > > >The OECD, a club of 30 wealthy nations including the United States and >Britain but not Russia, argues that Russian growth over the medium term >will inevitably depend on the natural resources sector and that >policymakers should accept this fact. To underpin its case, the OECD >downplays the role that high oil prices play in Russia's strong economic >recovery. Instead, the OECD emphasizes -- in part on the basis of a highly >dubious growth-accounting exercise -- the role of allegedly oil >price-insensitive efficiency improvements, especially in the private oil >sector. If this were correct, and Russian growth were insensitive to the >level of oil prices, then the inevitable decline in international oil >prices would have far less of an impact on growth than is usually supposed. > >The OECD accepts that Russian growth is sensitive to changes in oil >prices, but argues that growth is not -- or is only very weakly -- >dependent on the level of oil prices. The distinction is not esoteric. It >is of fundamental significance for future prospects. For example, Russian >growth next year should fall as a result of a likely sharp fall in the >average oil price from the high 2004 average. If oil prices more or less >stabilize at a permanently lower level, however, there is nothing as such >that affects subsequent output growth. > >The OECD accepts that growth is sensitive to the price of oil only at very >low price levels that render oil production completely unprofitable. But >this relationship operates along a continuum. The empirical link between >levels of oil prices and output dynamics in Russia has been extremely >strong for the last decade. It is not difficult to trace some of the >channels through which oil price levels have most likely affected growth. >High oil prices have facilitated improved fiscal policy, which is >emphasized by the OECD as a prime source of improved economic performance >since 1998, and not merely through the direct effect of oil prices on >budget revenue. High prices offset high-risk premiums and encouraged >measures to extract more oil from the ground; removed any >balance-of-payments constraint on growth; and facilitated sharp reductions >in external debt (the OECD itself appeals to recent evidence that links >growth to debt/GDP levels). > > The OECD concludes that high oil prices accounted at most for only one > percentage point of the average annual real GDP growth since 2000 of 6.8 > percent. It is not clear exactly how the OECD arrives at such a modest > estimate. Furthermore, the organization compares the outcome under actual > prices since 2000 to estimated outcomes under a $19 long-term average > price for Urals Blend, not the much lower $17 average price in the four > to five years before 2000 -- arguably a more appropriate counterfactual. > The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates that the contribution of high > oil prices to growth after 2000 was 2 to 3 percentage points, depending > on which of the counterfactual price assumptions is used. This is in line > with other estimates. > >It would be one thing to argue for a strategy to favor the oil sector if >present prices persisted for some time. But prices will fall fairly soon, >and since growth is linked to oil price levels, the opportunity cost of a >slow rate of diversification is far higher than the OECD allows. > >All the multilaterals agree that Russia needs a prudent fiscal policy, >tighter than in other circumstances. The government thus needs to aim for >a large fiscal stabilization fund and spurn the temptation to engage in >possibly pro-cyclical spending of budgetary receipts even after the fund >is filled to the currently targeted level. While the role of fiscal >rectitude in Russia's circumstances is obvious, there are some clear >trade-offs in an assessment of the balance of risk and potential reward. > > The OECD points to the serious degradation of human capital: the > declining health of the population (a paradox as this is getting worse > despite recent growth). One could also add deteriorating education and > technological capacity, which will stymie hopes of long-term growth. > > Thus it is not at all clear that the recommended degree of fiscal > tightening, which would preclude heavy spending on health, education and > infrastructure, is the best policy. The multilaterals are also ambivalent > toward proposed heavier taxation of the natural resources sector combined > with tax cuts for other sectors. There are strong warnings that raising > the tax burden will endanger the role of the energy sector as the driver > of growth. > >Another argument invoked to support a policy that favors the natural >resources sector is the threat of a balance-of-payments constraint. Export >growth will depend on growth in energy and metals exports over the medium >term. Import growth projections depend in part, however, on assumed strong >real appreciation. Second, even at much lower oil prices, and assuming >only modest export growth, it would be some years before Russia's current >account surplus disappears. And it would take even longer for any >balance-of-payments crunch to occur, given reduced external debt service >and increasing levels of foreign direct investment. > >The OECD notes the political economy implications of resource dependence: >the institutional pathologies, such as greater inequality of incomes, >corruption and a bias toward rent-seeking over entrepreneurship. > > The recommendations on how to deal with this are circular -- it is said > that Russia needs a noncorrupt state apparatus to tax fairly and > efficiently -- and/or amount to mere exhortation to promote transparency > and the rule of law. > > For the multilaterals diversification is a worthy aim, but one to be > postponed for the long term. The government should in the meantime > gradually lay some of the groundwork through institutional improvements. > Time optimization problems are not recognized, and in key policy areas > the advice is skewed to ensure continued natural resource dominance. > > Long-term growth in Russia will not be achieved on the basis of natural > resource dependency. In the context of falling oil prices, medium-term > growth will be seriously constrained. The state's present apparent > dominance over vested interests may be fleeting. The government should > seize the present opportunity to pursue policies that maximize the > chances (which are uncertain at best) of diversification: prioritizing > the exchange rate in monetary policy; use of oil windfalls to increase > spending on health and education; measures to reduce industrial > concentration levels; and curbing the power of vested interests in the > natural resources sector. > > Not for the first time during its transition, Russia would be very > foolish to follow the multilaterals' advice. > >Laza Kekic, director for Central and Eastern Europe at the Economist >Intelligence Unit, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times. > > >-- >------------------ > >warmest regards > >Jonathan > >web site at: > >http://elegant-technology.com >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Fri Aug 6 04:25:49 2004 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Fri Aug 6 04:53:44 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] TWN Comment on WTO July Package by Martin Kohr Aug 4 [a few gains + lost ground in other areas for developing countries] Message-ID: <4113408D.8671.1409B9B7@localhost> ------- Forwarded message follows ------- To: From: "Martin Khor" Date sent: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 09:33:26 +0800 Subject: [StopWTORound] TWN Comment on WTO July Package TWN Info Service on WTO Issues (Aug04/1) 6 August 2004 Third World Network www.twnside.org.sg Dear friends and colleagues, PRELIMINARY COMMENTS ON THE WTO?S JULY DECISION AND PROCESS As you know, the WTO?s General Council adopted a Decision on the night of 31 July after several days of informal consultations and Green Room meetings. The Decision contains a main document of three pages together with four annexes: Annex A (on agriculture), Annex B (on market access for non-agricultural products or NAMA), Annex C on Services and Annex D on trade facilitation. The Decision involved several issues, including the establishment of Frameworks for modalities in agriculture and non-agriculture market access (NAMA), recommendations for continuing with services negotiations, modalities for negotiations on trade facilitation, the other three Singapore issues, the ?development issues? (special and differential treatment and implementation issues) and the cotton issue. Below is a Preliminary Comment on the WTO?s July Decision, written by myself, which we hope you will find useful. Comments from you on this paper would be most welcome. With best wishes, Martin Khor TWN ------------------------------------------------------------------ PRELIMINARY COMMENTS ON THE WTO?S GENEVA JULY DECISION By Martin Khor, Third World Network, 4 August 2004 A. INTRODUCTION Agreement was reached on 1 August night at the World Trade Organisation in Geneva on the ?July package? after a week of intense meetings. The WTO adopted frameworks for how to move ahead on trade in agriculture and non-agriculture market access (NAMA, involving mainly industrial goods), and on the so-called Singapore issues, services, and the ?development issues?. They will be the basis for the next stage of negotiations. In agriculture and NAMA, the next phase will focus on finalizing ?modalities? (principles and figures, for example on how much to reduce tariffs). The negotiations are under the work programme agreed to at the WTO?s Ministerial meeting at Doha in 2001. A first reading of the results shows a few significant gains for the developing countries, but this is more than offset in other areas where they have also lost ground. Also, the meeting and its outcome again showed up how the WTO?s decision-making process is generally controlled by the big countries and how developing countries? positions are generally not properly reflected. At a press conference, the WTO?s Director General Supachai Panitchpakdi said the WTO had now achieved what it failed to do in Cancun last September (when the Ministerial conference ended without any decision). ?Multilateralism has made a minor triumph,? he said, adding that some people had predicted that the Geneva meeting would be another Cancun. ?This agreement has strengthened belief in the multilateral trading system.? The fear of being blamed for another Cancun-like collapse caused many developing countries to be extra cautious and to eventually accept a deal of which they had been critical. When the first draft came out on 16 July, it was severely criticized by many developing countries. The second draft on 30 July was also criticized. Some, but only some, of the concerns were dealt with, and some of the countries decided to compromise and ?live with the text? for fear they would be blamed if another WTO meeting failed, and the system were to suffer another blow. Besides the ?fear of blame? factor, different groups of developing countries also felt they were getting at least a minimum of what they were seeking, even as they had to give up ground in other areas. There was also a serious lack of time for the developing countries to seriously consider the drafts and the final text, and the absence of Ministers of most developing countries also meant that immediate political decisions were difficult to take. In contrast, the Ministers of most of the developed countries were present at the WTO or in Geneva. ?Although this was meant to be a General Council meeting, it took on the atmosphere of a Mini-Ministerial with decision-making powers, and most of our Ministers were not present? said a leading developing-country diplomat. B. A FEW SIGNIFICANT GAINS There were two significant gains from the Geneva meeting for developing countries in general: a commitment to eliminate export subsidies, and the placing of three ?Singapore issues? outside the negotiating agenda of the Doha work programme. B1. Commitment to eliminate export subsidies The developed countries agreed in principle to eliminate agricultural export subsidies. Export credits, export credit guarantees or insurance programmes with repayment periods beyond 180 days will also be eliminated and those of 180 days and below will be disciplined. Thus, for the first time, elimination of export subsidies has been committed. When it takes place, this will get rid of some of the most trade distorting of the rich countries? subsidies that have enabled the dumping of rich-country agriculture exports (including to the South) and unfairly kept out the developing countries? farm products. However, the July package has not fixed an end date or a road-map for this elimination, so what will really happen here (and when) remains to be seen. However, there were also some unsatisfactory results in other parts of the agriculture decision (See Section C2).. B2. Three Singapore issues put on the back burner Secondly, three of the unpopular ?Singapore issues? (investment, competition, and transparency in government procurement) have now been dropped from the WTO?s negotiating agenda, at least during the period of the Doha programme. Developing countries had opposed these issues which they believed would interfere with their national policies and hinder their economic development. The attempts by the rich countries to set up new agreements on these issues had generated heated controversy for years and was a major factor in derailing the Cancun meeting. The decision says ?no work towards negotiations on any of these issues will take place within the WTO during the Doha Round.? It has thus left it vague as to whether discussions (as contrasted to negotiations) would continue even now at the WTO, through a revival of a study process in the working groups. It has also left open the possibility of their making a comeback as negotiating topics after the Doha programme is finished. However, doing away with negotiations on these issues for the time being is a big relief for developing countries, and also a significant gain, since it had seemed that the battle was almost lost at the Doha Ministerial of 2001 which mandated the launching of negotiations on four Singapore issues, on the basis of explicit consensus on the modalities of negotiations. Although the three issues have been put on the back burner, the developing countries had to make the concession of agreeing to launch negotiations on the remaining Singapore issue, i.e. trade facilitation (see below). C. MAJOR LOSSES, AND SOME NEGATIVE OUTCOMES Against these positive developments were some major setbacks and other negative outcomes for the developing countries C1. Unfair adoption of a damaging NAMA framework By far the worst decision was the adoption of a framework on NAMA (trade mainly in industrial goods), which could worsen the threat in many developing countries of cheap industrial imports overwhelming local goods and industries. There are at least three elements of the NAMA framework (contained in Annex B) that will have serious negative effects on development. First, it advocates a ?non-linear? formula which is aggressive for its sharply reducing tariffs, and with steeper cuts for higher tariffs. For example, under a variation of this formula, a 40% tariff on a product would have to be reduced to 7%. Many developing countries have relatively high bound industrial tariffs to protect their local industries, and thus they will be much harder hit. In the history of GATT and WTO, the developing countries have never had to come under a ?formula approach?, let alone an aggressive non- linear formula, not even during the Uruguay Round. Given the above, it will be crucial when the negotiations continue that the developing countries prepare their case on the type of approach or formula and the parameters that are more appropriate for them, in order to avoid the more damaging situation. Second, it calls developing countries to give up the WTO?s present flexibilities for countries to choose how many of their industrial products? tariffs they would like to bind and at what rate. The July decision advocates at least 95% of their tariff lines will have to be bound, many at very low rates. The reason is that to calculate the new bound rates, the applied tariff rates of the presently unbound products will be taken and multiplied by two (this figure is mentioned within brackets) and then subjected to the harsh non-linear formula. The new bound rates could end up significantly lower than the present applied rates. There would also, in these cases, no longer be a gap (as now exists) between applied and bound rates, and thus the developing countries would lose having a ?safety zone? where they can choose to raise the applied rates towards the bound rate in the event of serious difficulties arising from import competition. As many developing countries have low applied rates for many products (as a result of structural adjustment loan conditionalities), the result of the NAMA exercise may be to depress the industrial tariffs (both bound and applied) of developing countries to unbearably low levels. Third, there is a ?sectoral tariff component? in which many sectors (an earlier draft mentioned seven) would be slated for fast-track total elimination of tariffs. The text says participation by all will be important, implying the sectoral component could be compulsory. If sectors are selected that are important in a developing country?s domestic production, then the risks to its domestic industries will be heightened. If the negotiations that follow are not handled properly, and these measures are accepted, they could threaten the share and the very survival of many local firms and industries in developing countries. They may not be able to compete with imports if tariffs are brought to zero or to low levels. Many developing countries (in Africa, Latin America and the Carribean) have already suffered from a de- industrialisation process as cheap imports overwhelmed the local firms as a result of rapid liberalization under structural adjustment. Most developing countries (especially from Africa and the Carribean) had opposed the Annex for many months, as it had been recycled from the same NAMA draft (known as the Derbez text) presented at the Cancun Ministerial of September 2003. It had been criticized at Cancun and in the post-Cancun period. Many developing countries had submitted their own proposals for a NAMA framework, which were radically different from the Derbez text. The African, Carribean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the LDC Group (in their G90 Ministerial meeting on 12 July) had criticized the Derbez text on NAMA for its potential of causing deindustrialization, unemployment and poverty in their countries. They protested against the plan to include this text, unchanged, into the July package. Many developing countries were thus outraged that the Derbez text popped up again unmodified in the first July package draft of 16 July. The African Group proposed amendments to Annex B. But any amendment to the text was said to be unacceptable to the developed countries. At one stage, it looked as if the Geneva meeting would collapse on the NAMA issue. Negotiations then focused on a ?vehicle? or explanatory paragraph that would state that more negotiations would be needed on some elements of Annex B. The location and thus legal status of this ?vehicle? became a subject of controversy. In the end, the developing countries agreed to accept the disputed Annex with no modification, except that it be prefaced with a first paragraph explaining that the Annex contains ?the initial elements? for future work, and that ?additional negotiations are required to reach agreement on the specifics of some of these elements.? These relate to the formula, treatment of unbound tariffs, flexibilities for developing countries, participation in the sectoral component, and preferences. This paragraph has given the developing countries a space from where to continue to battle for a better framework. But since the Derbez text forms the rest of Annex B, and will be the basis for negotiations, it will be an uphill task for the developing countries to put forward their own versions of modalities that are suited to their industrial development. The unjust process of placing an unagreed and contentious text as the framework, and then asking countries to work with it as the basis, has placed the developing countries at a grave and unfair disadvantage. It will be an uphill battle for them to limit the damage, and a more than Herculean task to succeed in putting in place an alternative set of modalities. Thus, the July decision on NAMA is extremely damaging to development and poses a grave danger to the survival of industries in many developing countries. Much work has to be done to at least limit the more damaging aspects of the framework in the post-July negotiations. [Also see comments on the NAMA decision-making process in Section D]. C2. Agriculture As pointed out in Section B, a positive point in the agriculture framework (in Annex A) is the commitment to end export subsidies and to tighten disciplines on other forms of export subsidization. However, the all-important end date will be fixed later. And the positive effects in this area could be offset if subsidies in the other pillar, domestic support, is not adequately curbed or is allowed to increase. And small farmers in developing countries could be further hurt if the parameters in the market access pillar mandates further tariff reductions for imports competing with their products. In this context, the outcome in the domestic support and market access pillars was unsatisfactory and potentially damaging. A loud complaint from developing countries during the week?s negotiations was the double standards that emerged in the texts. The developed countries had their way when relatively new concepts or issues (an expanded blue box, and sensitive products) important to their interests were fast-tracked into the text, whereas the developing countries? long-standing problems (cheap imports overwhelming their farmers) and their demands for instruments to deal with these (special products or SP and special safeguard mechanism or SSM) made relatively little or no headway. Domestic Support: The developed countries, especially the US, pushed for a change in WTO rules to allow them to use new kinds of domestic farm subsidies categorized under the ?Blue Box? (in WTO jargon). Subsidies under the Green Box do not have to be reduced, unlike those in the Amber Box, and up to now there is also no reduction required of the Blue Box. The US has some types of subsidies, particularly counter-cyclical direct payment to farms under its Farm Bill, which it would like to transfer to the Blue Box, so that they can be maintained at the scheduled levels. The attempt to ?expand? the Blue Box to incorporate these types of subsidies (which otherwise would have to be disciplined) lay behind the proposals. The developing countries were generally against the expansion of the Blue Box which they believed would be a loophole, allowing subsidies to shift from box to box, and thus enabling the developed countries to maintain their high domestic subsidies or even increase their overall level (as happened after the Uruguay Round), thus making a mockery of the often-stated WTO aim of domestic support reduction. This issue split the meeting and also threatened to derail it. To break the impasse, it was agreed that Article 6.5 on the blue box would be reviewed so that members may have recourse to direct payments, with indications that these will include new criteria that would allow for new kinds of subsidies within it. The text does say that the criteria ?will be negotiated? and will have to be less trade- distorting than the Amber Box. But the text seems to pave the way for the kind of counter-cyclical payments of the US to be eventually accommodated. The Blue Box support will also not exceed 5% of agricultural production value of a period to be established. Since the US has presently no blue box subsidies, it can increase up to the 5% level. The EU makes significant use of the blue box subsidies, above the proposed 5% limit, but has already planned to transfer a large part of these to the Green Box, and therefore should be able, without pain, to reduce to meet the target. The Green Box is already the category in which the US puts most of its domestic support, and the EU is in the process of transferring much of its domestic support to the Green Box as well. Although this Green Box is said to be not (or minimally) trade distorting, it is increasingly realized that Green Box subsidies can also distort by boosting farm revenues and assisting farms to remain in business, which would otherwise not be in business. The Geneva package does not place a cap on these subsidies, nor include a reduction commitment. It only says the Green Box criteria will be reviewed and clarified to ensure they have no or minimal trade distorting effects. In fact, such a review should lead to action to discipline and reduce Green Box subsidies, but there is no mention in the text for such action to be taken or contemplated. The Geneva decision thus allows a big loophole, for domestic subsidies to be expanded under the Green Box, even if other subsidies are reduced. Overall, the domestic support can thus still increase. The decision also obliges members to reduce their de minimis domestic support. At present, 5% (for developed countries) and 10% (for developing countries) of the value of production is exempted from reduction of domestic support, under the de minimis provision. A battle was fought by developing countries to have exemption from this reduction in the Geneva decision. They rightly argue that they do not have huge subsidies (unlike the developed countries) and yet they are bound not to increase their presently low levels of domestic subsidies; for many of these countries, they can only increase their Amber Box subsidies in future through the use of the de minimis up to the permitted level. If the permitted level were to be reduced, that would limit their possible use of domestic subsidies further. Thus, it is only fair that they should not have to reduce their de minimis support. But some of the developed countries were adamant in not giving the developing countries such blanket exemption from reduction. In the end, only developing countries that allocate ?almost all de minimis support for subsistence and resource-poor farmers will be exempt.? This restrictive language may mean that several developing countries that do allocate a lot but not ?almost all? their subsidies to poor farmers would have to reduce the level of their permitted de minimis support. The Geneva decision also calls for substantial reduction in the overall level of trade-distorting domestic support from bound levels. The final bound total AMS and permitted de minimis levels will be substantially reduced; and the Blue Box will be capped (i.e. will not exceed 5% of agricultural production). [The AMS or aggregate measurement of support is the amount of domestic support considered trade-distorting and subject to reduction commitment; usually termed the Amber Box]. The overall base level of all trade- distorting domestic support will be reduced according to a tiered formula, in which members with higher support will make greater overall reduction. As a first installment of overall cut, in the first year (and throughout), the sum of all trade-distorting support will not exceed 80% of the sum of final bound total AMS plus permitted de minimis plus Blue Box (at the para 15 level, i.e. 5% level). This, on the surface, may appear to be moving in the direction of the Doha principle of ?substantial reductions in trade-distorting domestic support.? However, as some commentators have pointed out, the devil is in the details of this complex decision on domestic support. The overall base level of all trade-distorting support, on which calculations for reduction will be based, is to be measured by a combination of bound/permitted and existing levels of support. Whether or not the exercise will result in actual substantial reductions in each item and overall will depend on many factors, such as the difference between the bound or permitted level and the existing level, the choice of using bound/permitted or existing levels as the base level from where required reductions are calculated; the choice of base period; etc. The result may also be different for different countries. Given these factors, some commentators doubt that there will be genuine reductions (or significant reductions) in existing levels beyond what exists or what is already planned by some of the developed countries. Moreover, many developed countries (eg the EU) are already in the process of shifting a lot or much of their domestic support to the Green Box, and thus are prepared to reduce their support in other boxes. A key follow-up question would thus be whether there will be adequate disciplines in the Green Box as well as action (such as capping and reduction). The Geneva decision does not require capping or reduction of the Green Box. The Green Box subsidies could thus be increased thus offsetting the decrease in other categories of domestic subsidies, and resulting in little or no overall reduction in domestic support (or possibly even a net increase). The Geneva decision therefore is no guarantee that the eventual result is a substantial tial decline in domestic support overall and actually allows continued flexibility, especially through the undisciplined Green Box. The loophole of the Green Box was left in the WTO Agreement in Marrakesh perhaps because the implications were not clear to the developing countries at that time. Now, however, the serious implications are more clear. Even then this potentially wide loophole has not been closed, and that is a matter for worry in future. The task in future negotiations therefore is to make the criteria so clear and enforceable that the loophole is blocked. Market Access: The developed countries succeeded to have ?an appropriate? number of their heavily protected farm goods categorized as ?sensitive products? which would enjoy special treatment in relation to the standard tariff-cutting formula. This concept of ?sensitive products? made a sudden appearance in the text just a fortnight before, without its having been extensively discussed. Thus, developed countries are given some significant protection for their high-tariff products. [Although the ?sensitive products? category can be used by all members and thus by developing countries as well, it is understood that this category was devised for the developed countries which are unable to make use of the special products category, which falls under special and differential treatment for developing countries]. There is concern by that the ?sensitive products? concept would continue to prevent or limit market access of developing-country agricultural exports and potential exports to the developed-country markets. In contrast, the developing countries have been pushing for years for a decision that farm products on which their food security, farmers? livelihoods or rural development depend should be exempted from further tariff reduction. The Geneva decision states that developing countries will have the flexibility to designate an appropriate number of products as Special Products, based on criteria of food security, livelihood security and rural development needs, and these products are eligible for ?more flexible treatment.? The criteria and treatment will be specified during the negotiations. In the Green Room, Indonesia (the coordinator of the G33) had a hard time insisting on removing the words ?under conditions to be agreed in the negotiations? which had been placed after ?flexibility to designate?. This was opposed especially by the US; but Indonesia finally succeeded. Although these ?special products? received slightly better recognition after the Geneva meeting, the exemption from tariff reduction that the G33 asked for is still not provided. Moreover, in a major step backwards, the statement in the first Geneva draft of 16 July, that ?there will be no requirement to expand tariff rate quotas on SP products?, has been removed, implying that SPs will also be subjected to TRQ expansion. The paragraph on Special Products is thus weak, but from here the battle will have to continue for protection of small farmers in developing countries. There will be tough talks ahead on how to define these products, what special treatment they will get, etc. The decision also states that a special safeguard mechanism will be established for use by developing countries. A good development is that the qualifying phrase in the 16 July text, ?under conditions to be agreed?, has been removed. The Geneva decision has agreed to a ?single approach? for developed and developing countries of a ?tiered formula? for tariff reductions, with ?deeper cuts in higher tariffs, with flexibilities for sensitive products.? There will be special and differential treatment for developing countries, but they (other than LDCs which are exempted) will be subjected to the tiered formula. The number of bands, thresholds for defining the bands and type of tariff reduction in each band, will be negotiated. Though not mentioned in the Geneva decision, it is understood that the tiered approach will have a number of bands, with each band specifying the tariff range (e.g. 1- 10%, 11-30%, 31-50% etc), and presumably the bands with higher tariffs will be subjected to deeper cuts. What kind of formula to use within each band is to be discussed. It is clear that with this kind of ?tiered approach?, there will be much less flexibility for developing countries than in the Uruguay Round approach (which had a guideline for developing countries of an overall average reduction of 24% and a minimum reduction of 10% in each tariff line). For developing countries, generally, tariffs will have to be reduced and probably by more than during the Uruguay Round; and especially affected would be the products with higher tariffs. The grave and growing concerns that import liberalization has led to a significant increase in import surges, displacement of local farm products and great difficulties for small farmers in developing countries, has not been addressed in the Geneva decision on market access, which through its ?tiered formula? instead increases the level of these concerns. It remains to be seen, in the negotiations, whether the worsening of the situation can be partially offset through the special products and SSM mechanisms, and to what extent. C3. Cotton Another negative development was the poor outcome on the cotton issue at the meeting. Cotton-producing West African countries, backed by the Africa Group and ACP Group, have highlighted their plight, on how billions of dollars of cotton subsidies (mainly in the US) have hampered their own cotton production and trade, affecting the incomes and lives of many thousands of African farmers. The countries had been persuaded to give up their original demand that cotton be treated as a stand-alone issue and agreed that it could be treated within the agriculture negotiations. However they had maintained their key positions, that within the agriculture negotiations, cotton be given a special status, with its own measures and time-table so that it would not merely be subjected to what happens generally in agriculture. . The Africa Group put forward its proposal at the heads-of-delegation meeting of 19 July, that included the following measures: all forms of cotton export subsidies are eliminated by date of implementation of the Doha results; more than average reductions in domestic support on cotton, and complete elimination of all forms of trade distorting support on cotton by a specific year; a cotton agreement shall be implemented on an early harvest basis starting in 2005, and a date for total elimination of cotton subsidies shall be determined by the next Ministerial irrespective of progress in the rest of agriculture negotiations; technical and financial assistance to meet the needs of cotton developing-country producers; a working group on cotton to be established. During the Geneva week, USTR Bob Zoellick held a marathon all-night 12-hour meeting with some of the West African countries on the cotton issue.. Eventually, the specific proposals for special treatment for cotton, aimed at eliminating cotton subsidies on a fast-track basis, were not included in the text. In the main text, there is only a general reaffirmation of the importance of the cotton initiative, the importance of the development aspects and the complementarity between the trade and development aspects. In Annex A on agriculture, a paragraph on cotton states it will be addressed ?ambitiously, expeditiously and specifically, within the agriculture negotiations? and that the agriculture special session will ensure ?appropriate ?prioritization? of the cotton issue independently from other sectoral initiatives. A subcommittee on cotton will meet periodically and report to the agriculture special session to review progress, and work will encompass trade-distorting policies affecting the sector in all three pillars as specified in the Doha text and this Framework text. >From this, it would appear that the cotton issue is meant to be dealt with within the framework and parameters of the Doha mandate and the Geneva decision. Although there is mention of ?prioritization? of the cotton issue from other sectoral initiatives, it should be noted that there are no other sectoral initiatives (at least at present) and there is no specific mention that there will be prioritization as against other aspects of the agriculture negotiations, or prioritization in terms of higher commitments to eliminate cotton subsidies at a faster rate and speed than generally, or that there be a separate time table than the general one. Thus there does not appear to be a commitment to any effective special or specific treatment for cotton in the text. However, the text does provide special mention of the cotton issue, and thus give a handle to the proponents of the ?cotton initiative? to continue to pursue their cause. It remains to be seen to what extent the issue will be kept alive through the cotton subcommittee, and by the efforts that the developing-country cotton producing countries may continue to exert. C4. Trade facilitation There was a decision to launch negotiations on ?trade facilitation?, one of the four Singapore issues. Such a launch had been opposed by most of the developing countries at the Cancun Ministerial meeting, and for a long period after Cancun many of them had maintained their reluctance for launching negotiations, preferring to continue to clarify the issues and work on the modalities. Among the points raised by developing countries (including the African and ACP Ministers at their meetings) were the fear that there would be high costs of implementation, the need for assurance that such costs would be met by financial assistance from developed countries, and the issue of whether it is appropriate to involve the WTO dispute settlement system (as non-binding guidelines may be more suitable). The developing countries that had such strong reservations made a concession at the Geneva meeting to agree to the launch of negotiations, after they came to agreement on modalities (in Annex D) which incorporated several of their main points. Para 4 states that members shall address the concerns of developing countries and LDCs related to the cost implications of proposed measures. Para 6 says that support and assistance should be provided to help developing countries implement the commitments. The text recognizes that commitments may also involve infrastructure development, and developed countries will make every effort to provide assistance; where the required assistance is not forthcoming, implementation will not be required. LDCs are required to undertake commitments to the extent consistent with their individual needs and capabilities. C4. Services Services is dealt with by a separate sentence in the main text and an Annex. The main text, besides adopting the Annex, states that revised offers should be tabled by May 2005. It was reported that this deadline was proposed at the end of the Green Room meetings by the US and EU when participants were leaving or about to leave, and there was no adequate opportunity to discuss it. During the final heads-of-delegation session, some developing countries, which were concerned about the extra pressure generated by the deadline, reportedly expressed reservation on this deadline, questioning how it was set and its appropriateness.. Annex C contains the recommendations of the Services Council, which among other things states that members who have not yet submitted their initial offers must do so as soon as possible; a date for submitting revised offers should be established (it now has been); that members shall strive to ensure a high quality of offers, especially in sectors and modes of supply of export interest to developing countries; and that members shall aim to achieve progressively higher levels of liberalisation with no a priori exclusion of any service sector or mode of supply and shall give special attention to sectors and modes of supply of export interest to developing countries, noting mode 4. The decision on the deadline for revised offers places heavy pressure on developing countries to submit commitments on opening up their services markets, which many are reluctant to. The deadline is also very stringent, given that many countries have yet to submit even their initial offers, and also given that the original deadlines for resolving the development issues (SDT and implementation) were set for far earlier than the services deadlines. Yet the deadlines for development have passed without results and new deadlines on development issues have now been set for the same months or later than the revised offers for services. Thus the pressures for meeting commitments for services have become even far heavier than those for development issues. C5. ? Development issues? On the ?development issues? (special and differential treatment for developing countries and issues relating to implementation of WTO agreements), the Geneva meeting again failed to agree on concrete measures to strengthen existing SDT measures or to provide new measures; or to take decisions on resolving specific problems of implementation of the existing WTO rules. The Geneva decision only sets new deadlines (since the old deadlines have long past) for the issues to be considered and for reports on these issues to be submitted. On SDT, the Committee on Trade and Development is asked to complete its review of all outstanding agreement-specific proposals and report by July 2005; all other outstanding work will be reported ?as appropriate?; and all WTO bodies dealing with Category II proposals are to report to the Council by July 2005. On implementation, the Director General is requested to continue with his consultative process and report to the Trade Negotiating Committee and General Council by May 2005 for a Council decision by July 2005. In fact the Geneva meeting marked another sad step in the steady decline in status and action on these ?development issues?. There has been hardly any concrete results on them. The Doha Declaration had accorded priority status for these issues, and deadlines for results on them were also given priority status. But now there are far behind the deadlines, whilst progress in other areas has been faster. When the Doha negotiations were launched in 2001, it was with a lot of rhetoric on the need to put developing countries? interests at the center. The resolution of the SDT and implementation issues was in turn at the centre of development issues, and was to be the test of the seriousness with which development is pursued in the Doha work programme. Sadly, the negative aspects far outweighed the positive developments at the Geneva meeting last week. And thus development remains rhetoric, whilst some of the new decisions (especially on industrial tariffs) are potentially threatening to development prospects. D. DECISION-MAKING PROCESS The Geneva process again showed up the WTO?s unsatisfactory and flawed decision-making process. The draft texts were issued very late, giving little or no time for delegations to study them, send them back to capitals for instructions, and to respond adequately to them. The first draft came out only on 16 July, giving little time for the process of response, consultations within the country delegation and within groupings. The meeting started on 27 July and was supposed to end on 29 or 30 July. The first revised appeared only on 30 July morning, and a heads of delegation informal meeting was held at 10am the same day to discuss it, giving delegations hardly any time to study it properly or to consult their capitals, or to propose changes. The final draft of 31 July came out in the afternoon and a meeting to adopt it was held that night itself. The extremely rushed circumstances placed the developing countries at great disadvantage, especially those with few personnel and with no access to the Green Rooms and informal consultations. The lack of time for the developing countries to seriously consider the drafts and the final text, and the absence of Ministers of most developing countries also meant that immediate political decisions were difficult for them to take. Key decisions were made by a few countries. In particular, the ?five interested parties? or the FIP (comprising US, EU, Brazil, India, Australia) spent time among themselves for a long period during the week, and every other delegation was left waiting for news and for the results. There were bitter complaints from developing countries and even from developed countries like Switzerland and Canada for being left out of the main agriculture talks, and thus of being put in a position where they were pressurized (including by time if not anything else) to accept the main decisions of the FIP meeting, with only some minor changes possible. Developing countries in general came under pressure to accept a package, even if it was not to their liking, under the fear that if they objected to any part of it, they would most likely carry the blame for the collapse of the talks and for striking a blow to the multilateral trading system. An atmosphere had been generated for weeks, including through some articles in major mainstream Western media, that the position of some groups of developing countries could threaten the Geneva talks and that a collapse would hurt the poorer developing countries more than any others. Besides the ?fear of blame? factor, different groups of developing countries also felt they were getting at least a minimum of what they were seeking, which made the final text more acceptable. Most developing countries were, however, very dissatisfied with the outcome on NAMA. The most obvious form of pressure and unfair process was over the text on NAMA. The NAMA Annex, much liked by the developed countries, had been rejected by many developing countries in its earlier form before Cancun, and then when it became the Derbez text it had been opposed in Cancun and after Cancun. Many developing countries insisted that at best it could be one of the main documents used as a reference point in the negotiations, whilst other proposals (especially those from the developing countries) should also be referred to in the negotiations. Yet the Derbez text was included unchanged as the NAMA Annex. The Africa Group protested against the decision to do so when the Chairman of the NAMA negotiations indicated his intention in early July and the African, ACP and G90 Ministers proclaimed themselves against it in May and July in their various conference declarations. And yet a decision was made by the NAMA chair, the General Council chair and the Director General to incorporate this disputed text in the overall July package as the Annex on NAMA. The only concession the developed countries were willing to make was to create a ?vehicle? to indicate that further negotiations are required on some aspects of the Annex, and after another big battle it was agreed to place the ?vehicle? in the body of the Annex. It is incredible how such an important text as a Framework for modalities on such an important subject as NAMA could be adopted without any changes whatsoever, even though its most important elements had been opposed by so many members; and that many members who object to it find themselves in a situation where they had to agree to adopting it, with only an inadequate ?chapeaux? or paragraph 1 to indicate that they can re-open some aspects of it, and with no guarantee that the re-opening can be to an adequate extent. It is improbable that the NAMA Annex would have been adopted if there had been a fairer decision-making process. The manner in which the Chairman of the NAMA negotiations put the annex in the text (thus placing the developing countries in an extremely vulnerable position during the negotiations) shows in a stark way how unfairly the WTO negotiating process functions at present. Also, the fact that the developing countries did not reject the NAMA text outright shows their weakness in the WTO system. The Green Room meetings again brought up renewed charges of lack of transparency and questions about representativeness. It was never announced to the members that there would be exclusionary Green Room meetings to go through the draft and decide the final text. It was not made known who were invited, and on what basis. There was an additional complication in that this was a General Council meeting, where the main players were supposed to be Ambassadors, and the WTO leadership made known that it was not necessary or advisable for delegations to ask their Ministers to come. Yet Ministers from almost all the developed countries came (either to the WTO or at least to Geneva). In the end, the USTR and the European Trade Commissioner played the most active roles in the outcome. In contrast, Ministers from only a few developing countries came. Prominent among them were the Brazil and India Ministers who played important roles in the agriculture negotiations. But the absence of Ministers of most developing countries meant that immediate political decisions were difficult for these countries to take. ?Although this was meant to be a General Council meeting, it took on the atmosphere of a Mini-Ministerial with decision-making powers, and most of our Ministers were not present? said a leading developing-country diplomat. As almost all of the meetings conducted during the week were ?informal?, there will be no records of what ?informal consultations? or Green Room meetings were held, and who took part or said what there, or what delegations said even at the heads of delegation meetings to which all delegations were invited. The General Council suspended its meeting on 27 July when it came to the agenda item on these Doha negotiations, and it convened again officially only on the night of 30 August to adopt the decision and hear concluding speeches. Finally, the already inadequate access that civil society groups have to WTO meetings was reduced even further during the week of the Geneva process. The limitation was even stricter than during Ministerial conferences, during which many hundreds of civil society groups were accredited to be within the conference premises, attended the formal opening and closing plenary sessions (although not the closing plenary at Cancun) and were able to conduct activities. Access, attendance of meetings and conduct of activities were not available in the Geneva process, which was thus shrouded away from the public. From papadop at peak.org Fri Aug 6 04:54:38 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Fri Aug 6 04:54:43 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] US "OPENS UP" GUANTANAMO TRIBUNALS Message-ID: "He was handcuffed and his feet were shackled to the floor. He wore the normal orange prisoner clothing. All I can say in terms of identification is that he was a 31-year-old Afghan," our correspondent reports. ============= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3539896.stm BBC: Friday, 6 August, 2004, 00:57 GMT 01:57 UK US OPENS UP GUANTANAMO TRIBUNALS Room set up for tribunals at Guantanamo Bay Part of the proceedings were open to journalists Two Afghan men have denied being enemy fighters in appearances before US military tribunals reviewing the status of Guantanamo Bay detainees. For the first time, the US allowed journalists to attend the hearings. The men, both handcuffed and shackled, admitted they were with the Taleban but said they never fought US forces. Their requests to call witnesses were denied. The US insists the process to determine whether the men are being held legally as enemy combatants is fair. The tribunals, which have been running since Friday, were instigated after the US Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners could challenge their detentions. I wasn't going to fight anyone -- Afghan detainee It is the first time any of the around 600 detainees, who have been held without trial or access to lawyers for more than two years, have been allowed any form of hearing. Five of the 10 prisoners reviewed so far have refused to take part, but all will eventually go through the process even if they choose not to appear before the tribunals in person, the US authorities say. Initial results could be given by next week, US officials say. 'I surrendered myself' The BBC's Nick Childs was one of a small group of reporters allowed into a windowless small, cramped room at the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. US Navy Secretary Gordon England -- England does not expect many inmates to be freed Just a couple of metres from him was the slight, heavily bearded first Afghan detainee. "He was handcuffed and his feet were shackled to the floor. He wore the normal orange prisoner clothing. All I can say in terms of identification is that he was a 31-year-old Afghan," our correspondent reports. Three military officers and other officials heard a summary of the case against him: * that he was a Taleban member * that he was a soldier who had been given a weapon * that he had gone to the northern Afghan city of Kunduz to fight the Northern Alliance * and that he had been caught with a Taleban leader. Speaking through an interpreter, the man denied being a fighter and said the Taleban gave everybody weapons. "I surrendered myself to Americans because I believed Americans are for human rights," he said. "I had never heard Americans mistreated anybody in the past." The detainee asked when he would know the decision and whether he would be sent back to his country. 'Witnesses irrelevant' During the second hearing, the 49-year-old men argued through an interpreter that he had been forced to join the Taleban. He said he had not fought and had not been trained to fight, but had been taken captive after Taleban leaders in the house he had been taken to surrendered. Prisoner in cell at Guantanamo Bay Almost 600 detainees are held at Guantanamo He said he was kept in the house in Kunduz for about 20 days with an armed Taleban guard posted outside. "We could not leave the compound. They [the Taleban] were sending people by numbers to fight," he said, adding that he was never called. Both detainees asked for witnesses and each was denied by the tribunals on the grounds that they were not relevant to their particular deliberations, our correspondent says. After this part of the hearings, journalists had to leave while officials reviewed classified information. 'No declared war' The Pentagon decided to go ahead with the hearings after heavy pressure on the US defence department. The man overseeing the prisoners' appeal process, Gordon England, has rejected claims that the process is flawed. Mr England told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the system was derived from the Geneva Convention. "We are allowing the detainees to appear before the hearing and present their case, and we have a person to work with them," he said. The detainees do not have lawyers, but "personal representatives" because it is an administrative not a legal proceeding, Mr England said. He said detainees were being treated as enemy combatants, not prisoners of war which are entitled to certain legal rights, because "there's no declared war between countries". If the tribunals, presided over by three military officers, find that a prisoner does not qualify as an enemy combatant, he may have to be freed. Mr England conceded this, but said he did not expect "a very large number" to be released. From janice_g at free.net.nz Fri Aug 6 05:18:01 2004 From: janice_g at free.net.nz (Janice) Date: Fri Aug 6 05:54:15 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right Message-ID: <380-2200485612181421@free.net.nz> ---- Original Message ---- From: dgiles@central.murdoch.edu.au To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Subject: Re: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 09:12:58 +0800 >There are some good insights in this article, but it is not >surprising that >-- as Lobe points out -- "On this question [why the neoconservatives >wanted >war with Iraq] the authors tend to be frustratingly elusive . . ." . > Lobe >seems to overemphasise ideology as a prime mover and to separate it >from >economics, but without the backing of the grabbing classes neither >the >neocons nor their predecessors the Nazis and the Jap warrior caste >could >ever have amounted to a row of beans. Which really underlines the invalidity of "anti-capitalism" as a movement. The same grabbing class will not permit any real competition in globalisatin therefore capitalism as an economic system does not exist. Only fascism exists. j From thinker at uniserve.com Fri Aug 6 07:22:10 2004 From: thinker at uniserve.com (Ed Deak) Date: Fri Aug 6 07:22:11 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Hiroshima mayor slams "egocentric" US on Aug. 6 anniversary Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040806072010.0285c808@pop.uniserve.com> All generals, all bomber crews, especially in WW2, and all wartime politicians on all sides have been and are war criminals. The much touted bombing of Europe during WW 2 did nothing to stop, or slow down war production in Germany and satellites. This has been established over 50 years ago by independent researchers, including JK Galbraith. Its only purpose was to kill and demoralize the civilian population. That didn't work either. The bomber crews, the soldiers and the victims suffered and died for nothing, as it is the case in all wars. Cheers, Ed. ======================================================================================================== >Welcome to Breaking News. Skip directly to: ><http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/06/1091732066265.html?oneclick=true#search>Search >Box, ><http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/06/1091732066265.html?oneclick=true#nav>Section >Navigation, ><http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/06/1091732066265.html?oneclick=true#content>Content. > > >Hiroshima mayor slams 'egocentric' US > >August 6, 2004 - 12:39PM > >Page Tools ><http://www.theage.com.au/cgi-bin/common/popupEmailArticle.pl?path=/articles/2004/08/06/1091732066265.html> >Email to a friend ><http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/06/1091732066265.html?oneclick=true#> >Printer format ><http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/06/1091732066265.html?oneclick=true#> > > >The mayor of Japan's city of Hiroshima slammed the United States, the 59th >anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing which killed tens of >thousands of people, for continuing to develop nuclear arms. > >"The egocentric world view of the US government is reaching extremes," >mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said in an address at a ceremony to mark the August >6, 1945 World War II bombing by the United States. > >"Ignoring the United Nations and its foundation of international law, the >United States has resumed research to make nuclear weapons smaller and >more usable," the mayor said. > >Meanwhile, the chain of violence and retaliation around the world showed >no end, he said. > >"Reliance on violence-amplifying terror and North Korea, among others, >buying into the worthless policy of 'nuclear insurance' are salient >symbols of our times," he said. > >As the clock clicked onto 8:15am (0915 AEST), the exact time the United >States dropped the bomb, those at the ceremony bowed their heads for a >minute's silence in memory of victims of the attack. > >Advertisement Advertisement > >Around 140,000 people - almost half the city population of the time - died >immediately, or in the months after the nuclear bomb, from radiation >injuries or horrific burns. > >The Hiroshima bombing was followed by the dropping of a second atomic bomb >on the city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, leaving tens of thousands more >dead. > >? 2004 AFP >Brought to you by ><http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/06/1091732066265.html?oneclick=true#top>Top >of Page > > >Content-Type: application/octet-stream; > >name="index.html%3Ffrom%3Dlhsnav&s=800x600&c=32&j=1.3&v=Y&k=N&bw=792&bh=452&ct=modem&hp=N&[AQE]" > >Content-Location: >http://f2ntheage.112.2o7.net/b/ss/f2ntheage/1/G.5-PD-R/s93492914526806?AQB&ndh=1&t=5/7/2004%2021%3A26%3A24%204%20420&pageName=au_f2_TheAge-BreakingNews-Premium-BreakingWorld-Story-Online&ch=BreakingNews&server=www.theage.com.au&events=event1&c1=Brea%3AHiroshima%20mayor%20slams%20%27egocentric%27%20US&c2=Online&c3=BreakingNews/Premium-BreakingWorld&c4=ZU&c5=ZU&c6=ZU&c7=ZU&c8=ZU&g=http%3A//www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/06/1091732066265.html%3Foneclick%3Dtrue&r=http%3A//www.theage.com.au/breaking/index.html%3Ffrom%3Dlhsnav&s=800x600&c=32&j=1.3&v=Y >&k=N&bw=792&bh=452&ct=modem&hp=N&AQE > From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Fri Aug 6 07:02:57 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Fri Aug 6 07:41:20 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] A Clash of two Models Message-ID: Colombia and Venezuela A Clash of two Models by Justin Podur and C.P. Pandya; August 04, 2004 http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=5988§ionID=45 Carlos Andres Perez, a former President of Venezuela and leader of the Venezuelan 'opposition' against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, said in a recent interview that "Violence will allow us to remove [Chavez]. That's the only way we have," and that Chavez "must die like a dog, because he deserves it." (1) Chavez "deserves it" because of efforts to create home-grown development and regional integration in ways that offer a genuine challenge to the neoliberal model. Because such programs are popular with the poor, "violence is the only way" to stop them. In a recent article about the Venezuelan referendum, James Petras predicted the consequences of a Chavez defeat: "If Chavez is defeated and if the Right takes power, it will privatize the state petroleum and gas company, selling it to US multinationals, withdraw from OPEC, raise its production and exports to the US, thus lowering Venezuelan revenues by half or more. Internally the popular health programs in the urban "ranchos" will end along with the literary campaign and public housing for the poor. The agrarian reform will be reversed and about 500,000 land reform recipients (100,000 families) will be turned off the land. This will be accomplished through extensive and intensive state bloodletting, jailing and extrajudicial assassination, and intense repression of pro-Chavez neighborhoods, trade unions and social movements." (2) If Venezuela provides a new, albeit fragile, model of social and economic progress for the region, then its Andean neighbor Colombia, can be seen providing a less-favored, more dangerous alternative - one of neoliberal repression and privatization. Venezuelans will decide which model to pursue in the referendum of August 15. But the clash of the two models has taken some unexpected turns recently. The Colombia Model The package of privatization, anti-poor programs, and intense repression is best exemplified by Colombia, where imposing privatization and the kind of 'development' that displaces and impoverishes millions takes so much violence that it has forced even its US sponsors to make public, if hypocritical, statements against it. On July 26, John Kerry, John Edwards, and several other US senators sent a letter to Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe Velez. Kerry and friends were "encouraged by the decline in the level of homicides, massacres, kidnappings, and forced displacement." But they were also "deeply concerned" about "extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances, attributed directly to Colombian security forces." They urged Uribe to follow the UN's recommendation to "cut ties between the army and the paramilitary forces". The letter named names, citing the cases of Carlos Bernal, an activist assassinated on April 1 with his bodyguard, and Carlos Alberto Chicaiza, a unionist killed on April 15. The good senators could have benefited from more up to date information. For example on August 3, Kankuamo indigenous activist Freddy Arias Arias was killed riding home on his bicycle in Valledupar. The Kankuamo nation has some 5000 people, 92 of whom have been assassinated and 1732 displaced in the past two years. In Bucaramanga, on July 15, Carmen Elisa Nova Hernandez, a health worker's union activist, was assassinated by motorcycle gunmen. She was the mother of a 5-year-old daughter. On July 3, Colombian police detained Fanime Reyes Reyes of the agicultural union, FENSUAGRO, in Sincelejo, Sucre. On July 7, they detained Nubia Gonzalez, daughter of a union worker, in the same city. On June 19, members of the 3rd Brigade of the Army rounded up 25 people in the Municipality of Corinto in Valle del Cauca department. A local human rights organization said the military's mass detention: "took the form of the military violently entering into their houses, violently searching people, intimidating them and detaining many in a highly arbitrary manner." On June 17, Colombian police in Barrancabermeja attacked a demonstration by oil workers of the Union Sindical Obrera and youth, "beating them physically and threatening them verbally," not discriminating between journalists and demonstrators; Luz Dary Innes of Canal Enlace Television, along with at least four other journalists, sustained moderate injuries. The police detained 9 USO workers as well. There are numerous other reports from the past few weeks and months of paramilitary intimidation and terror in the countryside (like at the La Balsita peace community in mid-June). But Kerry and friends selected a few drops out of an ocean of terror and state violence: just what they needed to make the point. And to be fair, their point was clear: that army-paramilitary links need to be cut. The senators ought not to hold their breath though. Uribe has chosen an odd way to cut army-paramilitary links: bringing the paramilitaries to make speeches in Colombia's House of Representatives. The speeches were part of the "negotiations" that are going on between the government and the paramilitary killers the government has been using in order to destroy independent social forces and displace peasants from resource-rich areas in advance of 'development'. The head of the national paramilitary organization, Salvatore Mancuso, a major killer, asked for new demilitarized zones under exclusive paramilitary control. He proudly told the nation (the day after the senators sent their letter) that "The ceasefire declared by the self-defense groups does not absolve us of our responsibility for defending the populations and regions where the state is not present from guerrillas". But who will defend the populations from the paramilitaries? The Organization of American States can't do it. The OAS observer team excused itself from the process and didn't attend the paramilitary speech (no explanation was given). Colombia's Vice President Francisco Santos said that the OAS refusal, combined with the fact that paramilitary cooperation has not been 'total', has given the 'negotiations' a 'credibility problem'. Other politicians used stronger language: Gina Parody, a pro-Uribe representative, called having the paramilitaries in the Congress a "shameful and lamentable spectacle." The same could be applied to the negotiations. Perhaps the most shameful and lamentable part of the episode came when Mancuso said paramilitaries would not go to jail. "The reward," he said, "for all our sacrifices for the nation cannot be prison." This was too much even for the US ambassador. Even though the US is a sponsor of the government-paramilitary negotiations, William Wood came out against Mancuso's speech. "To hear Mancuso talk about sacrifices for the nation is scandalous." (3) Despite this newly discovered moral fiber by the likes of Kerry and Wood, there is plenty they aren't complaining about. When Cali's public utilities company, EMCALI, sacked 60 workers including the union's president on July 14, Wood didn't find anything 'scandalous' in the violation of union rights. Perhaps that is because the union is the single biggest obstacle to the privatization of the very important company, and the United States is pushing for a great deal more privatization from Colombia in its free-trade negotiations with that country. The US demanded, for example, that the Colombian government leave the telecommunications sector altogether. And the US flexed its muscles, vetoing Colombia's chosen negotiator on intellectual property rights in the accord. Colombia walked away from that session as a result. But the outcome was predictable regardless: when the US flexes its muscles, it gets what it wants. Colombia is planning $10 billion in privatizations, and the US is sending it $108 million for 'counterinsurgency' and $313 million for chemical warfare (also known as 'aerial fumigation') in return (4). So, if the new plan for Colombia is at all different from the old plan, it is only in one simple way: instead of celebrating the murderous repression while pushing for it, paying for it (though Colombians are paying much more), and profiting from it, US officials might occasionally make some noises about how they don't like it, while continuing to finance it. The Plan for Venezuela By tendering at least some protest at the horrors going on in Colombia, US establishment figures like Kerry and other liberal voices can sound marginally more consistent when they do their inane posturing on Venezuela. The Washington Post (footnote: Washington Post Editorial, July 30, 2004.) says that Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez "does not genuinely accept democracy or the rule of law. He delayed the referendum for a year through legal manipulation and political dirty tricks. Now he flirts with outright political repression in an attempt to determine its outcome." The referendum referred to is a referendum to recall the President, something allowed for by the Venezuelan constitution of 1999, enacted under Chavez's government (the US has no such provision in its constitution). Incidentally, Uribe's own plans for re-election were thwarted by a referendum he lost in October 2003 (5). Undaunted, Uribe ignored the people's will and is ramming his re-election through Congress (where is the Post article discussing how Uribe "does not genuinely accept democracy or the rule of law", one wonders). Alas, all Chavez can manage to do is 'flirt with political repression'. He could take lessons from Uribe, or indeed from US Presidents who gave us COINTELPRO and the PATRIOT Act. Kerry talks even tougher on Venezuela than the Post and his condemnation of the Chavez government goes far beyond the mild criticism of Uribe's murderous regime expressed in the July 26 letter. And unlike that letter, Kerry's 'Statement on Venezuela' (6) comes with no supporting evidence for its outrageous accusations, which are standard by now: Chavez "has compromised efforts to eradicate drug cultivation by allowing Venezuela to become a haven for narco-terrorists, and sowed instability in the region by supporting anti-government insurgents in Colombia." He has "repeatedly undermined democratic institutions by using extra-legal means, including politically motivated incarcerations", and worst of all, he has a "close relationship with Fidel Castro"! In his statement, Kerry then criticizes Bush for "acquiescing in a failed coup" in Venezuela in 2002. "Having just allowed the democratically elected leader to be cast aside in Haiti, they should make a strong statement now by leading the effort to preserve the fragile democracy in Venezuela." One wonders if Kerry's problem with Bush is that he acquiesced to the coup or that the coup failed at all. Kerry and the Washington Post need not worry: the forces of 'democracy' are continuing their noble work in Venezuela. Several dozen Venezuelan military officers are in hiding after stealing 63 kilograms of C-4 plastic explosive and 80 detonators from a naval base, probably for use during the referendum campaign. These officers are also accused of bombing the Colombian and Spanish embassies in Venezuela in 2003 - three of them were also involved in the coup in 2002. This, on the heels of a previous plot to assassinate Chavez involving Colombian paramilitaries (7), which itself was followed by an announcement of a plot to deploy Colombian tanks to the Venezuelan border (8). Fine-Tuning the Plan (with Megaprojects)? Tough talk and dirty war are certainly tried-and-true US strategies in Latin America. But, like the weak expressions of protest against state terror in Colombia, the US and Uribe have other games afoot, as Uribe's visit to Venezuela in July showed. Colombia's role as a resource-rich territory and a corridor between Central and South America are important enough to the United States. But as a base from which to destabilize the region in various ways, Colombia is even more valuable. Colombia's president visited his Venezuelan counterpart on July 15, to discuss a 205km, $98 million natural gas pipeline project that will cross both countries and make it possible for countries to export gas through Central America. The mystery, however, is why Uribe didn't wait for the outcome of the referendum before visiting. A major pipeline takes time: what could be lost by waiting a month? Since Uribe's sympathies are violently on the side of the Venezuelan elite and against Chavez, why visit him? What Uribe said during the visit is even more inconsistent with his own life's work of paramilitarism and destruction (9) He paid complements to Chavez more than once, first in the form of praise for Simon Bolivar when he said: "Any work we can think of doing today was already been done by the Liberator (Bolivar)... today, 200 years later, we are trying to make these things happen, so that history doesn't pass us by." He said it was time to leave rhetoric behind and expressed admiration for Chavez who was "talking and doing, taking advantage of his vigor and dynamism." The famous deal between Spain and Colombia for tanks to be posted to the Venezuelan border having been cancelled by Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government, Uribe said that he didn't want the tanks any more in any case: "I don't want the tanks any more; I hope that with the government of President Zapatero we can make a deal where, instead of selling us these tanks, they can sell us something more useful." Chavez was gracious, saying that there had been bad relations between Colombia and Venezuela, including war plans between them, but that what was really needed was "a joint war against poverty and underdevelopment." Uribe then replied that there would "never be war" between the two countries. The press conference then descended into the realm of the bizarre, with both presidents joking about these life-and-death matters. Uribe said he would miss not being able to learn how to drive a tank, and that he wished Chavez could teach him how: "The only thing I deplore is that I've lost the chance to have President Chavez as my teacher. How many tanks will you loan me, President Chavez? Please loan me some tanquecitos!" (10) Chavez's reason for meeting Uribe is easy enough to understand: he wants, indeed needs, good relations with Colombia, for the safety of the Venezuelan people if for no other reason. Wanting to defuse the Washington-fueled conflict between the two countries, which would be a disaster for both, is in Chavez's interest. But Uribe's interest is much more difficult to speculate on. But the answer might have to do with the politics of megaprojects. Perhaps by sending Uribe, the US minion in the region, to visit Chavez and make peace, the U.S. can get another hand on what Chavez is doing with its natural resources - using the velvet glove instead of the iron fist. In return, Colombia gets windfall revenue from the pipeline project and becomes more foreign-investor friendly. This is the politics of megaprojects. The western world sees them as unequivocally good, and profitable - and the heads of developing nations see them as a way to provide visible evidence of "development" even though many believe that these projects do little but displace and kill people and produce inefficient, low-productivity output. Most of the political organizations of Colombia's 3 million+ displaced people talk about megaprojects. They believe that they were displaced from their lands in order to make way for such projects: dams, drilling, oil and gas pipelines, mega-scale agricultural monocultures - all forms of 'development without people' designed to profit transnationals and the segment of the local elite than can sell the country to them. Afro-Colombians have been displaced all along the Naya River on the Pacific Coast in anticipation of such projects. The U'wa and the Embera Katio have been subjected to murderous campaigns for fighting oil and dam projects. The list in Colombia goes on and on. Outside of Colombia, megaprojects despoil landscapes from one end of the continent to the other, from Plan Puebla-Panama in Central America (11) to the BR-163 superhighway planned to cut the Brazilian Amazon (12). But megaprojects are not a monopoly of neoliberals, and the 'Bolivarian project' of nationalist development does not exclude them. Development has the potential to become a wedge that divides Venezuela's population and ultimately succeeds in undermining the Bolivarian process in a way that all the violence cannot. If the government cannot deliver 'development', the people will turn against it. But if the government delivers the kind of 'development' that displaces indigenous people from their lands and contributes to violence in the countryside, it will also alienate its constituency. These are serious risks for a progressive government to face. As an example of the kind of problems and divisions that can arise, consider the Pemon indigenous of Venezuela, who waged a struggle against a 676 km electricity project from Venezuela to Bolivia for several years. According to Michael McCaughan, (13) the Pemon's struggle was repressed - including the May 2002 shooting of Miguel Lanz, a 25-year old indigenous activist who was killed by a soldier, who was not punished. "The community retreated, unwilling to risk more bloodshed. The battle was over. The electricity pylon project signed by [Then President of Venezuela] Rafael Caldera and [Then President of Brazil] Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1997 was finally inagurated in August 2002 when Cardoso and Chavez were joined by Fidel Castro to celebrate a victory for progress. Insult was piled on injury when it was revealed that? the vast project is currently only feeding electricity to two small border towns, one in Brazil and one in Venezuela." If solutions to problems like these cannot be found, they could undermine the whole program of developing the region for its people, including the very real successes in genuine development and regional integration, in which Venezuela is exemplary. Frustrated Movements Most Andean countries live somewhere in between the horrors of the Colombia Model and the fragile progress of Venezuela's government. The recently demonstrated ability of Latin America's indigenous and poor to oust regimes that are overly contemptuous of their populations and too obedient to US dictates suggests there is a possibility for true social and economic progress. Unfortunately, the initial momentum created by many social movements in Latin America has repeatedly been lost when the subsequent leaders betrayed their core constituencies in the poor and indigenous citizenry. In Bolivia, the indigenous threw business tycoon and President Gonzalo S?nchez de Lozada out of power in October 2003 in part because of the government's plan for a $5.2 billion natural gas pipeline project that was to be controlled by a consortium of multinational energy companies, and sold to the U.S. The mostly indigenous uprising against Lozada and his plan brought to power his vice president, Carlos Mesa, who in the 10 months since becoming president has slyly pushed through a referendum paving the way for privatization, and ultimately robbing the Bolivian people of the right to determine the use of their country's resources. Bolivia's indigenous leaders, after helping Mesa come into power, have quickly become alienated, and are again left with no alternative means to ensure lasting progress. In Ecuador, indigenous leader Lucio Gutierrez won the presidency in the November 2002 elections with promises of social justice and an end to corruption. Gutierrez, in fact, led the indigenous uprising against notoriously corrupt President Jamil Mahuad in 2000. Since coming to power and initially appointing indigenous leaders to his cabinet, Gutierrez has broken ranks with the country's leading confederation of indigenous people, Confederaci?n de Nacionalidades Ind?genas del Ecuador. Against their will, he signed a letter of intent with the IMF in August 2003 to privatize the petroleum sector, electricity, telecommunications, and natural resources like water (14). More recently, the Ecuadorian congress has been in a battle with Gutierrez to stop the president from opening up the country's oil fields to foreign oil companies. To a limited extent, Brazil under President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, has not lived up to the promises he made to the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Tera, - Landless Rural Workers Movement, Brazil. In his October 2002 victory speech, Lula declared that with his election to head Brazil, the world's fifth-largest democratic state, "hope has won over fear." This hope, which had been shared by movements and leftists across the globe, has since largely faded. In fact, it has seemingly been replaced within Brazil by political and economic stagnation and at times, repression of the landless (15). Some members of the Brazilian Workers' Party, Partido dos Trabalhadores, much like members of CONAIE in Ecuador, have come out in vocal opposition to Lula's leadership. Brazil continues to be heavily indebted to the IMF and, the MST contends, the PT has moved too slowly with land reforms. But where Lula and the rest have shown signs of weakness in providing a model of development and governance for the left, President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has methodically built strength. This is, in turn, precisely why he encounters such fierce opposition from the U.S. government and media. In the months leading up to the referendum, Chavez has implemented several development measures and fostered regional economic cooperation to build a base from which to oppose neoliberal economic policies. Home-Grown Development Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, has taken advantage of high oil prices over the past several months. Petroleos de Venezuela, the state-oil company also known as PdVSA has, with record revenue coming in as a result of the price per barrel hovering in the high $30 to low $40 price range, devoted $2 billion for spending on infrastructure projects. The fund is to be used for revamping power plants, building roads and launching a state airline. In addition, PdVSA has earmarked an additional $1.7 billion from windfall oil revenue for adult literacy programs and free healthcare for the poor. The two combined social spending measures have created an uproar ahead of the referendum, despite the fact that PdVSA President Ali Rodriguez has estimated that, if the price of oil remains at current levels, the oil company's net revenue for the year will surpass $46 billion. There is little reason to doubt the veracity of this claim. Oil industry analysts have estimated the price per barrel of oil may in the near future go as high as $50, ensuring further windfall revenue to flow in (16). Chavez's plans have been met with virulent opposition from critics even as his supporters say he is the first Venezuelan president to work to improve the lives of the over 50% of the population living below the poverty line. In the past, this opposition has seriously destabilized the economy. Perhaps it is for this reason that the $2 billion fund is so contentious. The idea of using even a marginal amount of revenue from the nation's national resources to create jobs and put in place institutional alternatives to privately-owned enterprises may be seen as a serious threat to the Venezuelan elite. Chavez is using about $16 million from the development fund, to partly fund the creation of a small new state-owned airline, Conviasa, which will begin operations in three to four months. The airline plans to first fly between the Andean nations and eventually to most points around the world, save the U.S. and Canada. The Venezuelan government also recently said it would go forward with plans announced over a year ago to launch a state-run telecommunications company known as CVG Telecom on Aug. 10. The company will compete with a number of other providers including the CA Nacional de Telefonos de Venezuela, known as CANTV. The Venezuelan telecommunications market is an oligarchy led by CANTV, which is the largest privately owned telecom corporation in the country. The corporation's size (and therefore influence) within the greater Latin American corporate elite structure is worth noting. Shares of CANTV make up nearly 40% of all shares traded on the local IBC Venezuelan stock index and the company names as its largest stakeholder, US telecom giant Verizon Communications. Therefore, any major swings in the share price of CANTV, say in response to new competition, could affect the overall performance of the IBC. Among CANTV's 10-largest institutional shareholders are U.S. investment houses Lazard, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. (17) The Aug. 10 launch is important, but shouldn't be overemphasized. It may be entirely coincidental that CANTV will be providing connection services for the Aug. 15 referendum, which will be conducted using electronic touch-screen voting machines. The building of these, relatively small, state alternatives to major industries within the Venezuelan economy can in the long-run serve as institutional alternatives to foreign-owned dominance of the country. If evidence of this foreign-owned dominance is ever a question, one should look no further than the US Treasury Department for answers. The department said recently that US investors bought $72 billion worth of foreign stock in 2003, a record that handily beat the previous record of US ownership in foreign markets of $63 billion, set in 1993. The pace is maddening. Based upon preliminary figures, US investors will own $90 billion worth of foreign stock this year (18). The sooner developing nations realize the tragic effects such ownership can have on their development schemes, the quicker such institutional can be undertaken. This recognition, on the part of the Venezuelan government, has made it a target. National alternatives, however, are not enough to fend off the pressure from the North for neoliberalism that has become common in the region. Nor are these economic measures enough to demonstrate the possibility of development without the overwhelming presence of institutions from the rich countries. Regional Integration By weaving together Venezuela's economy with its neighbors', the Chavez government is laying the groundwork for Venezuela to be part of an integrated Latin American economic bloc which could be less dependent on foreign money and less susceptible to traditional development pressures. Much of this integration has begun with Argentina, where president Nestor Kirchner shares Chavez's skepticsm about neoliberalism. Among many cooperative measures announced during July's Venezuela-Argentina Business Roundtable, was the creation of a credit card called Cabal for small businesses in Venezuela and a financing fund to provide credit guarantees to entrepreneurs. Also announced was the creation of a $1 million credit line with the help of government banks such as Venezuela's Banco de Comercio Exterior, and the Argentine government bank BCIE, to finance Venezuela's small industry exports to Argentina, according to a statement released by Bancoex. (19) Also according to the statement, the two countries foresee, in the long run, the creation of a South American bank that would promote business development in the region. The economic idea of comparative advantage - so often manipulated in neoliberal economic policy - has also found its place within the current Venezuelan-Argentine cooperation. The governments announced in July a plan to indefinitely extend this year's fuel-for-food accord, allowing Argentina to continue importing diesel and gasoil from Venezuela if its current natural gas and power shortages remain a problem. Argentina signed the $240 million contract with Venezuela in April 2004, allowing Kirchner's government to import around 1 million tons of diesel and gasoil. In return, the Venezuelans agreed that they could receive cash for the imports or request agricultural imports. The laundry-list of cooperative agreements between Venezuela and Argentina, as well as the confounding pipeline agreement between traditional rivals Colombia and Venezuela are a part of the larger picture of Venezuela's integration into the wider Latin American economy and the creation of a regional economic force to be reckoned with. On July 8, after eight years of lobbying, Venezuela was admitted as an "associate member" to the trading-bloc Common Market of the South, also known as Mercosur. The importance of this institutionalization lies not only in the increased trade opportunities for all the member and associate countries - Brazil and Argentina are full members with Paraguay and Uruguay while Peru, Chile and Bolivia are associates - but also in the strategic and symbolic unity the bloc will offer Chavez and Venezuela. The attempts by U.S. and Venezuelan corporate media and government to portray Chavez as a firebrand "dictator" isolated from the rest of Latin America because of his "communist" policies, will be less successful given the risk of offending the economically important bloc. The legacy the Chavez government leaves behind can form the basis for long-standing institutional alternatives to U.S.-backed development as well as a regional means to escape part of the heavy dependence on foreign direct investment needed to lift the citizens of poor nations out of poverty. It is for this reason these substantive, lasting, institutionalized measures are clearly seen as a threat to U.S. neoliberalism in Latin America. Colombia, in its economic obedience, serves as Venezuela's doppelganger of sorts - the quiescent country that will haunt its counterpart. Whichever US administration is in power will forgive the one and pour vitriol on the other. Nevertheless, resistance to the US agenda abounds in both Andean countries, despite their varying forms. The paramilitaries in the Colombian legislature were met with fierce opposition not only within the parliament itself, but also outside, as families of disappeared and murdered, social organizations, and others raised their voices to yell "Neither oblivion nor pardon!" Movements in Colombia's cities continue to offer resistance in unexpected and spontaneous ways even more-established movements aren't expecting (20). The Venezuelan referendum of August 15 is a crucial battle (if it is at all fair, Chavez will win easily) a long fight. The populations will not give up the fight for their region easily. Justin Podur is a writer and translator. CP Pandya (cppandya80@yahoo.com) is a freelance journalist, specializing in economic issues, based in the United States. Notes 1) See Martin Sanchez's story on Venezuelanalysis.com July 26, 2004 2) See Petras, 'Beware Jimmy Carter!', Counterpunch, July 14, 2004. 3) These quotes, and the account of the Uribe-Chavez meeting below, all come from El Tiempo (www.eltiempo.com), Colombia's main daily. Translations by the authors. 4) See Colombiaweek.org http://www.colombiaweek.org/, which cites the London Financial Times of July 19, 2004. 5) see Podur, "Colombia's Referendum", Oct 27, 2003 6) See Kerry's website: 7) See Podur, 'Terrorist Plot Foiled', ZNet May 10 2004 8) See Podur, 'The Final Answer Will be Given by the Tanks', ZNet June 19, 2004 9) The National Security Archive has unearthed documents from the United States Drug Enforcement Agency which, in 1991, called Uribe "A Close Personal Friend to Pablo Escobar", "Dedicated to Collaboration with the Medell?n Cartel at High Government Levels", and among "Important Colombian Narco-Traffickers". See http://www.nsarchive.org. This corroborates information well-known by many. See this March 16, 2004 interview with human rights defender Padre Javier Giraldo. 10) All quotes are from the pages of El Tiempo July 14-15 2004 11) Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas discussed the plan in 2003. 12) See 'Asphalt and Jungle', the Economist, July 24, 2004 13) Michael McCaughan, 'The Battle for Venezuela', Latin America Bureau, 2004, pp. 137-140. An interesting review of some of the problems with this book can be found on Venezuelanalysis, but McCaughan is a good journalist and the review pointed out no reason to doubt the veracity of his claims about the Pemon experience 14) See CONAIE's communique of Sept 6, 2003- 15) Associated Press, July 31, "1 Killed As Landless Clash With Ranch Guards In Brazil". 16) Wall Street Journal article "OPEC Finds Its Power Has Limits," By Bahree, Bhusan, Wednesday, August 4, 2004 17) All share and holding information gotten from Reuters market data 18) The Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Investors Have Been Buying Foreign Stock At A Record Pace," By Craig Karmin, Wednesday, August 4, 2004 19) Statement is online at http://bancoex.com/rueda_arg_ven/condiciones.asp 20) See Mondragon's March 5, 2004 article, 'Colombia Today' for some examples. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From papadop at peak.org Fri Aug 6 16:26:57 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Fri Aug 6 16:27:01 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] GITMO tribunals professionally run !! Message-ID: (Agence France Presse) GITMO inmates share the small slice of communist Cuba with about 3,000 US troops, as well as iguanas, vultures and some large rodents affectionately known as "banana rats" that roam on over Guantanamo. But the camp is a 15 minute drive from the main base and deliberately situated in the midst of a tropical desert. ========== Associated Press August 6, 2004 Two Afghan prisoners, their hands bound and feet chained to the floor, pleaded for their freedom Thursday before U.S. military tribunals, their first hearings since they've been held at Guantanamo Bay and the first open to observers. The tribunal was held in a windowless room about 6.2 metres (20 feet) by three metres (10 feet) in a portable hut set up in the camp, which is surrounded by razor wire, with a forest of cactus beyond. There was just enough space for the detainee, an officer who represents him, an interpreter, a military representative, stenographer and three tribunal members. Under strict US Defense Department media rules none of the inmates can be identified and only unclassified evidence is heard by reporters and the detainee. ================ The BBC's Nick Childs was one of a small group of reporters allowed into a windowless small, cramped room at the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3539896.stm [The prisoner without a name ] was a slight man with a long, dark beard, glanced at panel members and three journalists wearing yellow media badges. Other reporters were watching through a two-way mirror. ================== http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040805/1/3m856.html Agence France Presse Friday August 6, 7:02 PM [afp.gif] US OPENS UP GUANTANAMO TRIBUNALS FOR FIRST TIME With their feet shackled and wrists handcuffed, two Afghan "war on terror" detainees made their case for freedom to tribunals opened up to observers for the first time. The tribunals refused both men the right to call witnesses to back their cases that they had not fought against the United States or had been forced to join the Taliban. Facing criticism over the detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay US naval base in Cuba, US military authorities started the tribunals last week to review whether the two Afghans and 583 other inmates were properly classified as "enemy combatants" when captured. The tribunals are being held in a cramped, prefabricated hut in Camp Delta, which has been the prison for the Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees for more than two and a half years. Journalists were allowed to watch the proceedings for the first time when the Afghans, both wearing distinctive orange suits and with their feet chained to the floor, appeared before the three-member military panel. The tribunal was held in a windowless room about 6.2 metres (20 feet) by three metres (10 feet) in a portable hut set up in the camp, which is surrounded by razor wire, with a forest of cactus beyond. There was just enough space for the detainee, an officer who represents him, an interpreter, a military representative, stenographer and three tribunal members. Under strict US Defense Department media rules none of the inmates can be identified and only unclassified evidence is heard by reporters and the detainee. The cases of 10 detainees have now been heard but five of them have refused to attend. One 31-year-old man admitted Thursday he had been with the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 but said he would have been "crazy" to fight US forces. "I surrendered myself to the Americans because I am believing that Americans are for human rights," he told the tribunal through a translator. According to the few details given by the US military, the man was a member of the Taliban, was armed with a Kalashnikov rifle and was with a Taliban leader when captured in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz by forces of Northern Alliance warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam in late 2001. The man said he was hurt in US bombing raids launched in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by Osama bin Laden's group. After treatment, he returned to his home region of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. "After some time in Kunduz, I heard on the radio that the Americans are coming to get Osama bin Laden. "There should be a difference between someone who surrenders himself and someone who fights Americans. I surrendered," he said. The detainee asked that a witness be allowed to testify on his behalf, but was told such testimony would be irrelevant to the tribunal's task which is to determine whether he was an "enemy combatant". The second inmate, a 49-year-old man, asked that three witnesses be called to support his contention he was forced to join the Taliban. The tribunal president again said this was irrelevant to the proceedings. The man said that in October 2001, the Taliban had forced him to leave his house and join them. He said he never took part in fighting and did not have a weapon and that the Taliban leaders in the house where he was kept in the city of Kunduz also decided to surrender to Dostam's forces. The Northern Alliance at first kept the prisoners in a container and several died from suffocation and heat exhaustion, he testified. If the tribunals go in their favour, the inmates from 40 countries, including Australia, Britain, France, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, could be released. But Navy Secretary Gordon England warned on Wednesday that not many could expect to return home. Civilian lawyers have condemned the tribunals as unfair because there is no independent legal representation. But top US defence officials have insisted the hearings are "fair" and "professionally run". From papadop at peak.org Fri Aug 6 16:34:44 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Fri Aug 6 16:34:42 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Mayor of Hiroshima slams 'egocentric' US Message-ID: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040806/1/3m8uh.html Agence France Presse -- Friday August 6, 3:18 PM The mayor of Hiroshima slammed the United States for continuing to develop nuclear arms, the 59th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing which killed tens of thousands of people in this western Japanese city. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi meanwhile pledged at a ceremony here to mark the August 6, 1945 World War II bombing by the United States that Japan would stick to its post-1945 war-renouncing constitution. "The egocentric world view of the US government is reaching extremes," mayor Tadatoshi Akiba said at the ceremony held against the backdrop of the Atomic Bomb Dome, the preserved ruins of one of the few buildings not flattened by the blast. "Ignoring the United Nations and its foundation of international law, the United States has resumed research to make nuclear weapons smaller and more usable," the mayor told 45,000 people at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Meanwhile, a chain of violence and retaliation around the world showed no sign of ending, he said. "Reliance on violence-amplifying terror and North Korea, among others, buying into the worthless policy of 'nuclear insurance' are salient symbols of our times," he said. As the clock clicked onto 8:15 am (2315 GMT Thursday), the exact time the United States dropped the bomb code-named "Little Boy", those at the ceremony bowed their heads for a minute's silence in memory of victims of the attack. Around 140,000 people -- almost half the city's population of the time -- died immediately or in the months after the dropping of the 20 kiloton atomic bomb, from radiation injuries or horrific burns. During Friday's ceremony officials added to the existing toll the names of 5,142 atomic bomb suffers who died or were confirmed dead during the past year. The additions brought the cumulative death toll associated with the effects of the bombing to to 237,062. The Hiroshima bombing was followed by the dropping of a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, leaving tens of thousands more dead. The appalling loss of life among ordinary Japanese was credited with forcing Japan to surrender six days later, ending World War II in the Pacific theatre. The mayor also declared the period from Friday to August 9, 2005 to be a year of "Remembrance and Action for a Nuclear-Free World", while calling on Americans to act as "a people of conscience." Koizumi said at the solemn ceremony that Japan had no plans to change its pacificist constitution. "We, as the only atomic-bombed nation, will abide by the pacifist constitution under the firm resolve no to repeat the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," he said. The head of a group of survivors of the bombs said they were "boiling with anger" over global stockpiles of nuclear weapons and the spreading violence since the September 2001 attacks on the United States. "We have a grave duty in today's critical situation ...," Hiroshima Prefectural Confederation of A-Bomb Suffers Organisations head Sunao Tsuboi said. "We have to pass stories of our suffering from generation to generation and appeal more to the public about the terrible nature of nuclear weapons," he said. From hermann at picknowl.com.au Fri Aug 6 21:25:33 2004 From: hermann at picknowl.com.au (John Hermann) Date: Fri Aug 6 23:10:37 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20040807135444.02576640@mail.picknowl.com.au> At 12:18 AM 7/08/2004 +1200, Janice wrote: >Which really underlines the invalidity of "anti-capitalism" as a >movement. The same grabbing class will not permit any real >competition in globalisation therefore capitalism as an >economic system does not exist. Only fascism exists. Fascism is totalitarian capitalism. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20040807/ea649063/attachment.html From thinker at uniserve.com Sat Aug 7 08:49:31 2004 From: thinker at uniserve.com (Ed Deak) Date: Sat Aug 7 08:49:28 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20040807135444.02576640@mail.picknowl.com.au> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040807083502.028411b0@pop.uniserve.com> At 01:55 PM 07/08/2004 +0930, John Hermann wrote: >At 12:18 AM 7/08/2004 +1200, Janice wrote: > >>Which really underlines the invalidity of "anti-capitalism" as a >>movement. The same grabbing class will not permit any real >>competition in globalisation therefore capitalism as an >>economic system does not exist. Only fascism exists. > >Fascism is totalitarian capitalism. ============================================================================================== I would like to add :" .........with the use of the perceived power of imaginary money as weapon of conquest." In other words, fascism, capitalism and the neoclassical theory are not ideologies, or sciences, but pseudo religions, supported by most, if not all, especially fundamentalist religions . Hitler and Mussolini would never have succeeded without the support of major Churches, right to the very end. Neither could the neo-conservatives now. All ruling classes and aristocracies of history have been based and relied for their survival on religious support and ultimately they all collapsed through their own corruption, when the "faith" in their divinely ordered power waned. How long imaginary money can rule the world is anybody's guess ? Sooner or later the suckers will wake up. Cheers, Ed. From papadop at peak.org Sat Aug 7 09:10:45 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat Aug 7 09:10:50 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] 30 years on -- seems like yesterday Message-ID: On August 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon, facing impeachment on obstruction of justice charges in connection with the Watergate investigation, announced that he was resigning from office effective midday August 9. Read his televised resignation speech . At least Nixon's election was never questioned. Q: Can a non-elected impostor be impeached ? Michael P From papadop at peak.org Sat Aug 7 09:41:34 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat Aug 7 09:41:37 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] GREENLAND RADAR CLEARED FOR U.S. MISSILE DEFENSE AGAINST MIDDLE EAST Message-ID: CANADA also agrees to facilitate missile shield scheme without debate ! ============= http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_07-08/GreenlandRadar.asp Arms Control Today July/August 2004 Wade Boese The Danish parliament has unanimously approved a Bush administration request to upgrade a radar located in Greenland so it can play a future role in a planned U.S. missile defense system. The vote came approximately 18 months after the United States asked Denmark for permission to improve its early-warning radar at Thule Air Base. Greenland used to be a Danish colony until 1979 when it received the right to self-government. Denmark retained responsibility, however, for the islands defense and foreign policies. Although the proposal sparked some debate in Denmark and Greenland, 101 Danish lawmakers voted May 27 in favor of the move. Ten parliamentarians from two left-wing parties abstained, and 68 legislators were absent. Officials from the U.S. and Danish governments, as well as Greenlands Home Rule government, plan to codify an agreement covering the radar overhaul later this summer. The agreement will permit the Pentagon to make the Thule radar more capable of guiding U.S. missile interceptors toward ballistic missile warheads traveling through space. Currently, the radar is tasked with spotting launches of foreign ballistic missiles, but not accurately tracking and pinpointing the flight trajectories of the missiles and their payloads. The United States already received permission from the British government to carry out similar work on the Fylingdales radar in the United Kingdom. (See ACT, March 2003.) The Fylingdales radar is expected to be operational before the end of 2005, while the Thule radar will not be ready until at least 2006. The two radars are intended to help the United States track and intercept ballistic missiles launched from the Middle East. No country in that region currently possesses a ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States. The Arms Control Association is a non-profit, membership-based organization. ================== http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040805224153.q5fapms6.html CANADA INSISTS NO DECISION ON MISSILE SHIELD DESPITE AMENDING US PACT OTTAWA (AFP) Aug 06, 2004 Canada insisted Thursday that it had not covertly signed up to the US plan for a missile defense shield -- despite agreeing to extend joint air defense arrangements with Washington to facilitate the scheme. Ministers said Canada had yet to decide whether to join the national missile defence system, which emerged as a political hot potato during the country's recent general election campaign. The United States and Canada earlier announced they had extended the North American Aerospace Defense Command aerospace warning function to support missile defense. The deal allows the command, known as NORAD, information on incoming missiles to be used by the future US missile defense program. Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew said it made "good sense to amend the agreement so that this essential NORAD function can be preserved and Canada can continue to benefit from the security it provides to our citizens." "This amendment safeguards and sustains NORAD regardless of what decision the government of Canada eventually takes on ballistic missile defense." Defense Minister Bill Graham told reporters the move did not "affect or in any way determine the ultimate decision as to whether Canada will participate in missile defense." Washington, keen to press on with constructing the missile defense system, a key plank of the Bush administration's defense policy, has been pressing Canada for a decision for over a year. But the Canadian government has had to walk a political tightrope on the issue. Advocates of the scheme say a decision not to take part would badly damage the country's prestige and make Canada largely irrelevant in the defense of its own continent. But ministers realise that the scheme is highly unpopular in Canada, as is the Bush administration which is building it. Ministers have relied on the tortuous position that they oppose any system that involves the "weaponization of space" -- a position observers say does not rule out current US plans for missile defense. US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Washington looked forward to "continuing this longstanding defense cooperation" through NORAD. The new deal "formally assigns" to NORAD the responsibility for providing the threat information under the missile defense mission, Boucher said. Missile defense meanwhile thrust itself to the top of Secretary of State Colin Powell's agenda. Powell was due to leave the US capital early Friday for a one-day trip to Greenland to sign a series of pacts intended to modernize a US military base which will support the missile defense program. He will meet Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller and Greenland Deputy Premier Josef Motzfeldt to sign agrrements paving the way for an upgrade of radar facilities at Thule Air Base which will support the US missile defense program. Thule served as a key listening post during the Cold War and is now considered essential to US missile defense plans. As compensation to Greenland, where there was much opposition to the modernization and expansion plans, Copenhagen and Washington are to renew a 1951 treaty with Greenland recognizing it as an autonomous Danish territory. From papadop at peak.org Sat Aug 7 09:47:22 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat Aug 7 09:47:22 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Re:Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20040807135444.02576640@mail.picknowl.com.au> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20040807135444.02576640@mail.picknowl.com.au> Message-ID: Sorry to be picky - but this is just word-games. Capitalism is totalitarian Michael ======================== On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, John Hermann wrote: Fascism is totalitarian capitalism. From papadop at peak.org Sat Aug 7 10:00:32 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat Aug 7 10:00:33 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Newsweek: Bush rambled ....... Message-ID: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5633644/site/newsweek/ Disunity: Bush rambled where Kerry played to his base A Tale of Two Candidates Both Bush and Kerry addressed minority journalists this week. Guess who did better? Newsweek 12:31 p.m. ET Aug. 7, 2004 By Marcus Mabry Aug. 7 - It didn't sound like a hard question. After George W. Bush delivered a tepidly received address to a convention of minority journalists, a Native-American editor from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer asked, "What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century?" As president and a former governor, the journalist said, Bush had a "unique experience, looking at [the issue] from two perspectives." The president fumbled. "Tribal sovereignty means that -- it's sovereignty," he stammered. "I mean, you're a -- you're a -- you've been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity." As Bush rambled, looking like a schoolboy unprepared at the front of the class, many of the hundreds of Asian, black, Native American and Hispanic journalists gathered before himwell, snickered. >From the moment Bush took the stage of the Washington Convention Center on Friday morning, it was clear he would rather have been somewhere else. Anywhere else. Bush had come to the convention of Unity: Journalists of Color not because he wanted to, but because he had to. When he snubbed the NAACP's annual convention last month his absence made headlines. Not a good thing in a closely contested election where every vote counts, not only among minorities but -- more importantly -- among the white swing voters who value tolerance and diversity. So when Unity, the largest journalist group in the world, invited the president to address the meeting it holds every five years, Bush couldn't afford to look like he was dissing the entire American minority press corps. John Kerry had been on the same stage exactly 24 hours earlier and had received enthusiastic applause. But Kerry had been, presumably, playing to his base. The president's challenge was greater. Bush had come to office promising to be a uniter not a divider, on the tails of the ugliest election in 100 years, when, critics charge, as many as one million African Americans were disenfranchised. On Friday, clearly much of the audience remained skeptical of the president. "He's worse than I imagined," said one Asian journalist of the president's flat delivery. "Why does Kerry get such grief for not being a good speaker?" During his speech the president looked like he was getting a tooth extracted. For the most part, though, the audience was polite. Like Kerry, Bush received a standing ovation when he entered the cavernous hall and another when he left. Unlike Kerry, he did not receive a standing ovation when he finished his speech. And the applause lines that peppered his speech mostly fell flat. The exceptions: vouchers (the president called them scholarships) for parents to move their children from failing D.C. public schools to private schools; the increase in minority home ownership over the last two years; a call for diversity in hiring, "including news organizations;" and a line about faith-based initiatives saving "America, one heart, one soul, one conscience at a time." There were testy exchanges with the panel of four questioners over the need for a new voting rights amendment for minorities, Affirmative Action (the president agreed with one questioner that legacy admissions to colleges and universities should cease, in addition to "quotas" for minority acceptances). But Bush was more at ease in the rough-and-tumble of the question-and-answer period, his performance more impressive, when debating contentious issues like the need to protect innocent Arab Americans, minority disenfranchisement after the Florida 2000 vote and whether he agreed with former Iraq commander Tommy Franks that American forces would need to be based there for two to four more years. "[You're] trying to get me to put a timetable out there. I'm not going to do it. See, that's -- it's part of -- and when the timetable is busted they'll say, I told you!' As the audience erupted in laughter, apparently recognizing themselves in the president's comments. "Yeah. A for effort, anyway!" Kerry had made news with his speech to Unity the day before. When asked by a reporter what he would have done if he had been "caught in a Floridaclassroom on September 11," Kerry said he would have politely excused himself and told the children "the president has to something to attend to." For journalists attending Unity, the mini-firestorm that ensued offered a rare glimpse into how reporters can fail to get it right. Almost immediately, the presidents' surrogates, led by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, condemned Kerry for Monday-morning quarterbacking. Most media portrayed Kerry's comments as red meat for true believers. But neither a groggy Tim Russert speaking the next day on the Today show nor the front page of The Washington Post noted that the Kerry remark had been in response to a specific question about what he would have done had he been president at the fateful moment. More than that, there was something disingenuous in the Republican onslaught. Most polls showed Kerry with a modest bounce after the Democratic National Convention in Boston. But what all the polls showed was that even those voters who would not cast their ballots for Kerry "if the election were held today," had decided that he was credible on issues of national defense and homeland security. President Bush's double-digit lead over his challenger on who would better handle terrorism and homeland security -- the president's signature issue -- had evaporated. On the issue of Iraq, specifically, Kerry was polling better than Bush. The Democrat, too hapless to get a bounce out of his Boston coronation, was nibbling at, if not eating the president's lunch. The Giuiliani campaign -- not to mention the volley of ads from anti-Kerry Vietnam vets condemning his right to his war medals -- had more to do with countering Kerry's success at narrowing the leadership gap than what the Democrat said to a group of minority journalists on a Thursday morning in August. From papadop at peak.org Sat Aug 7 17:09:43 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat Aug 7 17:09:43 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] BLUNDER: -- "MOLE" outed by orange alert. Message-ID: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5902 856 REUTERS Sat Aug 7, 2004 12:46 PM LONDON: The revelation that a mole within al Qaeda was exposed after Washington launched its "orange alert" this month has shocked security experts, who say the outing of the source may have set back the war on terror. Reuters learned from Pakistani intelligence sources on Friday that computer expert Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, arrested secretly in July, was working under cover to help the authorities track down al Qaeda militants in Britain and the United States when his name appeared in U.S. newspapers. "After his capture he admitted being an al Qaeda member and agreed to send e-mails to his contacts," a Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters. "He sent encoded e-mails and received encoded replies. He's a great hacker and even the U.S. agents said he was a computer whiz." Last Sunday, U.S. officials told reporters that someone held secretly by Pakistan was the source of the bulk of the information justifying the alert. The New York Times obtained Khan's name independently, and U.S. officials confirmed it when it appeared in the paper the next morning. None of those reports mentioned at the time that Khan had been under cover helping the authorities catch al Qaeda suspects, and that his value in that regard was destroyed by making his name public. A day later, Britain hastily rounded up terrorism suspects, some of whom are believed to have been in contact with Khan while he was under cover. Washington has portrayed those arrests as a major success, saying one of the suspects, named Abu Musa al-Hindi or Abu Eissa al-Hindi, was a senior al Qaeda figure. But British police have acknowledged the raids were carried out in a rush. Suspects were dragged out of shops in daylight and caught in a high speed car chase, instead of the usual procedure of catching them at home in the early morning while they can offer less resistance. "HOLY GRAIL" OF INTELLIGENCE Security experts contacted by Reuters said they were shocked by the revelations that the source whose information led to the alert was identified within days, and that U.S. officials had confirmed his name. "The whole thing smacks of either incompetence or worse," said Tim Ripley, a security expert who writes for Jane's Defense publications. "You have to ask: what are they doing compromising a deep mole within al Qaeda, when it's so difficult to get these guys in there in the first place? "It goes against all the rules of counter-espionage, counter-terrorism, running agents and so forth. It's not exactly cloak and dagger undercover work if it's on the front pages every time there's a development, is it?" A source such as Khan -- cooperating with the authorities while staying in active contact with trusting al Qaeda agents -- would be among the most prized assets imaginable, he said. "Running agents within a terrorist organization is the Holy Grail of intelligence agencies. And to have it blown is a major setback which negates months and years of work, which may be difficult to recover." Rolf Tophoven, head of the Institute for Terrorism Research and Security Policy in Essen, Germany, said allowing Khan's name to become public was "very unclever." "If it is correct, then I would say its another debacle of the American intelligence community. Maybe other serious sources could have been detected or guys could have been captured in the future" if Khan's identity had been protected, he said. Britain, which has dealt with Irish bombing campaigns for decades, has a policy of announcing security alerts only under narrow circumstances, when authorities have specific advice they can give the public to take action that will make them safer. UNNECESSARY ALARM Home Secretary David Blunkett, responsible for Britain's anti-terrorism policy, said in a statement on Friday there was "a difference between alerting the public to a specific threat and alarming people unnecessarily by passing on information indiscriminately." Kevin Rosser, security expert at the London-based consultancy Control Risks Group, said an inherent risk in public alerts is that secret sources will be compromised. "When these public announcements are made they have to be supported with some evidence, and in addition to creating public anxiety and fatigue you can risk revealing sources and methods of sensitive operations," he said. In the case of last week's U.S. alerts, officials said they had ordered tighter security on a number of financial sites in New York, Washington and New Jersey because Khan possessed reports showing al Qaeda agents had studied the buildings. Although the casing reports were mostly several years old, U.S. officials said they acted urgently because of separate intelligence suggesting an increased likelihood of attacks in the runup to the presidential election in November. U.S. officials now say Hindi, one of the suspects arrested after Khan's name was compromised, may have been the head of the team that cased those buildings. But the Pakistani disclosure that Khan was under cover suggests that the cell had been infiltrated, and was under surveillance at the time Washington ordered the orange alert. The security experts said that under such circumstances it would be extraordinary to issue a public warning, because of the risk of tipping off the cell that it had been compromised. (Additional reporting by Mark Trevelyan in Berlin) From papadop at peak.org Sat Aug 7 18:26:41 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat Aug 7 18:26:40 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Bush vs. Bush Lite Message-ID: http://www.socialistworker.org/2004-2/508/508_01_WhatChoice.shtml August 6, 2004 JUST HOW far will John Kerry go in pandering to Republicans? With its lineup of retired generals, displays of U.S. flags and endless talk of a "strong" America, the Democratic National Convention in Boston last month was explicitly aimed at conservative voters. Kerry even bragged about supporting the Republicans' agenda of slashing government spending on programs for poor and working people. "When I came to the Senate, I broke with many in my own party to vote for a balanced budget, because I thought it was the right thing to do," Kerry declared. No wonder Kerry -- and the entire convention -- left many progressive commentators cold. "I'm already getting tired of the bulk e-mail messages claiming that Kerry is the embodiment of progressive dreams," wrote columnist Norman Solomon. "Please." Naomi Klein, the author and Nation columnist, wrote about "Kerry's vicious support for the apartheid wall in Israel, his gratuitous attacks on Hugo Chvez in Venezuela and his abysmal record on free trade." And in recent a speech, Fahrenheit 9/11 filmmaker Michael Moore warned that if Kerry is "weak-kneed and wimpy and wishy-washy," he "will encourage millions to stay home" on Election Day. Nevertheless, Moore, Klein and Solomon all support John Kerry -- in the name of stopping George W. Bush. They may dislike Kerry, but they claim that Bush is such a danger that he must be stopped at all costs. Yet Kerry has made it plain that his presidency would embrace all the main elements of the Bush agenda. Kerry, like Bush, wants to continue the occupation of Iraq -- and increase the already bloated military budget. He has vowed to limit government spending -- other than for national security and health care -- at the rate of inflation. This would lock in the Bush administration's budget cuts -- and prevent the funding of urgently needed programs to create jobs, alleviate poverty, rebuild public housing and schools. And Kerry's health care proposal would keep the system in the grip of profit-hungry pharmaceutical companies and health insurance giants -- and leave tens of millions uninsured. Kerry's campaign slogan is "we can do better" -- and we can. Not with Kerry and his conservative running mate, John Edwards, but with a genuine alternative -- Ralph Nader for president and Peter Camejo for vice president. Where Kerry-Edwards want to reward their corporate backers, Nader-Camejo call for taxing big business to pay for social programs, like universal, national health care. Where Kerry-Edwards want to keep the grip of U.S. imperialism on Iraq, Nader-Camejo call for ending the occupation -- and bringing the troops home. We don't have to accept a choice between George W. Bush and Kerry's copycat policies. Nader and Camejo are giving a voice to the vast majority left out of this rotten political system -- and their campaign deserves our support. From ptuffley at xtra.co.nz Sat Aug 7 19:12:34 2004 From: ptuffley at xtra.co.nz (Peter Tuffley) Date: Sat Aug 7 19:11:31 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Bush vs. Bush Lite In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6919F424-E8E0-11D8-9C4C-000A95C6C10C@xtra.co.nz> > Kerry's campaign slogan is "we can do better" -- and we can. Not with > Kerry and his conservative running mate, John Edwards, but with a > genuine > alternative -- Ralph Nader for president and Peter Camejo for vice > president. > Oh purleeeeeease!!! "Having a dream" is one thing -- indulging in this kind of cloud-cuckoo-land fantasy at a time like this is sheer irresponsibility. Typical Socialist Worker rubbish -- the masturbation of the impotent. > We don't have to accept a choice between George W. Bush and Kerry's > copycat policies. Nader and Camejo are giving a voice to the vast > majority Who's counting? > > left out of this rotten political system -- and their campaign deserves > our support. The US "system will continue to be rotten, with or without this preposterous pair of posturing "progressive" popinjays. From papadop at peak.org Sat Aug 7 19:44:17 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat Aug 7 19:44:15 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Kerry campaigns as candidate of big business Message-ID: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/aug2004/kerr-a07.shtml World Socialist Web Site By Bill Van Auken, SEP presidential candidate 7 August 2004 Historically, the Democratic Party has cast itself as the "party of the people." It claimed to stand up for the "common man" against those whom Franklin D. Roosevelt described as the "economic royalists". But that was 65 years ago. How far this party has shifted to the right, abandoning the last vestiges of liberal social reform, was on display this week, as its presidential candidate John Kerry surrounded himself with the modern-day princes of great wealth. The Kerry campaign Wednesday released the names of 200 billionaire and multi-millionaire financiers and corporate executives who have endorsed his run for the presidency, touting their support for his campaign as proof that he is a "responsible" candidate who will protect the interests of American capitalism. While the Bush campaign countered that they could easily come up with a far larger roster of capitalists backing the incumbent, the number in Kerry's corner was nonetheless significant. Most chiefs of big business have historically been Republicans, and there is generally little incentive to publicly oppose an incumbent president whose party controls both houses of Congress. When Bill Clinton challenged the elder Bush for the presidency in 1992, it should be recalled, he could count on only a handful of Wall Street and corporate backers. The very fact that he publicly appealed for support from these circles was considered a break from Democratic tradition. The release of the list of super-rich Kerry endorsers was accompanied by an "economic summit" in Davenport, Iowa. These ritualized affairs -- ostensibly "frank discussions" about the American economy -- have become part of the stock-in-trade of both parties. They were employed by both Clinton and George W. Bush to demonstrate their "concern" for the plight of ordinary people and mask the fact that their policies were directed entirely to furthering the interests of the US financial oligarchy, at the expense of the masses of working people. As is the norm, a delegation of trade union bureaucrats was brought to the table to serve as extras, whose presence is supposed to signify that billionaire investors and unemployed workers alike are "all in the same boat." Among those coming forward to back Kerry are some of the most ruthless elements at the pinnacle of US financial and industrial capital -- some of them life-long Republicans who publicly campaigned for Bush in the 2000 election. A prominent participant at the Iowa summit was Lee Iacocca -- responsible for the one of the greatest rounds of layoffs and wage cuts in US corporate history -- who summed up the thinking in these circles by declaring: "The bottom line is simple: we need a new CEO." Also on the list was David Bonderman, a founding partner of the buyout firm Texas Pacific Group. The Fort Worth-based financier made his fortune off the bankruptcies of Continental and American West airlines, and is presently involved in a leveraged buyout bid against Enron. He was a prominent backer of the incumbent both in Bush's campaign to become Texas governor and in his first run for the presidency. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal from a chartered yacht off the coast of Italy, Bonderman said: "George is really a good guy personally. But his policies are really terrible... He's turning out to be the worst president since Millard Fillmore -- and that's probably an insult to Millard Fillmore." Another former Bush supporter at Kerry's summit was Owsley Brown, the head of Brown-Forman, the maker of Jack Daniels whisky. He told the Journal: "It's of course not something done lightly and certainly not for someone like me -- a registered Republican all my life." He added that he was "looking for the kind of leadership that Senator Kerry will bring, certainly in fiscal matters." Also on the list were: Bank of America Chairman Charles Gifford; August A. Busch IV, president of Anheuser-Busch; Peter Chernin, second-in-command at Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation; Jeff Brotman, founder of Costco Wholesale Corp.; and Texas-based Wyndam Hotels CEO Fred Kleisner, who gave strong financial backing to Bush in 2000. In many cases, those on the list are well known for carrying out precisely the practices -- particularly the shifting of operations overseas to capitalize on low wages -- that Kerry has denounced on the campaign trail. Understandably, Kerry did not reprise the protectionist demagogy about "Benedict Arnold corporations" that he employed during the primaries. Why would such elements, who have reaped substantial rewards from the plundering of the country's resources to finance the massive tax cuts of the last four years, turn to Kerry instead of Bush? Kerry, who sits on one of the largest family fortunes in the country, is no stranger to these circles. The endorsements from Wall Street executives included not a few that can be traced back to services rendered by the Massachusetts senator. According to the book Buying of the President, 2004, by Charles Lewis, "Since 1995, he (Kerry) raised more than $30 million for his various campaigns, most of it from industries such as finance and telecommunications companies -- which are overseen by the Senate committees he serves on." The Democrats have tailored their campaign platform to appeal to the American financial oligarchy. Dedicated largely to war and "homeland security," it contains not a hint of significant social reform. Instead, it affirms the "free-market" creed: "We believe the private sector, not the government, is the engine of economic growth and job creation. Government's responsibility is to create an environment that will promote private sector investment, foster vigorous competition, and strengthen the foundations of an innovative economy." It promises that "Under John Kerry and John Edwards, 99 percent of American businesses will pay lower taxes than today." Over and over again, the platform's section on the economy vows that a Kerry administration will confront the challenge of capitalist globalization with a drive to renew "American competitiveness" in world markets. It says a Kerry administration will be committed to "strengthening our workers' ability to compete" and states the Democrats' belief that "our companies can keep and create jobs in America without sacrificing competitiveness." The thrust of this argument is that American workers must subordinate themselves to the drive to make American capitalism more globally competitive. Under conditions in which the economy is dominated by transnational corporations capable of moving production from continent to continent almost at will, this can only mean submitting to cuts in wages, benefits and working conditions in order to narrow the gap between the conditions of American workers and those who face the most brutal forms of exploitation -- from Mexico to Eastern Europe to India. There is doubtless sentiment among some within the financial elite that Bush and his administration have become too discredited among working people to impose further sacrifice and austerity without provoking social unrest. That a further onslaught on working class living standards is on the agenda is unquestionable. The US economy has grown increasingly unstable and vulnerable to crises. The latest federal budget deficit of $445 billion is the largest in the country's history. The massive US trade deficit is expected to grow by another $600 billion this year alone. The dollar has lost nearly 20 percent of its value against other foreign currencies since 2002. The price of crude oil, meanwhile, has hit a 21-year high, rising almost 40 percent in the last year alone. There are growing signs that spiraling oil prices could touch off a devastating combination of inflation and recession. The Bush administration's talk of economic expansion has grown increasingly hollow, with job creation declining for the last four months, and a mere 32,000 workers being added to payrolls in July -- some 200,000 less than economists had projected. Kerry has vowed to tackle the US economic crisis by cutting the federal deficit in half during his first four-year term. He claims this will be accomplished through a combination of roll-backs of some of the Bush administration's tax cuts for the top 1 percent of the population and a fiscal austerity policy requiring the government to be run on a "pay as you go" basis, including automatic spending cuts. Most economic analysts have concluded that the pledge to reduce the deficit is incompatible with Kerry's modest plans for expanding health care programs. There is also widespread skepticism about the ability of a Kerry administration to reverse tax cuts in the face of stiff opposition from the Republicans. Kerry has repeatedly stated that the Pentagon's swollen budget -- $416 billion this year -- will be untouchable. Every program already on the books -- including the "Star Wars" missile defense scheme -- will go through. Meanwhile, the Democratic candidate has said he is prepared to keep US troops in Iraq for at least another four years, guaranteeing hundreds of billions of dollars more in military expenditures. Given this commitment to militarism and the inevitable stonewalling of any attempt at a significant reversal of tax cuts, a Kerry administration would rapidly confront a severe fiscal crisis. It would inevitably jettison its health care proposals and respond with budget-cutting measures that would effectively demolish what remains of the social programs and benefits implemented from the 1930s to the 1960s. Here the record of the Clinton administration, which operated in a far more favorable economic environment, is instructive. In the face of Republican opposition, it abandoned its health care reform proposals during its first year and embarked on a fiscal austerity program that virtually eliminated welfare for the poor. The "liberalism" of Kerry and Edwards will prove equally bankrupt. Just as a Kerry administration is committed to continuing the war in Iraq and the underlying policies of global militarism, in the name of a war on terror, so domestically it would carry forward essentially the same draconian social policies that the Bush administration has prepared in advance. The extreme right-wing leadership in the Republican administration and Congress has deliberately stoked the US fiscal crisis, calculating that federal insolvency will compel the next government to gut social welfare programs -- in particular Social Security -- no matter who occupies the White House in 2005. Putting a Democrat, backed by the union bureaucracy, in the White House to carry out a scorched earth policy of social cuts has a definite appeal to more far-sighted elements within the financial elite. They believe that a Democratic administration would be better able to stave off, at least temporarily, a wave of social unrest against both the war in Iraq and the deteriorating economic situation at home. The embrace of Kerry by significant sections of big business must serve as a warning: no matter which party controls the White House, 2005 will see an escalating attack on jobs, living standards and basic democratic and social rights. If Kerry is elected, the Democrats' limited campaign promises will soon evaporate, and his administration's policies will be driven by the crisis of American capitalism and the demands of the financial oligarchy. There is no way out of the conditions of mounting economic insecurity, deepening social inequality and falling living standards that dominate American society outside of the fight for a socialist program that advocates the reorganization of economic life in the interests of the broad mass of working people. The Socialist Equality Party is running in the 2004 election to advance such a program. It advances policies that take as their starting point the mobilization of society's immense resources to improve living standards, create jobs and finance health care, education, and housing, rather than the subordination of the productive forces to the maximization of profit and the further enrichment of a tiny elite. Our campaign is dedicated to the political preparation of the mass, independent socialist movement of the working class that will be required in the coming struggles. We urge all of our supporters and readers to join the SEP campaign today. Participate in the fight to place our candidates -- both myself and my vice-presidential running mate Jim Lawrence, as well as our congressional and local candidates -- on the ballot. Make the SEP's campaign and platform known throughout the country, and make the decision to join our party and take up the struggle for a better world. From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Sat Aug 7 20:46:51 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sat Aug 7 20:47:08 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Kerry campaigns as candidate of big business In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040808112940.02e73260@central.murdoch.edu.au> Interesting that Bill Van Auken on the one hand refers disparagingly to "protectionist demagoguery" when corporations that go offshore to beat US wage standards are described by Kerry as "Benedict Arnolds" yet bases most of his case against corporations was against the attack on working conditions by "transnational corporations capable of moving production from continent to continent almost at will". Surely it is perfectly right to refer to such corporations, if they are American, as "Benedict Arnolds", even though of course Kerry didn't mean it. The primary goal of free trade (indeed most international trade) is to promote a race to the bottom in the very way that Bill Van Auken -- and momentarily for convenience John Kerry -- describe. But one can't have one's cake and eat it too -- to decry the race to the bottom and also to decry as "protectionist demagoguery" the defence of working and social conditions against the moving of production from continent to continent. As long as goods made by slaves are imported tariff-free and barrier-free, working conditions will be undercut and corporations will be _forced_ to move their production to where the slaves are kept in subjection, until American workers (in this instance) are also reduced to slavery. Dion Giles Western Australia From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Sat Aug 7 21:20:26 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sat Aug 7 21:22:22 2004 Subject: [MAI-NOT+] [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right In-Reply-To: References: <5.2.0.9.0.20040807135444.02576640@mail.picknowl.com.au> Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040808102324.02d88ea8@central.murdoch.edu.au> [Sorry for cross-posting on this, but I am not sure everyone who has engaged in this discussion is currently part of Mai-not -- DG] At 00:47 08/08/2004, MichaelP wrote: >Sorry to be picky - but this is just word-games. Capitalism is >totalitarian > >Michael >======================== Yes and no. It is important to get a good and detailed picture of the terrain. It is not important whether we call something a hill or a mound or a hillock or a mountain but it _is_ important to be aware of characteristics that change drastically with height, and use language to reflect this and to see that we all know what reality each of us is talking about. I would see capitalism and fascism as parallel in linguistic form to pre-cancerous lesions and cancer. Pre-cancerous lesions are not cancer -- they don't have the deadly invasive characteristics of cancer. Calling all precancerous lesions cancer muddies the battle against cancer. Both precancerous lesions and cancer grow from tissue and can't grow without it. But tissue isn't cancer either Fascism is an outgrowth from capitalism which itself is an outgrowth from the organisation of human beings into society. Capitalism is a condition which contains the roots of fascism. Fascism is a terminal disease which grows from capitalism when capitalism is "untreated". The war crushed fascism (which had grown almost without let or hindrance) and brought about a remission, but many metastases remained and so did the general condition from which fascism grows. For a third of the world's population -- the "socialist camp" -- capitalism was largely stamped out, yet something with all the objectionable features of fascism continued to grow. Indeed it grew more successfully, because attention was diverted from its growth which maturity in the USSR by the 1930s though it took until the 1960s for it to engulf Communist China. Something very like it rules in the Islamic world, and it is not at all certain that the anti-human nature of the mullah regimes in Iran or in Taliban Afghanistan grew out of capitalism within those societies. Yet everything that is objectionable about fascism bears down on the people of Iran and bore down on the people of Afghanistan (still does but in fragmented form). That grew out of religion, which preceded capitalism by centuries. The same disease of theocracy spread throughout Europe and lasted for many centuries during feudal, pre-capitalist times. No analysis is possible while we conflate fascism with capitalism -- as if the people of Europe weren't liberated from anything when the Nazi armed forces were crushed and driven out or that we might as well have let the Japs come and rule Australia (with the aid of collaborators from the Libs' predecessor the UAP). The problem common to capitalism, fascism which grows from it, and the fascism that grew in Soviet Russia and Islamic Iran and Afghanistan, is narrowing of the base from which power is exercised. The only answer to narrowing the power base is broadening the power base, which is the fundamental importance of democracy and in particular breaking it out of the chains of representative government which is in itself a narrow power base even if much broader than that which it replaced. Broadening the power base is a multifaceted task but should never be lost sight of in the enthusiasm of scoring successes against an oppressive class from a narrow power base. The real task remains one of broadening access to power. Dion Giles Western Australia PS: Re totalitarianism, this has been distinguished from despotism in that a despotic regime stops you criticising it but accepts your keeping your mouth shut whereas a totalitarian regime, like Nazism and Stalinism and Mullah-ism and Orwell's Oceania require the citizen ceaselessly to show loyalty by answering calls to prayer: silence is treated as enmity. The USA is edging towards totalitarianism (endless flag displays and oaths of allegiance) but remains a very long way from it. It is closer to fascism. From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 8 09:01:54 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 8 09:01:54 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Brit report on GITMO cageing Message-ID: If this BBC summary doesn't suffice to produce outrage, just look at http://cryptome.org/afcu-detention.htm where they display a 165-screen summary of the complete 115 page report. And you'll learn that; "The organizations that were involved in the interrogations included the CIA, FBI, DOD, MI5, NCI (Navy Crime Investigators), NSA, Army CID. MichaelP =============================== http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3533804.stm Wednesday, 4 August, 2004, 22:22 GMT 23:22 UK BRITONS ALLEGE GUANTANAMO ABUSE Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul Asef Iqbal, Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul allege humiliating and abusive treatment Three British men held by the US in Guantanamo Bay for more than two years have compiled a report alleging abuse and humiliation while in captivity. The document, to be released in New York on Wednesday, was being passed on to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The accusations include beatings and one of the men, Ruhal Ahmed, claimed a US guard pointed a gun at his head, in front of a British interrogator. The UK Ministry of Defence said it would investigate any such allegations. There was never any suggestion on the part of the British interrogators that this treatment was wrong Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Inmates refuse review Asef Iqbal, Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul - all from Tipton in the West Midlands - returned to Britain in March having spent more than two years without legal representation in American custody - first in Afghanistan, then at Guantanamo Bay. They were then released without charge by British police. Their experiences in captivity now form the basis of a 115-page report, Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. The allegations include: * they were repeatedly punched, kicked, slapped, forcibly injected with drugs, deprived of sleep, hooded, photographed naked and subjected to body cavity searches and sexual and religious humiliations * one American guard told the inmates: "The world does not know you're here - we would kill you and no-one would know" * Mr Iqbal said when he arrived at Guantanamo, one of the soldiers told him: "You killed my family in the towers and now it's time to get you back. * Mr Rasul said an MI5 officer had told him during an interrogation that he would be detained in Guantanamo for life * the men said they saw the beating of mentally ill inmates * another man was left brain damaged after a beating by soldiers as punishment for attempting suicide * the Britons said an inmate told them he was shown a video of hooded men - apparently inmates - being forced to sodomise one another * guards threw prisoners' Korans into toilets and tried to force them to give up their religion The men allege that when a new camp commander, Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller, took charge, new practices began, including the shaving of beards, playing loud music, shackling detainees in squatting positions and locking them naked in cells. Mr Ahmed said Foreign Office officials "did not seem to care or even ask him about the conditions". The report says: "It was very clear to all three that MI5 was content to benefit from the effect of the isolation, sleep deprivation and other forms of acutely painful and degrading treatment, including short shackling. "There was never any suggestion on the part of the British interrogators that this treatment was wrong." All the time I was kneeling with a guy standing on the backs of my legs and another holding a gun to my head Three complain of beatings The Foreign Office said the United States had been asked to examine the allegations and would be responding to them fully. But a spokesman said none of the Britons at Guantanamo had made it aware of any allegations of systematic abuse, either when they were detained in the camp or on their release. A statement said: "Throughout we have sought to meet the twin objectives of pursuing the fight against international terrorism whilst safeguarding the interests of the British citizens detained aboard." All three men said they had made either written or verbal complaints to British embassy officials while they were being held. The trio said they had eventually wrongfully confessed to appearing in a video with al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden and Mohammed Atta, one of the 11 September hijackers. There was not a single method that was not used to break their will -- Lawyer Gareth Pierce Mr Rasul was actually working in a Curry's electronics store in the West Midlands at the time the video was filmed, the report says. In the report, it is understood Mr Ahmed says shortly after his capture in northern Afghanistan in 2001 he was questioned by a British interrogator, who identified himself as an SAS officer, while an American soldier held a gun to his head, threatening to shoot him. The UK Ministry of Defence acknowledged that such behaviour is contrary to the Geneva Conventions and has promised to investigate any such allegation. For its part, the Pentagon has dismissed the claims of abuse as a fabrication. Lawyer Gareth Pierce told BBC News: "There was not a single method that was not used to break their will to make them confess to something they were not guilty of, and all three did." From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 8 09:59:18 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 8 09:59:11 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Web hoax fools news services Message-ID: Why pay money for AP stories ? "I did this for a couple of reasons. One is to attract attention. But two is to just make a statement on these type of videos and how easily they can be faked.' see eg http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~2322110,00.html Michael ======================= http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/08/08/MNGBN83I3U1.DTL Web hoax fools news services S.F. man fakes beheading, proves need for verification San Francisco Chronicle +++ Michael ======================= http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/08/08/MNGBN83I3U1.DTL S.F. man fakes beheading, proves need for verification San Francisco Chronicle Sunday, August 8, 2004 The faked beheading story broadcast on two Arab language television stations and sent out on international news services early Saturday was based on a grainy video that was made by three Bay Area residents as an experiment to find out how quickly erroneous information could be spread by the Internet. The experiment had a delayed reaction, but when it came, it did so more dramatically than the people who made the video ever dreamed. For almost an hour Saturday morning, the Associated Press reported that a 22-year-old San Francisco man, Benjamin Vanderford, had been beheaded in Iraq. The report of Vanderford's death was based on a 55-second video clip that Vanderford and two friends had faked and distributed via the Internet. The story also was picked up by the Reuters news service, and the grainy video was broadcast by two Middle Eastern television stations. In an interview with The Chronicle hours later, two of the three filmmakers responsible for the clip said they had never expected it to be disseminated so widely, and they blamed the mass media for publicizing the stunt without making sure that the video was genuine. "We never intended this to be taken as real," said Robert Martin, a 23- year-old Pleasanton man who produced the video with his girlfriend, Laurie Kirchner, 20, and with Vanderford. The video, which is intercut with grisly photographs of war victims taken from a Middle Eastern Web site and features a recording of someone reading the Quran on its soundtrack, was originally made in May and posted to two file- sharing sites, Soulseek and Kazaa. It all but disappeared until its appearance this weekend on www.islamic-minbar.com, a Web site in Arabic that has posted communiqus from Islamic radical groups and videos of victims who were beheaded by militants. Soon after it appeared on the Islamic-Minbar site, the video was picked up by the Associated Press in Cairo, Reuters News Service and two Middle Eastern television broadcasters. From there, it quickly spread through the media by being picked up by newspapers, radio stations and television news operations. Even though the video portrays only somebody making a sawing motion against Vanderford's neck with a knife, the Associated Press repeatedly characterized the depiction in the clip as a "beheading" -- and its first four stories about the video stated flatly that Vanderford had been "beheaded." Associated Press Deputy Managing Editor Tom Kent said the news service had reported the beheading as factual because the video had been broadcast on a Web outlet that has previously published information about terrorist group activities in the Middle East that turned out to be true. In an interview with The Chronicle, Kent said the site has provided valuable news leads and the Associated Press is careful to review the site's information before distributing it. "We spend a lot of time throwing out things that we don't trust," he said. "But if somebody is going to go to the kind of effort they did in this case, some things are going to get through." Generally, stories based on postings from the Web site are qualified with a phrase such as "the information could not be independently verified." But in the case of the video, none of the first four stories the Associated Press transmitted to its members carried that caveat, and the story that finally did state that the authenticity of the video could not be determined was published almost 90 minutes after the first version went out. Kent could not explain why the disclaimer had not been added earlier but suggested that the story had been published before it could be thoroughly authenticated "because in this case, everything was just happening fast and furious." "Verifying a beheading in Iraq is not something that you are going to do in an hour," he said. Kent said the episode showed the vulnerability of the news media to manipulation in reporting on the shadowy activities of terrorist organizations and militant groups. "It certainly emphasizes the importance of being as careful as we can in our reporting and writing," he said. "It's a very delicate line that we and other media have had to walk in reporting on terrorism." In part, the video appears to have been taken seriously because Islamic militants have recently beheaded three hostages -- U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg, South Korean translator Kim Sun Il and Bulgarian truck driver Georgi Lazov -- as part of their effort to force the U.S. and its allies out of Iraq. Another American, journalist Daniel Pearl, was killed the same way in Pakistan in 2002. Nevertheless, Ben Bagdikian, author and former journalism dean at UC Berkeley, said Saturday that the Associated Press should have stated that the information taken from the militant Islamic Web site was not independently corroborated. "Every reporter's safety valve is to put it in the conditional, to use the words 'alleged' or 'reported,' " Bagdikian said. "Having said that, I think if we were in normal times and someone heard of a beheading without very specific details and reasons, it would not be picked up by a responsible news service," he said. "But given the fact that there is a war in Iraq and there have been beheadings of foreign nationals in Iraq, it makes it plausible that another beheading happened. Still, you need to cite a source. You need to make more probes before it's put out on a news service." Vanderford, a San Francisco musician and video game designer who briefly mounted a campaign for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors this year, spent Saturday in his Western Addition high-rise apartment and said through friends that his attorney had advised him to stop talking about the video hoax. But Martin and Kirchner, who were visiting Vanderford to offer their support, agreed to talk about their short film "to clear up misconceptions." "We made the film in my garage in Pleasanton," said Martin, who described himself as an experimental musician. "We made the fake blood with corn syrup and red food coloring -- a recipe that we got on the Internet. We used a low- level cheap digital video camera. And if you look closely at the video, you see the supposed beheading is done with a dull vegetable knife and we used the wrong side. ... We did the whole thing in a couple of hours." Kirchner said the concept behind the hoax was to show how easy it is to make something fake look real. She and her two fellow filmmakers, she said, wanted to challenge others to question the validity of material that is presented as fact. "What is amazing,'' she said, "is the power of the Internet. One person gets the file, they share it with someone else. It eventually ends up on some Arab TV station and is believed as the real thing." Hours after it posted the clip, the Islamic Minbar site had removed it and posted a statement saying that it was checking its other videos of beheadings to make sure there were no other frauds. Both Vanderford and Martin were interviewed by FBI agents Saturday. San Francisco FBI spokeswoman LaRae Quy said the FBI is working with local law enforcement and the U.S. Attorney's Office to determine whether any charges can be filed against Vanderford. "It's a very unusual situation," Quy said. "It may come down to freedom of speech, and we'll defer to the U.S. attorney's office here on that. The question is: At what point does he step from freedom of expression into something that makes a mockery out of the pain suffered by families that have had beheadings of loved ones?" For those who have lost relatives to the violence of Islamic militants, the beheading hoax seemed thoughtlessly cruel. "The person who did this can't have a heart," said Bruce Hauser, who lives next door to Michael and Suzanne Berg, Nicholas Berg's parents. Berg's beheading was captured on video and later shown on the Internet. Hauser, a close friend who became the Berg family spokesman after Nicholas was killed, said from his home in Philadelphia that he sees the raw grief that comes with loss. For the Berg family, the grief hasn't abated, he said. "The world needs to keep in mind there are families like the Bergs that are going through this suffering," Hauser said. "It is all too real for them." When told of Hauser's statement, Martin and Kirchner expressed regret for any harm caused by their hoax. "If any families, such as the families of Daniel Pearl or Nicholas Berg have been caused undue stress, we apologize," said Kirchner. "It's not our fault. It's the media that made this real. This was intended to be a ridiculous little parody." - From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Sun Aug 8 13:36:59 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Sun Aug 8 13:37:25 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Neoliberalism and the Demise of Democracy Message-ID: Neoliberalism and the Demise of Democracy: Resurrecting Hope in Dark Times by Henry A. Giroux www.dissidentvoice.org August 7, 2004 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug04/Giroux0807.htm Neoliberalism has become one of the most pervasive, if not, dangerous ideologies of the 21st century. It pervasiveness is evident not only by its unparalleled influence on the global economy, but also by its power to redefine the very nature of politics itself. Free market fundamentalism rather than democratic idealism is now the driving force of economics and politics in most of the world, and it is a market ideology driven not just by profits but by an ability to reproduce itself with such success that, to paraphrase Fred Jameson, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of neoliberal capitalism. Wedded to the belief that the market should be the organizing principle for all political, social, and economic decisions, neoliberalism wages an incessant attack on democracy, public goods, the welfare state, and non-commodified values. Under neoliberalism everything either is for sale or is plundered for profit. Public lands are looted by logging companies and corporate ranchers; politicians willingly hand the public's airwaves over to powerful broadcasters and large corporate interests without a dime going into the public trust; Halliburton gives war profiteering a new meaning as it is granted corporate contracts without any competitive bidding and then bilks the U.S. government for millions; the environment is polluted and despoiled in the name of profit-making just as the government passes legislation to make it easier for corporations to do so; public services are gutted in order to lower the taxes of major corporations; schools more closely resemble either malls or jails, and teachers, forced to get revenue for their school by hawking everything from hamburgers to pizza parties. As markets are touted as the driving force of everyday life, big government is disparaged as either incompetent or threatening to individual freedom, suggesting that power should reside in markets and corporations rather than in governments (except for their support for corporate interests and national security) and citizens. Under neoliberalism, the state now makes a grim alignment with corporate capital and transnational corporations. Gone are the days when the state "assumed responsibility for a range of social needs." [1] Instead, agencies of government now pursues a wide range of "'deregulations,' privatizations, and abdications of responsibility to the market and private philanthropy." [2] Deregulation, in turn, promotes "widespread, systematic disinvestment in the nation's basic productive capacity." [3] Flexible production encourages wage slavery and disposable populations at home. And the search for ever greater profits leads to outsourcing which accentuates the flight of capital and jobs abroad. Neoliberalism has now become the prevailing logic in the United States, and according to Stanley Aronowitz "...the neoliberal economic doctrine proclaiming the superiority of free markets over public ownership, or even public regulation of private economic activities, has become the conventional wisdom, not only among conservatives but among social progressives." [4] The ideology and power of neoliberalism also cuts across national boundaries. Throughout the globe, the forces of neoliberalism are on the march, dismantling the historically guaranteed social provisions provided by the welfare state, defining profit-making as the essence of democracy, and equating freedom with the unrestricted ability of markets to "govern economic relations free of government regulation." [5] Transnational in scope, neoliberalism now imposes its economic regime and market values on developing and weaker nations through structural adjustment policies enforced by powerful financial institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Secure in its dystopian vision that there are no alternatives, as England's former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once put it, neoliberalism obviates issues of contingency, struggle, and social agency by celebrating the inevitability of economic laws in which the ethical ideal of intervening in the world gives way to the idea that we "have no choice but to adapt both our hopes and our abilities to the new global market." [6] Coupled with a new culture of fear, market freedoms seem securely grounded in a defense of national security, capital, and property rights. When coupled with a media driven culture of fear and the everyday reality of insecurity, public space becomes increasingly militarized as state governments invest more in prison construction than in education. Prison guards and security personnel in public schools are two of the fastest growing professions. In its capacity to dehistoricize and depoliticize society, as well as in its aggressive attempts to destroy all of the public spheres necessary for the defense of a genuine democracy, neoliberalism reproduces the conditions for unleashing the most brutalizing forces of capitalism. Social Darwinism has been resurrected from the ashes of the 19th century sweatshops and can now be seen in full bloom in most reality TV programs and in the unfettered self-interests that now drives popular culture. As narcissism is replaced by unadulterated materialism, public concerns collapse into utterly private considerations and where public space does exist it is mainly used as a confessional for private woes, a cut throat game of winner take all, or a advertisement for consumerism. Neoliberal policies are dominate the discourse of politics and use the breathless rhetoric of the global victory of free-market rationality to cut public expenditures and undermine those non-commodified public spheres that serve as the repository for critical education, language, and public intervention. Spewed forth by the mass media, right-wing intellectuals, religious fanatics, and politicians, neoliberal ideology, with its ongoing emphasis on deregulation and privatization, has found its material expression in an all-out attack on democratic values and on the very notion of the public sphere. Within the discourse of neoliberalism, the notion of the public good is devalued and, where possible, eliminated as part of a wider rationale for a handful of private interests to control as much of social life as possible in order to maximize their personal profit. Public services such as health care, child care, public assistance, education, and transportation are now subject to the rules of the market. Construing the public good as a private good and the needs of the corporate and private sector as the only source of investment, neoliberal ideology produces, legitimates, and exacerbates the existence of persistent poverty, inadequate health care, racial apartheid in the inner cities, and the growing inequalities between the rich and the poor. [7] As Stanley Aronowitz points out, the Bush administration has made neoliberal ideology the cornerstone of its program and has been in the forefront in actively supporting and implementing the following policies: [D]eregulation of business at all levels of enterprises and trade; tax reduction for wealthy individuals and corporations; the revival of the near-dormant nuclear energy industry; limitations and abrogation of labor's right to organize and bargain collectively; a land policy favoring commercial and industrial development at the expense of conservation and other pro environment policies; elimination of income support to the chronically unemployed; reduced federal aid to education and health; privatization of the main federal pension programs, Social Security; limitation on the right of aggrieved individuals to sue employers and corporations who provide services; in addition, as social programs are reduced, [Republicans] are joined by the Democrats in favoring increases in the repressive functions of the state, expressed in the dubious drug wars in the name of fighting crime, more funds for surveillance of ordinary citizens, and the expansion of the federal and local police forces. [8] Central to both neoliberal ideology and its implementation by the Bush administration is the ongoing attempts by free-market fundamentalists and right wing politicians to view government as the enemy of freedom (except when it aids big business) and discount it as a guardian of the public interest. The call to eliminate big government is neoliberalism's great unifying idea and has broad popular appeal in the United States because it is a principle deeply embedded in the country's history and tangled up with its notion of political freedom. And yet, the right wing appropriation of this tradition is racked with contradictions in terms of neoliberal policies. The advocates of neoliberalism have attacked what they call big government when it has provided essential services such as crucial safety nets for the less fortunate, but they have no qualms about using the government to bailout the airline industry after the economic nosedive that followed the 2000 election of George W. Bush and the events of 9/11. Nor are there any expressions of outrage from the cheerleaders of neoliberalism when the state engages in promoting various forms of corporate welfare by providing billions of dollars in direct and indirect subsidies to multinational corporations. In short, government bears no obligation for either the poor and dispossessed or for the collective future of young people. As the laws of the market take precedence over the laws of the state as guardians of the public good, the government increasingly offers little help in mediating the interface between the advance of capital and its rapacious commercial interests. Neither does it aid non-commodified interests and non-market spheres that create the political, economic, and social spaces and discursive conditions vital for critical citizenship and democratic public life. Within the discourse of neoliberalism, it becomes difficult for the average citizen to speak about political or social transformation, or to even challenge, outside of a grudging nod toward rampant corruption, the ruthless downsizing, the ongoing liquidation of job security, or the elimination of benefits for people now hired on part-time. The liberal democratic vocabulary of rights, entitlements, social provisions, community, social responsibility, living wage, job security, equality, and justice seem oddly out of place in a country where the promise of democracy has been replaced by casino capitalism, a winner-take-all philosophy, suited to lotto players and day traders alike. As corporate culture extends even deeper into the basic institutions of civil and political society, buttressed daily by a culture industry largely in the hands of concentrated capital, it is reinforced even further by the pervasive fear and insecurity of the public that the future holds nothing beyond a watered down version of the present. As the prevailing discourse of neoliberalism seizes the public imagination, there is no vocabulary for progressive social change, democratically inspired visions, or critical notions of social agency to expand the meaning and purpose of democratic public life. Against the reality of low wage jobs, the erosion of social provisions for a growing number of people and the expanding war against young people of color at home and empire-building abroad, the market-driven juggernaut of neoliberalism continues to mobilize desires in the interest of producing market identities and market relationships that ultimately sever the link between education and social change while reducing agency to the obligations of consumerism. As neoliberal ideology and corporate culture extend even deeper into the basic institutions of civil and political society, there is a simultaneous diminishing of non-commodified public spheres -those institutions such as public schools, independent bookstores, churches, noncommercial public broadcasting stations, libraries, trade unions and various voluntary institutions engaged in dialogue, education, and learning-that address the relationship of the individual to public life and foster social responsibility and provide a robust vehicle for public participation and democratic citizenship. In the vacuum left by diminishing democracy, religious zealotry, cultural chauvinism, xenophobia, and racism have become the dominant tropes of neoconservatives and other extremist groups eager to take advantage of the growing insecurity, fear, and anxiety that result from increased joblessness, the war on terror, and the unraveling of communities. As a result of the consolidated corporate attack on public life, the maintenance of democratic public spheres from which to launch a moral vision or to engage in a viable struggle over politics loses all credibility-not to mention monetary support. As the alleged objectivity of neoliberal ideology remains largely unchallenged within dominant public spheres, individual critique and collective political struggles become more difficult. [9] It gets worse. Dominated by extremists, the Bush administration is driven by an arrogance of power and inflated sense of moral righteousness mediated largely by a false sense of certitude and never ending posture of triumphalism. As George Soros points out this rigid ideology and inflexible sense of mission allows the Bush administration to believe that "because we are stronger than others, we must know better and we must have right on our side. This is where religious fundamentalism comes together with market fundamentalism to form the ideology of American supremacy." [10] As public space is increasingly commodified and the state becomes more closely aligned with capital, politics is defined largely by its policing functions rather than an agency for peace and social reform. As the state abandons its social investments in health, education, and the public welfare. It increasingly takes on the functions of an enhanced police or security state, the signs of which are most visible in the increasing use of the state apparatus to spy on and arrests its subjects, the incarceration of individuals coincided disposable (primarily people of color), and the ongoing criminalization of social policies. Examples of the latter include anti-begging ordinances and anti-loitering that fine or punish homeless people for sitting or lying down too long in public places. [11] An even more despicable example of the barbaric nature of neoliberalism with its emphasis on profits over people and its willingness to punish rather than serve the poor and disenfranchised can be seen in the growing tendency of many hospitals across the country to have patients arrested and jailed if they cannot pay their medical bills. The policy, right out of the pages of George Orwell's 1984, represents a return to debtors prisons, which is now chillingly called "body attachment," and is " basically a warrant for... the patient's arrest." [12] Neoliberalism is not simply an economic policy designed to cut government spending, pursue free trade policies, and free market forces from government regulations; it is also a political philosophy and ideology that effects every dimension of social life. Neoliberalism has heralded a radical economic, political, and experiential shift that now largely defines the citizen as a consumer, disbands the social contract in the interests of privatized considerations, and separates capital from the context of place. Under such circumstances, neoliberalism portends the death of politics as we know it, strips the social of its democratic values, and reconstructs agency in terms that are utterly privatized and provides the conditions for an emerging form of proto-fascism that must be resisted at all costs. Neoliberalism not only enshrines unbridled individualism, it also destroys any vestige of democratic society by undercutting its "moral, material, and regulatory moorings," [13] and in doing so it offers no language for understanding how the future might be grasped outside of the narrow logic of the market. But there is even more at stake here than the obliteration of public concerns, the death of the social, the emergence of a market-based fundamentalism that undercuts the ability of people to understand how to translate the privately experienced misery into collective action, and the elimination of the gains of the welfare state. There is also the growing threat of displacing "political sovereignty with the sovereignty of the market, as if the latter has a mind and morality of its own." [14] As democracy becomes a burden under the reign of neoliberalism, civic discourse disappears and the reign of unfettered social Darwinism with its survival-of-the-slickest philosophy emerges as the template for a new form of proto-fascism. None of this will happen in the face of sufficient resistance, nor is the increasing move toward proto-fascism inevitable, but the conditions exist for democracy to lose all semblance of meaning in the United States.. Educators, parents, activists, workers, and others can address this challenge by building local and global alliances and engaging in struggles that acknowledge and transcend national boundaries, but also engage in modes of politics that connect with people's everyday lives. Democratic struggles cannot under emphasize the special responsibility of intellectuals to shatter the conventional wisdom and myths of neoliberalism with its stunted definition of freedom and its depoliticized and dehistoricized definition of its own alleged universality. As the late Pierre Bourdieu argued, any viable politics that challenges neoliberalism must refigure the role of the state in limiting the excesses of capital and providing important social provisions. [15] At the same time, social movements must address the crucial issue of education as it develops throughout the cultural sphere because the "power of the dominant order is not just economic, but intellectual-lying in the realm of beliefs," and it is precisely within the domain of ideas that a sense of utopian possibility can be restored to the public realm. [16] Most specifically, democracy necessitates forms of education that provide a new ethic of freedom and a reassertion of collective identity as central preoccupations of a vibrant democratic culture and society. Such a task, in part, suggests that intellectuals, artists, unions, and other progressive movements create teach-ins all over the country in order to name, critique, and connect the forces of market fundamentalism to the war at home and abroad, the shameful tax cuts for the rich, the dismantling of the welfare state, the attack on unions, the erosion of civil liberties, the incarceration of a generation of young black and brown men, the attack on public schools, and the growing militarization of public life. As Bush's credibility crisis is growing, the time has come to link the matters of economics with the crisis of political culture, and to connect the latter to the crisis of democracy itself. We need a new language for politics, for analyzing where it can take place, and what it means to mobilize alliances of workers, intellectuals, academics, journalists, youth groups, and others to reclaim, as Cornel West has aptly put it, hope in dark times. Henry A. Giroux is the Global Television Network Chair Professor at McMaster University in Canada. His most recent books include: Take Back Higher Education: Race, Youth, and the Crisis of Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Palgrave, 2004); Public Spaces, Private Lives: Democracy Beyond 9-11 (Rowman and Littlefield 2003); The Abandoned Generation: Democracy Beyond the Culture of Fear (Palgrave, 2003). He can be reached at: hag5@psu.edu. REFERENCES 1. George Steinmetz, 'The State of Emergency and the Revival of American Imperialism; Toward an Authoritarian Post-Fordism," Public Culture 15:2 (Spring 2003), p. 337. 2. George Steinmetz, Ibid., 'The State of Emergency and the Revival of American Imperialism; Toward an Authoritarian Post-Fordism," p. 337. 3. Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment and the Dismantling of Basic Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982), p. 6 4. Stanley Aronowitz, Ibid. How Class Works, p. 21. 5. Stanley Aronowitz, How Class Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 101. 6. Stanley Aronowitz, "Introduction," in Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 7 7. Doug Henwood, After the New Economy (New York: The New Press, 2003); Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich (New York: Broadway, 2003); Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003). 8. Stanley Aronowitz, How Class Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 102. 9. Of course, there is widespread resistance to neoliberalism and its institutional enforcers such as the WTO and IMF among many intellectuals, students, and global justice movements, but this resistance rarely gets aired in the dominant media and if it does it is often dismissed as irrelevant or tainted by Marxist ideology. 10. George Soros, "The US is Now in the Hands of a Group of Extremists," The Guardian/UK (January 26, 2004). 11. Paul Tolme, "Criminalizing the Homeless," In These Times (April 14, 2003), pp. 6-7. 12. Staff or Democracy Now, "Uncharitable Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured," CommonDreams (January 8, 2004). 13. John and Jean Comaroff, "Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming," Public Culture 12:2 (2000), p. 332. 14. Comaroff, Ibid., (2000), p. 332. 15. Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market (New York: The New Press, 1998). 16. Pierre Bourdieu and Gunter Grass, "The 'Progressive' Restoration: A Franco-German Dialogue," New Left Review 14 (march-April, 2003), p. 66. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 8 14:34:04 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 8 14:33:57 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] IRAQ SEEKS ARREST OF PROMINENT POLITICIANS Message-ID: "There is nobody in Iraq who enjoys immunity." except for Halliburton, and other U$ corporations that were granted immunity by the previous ( Bremer ? ) administration. ===================== http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4400790,00.html Associated Press Sunday August 8, 2004 9:31 PM BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq has issued an arrest warrant for Ahmad Chalabi, a former governing council member, on counterfeiting charges and another for Salem Chalabi, the head of Iraq's special tribunal, on murder charges, Iraq's chief investigating judge said Sunday. The warrant was a new sign of the fall of Ahmad Chalabi from the centers of power. Chalabi, a longtime exile opposition leader, had been a favorite of many in the Pentagon but fell out with the Americans in the weeks before the U.S. occgupation ended in June. His nephew, Salem Chalabi, heads the tribunal that is due to try Saddam on war crimes charges. "They should be arrested and then questioned and then we will evaluate the evidence, and then if there is enough evidence, they will be sent to trial," said Judge Zuhair al-Maliky. The warrants, issued Saturday, accused Ahmad Chalabi of counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars - which had been removed from circulation following the fall of Saddam's regime last year, he said. Ahmad Chalabi appeared to have been hiding the counterfeit money amid other old money and changing it into new dinars in the street, he said. Police found the counterfeit money along with old dinars in Ahmad Chalabi's house during a May raid, he said. Salem Chalabi was named as a suspect in the June killing of the Haithem Fadhil, director general of the finance ministry. Both men were reportedly out of the country Sunday. Haidar al-Moussawi, Ahmad Chalabi's spokesman, said members of his Iraqi National Congress had heard of the arrest warrants only through the media. "Such a warrant has been issued, but no one called any of the accused or gave them a chance before issuing the arrest warrant," he said. "These are very bad indications about the state of justice and law in the new Iraq," he said. If convicted, Salem Chalabi could face the death penalty, which was restored on Sunday, al-Maliky said. Any sentence for Ahmad Chalabi would be determined by the trial judges, he said. Ahmad Chalabi was a senior member of the Governing Council, which ran Iraq from the fall of Saddam until the end of the U.S. occupation. But he fell out with the Americans, and allegations surfaced that he supplied Iranians with classified U.S. intelligence on American monitoring of Iranian communications. ========== http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=561338&src=rss/uk/topNews§ion=news Arrest warrant issued for judge heading Saddam case REUTERS Sun 8 August, 2004 21:46 A U.S.-appointed Iraqi judge says he has issued an arrest warrant against leading Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi and his nephew, who is heading the tribunal trying former President Saddam Hussein. "An arrest warrant has been issued against Ahmad Hadi Chalabi in connection with counterfeiting money. He is the prime suspect," Zuhair al-Maliki told U.S.-funded Radio Sawa. Another warrant has been issued against Salem Chalabi on murder charges, he added. "There is nobody in Iraq who enjoys immunity. Implementation of the warrant is proceeding," he added. Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon ally one seen as a potential post-Saddam leader, has fallen from favour in recent months, spurned by Washington and many in the new Iraqi government which took office in June. From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 8 14:44:19 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 8 14:44:10 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] "ANON" CIA ANALYST: IRAQ INVASION A "TREMENDOUS GIFT" TO BIN LADEN Message-ID: http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040808/1/3mad0.html Agence Francew Presse Monday August 9, 4:55 AM The US invasion of Iraq was a "tremendous gift" to Osama bin Laden and a major setback in the struggle against al-Qaeda, according to a CIA terrorism expert who has written a scathing account of the conduct of the US "war on terror." In an interview with AFP, the author of "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror" blasted the efforts of successive US governments and the US intelligence community in fighting what he describes as a a global Islamic insurgency. "Anonymous," as he is known, painted a dismal picture of the situation in Iraq, a "very bleak" outlook for Afghanistan and advocated debate about US policies which he claimed are providing a fertile recruiting ground for al-Qaeda in the Muslim world. A senior CIA analyst, "Anonymous" has been widely identified as the head of the bin Laden unit at the Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He was allowed to write the book on condition he not reveal his identity. Published last month with an initial print run of 10,000 copies the provocative work, which was vetted by his employer for classified material, has climbed to number five on the New York Times list of non-fiction best-sellers. It has gone back to the printers for another 200,000 copies and translations into nearly a dozen languages are planned. They include Arabic, French, Greek, Japanese and Turkish. "Anonymous," a bearded, professorial man in his 50s, is blistering in his criticism of the US decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. "It's a disaster," he said. "I'm not an expert at all on Saddam or WMD (weapons of mass destruction) or Iraq but as it factors into the war against al-Qaeda or al-Qaedaism it was a tremendous gift to bin Laden. "It validated so many of the arguments he's made over the past decade," "Anonymous" said, particularly the claim by the Saudi-born al-Qaeda leader that the West seeks to occupy the Islamic holy places. "We have the first one, the most important in the Arabian peninsula, we occupy that in their eyes," he said in a reference to Saudi Arabia. "We now occupy Iraq, the second holiest place, and the Israelis have Jerusalem, the third. "The idea that we would smash any government that posed a threat to Israel -- that's validated by our actions," he continued. "And his claim that we lust after control of Arab oil; Iraq has the second greatest reserves in the Arab world. "So it's been an astounding victory for Osama bin Laden in terms of perceptions and perceptions are reality so often," "Anonymous" said. He said the situation in Iraq, where more than 900 US soldiers have died, "looks like Afghanistan in the '80s with the Soviets, kind of a mujahedeen magnet. "I think you can see already the fighters that are flowing in from Algeria and from Saudi Arabia and from Malaysia and from all other places," he said. As for Afghanistan, "Anonymous" said: "It's very bleak." "The insurgency is increasing day by day in small measures," he said. "Eventually we'll be faced with a lose-lose situation of either increasing our forces dramatically or leaving." "Anonymous" said capturing or killing bin Laden would be important "symbolically" but "he's also very valuable in death as a martyr. "If he dies he'll be replaced and the movement goes on so the worth of taking him out is still there but it's drastically reduced from what it was four or five years ago in terms of its impact on improving American security," he said. "Al-Qaeda is transforming really into al-Qaedism, if you will, more of a movement than just an organization," he said. "Not all of it agrees with bin Laden's theological arguments or his military actions but they're all united at least in the sense of detesting our policies." To counter al-Qaeda, "Anonymous" advocates a coordinated strategy of tough military action, diplomacy, intelligence, energy independence, propaganda and debate over longstanding US policies. "Rhetoric is not going to work," he said. "There's no one listening out there. I think the best we can do in the near term is to undercut the room bin Ladenism has to grow. "And because we don't have any diplomacy that's working, because our policies basically are hated in the Muslim world, we only have a military option. "It seems to me that the one national security effort we haven't made is to debate whether policies that have been on autopilot for 30 years are still serving us well," he said. Asked what the reaction to his book has been at his workplace, "Anonymous" said "I think it represents a good deal of the views of the people who actually work this issue on a day to day basis. "I can't claim that I speak for anyone but me but the reaction among my colleagues has certainly been positive," he said. "On the other hand from my superiors there's been kind of a thundering silence." From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 8 17:29:00 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 8 17:28:52 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] The lies that led to war Message-ID: http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Eric_Margolis/2004/08/08/573355.html Toronto Sun Sun, August 8, 2004 by Eric Margolis WELCOME TO the "Italian Job." In his 2003 State of the Union address, U.S. President George Bush cited British intelligence claims that Iraq had secretly imported uranium ore from Niger to make nuclear weapons. Bush's claims were based on crude forgeries, previously rejected by the CIA. Now, new information from European intelligence sources is detailing how the forgeries made their way from the Niger embassy in Rome to the White House. An FBI investigation of this outrageous scandal is said to be at a critical phase. In a classic example of what intelligence professionals term "disinformation," a shady Italian intermediary, "Giacomo," was told a lady at the Niger embassy had "a gift" for him. ============ Date: Sun, 08 Aug 2004 23:56:54 The lies that led to war "Giacomo" has told The London Sunday Times he was given a sheaf of documents purporting to show Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium ore from Niger, a mineral used for nuclear fuel and weapons. "Giacomo" then reportedly passed them on to American agents. He says the Niger documents were given to him through SISMI, Italy's foreign intelligence service. SISMI has long been notorious for far-right leanings. Senior SISMI officers were implicated with celebrated swindler Roberto Calvi, the notorious P2 masonic lodge, and other extreme rightist groups. SISMI works hand in glove with U.S., British and other intelligence agencies. In the 1960s and '70s, it was revealed that SISMI carried out numerous operations for the CIA, including bugging the Vatican, the Italian president's palace, and foreign embassies. Some of its officers have been accused in the past of perjury, blackmail and political interference. Italy's civilian intelligence service, SISDE, associated with Italy's political centre-left, has long been a bitter rival of SISMI. In any event, although the CIA rejected the Niger file, it was taken up by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney who was urgently seeking reasons to invade Iraq. Cheney passed the now-discredited data to Bush, who used it in his January, 2003 address to the nation. Six months later, CIA director George Tenet admitted that the claim should never have been included in the State of the Union address. A 2002 investigation by former U.S. Ambassador to Niger, Joseph Wilson, also concluded the documents were forgeries, but he was ignored by the White House. Wilson is now being smeared by Republicans. Amazingly, Bush, Cheney, the neo-conservatives, and the media, all of whom kept beating the war drums over the alleged Iraqi nuclear threat, never seemed to have understood that yellowcake uranium ore is no more lethal than plain dirt. To make nuclear weapons, the ore must be laboriously enriched by gaseous separation or centrifuge. Both processes require enormous plants and huge amounts of electric power -- easily observable by satellite. Iraq had no nuclear industrial infrastructure to enrich uranium, as everyone knew. What would it do with raw ore? Iraq had no means to deliver nuclear warheads. The only way Iraq could get a nuclear warhead to the U.S. was by FedEx. Who was behind the Italian Job? Who knows? Likely right-wing elements within Italy's government who are ideological soulmates of Bush. In any event, this appears to be SISMI's contribution to the cascade of lies that led to war. In Great Britain, which also pushed the discredited Niger/uranium story, claiming it had independent confirmation from another source, MI6 provided other disinformation. Britain's respected Scotsman newspaper has just cited a report by investigative journalist Tom Mangold that Tony Blair's intelligence chief, John Scarlett, sent a secret message to British arms inspectors in Iraq, pressuring them to confirm 10 charges made by the British government -- which have now been disproved -- about Saddam's nefarious weapons of mass destruction. These claims were the centerpiece of a key government report on the Iraqi threat justifying war. All, as it turned out, were bogus. Instead of being sacked, Scarlett was recently promoted to head MI6 by Blair. Completing the farce, we now learn an astounding 15,000 tons of highly enriched uranium the U.S. sent around the world since the '50s for various research projects remain unaccounted for. It takes 10 kilos to build a basic nuclear weapon. From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Sun Aug 8 17:39:57 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sun Aug 8 17:40:09 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Excellent Iraq and PNAC summary Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040809083858.02fb7450@central.murdoch.edu.au> See William Rivers Pitt at http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/080904A.shtml Dion Giles Western Australia From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Sun Aug 8 19:23:16 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Sun Aug 8 19:23:48 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] The Writing on the Latrine Walls Message-ID: The Writing on the Latrine Walls By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Perspective http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/080904A.shtml Monday 09 August 2004 I sat with a photographer from Reuters who had just returned from a six-month tour of Iraq. He had been tagging along with the Kellogg Brown & Root operation, subsidiary of Halliburton, and saw everything there was to see. He went from new military base to new military base, from the oil work in the north and back to the south, observing how busy were the contactors for Halliburton. "I feel like I compromised every one of my principles by even being over there," he told me after the story had been spun out a bit. His eyes, which had seen too many things through the lens of his camera, were haunted. It was two years ago that talk about invading Iraq began to circulate. Reasons for the invasion were bandied about - they had weapons of mass destruction, they had a hand in September 11, they will welcome us as liberators - but it wasn't until the Project for the New American Century got dragged into the discussion that an understanding of the true motives behind all this became apparent. The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC for short, is just another right-wing think tank, really. One cannot swing one's dead cat by the tail in Washington D.C. without smacking some prehensile gnome, pained by the sunlight, scuttling back to its right-wing think tank cubicle. These organizations are all over the place. What makes PNAC different from all the others? The membership roll call, for one thing: * Dick Cheney, Vice President of the United States, former CEO of Halliburton; * Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense; * Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense; * Elliot Abrams, National Security Council; * John Bolton, Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security; * I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's top National Security assistant; Quite a roster. These people didn't enjoy those fancy titles in 2000, when the PNAC manifesto 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' (Adobe document) was first published. Before 2000, they were just a bunch of power players who had been shoved out of the government in 1993. In the time that passed between Clinton and those hanging chads, these people got together in PNAC and laid out a blueprint. 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' was the ultimate result, and it is a doozy of a document. 2000 became 2001, and the PNAC boys - Cheney and Rumsfeld specifically - suddenly had the fancy titles and a chance to swing some weight. 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' became the roadmap for foreign policy decisions made in the White House and the Pentagon; PNAC had the Vice President's office in one building, and the Defense Secretary's office in the other. Attacking Iraq was central to that roadmap from the beginning. When former Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke accused the Bush administration of focusing on Iraq to the detriment of addressing legitimate threats, he was essentially denouncing them for using the attacks of September 11 as an excuse to execute the PNAC blueprint. Iraq, you see, has been on the PNAC menu for almost ten years. The goals codified in 'Rebuilding America's Defenses,' the manifesto, can be boiled down to a few sentences: The invasion and occupation of Iraq, for reasons that had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. The building of several permanent military bases in Iraq, the purpose of which are to telegraph force throughout the region. The takeover by Western petroleum corporations of Iraq's nationalized oil industry. The ultimate destabilization and overthrow of a variety of regimes in the Middle East, friend and foe alike, by military or economic means, or both. "Indeed," it is written on page 14 of 'Rebuilding America's Defenses,' "the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." Two years after the talk began, the invasion is completed. There are no weapons of mass destruction, there is no connection to September 11, and the Iraqi people have in no way welcomed us as liberators. The cosmetic rationales for the attack have fallen by the wayside, and all that remains are the PNAC goals, some of which have been achieved in spectacularly profitable fashion. The stock in trade of Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root is the construction of permanent military bases. The Reuters reporter I spoke to had been to several KBR-built permanent American military bases in his six month tour of Iraq. "That's where the oil industry money is going," he told me. "Billions of dollars. Not to infrastructure, not to rebuilding the country, and not to helping the Iraqi people. It's going to KBR, to build those bases for the military." According to the Center for Public Integrity, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root has made $11,475,541,371 in Iraq as of July 1. So that's one PNAC goal checked off the list. As for the corporate takeover of the Iraqi oil industry, that has become the prime mission of the American soldiers engaged there. Kellogg Brown & Root also does a tidy business in the oil-infrastructure repair market. "The troops aren't hunting terrorists or building a country," said the Reuters photographer. "All they do is guard the convoys running north and south. The convoys north are carrying supplies and empty tankers for the oil fields around Mosul and Tikrit. The convoys south bring back what they pull out of the ground up there. That's where all these kids are getting killed. They get hit with IEDs while guarding these convoys, and all hell breaks loose." That last goal, about overthrowing other regimes in the region, hasn't been as easy to follow through on as the PNAC boys might have hoped. The Iraqi people are fighting back, and the small-by-comparison force Rumsfeld said would be enough to do the job can't seem to pacify the country. Perhaps that is because too many troops are dedicated to guarding the oil supply lines. More likely, however, it is because of the sincere belief among the Iraqi people that they have been conquered - not 'liberated' but conquered - and their conquerors don't give a tinker's damn whether they live or die. "The Americans over there have all these terms for people who aren't Americans," the Reuters photographer said. "The Iraqi people are called LPs, or 'Local Personnel.' They get killed all the time, but it's like, 'Some LPs got killed,' so it isn't like real people died. Iraqi kids run along the convoys, hoping a soldier will throw them some food or water, and sometimes they get crushed by the trucks. Nothing stops, those are the orders, so some LPs get killed and the convoy keeps rolling. The labels make it easier for them to die. The people are depersonalized. No one cares." "Everyone is an 'insurgent' over there," the photographer told me. "That's another label with no meaning. Everyone is against the Americans. There is a $250,000 bounty on the head of every Westerner over there, mine too, while I was there. The Americans working the oil industry over there are the dumbest, most racist jackasses I've ever seen in my life. That's the American face on this thing, and the Iraqi people see it." 930 American soldiers have died to achieve goals the PNAC boys gamed out before they ever came in with this Bush administration. Well over 10,000 Iraqi civilians have likewise died. Over $200 billion has been spent to do this. Fighting today rages across several sections of Iraq, and the puppet 'leaders' installed by U.S. forces are about to drive a final stake into the heart of the liberation rhetoric by declaring nationwide martial law. Two enemies of the United States - the nation of Iran and Osama bin Laden - are thrilled with the outcome to date. Saddam Hussein was an enemy to both Iran and bin Laden, and he has been removed. The destabilization and innocent bloodshed bolsters Iran's standing against the U.S., and sends freshly motivated martyrs into the arms of Osama. Yes, the Halliburton contracting in Iraq for military bases and petroleum production is a cash cow for that company. The bases are being built. The oil industry has been privatized. The resulting chaos of the PNAC blueprint, however, has left the entire theater of the war in complete chaos. The Bush administration has insisted all along that this invasion was central to their 'War on Terror.' It has, in truth, become a failed experiment in global corporate hegemony writ large, foisted upon us by some men named Cheney and Rumsfeld who thought it would all work out as they had planned it in 2000. It hasn't, except for the profiteering. For all their white papers, for all their carefully-laid plans, for all the power and fancy titles these erstwhile think-tankers managed to gather unto themselves, their works are now blood-crusted dust. They are clearly not as smart as they thought they were. The overall 'War on Terror' itself has plenty of examples of these boys not being too swift on the uptake. Iraq is only the largest, and costliest, example. The case of Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan is another perfect example. Khan was a mole, deep undercover within the ranks of al Qaeda, who was sending vital data on the terror organization from Pakistan to British and American intelligence. But officials with the Bush administration, desperate to show the American people they were making headway in the terror war, barfed up Khan's name to the press while bragging about recent arrests. Khan's position as a mole within al Qaeda was summarily annihilated. The guy we had inside was blown. Pretty smart, yes? "The whole thing smacks of either incompetence or worse," said Tim Ripley, a security expert who writes for Jane's Defense publications, in a Reuters article on the blown agent. "You have to ask: what are they doing compromising a deep mole within al Qaeda, when it's so difficult to get these guys in there in the first place? It goes against all the rules of counter-espionage, counter-terrorism, running agents and so forth. It's not exactly cloak and dagger undercover work if it's on the front pages every time there's a development, is it?" This would be the second agent we know of who has been blown by the arrogant stupidity of the Bush administration. The other, of course, was Valerie Plame. Plame was a 'Non-Official Cover' agent, or NOC, for the CIA. NOC designates the deepest cover an agent can have. Plame's deep-cover assignment was to run a network dedicated to tracking any person, nation or group that might give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Because her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had the temerity to accuse the Bush administration of lying in the public prints, the administration blew Plame's cover as a warning to Wilson and any other whistleblowers who might have thought of coming forward. The Bush administration blew Khan's cover because they wanted to get a soundbite out for the election campaign. They blew Plame out of sheer spite, and out of desperation. The mole we had inside al Qaeda, and an agent we had tracking the movement of weapons of mass destruction, are both finished now because the PNAC boys are watching all their plans go awry, and they don't quite know what to do about it. That makes them stupid and exceedingly dangerous. The soldiers over there are hip to the jive at this point. Michael Hoffman, a Marine corporal in artillery, was part of the original March invasion. Before Hoffman's unit shipped out, his battery first sergeant addressed all the enlisted men. "Don't think you're going to be heroes," said Hoffman's sergeant. "You're not going over there because of weapons of mass destruction. You're not going there to get rid of Saddam Hussein, or to make Iraq safe for democracy. You're going there for one reason and one reason alone: Oil." The Reuters photographer I spoke to couldn't get any soldiers to talk about how they felt when surrounded by their fellow soldiers. "They don't talk in the ranks, or just about anywhere on base," he said. "You have to go out to the latrine area, to the Port-O-Potties. For some reason, they talk there. You can read how they really feel - all the anti-Bush stuff, all the wanting to go home - in the writing on the shithouse walls." William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.' ------- -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 8 19:35:57 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 8 19:35:49 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] All quiet on the Venezuela Front ? Message-ID: So the referendum to unseat Hugo Chavez is set for August 15? If you've seen anything in the local newspaper it's about the Chavez' opposition, a 5,000 person march reported last week in Bloomberg and the SF Chrnicle -- "Thousands of government opponents joined a candlelight march through Venezuela's capital Friday in support of a recall vote against President Hugo Chavez. "Waving Venezuelan flags and chanting "this government will fall," the demonstrators danced to anti-Chavez jingles, held candles and blew whistles. "Chavez isn't capable of being president, and he's demonstrated that to us," said 56-year-old psychologist Nelson Mora, one of an estimated 5,000 in the march. "Unemployment and poverty have increased." http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/08/06/international2209EDT0431.DTL And if you think there's a U$ plot to get rid of Chavez - well maybe the money is there, but isn't the U$ military tied up somewhere else? So today's news suggests that Chavez has lots of voter support. Michael ================= http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040808/1/3mad9.html Agence France Presse Monday August 9, 8:51 AM [afp.gif] Hundrerds of thousands march for Chavez, one week before Venezuela referendum President Hugo Chavez urged supporters marching in the Venezuelan capital to prepare for a "final attack" against a crucial recall referendum coming up in a week to remove him from office. Chavez supporters gathered on Bolivar Avenue in downtown Caracas, where the leftist president called on supporters to stay alert ahead of the August 15 vote. "We start today the final attack, a popular offensive from all directions, with much intelligence and without losing calm," Chavez told a throng of supporters. "We will win, but we have not won yet," said Chavez, who was wearing a shirt in his trademark red color. "Careful with triumphalism. There are many days left. We cannot commit any mistakes in the seven days we have left." The mass of supporters wore the president's red color, blew whistles and waved Venezuelan flags amid a festive atmosphere. Freddy Bernal, the pro-Chavez mayor of Caracas' Libertador neighborhood, said 900,000 people took part in what was dubbed the "March for Victory." But Fire Chief Rodolfo Briceno, who works under anti-Chavez Caracas Mayor Alfredo Pena, told AFP: "Without a doubt, they are more than 100,000 and they arrived in 1,000 buses provided by the government." The opposition held a rock and salsa concert Sunday as a counter-protest, with television stars who hosted the show urging people to vote "yes" and shouting "Chavez go away!" The demonstration came as both Chavez and his opponents mounted massive door-to-door campaigns to try to win voters before the August 15 referendum. Both camps expressed confidence Sunday they would win the recall vote. Enrique Mendoza, a leader in the opposition's Democratic Coordinator (CD) coalition, predicted that Chavez will be recalled by "an ample majority." The spokesman for Chavez's campaign, Samuel Moncada, told AFP the goal was to "obtain twice as many votes as the opposition ... and to win in such overwhelming fashion that there would be no more doubts for the opposition, the international community and in particular for the government of Mr. George W. Bush." Chavez has accused the United States of funding the campaign to unseat him. The recall will ask Venezuelans whether Chavez should step down now, two years before his six-year term ends. Opinion polls suggest the race will be close and that many of the 14 million registered voters have yet to decide whether to vote "yes" or "no." The latest surveys generally give an edge to Chavez, but some analysts have questioned the reliability of opinion polls in a country that has been rocked by sporadic political violence in recent years. The opposition -- a diverse group united mainly by their hatred of Chavez -- has deployed 435,000 volunteers in its get-out-the-vote drive, spokesman Jesus Torrealba said. Chavez foes have closed ranks in recent months. The CD coalition remains an eclectic mix of political, business, labor, social and military groups with often divergent views. Chavez, a former paratrooper who spent two years in prison for leading a failed military coup in 1992, has personally led his campaign to defeat the referendum. But even if he loses this vote, he could again stand for president in the new polls that would be called one month after the referendum. From janice_g at free.net.nz Sun Aug 8 17:44:04 2004 From: janice_g at free.net.nz (Janice) Date: Sun Aug 8 21:02:16 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right Message-ID: <380-220048190444812@free.net.nz> I thought of your words yesterday Ed when I read the following announcement....of course I dont know this man or his credentials but assuming he has been trained in the Chicago School of Economics system like other American economists, Auckland University can look forward to more Worship At The Cult of the Almighty ZonPowered Dollar and other malarky, in spades. As you have so often implied, national business schools esp. economics departments urgently need a good scrub out with super strong disinfectant. Distinguished alumnus strengthens North American links The international reputation of The University of Auckland Business School?s Department of Economics has been given another boost with the extended appointment of Professor Peter Phillips from Yale University. [more news and events... ---- Original Message ---- From: thinker@uniserve.com To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net, mai-not@globalproblematique.net Subject: Re: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 08:49:31 -0700 >At 01:55 PM 07/08/2004 +0930, John Hermann wrote: >>At 12:18 AM 7/08/2004 +1200, Janice wrote: >> >>>Which really underlines the invalidity of "anti-capitalism" as a >>>movement. The same grabbing class will not permit any real >>>competition in globalisation therefore capitalism as an >>>economic system does not exist. Only fascism exists. >> >>Fascism is totalitarian capitalism. >===================================================================== >========================= > >I would like to add :" .........with the use of the perceived power >of >imaginary money as weapon of conquest." > >In other words, fascism, capitalism and the neoclassical theory are >not >ideologies, or sciences, but pseudo religions, supported by most, if >not >all, especially fundamentalist religions . > >Hitler and Mussolini would never have succeeded without the support >of >major Churches, right to the very end. Neither could the >neo-conservatives >now. > >All ruling classes and aristocracies of history have been based and >relied >for their survival on religious support and ultimately they all >collapsed >through their own corruption, when the "faith" in their divinely >ordered >power waned. > >How long imaginary money can rule the world is anybody's guess ? >Sooner or >later the suckers will wake up. > > Cheers, Ed. > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From janice_g at free.net.nz Sun Aug 8 17:54:33 2004 From: janice_g at free.net.nz (Janice) Date: Sun Aug 8 21:02:16 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right Message-ID: <380-220048190543331@free.net.nz> ---- Original Message ---- From: hermann@picknowl.com.au To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Subject: Re: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right Date: Sat, 07 Aug 2004 13:55:33 +0930 >At 12:18 AM 7/08/2004 +1200, Janice wrote: > >>Which really underlines the invalidity of "anti-capitalism" as a >>movement. The same grabbing class will not permit any real >>competition in globalisation therefore capitalism as an >>economic system does not exist. Only fascism exists. > >Fascism is totalitarian capitalism. If this is true then how do we explain the fact that it is occurring in democracies everywhere? j From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 8 21:12:07 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 8 21:11:58 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Prozac seeping into brit water supplies Message-ID: preface: [Prozac] "was associated with more hospitalizations, deaths, or other serious adverse reactions reported to the FDA than any other drug in America." Business Week 3/16/98 p. 14 http://www.businessweek.com/1998/11/b3569025.htm "So far, the tools used to manipulate serotonin in the brain are more like machetes than they are like scapels--crudely effective, but capable of doing plenty of collateral damage." Time magazine 9/29/97 http://www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/1997/dom/970929/cover1.html ================ http://news.scotsman.com/health.cfm?id=912662004 The SCOTSMAN (Edinburgh) Monday, 9th August 2004 THE anti-depressant drug Prozac is being taken in such large quantities in Britain that it has entered water supplies. Experts from the Environmental Agency are calling for an immediate investigation after it emerged that quantities of the medication were found in rivers and groundwater used for drinking supplies. The government's environmental watchdog has met officials from leading pharmaceutical companies to discover whether traces of the drug could have an impact on the nation's health or the ecosystem. A recent report by the Environmental Agency concluded the Prozac, dubbed the "happy pill" in the United States where it is hugely popular for its mood-lifting qualities, could be potentially toxic. It also branded its presence a "potential concern". Experts have also voiced concerns that the drug, which they believe has found its way into the water system from treated sewage water, could seriously damage the human reproductive system. Exact amounts of Prozac detected in British waters have not been specified but the government's Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) said it was likely that the drug has been found in such diluted concentrations that health risks involved will be minimal. Despite this, the discovery will raise concerns that GPs are over-prescribing the pill, Britain's most popular anti-depressant drug. In the decade up to 2001, prescriptions of Prozac rose from nine million to 24 million a year. Dr Andy Crawford, the Environmental Agency policy manager for pesticides said an investigation was needed to find how such traces of the drug impacts health. "We need to determine the effects of this low-level, almost continuous discharge," he said. Norman Baker, environmental spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said people needed to know what risks were involved. "This looks like a case of hidden mass medication upon the unsuspecting public," he said. "It is alarming there is no monitoring of levels of Prozac and other pharmacy residues in our drinking water." European studies in the past have raised fears about the build-up of drugs in the environment and highlighted that a negative impact of this upon human health and that of wildlife "cannot be excluded". However, a DWI spokesman was confident all such health risks are eliminated before drinking water reaches people's homes. "Advanced treatment processes installed for pesticide removal are effective in removing drug residues," he said. From netcfs at shaw.ca Sun Aug 8 22:47:43 2004 From: netcfs at shaw.ca (Yves Bajard) Date: Sun Aug 8 22:53:32 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] a few questions Message-ID: <1092030463.12585.98.camel@localhost> Dear newmainotters: 1. We are 33 on this new list and growing slowly. With such a small membership,.even if our archives are open to the public (which they are),I run quasi zero risk of having a copyright court case against me. Yet, to avoid any personal; liability, I have shifted the list to the small not-for-profit society, the Networking for a Common Future in Sustainability Society incorporated in British Columbia in November 21000, which is the hub of all the project our small group here undertakes toward educating and informing people about the dire circumstances in which we are living and in -particular the non-sustainability of our ways of doing things collectively and individual;ly. This changes absolutely nothing for you. the new Mai-Not remains as is. (by the way, Micheal, and others, I found how to accept bccs and you can resume with your former type of mailing), asa I am the founder and vice president of the society (we are some 10 members and growing thanks to a new project on the creation of a network of cooperatives for public information on relevant issues, instead of staying caught in the spider web of amusements of the mass media) If some of you want to share costs of setting up and running the new Mai-Not, I would welcome the idea, as the changes I had to do (from Majordomo to Mailman, have cost me some money and I had to step up two levels in the scale of services by my ISP) I have not had time yet to sum up the costs. Yet, I think that, depending on the number of Mai-Not subscribers willing to share costs, individual costs should be quite decent. The changes in services of my ISP are not only due to Mai-Not, but also to the other project and we have to decide at NCFS Board level, how to come up with a fair distribution of costs for each of our projects. The NCFS will then as muchas possible reimburse me for my expenses (I have been the main funder of the NCFS since inception, out of bits and pieces and scrounging on kitchen money..) (:-) Cordially Yves From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Mon Aug 9 05:04:44 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Mon Aug 9 05:05:05 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] The clandestine Soviet Union Message-ID: The clandestine Soviet Union By Victor Yasmann http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FH06Ag02.html Nationalist revanchism has been gaining momentum in recent years among various political groups in Russia and has been greeted with some sympathy from the Kremlin. In the past, this sentiment has taken the form of open calls for the restoration of the Soviet Union, but recently a more provocative set of ideas have been making the rounds in Russia. Maksim Kalashnikov, author of The Broken Sword of Empire (1998) and Battle for the Heavens (2000) - books that glorified Soviet militarism and earned him the moniker "Russia's Tom Clancy" - gave new impetus to the revanchist movement with the 2003 publication of Forward to the USSR-2, a book that is subtitled The National Idea or the Direction of the Main Offensive. Kalashnikov's real name is Vladimir Kucherenko, and he is a former deputy editor of the online magazine Stringer and a journalist for Rossiiskaya gazeta. Forward to the USSR-2 has gone through several editions over the past 18 months and its popularity has become widespread. Kalashnikov's vision of USSR-2 is a version of an unrealized scenario for the reform of the Soviet Union that dates back to the early 1980s and that is attributed to then KGB director Yurii Andropov. It was later popularized by the nationalist ideologue Aleksandr Prokhanov. "In 1980, the United States had a nightmare in which it saw the transformation of the USSR, a country with a clumsy socialist economy, into the smart, aggressive, and strong-willed super corporation Red Star," reads the cover blurb to Forward to the USSR-2. "It might have emerged as a creature never before seen in history, combining the most advanced Soviet defense technologies with billions of gas dollars and the incredible might of the Soviet secret services. The United States did everything in its power to make sure this scenario never materialized, but can we realize it now?" Kalashnikov, who has rejected Western models of economic development for Russia, answers a definite "yes" to this question. Those who advocate Western liberal economics, Kalashnikov writes, argue that if Russia follows their policies the country will reach Western living standards within a few decades. "However, under the conditions of globalization, we do not have this much time," Kalashnikov writes. Kalashnikov, however, also rejects calls for the restoration of the former Soviet system, describing the Soviet Union as "the country of the party's miasma ... Nationalizing Russia's old-fashioned and obsolete industry as the Communists suggest is absolute stupidity," he writes. Likewise, Kalashnikov rejects economic-development models such as those pursued by China, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brazil, Mexico or Pakistan. He argues that Russia cannot become a cheap producer of consumer goods because it does not have a cheap labor force, inexpensive and accessible natural resources, or convenient means of transporting manufactured goods to world markets. He notes that Russian workers must pay as much on utilities and other costs associated with surviving in Russia's harsh climate as workers in the countries mentioned above earn each year. This fact alone is enough to make Russian goods non-competitive on international markets. Kalashnikov also argues that basing the Russian economy on the export of mineral resources is shortsighted. He repeats the arguments that noted military economist Andrei Parshev put forward in his 2000 book Why Russia Is Not America. In that book, Parshev argued that once the Soviet-built economic and transportation infrastructure is exhausted, the extraction of Russia natural resources will become forbiddingly expensive. The only way for Russia to thrive is through the dream of USSR-2, Kalashnikov argues, urging the country to adopt several innovative development strategies that he calls "miracles". Kalashnikov's first miracle is financial. He argues that it is stupid to use oil revenues to create a stabilization fund to repay the debts racked up by Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and former Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Instead, Russia should sue the West to demand the return of gold deposited in Western banks by the czarist government during World War I. Kalashnikov argues that Russia must make such cases before the years 2014-17 or the government's claims will expire. Next, Kalashnikov calls for an ideological miracle. He says the state must put forward an ideology that will be broadly attractive and will help the country avoid "suicidal clashes" with China and Islam. Such an ideology must help the country develop previously unthinkable alliances, such as with Saudi Arabia, he writes. The next step, Kalashnikov argues, is an "ethnopsychological" miracle. He writes that the new state cannot be created with the current mentality of the Russian people, who he says are "ignorant not only of national ideals, but even of their own self-interests ... Therefore, it is necessary to create a new nation from the remnants of the Russian people, a new race that possesses the novel psychological quality of seeing itself as 'a nation of super-creators and geniuses'," Kalashnikov writes, echoing classic Nazi-style rhetoric. The centerpiece of Kalashnikov's project is the "organizational" wonder. He proposes creating a clandestine state behind the facade of the Russian Federation, a country he sees as "incurably ill and destined to perish". He describes the clandestine state as "a network that combines the features of a party, an army, a secret service, the mafia, a church, and a business community ... This kind of networked brotherhood should exist alongside the official Russian state, never openly warring with it," Kalashnikov writes. "The brotherhood should form a strategic union with the Russian president." Kalashnikov argues that such a parallel state will be able to act where the official state cannot. Utilizing its covert status, it will be able to operate wherever there are Russian communities - in Belarus, Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and even Europe and the United States. One of the first tasks of this secret state will be to regain control over financial resources controlled by the oligarchs and, more broadly, by the entire class of "new Russians". "Using psychological and other special methods, we will turn them into zombies, obedient to the will of the secret state and investing their money where the state tells them to," Kalashnikov writes in the foreword to Forward to the USSR-2. "Superficially, nothing will change and the current business community, with its assets in Russia and abroad, will continue to operate," Kalashnikov writes, "but in reality, control over financial flows will be recaptured by the secret state. In this way, we will avoid accusations of violating civil and property rights and other such nonsense. There will be no mass arrests, no demonstrative transfers of confiscated money into state funds." He writes that it is sufficient to apply pressure successfully to one or two oligarchs in order to bring all of them into submission. Leaving no doubt as to whom he has in mind, Kalashnikov writes in his latest book, Ride the Lightning (2003), about an oligarch named Samuil Modorkovskii and a company called Sokos, clear allusions to embattled oil giant Yukos and its former chief executive officer, Mikhail Khodorkovskii. Kalashnikov describes Modorkovskii as smart and energetic, but as someone who sees no future for Russia and who is looking to transfer the money gained from exploiting Russia's oil to the West. "Coercion and levers of fear should be used" against such people, Kalashnikov writes, seeming to justify the campaign against Khodorkovskii that was about to unfold. "God himself allows us to fight them with sophistication and acute cruelty." As for geographic expansion, Kalashnikov argues that it should not be necessary to repeat the experience of the Soviet Union. USSR-2 will be a "federal empire" and the states of the South Caucasus, Ukraine and, especially, the Central Asian republics can enter the new USSR with their own sovereignty, legislation and currencies intact. "We should tell our former southern republics that friendship with the United States will bring them no good," Kalashnikov writes. He said that while the United States criticizes these countries for corruption and human-rights violations, Russia will not demand any liberalization and will not intervene into their internal affairs. Instead, Russia will build military bases "that will defend both your and our security", Kalashnikov writes. Russia will build nuclear power plants and desalinization plants "for which you can pay with gold and uranium". In return Russia will ask little - "equal status" for ethnic Russians, unfettered access for "our imperial television channels", and a role for Russian capital in the exploration for and exploitation of local natural resources. It remains uncertain exactly how influential Kalashnikov's books and ideas actually are in Russia's corridors of power. But it cannot be denied that many, many pages from his books echo the most frightening headlines in contemporary Russian news reports. Many scenes in his books seem like the latest breaking news from Moscow. Victor J Yasmann is a senior regional analyst with RFE/RL Online and specializes in Russian and Central Eurasian affairs, foreign policy, and international security. He holds a master of arts in economics from the Kharkiv Engineering Economic Institute and joined RFE/RL as a Soviet affairs analyst in 1984. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Mon Aug 9 05:23:33 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Mon Aug 9 05:23:53 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] China's engine starts to sputter Message-ID: China's engine starts to sputter Ugly underside of economic miracle finally arrives Energy shortage stokes fears of foreign investors MARTIN REGG COHN http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1091919306385&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724 BEIJING - After the boom, the blackouts. Revved up by years of supercharged foreign investment, China's economic engine is sputtering from lack of power this summer. An acute energy shortage has idled the nation's factories three days a week, forced workers to take leaves and dimmed streetlights in the big cities. It's not just the sudden shortage of electricity that has shocked China. The gloomy outlook for the future has also rattled the nation's top leadership and unnerved foreign investors who are wondering how the world's fastest-growing economy can possibly sustain its breakneck pace. The answer, undoubtedly, is that it can't. In recent months, 24 of China's 31 provinces have experienced power blackouts because of surging demand. The land of cheap labour is going to have to start charging more for electricity - not just to pay for new power plants, but also to encourage conservation by profligate users. China is slowly, painfully, discovering the limits to growth - and the price of prosperity. A refrigerator and air conditioner in every home has saddled the nation's major cities with unsustainable electrical consumption. Private automobiles on congested arteries have helped transform China into the world's second-biggest oil consumer, overtaking Japan. And rapid expansion of power-hungry aluminum and automobile factories has drained the power grid beyond expectations. The short-term solution - yet more coal-fired power plants - is a recipe for blacker skies in a country already burdened by the world's most polluted cityscapes. It is, in short, the ugly underside of the economic miracle, and it has been a long time coming. "We may be facing the most severe power shortage situation since the 1980s," says Zhao Xizheng, head of the State Power Grid Corp. China produces more electricity than any country outside the United States and spends 13 per cent of its economic output on energy consumption - about double the American level, according to a report by the State Council. Outdated technology in aging power stations, and an inefficient electrical grid, account for more wastage and require a major overhaul. China is expected to allocate the equivalent of $450 billion to its transmission infrastructure over the next 25 years, about one-third more than what Canada and the United States will spend, predicts the International Energy Agency. Meanwhile, electricity demand is likely to double over the next 15 years. "It will not be sustainable to rely on heavy energy consumption to drive the economy," says Hu Jie, an engineer at the China National Petroleum Corp.'s research unit. More than 10,000 firms in Beijing and Shanghai have told hundreds of thousands of employees to book off for a week at a time. Factories in the south are operating at night to avoid blackouts during peak hours and importing powerful diesel generators to help them meet export targets. Major hotels are doing their laundry at night. Government offices are scaling back dramatically on lighting and air conditioning, ordering employees to eschew heavy suits in the workplace. "It's a very serious problem that they need to face," warns Simon Pang, the Beijing-based vice-president of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), who is closely monitoring the situation with an eye to potential sales of CANDU nuclear power reactors. "They hadn't foreseen the coming surge in requirements, so they were very slow in building new power plants," says Pang. "In my view, the situation will not improve that much because a lot of people in China are making more money and everyone wants a TV and air conditioner, compared with a few years ago." Government statistics show that China manufactured 50 million air conditioners and 23 million refrigerators last year, with most of them being sold on the domestic market, according to the official Xinhau news agency. Rapidly escalating personal consumption is what scares energy analysts - and creates market opportunities for people like Pang, who are trying to sell nuclear power plants. But the origins of the current crisis lie with the unparalleled growth of factories along the eastern coast surrounding Shanghai and the factories of Guangdong in the Pearl River Delta that feeds Hong Kong. In fact, factories account for about three-quarters of China's energy use. With economic growth above 9 per cent since last year, electricity consumption has surged by about 16 per cent for each of the past two years - with some observers suggesting that it has increased by 18 per cent so far this year. The result is a shortfall in China's energy supplies of about 10 per cent, according to Hong Kong-based energy analyst Angello Chan of Credit Suisse First Boston. "There's a bottleneck in the power supply," says Chan, and the government is desperately trying to fix the problem before it gets worse. "The president and the premier are all very aware of the problem and spending a lot of personal time on the subject." On orders from high up, state banks have cooled lending to factories that were planning to expand in energy-intensive fields like aluminum smelting, steel and cement production. But putting the brakes on those proposals will only prevent the problem from getting worse, without making it any better. Analysts point out that the crisis has been brewing since last year, when the first brownouts appeared on the horizon. Continuing drought has undermined the output of hydro plants and hot weather has placed an added strain on consumption, setting new records in the big cities. China has responded to the challenge as it usually does when facing shortfalls - by promising to build more power plants at a faster pace than ever before. Spending on generators doubled last year to more than $30 billion. By the end of this year, the electricity supply will have increased by 19.5 per cent from the end of 2002, reaching more than 420,000 megawatts. About three-quarters of the increase will come from coal-fired plants. The controversial $33 billion Yangtze Three Gorges dam has already started producing electricity and is scheduled to be completed within five years. Without its additional capacity of 18 gigawatts of electricity, Chan says China would be facing "a lot more social problems." Nuclear power plants, which currently account for less than 2 per cent of China's power needs, are likely to reach about 4 to 6 per cent in coming decades, and "even 4 to 6 per cent is very aggressive," notes the AECL's Pang. To reach that level, China plans to bring two 1,000-megawatt plants on line annually for the next 17 years - and recently inaugurated two CANDU plants. China will make up most of the current shortfall by building more coal-fired power plants, drawing on its irresistibly vast reserves, even at the expense of the environment. "Coal has environmental problems," says Chan, "but it's just too plentiful and just too cheap." The continuing reliance on coal has raised alarm bells with China's increasingly vocal environmentalists, who fret that the country is paying too much attention to boosting capacity instead of encouraging conservation. "I think environmentalists worry about this - it's a really big problem in China," explains Xiaoyi Liao, head of the Global Village environmental watchdog in Beijing. "This is a good opportunity for us to increase public awareness and make people think more about conservation." For the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), the outlook is increasingly bleak. Acid rain pollution costs China about $18 billion a year in environmental damage and will get worse if more coal-fired plants spew pollution into the air. China discharged 21.6 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the air last year, 90 per cent of which came from burning coal - the highest level since 1998. That figure is far above the target of 18 million tonnes set for 2005, suggesting that the painstaking environmental gains of recent years are being rapidly eroded. By 2020, China's consumption of coal is projected to double. "Thermal power plants discharge a large proportion of the country's sulphur dioxide emission," SEPA vice-director Pan Yue told reporters in June. "If their emissions are not well controlled, the acid rain pollution will probably worsen." Government officials are grudgingly taking note, acknowledging for the first time that conservation must be a component of any energy strategy for the future. The alternative is to keep building more power plants at a breakneck pace. Many analysts doubt it can be done. Zheng Jianchao, a researcher at the Academy of Engineering of China, put the challenge into perspective recently when he mused about China's overly ambitious energy shopping list. Said Zheng: "We need an additional supply equivalent to four more Three Gorges hydroelectric dams, 26 Yanzhou coalmines, six Daqing oil fields, eight gas pipelines and 20 nuclear power plants - as well as 400 thermal power generators and the network to link them all together." Additional articles by Martin Regg Cohn -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From hermann at picknowl.com.au Mon Aug 9 02:15:21 2004 From: hermann at picknowl.com.au (John Hermann) Date: Mon Aug 9 05:42:42 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right In-Reply-To: <380-220048190543331@free.net.nz> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20040809183107.01fb0008@mail.picknowl.com.au> At 12:54 PM 9/08/2004 +1200, you wrote: > >At 12:18 AM 7/08/2004 +1200, Janice wrote: > > > >>Which really underlines the invalidity of "anti-capitalism" as a > >>movement. The same grabbing class will not permit any real > >>competition in globalisation therefore capitalism as an > >>economic system does not exist. Only fascism exists. > > > >Fascism is totalitarian capitalism. > >If this is true then how do we explain the fact that it is occurring >in democracies everywhere? The world operated in a qualitatively different manner between 1945 and 1975. At that stage the neoclassical school was little more than a minor sect. Things really changed for the worse after 1980 with the advent of Thatcher and Reagan. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20040809/5205cfc1/attachment.html From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Mon Aug 9 06:43:08 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Mon Aug 9 06:43:18 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20040809183107.01fb0008@mail.picknowl.com.au> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20040809183107.01fb0008@mail.picknowl.com.au> Message-ID: At 12:54 PM 9/08/2004 +1200, you wrote: >At 12:18 AM 7/08/2004 +1200, Janice wrote: > >>Which really underlines the invalidity of "anti-capitalism" as a >>movement. The same grabbing class will not permit any real >>competition in globalisation therefore capitalism as an >>economic system does not exist. Only fascism exists. > >Fascism is totalitarian capitalism. If this is true then how do we explain the fact that it is occurring in democracies everywhere? The world operated in a qualitatively different manner between 1945 and 1975. At that stage the neoclassical school was little more than a minor sect. Things really changed for the worse after 1980 with the advent of Thatcher and Reagan. ******************************* Yes indeed, Mr. Hermann. You are SO correct. I am working on a doc these days about that "golden age" when regulated capitalism worked MUCH better than what has come since in increasing jobs, pay, working conditions, public health, living standards, etc.etc. Although I start the great unraveling in 1973, the Reagan / Thatcher years certainly accelerated the trend towards doom. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Mon Aug 9 07:18:15 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Mon Aug 9 07:18:32 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Admit we have a problem Message-ID: The FIRST thing the Times should admit is that the economic prescriptions it has been peddling for the last 30 YEARS are also a BIG part of the problem. *************************** 'Admit we have a problem' Date: Monday, August 09 @ 10:13:02 EDT Topic: Economic Policy By Bob Herbert, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/09/opinion/09herbert.html I suppose there are people who still believe that enormous tax cuts for the very wealthy will lead to the creation of millions of good jobs for working people. In the twilight of his first term, the president, stumping for votes in regions scarred by the demon of unemployment, continues to sing from the tattered pages of his economic hymnbook: "The economy is strong," he says again and again and again, "and it's growing stronger." At a riverfront rally under cloudy skies in Davenport, Iowa, last week, Mr. Bush told a crowd of 5,000, "We are turning the corner and we're not going back." In another four years, he says, "The economy will be better." His tax cuts, he insists, couldn't have been better timed. The true believers were jolted Friday by the news from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that employers added a meager 32,000 jobs in July. In an economy the size of America's, that's roughly equivalent to no jobs at all. July's poor job-creation performance was widely described as unexpected. But it's important to keep in mind that it didn't occur in a vacuum and that there is no quick fix coming. American workers are hurting. "The weak job market continues to put downward pressure on wage growth," said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. He noted that nominal wage growth on a year-over-year basis has been decelerating even as inflation is increasing, which is bad news for an economy so dependent upon consumer spending. In a report released by the institute on Friday, Mr. Bernstein wrote, "These job and wage dynamics erode workers' buying power, and this has negative implications for the strength of the recovery." Retail sales in July were disappointing, hampered by high gasoline prices as well as anemic wage growth. And the stock market is in a prolonged swoon. Despite the rosy rhetoric that comes nonstop from the administration, millions upon millions of American families, including many that consider themselves solidly in the middle class, are in deep economic trouble. Friday's Wall Street Journal featured a page-one article with the ominous headline: "New Group Swells Bankruptcy Court: The Middle-Aged." Personal bankruptcy filings in the U.S. are at an all-time high. The Journal story focused on "an emerging class of middle-age, white-collar Americans who make the grim odyssey from comfortable circumstances to going broke." Among the villains of this disturbing piece are the unstable job market and staggering amounts of personal debt. It's getting harder and harder to close our eyes to the growing economic devastation. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and co-author of "The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke," wrote in 2003: "This year, more people will end up bankrupt than will suffer a heart attack. More adults will file for bankruptcy than will be diagnosed with cancer. More people will file for bankruptcy than will graduate from college. And, in an era when traditionalists decry the demise of the institution of marriage, Americans will file more petitions for bankruptcy than for divorce." The Century Foundation, in a recent study, addressed the problem of outstanding debt. For many families borrowing has morphed from a tool that, used judiciously, can enhance their standard of living into a nightmare that threatens to destroy their economic viability. "Debt burdens," the study said, "are at record levels because families have been stretched to the limit in recent years. With more income going to housing and other rising expenses related to medical care, education, vehicles, child care, and so forth, families are relying on credit as a way to meet everyday needs. Remarkably, a family with two earners today actually has less discretionary income, after fixed costs like medical insurance and mortgage payments are accounted for, than did a family with only one breadwinner in the 1970's." There is no plan from the administration that I've heard of to brighten this bleak picture of the American economic landscape. John Kerry and John Edwards have an opportunity in the presidential campaign to offer their prescriptions. The first essential step for anyone serious about a search for solutions would be to recognize and acknowledge the sheer enormity of the problem. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Reprinted from The New York Times: -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From thinker at uniserve.com Mon Aug 9 08:30:23 2004 From: thinker at uniserve.com (Ed Deak) Date: Mon Aug 9 08:30:18 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] The end of Blair ? Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040809082924.027ff580@pop.uniserve.com> >"Iraq is Blair's poll tax, a fundamental breach of trust, demonstration of >arrogance and strategic blunder for which the party as a whole is >paying the price." > >http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,1279153,00.html > From thinker at uniserve.com Mon Aug 9 08:35:07 2004 From: thinker at uniserve.com (Ed Deak) Date: Mon Aug 9 08:35:02 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Global warming Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040809083430.027fd698@pop.uniserve.com> > Paris, Monday, August 9, 2004 > _________________________________________________________________ > > Editorials & Opinions > _________________________________________________________________ >We have the power to protect the climate >By Jennifer Morgan >http://www.iht.com/articles/533053.html > > _________________________________________________________________ > From thinker at uniserve.com Mon Aug 9 09:40:58 2004 From: thinker at uniserve.com (Ed Deak) Date: Mon Aug 9 09:40:59 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Neoliberalism and the Demise of Democracy In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040809083630.0285db70@pop.uniserve.com> Very true, but........... What is the difference between neoliberlism and neoconservativism ? I wish these learned people would make up their minds once and for all, so that we, the unwashed peasantry, would be able to use the correct nomenclature for this criminal movement, or be able to make a distinction between the two. Also, while they are complaining against the ideology of this crime wave, they remain tight lipped and silent on the fact that the scriptures for the justification of the crimes and for the introduction to global fascism originates and is being taught at their own universities under the name of "neoclassical market economics". Without this divine order the corporations and their fully owned politicians wouldn't have the chance of a snowflake in hell. I often wonder whether, after they write these beautiful words, they go down to the faculty club and have a pleasant drink with the economics professors, who are teaching this garbage science ? Why can they not get up enough courage to start hitting the origins of this fraud ? How about our professors on this list telling us the reasons for this silence ? Cheers, Ed (Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC, Canada) ======================================================================================================== At 03:36 PM 08/08/2004 -0500, Jonathan Larson wrote: >Neoliberalism and the Demise of Democracy: >Resurrecting Hope in Dark Times >by Henry A. Giroux >www.dissidentvoice.org >August 7, 2004 > >http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug04/Giroux0807.htm > > > >Neoliberalism has become one of the most pervasive, if not, dangerous >ideologies of the 21st century. It pervasiveness is evident not only by >its unparalleled influence on the global economy, but also by its power to >redefine the very nature of politics itself. Free market fundamentalism >rather than democratic idealism is now the driving force of economics and >politics in most of the world, and it is a market ideology driven not just >by profits but by an ability to reproduce itself with such success that, >to paraphrase Fred Jameson, it is easier to imagine the end of the world >than the end of neoliberal capitalism. > > Wedded to the belief that the market should be the organizing principle > for all political, social, and economic decisions, neoliberalism wages an > incessant attack on democracy, public goods, the welfare state, and > non-commodified values. Under neoliberalism everything either is for sale > or is plundered for profit. Public lands are looted by logging companies > and corporate ranchers; politicians willingly hand the public's airwaves > over to powerful broadcasters and large corporate interests without a > dime going into the public trust; Halliburton gives war profiteering a > new meaning as it is granted corporate contracts without any competitive > bidding and then bilks the U.S. government for millions; the environment > is polluted and despoiled in the name of profit-making just as the > government passes legislation to make it easier for corporations to do > so; public services are gutted in order to lower the taxes of major > corporations; schools more closely resemble either malls or jails, and > teachers, forced to get revenue for their school by hawking everything > from hamburgers to pizza parties. As markets are touted as the driving > force of everyday life, big government is disparaged as either > incompetent or threatening to individual freedom, suggesting that power > should reside in markets and corporations rather than in governments > (except for their support for corporate interests and national security) > and citizens. > > Under neoliberalism, the state now makes a grim alignment with corporate > capital and transnational corporations. Gone are the days when the state > "assumed responsibility for a range of social needs." [1] Instead, > agencies of government now pursues a wide range of "'deregulations,' > privatizations, and abdications of responsibility to the market and > private philanthropy." [2] Deregulation, in turn, promotes "widespread, > systematic disinvestment in the nation's basic productive capacity." [3] > Flexible production encourages wage slavery and disposable populations at > home. And the search for ever greater profits leads to outsourcing which > accentuates the flight of capital and jobs abroad. Neoliberalism has now > become the prevailing logic in the United States, and according to > Stanley Aronowitz "...the neoliberal economic doctrine proclaiming the > superiority of free markets over public ownership, or even public > regulation of private economic activities, has become the conventional > wisdom, not only among conservatives but among social progressives." [4] > >The ideology and power of neoliberalism also cuts across national >boundaries. Throughout the globe, the forces of neoliberalism are on the >march, dismantling the historically guaranteed social provisions provided >by the welfare state, defining profit-making as the essence of democracy, >and equating freedom with the unrestricted ability of markets to "govern >economic relations free of government regulation." [5] Transnational in >scope, neoliberalism now imposes its economic regime and market values on >developing and weaker nations through structural adjustment policies >enforced by powerful financial institutions such as the World Bank, the >International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). >Secure in its dystopian vision that there are no alternatives, as >England's former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once put it, >neoliberalism obviates issues of contingency, struggle, and social agency >by celebrating the inevitability of economic laws in which the ethical >ideal of intervening in the world gives way to the idea that we "have no >choice but to adapt both our hopes and our abilities to the new global >market." [6] Coupled with a new culture of fear, market freedoms seem >securely grounded in a defense of national security, capital, and property >rights. When coupled with a media driven culture of fear and the everyday >reality of insecurity, public space becomes increasingly militarized as >state governments invest more in prison construction than in education. >Prison guards and security personnel in public schools are two of the >fastest growing professions. > > In its capacity to dehistoricize and depoliticize society, as well as in > its aggressive attempts to destroy all of the public spheres necessary > for the defense of a genuine democracy, neoliberalism reproduces the > conditions for unleashing the most brutalizing forces of capitalism. > Social Darwinism has been resurrected from the ashes of the 19th century > sweatshops and can now be seen in full bloom in most reality TV programs > and in the unfettered self-interests that now drives popular culture. As > narcissism is replaced by unadulterated materialism, public concerns > collapse into utterly private considerations and where public space does > exist it is mainly used as a confessional for private woes, a cut throat > game of winner take all, or a advertisement for consumerism. > > Neoliberal policies are dominate the discourse of politics and use the > breathless rhetoric of the global victory of free-market rationality to > cut public expenditures and undermine those non-commodified public > spheres that serve as the repository for critical education, language, > and public intervention. Spewed forth by the mass media, right-wing > intellectuals, religious fanatics, and politicians, neoliberal ideology, > with its ongoing emphasis on deregulation and privatization, has found > its material expression in an all-out attack on democratic values and on > the very notion of the public sphere. Within the discourse of > neoliberalism, the notion of the public good is devalued and, where > possible, eliminated as part of a wider rationale for a handful of > private interests to control as much of social life as possible in order > to maximize their personal profit. Public services such as health care, > child care, public assistance, education, and transportation are now > subject to the rules of the market. Construing the public good as a > private good and the needs of the corporate and private sector as the > only source of investment, neoliberal ideology produces, legitimates, and > exacerbates the existence of persistent poverty, inadequate health care, > racial apartheid in the inner cities, and the growing inequalities > between the rich and the poor. [7] > >As Stanley Aronowitz points out, the Bush administration has made >neoliberal ideology the cornerstone of its program and has been in the >forefront in actively supporting and implementing the following policies: > > [D]eregulation of business at all levels of enterprises and trade; tax > reduction for wealthy individuals and corporations; the revival of the > near-dormant nuclear energy industry; limitations and abrogation of > labor's right to organize and bargain collectively; a land policy > favoring commercial and industrial development at the expense of > conservation and other pro environment policies; elimination of income > support to the chronically unemployed; reduced federal aid to education > and health; privatization of the main federal pension programs, Social > Security; limitation on the right of aggrieved individuals to sue > employers and corporations who provide services; in addition, as social > programs are reduced, [Republicans] are joined by the Democrats in > favoring increases in the repressive functions of the state, expressed in > the dubious drug wars in the name of fighting crime, more funds for > surveillance of ordinary citizens, and the expansion of the federal and > local police forces. [8] > >Central to both neoliberal ideology and its implementation by the Bush >administration is the ongoing attempts by free-market fundamentalists and >right wing politicians to view government as the enemy of freedom (except >when it aids big business) and discount it as a guardian of the public >interest. The call to eliminate big government is neoliberalism's great >unifying idea and has broad popular appeal in the United States because it >is a principle deeply embedded in the country's history and tangled up >with its notion of political freedom. And yet, the right wing >appropriation of this tradition is racked with contradictions in terms of >neoliberal policies. > > The advocates of neoliberalism have attacked what they call big > government when it has provided essential services such as crucial safety > nets for the less fortunate, but they have no qualms about using the > government to bailout the airline industry after the economic nosedive > that followed the 2000 election of George W. Bush and the events of 9/11. > Nor are there any expressions of outrage from the cheerleaders of > neoliberalism when the state engages in promoting various forms of > corporate welfare by providing billions of dollars in direct and indirect > subsidies to multinational corporations. In short, government bears no > obligation for either the poor and dispossessed or for the collective > future of young people. > > As the laws of the market take precedence over the laws of the state as > guardians of the public good, the government increasingly offers little > help in mediating the interface between the advance of capital and its > rapacious commercial interests. Neither does it aid non-commodified > interests and non-market spheres that create the political, economic, and > social spaces and discursive conditions vital for critical citizenship > and democratic public life. Within the discourse of neoliberalism, it > becomes difficult for the average citizen to speak about political or > social transformation, or to even challenge, outside of a grudging nod > toward rampant corruption, the ruthless downsizing, the ongoing > liquidation of job security, or the elimination of benefits for people > now hired on part-time. > > The liberal democratic vocabulary of rights, entitlements, social > provisions, community, social responsibility, living wage, job security, > equality, and justice seem oddly out of place in a country where the > promise of democracy has been replaced by casino capitalism, a > winner-take-all philosophy, suited to lotto players and day traders > alike. As corporate culture extends even deeper into the basic > institutions of civil and political society, buttressed daily by a > culture industry largely in the hands of concentrated capital, it is > reinforced even further by the pervasive fear and insecurity of the > public that the future holds nothing beyond a watered down version of the > present. As the prevailing discourse of neoliberalism seizes the public > imagination, there is no vocabulary for progressive social change, > democratically inspired visions, or critical notions of social agency to > expand the meaning and purpose of democratic public life. Against the > reality of low wage jobs, the erosion of social provisions for a growing > number of people and the expanding war against young people of color at > home and empire-building abroad, the market-driven juggernaut of > neoliberalism continues to mobilize desires in the interest of producing > market identities and market relationships that ultimately sever the link > between education and social change while reducing agency to the > obligations of consumerism. > > As neoliberal ideology and corporate culture extend even deeper into the > basic institutions of civil and political society, there is a > simultaneous diminishing of non-commodified public spheres -those > institutions such as public schools, independent bookstores, churches, > noncommercial public broadcasting stations, libraries, trade unions and > various voluntary institutions engaged in dialogue, education, and > learning-that address the relationship of the individual to public life > and foster social responsibility and provide a robust vehicle for public > participation and democratic citizenship. In the vacuum left by > diminishing democracy, religious zealotry, cultural chauvinism, > xenophobia, and racism have become the dominant tropes of > neoconservatives and other extremist groups eager to take advantage of > the growing insecurity, fear, and anxiety that result from increased > joblessness, the war on terror, and the unraveling of communities. > > As a result of the consolidated corporate attack on public life, the > maintenance of democratic public spheres from which to launch a moral > vision or to engage in a viable struggle over politics loses all > credibility-not to mention monetary support. As the alleged objectivity > of neoliberal ideology remains largely unchallenged within dominant > public spheres, individual critique and collective political struggles > become more difficult. [9] It gets worse. Dominated by extremists, the > Bush administration is driven by an arrogance of power and inflated sense > of moral righteousness mediated largely by a false sense of certitude and > never ending posture of triumphalism. As George Soros points out this > rigid ideology and inflexible sense of mission allows the Bush > administration to believe that "because we are stronger than others, we > must know better and we must have right on our side. This is where > religious fundamentalism comes together with market fundamentalism to > form the ideology of American supremacy." [10] > >As public space is increasingly commodified and the state becomes more >closely aligned with capital, politics is defined largely by its policing >functions rather than an agency for peace and social reform. As the state >abandons its social investments in health, education, and the public >welfare. It increasingly takes on the functions of an enhanced police or >security state, the signs of which are most visible in the increasing use >of the state apparatus to spy on and arrests its subjects, the >incarceration of individuals coincided disposable (primarily people of >color), and the ongoing criminalization of social policies. Examples of >the latter include anti-begging ordinances and anti-loitering that fine or >punish homeless people for sitting or lying down too long in public >places. [11] An even more despicable example of the barbaric nature of >neoliberalism with its emphasis on profits over people and its willingness >to punish rather than serve the poor and disenfranchised can be seen in >the growing tendency of many hospitals across the country to have patients >arrested and jailed if they cannot pay their medical bills. The policy, >right out of the pages of George Orwell's 1984, represents a return to >debtors prisons, which is now chillingly called "body attachment," and is >" basically a warrant for... the patient's arrest." [12] > >Neoliberalism is not simply an economic policy designed to cut government >spending, pursue free trade policies, and free market forces from >government regulations; it is also a political philosophy and ideology >that effects every dimension of social life. Neoliberalism has heralded a >radical economic, political, and experiential shift that now largely >defines the citizen as a consumer, disbands the social contract in the >interests of privatized considerations, and separates capital from the >context of place. Under such circumstances, neoliberalism portends the >death of politics as we know it, strips the social of its democratic >values, and reconstructs agency in terms that are utterly privatized and >provides the conditions for an emerging form of proto-fascism that must be >resisted at all costs. Neoliberalism not only enshrines unbridled >individualism, it also destroys any vestige of democratic society by >undercutting its "moral, material, and regulatory moorings," [13] and in >doing so it offers no language for understanding how the future might be >grasped outside of the narrow logic of the market. But there is even more >at stake here than the obliteration of public concerns, the death of the >social, the emergence of a market-based fundamentalism that undercuts the >ability of people to understand how to translate the privately experienced >misery into collective action, and the elimination of the gains of the >welfare state. There is also the growing threat of displacing "political >sovereignty with the sovereignty of the market, as if the latter has a >mind and morality of its own." [14] As democracy becomes a burden under >the reign of neoliberalism, civic discourse disappears and the reign of >unfettered social Darwinism with its survival-of-the-slickest philosophy >emerges as the template for a new form of proto-fascism. None of this will >happen in the face of sufficient resistance, nor is the increasing move >toward proto-fascism inevitable, but the conditions exist for democracy to >lose all semblance of meaning in the United States.. > > Educators, parents, activists, workers, and others can address this > challenge by building local and global alliances and engaging in > struggles that acknowledge and transcend national boundaries, but also > engage in modes of politics that connect with people's everyday lives. > Democratic struggles cannot under emphasize the special responsibility of > intellectuals to shatter the conventional wisdom and myths of > neoliberalism with its stunted definition of freedom and its > depoliticized and dehistoricized definition of its own alleged > universality. As the late Pierre Bourdieu argued, any viable politics > that challenges neoliberalism must refigure the role of the state in > limiting the excesses of capital and providing important social > provisions. [15] At the same time, social movements must address the > crucial issue of education as it develops throughout the cultural sphere > because the "power of the dominant order is not just economic, but > intellectual-lying in the realm of beliefs," and it is precisely within > the domain of ideas that a sense of utopian possibility can be restored > to the public realm. [16] Most specifically, democracy necessitates forms > of education that provide a new ethic of freedom and a reassertion of > collective identity as central preoccupations of a vibrant democratic > culture and society. Such a task, in part, suggests that intellectuals, > artists, unions, and other progressive movements create teach-ins all > over the country in order to name, critique, and connect the forces of > market fundamentalism to the war at home and abroad, the shameful tax > cuts for the rich, the dismantling of the welfare state, the attack on > unions, the erosion of civil liberties, the incarceration of a generation > of young black and brown men, the attack on public schools, and the > growing militarization of public life. As Bush's credibility crisis is > growing, the time has come to link the matters of economics with the > crisis of political culture, and to connect the latter to the crisis of > democracy itself. We need a new language for politics, for analyzing > where it can take place, and what it means to mobilize alliances of > workers, intellectuals, academics, journalists, youth groups, and others > to reclaim, as Cornel West has aptly put it, hope in dark times. > > > Henry A. Giroux is the Global Television Network Chair Professor at > McMaster University in Canada. His most recent books include: Take Back > Higher Education: Race, Youth, and the Crisis of Democracy in the > Post-Civil Rights Era (Palgrave, 2004); Public Spaces, Private Lives: > Democracy Beyond 9-11 (Rowman and Littlefield 2003); The Abandoned > Generation: Democracy Beyond the Culture of Fear (Palgrave, 2003). He can > be reached at: hag5@psu.edu. > >REFERENCES > >1. George Steinmetz, 'The State of Emergency and the Revival of American >Imperialism; Toward an Authoritarian Post-Fordism," Public Culture 15:2 >(Spring 2003), p. 337. > > 2. George Steinmetz, Ibid., 'The State of Emergency and the Revival of > American Imperialism; Toward an Authoritarian Post-Fordism," p. 337. > > 3. Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison, The Deindustrialization of > America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment and the Dismantling of > Basic Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982), p. 6 > > 4. Stanley Aronowitz, Ibid. How Class Works, p. 21. > > 5. Stanley Aronowitz, How Class Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, > 2003), p. 101. > > 6. Stanley Aronowitz, "Introduction," in Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of > Freedom (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 7 > > 7. Doug Henwood, After the New Economy (New York: The New Press, 2003); > Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American > Rich (New York: Broadway, 2003); Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling: > Losing Our Way in the New Century (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003). > > 8. Stanley Aronowitz, How Class Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, > 2003), p. 102. > > 9. Of course, there is widespread resistance to neoliberalism and its > institutional enforcers such as the WTO and IMF among many > intellectuals, students, and global justice movements, but this > resistance rarely gets aired in the dominant media and if it does it is > often dismissed as irrelevant or tainted by Marxist ideology. > > 10. George Soros, "The US is Now in the Hands of a Group of Extremists," > The Guardian/UK (January 26, 2004). > > 11. Paul Tolme, "Criminalizing the Homeless," In These Times (April 14, > 2003), pp. 6-7. > > 12. Staff or Democracy Now, "Uncharitable Care: How Hospitals are > Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured," CommonDreams (January 8, 2004). > > 13. John and Jean Comaroff, "Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a > Second Coming," Public Culture 12:2 (2000), p. 332. > > 14. Comaroff, Ibid., (2000), p. 332. > > 15. Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the > Market (New York: The New Press, 1998). > > 16. Pierre Bourdieu and Gunter Grass, "The 'Progressive' Restoration: A > Franco-German Dialogue," New Left Review 14 (march-April, 2003), p. 66. > >-- >------------------ > >warmest regards > >Jonathan > >web site at: > >http://elegant-technology.com >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From papadop at peak.org Mon Aug 9 09:42:23 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Mon Aug 9 09:42:27 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Kerry/Edwards have "no objections" to Missouri marriage ban Message-ID: http://uk.gay.com/headlines/6665 Larry Buhl, PlanetOut Network Monday 9 August, 2004 12:22 Vice presidential candidate John Edwards, campaigning Thursday in Cape Girardeau, said he and running mate John Kerry have "no objection" to this week's vote in Missouri to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. In an interview Thursday, Edwards told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "We're both opposed to gay marriage and believe that states should be allowed to decide this question." On Tuesday, Missouri became the first state since the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts to vote on amending its constitution to prevent such unions. More than 70 percent of voters supported the amendment. Adopting a states' rights approach, Kerry and Edwards have opposed the administration's efforts to amend the US Constitution to stop gays from marrying. Yet by supporting only limited rights such as civil unions and not objecting to state amendments like the Missouri ban, the Democratic candidates have disappointed many gay rights activists. "Kerry-Edwards is better than Bush-Cheney on human rights, but it is frustrating that both major candidates oppose full equality," said Geoffrey Kors, executive director of Equality California. "Whether we have Bush-Cheney, who support amending the federal Constitution, or Kerry-Edwards, who don't object to amending state constitutions, the GLBT community is going to have to become more assertive in demanding our rights from our elected officials," Kors said, adding that Equality California has yet to endorse a ticket for president. Other LGBT groups took a sanguine response to Edwards' remarks. "The Kerry-Edwards ticket has the strongest human rights record of any ticket in history, and we in the LBGT community have to keep our eye on the prize: defeating George Bush," said Steven Fisher, communications director for Human Rights Campaign. Instead of denouncing the Kerry-Edwards stance, Fisher assailed Republicans for pushing the gay marriage issue so hard in an election year. "We think the American people will see these state ballot efforts as George Bush's attempt to divide the American people and distract them from the failures of his administration." A July 30 Zogby poll showed the presidential race in Missouri to be a statistical dead heat in this key swing state. Louisiana residents are to vote on a marriage amendment Sept. 18. Then Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah are to vote on the issue Nov. 2. There also are initiatives pending in Michigan, North Dakota and Ohio. Four states -- Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska and Nevada -- already have similar amendments in their constitutions. From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Mon Aug 9 10:41:54 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Mon Aug 9 10:42:22 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Higher oil price threatens Bush Message-ID: Higher oil price threatens Bush August 10, 2004 http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/09/1092022403849.html?from=storylhs&oneclick=true# The rise in oil prices could influence US voters in the upcoming election, write Greg Ip and Jackie Calmes in New York. Oil shocks have accompanied every American recession over the past three decades. Now the sharp rise in fuel prices appears to be hampering the current expansion, as shown by Friday's weak US jobs report, when only 32,000 jobs were created in July. Oil shocks contributed to the demise of two recent American presidents in their bid for re-election: Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George Bush senior in 1992. The 2004 fuel jolt may threaten the bid of Mr Bush's son for a second term as well. Oil shocks also make life difficult for the Federal Reserve, which has been planning a slow, steady step-up in short-term interest rates over the coming months. Oil prices, which briefly hit an all-time high (not adjusted for inflation) of $US44.73 on Friday, may be doing the job of curbing consumer demand for them. But they could also lead to higher inflation if workers win compensating wage gains. Few forecasters suggest the US is tipping back into recession. There have been plenty of upbeat numbers to offset the recent weak data. Still, economists and some investors aren't nearly as bullish as they were when the US summer began. A month ago, Macroeconomic Advisers LLC was projecting growth in the current quarter of 5 per cent. Now the forecasting firm is estimating just 3.6 per cent. After the Dow Jones Industrial Averaged plunged 147.7 points to 9815.33 on Friday, the blue-chip indicator is down 7 per cent from its high this year, a poor performance this early in an expansion. High oil prices aren't the only thing weighing on the market and the broader economy. Another factor is the fading effect of the stimulus policies that were designed to counteract the 2001 recession and sluggish recovery. This year's surge in oil prices isn't as dire as the shocks of the 1970s. In 2004 dollars, today's price is still some 40 per cent below the record price hit in 1981. And the US is more fuel-efficient than it was then. However, the doubling of petroleum prices since early 2002 still represents one of the largest sustained increases since 1979, and has significantly crimped disposable income for consumers. The strong global demand for oil has left the petroleum industry with almost no spare capacity to cushion supply disruptions. The world's oil producers are thus operating with a tiny margin of spare pumping capacity of just 1 million barrels, in a market of 80 million barrels a day. That, in turn, means, any supply problems could send prices skyrocketing. Another force driving oil prices higher is turmoil in the Middle East. Prices could fall just as sharply as they rose, if fears of instability were calmed. But it also risks raising the political damage to President Bush. To the extent voters connect the dots, they may combine two of the US public's main concerns about Mr Bush - an uncertain economy and instability in Iraq - into one big one. - Wall Street Journal -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From jomut at yahoo.com Mon Aug 9 12:16:19 2004 From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa) Date: Mon Aug 9 12:16:21 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] tvo: the corporation Message-ID: <20040809191619.90049.qmail@web14002.mail.yahoo.com> Hi, Watched the first part of this last night on TVO. Quite interesting. Just in case those who can access TVO are interested. John. ============== http://www.tvo.org/thecorporation/ A corporation is designated as a legal person under law. What kind of person would it be? Answer: A psychopath. While this may strike some as obvious, others will find The Corporation a real eye-opener as it delves into the mindset and character of corporate America. This insightful documentary comes to us from Mark Achbar (Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media), Jennifer Abbott (A Cow at My Table), and Joel Bakan, whose book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (to be published March 8) serves as the basis for the film. Through interviews with left-wing staples such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore; company CEOs from Pfizer, Goodyear, and Royal Dutch Shell; activists and whistleblowers; and highlighting specific cases of corporate deception, the three-hour mini-series paints a somewhat unflattering picture of multinationals. Some of the most damning evidence is the film's exploration of FOX News executives pressuring its reporters to kill a story that exposed links to cancer in a synthetic Monsanto bovine milk hormone. The Corporation addresses three different themes. In the first program, The Pathology of Commerce, filmmakers examine the pathological self-interest of the modern corporation. Planet Inc. looks at the scope of commerce and the sophisticated, even covert, techniques marketers use to get their brands into our homes. The final program, Reckoning, examines how corporations cut deals with any style of government - from Nazi Germany to despotic states today - that allow or even encourage sweatshops, as long as sales go up. The Corporation received critical acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival, and has just been named as one of the Festival's "Canada's Top Ten 2003" films. The Corporation also garnered the Joris Ivens Special Jury Prize at the Amsterdam Film Festival in November and will be screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The Corporation next airs on TVO on: Wednesday, August 4, 2004 at 10:00pm - Part 1: The Pathology of Commerce Wednesday, August 11, 2004 at 10:00pm - Part 2: Planet Inc. Wednesday, August 18, 2004 at 10:00pm - Part 3: Reckoning ===== John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake) jomut@yahoo.com chakane@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/jomut __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From papadop at peak.org Mon Aug 9 12:37:43 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Mon Aug 9 12:37:46 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] {Possible Spam?} GVUARDIAN: Hugo Chavez on way to stunning victory Message-ID: Thanx GE http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,12716,1278276,00.html The Guardian (London) Saturday August 7, 2004 Richard Gott in Caracas * Richard Gott is the author of In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venezuela, published by Verso; his latest book, Cuba: A New History, will be published next month by Yale University Press To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Chavez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum designed to lead to his overthrow. First elected in 1998 as a barely known colonel, armed with little more than revolutionary rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme, Chavez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States. Closely allied to Fidel Castro, he rivals the Cuban leader in his fierce denunciations of George Bush, a strategy that goes down well with the great majority of the population of Latin America, where only the elites welcome the economic and political recipes devised in Washington. While Chavez has retained his popularity after nearly six years as president, support for overtly pro-US leaders in Latin America, such as Vicente Fox in Mexico and Alejandro Toledo in Peru, has dwindled to nothing. Even the fence-sitting President Lula in Brazil is struggling in the polls. The news that Chavez will win this month's referendum will be bleakly received in Washington. Chavez came to power after the traditional political system in Venezuela had self-destructed during the 1990s. But the remnants of the ancien régime, notably those entrenched in the media, have kept up a steady fight against him, in a country where racist antipathies inherited from the colonial era are never far from the surface. Chavez, with his black and Indian features and an accent that betrays his provincial origins, goes down well in the shanty towns, but is loathed by those in the rich white suburbs who fear he has mobilised the impoverished majority against them. The expected Chavez victory will be the opposition's third defeat in as many years. The first two were dramatically counter-productive for his opponents, since they only served to entrench him in power. An attempted coup d'état in April 2002, with fascist overtones reminiscent of the Pinochet era in Chile, was defeated by an alliance of loyal officers and civilian groups who mobilised spontaneously and successfully to demand the return of their president. The unexpected restoration of Chavez not only alerted the world to an unusual leftwing, not to say revolutionary, experiment taking place in Venezuela, but it also led the country's poor majority to understand that they had a government and a president worth defending. Chavez was able to dismiss senior officers opposed to his project of involving the armed forces in programmes to help the poor, and removed the threat of a further coup. The second attempt at his overthrow - the prolonged work stoppage in December 2002 which extended to a lockout at the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, nationalised since 1975 - also played into the hands of the president. When the walkout (with its echoes of the CIA-backed Chilean lorry owners' strike against Salvador Allende's government in the early 1970s) failed, Chavez was able to sack the most pampered sections of a privileged workforce. The company's huge surplus oil revenues were redirected into imaginative new social programmes. Innumerable projects, or "missions", were established throughout the country, recalling the atmosphere of the early years of the Cuban revolution. They combat illiteracy, provide further education for school dropouts, promote employment, supply cheap food, and extend a free medical service in the poor areas of the cities and the countryside, with the help of 10,000 Cuban doctors. Redundant oil company buildings have been commandeered to serve as the headquarters of a new university for the poor, and oil money has been diverted to set up Vive, an innovative cultural television channel that is already breaking the traditional US mould of the Latin American media. The opposition dismiss the new projects as "populist", a term customarily used with pejorative intent by social scientists in Latin America. Yet faced with the tragedy of extreme poverty and neglect in a country with oil revenues to rival those of Saudi Arabia, it is difficult to see why a democratically elected government should not embark on crash programmes to help the most disadvantaged. Their impact is about to be tested at the polls on August 15. Vote "Yes" to eject Chavez from the presidency. Vote "No" to keep him there until the next presidential election in 2006. The opposition, divided politically and with no charismatic figure to rival Chavez to front their campaign, continue to behave as though their victory is certain. They discuss plans for a post-Chavez government, and watch closely the ever-dubious and endlessly conflicting opinion polls, placing their evaporating hopes on the "don't knows". They still imagine fondly that they can achieve a victory comparable to that of the anti-Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1990. Yet their third attempt to derail the government is clearly doomed. The Chavez campaign to secure a "No" vote has struck the country like a whirlwind, playing to all his strengths as a military strategist and a political organiser. A voter registration drive, reminiscent of the attempt to put black people on the election roll in the United States in the 1960s, has produced hundreds of thousands of new voters. So too has a campaign to give citizenship to thousands of long-term immigrants. Most will favour Chavez, and Chavez supporters are already patrolling the shanty towns and the most remote areas of the country to get the vote out on August 15. One unexpected bonus for Chavez has been the dramatic and perhaps semi-permanent increase in the world oil price. As he explained to me a few days ago, he is now able to direct the extra revenues to the poor, both at home and abroad, for Venezuela supplies oil at a discount price to the countries of Central America and the Caribbean, including Cuba. Chavez celebrated his 50th birthday last month, and he has talked of soldiering on as president for years in order to see through the reforms he envisages. That is not such an improbable proposition. He has also been helped by the changing political climate in Latin America. Other presidents have been climbing over themselves to be photographed with him. He has patched up relations with Colombia and Chile, hitherto cool, and last month reinforced his friendly relations with Brazil and Argentina by signing an association agreement with the Mercosur trading union that they lead. Once perceived by his neighbours as a bit of an oddball, he now appears more like a Latin American statesman. Up and down the continent he has become the man to watch. Faced with a Chavez victory, the opposition may yet turn in desperation to violence. His assassination, hinted at recently by former president Carlos Andres Perez, or the deployment of paramilitary forces of the kind unleashed in recent years in Colombia, is always a possibility. Yet the more civilised sectors of the opposition will set themselves, with luck, to the difficult task of organising a proper electoral force to challenge Chavez in 2006. When I asked an uncommitted bookseller whether he would vote to sack the president in mid-term, he replied: "No, they should let him get on with the job." From papadop at peak.org Mon Aug 9 12:50:22 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Mon Aug 9 12:50:26 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Judge Upholds Media Subpoenas in PLAME Leak Case Message-ID: http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20040809_281.html Reuters Aug. 9, 2004 By James Vicini WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge on Monday upheld subpoenas to compel testimony of journalists at NBC News and Time magazine in a special prosecutor's probe into whether Bush administration officials illegally leaked a covert CIA officer's name to the news media. U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Hogan rejected requests to quash subpoenas issued to Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine on the grounds they violate the reporters' privilege under the Constitution's First Amendment. The subpoenas were issued by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and seek to require Russert and Cooper to appear before a federal grand jury to testify about conversations they had with an unidentified government official. "To be clear, this court holds that Cooper and Russert have no privilege, qualified or otherwise, excusing them from testifying before the grand jury in this matter," Hogan ruled in the 11-page opinion. "There have been no allegations whatsoever that this grand jury is acting in bad faith or with the purpose of harassing these two journalists," the judge wrote. A number of top administration officials have been questioned in the leak investigation, including President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell. The grand jury has been hearing testimony from administration and government officials in an attempt to establish who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media last year. Plame is the wife of Joe Wilson, a former ambassador who was asked by the CIA to travel to Niger in February 2002 to check reports that Iraq had tried to buy enriched uranium from the African country. A newspaper columnist disclosed Plame's identity in July last year and Wilson accused the Bush administration of having leaked the information to pay him back for having publicly taken issue with the president's uranium claim. The White House subsequently said Bush should not have cited the claim in his 2003 State of the Union address. Disclosing the identity of a clandestine intelligence officer is a federal crime as is leaking classified information to the media. Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, was appointed by the Justice Department late last year as special prosecutor, an announcement made at the same time that Attorney General John Ashcroft stepped aside from the politically charged probe. From papadop at peak.org Mon Aug 9 15:12:21 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Mon Aug 9 15:12:46 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] TIME Reporter Held In Contempt In Plame Leak Case Message-ID: Bush, Powell and other Bush administration officials have appeared before the grand jury or have been interviewed by prosecutors and the FBI - in this case. As betweeen the executive and its officials and TIME and its reporter, which is most likely to be lying even if brought before thew grand jury ? Michael ============== http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4404404,00.html TIME Reporter Held In Contempt In Plame Leak Case Monday August 9, 2004 10:31 PM By CURT ANDERSON WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal judge held a reporter for Time magazine in contempt of court Monday for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of a covert CIA officer. In an order issued July 20 but not made public until Monday, U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that Time's Matthew Cooper and "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert were required to testify "regarding alleged conversations they had with a specified executive branch official." NBC News issued a statement saying that Russert already had been interviewed under oath by prosecutors on Saturday under an agreement to avoid a protracted court fight. The interview concerned a July 2003 phone conversation he had with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Time and Cooper, however, did not agree to be interviewed and intend to appeal the judge's ruling, said Managing Editor Jim Kelly. If Time loses those appeals, Cooper could be jailed under Hogan's order until he agrees to appear and the magazine could be fined $1,000 a day. "We are disappointed in the decision," Kelly said. "We don't think a journalist should be required to give up a confidential source. We're going to appeal it as far as it goes." Neal Shapiro, president of NBC News, said the network agreed that forcing reporters to testify about their sources is "contrary to the First Amendment's guarantee of a free press." Shapiro said Russert answered "only limited questions" about the conversation with Libby "without revealing any information he learned in confidence." The subpoenas of Russert and Cooper were issued by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago, who was appointed as a special prosecutor in the leak case. Hogan denied the claims by the two journalists that they were protected by the Constitution from having to testify. "There have been no allegations whatsoever that this grand jury is acting in bad faith or with the purpose of harassing these two journalists," Hogan wrote in an 11-page ruling. The investigation concerns the leak last summer to syndicated columnist Robert Novak of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame. Disclosure of an undercover official's identity can be a felony. Plame's name appeared in Novak's column on July 14 last year, about a week after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, published a newspaper opinion piece criticizing President Bush's claim in the 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger. Wilson had been sent by the CIA to Niger to check the allegation, and he concluded it was unfounded. Novak wrote that Plame had suggested her husband for the mission, a claim Plame and Wilson have denied. NBC said in its statement that Russert told Fitzgerald in the interview that he did not know Plame's name or her identity as a CIA officer, and that he did not provide that information to Libby. The statement said that Libby had told the FBI about his conversation with Russert and requested that it be disclosed. In June, prosecutors interviewed a reporter for The Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, regarding two conversations he had with Libby in July 2003. Kessler has said he told prosecutors that Libby did not mention Plame, Wilson or the CIA-backed trip to Niger and that he testified only because Libby signed a waiver releasing Kessler from any promise of confidentiality. A number of Bush administration officials have appeared before the grand jury or have been interviewed by prosecutors and the FBI. Bush himself was interviewed in the White House on June 25, and earlier this month Secretary of State Colin Powell was interviewed. From thinker at uniserve.com Mon Aug 9 17:56:07 2004 From: thinker at uniserve.com (Ed Deak) Date: Mon Aug 9 17:56:01 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: STOP "AUSTRALIA" - Stop the kangaroo slaughter Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040809175453.02862a68@pop.uniserve.com> I don't know whether the following is true, or not , but I'm forwarding it for comments by our Ozzie friends. Cheers. Ed. >BOYCOTT ADIDAS and AUSTRALIA (also at the Olympics) > > All Australian laws assented to on behalf of a British Monarch, by any > non-legally appointed Governor-General of Australia since 1919, cannot > hold any valid or legal executive authority, as all of the > Governor-Generals appointments have been issued incorrectly. >The ENTIRE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT, IS NOW OFFICIALLY ILLEGAL ! >http://members.austarmetro.com.au/%7Ehubbca/aust_govt.htm > >http://www.brumbywatchaustralia.com/WelcomeFraser90.htm >http://www.principalityofcamside.cc/War%20Declared/Cam_War_Declared_Doc01.htm > > >Stop the kangaroo slaughter !!! > >DO PEOPLE ACTUALLY REALIZE THAT THERE WAS NO PROBLEM >UNTIL THE FIRST PRISONER OF HER MAYESTY ? > >The largest massacre of land animals on the planet takes place in >Australia each year. Millions of adult kangaroos are shot for their meat >and skins (for luxury items such as soccer boots made by ADIDAS or >souvenirs). Millions of orphaned baby joeys, "worthless" to the industry, >are shot, stamped on, clubbed over the head or abandoned to die. In pouch >joeys are routinely ripped from the pouch and decapitated, or bludgeoned >to death. Occasionally they are shot. The joey at foot is normally left to >starve or to meet death by predation. There is no record of numbers of >joeys killed or left to starve. Nowhere else in the world are the young of >wild animals treated with such blatant disregard for their suffering. See >http://www.savethekangaroo.com and >http://www.awpc.org.au > >How can you help.... see steps below > >1) Join the international campaign to save the kangaroo >Visit >http://www.savethekangaroo.com/tourism >and become 1-click campaigner >This is VERY IMPORTANT as just recently Australia launched push for >visitors with hundreds of millions dollars on promotional campaign >advertising Australia as a tourist destination and ironically using the >image of a kangaroo as a draw card! > >2) Contact the Australian Embassy in your country and register your >complain. >http://www.ausmaps.com/embassy.htm and >www.ausmaps.com/embassy2.htm > >3) Email or fax the The Minister for Environment & Heritage Senator The >Hon. Ian Campbell >to stop the commercial kangaroo shooting >mailto:senator.ian.campbell@aph.gov.au >Fax: (international code) +61+2+6273 6101 >Tel: (international code) +61+2+6277 7640 > >4) Visit http://www.kangarooslaughter.com > and make comments in the guestbook of this website (we will use your > comments in our campaign) > >5) Include some information on the plight of kangaroos on your website (if >you have one) > >6) Ask all your friends home and abroad to act too. > >7) DON'T BUY ANY ADIDAS PRODUCTS ! > >8) DON'T BUY OR EAT KANGAROO MEAT ! > >******************************************************************************************** >More info on the recent kangaroo slaughter: > >In order to supply their commercial markets, the kangaroo industry >continues the commercial kill even during the worst drought in living >history. They target the biggest and best animals and kill those >kangaroos who are essential in order to pass on their strong genes for the >survival of the species. The industry is running out of large kangaroos >and one kangaroo meat and skin processor has reported that some skins we >get are the size of a handkerchief . The industry is now desperate to >open up new areas where sizeable kangaroos can still be found. The NSW >State Government had recently approved the expansion of the shooting zone >into southeast NSW. This area contains some of the last undisturbed >kangaroo populations with intact, complex family-structures and strong >alpha males to ensure their survival. > >It seems that the Kangaroo Industry has also succeeded in the Australian >Capital Territory (ACT). On Sunday night, the 11th of July 2004, >Environment authority of ACT allowed commercial kangaroo shooters into the >Googong Dam catchment area, a Fauna Reserve outside Canberra. Despite >international outrage, during the following two weeks 800 kangaroos were >slaughtered and also many joeys (babies). Animal rights activists had >been at the dam each night to stop the massacre by creating a human >shield. They managed to seriously disrupt the shooting, but were unable to >prevent the eventual slaughter. > >No reasonable community consultation has taken place. Environment ACT >claimed the kangaroos were the cause of erosion and water contamination, >when livestock from properties adjoining the dam are clearly the real >culprits and runoff from the livestock dung is reaching the water. >However, when this was pointed out, the authority changed tactics and >suddenly claimed the kangaroos were starving, and so needed to be >slaughtered. These kangaroos are NOT starving. There is plenty of dry feed >on un-stocked properties and road reserves within easy reach of the dam. > >Imagine the picture (just one of the scenes): ...Two shooters are in a 4WD >truck with the heater going full bore. The night is black, and like most >nights at the Dam, the temperature is below zero, with some nights the >area experiencing rain and sleet or snow on adjacent mountains.The >shooters spotlight and shoot female kangaroos. They shoot a female, drag a >joey out of the dead mothers pouch, cut it s head off or bash it s head >in, as required by the Code of Practice, then throw it aside. Any >ex-pouch joeys still dependant on their mother, flee in panic into the >night to eventually die of exposure. The mother kangaroo is gutted and >hung on the side of the truck. The shooters jump back into the warm truck >and drive on looking for more kangaroos......dollars beckon&.. > >This "management of our so called protected wildlife " is a cruel and >gruesome blood bath for a fistful of dollars, the kangaroo is well and >truly betrayed& > >For more info on kangaroo slaughter at Googong Dam see: >http://www.kangarooslaughter.com >http://www.savethekangaroo.com/what_you_can_do/googongdam.shtml > >For more information about betrayal of the kangaroo please visit >http://www.savethekangaroo.com >http://www.awpc.org.au >http://www.kangaroo-protection-coalition.org >http://www.wlpa.org/ >http://www.vivausa.org/campaigns/kangaroo/kangaroo.html > >-------- > > >ECOTERRA Intl. > >---------------------- >Do you want to read or distribute a message in another language? >Just go to the free translation sites: >http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran/ >or (better, but free registration is required) >http://www.systransoft.com/ >or to Altavista Babelfish >http://www.babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr >or >http://www.t-mail.com/t-text.shtml for >engl., russian or korean >or Freetranslator >http://www.freetranslation.com/ or check for >arabic >and african automated translators at >http://www.bisharat.net/Trans/ or >the Google Language Tools >http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en > >and have the translation done free of charge. 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ECOTERRA Intl. 2004 > From papadop at peak.org Mon Aug 9 17:56:28 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Mon Aug 9 17:56:30 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Director of NSA shifts to new path Message-ID: http://cryptome.org/dirnsa-shift.htm http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.nsa08aug081,2568751.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines _________________________________________________________________ Hayden makes changes to keep up with technology; 'He's had to move the culture' By Scott Shane Baltimore Sun (subscriber) August 8, 2004 Last year, long before CIA Director George J. Tenet resigned in advance of a series of damning reports on intelligence failures before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the chief of an even larger spy agency was quietly asked to extend his term. Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the National Security Agency, was asked by Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to stay on as director until at least September 2005. The 6 1/2 -year term will make the three-star Air Force general by far the longest-serving NSA boss in the agency's 52-year history. Hayden's survival amid the harsh assessment of pre-Sept. 11 intelligence may reflect his ability to turn around the gargantuan eavesdropping agency in an era of shifting technology and threats. Even as stateless terrorists have replaced Soviet missile bases as the agency's prime target, so the boom in cell phones, the Internet and the spread of fiber-optic cable and computerized encryption have forced it to reinvent eavesdropping technology. "The whole ballgame of where and how you collect signals intelligence changed," says Charles G. Boyd, a retired Air Force general who was executive director of the Hart-Rudman Commission on national security in the late 1990s and now heads Business Executives for National Security. "And that's where [Hayden] has moved this institution. To do that, he's not only changed technologies and processes. He's had to move the culture itself, and that's very difficult to do." Boyd knows Hayden well from their Air Force service and has followed his work at NSA closely. "As a manager of change and a manager of intelligence overall, I think Mike Hayden is the best we have," he says. Agency changes Matthew M. Aid, a respected intelligence historian in Washington who is writing a book on the NSA, says the changes under Hayden appear to be producing results. "The al-Qaida operatives who are being tracked down and caught - that's largely the result of signals intelligence," which is spy lingo for the intercept of phone calls, e-mail and other messages that is NSA's turf, Aid says. "NSA is flush with cash. It's hiring thousands of new people. It's clearly an agency that's going places." Some NSA veterans complain that Hayden "brought in corporate types who gave him Harvard Business School models" that "don't work for an intelligence agency," Aid says. But the people at the CIA, the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon who receive NSA's reports see a difference, he says: NSA "has a lot more respect from intelligence consumers than it had when Hayden arrived in 1999." The changes at NSA have been wrenching, with large numbers of veterans taking early retirement and contractors brought in to handle much of the agency's retooling. More than 22 percent of the agency's civilian work force has been hired since 2000, with more than 1,300 new employees expected to come on board this year, agency officials say. Aid estimates that 25,000 civilian and military employees work on NSA's sprawling Fort Meade campus off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, although the exact number is classified. At least an additional 10,000 eavesdroppers are scattered elsewhere in the United States and around the world, he says. Many agency old-timers aren't happy, says retiree Mike Levin, who worked at the agency from 1947 to 1993. "I have a very negative view of General Hayden. Before he had a chance to know what was going on, he announced he was going to clean the place out," Levin says. But others say the NSA was in need of radical surgery well before the Sept. 11 attacks. "NSA was set up to monitor an enormous country, the Soviet Union, that didn't go anywhere," says James Bamford, author of two books on the agency. "It was never set up to follow individual terrorists around the world using phone cards, disposable cell phones and e-mail." Of Hayden, Bamford says, "I think he's done about as good a job as anyone could do given the limitations." In fact, the author says, the cerebral 59-year-old intelligence veteran, a Bulgarian linguist early in his career, might emerge as a candidate for the post of national intelligence director proposed by the Sept. 11 commission. Keeping up When Hayden arrived in March 1999, the agency was by all accounts hurting. Its budget had been cut by about a third since the height of the Cold War, but it had to devise new intercept systems to keep up with what Hayden calls "the greatest revolution in communications since Gutenberg discovered movable type." The shift of international communications traffic from satellites and microwave links to hard-to-tap fiber-optic cables posed a major challenge. Encryption described by NSA officials as impossible to break was spreading. National magazine stories on the secret agency began to ask: Is the NSA going deaf? Then, in January 2000, a huge computer crash took the agency offline for days, dramatizing the need for an updated infrastructure. Russian linguists were in oversupply, while there was an extreme shortage of speakers of Arabic and other languages more relevant to terrorism. Older employees who had mastered radio and microwave intercepts were not so adept at monitoring cellular networks and the Internet. After Sept. 11, 2001 - when most of NSA was evacuated for fear it might be the hijackers' next target - it became obvious that the agency would be permitted to expand. But Hayden decided to go forward the next month with a final early-retirement program, watching 765 employees leave even as the agency geared up to hire. "It was not because anyone was dumb, incompetent, lazy or calcified or anything else," Hayden said in an interview last week in his whisper-quiet office at the top of one of NSA's massive glass towers at Fort Meade. "It was just a work force that historically did not change over very much. ... So if we were going to get new skills, we were going to have to get new people." The old Soviet target, Hayden said, was "exceptionally slow-moving, oligarchic and technologically inferior," and what NSA was then interested in was "big things. You wanted to know where their nuclear missile submarines were. You wanted to know about Soviet forces in Germany - were they in garrison or in the field? You wanted to know if there were bombers at Arctic staging bases." By contrast, he said, "in the current war, you're looking for infinitely more granular information. You want to know where this human being is. And it's not good enough to say he's in Afghanistan. In terms of our current ops [operations] tempo, it's not even good enough to know what city. You have to know what building he's in." Rather than the special communications systems used by foreign militaries, "al-Qaida rides on the global [commercial] communications structure." To listen in, "you're putting yourself into their communication pattern. If your pattern doesn't match their pattern ... you don't hear." Technology revolution Given the dire assessments a few years ago, it is notable that Hayden says the communications revolution has on the whole been a plus, not a minus, for the NSA. The NSA director declines to elaborate. But interviews with outside experts suggest that the agency has managed to overcome the challenges posed by fiber-optic cable and encryption. "My opinion is that at this point, those are little more than a speed bump to NSA," says Steve Uhrig, president of SWS Security, a Harford County firm that builds eavesdropping and counter-eavesdropping systems for U.S. and foreign police agencies. "They have a virtually unlimited budget, and they can put amazing resources to work on a problem." Several sources who regularly speak with NSA officials say they believe Uhrig is right. Although they do not know the details, they say the agency has almost certainly managed to tap fiber cables on a large-scale basis, making access to the information inside less of a problem than its overwhelming volume. The NSA has also found a silver lining to the use of encrypted e-mail: Even if a particular message cannot be read, the very use of encryption can flag it for NSA's attention. By tracking the relatively few Internet users in a certain country or region who take such security measures, NSA analysts might be able to sketch a picture of a terrorist network. Information 'in motion' And by focusing their electronic tricks on messages as they are first typed on a computer or when they are read on the other end - what security experts call "information at rest" - NSA technical experts might be able to bypass otherwise-unbreakable encryption used when the information is "in motion." Meanwhile, the popularity of e-mail and particularly of cell phones has worked to the NSA's advantage in the battle against terrorism. The NSA's computers can track and sort huge volumes of e-mail far more easily than they can manage telephone intercepts, because text is consistently represented in digital code. And cell phones - as handy for terrorist plotters as for everyone else - provide not just an eavesdropping target but also a way to physically track the user. Uhrig, who has installed cellular intercept systems in several countries, says that as cell phones have proliferated, the "cells" served by a tower or other antenna have correspondingly grown smaller. "A big hotel may have a cell for every other floor. Every big office building is its own cell," he says. Easier tracking By following a switched-on cell phone as it shifts from cell to cell, "you can watch the person move," Uhrig says. "You can tell the direction he's moving. If he's moving slow, he's walking. If he's moving fast, he's in a car. The tracking is sometimes of much more interest than the contents of a call." But Hayden will say nothing about reports in the news media and from outside specialists that NSA telephone intercepts led to the recent series of arrests of suspected terrorists in Pakistan. Confirming the agencies' victories would only warn future targets to take precautions against eavesdropping. The most devastating such loss in recent years came in 1998, when al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden stopped using the satellite phone the NSA had used for years to track him and his plans. Whether he was tipped off by press reports - as the Sept. 11 commission has claimed - or by the United States' cruise missile attack on his camp in Afghanistan remains unclear. "This is the most fragile of all intelligence disciplines," Hayden said. "We would not want many of our successes broadcast." From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Mon Aug 9 20:06:57 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Mon Aug 9 20:07:57 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Foreigners to monitor US election for another fraud Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040810110320.030d7f90@central.murdoch.edu.au> The regime that lectures the world about "democracy" is to have its presidential election monitored by foreign teams for fraud. See http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=5916368 Dion Giles Western Australia From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Tue Aug 10 00:32:03 2004 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Tue Aug 10 00:32:11 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory Message-ID: <41184FC3.4926.462AC0D@localhost> Loathed by the rich Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory Richard Gott in Caracas Saturday August 7, 2004 The Guardian To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Chavez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum designed to lead to his overthrow. First elected in 1998 as a barely known colonel, armed with little more than revolutionary rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme, Chavez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States. Closely allied to Fidel Castro, he rivals the Cuban leader in his fierce denunciations of George Bush, a strategy that goes down well with the great majority of the population of Latin America, where only the elites welcome the economic and political recipes devised in Washington. While Chavez has retained his popularity after nearly six years as president, support for overtly pro-US leaders in Latin America, such as Vicente Fox in Mexico and Alejandro Toledo in Peru, has dwindled to nothing. Even the fence-sitting President Lula in Brazil is struggling in the polls. The news that Chavez will win this month's referendum will be bleakly received in Washington. Chavez came to power after the traditional political system in Venezuela had self-destructed during the 1990s. But the remnants of the ancien rigime, notably those entrenched in the media, have kept up a steady fight against him, in a country where racist antipathies inherited from the colonial era are never far from the surface. Chavez, with his black and Indian features and an accent that betrays his provincial origins, goes down well in the shanty towns, but is loathed by those in the rich white suburbs who fear he has mobilised the impoverished majority against them. The expected Chavez victory will be the opposition's third defeat in as many years. The first two were dramatically counter-productive for his opponents, since they only served to entrench him in power. An attempted coup d'itat in April 2002, with fascist overtones reminiscent of the Pinochet era in Chile, was defeated by an alliance of loyal officers and civilian groups who mobilised spontaneously and successfully to demand the return of their president. The unexpected restoration of Chavez not only alerted the world to an unusual leftwing, not to say revolutionary, experiment taking place in Venezuela, but it also led the country's poor majority to understand that they had a government and a president worth defending. Chavez was able to dismiss senior officers opposed to his project of involving the armed forces in programmes to help the poor, and removed the threat of a further coup. The second attempt at his overthrow - the prolonged work stoppage in December 2002 which extended to a lockout at the state oil company, Petrsleos de Venezuela, nationalised since 1975 - also played into the hands of the president. When the walkout (with its echoes of the CIA-backed Chilean lorry owners' strike against Salvador Allende's government in the early 1970s) failed, Chavez was able to sack the most pampered sections of a privileged workforce. The company's huge surplus oil revenues were redirected into imaginative new social programmes. Innumerable projects, or "missions", were established throughout the country, recalling the atmosphere of the early years of the Cuban revolution. They combat illiteracy, provide further education for school dropouts, promote employment, supply cheap food, and extend a free medical service in the poor areas of the cities and the countryside, with the help of 10,000 Cuban doctors. Redundant oil company buildings have been commandeered to serve as the headquarters of a new university for the poor, and oil money has been diverted to set up Vive, an innovative cultural television channel that is already breaking the traditional US mould of the Latin American media. The opposition dismiss the new projects as "populist", a term customarily used with pejorative intent by social scientists in Latin America. Yet faced with the tragedy of extreme poverty and neglect in a country with oil revenues to rival those of Saudi Arabia, it is difficult to see why a democratically elected government should not embark on crash programmes to help the most disadvantaged. Their impact is about to be tested at the polls on August 15. Vote "Yes" to eject Chavez from the presidency. Vote "No" to keep him there until the next presidential election in 2006. The opposition, divided politically and with no charismatic figure to rival Chavez to front their campaign, continue to behave as though their victory is certain. They discuss plans for a post-Chavez government, and watch closely the ever-dubious and endlessly conflicting opinion polls, placing their evaporating hopes on the "don't knows". They still imagine fondly that they can achieve a victory comparable to that of the anti-Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1990. Yet their third attempt to derail the government is clearly doomed. The Chavez campaign to secure a "No" vote has struck the country like a whirlwind, playing to all his strengths as a military strategist and a political organiser. A voter registration drive, reminiscent of the attempt to put black people on the election roll in the United States in the 1960s, has produced hundreds of thousands of new voters. So too has a campaign to give citizenship to thousands of long-term immigrants. Most will favour Chavez, and Chavez supporters are already patrolling the shanty towns and the most remote areas of the country to get the vote out on August 15. One unexpected bonus for Chavez has been the dramatic and perhaps semi-permanent increase in the world oil price. As he explained to me a few days ago, he is now able to direct the extra revenues to the poor, both at home and abroad, for Venezuela supplies oil at a discount price to the countries of Central America and the Caribbean, including Cuba. Chavez celebrated his 50th birthday last month, and he has talked of soldiering on as president for years in order to see through the reforms he envisages. That is not such an improbable proposition. He has also been helped by the changing political climate in Latin America. Other presidents have been climbing over themselves to be photographed with him. He has patched up relations with Colombia and Chile, hitherto cool, and last month reinforced his friendly relations with Brazil and Argentina by signing an association agreement with the Mercosur trading union that they lead. Once perceived by his neighbours as a bit of an oddball, he now appears more like a Latin American statesman. Up and down the continent he has become the man to watch. Faced with a Chavez victory, the opposition may yet turn in desperation to violence. His assassination, hinted at recently by former president Carlos Andris Pirez, or the deployment of paramilitary forces of the kind unleashed in recent years in Colombia, is always a possibility. Yet the more civilised sectors of the opposition will set themselves, with luck, to the difficult task of organising a proper electoral force to challenge Chivez in 2006. When I asked an uncommitted bookseller whether he would vote to sack the president in mid-term, he replied: "No, they should let him get on with the job." 7 Richard Gott is the author of In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venezuela, published by Verso; his latest book, Cuba: A New History, will be published next month by Yale University Press * Rwgott@aol.com ------- End of forwarded message ------- From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Tue Aug 10 00:32:37 2004 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Tue Aug 10 00:32:38 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] We will Crush the Opposition at the Referendum, says Chavez [Presna Latina aug 9] Message-ID: <41184FE5.25721.4633041@localhost> The consultation will establish whether there is support or rejection to the opposition"s request to revoke the head of state. Inquiries so far indicate that most Venezuelans will participate in what they are calling it from now as "revolcatorio" --meaning whipping-- because of the millions of NO votes they will give the head of state. PHOTO - Yesterday Vote NO rally in Caracas !! We will Crush the Opposition at the Referendum, says Chavez Caracas, Aug 9 (Prensa Latina) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reiterated this weekend the people?s decision to defend national sovereignty and the Bolivarian process, by trashing the opposition at the presidential referendum slated for August 15. The consultation will establish whether there is support or rejection to the opposition"s request to revoke the head of state. Inquiries so far indicate that most Venezuelans will participate in what they are calling it from now as http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID={A06E53E5-2789-44E3-8714- 969B7052A3B2}&language=EN We will Crush the Opposition at the Referendum, says Chavez Caracas, Aug 9 (Prensa Latina) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reiterated this weekend the people?s decision to defend national sovereignty and the Bolivarian process, by trashing the opposition at the presidential referendum slated for August 15. The consultation will establish whether there is support or rejection to the opposition"s request to revoke the head of state. Inquiries so far indicate that most Venezuelans will participate in what they are calling it from now as "revolcatorio" --meaning whipping-- because of the millions of NO votes they will give the head of state. Chavez said he once advised the opposition not to hold this referendum because they would emerge as true losers "but they did not listen because their ears just listen to their masters in Washington, that give them orders," said the president. He even recalled that, once more, United States shows its ignorance on what is going on in Venezuela today, as well as with the rest of the world. In his address to the workers of the national oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Chavez also invited the workers to organize so that every one will is able to cast his/her vote. On the other hand, the National Elections Commission (CNE) and support parties convened for a national rally this Sunday in support of president Hugo Chavez towards the referendum convened for next Sunday. Three marches will go through Caracas from east to west, to meet in the huge Bolivar Avenue, as closing of the campaign for the Say NO campaign that stands for the peoples" refusal to sack the president. sus/emw/jrr From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Tue Aug 10 00:39:34 2004 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Tue Aug 10 00:39:32 2004 Subject: + URL [Mai-not] Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning vict Message-ID: <41185186.19968.4698C7D@localhost> http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,12716,1278276,00.html ------- Forwarded message follows ------- From: "Janet M Eaton" To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Date sent: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 04:32:03 -0300 Priority: normal Subject: [Mai-not] Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory Send reply to: jeaton@ca.inter.net, A renewed Mai-Not Loathed by the rich Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory Richard Gott in Caracas Saturday August 7, 2004 The Guardian To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Chavez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum designed to lead to his overthrow. First elected in 1998 as a barely known colonel, armed with little more than revolutionary rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme, Chavez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States. Closely allied to Fidel Castro, he rivals the Cuban leader in his fierce denunciations of George Bush, a strategy that goes down well with the great majority of the population of Latin America, where only the elites welcome the economic and political recipes devised in Washington. While Chavez has retained his popularity after nearly six years as president, support for overtly pro-US leaders in Latin America, such as Vicente Fox in Mexico and Alejandro Toledo in Peru, has dwindled to nothing. Even the fence-sitting President Lula in Brazil is struggling in the polls. The news that Chavez will win this month's referendum will be bleakly received in Washington. Chavez came to power after the traditional political system in Venezuela had self-destructed during the 1990s. But the remnants of the ancien rigime, notably those entrenched in the media, have kept up a steady fight against him, in a country where racist antipathies inherited from the colonial era are never far from the surface. Chavez, with his black and Indian features and an accent that betrays his provincial origins, goes down well in the shanty towns, but is loathed by those in the rich white suburbs who fear he has mobilised the impoverished majority against them. The expected Chavez victory will be the opposition's third defeat in as many years. The first two were dramatically counter- productive for his opponents, since they only served to entrench him in power. An attempted coup d'itat in April 2002, with fascist overtones reminiscent of the Pinochet era in Chile, was defeated by an alliance of loyal officers and civilian groups who mobilised spontaneously and successfully to demand the return of their president. The unexpected restoration of Chavez not only alerted the world to an unusual leftwing, not to say revolutionary, experiment taking place in Venezuela, but it also led the country's poor majority to understand that they had a government and a president worth defending. Chavez was able to dismiss senior officers opposed to his project of involving the armed forces in programmes to help the poor, and removed the threat of a further coup. The second attempt at his overthrow - the prolonged work stoppage in December 2002 which extended to a lockout at the state oil company, Petrsleos de Venezuela, nationalised since 1975 - also played into the hands of the president. When the walkout (with its echoes of the CIA-backed Chilean lorry owners' strike against Salvador Allende's government in the early 1970s) failed, Chavez was able to sack the most pampered sections of a privileged workforce. The company's huge surplus oil revenues were redirected into imaginative new social programmes. Innumerable projects, or "missions", were established throughout the country, recalling the atmosphere of the early years of the Cuban revolution. They combat illiteracy, provide further education for school dropouts, promote employment, supply cheap food, and extend a free medical service in the poor areas of the cities and the countryside, with the help of 10,000 Cuban doctors. Redundant oil company buildings have been commandeered to serve as the headquarters of a new university for the poor, and oil money has been diverted to set up Vive, an innovative cultural television channel that is already breaking the traditional US mould of the Latin American media. The opposition dismiss the new projects as "populist", a term customarily used with pejorative intent by social scientists in Latin America. Yet faced with the tragedy of extreme poverty and neglect in a country with oil revenues to rival those of Saudi Arabia, it is difficult to see why a democratically elected government should not embark on crash programmes to help the most disadvantaged. Their impact is about to be tested at the polls on August 15. Vote "Yes" to eject Chavez from the presidency. Vote "No" to keep him there until the next presidential election in 2006. The opposition, divided politically and with no charismatic figure to rival Chavez to front their campaign, continue to behave as though their victory is certain. They discuss plans for a post-Chavez government, and watch closely the ever-dubious and endlessly conflicting opinion polls, placing their evaporating hopes on the "don't knows". They still imagine fondly that they can achieve a victory comparable to that of the anti-Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1990. Yet their third attempt to derail the government is clearly doomed. The Chavez campaign to secure a "No" vote has struck the country like a whirlwind, playing to all his strengths as a military strategist and a political organiser. A voter registration drive, reminiscent of the attempt to put black people on the election roll in the United States in the 1960s, has produced hundreds of thousands of new voters. So too has a campaign to give citizenship to thousands of long-term immigrants. Most will favour Chavez, and Chavez supporters are already patrolling the shanty towns and the most remote areas of the country to get the vote out on August 15. One unexpected bonus for Chavez has been the dramatic and perhaps semi-permanent increase in the world oil price. As he explained to me a few days ago, he is now able to direct the extra revenues to the poor, both at home and abroad, for Venezuela supplies oil at a discount price to the countries of Central America and the Caribbean, including Cuba. Chavez celebrated his 50th birthday last month, and he has talked of soldiering on as president for years in order to see through the reforms he envisages. That is not such an improbable proposition. He has also been helped by the changing political climate in Latin America. Other presidents have been climbing over themselves to be photographed with him. He has patched up relations with Colombia and Chile, hitherto cool, and last month reinforced his friendly relations with Brazil and Argentina by signing an association agreement with the Mercosur trading union that they lead. Once perceived by his neighbours as a bit of an oddball, he now appears more like a Latin American statesman. Up and down the continent he has become the man to watch. Faced with a Chavez victory, the opposition may yet turn in desperation to violence. His assassination, hinted at recently by former president Carlos Andris Pirez, or the deployment of paramilitary forces of the kind unleashed in recent years in Colombia, is always a possibility. Yet the more civilised sectors of the opposition will set themselves, with luck, to the difficult task of organising a proper electoral force to challenge Chivez in 2006. When I asked an uncommitted bookseller whether he would vote to sack the president in mid-term, he replied: "No, they should let him get on with the job." 7 Richard Gott is the author of In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venezuela, published by Verso; his latest book, Cuba: A New History, will be published next month by Yale University Press * Rwgott@aol.com ------- End of forwarded message ------- _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not ------- End of forwarded message ------- From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Tue Aug 10 01:43:58 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Tue Aug 10 01:44:32 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Goodbye, kind world Message-ID: Goodbye, kind world People choose to believe the climate change deniers because the truth is harder to accept George Monbiot Tuesday August 10, 2004 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1279603,00.html "We live," the cover story of the current Spectator tells us, "in the happiest, healthiest and most peaceful era in human history." And who in the rich world would dare to deny it? The aristocrats, the cardinals, Prince Charles, the National Front, perhaps: those, in other words, whose former social dominance has been usurped by the times. But the rest of us? Step forward the man or woman who would exchange modern medicine for the leech, sewerage for the gutter, the washing machine for the mangle, European Union for European wars, relative democracy for absolute monarchy. Not many takers, then. But the party is over. In 2,000 words, the Spectator provides plenty of evidence to support its first contention: "Now is good." It provides none to support its second: "The future will be better." Ours are the most fortunate generations that have ever lived. They are also the most fortunate generations that ever will. Let me lay before you three lines of evidence. The first is that we are living off the political capital accumulated by previous generations, and that this capital is almost spent. The massive redistribution which raised the living standards of the working class after the New Deal and the second world war is over. Inequality is rising almost everywhere, and the result is a global resource grab by the rich. The entire land mass of Britain, Europe and the United States is being re-engineered to accommodate the upper middle classes. They are buying second and third homes where others have none. Playing fields are being replaced with health clubs, public transport budgets with subsidies for roads and airports. Inequality of outcome, in other words, leads inexorably to inequality of opportunity. The second line of evidence is that our economic gains are being offset by social losses. A recent study by the New Economics Foundation suggests that the costs of crime have risen by 13 times in the past 50 years, and the costs of family breakdown fourfold. The money we spend on such disasters is included in the official measure of human happiness: gross domestic product. Extract these costs and you discover, the study says, that our quality of life peaked in 1976. But neither of these problems compares to the third one: the threat of climate change. In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us. Three wholly unexpected sets of findings now suggest that the problem could be much graver than anyone had imagined. Work by the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen suggests that the screening effect produced by particles of soot and smoke in the atmosphere is stronger than climatologists thought; one variety of man-made filth, in other words, has been protecting us from the effects of another. As ancient smokestacks are closed down or replaced with cleaner technology, climate change, paradoxically, will intensify. At the same time, rising levels of carbon dioxide appear to be breaking down the world's peat bogs. Research by Chris Freeman at the University of Bangor shows that the gas stimulates bacteria which dissolve the peat. Peat bogs are more or less solid carbon. When they go into solution the carbon turns into carbon dioxide, which in turn dissolves more peat. The bogs of Europe, Siberia and North America, New Scientist reports, contain the equivalent of 70 years of global industrial carbon emissions. Worse still are the possible effects of changes in cloud cover. Until recently, climatologists assumed that, because higher temperatures would raise the rate of evaporation, more clouds would form. By blocking some of the heat from the sun, they would reduce the rate of global warming. But now it seems that higher temperatures may instead burn off the clouds. Research by Bruce Wielicki of Nasa suggests that some parts of the tropics are already less cloudy than they were in the 1980s. The result of all this is that the maximum temperature rise proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001 may be a grave underestimate. Rather than a possible 5.8 degrees of warming this century, we could be looking at a maximum of 10 or 12. Goodbye, kind world. Like every impending disaster (think of the rise of Hitler or the fall of Rome), this one has generated a voluble industry of denial. Few people are now foolish enough to claim that man-made climate change isn't happening at all, but the few are still granted plenty of scope to make idiots of themselves in public. Last month they were joined by the former environmentalist David Bellamy. Writing in the Daily Mail, Bellamy asserted that "the link between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming is a myth". Like almost all the climate change deniers, he based his claim on a petition produced in 1998 by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and "signed by over 18,000 scientists". Had Bellamy studied the signatories, he would have discovered that the "scientists" included Ginger Spice and the cast of MASH. The Oregon Institute is run by a fundamentalist Christian called Arthur Robinson. Its petition was attached to what purported to be a scientific paper, printed in the font and format of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In fact, the paper had not been peer-reviewed or published in any scientific journal. Anyone could sign the petition, and anyone did: only a handful of the signatories are experts in climatology, and quite a few of them appear to have believed that they were signing a genuine paper. And yet, six years later, this petition is still being wheeled out to suggest that climatologists say global warming isn't happening. But most of those who urge inaction have given up denying the science, and now seek instead to suggest that climate change is taking place, but it's no big deal. Their champion is the Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg. Writing in the Times in May, Lomborg claimed to have calculated that global warming will cause $5 trillion of damage, and would cost $4 trillion to ameliorate. The money, he insisted, would be better spent elsewhere. The idea that we can attach a single, meaningful figure to the costs incurred by global warming is laughable. Climate change is a non-linear process, whose likely impacts cannot be totted up like the expenses for a works outing to the seaside. Even those outcomes we can predict are impossible to cost. We now know, for example, that the Himalayan glaciers which feed the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yangtze and the other great Asian rivers are likely to disappear within 40 years. If these rivers dry up during the irrigation season, then the rice production which currently feeds over one third of humanity collapses, and the world goes into net food deficit. If Lomborg believes he can put a price on that, he has plainly spent too much of his life with his calculator and not enough with human beings. But people listen to this nonsense because the alternative is to accept what no one wants to believe. We live in the happiest, healthiest and most peaceful era in human history. And it will not last long. www.monbiot.com -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Tue Aug 10 02:19:55 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Tue Aug 10 02:20:20 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] CIA executives in Chile plot to overthrow Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Message-ID: CIA executives gathered in Santiago de Chile revealed in contingency plot to overthrow Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=22356 Venezuela state-owned news agency VENPRES is quoting an El Mundo de Madrid (Spain) report that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is set to put a contingency plan in motion in the (likely) event that President Hugo Chavez Frias wins next weekend's Recall Referendum. The Madrid newspaper says that the White House strategy is to avoid a regional expansion of the President Hugo Chavez Frias 'Bolivarian Revolution' which is seen by Washington D.C. as a direct step into the kind of socialism espoused by many European nations and envisaged in the United States if John Kerry wrests control of the White House from the Bush 2 administration this coming fall. El Mundo says the CIA plan appears to concede a Chavez Frias victory next weekend "for good or bad" and that Langley spooks are already working on a strategy to "neutralize" Chavez Frias by fair means or foul. CIA under secretary for southern hemispherical affairs, William Spencer, has been drafted to Santiago de Chile to analyze the "Venezuelan situation" with CIA country directors from Colombia, Ecuador, Brasil and Peru. Spencer is reportedly convinced that Chavez Frias intends (no matter how fanciful) to create two centers of "revolutionary focus" in South America in preparation to overthrow Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez and Bolivia's Head of State, Carlos Mesa. Spencer espouses the theory that Chavez Frias will then forge onwards using a domino effect to include the overthrow of Peru's Alejandro Toledo, using multiple corruption scandals there as a pretext for invasion. Washington apparently sees Chavez Frias' progress as a "corrosive action" in a continuing Bolivarian Revolution which will expand easily into countries such as Ecuador where indigenous political are already reacting strongly to Washington's ideas of neo-liberalism. The CIA contingency plan against President Hugo Chavez Frias seemingly also includes Argentina and Brazil in the Venezuelan leader's dastardly designs against US Homeland Security ... inciting South American nations further into "contagious anti-USA prejudices..." According to the Madrid newspaper it is no coincidence that the US CIA delegates have gathered in Chile which is considered by Langley and Crawford (Texas) as the "last bastion of democracy and pro-US economic policies in South America." They are elaborating a financial strategy in cooperation with US Treasury officials and the Pentagon aimed at covering all possible loopholes in the anti-socialist strategy and to halt Chavez Frias "overwhelming ambition" to "transform Latin America into an impregnable replica of Fidel Castro's Cuba..." Part of the CIA strategy reveals a plot to have Movimiento Quinta Republica (MVR) suspend the referendum using the argument that serious irregularities have been detected ... alternatively that a conspiracy has been uncovered to assassinate Chavez Frias before the result is known. "In such a scenario ... if a State of Emergency is declared, the referendum, would be suspended indefinitely along with Constitutional guarantees and the Congress would be dissolved and public protests would immediately be ruled unlawful." A second scenario would be the fraudulent manipulation of the voting results and the repression of whatever protests that would be called by the opposition Coordinadora Democratica (CD) alliance. Whichever way, Chavez Frias will use to take whatever means necessary to avoid new elections taking place. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Tue Aug 10 06:20:52 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Tue Aug 10 06:21:07 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] {Possible Spam?} Boiling Point Message-ID: Boiling Point by Ross Gelbspan http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040816&s=gelbspan Climate change is not just another issue. It is the overriding threat facing human civilization in the twenty-first century, and so far our institutions are doing dangerously little to address it. Americans in particular are still in denial, thanks largely to the efforts of the fossil-fuel industry and its allies in the Bush Administration. But the nation's biggest environmental organizations and opposition politicians have also displayed a disturbing lack of leadership on this crucial challenge. They are by no means the only roadblocks to meaningful action on climate change. In addition to the Bush Administration and the fossil-fuel lobby, the failure of the press to cover the climate crisis has left the United States ten years behind the rest of the world in addressing this issue. Given this background, the failure of environmentalists to fill the informational and political vacuum is especially distressing. Over the past decade, the arguments against the reality of climate change by the carbon lobby have been as inconsistent as the weather itself. During the early years of the 1990s, the fossil-fuel lobby insisted that global warming was not happening. In the face of incontrovertible findings by the scientific community, the industry then conceded that climate change is happening but is so inconsequential as to be negligible. When new findings indicated that the warming is indeed significant, the spokesmen for the coal and oil industries then put forth the argument that global warming is good for us. But the central argument that big coal and big oil have spent millions of dollars to amplify over the past decade is that the warming is a natural phenomenon on which human beings have little or no impact. That argument has been repeatedly discredited by the world's leading climate scientists. Under the auspices of the United Nations, more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries have participated over the past fifteen years in what is most likely the largest, most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history. In 1995 the UN-sponsored panel found a "discernible human influence" on the planet's warming climate. The scientists subsequently concluded that to stabilize our climate requires humanity to cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent in a very short time. The Kyoto Protocol, by contrast, calls for industrial countries to cut aggregate emissions by just 5.2 percent by 2012. That is a woefully inadequate response; as British Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted in 2002, "Even if we deliver on Kyoto, it will at best mean a reduction of one percent in global emissions.... In truth, Kyoto is not radical enough." Nevertheless, the current low goals of the Protocol are championed by many Americans who should know better, including leading Democrats like John Kerry and virtually every national environmental organization. Confronted by the steel wall of resistance of the fossil-fuel lobby and their political allies, most climate activists and sympathetic politicians have retreated into approaches that are dismally inadequate to the magnitude of the challenge. Around the country, advocates are working to get people to drive less, turn down their thermostats and reduce their energy use. Unfortunately, while many environmental problems are susceptible to lifestyle changes, climate change is not one of them. Several of the country's leading national environmental groups are promoting limits for future atmospheric carbon levels that are the best they think they can negotiate. But while those limits may be politically realistic, they would likely be environmentally catastrophic. Most advocates, moreover, are relying on goals and mechanisms that were proposed about a decade ago, before the true urgency of the climate crisis became apparent. In 2000, researchers at the Hadley Center, Britain's main climate research institute, found that the climate will change 50 percent more quickly than was previously assumed. Their projections show that many of the world's forests will begin to turn from sinks (vegetation that absorbs carbon dioxide) to sources (which release it)--dying off and emitting carbon--by about 2050. In 1998 a team of researchers reported in the journal Nature that unless the world is getting half its energy from noncarbon sources by 2018, we will see an inevitable doubling--and possible tripling--of atmospheric carbon levels later in this century. Virtually all the approaches by activists in the United States, moreover, are domestic in nature. They ignore both the world's developing countries and, equally important from the standpoint of national security, the oil-producing nations of the Middle East. Ultimately, even if the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan were to cut emissions dramatically, those cuts would be overwhelmed by the coming increase of carbon from India, China, Mexico, Nigeria and all the other developing countries struggling to stay ahead of poverty. Many alternative approaches rely on market-based solutions because their proponents believe that, in an age of market fundamentalism, no other approach can gain political traction. Unfortunately, nature's laws are not about supply and demand; they are about limits, thresholds and surprises. The progress of the Dow does not seem to influence the increasing rate of melting of the Greenland ice sheet; the collapse of the ecosystems of the North Sea will not be arrested by an upswing in consumer confidence. Many groups justify the minimalist goals of making people more energy efficient as the first phase in building a political base for more aggressive action. In the past, that pattern has been successful in developing various movements. In the case of climate change, however, nature's timetable is very different from that of political organizers. Unfortunately, the signals from the planet tell us we do not have the luxury of waiting another generation to allow for the orderly maturation of a movement. Finally, the environmental establishment insists on casting the climate crisis as an environmental problem. But climate change is no longer the exclusive franchise of the environmental movement. Any successful movement must include horizontal alliances with groups involved in international relief and development, campaign finance reform, public health, corporate accountability, labor, human rights and environmental justice. The real dimensions of climate change directly affect the agendas of a wide spectrum of activist organizations. The environmental movement has proved it cannot accomplish large-scale change by itself. Despite occasional spasms of cooperation, the major environmental groups have been unwilling to join together around a unified climate agenda, pool resources and mobilize a united campaign on the climate. Even as the major funders of climate and energy-oriented groups hold summit meetings in search of a common vision, they shy away from the most obvious of imperatives: using their combined influence and outreach to focus attention--and demand action--on the climate crisis. As the major national groups insist on promoting exclusive agendas and protecting carefully defined turfs (in the process, squandering both talent and donor dollars on internecine fighting), the climate movement is spinning its wheels. Take the critical issue of climate stabilization--the level at which the world agrees to cap the buildup of carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. The major national environmental groups focusing on climate--groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the WWF (World Wildlife Fund)--have agreed to accept what they see as a politically feasible target of 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide. While the 450 goal may be politically realistic, it would likely be environmentally catastrophic. With carbon levels having risen by only 90 parts per million (from their pre-industrial level of 280 ppm to more than 370 ppm today), glaciers are now melting into puddles, sea levels are rising, violent weather is increasing and the timing of the seasons has changed--all from a 1-degree Fahrenheit rise in the past century. Carbon concentrations of 450 ppm will most likely result in a deeply fractured and chaotic world. The major national environmental groups, moreover, are trapped in a Beltway mentality that measures progress in small, incremental victories. They are operating in a Washington environment that is at best indifferent and at worst actively antagonistic. And too often these organizations are at the mercy of fickle funders whose agendas range from protecting wetlands to keeping disposable diapers out of landfills. The fossil-fuel lobby has hijacked America's energy and climate policies. One appropriate response might involve environmental leaders' forging a coalition of corporate and financial institutions of equivalent force and influence to counteract the carbon industry's stranglehold on Congress and the White House. The vast majority of climate groups shun confrontation and work instead to get people to reduce their personal energy footprints. That can certainly help spread awareness of the issue. But by persuading concerned citizens to cut back on their personal energy use, these groups are promoting the implicit message that climate change can be solved by individual resolve. It cannot. Moreover, this message blames the victim: People are made to feel guilty if they own a gas guzzler or live in a poorly insulated home. In fact, people should be outraged that the government does not require automakers to sell cars that run on clean fuels, that building codes do not reduce heating and cooling energy requirements by 70 percent and that government energy policies do not mandate decentralized, home-based or regional sources of clean electricity. What many groups offer their followers instead is the consolation of a personal sense of righteousness that comes from living one's life a bit more frugally. That feeling of righteousness, coincidentally, is largely reserved for wealthier people who can afford to exercise some control over their housing and transportation expenditures. Many poorer people--who cannot afford to trade in their 1990 gas guzzlers for shiny new Toyota Priuses--are deprived of the chance to enjoy the same sense of righteousness, illusory though it may be. Given the lock on Congress and the White House by the carbon lobby, there is no way the US government will pursue a rapid global energy transition without a massive uprising of popular will. Environmentalists should therefore be forging alliances with other activists who focus on international development, campaign finance reform, corporate accountability, public health, labor, environmental justice and human rights--not to mention with communities of faith--to mobilize a broad, inclusive constituency around the issue. The tragedy underlying the failure of the environmental community lies in the fact that so many talented, dedicated and underpaid people are putting their lives on the line in ways that will make little difference to the climate crisis. They are outspoken in their despair about what is happening to the planet. They are candid about their acceptance of a self-defeating political realism that requires relentless accommodation. What is missing is an expression of the rage they all feel. The United States did not withdraw from Vietnam because a few individuals moved to Canada or Sweden to avoid military service or because the leaders of the antiwar movement negotiated a reduction of the bombing runs over Vietnam. The United States left Vietnam because a sustained uprising of popular will forced one President of the United States to drop his plans for re-election and pressured his successor to scramble until he had achieved something he could call "peace with honor." These comparisons to the climate movement may be seen as too harsh until one considers the most fundamental fact about the climate crisis: Activists compromise. Nature does not. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From thinker at uniserve.com Tue Aug 10 08:31:46 2004 From: thinker at uniserve.com (Ed Deak) Date: Tue Aug 10 08:31:34 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Greenland's icesheet Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040810083048.00a494d8@pop.uniserve.com> SCIENTISTS ALARMED AT INCREASE IN MELT RATE OF ICE By Hamish Macdonell The Scotsman August 4, 2004 http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=891712004 Greenland's cover of ice is melting ten times quicker than previously thought, an increase that could lead to floods across the world, scientists have found. Newly published research shows an alarming rise in the rate of collapse of the massive Greenland ice-sheet as a result of global warming. Scientists now believe the ice-sheet is shrinking at the rate of ten metres a year, not the one metre previously thought. If the entire ice-sheet melts, the resulting flood waters would raise the level of global seas by seven metres, submerging large areas of land, including sea-level cities such as London. Greenland has the biggest ice-sheet in the northern hemisphere: almost 772,000 square miles of ice which is up to 1.9 miles thick, the base of which is below sea level. The new research was published by the Geological Survey of Greenland and Denmark, which has been monitoring the ice-sheet for several years. Icebergs from the ice-sheet crash into the sea regularly, but they have been doing so with increasing frequency over the past year. The last major study of Greenland was by NASA, the US space agency, four years ago. That found that the surface of the ice was receding by one metre a year. Carl Boggild, the lead scientist, said the ice had dropped by two or three metres in just the past few months. "There is a high melt rate due to warm winters and warm summers," he said. Jonathan Gregory, of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction, at the University of Reading, along with colleagues from Brussels and Bremerhaven, has also found that an average annual warming in the region of 2.7C would mean that the rate of melting would outpace the annual snowfall. The greater the warming, the faster the snow melts. The worst-case predictions for Greenland, made by an inter-governmental panel of scientists, now involve an average warming of 8C. At those temperatures, oceans that have risen by 2.5mm (less than one-tenth of an inch) a year will start to rise by a steady 7mm a year. One medium-term side-effect of the destruction of the Greenland ice-sheet could be the loss of the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe warm and temperate. The fresh water from the ice mixes with the salt water in the sea, altering the salinity and changing the direction and behaviour of major currents. The scientists on the Greenland survey admit they have no way of setting any kind of timetable to a rise in water levels or forms of climate change, and insist that further monitoring will have to take place over the next few years to get a clearer picture. But they do admit that their findings are worrying and suggest a much more serious picture for global sea levels than had been available up until now. It is likely to take hundreds of years for the entire ice-sheet to melt but, as this year's survey has shown, if the speed of the destruction increases, that timescale could be brought forward dramatically. -- ============================================================ Alister Sieghart Shades & Characters Ltd. 10a St. John's Square, Glastonbury, Somerset BA6 9DP, UK. Tel: +44 (0)1458 835438 Fax: +44 (0)1458 834844 E-mail: asieghart@gn.apc.org ============================================================ From papadop at peak.org Tue Aug 10 19:18:24 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Tue Aug 10 19:18:19 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY REPORTING CRITERIA Message-ID: http://cryptome.org/fbi-dhs-sarc.htm 10 August 2004 Department of Homeland Security Washington DC 20528 Federal Bureau of Investigation Department of Homeland Security August 3, 2004 SUBJECT: Suspicious Activity Reporting Criteria for Infrastructure Owners and Operators FOR: Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISACs), State Homeland Security Advisors, Government First Responders, Security Managers, and Facility Operators DHS and FBI encourage recipients of this memorandum to report information concerning suspicious or criminal activity to their local FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) Ð the regional phone numbers can be found online at http://www.fbi.gov/contact/fo/fo.htm Ð and the Homeland Security Operations Center (HSOC) or the National Infrastructure Coordination Center (NICC), a sub-element of the HSOC in support of the private sector and critical infrastructures. The HSOC can be reached via telephone at 202-282-8101 or by email at HSCenter@dhs.gov; and the NICC/HSOC can be reached via telephone at 202-282-9201 or via email at NICC@dhs.gov. Each report submitted should include the date, time, location, type of surveillance, number of people and type of equipment used for the activity, the name of the submitting company and a designated point of contact (POC). OVERVIEW DHS and FBI request that the owners and operators of the nationÕs critical infrastructure/key resource facilities (see Appendix), provide reporting to the above offices on the following types of suspicious activities potentially indicative of pre-operational terrorist planning: SURVEILLANCE/PROBING ACTIVITY ** Report attempts to test or conduct reconnaissance of security operations at critical infrastructure/key resource facilities, high profile venues or sector-specific events. ** Report any persons showing uncommon interest in security measures or personnel, entry points or access controls, or perimeter barriers such as fences or walls. ** Report any persons showing uncommon interest in critical infrastructure/key resource facilities, networks, or systems (e.g. photographing or videotaping assets). ** Report any theft of or missing official company identification documents, uniforms, credentials, or vehicles necessary for accessing critical infrastructure/key resource facilities or sector-specific events. ** Report all suspicious attempts to recruit employees or persons knowledgeable about key personnel or critical infrastructure/key resource facilities, networks, or systems. ** Report any theft, purchase, or suspicious means of obtaining plans, blueprints, alarm system schematics, or similar physical security-related or sensitive information related to a facility with critical infrastructure/key resource facilities and systems. ** Report any discovery of documents (particularly foreign language products) containing pictures or drawings of critical infrastructure/key resource facilities or systems. ** Report any persons near critical infrastructure/key resource facilities who do not fit the surrounding environment, such as individuals wearing improper attire for conditions or not normally present in the area (such as, homeless persons, street vendors, demonstrators, or street sweepers). ** Report pedestrian surveillance near critical infrastructure/key resource facilities involving any surveillance activity of sensitive operations, including photography, videotaping, or extensive note-taking/use of audio recorder (regardless of the number of individuals involved), or mobile surveillance by cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats or small aircraft. Threats/Warnings ** Report all threats/warnings that could affect the reliability and operation of the nationÕs critical infrastructures/key resources. ** Report discoveries of website postings which make violent threats specific to critical infrastructures or sector specific events. For comments or questions related to the content or dissemination of this memorandum, please contact the DHS/Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection DirectorateÕs Requirements Division at DHS.IAIP@DHS.GOV. ____________________________________ APPENDIX CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURES AND KEY RESOURCE FACILITIES1 CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURES ** Banking and Finance ** Chemical ** Defense Industrial Base ** Electric Power ** Emergency Services ** Food/Agriculture ** Information Technology ** National Monuments and Icons ** Oil and Natural Gas ** Postal and Shipping ** Public Health ** Telecommunications ** Transportation (Rail/Mass Transit, Maritime, Aviation, Highway) ** Water KEY RESOURCE FACILITIES ** Commercial Facilities ** Dams ** Government Facilities ** Nuclear Reactors/Materials ____________________ 1 Under the Homeland Security Act, which references the definition in the USA PATRIOT Act, the term Òcritical infrastructureÓ means Òsystems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.Ó The Act defines Ôkey resourcesÓ as Òpublicly or privately controlled resources essential to the minimal operations of the economy and government.Ó _________________________________________________________________ [Thanks to A2.] Dangers from terrorism scant compared to other risks, experts say By Miles Benson Newhouse News Service 08/08/04 "Seattle Times" -- WASHINGTON -- The terrorists can't win. They can't wreck the economy or inflict other forms of irreparable damage on the nation, despite their ability to impose great inconveniences, disruptions, expense and occasional scary periods of elevated alert, many experts say. To be sure, bombs or other forms of attack on the homeland could take lives, and the respite since Sept. 11, 2001, may not last. But the danger of average Americans or their loved ones becoming casualties in the war on terrorism is scant compared, say, to the daily risks they face from automobile accidents, crime or weather-related menaces. "A false sense of insecurity" grips the nation, spurred partly by war rhetoric from President Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, warns John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University. The election campaign intensifies "a general tendency to exaggerate worst-case scenarios -- that terrorists can destroy our way of life," Mueller said. "That strikes me as basically wrong. Most likely there is some destruction here and there, which is very tragic -- we can't downplay the horror to the people directly involved -- but the idea that a tiny group of terrorists on the run can actually destroy the U.S. is extremely questionable." Other experts agree that the climate of danger and concern is out of proportion to the reality of terrorist capabilities. Al-Qaida might target the U.S. financial-services industry -- that threat triggered the current elevated alert in New York, Washington, D.C., and Newark, N.J. -- but even a successful attack would not bring the nation's economy to a halt. "Blowing up the International Monetary Fund or the New York Stock Exchange would be calamities, but not in that category, because the economy recovers from personal tragedies quite readily, in a heartless kind of way," said Henry Aaron, an economist at the Brookings Institution. "We should not be complacent," said Chester Crocker, a former assistant secretary of state under President Reagan, now a professor of diplomacy at Georgetown University. "But there is danger of people who don't know how the world is organized getting spooked and hysterical by the hype and emotional overreaction at the popular level." Terrorists may attempt to tear the fabric of society, but can they accomplish that? "No, not tactically," said Frank Cilluffo, associate vice president for homeland security at George Washington University and a former senior terrorism adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. It's not "within the realm of probability. But they are in the business of inflaming fear. They can win battles, but in the long term they cannot overcome our resilience and who we are as a nation." While there is always the chance of losing hundreds of lives or critical parts of the infrastructure, "there is no danger of massive defeat of the United States" by terrorism, said Anthony Cordesman, a senior defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Factors like the weather attack us all the time and produce casualties, but we are a great deal more resilient than most people understand." "Terrorism has become one more actuarial risk, like getting out of bed. Americans have shown they can live with the risks of getting out of bed, and terrorism as well, particularly if terrorism is as low as it has been." The National Center for Health Statistics, which tracks 113 causes of death in the United States, reported that in the same year that nearly 3,000 people died in the Sept. 11 attacks, 43,788 died in motor-vehicle accidents, 30,622 by suicide, 20,306 were murdered (including 11,348 by firearms), 14,078 died by accidental poisoning and 3,021 died as a result of complications from medical care. An additional 700,000 Americans died of heart disease, the No. 1 killer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while 553,768 died of cancer and 32,238 died of blood poisoning. "It's hard to compare the dangers of terrorism with other threats to life," said Dr. Robert Lifton, a psychiatrist who has studied and written extensively about the ways people react to extreme situations. "With terrorism, with Sept. 11, there was a shocking experience of violation of America's sense of safety," said Lifton, author of "Superpower Syndrome," a book about the nation's response to the terrorist threat. Some critics think the Bush administration has manipulated warnings about the timing of possible terrorist attacks for political purposes. Cilluffo, a Republican, dismissed such suggestions as "truly preposterous." Zbigniew Brzezinski, national-security adviser to former President Carter, is not so sure, and he worries about the degree to which perceived political imperatives drive leaders in both parties. "My grave concern is that we are hyping ourselves into a state of panic which is going to discredit us internationally even if it has some utility in the short run for the administration," Brzezinski said. "It reinforces the theme that we are at war. In a war you don't change your commander in chief. This is a pretend war. If it was a real war, we would have a draft, special taxes and a sense of sacrifice, posters with Uncle Sam pointing a finger at you and saying, 'I want you.' " Brzezinski acknowledged that Democratic presidential nominee Kerry also is talking "war" and using other language similar to Bush in describing the terrorist threat. "I suspect it's unnecessary," Brzezinski said. He blamed other party leaders, including Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and former House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri. "Democrats were stampeded into supporting Bush and enlarging the scope of the conflict," Brzezinski said. _________________________________________________________________ [Thanks to Paul Wolf.] From: paulwolf@icdc.com Subject: Demise of the CIA Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 10:53:00 US/Eastern At first glance, the 9/11 Commission recommendations look like the beginning of the end of the CIA. And I'm all for it. The Agency has outlived its purpose and is an anachronism in the post- cold war world. The existence of such a powerul organization, answering to neither Congress, the judiciary, or the public, mocks the nature of our democratic government and presents a criminal mug to the outside world. "For the world as a whole," wrote Arnold Toynbee some thirty years ago, "the CIA has now become the bogey that communism has been for America. Wherever there is trouble, violence, suffering, tragedy, the rest of us are now quick to suspect the CIA has a hand in it." This reputation has endured to this day. The solution is to reorganize the CIA out of existence. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission will do away with the CIA. The appointment of a National Intelligence Director strips the CIA of its primary responsibility: the coordination and analysis of information from all government intelligence agencies. The CIA will become another in the alphabet soup of intelligence collectors, including the DIA, FBI, G-2, NRO, NSA, and so on. Another recommendation getting serious attention is to strip the CIA of its role in conducting paramilitary operations. In his book Deadly Deceits, Ralph McGehee, a Phoenix Program veteran turned Agency critic, writes that the CIA is not a central intelligence agency -- it is the covert operations arm of the President's foreign policy. Doing the President's bidding, writes McGehee, politicizes intelligence analysis and inevitably results in telling the boss what he wants to hear. It also makes more sense for the Pentagon to direct these kinds of operations. The CIA evolved from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a World War II creation that specialized in sabotage, the organization and training of guerrilla forces, and the so-called Morale Operations, designed to generate panic and hopelessness among German and Japanese civilian populations. The collection of "Secret Intelligence" -- what we normally think of as espionage, was an afterthought intended to facilitate those operations. The OSS was disbanded at the end of the war, its functions scattered among other branches of government. Harry Truman, in particular, wanted no part in "an American Gestapo." The need for the collection and analysis of information remained, however, and after a short period of chaos Congress enacted the National Security Act of 1947, creating the CIA. The CIA inherited the OSS principle of combining Secret Intelligence and Special Operations and applied the hard-hitting approach of the OSS to the post-war era. Today we see another paradigm shift. No longer do we feel theatened by communism in Vietnam or Central America. Now, as the government continuously reminds us, we are theatened by "terrorist organizations" not affiliated with any government. And although our reaction to the September 11 attacks has been decidedly destructive, I believe there is also an opportunity to make a clean break with our past. The 911 Commission recommends that the "need to know" philosophy be replaced with a "need to share" information. This is a law enforcement approach, rather than a counterintelligence approach. Normally, it is assumed that foreign intelligence agencies have penetrated our own to some extent, and information is "compartmentalized" to minimize thechance that it will fall into the wrong hands. But if our enemies are international criminals, rather than foreign governments, this is not such an important concern. And then there is the problem of secrecy and public accountability. Since the passage of the Freedom of Information Act in 1975, the courts have held the CIA above the law, and created for it a "zone of secrecy" that does not exist for any other part of government. Yes, it does release some selected information to the National Archives and to favored reseachers, but this is entirely at its discretion and has little to do with public oversight. Presumably, the CIA would continue to maintain its labyrinth of front organizations, foundation grants and covert political manipulators. Yet the 9/11 Commission recommendations would go a long way to curtailingthe power of this agency. Yes, the time has come to reorganize the CIA out of existence. Take away their coordinating role, take away their paramilitary operations, disclose their budget, and start transferring people to another agency with a new name. Sure, there are risks of creating something even worse. But whatever new organization emerges will at least be free of the horrendous legacy of the CIA. Paul Wolf [Attachments] 1. A loophole for covert operations 2. The National Director Should Oversee Only the Agencies That Gather Data 3. Congress urged to take more power http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/9344226.htm A loophole for covert operations By Jennifer Kibbe, Fort Worth Star-Telegram Aug 8, 2004 The 9-11 Commission is to be commended for many aspects of the weighty report it has just issued. The report provides a wealth of detail about the tragic events of that day and of what led up to them. It also provides some thoughtful recommendations on how to fix the very serious problems with the nation's ability to confront the threat of terrorism, including expanding congressional oversight of intelligence. Which is all the more reason to be shocked and disappointed that in one very important way, the commissioners dropped the ball. Not only did they not tighten up oversight of the crucial area of covert paramilitary operations, but they effectively loosened it, creating the potential for serious problems involving covert actions over which Congress has no say or control. In its recommendations regarding reorganization of the intelligence community, the commission states: "Lead responsibility for directing and executing paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert, should shift to the Defense Department," from the CIA where it has traditionally been housed. The commissioners' reasoning is sound. They begin from the underlying assumption that against the current enemy, more decentralized and fluid than the Soviet opponent of the Cold War, there will be more call for smaller, paramilitary-type operations. They point out, though, that before 9-11 the CIA did not invest much in developing a paramilitary capability and that it would be redundant and expensive to build one up now when the military already has the Special Forces for exactly that purpose. The problem lies in the fact that in all their recommendations about strengthening congressional oversight, the commissioners neglected to say anything about oversight of these covert paramilitary operations. Some context may help highlight the problem. As defined by statute, a covert operation is activity meant "to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly." Thus, where "clandestine" refers to the secrecy of the operation itself, "covert" refers to the secrecy of its sponsor; the action itself m whether the military has or should. For one thing, the law expressly exempts "traditional military activities." In true legislative form, the law itself does not define the phrase, but the conference committee report explained that it was meant to include actions preceding and related to anticipated hostilities that will involve U.S. military forces. That still leaves o several dangerous and embarrassing chapters in U.S. history, including the CIA's efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon's efforts to overthrow Chile's Salvador Allende, and the Iran-contra affair. Just because the military may be better suited than the CIA to conduct today's covert paramilitary operations does not mean that military leaders are somehowimmunethe dots. The field of view of our intelligence community is too narrow. The community is relatively small and its component institutions isolated. It is understandably and necessarily preoccupied with protecting sources and methods. And bureaucracies naturally fight for resources. In that environment, intelligence bureaucrats, like bureaucrats in any organization, striveNichols when it was proposed by Congress. Now it swears by its results. We have proved in the Defense Department that we can bring competing institutions together for a common purpose without forcing people to wear a common uniform. The writer is president and chief executive of the Center for Strategic & International Studies and a former deputy secretary of defense.action, you're going to work closely with Congress on those matters. But the president made very clear his commitment to making sure that we had a nationalintelligence director that has the authority and power he or she needs to do the job," Mr. McClellan said. Mr. Lehman said he thought the administration eventually will embrace budget authority for the NID. He said the problem is that Mr. Bush must placate some members of his own administration right now. "By the end of the process, I'm confident that the word 'coordinate,' while it might still be there, will be subservient to 'direct' in the executive sense, because those powers must be given. And I don't believe the president will oppose them," Mr. Lehman said. "I think, unlike the rest of us, he has a whole administration that he's got to kind of herd along and keep consensus in." Mr. Kerrey said every government board that has studied the issue has concluded that there should be an intelligence chief with more authority, but the recommendation never goes anywhere because of turf battles with the military committees in Congress and with the Department of Defense (DOD), which controls a sizable portion of intelligence gathering outside of the CIA's purview. "If they win one more time, if the DOD wins one more time, then next time, there's a dust-up and there's a failure, don't call the director of central intelligence up here. Kick the crap out of DOD, because they're the one with the statutory authority over budget," Mr. Kerrey said. The outstanding question is how dug in the White House is over protecting its authority. Although the commission laid out a broad blueprint for reforms in the executive branch, Mr. Lehman and Mr. Kerrey made it clear yesterday that Congress also must reform itself to take a more intense role. "The most important thing to do is to fix the congressional issues," Mr. Lehman said. The two men want Congress to create a joint House-Senate committee to oversee intelligence. Right now, each chamber has its own. "It is a much stronger position, Congress versus the executive branch, than perhaps the executive branch would want," Mr. Kerrey said. "But from my evaluation, the stronger, the better." He said the executive branch needs that oversight and added that, in recent months, that role was being filled by the September 11 commission and now must be turned over to Congress. That's one reason why Mr. Kerrey disagreed with those, chief among them Democratic nominee Mr. Kerry, who are calling for the commission's term to be extended. "I love John Kerry, and I intend to vote for him. My confidence in him was shaken when he said that we ought to work for 18 more months," Mr. Kerrey said. From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Tue Aug 10 19:29:45 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Tue Aug 10 19:29:39 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Bush's median approval rating vs time Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040811102818.02cf64e0@central.murdoch.edu.au> Thanks to Alan Griffiths for this link: http://img57.exs.cx/img57/7638/aproval_vs_alert_chart.gif Dion Giles Western Australia From papadop at peak.org Tue Aug 10 20:43:22 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Tue Aug 10 20:43:13 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] MONBIOT: THE HAPPIEST, HEALTHIEST AND MOST PEACEFUL ERA IN HUMAN HISTORY. Message-ID: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1279603,00.html Goodbye, kind world People choose to believe the climate change deniers because the truth is harder to accept The Guardian Tuesday August 10, 2004 George Monbiot "We live," the cover story of the current Spectator tells us, "in the happiest, healthiest and most peaceful era in human history." And who in the rich world would dare to deny it? The aristocrats, the cardinals, Prince Charles, the National Front, perhaps: those, in other words, whose former social dominance has been usurped by the times. But the rest of us? Step forward the man or woman who would exchange modern medicine for the leech, sewerage for the gutter, the washing machine for the mangle, European Union for European wars, relative democracy for absolute monarchy. Not many takers, then. But the party is over. In 2,000 words, the Spectator provides plenty of evidence to support its first contention: "Now is good." It provides none to support its second: "The future will be better." Ours are the most fortunate generations that have ever lived. They are also the most fortunate generations that ever will. Let me lay before you three lines of evidence. The first is that we are living off the political capital accumulated by previous generations, and that this capital is almost spent. The massive redistribution which raised the living standards of the working class after the New Deal and the second world war is over. Inequality is rising almost everywhere, and the result is a global resource grab by the rich. The entire land mass of Britain, Europe and the United States is being re-engineered to accommodate the upper middle classes. They are buying second and third homes where others have none. Playing fields are being replaced with health clubs, public transport budgets with subsidies for roads and airports. Inequality of outcome, in other words, leads inexorably to inequality of opportunity. The second line of evidence is that our economic gains are being offset by social losses. A recent study by the New Economics Foundation suggests that the costs of crime have risen by 13 times in the past 50 years, and the costs of family breakdown fourfold. The money we spend on such disasters is included in the official measure of human happiness: gross domestic product. Extract these costs and you discover, the study says, that our quality of life peaked in 1976. But neither of these problems compares to the third one: the threat of climate change. In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us. Three wholly unexpected sets of findings now suggest that the problem could be much graver than anyone had imagined. Work by the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen suggests that the screening effect produced by particles of soot and smoke in the atmosphere is stronger than climatologists thought; one variety of man-made filth, in other words, has been protecting us from the effects of another. As ancient smokestacks are closed down or replaced with cleaner technology, climate change, paradoxically, will intensify. At the same time, rising levels of carbon dioxide appear to be breaking down the world's peat bogs. Research by Chris Freeman at the University of Bangor shows that the gas stimulates bacteria which dissolve the peat. Peat bogs are more or less solid carbon. When they go into solution the carbon turns into carbon dioxide, which in turn dissolves more peat. The bogs of Europe, Siberia and North America, New Scientist reports, contain the equivalent of 70 years of global industrial carbon emissions. Worse still are the possible effects of changes in cloud cover. Until recently, climatologists assumed that, because higher temperatures would raise the rate of evaporation, more clouds would form. By blocking some of the heat from the sun, they would reduce the rate of global warming. But now it seems that higher temperatures may instead burn off the clouds. Research by Bruce Wielicki of Nasa suggests that some parts of the tropics are already less cloudy than they were in the 1980s. The result of all this is that the maximum temperature rise proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2001 may be a grave underestimate. Rather than a possible 5.8 degrees of warming this century, we could be looking at a maximum of 10 or 12. Goodbye, kind world. Like every impending disaster (think of the rise of Hitler or the fall of Rome), this one has generated a voluble industry of denial. Few people are now foolish enough to claim that man-made climate change isn't happening at all, but the few are still granted plenty of scope to make idiots of themselves in public. Last month they were joined by the former environmentalist David Bellamy. Writing in the Daily Mail, Bellamy asserted that "the link between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming is a myth". Like almost all the climate change deniers, he based his claim on a petition produced in 1998 by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and "signed by over 18,000 scientists". Had Bellamy studied the signatories, he would have discovered that the "scientists" included Ginger Spice and the cast of MASH. The Oregon Institute is run by a fundamentalist Christian called Arthur Robinson. Its petition was attached to what purported to be a scientific paper, printed in the font and format of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In fact, the paper had not been peer-reviewed or published in any scientific journal. Anyone could sign the petition, and anyone did: only a handful of the signatories are experts in climatology, and quite a few of them appear to have believed that they were signing a genuine paper. And yet, six years later, this petition is still being wheeled out to suggest that climatologists say global warming isn't happening. But most of those who urge inaction have given up denying the science, and now seek instead to suggest that climate change is taking place, but it's no big deal. Their champion is the Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg. Writing in the Times in May, Lomborg claimed to have calculated that global warming will cause $5 trillion of damage, and would cost $4 trillion to ameliorate. The money, he insisted, would be better spent elsewhere. The idea that we can attach a single, meaningful figure to the costs incurred by global warming is laughable. Climate change is a non-linear process, whose likely impacts cannot be totted up like the expenses for a works outing to the seaside. Even those outcomes we can predict are impossible to cost. We now know, for example, that the Himalayan glaciers which feed the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yangtze and the other great Asian rivers are likely to disappear within 40 years. If these rivers dry up during the irrigation season, then the rice production which currently feeds over one third of humanity collapses, and the world goes into net food deficit. If Lomborg believes he can put a price on that, he has plainly spent too much of his life with his calculator and not enough with human beings. But people listen to this nonsense because the alternative is to accept what no one wants to believe. We live in the happiest, healthiest and most peaceful era in human history. And it will not last long. From papadop at peak.org Tue Aug 10 22:06:49 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Tue Aug 10 22:06:43 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] venezuela: SPINNING "LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND STATISTICS" Message-ID: http://www.narconews.com/Issue33/article1007.html Venezuelan Pollster's Deceit Failed to Rob Chavez of His Base Among the Poor Special to The Narco News Bulletin July 30, 2004 By Justin Delacour "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." -- Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of England (1868, 1874-1880) As the August 15 referendum on whether Hugo Chavez should continue as president approaches in Venezuela, anti-Chavez pollsters have begun reluctantly issuing polls showing Chavez in the lead. In June, the Washington-D.C. based polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc. -- working on behalf of the opposition -- conducted a poll showing that 49 percent of Venezuela's registered voters would support President Chavez versus 44 percent that would vote to recall him. Another June poll by the Venezuelan firm DATOS -- also commissioned by the opposition -- gave Chavez 51 percent of support, against 39 percent who would vote against him. Recently Chavez challenged other Venezuelan polling firms aligned to the opposition to release the results of their latest polls. Venezuelan Information Minister Jesse Chacon has claimed to have copies of these polls -- which favor Chavez -- and has threatened to publish them if the polling firms do not come forward. One should not mistakenly conclude that these polls vindicate the anti-Chavez pollsters as "unbiased." Rather, in the hour of truth, some pollsters -- after having long engaged in highly biased polling designed to demoralize the government's supporters and to embolden the opposition -- will issue less biased polls in a last-ditch effort to salvage their own credibility in the face of impending defeat. In early February 2003, the anti-Chavez Venezuelan polling firms Datanalisis and Consultores 21 held a joint press conference in Caracas claiming to be "neutral parties" in the country's deeply polarized political conflict. Just over two weeks before the press conference, Narco News had highlighted that Datanalisis' President Jose Antonio Gil Yepes had told the Los Angeles Times in July 2002 that Chavez "has to be killed." Narco News pointed out that a simple glance at Datanalisis' website revealed "the kind of blatant political partisanship that one normally does not associate with respectable polling operations" (as this report goes to print, Datanalisis' website has been running John Kerry's Chavez-bashing misstatement at the top of their "news" column for over a month). Since Narco News first reported on Datanalisis' blatant partisanship and biased polling, Gil Yepes has mysteriously disappeared as a public spokesperson for his company (although he occasionally pops up brandishing a letter from L.A. Times correspondent T. Christian Miller, who now supposedly claims that the pollster did not have criminal intent when he told Miller that Chavez "has to be killed"). With Gil Yepes' reputation in question, the job of restoring Datanalisis' mythic neutrality was left to company director Luis Vicente Leon. Never mind that Leon had also been making blatantly anti-Chavez statements to the press long before Gil Yepes blurted out his homicidal fantasies to the L.A. Times. In Venezuela, where Chavez-bashing journalists abound, "neutrality" means telling the business-controlled propaganda apparatus what it wants to hear. Thus, in the spirit of "neutrality," Leon made a startling announcement at the conference of February 2003. Although it had long been established that Chavez enjoyed his highest levels of support among the poor, Leon declared that Datanalisis' latest "poll" disproved the "myth" that public opinion was divided along class lines. According to Leon, "people of lower incomes" had become even more inclined to reject Chavez than the rest of Venezuelan society. For anyone even slightly in tune with reality, Leon's claim should have sent off alarm bells. Hardly more than two months before, Gil Yepes himself told the Associated Press that -- while only 30 percent of the overall Venezuelan population supported the government -- 45 percent of the poor still approved of Chavez. Setting aside the question of whether or not Gil Yepes' figures were based on methodologically sound polling (that issue will be taken up in the second part of this series), the figures suggested that the poor were more than twice as inclined to support Chavez as the rest of society, a finding that was consistent with past polls and election returns. Given that Venezuela's poorest stratum (stratum E) accounts for just over 40 percent of the adult population, the only way Gil Yepes could arrive at an overall 30 percent approval rating amid 45 percent support for Chavez among the poor is if the President's approval rating among the non-poor was close to 20 percent. Did Leon actually expect people to believe that -- in the course of two months -- the poor had gone from being more than twice as likely to support Chavez to rejecting him at a higher rate than the middle and wealthier strata? Puzzled by Leon's claim, I decided to ask Jose Miguel Sandoval -- an expert on Latin American opinion polls at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- how the political views among Venezuela's poor could undergo such a dramatic shift. Sandoval replied that reports of "drastic changes of opinion in a short period of time are not to be taken seriously, particularly in Venezuela, where opinions are well entrenched." Curiously, Leon's dubious "finding" of the "myth" of a class divide appeared just in time for the Venezuelan opposition's new U.S. campaign strategists to spin the same story. As the Washington Post's Scott Wilson reported, prominent members of the Venezuelan opposition traveled to Washington in January 2003 and began consulting informally with Democratic Party strategist James Carville. Soon thereafter, the Democratic Party polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQR) -- the company of Carville's associate and Clintonite pollster Stanley Greenberg -- popped up in Venezuela working on behalf of the opposition. In a clear demonstration of U.S. bipartisanship at the service of Uncle Sam's reactionary foreign policy, GQR joined forces with the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies to carry out "polls" on behalf of the opposition. In March 2003, GQR released a misleading statement that its findings contrasted with "the assumption of many analysts that Venezuela is divided between the upper- and middle-class opponents of Chavez and his lower-class supporters." The strategy was clear; in order to beat Chavez, GQR -- like Datanalisis -- sought to deny the government of its base. The only problem was that GQR's denial of a class divide and Datanalisis' claim that the poor were now even more disapproving of Chavez than middle and wealthier strata were strongly contradicted by the actual results of the GQR-POS "poll". The "poll" showed that the poor (stratum E) and the relatively poor (stratum D) -- which together represent about 80 percent of Venezuela's adult population -- were more than twice as likely to continue supporting Chavez than the middle to wealthier strata. As it turned out, Datanalisis' claim that the poor had turned against Chavez with greater vehemence than middle to wealthier strata was plainly dishonest. Between November 2002 and February 2003 -- the period of business-led economic sabotage against the Venezuelan government and people -- Datanalisis temporarily stopped sending field workers into Chavista-controlled slums. Due to the heightening of resentment towards biased pollsters as well as increasing levels of crime resulting from the misery induced by the economic sabotage, field workers could not safely perform surveys. In other words, Leon relied on telephone polls for his claim that lower-income respondents had turned strongly against Chavez (Datanalisis' website acknowledged that its December 2002 poll regarding the opposition's so-called "general strike" was conducted by telephone). The sociologist Greg Wilpert, who resides in Caracas, estimates that only 50 percent of Venezuelan households have mainline telephones, meaning that Datanalisis could scarcely have polled stratum E (the poor) during the period on which Leon based his deceitful claim. Now, as the opposition's campaign is clearly faltering and Venezuela's poor appear poised to turn out en masse against the recall of President Chavez, the failure of the anti-Chavez pollsters' underhanded attempts to deny the government of its long-standing base becomes increasingly clear. From netcfs at shaw.ca Tue Aug 10 22:33:13 2004 From: netcfs at shaw.ca (Yves Bajard) Date: Tue Aug 10 22:43:51 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] A look at the new Mai-Not and an invitation to suggest improvements. Message-ID: <1092202393.23142.67.camel@localhost> Dear NewMainotters I have been monitoring our group, and would like to share the results with you. 1. We are at present 33 on the list. 20 subscribers have contributed posts fduring the first month on Mailman 2. In the old Mai-Not tehre were some 90 + subscribers and 29 had contributed between January 17 and Jul;y 10 (i.e nearly six months). 3. If we look at the six most active participants Dion Giles, Ed Deak, Janet Eaton Janice Gradham, Jonathan Larson and MichealP; a. In the first month of operation under Mailman, these six persons contributed 86.4% of the posts b. over six months of operation I monitored for the Old Mai-Not, these persons contributed 84.4% This of course has no real statistical; value, but it is indicative that out of the whole number of subscribers 6 persons take the largest share of the posts. And one must consider taht in the New Mai-Not, Janice came in just a few days ago.. 1. The major part of the contributions of these active posters consists of articles forwarded in full text with sources, or for some of them of the URL sources only. Most of them place a short comment at the beginning of their message. Then, there is quite often some exchange largely between them, about the articles and the comments. And the whole goes to archives. 2. A few of the six active posters send their messages to several addresses, and some of them do it by using bcc (implicit address). I have now found how to allow this practice on the New Mai-Not. So those such as MichaelP, who had very kindly started to post separately to Mai-Not, can resume their bcc sending to all their destinations 3. There has been no reaction to my recent post relative to(1) the option I took to transfer the list to the NCFS and (2) my request to those who would like to share the cotst and other brudens with me to get in touch with me. 4. The whole image does not suggest a very active list. If I remember the beginning of the old Mai-Not, there was much more active discussions about what to do. Actually much more than the forwarding of new and articles. From periodical reviews. 5. I think that we could try to give a more dynamic thrust to this group and have a few ideas. You may also wish to give to this group a more action-oriented direction and probably have a few ideas. A condition is to remain within the spirit of the old and new lists as spelled out in both the old and the new guidelines (which in spite of different wording, have the same meaning). I'll hold my ideas for now, in order not to be seen as trying to impose my views. I will inejdct them if and when warranted only. You mnay have better ideas than me anyway. So, you are invited to comment on the above and to propose ideas to revive Mai-Not and hopefully widen its reach Cordially Yves Bajard From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Tue Aug 10 22:44:35 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Tue Aug 10 22:45:18 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Minority of jobs require college, studies find Message-ID: Minority of jobs require college, studies find H.J. Cummins, Star Tribune August 10, 2004 http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/4919400.html The vision of America evolving into a global center of wealthy, high-skilled workers is not materializing, new jobs numbers and projections indicate. Only 37 percent of Minnesota's current job vacancies require anything beyond a high school diploma, according to semiannual figures released Monday by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. Nationally, jobs requiring college degrees will remain stagnant at about 27 percent through 2012, said the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a labor-funded think tank in Washington, D.C. Both reports challenge the popular notion that this country can educate itself out of unemployment by replacing jobs lost to technology and off-shoring with highly skilled, highly paid work. They also suggest that a college degree is not the ticket to the American dream it once was thought to be. "There is no pent-up demand that exists now or will in the future," said Lawrence Mishel, author of last month's EPI report, "Jobs in the future: No boom in the need for college graduates." Consider University of St. Thomas graduate Betsy Kroon, who just earned undergraduate degrees in journalism and women's studies and is finding a dismal job market. "St. Thomas has a fabulous career services department and online jobs listing," Kroon said. "The problem is there just haven't been a lot of full-time paid jobs -- full-time anything, really." Other economists say the reports and Kroon's glum employment situation don't point to a permanent downturn. In Minnesota, some suggest the state's current preponderance of low-skilled job openings may be a passing phase, typical of the early stages in economic recoveries. And Monday's report had plenty of good news, Economic Development Department spokesman Steve Hine said: 65,300 job vacancies overall, including 1,000 high-skilled jobs in science, and another 1,600 in computers and mathematics - three times as many as a year ago. The Employment Policy Foundation (EPF), a business-funded think tank in Washington, D.C., takes exception to the institute's conclusions. "Our perspective is exactly the opposite," foundation spokesman Michael Chittenden said. "We believe college degrees are more important today than ever, and they will be more important in the future." In Minnesota Minnesota's new job-vacancy numbers represent the first increase in openings since late 2000, before the recession. They show five openings for every 10 unemployed Minnesotans, up from 3.5 openings a year ago. Still, only 14 percent call for a college graduate. Kroon, a May graduate at St. Thomas, has spent the time since working unpaid, part-time internships while looking for a job. She said she is pursuing every job opening she finds. She sometimes ignores experience requirements, hoping the rest of her r?sum? will impress prospective employers. She mails and calls, cold, to any possible employers. With savings running low, and her intent to get on with her life, Kroon has decided to look for temporary work to pay bills. "I did everything you're supposed to do," she said. "I had three internships and was very involved in activities. I'm just running up against the lack of jobs out there." At other moments, she doesn't sound so self-confident. "It's not fun to get rejection letters, or not get calls back," Kroon said. "It preys on your self-esteem. I battle to keep a positive perspective, but self-doubts still creep in." JobsNow, a coalition that advocates for low-wage workers in Minnesota, was disappointed in the wage levels in Monday's report. "Most depressing is that manufacturing-industry openings pay a median wage of only $10 per hour," said executive director Kristine Jacobs in St. Paul. "Sixty percent of all job openings in the state are in occupational groups with a median wage below $11 per hour." JobsNow calculates that two working parents in a Minnesota family of four must earn $11.41 an hour each to meet basic expenses. "The workforce doesn't have a skills deficit -- it has a wage deficit," Jacobs said. "The problem is nobody wants to talk about the money, because we believe so deeply in our culture that we are the captains of our economic fate." She sees a lot of disappointed college graduates. "They feel bad, and their parents are saying, 'You've had all these advantages and you're still not making it,' " Jacobs said. "At the very least, people should be discouraged from taking on a hundred thousand dollars in college debt." The Steele County commissioners also believe Minnesotans need better-paying jobs. That's why this May they voted to grant developers a tax break only if they create jobs that pay at least 120 percent of JobsNow basic cost-of-living standards. For a family of four in Steele County, with one income, that's about $30,000 a year, county human services director Stan Groff said. "That's low even for a progressive policy like that, when the state's median income for households of four is over $50,000," Groff said. "The county board is very pro-business, and they believe this is a policy that is fair, both to workers and to economic developers." A brighter future? The numbers in Mishel's national report come from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' job projections to 2012. They show almost no increase in college-degree jobs, from 26.9 percent of all jobs in 2002 to 27.9 percent in 2012. They also show almost no drop in jobs requiring high school degrees or less: from 44.3 percent in 2002 to 43.4 percent in 2012. At the same time, more Americans are earning college degrees: up from 23 percent in 1995 to 27 percent last year. The report is the institute's most recent challenge to what it calls "educationists" - Alan Greenspan among them - that more study and training is this country's path to robust employment and top-of-the line jobs in the global marketplace. Among the institute's counterpoints: * The employment rate for college graduates hit its lowest level in 25 years at the end of last year. * Jobs for college graduates are coming back from the 2001 recession slower than any other education level. "People with low education still bear the brunt of any recession," said institute economist Sylvia Allegretto. Their jobs often are high-turnover and low-pay, even before an economy sours. "It's just that this time the brunt is broader and reaches higher. There are a lot of very educated unemployed people." But across town at the business-funded group, Chittenden said the institute underestimates the growing demand for college-educated workers. That's because the labor-funded group hasn't considered that employers will want college-educated people in jobs that traditionally haven't required them. One sign of the change, he said, is the changing numbers for secretaries: in 1992 only about 9 percent of secretaries had college degrees; by last year it was 15 percent. Also, it's still true that for individuals, more education brings more money, he pointed out. The median salary of an electrician with a high school degree and apprenticeship is $32,000 a year, compared with $66,000 for college-educated electric engineers, he said. That's if they find a job, said Luke Boynton, a graphic designer at the 50 Below agency in Duluth. "The degree helps, but it's just not enough," Boynton said. "There are so many people looking for the same work, it gets so competitive. [A degree] is not the ticket it used to be." H.J. Cummins is athcummins@startribune.com. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Tue Aug 10 23:20:22 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Tue Aug 10 23:20:15 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] A look at the new Mai-Not and an invitation to suggest improvements. In-Reply-To: <1092202393.23142.67.camel@localhost> References: <1092202393.23142.67.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040811141254.02f44378@central.murdoch.edu.au> On just a few of Yves' comments. One was on costs. How much each and to what address? Another was on expanding spread of contributions. There is only one way people can do that. Post items. Post information. Post comment on items. Post comment on comments. Another was on the lack of response to Yves' having transferred to list to NCFS. It is hard to respond to that when one has no idea what implications that has, if any, for the list's operation. At 13:33 11/08/2004, you wrote: >Dear NewMainotters > > >I have been monitoring our group, and would like to share the results >with you. > > > 1. We are at present 33 on the list. 20 subscribers have > contributed posts fduring the first month on Mailman > > 2. In the old Mai-Not tehre were some 90 + subscribers and 29 had > contributed between January 17 and Jul;y 10 (i.e nearly six > months). > > 3. If we look at the six most active participants Dion Giles, Ed > Deak, Janet Eaton Janice Gradham, Jonathan Larson and MichealP; > > a. In the first month of operation under Mailman, these six persons > contributed 86.4% of the posts > > b. over six months of operation I monitored for the Old Mai-Not, > these persons contributed 84.4% > > This of course has no real statistical; value, but it is > indicative that out of the whole number of subscribers 6 persons > take the largest share of the posts. And one must consider taht > in the New Mai-Not, Janice came in just a few days ago.. > > 1. The major part of the contributions of these active posters > consists of articles forwarded in full text with sources, or for > some of them of the URL sources only. Most of them place a short > comment at the beginning of their message. Then, there is quite > often some exchange largely between them, about the articles and > the comments. And the whole goes to archives. > > 2. A few of the six active posters send their messages to several > addresses, and some of them do it by using bcc (implicit > address). I have now found how to allow this practice on the New > Mai-Not. So those such as MichaelP, who had very kindly started > to post separately to Mai-Not, can resume their bcc sending to > all their destinations > > 3. There has been no reaction to my recent post relative to(1) the > option I took to transfer the list to the NCFS and (2) my > request to those who would like to share the cotst and other > brudens with me to get in touch with me. > > 4. The whole image does not suggest a very active list. If I > remember the beginning of the old Mai-Not, there was much more > active discussions about what to do. Actually much more than the > forwarding of new and articles. From periodical reviews. > > 5. I think that we could try to give a more dynamic thrust to this > group and have a few ideas. You may also wish to give to this > group a more action-oriented direction and probably have a few > ideas. A condition is to remain within the spirit of the old and > new lists as spelled out in both the old and the new guidelines > (which in spite of different wording, have the same meaning). > I'll hold my ideas for now, in order not to be seen as trying to > impose my views. I will inejdct them if and when warranted only. > You mnay have better ideas than me anyway. > > >So, you are invited to comment on the above and to propose ideas to >revive Mai-Not and hopefully widen its reach > > >Cordially > > >Yves Bajard > > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Tue Aug 10 23:22:03 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Tue Aug 10 23:21:54 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Oops - I hit send by mistake. Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040811142100.02f410b0@central.murdoch.edu.au> Wasn't finished. Will send the rest in due course. Dion Giles Western Australia From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Wed Aug 11 01:39:51 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Wed Aug 11 01:40:01 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] A look at the new Mai-Not: fuller response Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040811161105.02fce248@central.murdoch.edu.au> On just a few of Yves' comments. One was on costs. Once more I ask: How much each and to what address? Another was on expanding spread of contributions. There is only one way people can do that. Post items. Post information. Post comment on items. Post comment on comments. And if you post an item which is a relaying of news, don't be discouraged by lack of replies. I for one sift through what arrives and pass it on to targetted audiences. In this way I am _using_ the list. Those who post the items relaying news are _contributing_ to it, rather that _taking_ [a share] -- just to correct a term Yves accidentally used which may have given the wrong impression of what he meant to convey. Also see below. Another was on the lack of response to Yves' having transferred to list to NCFS. It is hard to respond to that when one has no idea what implications the transfer has, if any, for the list's operation. Finally, I did some checking of my own on the basis of Yves' statistics. He had referred to a small number who contribute a large percentage of the material and added that the major part of the contributions of these active posters consists of articles forwarded in full text with sources. So I looked at all the items I had sent in the past month -- 45 posts or just under 1.5 a day. 31 of these were either comment only or comment plus URL. Nine were excerpts from copyrighted material, together with comments. Five were copyrighted material reproduced (with or without comments). Of there, four were from the ABC whose copyright statement allows for passing material on to others and the remaining one was from Green Left Weekly which is hardly likely to scream that we pinched their copyright. I use a separate mailing list to pass on articles in full, acknowledges and with URL of course. I guess I can only repeat: Internet lists are not like restricted space in a hard copy journal. It is not a zero sum game. Items sent by one person don't restrict space available to others. As a reader I welcome all that comes forward and would love to see more of it, from more people. It is both a learning experience and a teaching resource. Dion Giles Western Australia At 13:33 11/08/2004, you wrote: >Dear NewMainotters > > >I have been monitoring our group, and would like to share the results >with you. > > > 1. We are at present 33 on the list. 20 subscribers have > contributed posts fduring the first month on Mailman > > 2. In the old Mai-Not tehre were some 90 + subscribers and 29 had > contributed between January 17 and Jul;y 10 (i.e nearly six > months). > > 3. If we look at the six most active participants Dion Giles, Ed > Deak, Janet Eaton Janice Gradham, Jonathan Larson and MichealP; > > a. In the first month of operation under Mailman, these six persons > contributed 86.4% of the posts > > b. over six months of operation I monitored for the Old Mai-Not, > these persons contributed 84.4% > > This of course has no real statistical; value, but it is > indicative that out of the whole number of subscribers 6 persons > take the largest share of the posts. And one must consider taht > in the New Mai-Not, Janice came in just a few days ago.. > > 1. The major part of the contributions of these active posters > consists of articles forwarded in full text with sources, or for > some of them of the URL sources only. Most of them place a short > comment at the beginning of their message. Then, there is quite > often some exchange largely between them, about the articles and > the comments. And the whole goes to archives. > > 2. A few of the six active posters send their messages to several > addresses, and some of them do it by using bcc (implicit > address). I have now found how to allow this practice on the New > Mai-Not. So those such as MichaelP, who had very kindly started > to post separately to Mai-Not, can resume their bcc sending to > all their destinations > > 3. There has been no reaction to my recent post relative to(1) the > option I took to transfer the list to the NCFS and (2) my > request to those who would like to share the cotst and other > brudens with me to get in touch with me. > > 4. The whole image does not suggest a very active list. If I > remember the beginning of the old Mai-Not, there was much more > active discussions about what to do. Actually much more than the > forwarding of new and articles. From periodical reviews. > > 5. I think that we could try to give a more dynamic thrust to this > group and have a few ideas. You may also wish to give to this > group a more action-oriented direction and probably have a few > ideas. A condition is to remain within the spirit of the old and > new lists as spelled out in both the old and the new guidelines > (which in spite of different wording, have the same meaning). > I'll hold my ideas for now, in order not to be seen as trying to > impose my views. I will inejdct them if and when warranted only. > You mnay have better ideas than me anyway. > > >So, you are invited to comment on the above and to propose ideas to >revive Mai-Not and hopefully widen its reach > > >Cordially > > >Yves Bajard > > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From papadop at peak.org Wed Aug 11 04:26:55 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed Aug 11 04:27:17 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Venezuela gets the Florida treatment Message-ID: Greg Palast writes Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 01:17:58 -0400 From: palast@gregpalast.com Subject: Venezuela gets the Florida treatment VENEZUELA FLORIDATED Tuesday, August 10, 2004 Will The Gang That Fixed Florida Fix the Vote in Caracas this Sunday? by Greg Palast Hugo Chavez drives George Bush crazy. Maybe it's jealousy: Unlike Mr. Bush, Chavez, in Venezuela, won his Presidency by a majority of the vote. Or maybe it's the oil: Venezuela sits atop a reserve rivaling Iraq's. And Hugo thinks the US and British oil companies that pump the crude ought to pay more than a 16% royalty to his nation for the stuff. Hey, sixteen percent isn't even acceptable as a tip at a New York diner. Whatever it is, OUR President has decided that THEIR president has to go. This is none too easy given that Chavez is backed by Venezuela's poor. And the US oil industry, joined with local oligarchs, has made sure a vast majority of Venezuelans remain poor. Therefore, Chavez is expected to win this coming Sunday's recall vote. That is, if the elections are free and fair. They won't be. Some months ago, a little birdie faxed to me what appeared to be confidential pages from a contract between John Ashcroft's Justice Department and a company called ChoicePoint, Inc., of Atlanta. The deal is part of the War on Terror. Justice offered up to $67 million, of our taxpayer money, to ChoicePoint in a no-bid deal, for computer profiles with private information on every citizen of half a dozen nations. The choice of which nation's citizens to spy on caught my eye. While the September 11th highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint's menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Argentines. How odd. Had the CIA uncovered a Latin plot to sneak suicide tango dancers across the border with exploding enchiladas? What do these nations have in common besides a lack of involvement in the September 11th attacks? Coincidentally, each is in the throes of major electoral contests in which the leading candidates -- presidents Lula Ignacio da Silva of Brazil, Nestor Kirschner of Argentina, Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador and Venezuela's Chavez -- have the nerve to challenge the globalization demands of George W. Bush. The last time ChoicePoint sold voter files to our government it was to help Governor Jeb Bush locate and purge felons on Florida voter rolls. Turns out ChoicePoint's felons were merely Democrats guilty only of V.W.B., Voting While Black. That little 'error' cost Al Gore the White House. It looks like the Bush Administration is taking the Florida show for a tour south of the border. However, when Mexico discovered ChoicePoint had its citizen files, the nation threatened company executives with criminal charges. ChoicePoint protested its innocence and offered to destroy the files of any nation that requests it. But ChoicePoint, apparently, presented no such offer to the government of Venezuela's Chavez. In Caracas, I showed Congressman Nicolas Maduro the ChoicePoint-Ashcroft agreement. Maduro, a leader of Chavez' political party, was unaware that his nation's citizen files were for sale to U.S. intelligence. But he understood their value to make mischief. If the lists somehow fell into the hands of the Venezuelan opposition, it could immeasurably help their computer-aided drive to recall and remove Chavez. A ChoicePoint flak said the Bush administration told the company they haven't used the lists that way. The PR man didn't say if the Bush spooks laughed when they said it. Our team located a $53,000 payment from our government to Chavez' recall organizers, who claim to be armed with computer lists of the registered. How did they get those lists? The fix that was practiced in Florida, with ChoicePoint's help, deliberate or not, appears to be retooled for Venezuela, then Brazil, Mexico and who knows where else. Here's what it comes down to: The Justice Department averts it's gaze from Saudi Arabia but shoplifts voter records in Venezuela. So it's only fair to ask: Is Mr. Bush fighting a war on terror -- or a war on democracy? --- Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.' This commentary is based on 'Tango Terrorists,' in the new chapter of the book's Expanded Election Edition (Penguin 2004). For Palast's reports on Venezuela for the Guardian of Britain and his exclusive interview for BBC Television with President Hugo Chavez, go to www.GregPalast.com ============================================ If you would like to have your e-mail address removed from this mailing list. Cut and paste the following URL into your browser address bar. This will automatically remove from the mailing list and you will receive no further mailings. http://www.gregpalast.com/emailremove.cfm?id=9192 From papadop at peak.org Wed Aug 11 04:43:20 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed Aug 11 04:43:24 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] {Possible Spam?} TARIQ ALI' om the Chavez referendum Message-ID: http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/593/593p24.htm Green Left Weekly, (Australia) August 11, 2004. Tariq Ali: Chavez will win in Venezuela Claudia Jardim and Jonah Gindin spoke to veteran political activist and author Tariq Ali, during his recent trip to Caracas, about Venezuela and Latin American resistance to US neoliberalism. Q: How do you explain the explosion in social movements against neoliberalism in Latin America? I think the reason for this is that Latin America was used as a laboratory by the United States for a long, long time. When Washington wanted to crush popular movements by unleashing military dictatorships, it did it in Latin America first: in Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Then, [the US government] got Latin America in a grip economically, and said "this is the only way forward". The laboratory of the American Empire is the first to rebel against the empire. Chile under the rule of General Augusto Pinochet, then Brazil under President Fernando Cardoso and Argentina under successive governments, were de-industrialised. [These rulers] thought that their countries could function in an economic bubble created by a false boom, largely fuelled by foreign money coming into banks where there were low interest rates. Whenever the investments got risky, [international investors] would pull out. They had absolutely no motivation for building Brazil or Argentina -- so you gradually began to have the rise of new social movements from below: peasant movements, landless peasant movements, unemployed working-class movements that began to challenge this, initially in villages, in one town, in one locality, in one region. And then gradually it began to spread. The result was continent-wide protests. You had an uprising in Cochabamba in Bolivia against the privatisation of water. You had a struggle of the peasants of Cuzco in Peru, against the privatisation of electricity. On both struggles, the government made repression its first response, and then had to retreat. Then you had an unbelievable collapse in Argentina, where within three weeks four or five presidents came and fell. That began to demonstrate very graphically the crisis of neoliberal capitalism. In Brazil, Cardoso had de-industrialised the country completely. There was no national bourgeoisie left, there were no national traditions within the capitalist sphere left, and the country began to suffer. Q: Do you see the US empire absorbing this energy by proposing a softer version of neoliberalism? I don't think [US rulers], at the moment, are prepared to do that. They will only do that if they feel threatened. And they don't feel threatened at the moment. And one reason -- I have to be very blunt here -- they don't feel threatened is because there is an idealistic slogan within the social movements, which goes like this: "We can change the world without taking power." This slogan doesn't threaten anyone; it's a moral slogan. The Zapatistas -- who I admire -- when they marched from Chiapas to Mexico City, what did they think was going to happen? Nothing happened. It was a moral symbol, it was not even a moral victory because nothing happened. I think that phrase was understandable in Latin American politics, people were very burnt by recent experiences: the defeat of the Sandinistas, the defeat of the armed struggle movements. >From that point of view, the Venezuelan example is the most interesting one. It says: "In order to change the world you have to take power, and you have to begin to implement change -- in small doses if necessary -- but you have to do it. Without it nothing will change." Q: Without adequately addressing state power, what alternative to neoliberalism is the global social justice movement offering? It has no alternative! [These activists] think that it is an advantage not to have an alternative. But, in my view that's a sign of political bankruptcy. If you have no alternative, what do you say to the people you mobilise? The MST [Landless Workers Movement] in Brazil has an alternative, it says, "take the land and give it to the poor peasants, let them work it". But the thesis of the Zapatistas, is a thesis for cyberspace: let's imagine. But we live in the real world, this thesis isn't going to work. Therefore, the model for me of the MST in Brazil is much much more interesting than the model of the Zapatistas in Chiapas. Q: In Colombia there has been a huge militarisation that is very similar to Cold War US strategy in Latin America. Where does this fit in with a new strategy that, as you have pointed out, is largely economic? Colombia is exceptional at the moment, and of course Venezuela where [Washington] tried to push through a new coup d'etat that failed. [US rulers] will do that if nothing else succeeds. Where they feel democracy doesn't serve their interests they will return to the military -- that's obvious. But at the moment the problem is how to devise a society in which you can push through social-democratic projects for the poor. That's why Venezuela is very important. Before President Luiz "Lula" da Silva was elected, a possibility emerged, [given that] Argentina had collapsed and in Venezuela there was President Hugo Chavez. If you had a Bolivarian federation, of Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba, it could produce a completely different way of looking at the world and a different form of society, which would not be repressive, which would not be vicious, which would transform the everyday lives of the poor. That has not happened. Argentinian President Nestor Kirchner, in my opinion, is better than Lula. The big disappointment has been the Brazilian Workers Party. But that doesn't mean we stop thinking [about the possibilities]. Ten thousand Cuban doctors [are working in Venezuela], thousands of poor Venezuelan kids are going to Cuba to learn to be doctors. Here you take advantage of each other's strengths, not each other's weaknesses. So it's very good that Venezuela and Chavez are taking advantage of the strengths of Cuba, rather than its weaknesses. The social structure they have created, health, education that's something that Brazil could do as well, but it doesn't do it. Q: The global justice movement is wary of Chavez's populism, his military background, and what they fear may become a top-down "revolution" that excludes the grassroots. How do you think this movement and Chavez can be reconciled? As long as the poor in Venezuela support this government it will survive, when they withdraw their support it will fall. But I think it will be useful if the Global Justice Movement -- and there are many different strands in it -- came and saw what's going on here. What's the problem? Go into the shantytowns, see what the lives of the people are, see what their lives were before this regime came into power. And don't go on the basis of stereotypes. You cannot change the world without taking power, that is the example of Venezuela. Chavez is improving the lives of ordinary people, and that's why it's difficult to topple him -- otherwise he would be toppled. So it's something that people in the Global Justice Movement have to understand, this is serious politics. It's pointless just chanting slogans, because for the ordinary people on whose behalf you claim to be fighting getting an education, free medicine, cheap food is much much more important than all the slogans put together. Q: What do you think of the Venezuelan example of participatory democracy? I think it needs to be strengthened. I think it's weak, I think the movement here needs to institutionalise on every level -- the level of small pueblos, the level of the towns, the level of different quarters organisations,, Bolivarian Circles, whatever you want to call them, which meet regularly, which talk with each other, which discuss their problems, which aren't simply a response to calls from above. It's very very important, because Chavez is an unusual guy in Latin America very special -- and he is young and long may he live, but he has to create institutions which outlast him for the future of this country. Q: What is at stake in Venezuela? Whose interests? Can Venezuela survive alone? What does Venezuela mean to the US? Venezuela is an example which the US wishes to wipe out. Because if this example exists, and gets stronger and stronger and stronger, then people in Brazil, in Argentina, in Ecuador, in Chile, and in Bolivia will say "if Venezuelans can do it, we can do it". So Venezuela, from that point of view, is a very important example. That's why Washington pours in millions of dollars to help the stupid opposition in Venezuela; an opposition which is incapable of offering any real alternative to the people, except what used to exist before: a corrupt, a servile oligarchy. I think that one weakness, until recently, of the Bolivarian revolution has been that it has not done more towards the rest of Latin America, because it's been under siege at home. But I think, once Chavez wins the referendum [on whether to recall him, held on August 15], and then [there are pro-Chavez victories in] the local elections, and the mayoralty of Caracas in September, I hope then a big offensive is made for the rest of Latin America too. >From that point of view, the model of the Cuban doctors is a very good one. I mean, a Venezuelan doctor -- in five years Venezuelans will come back [from Cuba] as doctors, they can help both their own country, and they can go to other countries to work in the shantytowns. They are small things, but in the world in which we live they are very big things. Fifty years ago they would have been small, today they are very big. And that's why we have to preserve and nurture them. Q: The mainstream private media plays an important political role in Venezuela. How can this disinformation be combated? What we lack in Latin America is means of communication, we need a satellite channel like Al Jazeera, and I said we'll call it Al Bolivar' if you want. But you need one which reports regularly -- what the right is saying, what the left movements are saying, which gives an account of what it is the MST wants, which challenges Lula, but which does it quite independently, without being attached to any state. And I think this satellite channel could be very important for the whole of Latin America, to challenge the BBC World, and CNN and have a Latin American channel. Q: What do you think opposition and US strategy will be in the event of a Chavez victory on August 15? Well, I think the only strategy left is to try and overthrow him by a military coup. But the military seems to be supporting him. The previous coup was a warning to him as well: you can't simply rely on the military without educating people. I think without the military in Venezuela, they can't do anything -- they cannot topple him. This referendum has been the big demand [of the Venezuelan opposition] for years, as they claimed "oh, he's not allowing a referendum" -- forgetting that without [Chavez's] constitution you couldn't have had this referendum. So if Chavez wins this referendum, the opposition will be fractured, I think it will be completely demoralised, it's foolish. Q: Do you think opposition might claim there was fraud in order to deligitimise Chavez s victory? Well, look, we have to fight that when it happens, but I think this is why the process should be transparent, and I think lots of observers will be coming. And if that happens, the government has to go immediately on the offensive, and say "this was a clear victory, you want you go into the whole country and talk to every single voter". Go completely on the offensive and say, "this isn't Florida". In any case, one shouldn't worry permanently -- you know one should depend on the strength of the people. If the people vote him in, and he wins the referendum they will be big celebrations all over the country. And it will be obvious what has happened. From papadop at peak.org Wed Aug 11 04:52:30 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed Aug 11 04:52:33 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Copyright Issues in Digital Media August 2004 Message-ID: INFO: Time to reaxamine intellectual property issues ? Michael ========================== http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5738&sequence=0 Copyright Issues in Digital Media August 2004 Cover Graphic Preface Rapid technological progress in information technologies poses new issues for copyright law. Today, a digital file can be copied and instantaneously distributed worldwide through the Internet, thus potentially depriving the copyright holder of revenue from licensed sales. As a result, holders of copyright on creative works in digital format are contesting the right of consumers to make personal copies of copyrighted materials. At the same time, consumers are beginning to chafe at copyright owners' use of digital technologies to prevent or deter copying and other unauthorized uses of copyrighted works. As digital processing grows more powerful and the high-speed distribution of digital content becomes more pervasive, the debate over copyright issues--in particular, whether copyright law has achieved the appropriate balance between incentives to engage in creative activity and the social benefits that arise from the widespread use of creative works--is likely to intensify. Yet the implications of any change to copyright law extend beyond the producers and consumers of copyrighted material to society at large. Investments in the computer hardware and communications industries, for example, are linked in part to the availability of creative content in digital form. How the current copyright debate is resolved, therefore, is likely to influence the growth of those related sectors of the economy. Potential revisions to copyright law may also have an impact on broader social concerns such as individual privacy. Revisions to copyright law could impose mandated costs on producers and consumers of copyrighted material, as well as the providers of goods and services used in conjunction with copyrighted works. This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) paper reviews current copyright law in the United States and considers the unique aspects of digital technology's challenge to that law. It also examines the prospects for a market-based resolution to copyright disputes over digital content and explores the effect of potential revisions to copyright law on economic efficiency and equity. While this analysis suggests some issues and concerns that the Congress may wish to consider during its deliberations about any changes in copyright law, in keeping with CBO's mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, the paper makes no policy recommendations. Nathan Musick of CBO's Microeconomic and Financial Studies Division wrote this paper under the supervision of Roger Hitchner and David Moore. Helpful review and comments were provided by Robert P. Murphy, CBO's General Counsel; Julie H. Topoleski of CBO; Robert M. Hunt of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; and Robert Kasunic of the U.S. Copyright Office. The assistance of external reviewers implies no responsibility for the final product, which rests solely with CBO. Juyne Linger edited the paper, and Christine Bogusz proofread it. Angela McCollough prepared the tables and graphs. Maureen Costantino designed the cover, produced the figures, and prepared the paper for publication. Lenny Skutnik produced the printed copies, and Annette Kalicki prepared the electronic versions for CBO's Web site. Douglas Holtz-Eakin Director August 2004 CONTENTS Summary 1 The Current Copyright Debate Disputed Control of Copyrighted Works New Obstacles to Copyright Enforcement Potential Impact of Copyright Law Revisions on Innovation and Economic Growth 2 Copyright Law and Technological Change The Rights of Copyright Holders Limitations on the Rights of Copyright Holders Unsettled Areas of Copyright Law Copyright Law Modifications for Digital Media Technology's Continuing Challenge to Copyright Law 3 Copyright and the Economics of Intellectual Property Regulation The Regulation of Intellectual Property More Efficient Copyright Markets: Price Discrimination and Technology 4 Economic Implications of Prospective Legislative Action Forbearance Extend Compulsory Licensing to Digital Content Revise Copyright Law Table 4-1. Primary Effects of Broad Options for Modifying Digital Copyright Law Figures 1-1. Distribution of Gross Revenues Across Core Copyright Industries, 2002 2-1. Annual Change in Value of Recording Industry Shipments, 1987 to 2003 Boxes 1-1. Interpreting Gross Revenue Data 2-1. Protection Afforded to Collections of Facts 2-2. Recent Legislative and Judicial Responses to Copyright Issues Arising from the Digitization of Creative Works 2-3. Is It Legal to Use a Computer to Make a Copy of a Music CD? 2-4. A Particular Technology's Challenge to Fair Use 2-5. Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Networks 4-1. Internet File-Sharing: Trends and Attitudes From duanebehrens at cox.net Wed Aug 11 08:51:32 2004 From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens) Date: Wed Aug 11 08:51:34 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] A look at the new Mai-Not and an invitation to suggest improvements. Message-ID: <20040811155132.JXFS19941.fed1rmmtao12.cox.net@smtp.west.cox.net> Yves, I am one of the majority of subscribers here who do NOT regularly contribute, but who nevertheless depend on articles posted by its main contributors. I read almost every article posted here by Janet, Dion, Jonathan, Ed and Michael. And while I enjoy their occasional discussions on various subjects, it is not why I am here. I am here because I want to stay informed of local, national and world events, from sources and authors who are not normally available to me, as posted by six individuals whose world view I share. The old MAI-Not list. The new MAI-Not list. It is what it is. And for me at least, it's damn near perfect. Duane Behrens > From: Yves Bajard > Date: 2004/08/11 Wed AM 01:33:13 EDT > To: New MAI-NOT > Subject: [Mai-not] A look at the new Mai-Not and an invitation to > suggest improvements. > > > Dear NewMainotters > > > I have been monitoring our group, and would like to share the results > with you. > > > 1. We are at present 33 on the list. 20 subscribers have > contributed posts fduring the first month on Mailman > > 2. In the old Mai-Not tehre were some 90 + subscribers and 29 had > contributed between January 17 and Jul;y 10 (i.e nearly six > months). > > 3. If we look at the six most active participants Dion Giles, Ed > Deak, Janet Eaton Janice Gradham, Jonathan Larson and MichealP; > > a. In the first month of operation under Mailman, these six persons > contributed 86.4% of the posts > > b. over six months of operation I monitored for the Old Mai-Not, > these persons contributed 84.4% > > This of course has no real statistical; value, but it is > indicative that out of the whole number of subscribers 6 persons > take the largest share of the posts. And one must consider taht > in the New Mai-Not, Janice came in just a few days ago.. > > 1. The major part of the contributions of these active posters > consists of articles forwarded in full text with sources, or for > some of them of the URL sources only. Most of them place a short > comment at the beginning of their message. Then, there is quite > often some exchange largely between them, about the articles and > the comments. And the whole goes to archives. > > 2. A few of the six active posters send their messages to several > addresses, and some of them do it by using bcc (implicit > address). I have now found how to allow this practice on the New > Mai-Not. So those such as MichaelP, who had very kindly started > to post separately to Mai-Not, can resume their bcc sending to > all their destinations > > 3. There has been no reaction to my recent post relative to(1) the > option I took to transfer the list to the NCFS and (2) my > request to those who would like to share the cotst and other > brudens with me to get in touch with me. > > 4. The whole image does not suggest a very active list. If I > remember the beginning of the old Mai-Not, there was much more > active discussions about what to do. Actually much more than the > forwarding of new and articles. From periodical reviews. > > 5. I think that we could try to give a more dynamic thrust to this > group and have a few ideas. You may also wish to give to this > group a more action-oriented direction and probably have a few > ideas. A condition is to remain within the spirit of the old and > new lists as spelled out in both the old and the new guidelines > (which in spite of different wording, have the same meaning). > I'll hold my ideas for now, in order not to be seen as trying to > impose my views. I will inejdct them if and when warranted only. > You mnay have better ideas than me anyway. > > > So, you are invited to comment on the above and to propose ideas to > revive Mai-Not and hopefully widen its reach > > > Cordially > > > Yves Bajard > > > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > From ffisher at sfu.ca Wed Aug 11 11:26:22 2004 From: ffisher at sfu.ca (Fulton Fisher) Date: Wed Aug 11 11:27:06 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] The New Mai-Not Message-ID: <6.1.0.6.0.20040811104522.02a4c8e0@popserver.sfu.ca> I heartily echo Duane Behrens. I am surprised to learn there are not hundreds of subscribers like us who have found, and continue to find, Mai-Not to be such a reliable source of encouragement and sanity from around the world. Even when I have discovered new items I want to share, with few exceptions I have found one or more of our vigilant team of major contributors has already put them in the next list. Thank you all. Fulton Fisher -------------- next part -------------- --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.732 / Virus Database: 486 - Release Date: 7/29/04 From hooleys at highstream.net Wed Aug 11 12:02:58 2004 From: hooleys at highstream.net (hooleys@highstream.net) Date: Wed Aug 11 12:03:22 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Re: The New Mai-Not References: <6.1.0.6.0.20040811104522.02a4c8e0@popserver.sfu.ca> Message-ID: <001901c47fd5$d2263f20$0d0b8c41@u8a8u5> I too deeply appreciate the work of the primary posters to MAI-NOT. I have subsribed for years. This list is my primary way to get the news underneath the news. I pass much of it on to my peace and justice community. I admit that I like it best when the post is impersonal; a synopsis, an URL, and the full article. These last months where half of the posts have been administrative and where many postings reveal the human beings behind the curtain have been disappointing. That's no one's fault but my own. The list's selflessness and high quality have spoiled me. I haven't been doing the work or bearing the burdens. I thank all of you and sincerely hope that you continue to offer this gift. Chris Hooley From papadop at peak.org Wed Aug 11 15:14:43 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed Aug 11 15:15:24 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] U.S. Barred From Weakening Dolphin Rules Message-ID: This new U$ federal court decision set me to wonder -- hadn't there been a GATT/NAFTA decision made to overcome the dolphin-protection rules just reaffirmed ? So I did a low-power Google search for "nafta dolphin" - thought it valuable to remind y'all of what was happening on the subject of free trade in dolphins during the Clinton administration: Cheers Michael ==================== [snippet of OLD news] http://www.api4animals.org/644.htm Since the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act that created "Dolphin Safe Tuna" labeling was passed in October 1990, dolphin deaths worldwide have dropped by 96 percent. In February 1991 Mexico challenged the embargo in a formal complaint against the United States under GATT. A three-member panel in Geneva, Switzerland found for Mexico, ruling that the MMPA provision protecting dolphins from dolphin-deadly tuna nets violated GATT as a barrier to world trade. The panel further held that no country may have any law to protect the environment or a species outside its own geographic territory, including the global commons of the oceans and the air or the species inhabiting them, if that law can also affect trade. It stated that a country may not consider the process by which a product is produced and that, therefore, the United States cannot embargo the importation of tuna from a country that uses dolphin-deadly methods to catch the tuna. In another embargo challenge in 1994, a GATT panel similarly ruled that U.S. tuna-dolphin laws were inconsistent with U.S. GATT obligations. But under the then-current GATT rules, the U.S. could -- and did -- ignore both rulings. The 1994 version of GATT that emerged from the Uruguay Round changed all that. It created the WTO (World Trade Organization), which steps in when laws that "impede" trade are challenged. Unlike the old GATT, the new WTO permits no veto powers. If the United States loses a review decision, Congress must repeal the offending legislation or pay heavy damages in trade sanctions. The world tuna market is huge, and the one-fourth that the United States consumes represents a billion dollars a year. The Mexican Government wants a piece of the U.S. market for its dolphin-deadly tuna, and the Clinton Administration is eager to help by repealing current tuna-dolphin laws, as Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo learned when he visited Washington in the fall of 1995 Zedillo warned that if the Clinton Administration could not kill the U.S. law quietly Mexico would launch a new WTO challenge and publicly force the U.S. to kill the law or face trade sanctions. Preferring to avoid another WTO trade challenge by Mexico and the possibility of mandatory trade sanctions, the Clinton Administration introduced legislation that would lift the embargo on dolphin-deadly tuna by redefining "dolphin-safe" to permit fishing methods which chase, harass, encircle, capture, and kill dolphins. Under this scheme, such tuna could be labeled "dolphin safe" if no dolphins were "observed" killed outright in the process of capture, which is something like allowing logging in a forest if no spotted owls were observed killed by loggers. ----- So today's news is .... ========================== http://news.findlaw.com/ap/o/1501/8-11-2004/20040811060007_135.html Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2004 U.S. Barred From Weakening Dolphin Rules The case is Earth Island Institute v. Evans, 03-0007. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - In a victory for environmentalists, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Bush administration cannot change the standards commercial fisheries must meet before the tuna they catch can carry the "dolphin-safe" label. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson found that Commerce Secretary Donald Evans not only failed to conduct the scientific research required to relax existing tuna-labeling laws, but engaged in "a pattern of delay and inattention" to build support for his position. "The record is replete with evidence that the secretary was influenced by policy concerns unrelated to the best available scientific evidence," Henderson wrote in a strongly worded 51-page opinion. "This court has never, in its 24 years, reviewed a record of agency action that contained such a compelling portrait of political meddling." The Commerce Department wanted to rewrite the 1990 law to allow tuna caught with nets to be labeled dolphin-safe if observers certified that no dolphins were killed or seriously injured in the process. Dolphins commonly swim with schools of tuna, and fisheries in Mexico and South America encircle the popular mammals with nets to hone in on their prey. Tuesday's ruling makes permanent an injunction Henderson issued last year that barred the Commerce Department from implementing the new rules while the case was pending. "Judge Henderson's ruling exposes the Bush administration's deceit in ignoring its own scientists and caving into Mexican demands to allow dolphin-deadly tuna back into the U.S. with a phony label," said Earth Island Institute director David Phillips, whose group was one of the plaintiffs in the suit against Evans. A U.S. Justice Department spokesman said government attorneys would have to review the decision and consult with the Commerce Department before deciding whether to appeal. In his opinion, Henderson condemned the process the Commerce Department used to conclude that dolphins would not be harmed if the labeling rules were relaxed. The department never made a serious effort to determine if encircling methods of fishing increased dolphin mortality rates and erroneously concluded based on limited existing research that they didn't pose a significant hazard, the judge said. "Rather than supporting Defendants' position, the record shows an agency that continued to drag its feet, exercised little diligence, and put obstacles in its own road," Henderson wrote, adding that Evans' "arbitrary and capricious" decision was prompted by international trade policy. From papadop at peak.org Wed Aug 11 16:19:26 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed Aug 11 16:20:41 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Kathy Kelly - Najaf - The Shrine of Ali Message-ID: Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 23:20:10 -0600 From: Voices in the Wilderness Is a USA Economic Collapse Due in 2005? by F. William Engdahl http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ENG407A.html "The whole world is hostage to the misconceived economic policies of a dollar standard out of control." The US Senate just reconfirmed 78-year-old Alan Greenspan to an unprecedented fifth term as chairman of the world's most powerful central bank, the Federal Reserve, or Fed as it is known. The fact that President Bush re-nominated Greenspan underscores how vulnerable the global financial edifice is, and not how excellent a central banker Greenspan is. On the surface, world growth appears to be expanding finally, after severe recession and the 60% fall of the US stock market in 2000-2001. The Federal Reserve says it is so confident that growth in the US economy is taking firm hold, that it raised its key interest rate from a record low 1% to 1.25% last month, signaling it would slowly bring rates up to "neutral" levels of 3.5-4.5% over coming months. Around the world, strong growth of exports are being reported from Brazil to Mexico to South Korea. Growth in China is so strong the government is worried it is overheating. In Europe, the UK is expanding at the fastest pace in 15 years. France expects GDP to grow by 2.5%, and even Germany is talking about stronger export growth. The driver is US economic growth. The problem with this optimistic picture is the fact it is entirely based on the dollar and unprecedented creation of cheap dollar credit by Greenspan and the Bush Administration. Their only short-term goal has been to keep the US economy strong enough to assure re-election for George Bush in November. Washington reports are that Bush made a deal to re-appoint Greenspan on the promise Greenspan would keep the economy growing until the elections. They have done this by a combination of historic low interest rates, rates only seen before in times of war or depression, and by stimulating the economy by record budget deficit spending, issuing government bonds to finance it. The world has been flooded with cheap dollars as a result. What is clear now is that this unsustainable effort is likely to come to an end sometime in 2005, just after the elections, regardless of who is President. Given the scale of the money-printing by the Fed and the US Treasury since 2001, it is pre-programmed that the "correction" of the latest Greenspan credit binge will impact the entire global financial and economic system. Some economists fear a new Great Depression like the 1930's. The world today depends on cheap US dollar credit. When US interest rates are finally forced higher, dramatic shocks will hit Europe, Asia and the entire global economy, unlike any seen since the 1930's. Debts that now appear manageable will suddenly become un-payable. Defaults and bankruptcies will spread as they did in the wake of the 1931 Creditanstalt collapse. The US Home Bubble The official US myth is that the recession of 2000-2001 ended in November 2001 and "recovery" has been underway ever since. The reality is not so positive. Using record low interest rates, the Fed has lured American families into debt at record rates, creating what might be called a "virtual recovery," financed by record amounts of new consumer debt. There has never been a recovery before in which debt levels increase, rather the opposite. The American dream of owning an own home has been the source of the record lending, helped by the lowest interest rates in 43 years. Greenspan has often boasted this has been what has propped the US economy since 2001. When families buy a home, they need furniture, they employ construction workers, electricians, engineers, and the economy grows. Record low interest rates have made it very easy for families to get a bank loan, using their home equity as collateral or guarantee. These loans, tied to the rising real estate prices, allowed American families to finance new furniture, cars, and countless more. In 2003 banks made a record $324 billion in such home equity loans, on top of $1 trillion in new mortgage loans. All this economic consumption has created the illusion of a recovering economy. Behind the surface, a huge debt burden has built up. Since 1997, the total of home mortgage debt for Americans has risen 94% to a colossal $7.4 trillion, a debt of some $120,000 for a family of four. Bank loans for real estate purchases have risen since 1997 by 200%, to $2.4 trillion. Average US home prices have risen by 50% in the period since 1998. In 2003 alone a record total of $1 trillion in new mortgage loans were made. In 1997 mortgages totalled $202 billion. In many parts of the US, home price inflation has become alarming. An apartment in Manhattan is now above $1 million. Home prices in Boston have risen by 64% in five years. California real estate prices are soaring. On average US home prices have risen 50% in six years, an unprecedented rise, driven by Greenspan's easy credit. In seven years to 2004, prices of US homes had risen on paper by $7 trillion to a total of $15 trillion, the highest in US history. The problem is so obviously dangerous, that Greenspan recently was forced to deny existence of any real estate "bubble," much as he denied a dot.com stock bubble in 2000. But that is exactly what he has created with his low interest rates. The dot.com bubble has been transformed into a larger and more threatening real estate bubble. Families have been convinced to invest in a home as an alternative to buying stocks for their pension years. The rise in home prices has been driven by cheap interest rates and banks rushing to lend with abandon. Because two semi-government agencies, the Federal National Mortgage Association, known as FannieMae, and the Government National Mortgage Association, or GinnieMae buy up the bank's mortgage contracts, taking the risk from the local banks, so the local lending bank has less pressure to guarantee that he lends to low-risk credit-worthy families likely to repay the loan. The US Congress has passed new laws making it even easier for families to buy homes with no penny of their own money required initially as "down payment." This has meant a huge rise in mortgage loans to economically marginal or risky families. The number of such risky or "sub-prime" mortgage loans has risen by 70% this year alone, and now makes up 18% of all US mortgages. Many of these risky mortgages are made under "adjustable rate mortgages". Today adjustable rates are low, just above 4%. Because of this some 35% of all new mortgages are adjustable today. So long as rates stay low, the roulette wheel of debt rolls on. The problem begins when interest rates rise and families, lured into buying a home with variable interest rate payments, suddenly find their monthly cost of paying the mortgage has exploded as interest rates rise. At that point, US banks will face a serious bad loan problem, far worse than that of 1990-92 when several of the largest US banks were on the brink of failure. US rates began to rise significantly in May, and the Fed was forced to raise its official rate on June 30 for the first time in four years. Many banks have loans written in adjustable mortgage rates. As US interest rates continue to rise over the next twelve months or so, that will trigger a wave of mortgage defaults. Some industry experts fear a "bloodbath" in 2005. The American family is highly indebted, not just for their home. The Federal Reserve data show a total US debt level now above $35 trillions, or some $ 450,000 for a typical family of four. Average consumer debt for credit cards, autos and such is at record highs. Carmakers continue to offer car loans, with loans for up to six or even seven years. Many Americans owe more on their car than it is worth. The debt grows. As long as Fed rates are at 43 year lows, the debt is manageable. When US rates rise, it becomes unmanageable for many. The rise has begun. There are two ways rates are likely to rise from here. First, the Fed itself has been forced to act, raising its Fed funds rate the first time since four years, to 1.25% from 1% on June 30. It had no choice. Greenspan has claimed for months that the US recovery was "strong" and that rates would return to "normal" soon. It was a calculated bluff. Had he not acted as US jobs data convinced investors recovery might be real, he faced a major crisis of confidence in the dollar. The Bush Administration reportedly manipulated employment statistics to show better job growth for the election. Ever since raising rates, Greenspan has calmed nervous markets by stating that future rises will be ever so gradual. In other words: don't worry, speculators. But if he is to keep the confidence of the large bond markets, he must convince them that he is still vigilant against inflation. That is tough when prices for everything from copper to oil to lumber to soybeans and scrap steel are rising from 50% to 110% over recent months. His only anti-inflation tool is higher interest rates, or promise of same. The longer he fails to raise rates as prices rise, the greater the risk of a dollar crisis, as foreign investors fear the worst, namely that the US economy is in far worse shape than officials admit. The Fed is in a trap. Yet higher interest rates threaten to explode the trillion dollar home mortgage debt bubble, where home values are estimated to be at least 20% overvalued nationally, or $3 trillion. When private bond investors such as major pension funds and banks lose confidence in Greenspan's inflation commitment, the only other source of support for low interest rates would be the willingness of Japan and China above all, to pour billions more of their dollars into buying US bonds. Keeping the Bush Government Afloat The largest buyers of US government debt have been the central banks of the Asia-Pacific. The central banks of Japan and China alone hold more than $1 trillion of US Treasury bonds as foreign currency reserves. Worldwide foreign central banks hold some $1.3 trillion of US government debt. If private debt is added, the United States is the world's largest debtor, with some $3.7 trillion in net foreign debt, as of the start of this year, likely well over $4 trillions by now. In 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected the US was the world's creditor with a plus of $1 trillion. Nations depending on the large US export market, recycle their trade surplus dollars back into buying US Treasury debt, to keep their currency fixed to the dollar. Because Japan and China and others continue to buy record sums of US debt, paying with their hard-earned trade dollars, US interest rates can remain far lower than otherwise. Were foreign buying of US bonds to reverse or even slow, the US Treasury would have to offer higher interest rates to lure investors to buy the debt. That would make interest rates on homes more expensive very fast. Millions of homeowners would face default. Prices would collapse in many regions, leading to higher unemployment. This will not be like the dot.com crash, which was a deliberate crash caused by the Fed raising rates to deflate that bubble. In 2000 interest rates were 6.5% and the Fed had room to lower to 1% and create the housing bubble alternative for money to keep the economy afloat on a sea of debt. This time, rates are at historic lows, debt at historic highs, dependency on continued foreign capital inflows is unprecedented. Speculation has become global as never before. The cheap credit in the dollar world has led to cheaper credit worldwide. The economies of Brazil, Mexico and even Argentina benefit from banks and speculators like George Soros who borrow at the super low US or Japanese interest rates to invest in bonds in high interest rate lands like Brazil or Turkey or Argentina. These so-called emerging markets have been booming in the past year on Greenspan's promise to keep US rates so low. That now is beginning to look very risky. As well, Bush Administration talk of possible terror attacks around election-time, is making many major investors fear risking investing in US stocks or bonds. They are instead beginning to cash in their recent profits from the Greenspan stock boom of 2003-04, and holding it in safe cash. That is a major reason the US stock and other markets have been in steady fall in recent weeks. The US debt bubble depends on maintaining the myth of a US recovery to lure foreign capital to invest, helping keep the dollar from collapse. Should foreign pension funds of the central banks of China and Japan be convinced the US recovery is in danger, there could be a major shift of funds out of dollars. Yet China and Japan, fearing the dollar crisis, have recently begun heavy buying of commodities, from oil to iron ore to copper to gold. They are using their trade dollars to buy real commodities, instead of US Treasury debt, which is mere paper. Chinese panic buying of oil for stockpiling reserves is a major factor pushing oil prices again to record levels of $42 barrels despite two major OPEC quota rises. Steel prices have exploded due to China demand. When Bush became President he inherited a Federal budget in surplus. Since then he has created the largest deficits in US history, near $500 billion in 2004 and estimated to reach $600 billion in 2005. In 1971, when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard, the Federal budget deficit was an "alarming" $23 billions. These huge deficits are financed by the US Treasury selling government bonds or similar paper to investors. Since 2001, the central banks of Asia, led by Japan and China, have bought huge sums, some 43% of all US Government debt. They in effect recycled their trade dollars gained from exporting cars, electronics, textiles and other goods to the US consumer. In the 12-month period to this April, the Bank of Japan spent a record $200 billions to buy US dollar bonds or, in effect, to finance the cost of Bush's Iraq war. The Banks of China, South Korea and Taiwan bought almost as much dollar bonds. They did this for clear reasons: Their currencies are linked to the dollar, and were the dollar to fall against the Yen or the Yuan, Asian exports would suffer a decline, endangering their economic growth and leading to explosive rises in unemployment across Asia. By recycling their trade dollar surplus into buying US Treasury debt, they argue they are looking after their own needs. A dollar crisis in early 2005 could signal the next global crisis. The whole world is hostage to the misconceived economic policies of a dollar standard out of control. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Wed Aug 11 16:43:01 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Wed Aug 11 16:43:13 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] A Disturbing Look at America--in Kansas Message-ID: A Disturbing Look at America--in Kansas Where you see "going out of business" signs side by side with placards supporting George W. Bush. By Gerald Rellick http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=829 One of the most remarkable political phenomena of the last 30 years is how America has moved to the political right. In a Los Angeles Times commentary article, Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America," writes, "This rightward movement has largely been accomplished by working-class voters whose lives have been materially worsened by the conservative policies they have supported." Paradoxes abound says Frank: "On nearly any Main Street in middle America we see 'going out of business' signs side by side with placards supporting George W. Bush." Frank is a native of Kansas and chose to visit his home state to find some answers: "Kansas is a place that has been particularly ill-served by the conservative policies of privatization, deregulation, and de-unionization, and that has reacted to its worsening situation by becoming more conservative still." He sees Kansas as a "landscape of distortion, paranoia, and of good people led astray." And it's not just that they have been duped by the political right: "Though Kansas voters have chosen self-destructive policies, it is just as clear to me that liberalism deserves a large part of the blame for the backlash phenomenon?. Somewhere in the last four decades liberalism ceased to be relevant to huge portions of its traditional constituency." But mostly, Frank is unsparing in his criticisms of those in working-class Middle America--epitomized by his fellow Kansans--who have allowed themselves to be manipulated by conservatives on "cultural wedge issues like guns, abortion, and the sneers of Hollywood whose hallucinatory appeal would ordinarily be far overshadowed by material concerns." Says Frank, "We are in an environment where Republicans talk constantly about class--in a coded way, to be sure--but where Democrats are afraid to bring it up." In a review of Frank's book, Eric Alterman writes that the right wing has little interest in delivering on the social and cultural issues they promote. The Federal Marriage Amendment serves to illustrate how clever the right has become in duping Americans. Here they win when they lose. Says Frank: "Failure on the cultural front serves to magnify the outrage felt by conservative true believers. It mobilizes the base. Failure sharpens the distinctions between conservatives and liberals. Failure allows for endless grandstanding without any real-world consequences that might upset more moderate Republicans or the party's all-important corporate wing. You might even say that grand and garish defeat--especially if accompanied by the ridicule of the sophisticated--is the culture warrior's very object." Where is this all leading? Frank worries that while Kansas may be a national "laughingstock" it may also be a harbinger of worse to come as "the corporate world blankets the nation with a cultural style designed to offend and to pretend-subvert" and to which Kansans in particular have succumbed. Frank sums up the matter well in these words: "The state watches impotently as its culture, beamed in from the coasts, becomes coarser and more offensive by the year. Kansas aches for revenge. Kansas gloats when celebrities say stupid things; it cheers when movie stars go to jail. And when two female rock stars exchange a lascivious kiss on national TV, Kansas goes haywire. Kansas screams for the heads of the liberal elite. Kansas comes running to the polling place--and Kansas cuts those rock stars' taxes" Frank's book raises many serious questions--and Frank presents the portent of a disturbing future. He writes, "Sociologists often warn that societies that turn their backs on equality inevitably meet with a terrible comeuppance. But those sociologists were thinking of an old world in which class anger was a phenomenon of the left. They weren't reckoning with Kansas, with the world we are becoming." Is it possible that a perverse form of ideology, based on distortion and emotionalism, can take root today--more than 225 years after the founding of the Republic? It may be true that you can't fool all of the people all of the time, but in America you only have to fool half of the people all of the time. We will learn on November 2 if Kansas' death wish is America's death wish. Gerald S. Rellick, Ph.D., worked in the defense sector of the aerospace industry. He now teaches in the California Community College system. Posted Sunday, August 8, 2004 -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From papadop at peak.org Wed Aug 11 19:17:02 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed Aug 11 19:17:03 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Brit Judges in row over torture ruling Message-ID: Taking the moral low ground !! MIchael ===================== http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1281390,00.html Courts can hear evidence if abusers are not British The Guardian (London ) Thursday August 12, 2004 Appeal court judges yesterday defied human rights campaigners by ruling that British courts could use evidence extracted under torture, as long as British agents were not complicit in the abuse. In a highly controversial judgment, the second highest court in the land rejected the appeals of 10 men suspected of having links to international terrorism and currently held without charge in what activists call "Britain's Guantanamo Bay". The court of appeal, sitting in London, ruled that the home secretary was right to hold the men in two high-security prisons and a high-security psychiatric hospital, and that the special immigration appeal commission (Siac), which backed the internments, was justified in doing so. Two of the men have since returned to their countries of origin but are still appealing. The judgment was immediately condemned as leaving the door open for torture evidence to be used in British courts - and the detainees plan to take their appeal to the House of Lords. Last night Amnesty International criticised the judges for giving a "green light for torture". It said: "The rule of law and human rights have become casualties of the measures taken in the aftermath of September 11. This judgment is an aberration, morally and legally." The decision comes just a week after three British men formerly held in Guantanamo Bay described how after ill treatment they had confessed to meeting up with Osama bin Laden when in fact all three had alibis, confirmed by British security services, that they were in the UK at the time. Ellie Smith, a human rights lawyer at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, said: "It is really dangerous and very worrying that any court is willing to use any evidence that has been obtained through use of torture or ill treatment." The decision to allow evidence from foreign torture was tantamount to contracting out the torture. "We have seen recent instances where the US forces have sent people to other countries for the purpose of extracting evidence," she added. The men - all of them foreign nationals and Muslim - are detained indefinitely under the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 and do not know most of the evidence against them because it is kept secret in the interests of national security. In their appeals, they argued that to use evidence obtained by torture was "morally repugnant", adding that evidence may have been extracted from men detained in both Guantanamo Bay and Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. Yesterday, one of the judges, Lord Justice Laws, ruled that there was no evidence to suggest the secretary of state had relied on material derived from torture or any other violation of the European convention on human rights. To suggest that it had been was "purely hypothetical". He and Lord Justice Pill said that torture evidence could be used in a British court so long as the state had not itself "procured" it or "connived" at it. The position facing the secretary of state on the use of such evidence was "extremely problematic". The law could not expect the secretary of state to inquire into the methods of how information was obtained. Mr Justice Laws said: "He [the home secretary] may be presented with information of great potential importance, where there is, let us say, a suspicion as to the means by which, in another jurisdiction, it has been obtained? What is he to do?" The judges unanimously dismissed the appeal but Lord Justice Neuberger dissented on the torture issue. He said he did not consider that a person would have a fair trial if evidence obtained through maltreatment was to be used, particularly since the person giving the statement would not be available for cross-examination. The majority decision was welcomed by the home secretary, David Blunkett. He said: "There has been a great deal of speculation about the cases put before Siac and whether they relied upon torture. Let me make it clear, we unreservedly condemn the use of torture and have worked hard with our international partners to eradicate this practice. However, it would be irre sponsible not to take appropriate account of any information that could help protect national security and public safety." Gareth Peirce, solicitor for eight of the men, said: "This is a terrifying judgment. It shows we have completely lost our way in this country, morally and legally." Britain is a signatory to the European convention on human rights which enshrines a series of fundamental rights, including "freedom from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment". Facilitating torture elsewhere is also illegal under the convention against torture to which the UK is committed. The lawyer for two other men, Natalia Garcia, said that human rights had become "a casualty of the so-called war on terror". She added: "We have sunk to an all-time low where a court can even contemplate that evidence obtained under torture could be admissible and where there is no attempt to provide any effective remedy against abuse of power. "This is injustice heaped upon injustice and we shall appeal to the House of Lords." From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Wed Aug 11 20:08:11 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Wed Aug 11 20:08:18 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Letter to G-Weekly re terrorism verdict Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040812110612.02c15578@central.murdoch.edu.au> It seems the British judges, in lowering the standard of proof, have decided that the crime of terrorism is so heinous that defendants must be punished whether they committed it or not. This is not new of course, as those gaoled for not planting a bomb at a Birmingham pub could attest. Dion Giles Joondanna, Western Australia From jfos at net-tech.com.au Thu Aug 12 04:55:05 2004 From: jfos at net-tech.com.au (John) Date: Wed Aug 11 21:30:45 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Good website on Iraq Message-ID: <6.1.0.6.1.20040812214314.02a296d0@redback.net-tech.com.au> The following site gathers daily info concerning occupied Iraq: news, analysis, documents and texts of Iraqi resistance - available in English and Italian Examples of recent postings/articles New neocon committee prepares for life in opposition Hussein Ibish, The Daily Star In an effort to shore up their waning influence on United States foreign policy, especially towards the Middle East, a group of neoconservative p olitical figures have launched a new organization, "the Committee Against the Present Danger." Many of its members represent the most belligerent trend in American politics towards the Arab world. Its chairman, former CIA Director James Woolsey, for example, has called on the United States to engage in "World War IV" against not only Islamist extremists like al Qaeda, but also the Shiite religious government of Iran, and the "fascists" of the former Iraqi regime and Syria... The lies that led to war Eric Margolis WELCOME TO the "Italian Job." In his 2003 State of the Union address, U.S. President George Bush cited British intelligence claims that Iraq had secretly imported uranium ore from Niger to make nuclear weapons. Bush's claims were based on crude forgeries, previously rejected by the CIA. Now, new information from European intelligence sources is detailing how the forgeries made their way from the Niger embassy in Rome to the White House. An FBI investigation of this outrageous scandal is said to be at a critical phase... The corporate invasion of Iraq Nicole Colson THERE'S ANOTHER invasion taking place in Iraq. But this time, it's not the U.S. military moving in--it's Corporate America. And it was all set up courtesy of outgoing former U.S. over seer, L. Paul Bremer. According to a recent report by Antonia Juhasz in Foreign Policy in Focus, some 158,000 U.S. and international troops and 20,000 contractors still occupy Iraq. But "equally debilitating, however significantly less well reported upon, is the continued political and economic occupation by the Bush administration and its corporate allies," Juhasz wrote... well worth a visit john foster Victoria, Australia From jfos at net-tech.com.au Thu Aug 12 05:22:32 2004 From: jfos at net-tech.com.au (John) Date: Wed Aug 11 21:30:45 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] German film exposes current radioactive warfare in Iraq Message-ID: <6.1.0.6.1.20040812221443.02a6deb0@redback.net-tech.com.au> "The Doctors, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children" German film exposes current radioactive warfare in Iraq http://www.traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_iraq.html Veterans, military families, activists and interested individuals can now order an English version of a documentary film produced for German television by Freider Wagner and Valentin Thurn. This stunning new video, has just been released by Ochoa-Wagner Produktion in 2004 in Germany and is available through Traprock Peace Center. "The Doctors, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children" exposes the use and impact of radioactive weapons during the current war against Iraq. The story is told by citizens of many nations and opens with comments by two British veterans, Kenny Duncan and Jenny Moore, describing their exposure to radioactive, so-called 'depleted? uranium (DU), weapons and the congenital abnormalities of their children. Dr. Siegwart-Horst G?nther, a former colleague of Albert Schweitzer, and Tedd Weyman traveled to Iraq, from Germany and Canada respectively, to assess uranium contamination in Iraq. Weyman led the investigative team that gathered samples for analysis for the Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC). He discusses startling findings of the 2003 field investigations in Iraq. "The human and environmental samples have been found to contain depleted uranium and abnormally high levels of the artificial transuranic isotope, 236U. ... Viewers will see in the film, evidence of a new class of uranium weapons." These include "bunker defeat" bombs. As an M.D., Dr. G?nther is especially interested in the health effects that can be caused by such contamination. At a hospital in Basra, Dr. Jenan Hassan revealed an on-going health catastrophe--a ten-fold increase in cancers and a twenty-fold increase in congenital deformities. The grisly realities of the cancer ward provide an appropriate alarm that could help to stop the use of these weapons unless it can be shown they will not harm civilians for generations to come. Dr. Duracovic, founder of the Uranium Medical Research Centre, and formerly a Colonel in the U.S. Army, says that the Canadian government wasted a million dollars on tests provided to Canadian veterans, using faulty methodology that looked for uranium in the hair, where uranium will not accumulate. LINKS To purchase "The Doctors, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children" (VHS NTSC format) go to http://www.traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_iraq.html The purchase price is $25.00 for non-commercial, non-institutional use and includes normal shipping - first class mail within the US. (If you require expedited shipping, please call Traprock at 413-773-7427 as the shipping rates will vary.) For an exclusive article on this film by Tedd Weyman, leader of Uranium Medical Research Centre investigative team that gathered samples for analysis, go to http://www.traprockpeace.org/tedd_weyman_10aug04.html For further description of the film see a summary of "The Doctors ... " by Sunny Miller. http://www.traprockpeace.org/depleted_uranium_iraq.html Thanks to Marion K?pker for alerting us to this resource. She was a convener of the World Uranium Weapons Conference 2003 -http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de Sunny Miller, Executive Director, Charles Jenks attorney at law President of the Core Group Traprock Peace Center 103A Keets Road Deerfield, MA 01342 413-773-1633; Fax 413-773-7507 charles@mtdata.com http://traprockpeace.org [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm From jfos at net-tech.com.au Thu Aug 12 06:13:59 2004 From: jfos at net-tech.com.au (John) Date: Wed Aug 11 21:30:45 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] ' Depleted ' Uranium : GI's Will Come Home To A Slow Death Message-ID: <6.1.0.6.1.20040812230859.06512790@redback.net-tech.com.au> " ...one way for a nation to achieve sovereignty over another nation was and is to utilize depleted uranium weaponry. Although such weaponry will not necessarily offer up a mushroom cloud, the wake of its devastation can be as deadly. Thus a policy of using depleted uranium in weapons began. (snip) The population-devastation politics of DU continues to this day....Witness what is occurring to the civilian population in Iraq. (snip) Never think for a moment that the Muslim nations hate us for our shopping centers and our democracy, our backyard swimming pools and our skyscrapers. They hate us for what we have done, and are doing, to them.' http://www.coastalpost.com/04/08/01.htm Marin Depleted Uranium Resolution Heats Up: GI's Will Come Home To A Slow Death By Carol Sterritt "There are only two things worth knowing in life, but I forget what they are." John Hiatt, American songwriter Now I remember what the two important things are. One is that the situation is dire. (And thus we need the artist and musician, the soul healer and the clown, more than ever.) The other is that despite the horror of the day, there are people who are so brave and beautiful in both thought and action that one is moved to tears. Look at the mindfulness of actions here in this county. For years, certain people in Marin have devoted a large portion of their lives to an outfit called the Marin Peace and Justice Coalition. Inside that group, some members are beginning a major work that could affect military service today and in the future when a draft might be instituted. One such Peace and Justice member is Yvette Wakefield. For over eighteen months, she has examined the Depleted Uranium issue. A county employee, she has often read the inscription on the 20 North San Pedro Building. This inscription reads: "The mission of health and human services is to promote and protect the health, well-being, self-sufficiency and safety of all people in Marin." Yvette could not reconcile what she learned about depleted uranium (DU) with the idea of health and human safety. For one thing, she had befriended Leuren Moret, a geoscientist who is now a world renowned authority on DU. Moret, who comes from a Quaker background, once worked at Livermore Labs. She now travels the world speaking out against the "omnicide" destructiveness of this material. The Creation of A World Class Activist How could someone like Moret, who once worked for the war industry, become a friend of a "peacenik," like Wakefield. Or for that matter, how could she herself become a peace activist? Well, back in 1991, Moret had a major realization. According to Moret, "In 1991 I became a whistleblower at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory near San Francisco, CA. Richard Berta, the Western Regional Inspector for the Department of Energy, told me, "The Pentagon exists for the oil companies and the nuclear weapons labs exist for the Pentagon." The more Moret learned, the more she became convinced that research and work involving depleted uranium was immoral. Beginning in 1991, depleted uranium was used to support three policies: One, to test the radiobiological effects of 4th generation nuclear weapons (still under development); Two, to blur and break down the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons; Three, to make it easier to reintroduce nuclear weapons into the US military arsenal. While at her job at Livermore, Moret watched America wage a short and apparently victorious Gulf War. In just a few short weeks, and after only 110 American casualties, we routed Iraq from Kuwait. But the true toll of this war upon our young servicemen and women occurred over the next decade. Of the 700,000 troops who served in the region, 267,000 suffered from some form of disability. Not only that, but some soldiers "infected" their spouses with disabilities similar to their own. Or they suffered the tragedy of having a child born with birth defects. Some victory, huh? At first, in its usual fashion, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Pentagon simply denied that this was happening. Those men and women, who had been hale and hearty before their military service, were now branded "malingerers." But internationally, other researchers spoke on record that these illnesses had nothing to do with malingering. Testimony from Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, Former Chief of the Naval Staff, India reads, "DU weapons emit Alpha particle dose impacting a single cell from U-238 some 50 times the annual dose level. Cancer is initiated with one alpha particle, its daughter isotopes effect generations as the isotopes bio-concentrate in plants and animals. They then travel up the food chain. It is a nuclear weapon because the energy is derived from the nucleus of the atom. The particles enter the body through the lungs, the digestive system or breaks in the skin. "One gram of DU releases more than 12,000 particles per second. The radiation slowly kills the cells that make life possible. The Gulf War syndrome of 1991 did just that (reported by Dr. Asaf Durakovic, Prof. of Medicine, Georgetown University, and discoverer of the Gulf War Syndrome.)" Our military has lobbed more than 500 tons of DU munitions on Afghanistan. Professor Yagasaki has calculated that 800 tons of DU is the "atomicity equivalent to 83,000 Nagasaki bombs." This fact he presented to the World Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg in October 2003. The amount of DU used in Iraq in 2003 equals nearly 250,000 Nagasaki bombs. Just as the Gulf War vets and their families have been imperiled by their service in Gulf War I, those veterans about to return from the Iraq war will undoubtedly face similar consequences. The Local FallOut This is why Yvette Wakefield is concerned. Should Marin County expend the energy and funding to nurture its children with healthy baby clinics, education Kindergarten to twelfth grade, sports programs and parks and recreation, only to then hand our kids at age eighteen over to the military? And not just any military, but one that plans on dispatching its personnel to a killing field where they will, even if surviving the "normal" activities of the battlefield, come home to a life of infirmity, sickness and hospitalization? Wakefield has problems with this idea. A trained paralegal, she began work on a County wide resolution that would proclaim the unacceptability of any Marin citizen serving in any area of the world where their health might forever be destroyed by DU. Her working draft of this resolution reads: Therefore in view of those dangers posed by exposure to depleted uranium, Marin County requires that all Marin residents serving in the United States Armed Forces and its Reserves be prohibited from serving in those areas where depleted uranium weaponry is used. This is because we acknowledge that our residents should not be required to face the life-threatening and lifelong health problems of radiation poisoning. Their having faced the normal dangers of combat should be enough. Soldiers who survive their military service are entitled to return home to a normal life of working, having families and friends and engaging in normal activities. She is now building a case for her resolution. She has set up a public forum on August 12, at 7:30 PM at the First United Methodist Church 9 Ross Valley Drive, San Rafael. Both Leuren Moret and Dennis Kyne will be speaking at the event. Their talk is titled "Depleted Uranium - The Trojan Horse of A Nuclear War." Once people in Marin hear the truth of the DU deployment, and they realize the horrific consequences born by the populations in the Middle East and our soldiers, they can be counted on to be supporters of this County wide resolution. Where DU Policies Came from, And Why They Continue The use of depleted uranium can be traced back to certain Nixon-Kissinger era decisions. When our country was stymied by the 1973 oil embargo, Nixon remarked that we have to make sure that an oil embargo will never happen again. Perhaps he would have been stopped by the test ban treaty of 1963, signed by Russia and the United States, both super powers at that time. According to the treaty, nuclear war was outlawed. But one way for a nation to achieve sovereignty over another nation was and is to utilize depleted uranium weaponry. Although such weaponry will not necessarily offer up a mushroom cloud, the wake of its devastation can be as deadly. Thus a policy of using depleted uranium in weapons began. It first surfaced in the Arab-Israeli war, Fall 1973, when Israel received and used such weapons from the United States. It used these weapons under our country's supervision. (Never think for a moment that the Muslim nations hate us for our shopping centers and our democracy, our backyard swimming pools and our skyscrapers. They hate us for what we have done, and are doing, to them.) The population-devastation politics of DU continues to this day. It is an effective policy. Witness what is occurring to the civilian population in Iraq. Following the Gulf War, birth defects and cancer cases rose exponentially. In one Baghdad hospital, which in pre-war days saw a single birth defect a week, there soon occurred three and four birth defective babies in a single day. (According to Moret, these defects are a deliberate contamination of the population.) For the past thirteen years, rare leukemias and bone cancers have been on the rise there. And of course, in the days of sanctions, the hospital supplies and equipment to help those affected were unavailable. Now, after the devastation of the "shock and awe" campaign of Spring, 2003, supplies are equally non-existent. Also, hospitals are now faced with the consequences of having only sporadic electricity and a lack of clean water. (The Bagdad population has survived the past winter by utilizing rainwater, collected in pots and pans put out on their roofs.) The stories related to birth defects are heart-breaking. Some Iraqi babies are born with eyeballs the size of lemons protruding from their eye sockets. Some babies have no brains. Some babies are born without any skin. Some pregnancies, although carried close to full term, result in a birth of only a lump of flesh, with no discernable torso, limbs or head or facial features. Our soldiers are coming home from our Middle East "adventures" with bodies pushed to the breaking point. On KPFA radio in June, it was revealed that of nine returning servicemen to New York City, six tested positive for unusually high levels of radioactivity in their bodies. Those with the highest levels already feel its effects. They are mind-numbingly tired; they have rashes, muscle aches and pains, and their nervous systems are impaired. The Horrific Working of Pernicious Materials These men were average soldiers in terms of their war experiences. But for certain soldiers, especially those who have survived the destruction of their tanks, the radiation diseases hit hard and heavy. By its nature, DU is aerosolized when impacted by explosion. Also the metal components of DU-hardened tanks become a deadly, inhale-able radiation upon explosion. The men and women experiencing this first hand are unaware that every breath they take during these events is impacting their lungs and blood streams with nano-sized charged particles that begin the ruin of their health immediately. Unlike the Japanese survivors of atomic blasts, who first felt radiation sickness within three days to a week, our soldiers can experience symptoms almost immediately. This is the result of the aerosol effects of the materials. The radioactive dust can be pulverized to the point that it is one hundred times smaller than bacteria. The particles go from the air to the lungs to the blood stream. They then end up attacking the body's mitochondria. The results range from multiple sclerosis type illnesses, to Parkinson's, to chemical sensitivities, and of course, at a somewhat later date, various cancers. Our nation's youth will sacrifice their prime years to this devastation, wearing adult diapers, shuffling along with walkers, using oxygen tanks, and trying to live with blindness and hearing loss. Meanwhile, our nation's policy shapers have big plans inside our country as well. In both Ohio and Kentucky, DU processing plants are underway. Both these areas have high unemployment rates. The local populace, desperate for work and a steady income, will have few qualms about what they are doing or why they are doing it. They will be told that the work is safe, and indeed it will seem so. There is no stench to uranium processing; the tiles and linoleum in the plants will no doubt be spotless. Those who recruit them will seem friendly and kind. The fact that the DU workers may have health problems five or ten years down the road is not a big matter for concern. After all, if you don't consider reality, how can it bother you? I ask that if you are moved by this account of Depleted Uranium devastation, you make a commitment. Red circle the date of the public forum, August 12th, on your calendars. For further information, call 415 721 2844. The lives you save are your own. After all, the air a Baghdad housewife breathed in this morning can be in your lungs by tomorrow afternoon. Public Forum "Depleted Uranium - The Trojan Horse of A Nuclear War." 7:30 PM at the First United Methodist Church 9 Ross Valley Drive, San Rafael Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm From papadop at peak.org Thu Aug 12 03:07:27 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Thu Aug 12 03:07:36 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] KERRY FAILS IRAQ TEST Message-ID: Thanks EL: ==================== http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1092175810357 Toronto Star Aug. 11, 2004. 01:00 AM Editorial: What do Americans need in their president, post-9/11? Strong leadership, of course. Clear vision. Common sense. And in a dangerous, fast-changing world, the capacity to learn from past mistakes would be helpful. Senator John Kerry, the Democrat who hopes to elbow President George Bush from office on Nov. 2, promises all of the above and more. But there was little of it on display Monday, when Kerry responded to Bush's challenge to spell out where he stands on the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Rising to Bush's bait, Kerry said he would have cast the same Yes vote in Congress that he did on Oct. 11, 2002, to authorize the president to launch a pre-emptive war that began March 19, 2003, even if Kerry had known that Saddam Hussein had no ties with Al Qaeda terrorists, no weapons of mass destruction and posed no real threat to the world. "I believe it's the right authority for a president to have," Kerry now says. Only he would have used that power more "effectively." This amounts to a sweeping claim by Kerry that America has carte blanche to make war on even bogus grounds, and in defiance of the United Nations and world opinion, so long as the war is waged effectively. It's depressing from a candidate who has attacked Bush for "misleading" the nation, who promises a better direction and who claims to want to re-engage with the world. Kerry's vote in 2002, while misguided, was defensible. Bush had exaggerated Saddam's threat, and had won over 7 in 10 Americans to the view that the Iraq war was justified. But since then, the U.N. has been vindicated. Saddam was contained; there were no ties to the 9/11 terrorists; and Iraq had no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. That leaves most Americans feeling misled, or duped. They can see the damage to U.S. prestige internationally. The loss of more than 1,000 American and allied lives, and 16,000 Iraqi lives . A $200-billion cost. And they see no easy exit. All this is baggage Bush should carry to the polls, alone. But Kerry has just re-endorsed his misguided policy, if not its clumsy delivery. No wonder Kerry is struggling to pull ahead in a race with a president who has not delivered promised jobs and who is seen as a friend of the rich and powerful. Practical politics undoubtedly prompted Kerry's reply. He is loath to admit he cast a foolish vote in 2002. He does not want to alienate voters who were similarly duped, and who are not keen to be reminded of it. And he must not be seen as "soft" on Saddam. But Kerry comes off looking like "Bush lite" on Iraq, rather than as a candidate with better values and a sounder program. He seems weak. Muddled. Has he learned nothing from a slew of American investigations that have exposed the sloppiness of U.S. intelligence and the shabbiness of the rationale for war? This is a letdown for American voters who yearn for a real alternative, and a healthier direction. It is not good news for the world, either. From papadop at peak.org Thu Aug 12 03:26:47 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Thu Aug 12 03:26:52 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Kerry doesn't leave room for retraction Message-ID: Congress (still ?) has the sole power to declare war. Bush came to the Congress for authority to go to war, preemptively, without awaiting UN support based on the results of weapons inspections, and on the basis of lies. Kerry fell for the lies, and in his own words would still support the congressional grant of authority if asked to vote today. ==================================== http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040810/1/3mc87.html Agence France Presse Wednesday August 11, {snip] As fighting raged in Najaf, debate over the Iraq war intensified in the United States, with President George W. Bush claiming political vindication after his Democratic rival for the White House, John Kerry said he would have authorised military action in Iraq even knowing what he knows today. "Almost three years after he voted for the war in Iraq, and almost 240 days after switching position and declaring himself the anti-war candidate, my opponent has found a new nuance," Bush told a campaign rally here. "He now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq," said Bush, whose handling of the military operation has been a major issue in his quest for re-election in November. Kerry voted to authorise force in Iraq but later turned critical of the war, lambasting Bush for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and establish a link between Baghdad and al-Qaeda terrorists. Under pressure to say whether he would vote the same way today, Kerry told reporters Monday: "Yes, I would have voted for the authority, I believe it's the right authority for a president to have." But speaking to reporters while campaigning at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, the Massachusetts senator said that as president he would have used the authority "very differently from the way President Bush has." Kerry said Bush had rushed to war without a plan to win the peace and on faulty intelligence. He said the president had failed to "bring other countries to the table" to support American troops. In Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf has said his country would not send troops to Iraq at present, but has not ruled out a change in policy if conditions improved. Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi gave the party of disgraced Pentagon favourite Ahmed Chalabi 24 hours to leave its Baghdad headquarters. An interior ministry spokesman insisted that similar eviction orders would be issued to parties which he said had seized state property after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, but acknowledged that this was the first. An official from Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress party charged that the order was part of a continuing conspiracy against the group, after its leader was charged with banknote forgery late last week. "The order was signed by the Iraqi government and delivered to us by an American soldier. The conspiracy continues," said Mithal al-Alusi. Following threats against key oil infrastructure from at least two Sadr aides, the state-owned Southern Oil Company announced on Monday that it was halting the pumping of crude "for security reasons." The southern oilfields around the city of Basra have been Iraq's sole source of crude exports since an attack on a pipeline artery to Turkey halted deliveries from the north last week. Limited loading continued at Basra but a terminal official said exports were down to an average of 35,000 barrels per hour from 80,000 barrels an hour previously. The Southern Oil Company refused to say whether pumping had resumed Tuesday. "We are closed today and I can say no more," an official said. The disruption helped push New York crude prices above 45 dollars a barrel for the first time ever Tuesday, although they later fell back. A Jordanian businessmen was snatched in Baghdad by an unknown group demanding a 250,000-dollar ransom, Amman's official Petra news agency said. However, Beirut said a truck driver, kidnapped in Iraq, was heading home after becoming the third Lebanese hostage to be released in 24 hours. Kidnappers of a Turkish driver also promised to release him in 24 hours if his company declared publicly that it worked for US troops and would no longer operate in Iraq, in a videotape shown to reporters in the city of Samarra. From papadop at peak.org Thu Aug 12 03:49:38 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Thu Aug 12 03:49:43 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] OUT-FOX FOX Message-ID: https://www.alternet.org/donate/fightfox/ Check this link to get more info FIGHT FOX DVD Donate $30 or more and get OUTFOXED on DVD AlterNet has launched a national legal challenge against the Fox News Network. We are suing to cancel its trademark ("Fair and Balanced") on the grounds that it is misleading, deceptive, and "notoriously mis-descriptive." Rupert Murdoch is livid, and has $7.8 billion to fight us with. AlterNet has ... well, let's just say that AlterNet has quite a bit less. So we're asking for your help to win this historic "David and Goliath" battle for the soul of honest and responsible journalism. More info --- We'll gladly send you a DVD copy of the powerful new documentary "OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" as our thanks for your help. OUTFOXED blows the lid off the Fox Network's cynical campaign to spin, slant, and manipulate the news in favor of the Republican Party. From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Thu Aug 12 07:28:08 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Thu Aug 12 07:28:18 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] OUT-FOX FOX In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >https://www.alternet.org/donate/fightfox/ > >Check this link to get more info > >FIGHT FOX > >DVD Donate $30 or more and get OUTFOXED on DVD > >AlterNet has launched a national legal challenge against the Fox News >Network. We are suing to cancel its trademark ("Fair and Balanced") on >the grounds that it is misleading, deceptive, and "notoriously >mis-descriptive." > >Rupert Murdoch is livid, and has $7.8 billion to fight us with. >AlterNet has ... well, let's just say that AlterNet has quite a bit >less. So we're asking for your help to win this historic "David and >Goliath" battle for the soul of honest and responsible journalism. > > >More info --- > >We'll gladly send you a DVD copy of the powerful new documentary >"OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" as our thanks for your >help. OUTFOXED blows the lid off the Fox Network's cynical campaign to >spin, slant, and manipulate the news in favor of the Republican Party. > I have seen "Outfoxed." (It wasn't the DVD but an excellent Divx rip available all over the Internet.) If you are like me and cannot stand watching the moronic level of "journalism" the Fox News Channel provides, watching this documentary which contains the evils of Murdoch--chapter and verse--is probably hazardous to your health. So if you want to join Alternet's symbolic lawsuit, you may just want to send some money and skip the DVD. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Thu Aug 12 07:39:38 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Thu Aug 12 07:40:04 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] It's the post-industrial economy, stupid! Message-ID: 'It's the post-industrial economy, stupid!' Date: Thursday, August 12 @ 10:10:39 EDT Topic: Economic Policy By Randolph T. Holhut http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=17391 DUMMERSTON, Vt. - So now, even journalists aren't immune from the outsourcing juggernaut. Reuters announced this week that it was cutting 20 editorial positions in the U.S. and Europe. They will be replaced by up to 60 people in Bangalore, India. According to Reuters, the Indian journalists won't be doing any actual reporting or writing bylined stories. They will be responsible for doing the scut work of financial reporting - compiling tables, writing short research alerts based on analyst reports and polling analysts for earnings forecasts. Reuters won't say how much money they will save by using lower-cost Indian journalists to do work once done in the U.S. and Europe, but the company says it is committed to reducing its workforce to stay profitable and keep pace with its chief rival in the financial news field, Bloomberg. In a column for Editor & Publisher's Web site, Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger wrote that "work gets done where it can be done most effectively and efficiently" and that outsourcing "helps because it frees up people and capital to do different, more sophisticated work. ... Every person, just as every corporation, must tend to his or her own economic destiny, just as our parents in the mills, shoe shops and factories did. That means continually upgrading skills and staying alert to emerging opportunities. ... The question shouldn't be 'Why?' It should be 'What can I do now that I don't have to do the work that's gone abroad?' and it must be 'What can you, my company, do to help me make a fresh start?'" If you are fortunate enough to have skills to do different, more sophisticated work, or have the means to acquire those skills, there will be opportunities. My question for Schlesinger is this: most workers are employed by companies that sees their employees as something disposable to be thrown away when they are no longer useful. In a world where more and more jobs are going to the lowest bidder, are we ready to be a post-industrial society? Are we ready to trust our lives to the whims of the marketplace? These are questions that need to be asked of our business and political leaders as well. The manufacturing sector of the American economy has been all but wiped out. Now, the back-of-the-house professional jobs are starting to disappear. Outsourcing is a big reason why, despite faint signs on an economic recovery, there is little new job growth in the U.S. Some economists think there is little advantage to the U.S. hanging onto what they call "low-value" businesses. If workers in Bangalore can process insurance claims or operate a telephone call center cheaper than American workers, why bother to keep those jobs in the U.S.? Better we should concentrate on businesses like publishing and entertainment, which accounts for 5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product and is the biggest single sector of the U.S. economy. But how many Americans are going to find jobs in the entertainment industry? And can we build a national economy where the U.S. specializes in entertainment, banking and technology while we farm out the rest of our economic functions to India or China? For now, America has the upper hand. The U.S. economy is eight times the size of China's. While Chinese factories are not as technologically advanced as U.S. factories, Chinese workers are efficient, disciplined and plentiful. They can build products by hand or with equipment that would be considered obsolescent in a U.S. factory, and build those products with comparable quality for a lower price. Few U.S. companies can compete with Chinese factories and their low labor costs. While there is an economic benefit - cheap consumer goods - for Americans, the tradeoff is the loss of good-paying jobs that enable workers to afford those goods. When manufacturing jobs started flooding out of the U.S., two decades ago, we were told not to worry, because the "knowledge economy" would create the jobs that would take their place. Now, even those jobs are going to other countries where the work can be done cheaper. Can America survive when the biggest employer is Wal-Mart and the career options available to the average worker involve low-paying service jobs that aren't enough to support a family? Some say education is the answer - investing in the human, social and cultural capital of America to insure we have the most creative, innovative and highly skilled workers in the world. India certainly is doing that - its colleges and universities are turning out more than 40,000 computer science graduates each year, and the enrollments in those programs are rising while U.S. colleges struggle to fill their science programs. And China produces more 325,000 engineers each year, or five times more than the U.S. Even if there is a massive investment in U.S. science education on par with what the federal government did after Russia launched their Sputnik satellite in 1957, companies will still turn to Indian and Chinese engineers and techies because they will be able to do quality work for less money than their U.S. counterparts. While the "war on terror" is dominating the presidential campaign, I believe that the effect of globalization and outsourcing on the U.S. economy is an equally important issue. Americans feel uneasy about the future and see a swiftly changing economy that doesn't seem to have room for most workers. The American economy is eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs each year as workers and resources get redirected to other industries. The average worker who finds a job to replace the one he lost earns about 13 percent less at his new job. People are being asked to work harder and longer for less money and labor under the constant threat of their job being sent to another country. And while it may be reassuring to know that your job may be safe if you are a plumber or carpenter, a health care worker or a teacher - in other words, skilled jobs that require physical proximity - everything else seems up for grabs. This is a problem without an easy solution. It will take money, creativity and a commitment to putting the needs of the people ahead of the needs of the market. The alternative is watching the U.S. become a second-rate economic power. Randolph T. Holhut has been a journalist in New England for more than 20 years. He edited "The George Seldes Reader" (Barricade Books). He can be reached at randyholhut@yahoo.com. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Thu Aug 12 08:12:06 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Thu Aug 12 08:12:24 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Let them eat Prozac! Message-ID: 'Let them eat Prozac!' Date: Thursday, August 12 @ 09:59:47 EDT Topic: The Bush Administration By Alan Bisbort, Hartford Advocate http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:77347 "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." -- G.W. Bush, 8/5/04 Wouldn't you know it. The one time when the truth passes the lips of a Bush, it's an accident. While the media played his latest gaffe like all the others -- isn't our prez a hoot! -- his misstatement is actually the guiding philosophy of the Republican Party. He and his gang of neocon sociopaths have harmed our country and our people so thoroughly that many Americans are now inured to it. It's accepted as part of the national scene, like a Red Sox collapse or celebrity crash diet. It's one unbroken chain of harm: Lost jobs, terror alerts, record gas prices, 54 U.S. dead in July in Iraq, our environment, public health and education left unprotected. And the biggest hoot of all is that the Republicans are "running on their record" in November. Who said irony was dead? The prevailing attitude was summed up by Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt. Sheybani recently suggested that American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones -- or take Prozac to get over their unhappiness. "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?" she said. Since 40 million adult Americans don't have health insurance, the Prozac solution proffered by self-appointed Dr. Sheybani isn't within the means of the unhappiest of our workers. Prozac, without insurance, is expensive, even as a generic. Sheybani might also consider that anxiety-riddled workers are less dangerous when left to their beer and satellite dishes, which have kept them sated and distracted up until now. A few beers, a few minutes with Fox News and they'll keep voting against their best interests, keep equating patriotism with the amoral corporate hucksters, keep believing Saddam was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Taken as directed by a physician, Prozac is designed to lift such delusional scales from one's eyes. Not worth taking a chance, Piggy Sue. The only other solution offered to overworked and underpaid Americans by the prevailing power structure was one suggested by Tom Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in a recent speech to an exclusive California business club. Donohue told the millions of Americans who've lost their jobs, will lose their jobs, can't find work or have to settle for low-paying jobs with no benefits to "Stop whining!" The remark was greeted with warm applause from the upper crust to whom it was delivered. To Republicans in 2004, bashing American workers is like Strom Thurmond's ancient cry for racial purity and lynch parties. "Stop whining," said Donohue, "the benefits of offshoring jobs outweigh the cost." And what are those benefits? Because those benefits can be summed up so simply, they are often ignored as part of the "new ways to harm our people" strategy: to make the rich richer, middle class poorer, and the poor so miserable they kill themselves or each other, thinning the herd to make room for the unaborted fetuses Republicans profess to love so much. Though it is provable, beyond a reasonable doubt, that four more years of Bush will be an unmitigated disaster for America, almost half of the people who stand to be harmed the most will refuse to believe it. They will, if they vote at all, mark their ballot for the man who read My Pet Goat for seven minutes to a class full of children while the nation suffered through the worst terror attack in history. This weird paradox is embodied by a guy on my block, a diehard backer of Bush, whom he affectionately calls "George W." This guy works hard in the outdoors every day for a living and unwinds each evening with several beers. He often begins rhapsodizing about the 300 bucks he got from "George W" last year as a tax "rebate," and other related themes. He blissfully lives with the delusion that "George W" is looking out for the little guy. This guy is an otherwise good neighbor and I normally let him go on. But this time I launched a five-minute recitation of all the reasons why he would be insane to vote for "George W" again. "Well, just because I back Bush doesn't make me a bad person, does it?" The self-pity embedded in that remark took me aback. Here are the sort of people who've keyed my car for its anti-Bush stickers, called me a "Saddam-loving" traitor, threatened me and my family, and now they want pity, they want to make nice. Sorry, neighbors. When Bush loses in November, we won't forgive and forget. Or make nice. If you're unhappy with that, maybe Dr. Laura will write you a scrip for Prozac. Copyright ? 2004 New Mass Media. Reprinted from The Hartford Advocate: -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Thu Aug 12 14:16:05 2004 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Thu Aug 12 14:16:11 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] (Fwd) AP/Ipsos Poll: Bush And Kerry Remain In Dead Heat Message-ID: <411BB3E5.1422.11A1CF95@localhost> ------- Forwarded message follows ------- From: "Ipsos News Alerts" To: "Janet Eaton" Subject: AP/Ipsos Poll: Bush And Kerry Remain In Dead Heat Date sent: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 16:02:06 -0500 AP/Ipsos Poll: Bush And Kerry Remain In Dead Heat Kerry Improves Profile On Security Washington, DC, August 12, 2004 - As President George W. Bush prepares for the GOP convention later this month, the latest Associated Press/Ipsos Public Affairs poll shows that he is statistically tied with Democratic candidate John Kerry, and has as many supporters as detractors of his job so far as President. Moreover, Bush is facing a group of persuadable voters who are even more negative than the average toward his performance. To peruse the full press release, with topline results, please go to: http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=2341 About Ipsos Public Affairs Ipsos Public Affairs, headquartered in Washington D.C., is a non-partisan, objective, survey-based research company made up of campaign and political polling veterans as well as seasoned research professionals. The company conducts strategic research initiatives for a diverse number of American and international organizations, based not only on public opinion research but often elite stakeholder, corporate, and media opinion research. It has offices in New York City, Chicago, San Ramon (CA), and Washington, with affiliates around the world. Ipsos Public Affairs conducts national and international public opinion polling on behalf of The Associated Press, the world's oldest and largest news organization, and conducts the young voters poll for Newsweek.com. Ipsos Public Affairs is an Ipsos company, a leading global survey-based market research group. Visit Ipsos Public Affairs online at http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pa To stay abreast of breaking news, research and analysis from Ipsos member companies, bookmark the Ipsos News Center: http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/ --------------------------------------------------------- This email was addressed to: jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca You received this email because you are subscribed to the Ipsos News Center or are a member of the media interested in public opinion polls. If you no longer wish to receive News Alerts from Ipsos, please UNSUBSCRIBE at: http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/unsubscribe.cfm Or let us know you'd like to be removed from our distribution list by reply email. ---------------------------------------------------------- (c) Ipsos Public Affairs 2004. All rights reserved. 1101 Connecticut Ave NW - Suite 200, Washington, DC, 20036, USA. ------- End of forwarded message ------- From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Thu Aug 12 18:47:44 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Thu Aug 12 18:48:05 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] World Bank Undermines Efforts on Global Warming Message-ID: http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/081304G.shtml World Bank Undermines Efforts on Global Warming By George M. Woodwell and Kilaparti Ramakrishna Boston Globe Wednesday 11 August 2004 Woods Hole - While we are all preoccupied with an unnecessary war costing billions of dollars and eating up time that might far better be spent on the alleviation of poverty and disease, global climatic disruption gains momentum and moves toward irreversible climatic chaos. The World Bank recently met to consider continued support for development of new sources of fossil fuels, the primary cause of the climatic disruption. It decided to continue support in the interest of offering succor to those less developed nations that might sell oil or coal or gas into the world markets. The action calls attention once again to the growing discrepancy between what the scientific community is saying about the state of the world and what the political and economic communities are willing to hear. The fact is that the environment is being changed in ways that destroy its life-supporting capacities. Immediate effective steps must be taken to stop the erosion. First, the world must move away from a reliance on fossil fuels - coal, oil, and gas - as the energy source for industrialization. There is, of course, enormous resistance to this change. The political and economic interests of the fossil fuel industry and its allies are overwhelming. They argue, in a now stereotypical pattern, that the scientists are wrong, then that the scientists may be right but change is very expensive and the expense is not justified, and, finally, that it is too late to try because we cannot stop the changes. The World Bank, on the other hand, has an international legal personality and a position of leadership. Its job is to improve the world, to aid in economic development. While one might question the organization's methods, its mission is certainly not to drive the world into impoverishment. Yet the human undertaking that the World Bank wishes to advance is dependent upon a functioning environment that is being destroyed daily by current use of fossil fuels. The best way to eliminate a pest, defeat an enemy, or cause the erosion of society is to change the environment out from under it. History is rich in examples as climate or soil or other environmental resources have collapsed and caused the demise of one civilization after another. The difference now is that the changes are global and the global industrial civilization with all of its successes and all of its promise is at hazard. The atmospheric burden of human-produced heat-trapping gases, especially carbon dioxide, is more than 30 percent 0above what it was a century ago and far higher than it has been at any time in the last 460,000 years. And it will soar under current policies to levels that are in fact unpredictable as the warming feeds on itself by stimulating further releases of heat trapping gases from forests and soils and as the seas warm and absorb less of the excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The full effects of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, without continued additions, will extend far beyond current predictions. The failure of the United States and others to take international leadership in correcting this trend is inexcusable, but this failure in no way justifies the action of the World Bank in leading the world into even greater reliance on fossil fuels. If the bank requires justification in international action, it has it in the Framework Convention on Climate Change, a treaty that has been ratified by all the nations, including the United States, and provides for "stabilizing" the heat trapping gas content of the atmosphere at levels that will protect human interests and nature. It is time for the public to hold the World Bank and other international development agencies to a far higher set of environmental standards than has been set by most of the governments that delegates to the governing board represent. Failure to do so assures the ultimate and final failure of the central mission of government at all levels, but most conspicuously in the international realm that the international development banks serve. George M. Woodwell and Kilaparti Ramakrishna are the director and deputy director of the Woods Hole Research Center. Floods: Rich Nations 'Must Share the Blame' By Saleemul Huq Mail & Guardian, South Africa Wednesday 11 August 2004 Cape Town is under water. So is Bangladesh. But Capetonians are relatively well off. In Bangladesh, millions of people have been displaced by water this year alone. With global warming a likely culprit, shouldn't those who caused it pay their debt? The role of climate change - even if only partial - in helping to trigger recent floods increases the moral duty of rich nations to provide assistance. The issue is all the more pressing as the frequency of flooding is likely to increase in the future. As Bangladesh faces the consequences of its worst floods in six years, leaving more than 700 dead and at least 30-million people homeless or stranded, the question is inevitably being asked: have these floods been caused by human-induced climate change? There is no straight answer; indeed, it may be impossible to attribute this particular flood event to climate change. But what can be said with certainty is that such events will occur with increasing frequency in the future, due to changes in the global climate system caused by greenhouse gas emissions attributable to human activities. In its last report, published in 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - set up by the United Nations to examine the evidence for climate change - states unequivocally that human-induced climate change is taking place. The panel's conclusions are based on observations from some of the world's leading scientists, who have recorded unprecedented changes in climatic patterns, along with global circulation models that also predict that the atmosphere will get warmer over the next five to 10 decades. Such models also confidently predict that this atmospheric warming will cause sea levels to rise by several metres over the next 500 to 700 years. In contrast, however, the panel's degree of confidence is much lower in short- and medium-term predictions of between five and 20 years. It is also relatively difficult to model the types of changes in climate that may be triggered by global atmospheric warming. Floods and cyclones are among the extremes of natural climatic variation. We are, therefore, naturally interested to know about the likelihood of such extreme events in a warmer world. Climate modellers are currently unable to make accurate predictions about such extreme events. But in the short term, they can already say that they are likely to become more frequent, even if not necessarily more severe. For example, "once-in-20-year" events, such as the current flood, could now occur every five years. This prediction is supported by the fact that the last flood of similar magnitude occurred in Bangladesh not 20 years ago (as we might have expected without any global warming) but only six years ago, in 1998. Of course, this does not prove conclusively that this flood is due to global warming. But the modelling work of climate scientists does suggest the frequency of such floods will be much greater in future than in the past. And that means that we need to be better prepared for such floods in future. In the case of the present floods in Bangladesh, the public warning about rising waters was made known several days in advance, and those likely to be affected were able to take some - admittedly quite inadequate - measures. Given the increasing accuracy of predictions, based on a combination of weather forecasting and aerial monitoring of river and irrigation systems, there will no longer be any excuse in future for saying that the floods came as a surprise. Countries need to be ready for such disasters every year from now, just as if it were putting the country on a war footing. If the floods turn out to be moderate, the country will not have lost much. But if they are severe, the nation will be better prepared, and better preparation will considerably reduce the adverse impacts. The prudent course to follow is to prepare for the worst-case scenario. This requires a wide range of changes in attitudes and actions. These include: * Improved meteorological and hydrological information for prediction and warning; * Making flood warning more accurate with respect to which localities will be affected, by how much and when; * Improving evacuation procedures, providing safe shelters on raised ground, building all future roads at higher levels with more sluice gates to allow the flow of flood water; * Building protective embankments for high-capital-value infrastructure or densely populated areas only (it will be impossible to protect everyone and everywhere); * Stockpiling water-purification tablets, medicines and dry food; * Preparing health centres for patients with diarrhoea and snake bites; and * Preparing seed beds for seedlings after the floods recede. In addition, multiple other actions need to be taken by those at all levels: from national policy-makers to those working for the relevant ministries, local administrations, political parties, NGOs, colleges, schools and finally down to individual citizens. It may seem, therefore, that the future looks bleak with respect to future floods. But it does not necessarily have to be that bad, and there are at least a couple of important, albeit small, silver linings behind the dark, rain-laden clouds. Firstly, with better information, preparation, warning, action and rehabilitation, the adverse impacts of severe events such as floods can be reduced; this was already well demonstrated during the Bangladeshi floods of 1998, and hopefully will be demonstrated again this year. People have risen to the challenge in the past and can do so again in the future. Second is the fact that floods caused - even if only partly - by climate change are fundamentally different from "normal" floods. Even though scientists cannot (yet) attribute an exact percentage to the role of climate change in such events, they are reasonably sure it is greater than zero, and will be able to make an increasingly accurate estimate of the contribution over the next few years. This opens up an entirely new level of calculation for the floods. In the past, they could be attributed entirely to "acts of God" (or nature). In future, they will also be at least partially attributable to human acts as well. Furthermore, it is also widely recognised that it is the rich countries of the world that are primarily responsible for the problem of global warming. And that puts a political slant on the allocation of responsibility both for extreme events themselves and for efforts to mitigate their impact. In future, therefore, when affected countries demand assistance from the rich countries of the world in helping address climate-related disasters such as floods, it will not be for a request for charity but for compensation - appealing to their moral responsibility, if not their legal liability - to make good the damage and destruction for which their activities have, directly or indirectly, been partially responsible. Saleemul Huq is the director of the climate change programme at the International Institute for Environment and Development in the United Kingdom and chairperson of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies. This feature is adapted from an article published in The Daily Star in Dhaka, Bangladesh. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Thu Aug 12 19:58:29 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Thu Aug 12 19:58:42 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] New group attacks Kerry; youth swing away from Bush Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040813104939.02d3f5b0@central.murdoch.edu.au> A couple of interesting items in the Washington Post, along with the usual parochial Capitol Hill blather. **A group of coloured Americans has started a series of hard-hitting radio ads against Kerry's pretensions, sponsored by a tycoon for motives which are being questioned by the Kerry camp. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58006-2004Aug11.html AND ** Polls are showing a major swing of young Americans away from Bush over the past four months. It is at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59072-2004Aug12.html Dion Giles Western Australia From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Thu Aug 12 20:30:05 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Thu Aug 12 20:30:23 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Washington Post admits pre-Iraq 'flaws' Message-ID: Washington Post admits pre-Iraq 'flaws' From correspondents in Washington August 12, 2004 http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,10423940%255E401,00.html EDITORS at US daily newspaper The Washington Post have acknowledged they underplayed stories questioning US President George W Bush's claims in the lead up to the US invasion of Iraq. In the story published in the newspaper today, Post media critic Howard Kurtz writes that editors resisted stories that questioned whether Bush had evidence that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. "We did our job but we didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder," assistant managing editor Bob Woodward says in the story. "We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier" than many believed. Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks told Kurtz, "There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?" Executive editor Leonard Downie said, "We were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration's rationale." In the story, which runs for more than 3,000 words for today's edition of the Post, Kurtz writes, "The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times." A number of critics have faulted the American news media for not being more sceptical about the Bush administration's claims before the beginning of the war in March 2003. In the year and a half since Saddam was toppled, US troops have yet to discover any weapons of mass destruction. In a study published in March by the Centre for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, researchers wrote: "If the White House acted like a WMD story was important, ... so too did the media. If the White House ignored a story (or an angle on a story), the media were likely to as well." In May, The New York Times criticised its own reporting on Iraq, saying it found "a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been" and acknowledging it sometimes "fell for misinformation" from exile Iraqi sources. The Associated Press -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Thu Aug 12 20:35:39 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Thu Aug 12 20:35:54 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Bush Stumbles Again Message-ID: Bush Stumbles Again Bush's verbal gaffes are no longer a laughing matter. By Gerald Rellick http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=835 At a bill signing ceremony in the White House on August 5, George Bush pulled off his latest verbal gaffe. Captured on film and shown worldwide, as well as on Jay Leno, Bush remarked with his patented smirk, "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." The same day I read this, I had just finished an article by Charley Reese, Vote for a Man, Not a Puppet, written in May. Reese, a staunch conservative and formerly a columnist with the Orlando Sentinel, writes, "It's no wonder the president avoids press conferences like the plague. Take away his cue cards and he can barely talk. Americans should be embarrassed that an Arab king (Abdullah of Jordan) spoke more fluently and articulately in English than our own president at their joint press conference recently." Jay Leno joked recently that hearing Bill Clinton during the Democratic convention "made you nostalgic for a time when presidents could speak." Last April, the Los Angeles Times published a letter from a 73 year-old woman, Phyllis Lilly, of Ridgecrest, California. No one could have captured any better the essence of our hapless president than Ms. Lilly when she wrote, "I watched President Bush's April 13 press conference. In my 73 years, I have never seen or heard such stumbling, bumbling ignorance by an American president. He never fully answered one question and deliberately rambled on in order to kill time and answer fewer questions. This illiterate man is an embarrassment to our country." And mind you, these are not the words of one of those "pointy-headed liberal intellectual elites." But the sheer frightfulness of George Bush isn't just found in his language. Consider one very alarming example. Nearly everyone has now seen, or heard of, the scene from Fahrenheit 9/11 where George Bush sits passively and glazed for seven minutes in a Florida school room after he has been informed of a second hijacked plane hitting the Twin Towers. The words spoken to him were, "We are under attack, Mr. President." As one movie reviewer remarked, this scene is almost surreal; it has to be seen to be believed. The 9/11 Commission Report tells us that during those dreadful minutes, Vice President Cheney was, in effect, calling the command shots from Washington. But Cheney lacked good information and was understandably bewildered and confused. Nevertheless, he at least was trying to do something to protect America, while the president flew around in Air Force One wondering where to land and what to do. Consider our nuclear weapons system, which is designed so that the president always has the nuclear code with him in the form of the so-called "football," handcuffed to a military officer so that the president can react to a nuclear threat within minutes, perhaps even seconds. But after Bush's performance on September 11, 2001, perhaps it would be better to have the football travel with Dick Cheney, or perhaps the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture--anyone but George Bush! So, who are these people who still support George Bush for four more years of dis-service to this country? Do they believe that stupidity pays some dividend in the end? Are they so frightened of the Democrats that they prefer a virtual moron as president--a man who has his finger on the nuclear trigger and who has already demonstrated that war is not his "last option"? Do they concede that Bush really is stupid but otherwise just a harmless dupe or puppet who will be held in check by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the Republican forces in Congress--and so, is still better than any Democrat, who as we all know will raise our taxes, take away our guns, release all the felons from prison, give abortion on demand, promote pornography, ? ? Millions of American voters are in some form of deep denial due largely to fear growing out of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. America the brave has become America the afraid, and it seeks comfort in the known and familiar, just as the abused wife futilely seeks comfort in her abuser. And make no mistake, Bush and his cohorts have orchestrated this perfectly for political purposes, from the nonspecific terrorist alerts, which have become the butts of comedians' jokes, to the pressure being put on Pakistan President Musharraf by the Bush administration to capture "high-value targets before the November elections," as reported by The New Republic. One such HVT captured was Ahmed Ghailani, an Al Qaeda operative wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. TNR reports that although Ghailani was captured on July 25, announcement of his capture by Pakistan's interior minister took place on local television about five hours before John Kerry gave his acceptance speech in Boston on July 29. The announcement was at midnight Pakistani time. Is there is any doubt that it was intended for American audiences? Bush is now furiously playing catch-up as he loses ground on this one last issue of combating terrorism that Americans still give him some credit for. And, as Bob Herbert writes in the New York Times, "The nation seems paralyzed, unsure of what to do about Iraq or terrorism?. Nobody seems to know where we go from here." Like one giant ball of loosely wound string, the myth of the warrior-hero is unraveling. Gerald S. Rellick, Ph.D., worked in the defense sector of the aerospace industry. He now teaches in the California Community College system. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Thu Aug 12 20:44:49 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Thu Aug 12 20:45:46 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Painting the Economy Into a Corner Message-ID: Painting the Economy Into a Corner, Bush Then Says Lets Change The Subject To Terror Painting the Economy Into a Corner Published: August 12, 2004 http://engforum.pravda.ru/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=91665 President Bush reacted decisively to this month's shockingly bad employment report - by quickly changing the topic to terror. The Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, also focused elsewhere, namely on rising oil prices. Mr. Greenspan used inflationary energy costs as the rationale for raising interest rates a quarter point, despite the drastic slump in hiring and a recent slowdown in productivity growth. What neither man seems ready to acknowledge outright is that policy makers have run out of tools for stewarding an economy that - nearly three years into a recovery - has yet to flourish and may even be downshifting to neutral. The president's fiscal policies, mainly high-end tax cuts, have resulted in a record federal budget deficit without spurring hiring or income growth. If Mr. Bush continues on the tax-cut path, continuing high deficits will further threaten job creation and living standards. Mr. Greenspan passed up opportunities to discourage Mr. Bush's disastrous tax-cut strategy back when it might have done some good. Instead, the Fed pursued its own stimulative policy, pushing interest rates to the lowest level in a generation. One result has been a debt load that is a big factor in the overall decline in households' net worth, despite the rise in housing values. That alone argues for tightening the money spigot. Another reason for raising rates is that the continuation of a cheap-money policy would probably precipitate inflation, as a glut of dollars would eventually feed rising prices. Mr. Bush and Mr. Greenspan have now exhausted almost all of their stimulus options. The economy is on its own, and it is not clear whether it is on track for a stronger recovery in the second half of the year. No wonder, then, that Mr. Bush won't acknowledge the bad news on jobs. Doing so would imply a need to re-examine the policies that have led to this point, something he is not willing to do. Given the facts, his intransigence is appalling: according to a new research report by Economy.com, an independent provider of economic data and analysis, the $700 billion swing from surplus to deficit under President Bush accounted for nearly two percentage points of economic growth a year. But it has generated economic gains of just over one percentage point. The main reason for the crippling discrepancy is that the tax cuts were mostly handed out where they did the least good - that is, lavished on the people least likely to spend the largess. The reduction in the tax rates, the largest of Mr. Bush's tax boons, provided only 59 cents of economic stimulus for every dollar of lost tax revenue. The tax cut for dividends and capital gains produced 9 cents of stimulus for every forgone dollar. (Did someone say, "Deficits as far as the eye can see"?) In contrast, the economic bang for a dollar of aid to state governments is $1.24. Yet such assistance accounted for only 3 percent of the total cost of Mr. Bush's fiscal policies. The president was right to use a fiscal stimulus to counter a recession - it's just that his favorite tactics were wrong, and they failed to create an environment that fosters growth in jobs and income. Now, along with outside factors like oil prices, Mr. Bush's priorities are actually contributing to the weak picture for jobs. And in a perverse feedback loop, a continuation of these policies will further swell the deficit, impeding job growth even more. While the economy is still expanding and jobs are being created, the pace pales in comparison with the pace of other recoveries at this same stage. For real prosperity to take hold, a much broader swath of the labor force must be able to find jobs and earn decent wages. That isn't likely to happen under Mr. Bush's policies. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Thu Aug 12 22:04:36 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Thu Aug 12 22:05:12 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Huge escalation of Middle East war Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040813124245.02ed11a0@central.murdoch.edu.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20040813/e8a60733/attachment.html From papadop at peak.org Thu Aug 12 23:05:23 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Thu Aug 12 23:05:26 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] CASSEL: Another "Terrorist" Cell Conviction In Trouble: Message-ID: http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/ecassel/2004/08/12 Send Comments and Tips to: Elaine Cassel Thursday, August 12, 2004 Another "Terrorist" Cell Conviction In Trouble: When Will Ashcroft and His Henchmen Pay? As I await final word on the possible release of Yaser Hamdi, whom Ashcroft has proclaimed for more than two years as too dangerous to ever see the light of day (never mind that he faced no criminal charges), I learned why a federal judge in Detroit has had a motion to overturn convictions in an alleged terrorist cell under consideration since January 2004. Seems like key evidence introduced by the government through its witnesses is a fraud, a fake. Or course, the proseuctors knew nothing about it, right? They can't tell tourist home videos from al Qaeda surveillance tapes. Think of this story as you read about the arrest of a man in Charlotte, NC for taking pictures. While you are at it, you better throw away your camera. The next picture you take could be your last. I am not sure what Judge Gerald Rosen will do, but he cannot be too happy about this news. Note that once again, a prosecutor violated his gag order to not discuss the case (something prosecutors and Big John Ashcroft himself did during the trial). A defense attorney would be in jail for contempt of court. Prosecutors are not beholden to judges, in case you have not noticed. Maybe Judge Rosen will give the prosecutors--and the defendants--what they deserve. Dismissal of charges. While he is at it, maybe he will embarass John Ashcroft into explaining the false prosecutions and fraudulent evidence. JUSTICE DISPUTES KEY TERROR CASE EVIDENCE By SARAH KARUSH and JOHN SOLOMON Associated Press Writers (AP) - The Bush administration's already troubled case against an accused terror cell in Detroit is being dealt another blow with revelations that a witness came forward after the trial to undercut a key piece of video evidence presented to jurors. Lawyers and Justice Department officials said Wednesday night that a man shown in a videotape of landmarks in New York, Las Vegas and California has told investigators the tape was an amateur film and not surveillance as prosecutors portrayed at the trial of four suspected terrorists. The witness interview was conducted in January, months after the trial in Detroit ended, and was turned over this summer to defense lawyers. It could deal a significant blow to the Bush administration's first major terror prosecution since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The Justice Department is nearing completion of a monthslong review of prosecutors' conduct during the case, and a judge will rule on a defense request to reverse the convictions of three men. "During the course of this review, information has come to the government's attention that we were obligated to turn over the defense, and we did so," Justice spokesman Mark Corallo said Wednesday night. "The review is ongoing and at the end of the day, the government will do the right thing based on the facts and the evidence." Though both sides have known about the witness interview for some time, they were precluded from disclosing it because of a judge's gag order. Both sides confirmed it Wednesday after the judge lifted the gag order because one of the original prosecutors in the case, Richard Convertino, granted an interview to The Associated Press this week. James Thomas, a lawyer for one of the Detroit defendants, said the new witness testimony undercuts one of the key pieces of evidence used against his client. "It was an amateurish video taken by school kids," Thomas said. Justice officials said their review has turned up several problems with the original prosecution. "Since the discovery of the tape in Detroit in 2001 and up until recently, the Justice Department's experts believed the footage was terrorist surveillance, but the information that has come to light calls into question those conclusions," a Justice official said, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the internal investigation is still under way. William Sullivan, a lawyer for Convertino, said his client had shown the tape to numerous Justice experts who told him it was consistent with other terror surveillance. "He was never presented with any evidence that contradicted those experts' assessments," Sullivan said. Convertino is now under investigation in the case. In a jury verdict last summer hailed by the Bush administration as the breakup of a terror cell, Karim Koubriti, 25, and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, 38, were convicted on terrorism and fraud charges, and Ahmed Hannan, 36, was convicted of fraud. A fourth defendant, Farouk Ali-Haimoud, 24, was acquitted. The convictions have been in doubt for months after Justice officials divulged some documents that might have been helpful to defense lawyers weren't turned over during the trial, and they removed the original prosecutors and put them under investigation. An FBI agent and other experts put on by the prosecution at the trial said the tape appeared to be casing footage consistent with the way radical Muslim groups have taught operatives to conduct surveillance. But the defense has argued the tape belonged to someone else and showed innocent tourism footage. Justice officials said while the belated witness testimony calls into question the Detroit tape, a second tape found by Spanish authorities in an al-Qaida hideout in Madrid in 2002 that shows many of the same landmarks is still regarded by U.S. officials as terror surveillance. Both tapes, obtained by AP and aired nationally this week, show footage of casino hotels in Las Vegas, Disneyland in California and several landmarks in New York City, including the World Trade Center before it was attacked. AP reported earlier this week that Justice Department documents from the time of the Detroit trial show that repeated friction between Washington and Detroit kept the government from showing the Spanish videotape and other evidence to the jury. In an interview with AP, Convertino alleged that "narrow-shouldered bureaucrats" in Washington kept him from putting on a stronger case. Convertino also claimed that Las Vegas authorities decided for economic reasons not to warn the public in 2002 that Detroit and Spanish terror cells had footage of the casinos that experts regarded as surveillance. Las Vegas authorities acknowledged they were shown both tapes back in 2002, but said their decision not to warn the public had nothing to do with economics. "There are many factors that impact upon decisions pertaining to the type and quality of information that should be disseminated ... but the monetary impact of the information upon the local economy is not one of them," the U.S. Attorney's Office in Las Vegas said Wednesday. While Las Vegas authorities didn't issue a warning, California officials who were told about the same Spanish video footage, which included the Golden Gate Bridge, decided back in 2002 to go public with an alert. From ax490 at ncf.carleton.ca Fri Aug 13 02:43:58 2004 From: ax490 at ncf.carleton.ca (Mike Dirienzo) Date: Fri Aug 13 03:23:55 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Don't say "class", don't even say "worker" Message-ID: <411C8D5E.7040705@ncf.carleton.ca> A letter to the rather good online newspaper Straight Goods nicely illustrates how the right has marginalized the left by controlling the acceptable public use of language. Here's the link: http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewLetter.cfm?REF=1391 The letter writer denounces the word "worker" as a "slogan" from the 19th-century. He criticizes a columnist for using the word, but does not suggest any alternative term. Are we "associates" now? I know a high-tech company that refers to its workers as "service providers". Having made an issue of an ordinary English word, his only contribution to the discussion is to muddy the waters with disingenuous questions: Are executive employees not workers? What about the self-employed? Etc. If people like us took this criticism to heart, in the name of protecting our credibility, we would have to stop talking about deteriorating working conditions and increasing exploitation. Some people would like that very much. From janice_g at free.net.nz Fri Aug 13 05:39:31 2004 From: janice_g at free.net.nz (Janice) Date: Fri Aug 13 07:02:34 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right Message-ID: <380-220048513123931500@free.net.nz> ---- Original Message ---- From: hermann@picknowl.com.au To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Subject: Re: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 18:45:21 +0930 >At 12:54 PM 9/08/2004 +1200, you wrote: > >> >At 12:18 AM 7/08/2004 +1200, Janice wrote: >> > >> >>Which really underlines the invalidity of "anti-capitalism" as a >> >>movement. The same grabbing class will not permit any real >> >>competition in globalisation therefore capitalism as an >> >>economic system does not exist. Only fascism exists. >> > >> >Fascism is totalitarian capitalism. >> >>If this is true then how do we explain the fact that it is occurring >>in democracies everywhere? > > > The world operated in a qualitatively different manner between > 1945 and 1975. At that stage the neoclassical school was little > more than a minor sect. Things really changed for the worse > after 1980 with the advent of Thatcher and Reagan. > This does not answer the question, John. If fascism is totalitarian capitalism then explain how fascism is occurring in democracies ? Either totalitarianism is an absolute dictatorship or it is not totalitarianism. You can't have it both ways. :-) j j From janice_g at free.net.nz Fri Aug 13 06:23:52 2004 From: janice_g at free.net.nz (Janice) Date: Fri Aug 13 07:02:34 2004 Subject: + URL [Mai-not] Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning vict Message-ID: <380-22004851313235215@free.net.nz> Post this one to local indymedias everyone. Lets give him our support in any small way we can. > >---- Original Message ---- >From: jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca >To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net >Subject: RE: + URL [Mai-not] Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a >stunning vict >Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 04:39:34 -0300 > >>http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,12716,1278276,00.html >> >>------- Forwarded message follows ------- >>From: "Janet M Eaton" >>To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net >>Date sent: Tue, 10 Aug 2004 04:32:03 -0300 >>Priority: normal >>Subject: [Mai-not] Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning >victory >>Send reply to: jeaton@ca.inter.net, >> A renewed Mai-Not >> >> >>Loathed by the rich >> >> Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory >> >>Richard Gott in Caracas >>Saturday August 7, 2004 >>The Guardian >> >>To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise > >>of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo >>Chavez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a >>referendum designed to lead to his overthrow. First elected in 1998 >>as a barely known colonel, armed with little more than revolutionary > >>rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme, Chavez has >>become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the > >>neo-liberal hegemony of the United States. Closely allied to Fidel >>Castro, he rivals the Cuban leader in his fierce denunciations of >>George Bush, a strategy that goes down well with the great majority >>of the population of Latin America, where only the elites welcome >the >>economic and political recipes devised in Washington. While Chavez >>has retained his popularity after nearly six years as president, >>support for overtly pro-US leaders in Latin America, such as Vicente > >>Fox in Mexico and Alejandro Toledo in Peru, has dwindled to nothing. > >>Even the fence-sitting President Lula in Brazil is struggling in the > >>polls. The news that Chavez will win this month's referendum will be > >>bleakly received in Washington. Chavez came to power after the >>traditional political system in Venezuela had self-destructed during > >>the 1990s. But the remnants of the ancien rigime, notably those >>entrenched in the media, have kept up a steady fight against him, in > >>a country where racist antipathies inherited from the colonial era >>are never far from the surface. Chavez, with his black and Indian >>features and an accent that betrays his provincial origins, goes >down >>well in the shanty towns, but is loathed by those in the rich white >>suburbs who fear he has mobilised the impoverished majority against >>them. The expected Chavez victory will be the opposition's third >>defeat in as many years. The first two were dramatically counter- >>productive for his opponents, since they only served to entrench him > >>in power. An attempted coup d'itat in April 2002, with fascist >>overtones reminiscent of the Pinochet era in Chile, was defeated by >>an alliance of loyal officers and civilian groups who mobilised >>spontaneously and successfully to demand the return of their >>president. The unexpected restoration of Chavez not only alerted the > >>world to an unusual leftwing, not to say revolutionary, experiment >>taking place in Venezuela, but it also led the country's poor >>majority to understand that they had a government and a president >>worth defending. Chavez was able to dismiss senior officers opposed >>to his project of involving the armed forces in programmes to help >>the poor, and removed the threat of a further coup. The second >>attempt at his overthrow - the prolonged work stoppage in December >>2002 which extended to a lockout at the state oil company, Petrsleos > >>de Venezuela, nationalised since 1975 - also played into the hands >of >>the president. When the walkout (with its echoes of the CIA-backed >>Chilean lorry owners' strike against Salvador Allende's government >in >>the early 1970s) failed, Chavez was able to sack the most pampered >>sections of a privileged workforce. The company's huge surplus oil >>revenues were redirected into imaginative new social programmes. >>Innumerable projects, or "missions", were established throughout the > >>country, recalling the atmosphere of the early years of the Cuban >>revolution. They combat illiteracy, provide further education for >>school dropouts, promote employment, supply cheap food, and extend a > >>free medical service in the poor areas of the cities and the >>countryside, with the help of 10,000 Cuban doctors. Redundant oil >>company buildings have been commandeered to serve as the >headquarters >>of a new university for the poor, and oil money has been diverted to > >>set up Vive, an innovative cultural television channel that is >>already breaking the traditional US mould of the Latin American >>media. The opposition dismiss the new projects as "populist", a term > >>customarily used with pejorative intent by social scientists in >Latin >>America. Yet faced with the tragedy of extreme poverty and neglect >in >>a country with oil revenues to rival those of Saudi Arabia, it is >>difficult to see why a democratically elected government should not >>embark on crash programmes to help the most disadvantaged. Their >>impact is about to be tested at the polls on August 15. Vote "Yes" >to >>eject Chavez from the presidency. Vote "No" to keep him there until >>the next presidential election in 2006. The opposition, divided >>politically and with no charismatic figure to rival Chavez to front >>their campaign, continue to behave as though their victory is >>certain. They discuss plans for a post-Chavez government, and watch >>closely the ever-dubious and endlessly conflicting opinion polls, >>placing their evaporating hopes on the "don't knows". They still >>imagine fondly that they can achieve a victory comparable to that of > >>the anti-Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1990. Yet their third attempt >to >>derail the government is clearly doomed. The Chavez campaign to >>secure a "No" vote has struck the country like a whirlwind, playing >>to all his strengths as a military strategist and a political >>organiser. A voter registration drive, reminiscent of the attempt to > >>put black people on the election roll in the United States in the >>1960s, has produced hundreds of thousands of new voters. So too has >a >>campaign to give citizenship to thousands of long-term immigrants. >>Most will favour Chavez, and Chavez supporters are already >patrolling >>the shanty towns and the most remote areas of the country to get the > >>vote out on August 15. One unexpected bonus for Chavez has been the >>dramatic and perhaps semi-permanent increase in the world oil price. > >>As he explained to me a few days ago, he is now able to direct the >>extra revenues to the poor, both at home and abroad, for Venezuela >>supplies oil at a discount price to the countries of Central America > >>and the Caribbean, including Cuba. Chavez celebrated his 50th >>birthday last month, and he has talked of soldiering on as president > >>for years in order to see through the reforms he envisages. That is >>not such an improbable proposition. He has also been helped by the >>changing political climate in Latin America. Other presidents have >>been climbing over themselves to be photographed with him. He has >>patched up relations with Colombia and Chile, hitherto cool, and >last >>month reinforced his friendly relations with Brazil and Argentina by > >>signing an association agreement with the Mercosur trading union >that >>they lead. Once perceived by his neighbours as a bit of an oddball, >>he now appears more like a Latin American statesman. Up and down the > >>continent he has become the man to watch. Faced with a Chavez >>victory, the opposition may yet turn in desperation to violence. His > >>assassination, hinted at recently by former president Carlos Andris >>Pirez, or the deployment of paramilitary forces of the kind >unleashed >>in recent years in Colombia, is always a possibility. Yet the more >>civilised sectors of the opposition will set themselves, with luck, >>to the difficult task of organising a proper electoral force to >>challenge Chivez in 2006. When I asked an uncommitted bookseller >>whether he would vote to sack the president in mid-term, he replied: > >>"No, they should let him get on with the job." 7 Richard Gott is the > >>author of In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the >>Transformation of Venezuela, published by Verso; his latest book, >>Cuba: A New History, will be published next month by Yale University > >>Press >> >> >>* Rwgott@aol.com >> >> >>------- End of forwarded message ------- >>_______________________________________________ >>Mai-not mailing list >>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not >>------- End of forwarded message ------- >>_______________________________________________ >>Mai-not mailing list >>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not >> From janice_g at free.net.nz Fri Aug 13 06:56:11 2004 From: janice_g at free.net.nz (Janice) Date: Fri Aug 13 09:00:51 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] FW: VENEZUELA FLORIDATED Message-ID: <380-220048513135611968@free.net.nz> ---- Original Message ---- From: moderator@portside.org To: portside@lists.portside.org Subject: FW: VENEZUELA FLORIDATED Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 22:49:28 -0400 (EDT) VENEZUELA FLORIDATED Tuesday, August 10, 2004 Will The Gang That Fixed Florida Fix the Vote in Caracas this Sunday? by Greg Palast From: palast@gregpalast.com Hugo Chavez drives George Bush crazy. Maybe it's jealousy: Unlike Mr. Bush, Chavez, in Venezuela, won his Presidency by a majority of the vote. Or maybe it's the oil: Venezuela sits atop a reserve rivaling Iraq's. And Hugo thinks the US and British oil companies that pump the crude ought to pay more than a 16% royalty to his nation for the stuff. Hey, sixteen percent isn't even acceptable as a tip at a New York diner. Whatever it is, OUR President has decided that THEIR president has to go. This is none too easy given that Chavez is backed by Venezuela's poor. And the US oil industry, joined with local oligarchs, has made sure a vast majority of Venezuelans remain poor. Therefore, Chavez is expected to win this coming Sunday's recall vote. That is, if the elections are free and fair. They won't be. Some months ago, a little birdie faxed to me what appeared to be confidential pages from a contract between John Ashcroft's Justice Department and a company called ChoicePoint, Inc., of Atlanta. The deal is part of the War on Terror. Justice offered up to $67 million, of our taxpayer money, to ChoicePoint in a no-bid deal, for computer profiles with private information on every citizen of half a dozen nations. The choice of which nation's citizens to spy on caught my eye. While the September 11th highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint's menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Argentines. How odd. Had the CIA uncovered a Latin plot to sneak suicide tango dancers across the border with exploding enchiladas? What do these nations have in common besides a lack of involvement in the September 11th attacks? Coincidentally, each is in the throes of major electoral contests in which the leading candidates -- presidents Lula Ignacio da Silva of Brazil, Nestor Kirschner of Argentina, Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador and Venezuela's Chavez -- have the nerve to challenge the globalization demands of George W. Bush. The last time ChoicePoint sold voter files to our government it was to help Governor Jeb Bush locate and purge felons on Florida voter rolls. Turns out ChoicePoint's felons were merely Democrats guilty only of V.W.B., Voting While Black. That little 'error' cost Al Gore the White House. It looks like the Bush Administration is taking the Florida show for a tour south of the border. However, when Mexico discovered ChoicePoint had its citizen files, the nation threatened company executives with criminal charges. ChoicePoint protested its innocence and offered to destroy the files of any nation that requests it. But ChoicePoint, apparently, presented no such offer to the government of Venezuela's Chavez. In Caracas, I showed Congressman Nicolas Maduro the ChoicePoint-Ashcroft agreement. Maduro, a leader of Chavez' political party, was unaware that his nation's citizen files were for sale to U.S. intelligence. But he understood their value to make mischief. If the lists somehow fell into the hands of the Venezuelan opposition, it could immeasurably help their computer-aided drive to recall and remove Chavez. A ChoicePoint flak said the Bush administration told the company they haven't used the lists that way. The PR man didn't say if the Bush spooks laughed when they said it. Our team located a $53,000 payment from our government to Chavez' recall organizers, who claim to be armed with computer lists of the registered. How did they get those lists? The fix that was practiced in Florida, with ChoicePoint's help, deliberate or not, appears to be retooled for Venezuela, then Brazil, Mexico and who knows where else. Here's what it comes down to: The Justice Department averts it's gaze from Saudi Arabia but shoplifts voter records in Venezuela. So it's only fair to ask: Is Mr. Bush fighting a war on terror -- or a war on democracy? --- Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.' This commentary is based on 'Tango Terrorists,' in the new chapter of the book's Expanded Election Edition (Penguin 2004). For Palast's reports on Venezuela for the Guardian of Britain and his exclusive interview for BBC Television with President Hugo Chavez, go to www.GregPalast.com _______________________________________________________ portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a news, discussion and debate service of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It aims to provide varied material of interest to people on the left. For answers to frequently asked questions: To subscribe, unsubscribe or change settings: To submit material, paste into an email and send to: (postings are moderated) For assistance with your account: To search the portside archive: From janice_g at free.net.nz Fri Aug 13 07:30:37 2004 From: janice_g at free.net.nz (Janice) Date: Fri Aug 13 09:00:51 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Are Computers Wrecking Schools? Message-ID: <380-220048513143037359@free.net.nz> Do you know how much money your government has doled out to Microsoft recently for educational software? NZ gave them another 27.4 milion dollars in May Are Computers Wrecking Schools? http://www.booknoise.net/flickeringmind/ The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom A new and controversial book argues that computers have done far more harm than good to education Newsweek Web Exclusive Updated: 6:39 p.m. Oct. 14, 2003 - Todd Oppenheimer, author of ?The Flickering Mind,? was among the first journalists to leave print to explore computers, CD-ROMs and online delivery, here at Newsweek. But what he saw of the cyberworld clearly didn?t sit well. After a few years he returned to the realm of print to produce his first book?a carefully researched and scathing attack on computers in education stretching back to the early Eighties. His subtitle says it all: The false promise of technology in the classroom and how learning can be saved. IT IS HARDLY AN, ahem, academic issue: total school spending on computer technology, in the ?90s alone, was estimated at $70 billion. And the ongoing Federal ?e-rate? program continues to pump $2.25 billion each year into Internet networks for poor schools. The use of heavily computer-based curricula, both in schools and in private learning centers, is rapidly increasing. And hardware manufacturers continue to court school district business as assiduously as they do the Fortune 500. If computers are bad for schools, then we?ve taken a catastrophically wrong turn. And that?s exactly what Oppenheimer argues. At four-hundred-pages-plus, ?The Flickering Mind? www.flickeringmind.net) is not a book intended for a quick browse or a snap judgment; Oppenheimer has been visiting classrooms and talking to educators ever since an Atlantic Monthly article he wrote on the topic in 1997 won a National Magazine Award. And the subject needs the space: educational computing is a mix of issues ranging from politics and capitalism to marketing and the social status of teachers. Oppenheimer focuses on what he sees as the key failings of computers in schools. Some issues are not new: the early and excessive concern about ?computer literacy,? too often at the cost of basic literacy. Other issues are familiar but more clearly documented than usual-the inability of school systems to maintain equipment or train teachers once the hardware is in place. He does give computers credit for some benefits: more efficient record keeping, and better ways to reach children with learning disabilities. But the central message is that computer infatuation has not only drained billions of dollars from more urgent educational needs, but that its misuse actually damages students, turning out a generation of kids with inferior learning and thinking skills. Oppenheimer is brutal in his assessment of the well-to-do ?high tech? schools he visits, all too often finding teachers and administrators in a fog of self-delusion, bragging about glitzy student PowerPoint productions that in fact reveal scant understanding. He is equally cutting about the technologic follies he sees in underprivileged schools. This time he lays blame on ambitious administrators and clueless federal programs that ignore the real needs of teachers?many of whom need careful coaching even to find the ?Enter? key. While there are few heroes in Oppenheimer?s book, most of the villains are superficial or misguided, rather than venal, with one exception: the companies that have prospered by selling technology to schools. Oppenheimer is particularly strong in examining the Federal e-rate program, in which technology firms seem to have systematically overbilled many school districts in setting up their Internet services. Oppenheimer describes how, in 2000, the San Francisco school district turned down $50 million in e-rate funds when they found that they could actually build their network themselves, for less than even the small cost they would have had to pay in order to receive the e-rate funding. The hardware manufacturer was marking up the equipment for the federal program far over the prices that the district could get on the open market. In another extended chapter he also takes off after the highly popular (and lucrative) Renaissance Learning Inc., whose software-based reading curriculum is promoted via reams of questionable research. Oppenheimer can overstep in his technology-bashing. At one point he suggests that ?by 2002, use of the Web, by both developers and consumers, was already starting to decline,? a statement that would puzzle most Internet statisticians. And then by way of explanation for this faltering Web, Oppenheimer explains that ?what increasingly filled the Internet?s void were hundreds of lucrative sites serving up pornography, swindles and various other examples of sleaze.? Had he made that ?tens of thousands? of sleazy sites he?d be closer?but then there were also plenty of smart, well-designed, and reasonably informative sites elsewhere in the ?void.? Oppenheimer doesn?t limit himself to technology?laced throughout the book are nutshell summaries of historical trends in education and various pedagogic philosophies, as well as analysis of public school funding in this country. At times one wonders whether what Oppenheimer finds unappealing in his classroom visits aren?t so much computers, but the endemic problems of this country?s neglected public schools, newly reflected in the mirror of technology infatuation. But computer technology remains the central focus, and when Oppenheimer at last turns to solutions, his centerpiece is the controversial Waldorf method, an unorthodox schooling philosophy that discourages technology of any kind. Oppenheimer?s admiration for the Waldorf method stems from the schools? insistence that kids learn best with physical objects and activities rather than computerized graphics and abstractions. And in fact there is some evidence that too much computer activity early in life?in lieu of real-world experience?may indeed limit intellectual and creative development. That possibility, even more than the billions of wasted dollars, is certainly the book?s most worrisome theme. The Flickering Mind will likely launch a firestorm among educators?anyone who spends much time with teachers knows that many find great value in computers, and often spend their own time and money to learn about the technology. Luddite opponents may also use the book to condemn any computers in schools, and that would be a shame. It?s important to recall that Oppenheimer?s survey covers only the very first years of a process in which educators are still learning the best ways to use the little machines. If The Flickering Mind helps redirect educators toward a more judicious and appropriate use of computers, Oppenheimer?s crusade will be worthwhile. If it merely gives society another reason to cut education spending?this time at the expense of classroom technology?then the costly lessons we?ve learned thus far will be wasted altogether. From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Fri Aug 13 09:56:27 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Fri Aug 13 09:56:34 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] List moderation?? Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040814005002.02f5c9f8@central.murdoch.edu.au> Is anyone, on posting to this list, receiving the following response? I'm not, but is anyone else? Is it a glitch that can be brought about by the manner of posting? Dion Giles Western Australia The response: Your mail to 'Mai-not' with the subject Re: [Mai-not] [...etc...] Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. The reason it is being held: Post to moderated list Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive notification of the moderator's decision. If you would like to cancel this posting, please visit the following URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/confirm/mai-not/c669fab 8f49ed0112af7e21db14bc1d38eb9dba6 From netcfs at shaw.ca Fri Aug 13 15:25:38 2004 From: netcfs at shaw.ca (Yves Bajard) Date: Fri Aug 13 15:30:49 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Recommended reading in preparation to a post with some of my ideas about a possible widening and reactivation of Mai-Not Message-ID: <1092435938.3614.120.camel@localhost> Dear NewMaiNotters: I have received a few replies to my post about "A look at the New Mai-Not" But I have received no response from the frequent posters (MichaelP, Jonathan Larson, Janet Eaton and Ed Deak (I except Janice Graham, who just started). Among you, frequent posters, only Dion Giles reacted. His reaction is perfectly justified, because he has been very careful not to post whole articles unless there was no choice, to provide comments in depth about other articles and to respond to comments made,etc.. (Thanks Dion) The other persons who reacted are mostly persons who do not contribute, but rely on Mai-Not to keep informed otherwise than by the mass media. I agree that the way this list is going now should continue. with complete articles posted when necessary and if possible limit the posting to the URL of the source, and always quoting the source anyway. However, I would propose we add to this valuable aspect of Mai-Not in the following manner: 1. Provide regularly a list of URLs for independent media, which Mai-Not participants can access on the Web and though which they can be even better informed on issues of importance to them 2. Subdivide mailings by subjects: We should open several threads and group our articles by threads and open our scope more widely beyond the USA Australia and Canada. 3. Also,w e could and should in my opinion, do some editorial work, or synthesis of the posts sent to the group on each threads, so that constructive discussions can take place on these subjects. 4. For all that to be possible we should widen our audience and do a few things: * review and change the guidelines for Mai-Not, and make it attractive and corresponding to what we agree to do, * invite people we know to join and spread a wider invitation on the Web * assemble among us a team of persons among the subscribers who would work at editorials and synthesis, and help me coordinate the group. In this manner, Mai-Not would be again an action oriented group as it was in its early stages. What do you think? Yves Bajard PS: regardless of your position about the above post, I would strongly recommend that you read a book that was just recently published, Title: PowerDown Author: Richard Heinberg Publisher: New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC Canada ISBN 0-86571-510-6 About the author, I got the following info from the faculty page of the New College of California, where he teaches: Richard Heinberg: Core Faculty, is an author and lecturer whose books include Memories and Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age, Celebrate the Solstice, A New Covenant with Nature: Notes on the End of Civilization and the Renewal of Culture, and Cloning the Buddha: The Moral Impact of Biotechnology. His latest book, The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, was published in 2003. He also publishes the monthly Museletter, which was nominated by UTNE Reader in 1994 for Best Alternative Newsletter. The book is very well written, clear, short (194 pages). It states very well the conundrum within which we evolve toward societal, ecological and resource-depletion collapse, and proposes four options. With a couple of exceptions I have never found a book whose contents corresponds so well with my assessment the circumstances we are living though and which most people tend to deny or ignore and with the options that society are taking or could take about it. My assessment is based on nearly forty years of observation, professional assignments in many countries of the world and on scientific research spread over about forty years. Therefore, I think that I can say that I know what I am talking about. It may be a shock for some of you, but if you recover from that shock, we may be able to give a dynamic impulse to Mai-Not If you cannot buy it (some Can $ 23 ), as your library to order it and to order at least three copies. From jomut at yahoo.com Fri Aug 13 15:39:48 2004 From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa) Date: Fri Aug 13 15:39:50 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] World Bank Still Says Yes to Oil Message-ID: <20040813223948.49975.qmail@web14008.mail.yahoo.com> http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=25032 POLITICS: U.S. and France Begin a Great Game in Africa Julio Godoy PARIS, Aug 11 (IPS) - France and the United States have begun a new race to compete for favours with undemocratic regimes in Africa. The competition is growing particularly in the oil- rich North and West Africa. France and the United States have begun a new race to compete for favours with undemocratic regimes in Africa. The competition is growing particularly in the oil- rich North and West Africa. The French government announced last month that it is due to sign a military pact with former colony Algeria that would include weapons and technology transfer, training and intelligence sharing. The agreement was negotiated by French defence minister Michele Alliot-Marie on a visit to Algiers July 19. Alliot-Marie, the first French defence minister to visit Algeria since the end of the bloody war of independence in 1962, said the "historic" agreement will "turn a page" in French-Algerian history. Foreign minister Michel Barnier visited Algiers earlier in July to discuss new cooperation. Finance minister Nicolas Sarkozy followed his colleagues later in the month to approve a 2.5 billion dollar aid package. France has invited Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to commemoration of the liberation of south France from Nazi occupation in 1944, in the face of protests from French veterans of the war of independence. Analysts say these moves seek to secure access to Algerian oil and gas resources to counter similar efforts by the U.S. government. "The French government wants to counter the diplomatic advances achieved by the Bush government in Algeria in particular, and in West Africa in general," says Francois Gèze, an expert in French-Algerian relations. In an article in Le Monde written with Algerian-born scholar Lahouari Addi who lives in France in exile, Gèze condemned the "French alliance with a criminal regime." Gèze told IPS that the Algerian government has detained and tortured opposition leaders for more than a decade now. But given the anti-terrorism climate, Algeria represents what "the 'great' Western countries wish for in the Arab world" – a government ready to cooperate with the United States whatever its domestic record. France has been building diplomatic relations across oil-rich West Africa. This includes Gabon ruled by Omar Bongo since 1966, Congo Brazzaville ruled by Denis Sassou-Nguesso who came to power in 1997 following a civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and Angola where former independence hero José Eduardo dos Santos has been in power since 1979. In a recent instance of new 'cooperation' the French government dealt with dos Santos to protect French citizen Pierre Falcone charged with transfer of weapons to Angola. Dos Santos named Falcone Angolan ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organization (UNESCO) headquartered in Paris. The appointment would provide him diplomatic immunity. It is no coincidence that the United States has been following a similar strategy of supporting military dictators in Africa while seeking access to natural resources in their countries. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Angola and Gabon in 2002 in the first trip ever by such a high-ranking U.S. official to these countries. Last year U.S. President George W. Bush visited Senegal, Nigeria, Botswana, Uganda and South Africa. In March this year the U.S. government invited top ranking military officials of Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia to the U.S. European command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. The command centre also covers 48 African countries. The Stuttgart summit covered representation from the Middle East through the Maghreb (Arabic North Africa) to the Gulf of Guinea. This is a region sitting above a giant sea of underground oil. Two weeks before the March meeting Gen. Charles F. Wald, deputy commander at Stuttgart had toured Angola, Nigeria, Tunisia, Algeria, Ghana, South Africa and Gabon among other African countries. "Every place I go in Africa, where we talk about the war on terrorism, there is a resonance and an agreement that we have something in common," Wald said during the visit. The threat extremists pose to democratically elected governments is "universally understood," he said. But of the countries he visited, only South Africa has a democratically elected government. Earlier this week the U.S. government indicated its interest in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea in announcing a military cooperation programme with Nigeria. Gen. Robert Fogleson, commander of the U.S. air force in Europe said at the announcement: "This region is important to the stability of the United States…because of the petroleum… and so it's no surprise to me that if the U.S. Navy, the U.S. government wanted to exercise, that they will take the areas that are of great importance to them." Analysts believe that over the next five years a quarter of non-Gulf oil on the world market will come from sub-Saharan Africa. (END/1900) =============================== http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=24931 ECONOMY: World Bank Still Says Yes to Oil, Gas Projects Jim Lobe WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (IPS) - After a longer-than-expected meeting Tuesday, the executive board of the World Bank Group (WBG) gave general approval to a management plan to continue investing in oil, gas, and mining projects despite the recommendations of an independent review. After a longer-than-expected meeting Tuesday, the executive board of the World Bank Group (WBG) gave general approval to a management plan to continue investing in oil, gas, and mining projects despite the recommendations of an independent review. The Extractive Industries Review or EIR, commissioned by the World Bank in 2000, was headed by Emil Salim, the former Indonesian environment minister. It called for an immediate halt to WBG's support for coal projects and a four-year phase-out of its lending for oil projects in poor countries. The WBG's 24 executive directors, representing the Bank's 184 member-countries, agreed to a management response to the EIR pending a further ''refine(ment)'' of some provisions bearing on several issues, including poverty reduction and local participation in mining and energy-related projects, according to a Bank statement issued after the meeting. Most important, however, the board backed up the management's determination to continue investing in oil, gas, and mining projects in developing nations while only gradually increasing its portfolio for renewable-energy and energy- efficiency projects which the EIR had recommended be increased by as much as 500 million U.S. dollars a year. ''The harsh reality is that some 1.6 billion people in the developing nations still do not have electricity, and some 2.3 billion people still depend on biomass fuels that are harmful to their health and the environment'', Bank president James Wolfensohn told reporters after the meeting. ''That underscores the need for our continued but selective engagement in oil, gas, and coal investments'', he stressed, noting that the Bank will give greater emphasis in its lending to extractive industries on how these projects can more effectively reduce poverty. He also announced that the WBG will review with the board on an annual basis progress it is making toward several goals in its extractive-industry portfolio, including poverty reduction, improved governance and increased transparency in host countries. The World Bank chief promised greater participation by local communities in the design and implementation of future projects, and increases in lending for renewable-energy and energy-efficiency projects by about 20 percent annually over the next five years. Reaction from non-governmental organisations (NGOs), particularly those that had favoured the original EIR recommendations, are sharply negative. They hit out at the vagueness with which the management's plan had treated the issue of poverty reduction which is supposed to be the WBG's core mission. ''By largely ignoring the (EIR's) recommendations, the Bank's management has ensured that the poverty pipeline will continue to flow'', Keith Slack, Oxfam's Extractive Industries policy advisor told IPS. ''The Bank's unwillingness to change means that this process will likely result in precious little for the poor communities affected by oil and mining projects around the world. Despite its mandate to reduce poverty, the Bank has been unable to demonstrate that its extractive projects have actually done this,'' he pointed out. The reaction from environmental groups was much the same. ''The World Bank has ignored the EIR recommendations and endorsed business as usual'', said Jon Sohn of Friends of the Earth (FoE). ''The EIR called for an 'extreme energy makeover,' but the Bank has opted for a cheap pedicure. It has missed a historic opportunity to bring its lending more in line with its mission to alleviate poverty''. Launched three years ago, the EIR was designed to address a series of questions about the generally poor record that extractive industries have compiled in many developing countries. NGOs had also become increasingly concerned about the environmental impacts of such projects both locally and in their contribution to global warming which, according most scientists, is accelerated by emissions from fossil fuels, particularly oil, coal and gas. The WBG -- which includes the World Bank; its soft-loan affiliate, the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provides loans and other support to the private sector, and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) - has long been a major backer of extractive-industry projects in developing countries. While it has provided on average only about one billion U.S. dollars a year in lending to that sector over the past decade, its backing for such projects - through co-financing, advisory services, or insurance or other guarantees -- still acts as a powerful magnet for private capital that would otherwise be reluctant to invest. After three years of wide-ranging consultations with civil society, local communities, extractive-industry executives, governments, and Bank staff, the EIR commission headed by Salim issued an unexpectedly sweeping and critical report that urged the WBG to get out of the coal business, phase out its involvement in oil-related projects by 2008, impose tight social and environmental conditions on mining projects, and increase lending for renewable-energy and energy-efficiency projects manifold. These recommendations were greeted with enthusiasm by environmental, human rights, and development NGOs, but with undisguised horror from big oil and mining companies, and the private banks that underwrite their projects. Developing-country governments, particularly those that rely on extractive industries as a major source of export earnings, also expressed strong reservations. Responding to the EIR in June, WBG management thanked Salim and his colleagues for their work and rejected the most sweeping proposals. Instead, it said it would pursue a ''more selective'' approach to extractive projects that would put greater emphasis on reducing poverty and promoting project transparency. It was that response that the executive board endorsed Tuesday. For one EIR consultant who asked to remain anonymous, the WBG's reaction was all too typical of its approach to other outside reviews. ''The Bank has really developed to an art form high-minded ways of saying that the (EIR's) conclusions are misguided; everything is this way for a reason, and much as we all want a better world, we are already doing about as much as can reasonably be expected'', he said, adding that the Bank's past record, particularly in reducing poverty, invited skepticism about its ability to follow through. ''The surprising thing is that while there has been a lot of big talk about how these industries do or don't reduce poverty, the Bank has until very recently done almost nothing to find out the answer, at least in any rigorous or objective way''. (END/1900) ===== John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake) jomut@yahoo.com chakane@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/jomut __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From jomut at yahoo.com Fri Aug 13 15:41:41 2004 From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa) Date: Fri Aug 13 15:41:39 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] oil games in africa Message-ID: <20040813224141.82497.qmail@web14002.mail.yahoo.com> http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=25032 POLITICS: U.S. and France Begin a Great Game in Africa Julio Godoy PARIS, Aug 11 (IPS) - France and the United States have begun a new race to compete for favours with undemocratic regimes in Africa. The competition is growing particularly in the oil- rich North and West Africa. France and the United States have begun a new race to compete for favours with undemocratic regimes in Africa. The competition is growing particularly in the oil- rich North and West Africa. The French government announced last month that it is due to sign a military pact with former colony Algeria that would include weapons and technology transfer, training and intelligence sharing. The agreement was negotiated by French defence minister Michele Alliot-Marie on a visit to Algiers July 19. Alliot-Marie, the first French defence minister to visit Algeria since the end of the bloody war of independence in 1962, said the "historic" agreement will "turn a page" in French-Algerian history. Foreign minister Michel Barnier visited Algiers earlier in July to discuss new cooperation. Finance minister Nicolas Sarkozy followed his colleagues later in the month to approve a 2.5 billion dollar aid package. France has invited Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to commemoration of the liberation of south France from Nazi occupation in 1944, in the face of protests from French veterans of the war of independence. Analysts say these moves seek to secure access to Algerian oil and gas resources to counter similar efforts by the U.S. government. "The French government wants to counter the diplomatic advances achieved by the Bush government in Algeria in particular, and in West Africa in general," says Francois Gèze, an expert in French-Algerian relations. In an article in Le Monde written with Algerian-born scholar Lahouari Addi who lives in France in exile, Gèze condemned the "French alliance with a criminal regime." Gèze told IPS that the Algerian government has detained and tortured opposition leaders for more than a decade now. But given the anti-terrorism climate, Algeria represents what "the 'great' Western countries wish for in the Arab world" – a government ready to cooperate with the United States whatever its domestic record. France has been building diplomatic relations across oil-rich West Africa. This includes Gabon ruled by Omar Bongo since 1966, Congo Brazzaville ruled by Denis Sassou-Nguesso who came to power in 1997 following a civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and Angola where former independence hero José Eduardo dos Santos has been in power since 1979. In a recent instance of new 'cooperation' the French government dealt with dos Santos to protect French citizen Pierre Falcone charged with transfer of weapons to Angola. Dos Santos named Falcone Angolan ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organization (UNESCO) headquartered in Paris. The appointment would provide him diplomatic immunity. It is no coincidence that the United States has been following a similar strategy of supporting military dictators in Africa while seeking access to natural resources in their countries. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Angola and Gabon in 2002 in the first trip ever by such a high-ranking U.S. official to these countries. Last year U.S. President George W. Bush visited Senegal, Nigeria, Botswana, Uganda and South Africa. In March this year the U.S. government invited top ranking military officials of Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia to the U.S. European command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. The command centre also covers 48 African countries. The Stuttgart summit covered representation from the Middle East through the Maghreb (Arabic North Africa) to the Gulf of Guinea. This is a region sitting above a giant sea of underground oil. Two weeks before the March meeting Gen. Charles F. Wald, deputy commander at Stuttgart had toured Angola, Nigeria, Tunisia, Algeria, Ghana, South Africa and Gabon among other African countries. "Every place I go in Africa, where we talk about the war on terrorism, there is a resonance and an agreement that we have something in common," Wald said during the visit. The threat extremists pose to democratically elected governments is "universally understood," he said. But of the countries he visited, only South Africa has a democratically elected government. Earlier this week the U.S. government indicated its interest in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea in announcing a military cooperation programme with Nigeria. Gen. Robert Fogleson, commander of the U.S. air force in Europe said at the announcement: "This region is important to the stability of the United States…because of the petroleum… and so it's no surprise to me that if the U.S. Navy, the U.S. government wanted to exercise, that they will take the areas that are of great importance to them." Analysts believe that over the next five years a quarter of non-Gulf oil on the world market will come from sub-Saharan Africa. (END/1900) =============================== ===== John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake) jomut@yahoo.com chakane@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/jomut __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From thinker at uniserve.com Fri Aug 13 17:33:57 2004 From: thinker at uniserve.com (Ed Deak) Date: Fri Aug 13 17:33:53 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] CAFTA Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040813173321.028189d0@pop.uniserve.com> Citizens Trade Digest, August 13, 2004 Welcome to our bi-weekly digest that we hope will educate and agitate people on current trade issues that affect our daily lives and the world we live in. These digests include action alerts, important news articles, local trade-related event information, resources, and other useful tools to change U.S. trade policy and promote economic justice, human rights, healthy communities, and a sound environment. Check out more resources and updates on our website at http://www.citizenstrade.org/. This digest contains: 1). ACT NOW: Help Defeat the Corporate Free Trade Agenda! 2). Dominican Republic signs on to CAFTA 3). Water Privatization Under CAFTA 4). Negotiations with Panama Spark Protest 5). Australian Free Trade Deal Amended 6). Jobs Jaundice 7). WTO Reaches Flawed Last-Minute Agreement 8). New resource: CTC adds Andean FTA page ************************************************************************ 1). ACT NOW: Help Defeat the Corporate Free Trade Agenda! We have entered what could be the decisive battle to end the corporate free trade agenda as we have known it for the past 15 years. Stopping the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) will completely change the terms of the trade debate in this country. And now is a crucial time to act. We are in the middle of the August Congressional recess. Your representatives are in their home districts for the last time before the November elections. With a possible "lame-duck" vote following the elections, when members are the least accountable to their constituents, we need to lock down their votes ahead of time. Your representatives need to hear from you about CAFTA. Keep the pressure on and help us defeat the corporate free trade agenda! Check out our new Action Kit to Stop CAFTA: http://www.citizenstrade.org/caftalobbykit.php ************************************************************************ 2). Dominican Republic signs on to CAFTA The Dominican Republic signed on to the Central American Free Trade Agreement in a ceremony held in Washington, DC on August 5th. The agreement, now known as the DR-CAFTA, still needs to be ratified by the member Congresses before it can go into effect. Opposition to the agreement is mounting in the U.S., as well as the other six nations. Farmers in the Dominican Republic have been particularly vocal in their opposition, fearing a flood of subsidized U.S. agriculture goods that will undercut local production of staple crops. Access to life-saving essential medicines, such as those used to keep HIV/AIDS in check, is also at risk. Stringent intellectual property laws dictated in the DR-CAFTA could drive prices for these medicines as much as 800 percent higher. Read a column about access to essential medicines in CAFTA by Professor Angelina Godoy and Cameron Herrington of the University of Washington: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/184875_dominican05.html ************************************************************************ 3). Water Privatization Under CAFTA The American Friends Service Committee has released a study on the effects of CAFTA on access to water. According to the study, CAFTA "could have an enormous impact on the quality of our water, on who has access to it, and on who controls that access. It does so by implicitly defining water ? and just about every other aspect of our lives ? as a ?good? or commodity, as a ?service,? as an ?investment,? and in relation to the process by which governments purchase goods and services. In doing so, CAFTA trumps national, state, and local laws and turns one of our life-giving resources from something to be shared by all into something that is sold to the highest bidder." Read the study by the American Friends Service Committee: http://wwwafsc.org/newengland/nh/CAFTA-and-Water.pdf ************************************************************************ 4). Negotiations with Panama Spark Protest The U.S. and Panama completed a fourth round of talks this week in Tampa, Florida for a bilateral free trade agreement. The secrecy surrounding the talks sparked protest, as many fear the agreement will be in the same mold as the recently-concluded CAFTA deal, lacking serious enforceable protections for workers and the environment. Thousands of farmers, workers and students marched in Panama City during the last round of talks, demanding the exclusion of sensitive products from the negotiations. Workers in Panama protest free trade negotiations with the U.S. Photo credit: Reuters Read an article about opposition to the negotiations: http://www.citizenstrade.org/pdf/tampatribune_panamaftaprotest_08122004.pdf ************************************************************************ 5). Australian Free Trade Deal Amended The U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement, which has already passed the U.S. House and Senate, as well as the Australian House, cleared one more hurdle this week in the Australian opposition-controlled Senate. Opposition leader, Mark Latham agreed that his Labor Party will support the trade deal on condition that certain amendments be added to protect the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and local content in media. The Howard government, unable to pass the agreement without the Labor Party?s support, reluctantly accepted the amendments, though he warned that they were unnecessary and could be a deal-breaker for the U.S. The trade pact now faces one last unexpected hurdle as the United States must endorse the amended agreement. Read more about the amendments to the U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement: http://www.citizenstrade.org/pdf/aap_ausfta_08122004.pdf ************************************************************************ 6). Jobs Jaundice The U.S. economy created a paltry 32,000 jobs in the month of July, 200,000 less than projected. According to columnist Paul Craig Roberts, "[t]hose giving assurances that America is benefiting from globalism are missing the big picture. Globalism is reshaping the US labor force, giving the work force a third world profile. Thirty-two months of economic recovery has seen job growth only in domestic services, many of which are poorly paid. . . . Economists are absurd to pretend that the absence of US job growth in tradable goods and services is unrelated to offshore production and outsourcing." Read the complete column by Paul Craig Roberts in the Washington Times: http://www.citizenstrade.org/pdf/washtimes_jobsjaundice_08122004.pdf Read an opinion piece on offshoring by Leo Hindery, Jr. in the San Jose Mercury News: http://www.citizenstrade.org/pdf/mercurynews_outsourcing_08052004.pdf ************************************************************************ 7). WTO Reaches Flawed Last-Minute Agreement The World Trade Organization (WTO) managed to eke out a framework in time to meet its July 31 deadline. Agriculture served as the primary stumbling block, as developing countries demanded the end of rich country subsidies for farm goods, while the developed countries held out for increased market access in the developing world. Bullying on the part of developed countries, closed-door negotiations from which most countries were excluded, and a last-minute text that left no time for detailed study or analysis achieved a framework that is being hailed as a "breakthrough," despite the fact that much of the language remains tentative, with many of the details still to be negotiated. Cotton harvest in the Ivory Coast. Photo credit: Agence France Presse Read Public Citizen?s Global Trade Watch press release on the WTO framework: http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=1759 ************************************************************************ 8). New resource: CTC adds Andean FTA page CTC has added a new web page with articles and resources on the negotiations for an Andean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA). The AFTA is being negotiated between the United States and Columbia, Ecuador and Peru, with Bolivia observing, but expected to join as a full member. The next round of talks will be held in Puerto Rico in September. The Andean pact replicates the CAFTA model for the Andean region, yet is particularly worrisome given the horrific labor and human rights record of the Colombian government. Find out more about the Andean Free Trade Agreement: http://www.citizenstradeorg/andean.php ******************************************************************* The Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC) is a national coalition whose members include the National Family Farm Coalition; United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society; Public Citizen; International Brotherhood of Teamsters; UNITE!; Friends of the Earth; the United Steelworkers of America; United Students Against Sweatshops; Communications Workers of America; Western Organization of Resource Councils; American Lands Alliance; Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment; Defenders of Wildlife, and Americans for Democratic Action, as well as regional, state, and city-based coalitions, organizations, and individual activists throughout the United States. To unsubscribe or change to regular delivery mode: http://wwwcitizenstrade.org/mailman/listinfo/ctcinfo Go to the bottom of the website, enter your email address, and then edit your options. To subscribe: http://wwwcitizenstrade.org/mailman/listinfo/ctcinfo From thinker at uniserve.com Fri Aug 13 17:40:35 2004 From: thinker at uniserve.com (Ed Deak) Date: Fri Aug 13 17:40:26 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Recommended reading in preparation to a post with some of my ideas about a possible widening and reactivation of Mai-Not In-Reply-To: <1092435938.3614.120.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040813173517.02870830@pop.uniserve.com> I'm sorry Yves, but we're getting ready for a show in 6 weeks, I still have 50 odd picture frames to make and several more drawings to finish and then I have to set up our new firewood canopy and then cut and split 12 cords of firewood before winter, at the age of 77. I get up at 6 and go to bed at 11 and hardly have any time to read anything, or am too tired. I really appreciate your efforts, but at this time I just don't have the time, or the strength to contribute more. Cheers, Ed. ======================================================================================================= At 03:25 PM 13/08/2004 -0700, Yves Bajard wrote: >Dear NewMaiNotters: > >I have received a few replies to my post about "A look at the New >Mai-Not" But I have received no response from the frequent posters >(MichaelP, Jonathan Larson, Janet Eaton and Ed Deak (I except Janice >Graham, who just started). Among you, frequent posters, only Dion Giles >reacted. His reaction is perfectly justified, because he has been very >careful not to post whole articles unless there was no choice, to >provide comments in depth about other articles and to respond to >comments made,etc.. (Thanks Dion) > >The other persons who reacted are mostly persons who do not contribute, >but rely on Mai-Not to keep informed otherwise than by the mass media. > > >I agree that the way this list is going now should continue. with >complete articles posted when necessary and if possible limit the >posting to the URL of the source, and always quoting the source anyway. > >However, I would propose we add to this valuable aspect of Mai-Not in >the following manner: > > 1. Provide regularly a list of URLs for independent media, which > Mai-Not participants can access on the Web and though which they > can be even better informed on issues of importance to them > > 2. Subdivide mailings by subjects: We should open several threads > and group our articles by threads and open our scope more widely > beyond the USA Australia and Canada. > > 3. Also,w e could and should in my opinion, do some editorial work, > or synthesis of the posts sent to the group on each threads, so > that constructive discussions can take place on these subjects. > > 4. For all that to be possible we should widen our audience and do > a few things: > > > * review and change the guidelines for Mai-Not, and make it > attractive and corresponding to what we agree to do, > > * invite people we know to join and spread a wider invitation on > the Web > > * assemble among us a team of persons among the subscribers who > would work at editorials and synthesis, and help me coordinate > the group. > > > >In this manner, Mai-Not would be again an action oriented group as it >was in its early stages. > > >What do you think? > > >Yves Bajard > > >PS: regardless of your position about the above post, I would strongly >recommend that you read a book that was just recently published, > >Title: PowerDown >Author: Richard Heinberg >Publisher: New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC Canada >ISBN 0-86571-510-6 > >About the author, I got the following info from the faculty page of the >New College of California, where he teaches: Richard Heinberg: Core >Faculty, is an author and lecturer whose books include Memories and >Visions of Paradise: Exploring the Universal Myth of a Lost Golden Age, >Celebrate the Solstice, A New Covenant with Nature: Notes on the End of >Civilization and the Renewal of Culture, and Cloning the Buddha: The >Moral Impact of Biotechnology. His latest book, The Party's Over: Oil, >War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, was published in 2003. He also >publishes the monthly Museletter, which was nominated by UTNE Reader in >1994 for Best Alternative Newsletter. > >The book is very well written, clear, short (194 pages). It states very >well the conundrum within which we evolve toward societal, ecological >and resource-depletion collapse, and proposes four options. With a >couple of exceptions I have never found a book >whose contents corresponds so well with my assessment the circumstances >we are living though and which most people tend to deny or ignore and >with the options that society are taking or could take about it. My >assessment is based on nearly forty years of observation, professional >assignments in many countries of the world and on scientific research >spread over about forty years. Therefore, I think that I can say that I >know what I am talking about. > >It may be a shock for some of you, but if you recover from that shock, >we may be able to give a dynamic impulse to Mai-Not > > >If you cannot buy it (some Can $ 23 ), as your library to order it and >to order at least three copies. > > > > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Fri Aug 13 18:21:39 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Fri Aug 13 18:21:55 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Record US trade deficit hits $55.8bn Message-ID: Record US trade deficit hits $55.8bn By Jennifer Hughes in New York Published: August 13 2004 14:45 | Last updated: August 13 2004 14:45 http://news.ft.com/cms/s/396e4ed6-ed2a-11d8-a587-00000e2511c8.html Weakening exports and surging imports pushed the US trade deficit to a record in June, according to data on Friday that led to warnings that growth estimates could be revised lower. The Commerce Department reported that the gap widened by $8.9bn (?7.3bn, ?4.9bn) a record shift for a single month to $55.8bn as exports slumped to their lowest in nearly three years while imports pushed to a new record high, helped by a jump in the volume of oil imports. "It was a perfect storm everything that could happen to push the deficit wider, did," said Henry Willmore, US economist at Barclays Capital. Imports jumped 3.3 per cent in June to $148.6bn while exports fell by 4.3 per cent to $92.8bn the biggest one-month drop since September 2001. Economists said a fall-off in capital goods exports large items such as aircraft and supercomputers may have been responsible for the decline and could rebound next month. "If two or three items that usually get shipped got delayed, it can have a marked effect on the figures," added Mr Willmore. Economists expected the deficit in July to have narrowed from the June record, but warned the trend towards wider trade gaps was still in place. "It should be clear that the US is experiencing a real and accelerating deterioration in its international accounts," said Rebecca Patterson, strategist at JP Morgan, who described the trade deficit as an "Achilles heel" for the dollar. The US currency fell to three-week lows against the euro at $1.235 after the report as traders worried that the widening gap would add to US dependence on foreign inflows into its financial markets to balance payments. "Even if the deficit does narrow, we could still be looking at a gap around $50bn for the next few months. This is going to a be a bigger drag going into the third quarter than we had expected," said Ian Morris, US economist at HSBC. The report was also expected to prompt downwards revisions to second-quarter growth estimates from the original 3 per cent estimate to about 2.5 per cent. Interest rate futures contracts rose, implying markets were pricing in slightly less chance of rate rises from the Fed than before the data. Rising oil costs were a factor in the trade data and two other reports released yesterday. Oil accounted for $2.5bn of the deficit increase. Since June, when the average was $33.76 a barrel, prices have risen to new records above $45 in New York. A fall in consumer confidence, as measured by the University of Michigan, was partially attributed to concerns about higher energy costs, which also added to producer inflation data. Producer price inflation rose 0.1 per cent last month, or 4 per cent year on year. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, prices rose by an annual 1.7 per cent. "This suggests the price pressures that have been building are not going to go away," said Mr Willmore. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Fri Aug 13 20:50:53 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Fri Aug 13 20:51:20 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Reinventing the War Party Message-ID: Reinventing the War Party The neocons go into opposition http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3300 The tom-toms are beating, and the word is going out to neocons worldwide: Save yourselves! Anybody but Bush! Yes, I know it must be hard to believe, since loyalty is such a big deal to the neocons (as in: they don't have any), but the word on the street is that, since the Great Cause of Democracy (and Richard Perle's bank balance) has been betrayed - and the Prez is a goner, come November, anyway - it's time for the neocons to go into opposition. That's what the revival of the supposedly "bipartisan" Committee on the Present Danger is all about, and the signs of a neocon retrenchment are all around us. Check out the final paragraph of Christopher Hitchens' latest advertorial for Ahmed Chalabi, the now disgraced leader of the Iraqi National Congress. After defending this convicted embezzler and self-described "hero in error" - the one man on earth who might be more of an opportunist than Hitchens - for well over a thousand words, the former features editor of one of the most boring Trotskyite rags in existence avers: "As I write, the Allawi government in Baghdad is trying, with American support, a version of an 'iron fist' policy in the Shiite cities of the south. ('Like all weak governments,' as Disraeli once said in another connection, 'it resorts to strong measures.') Chalabi, who has spent much of this year in Najaf, thinks that this is extremely unwise. We shall be testing all these propositions, and more, as the months go by." Hitchens howled for war, along with the rest of the neocon wolf pack, for months - nay, years - yet now he cites Disraeli's disdain for "strong measures." So, Chalabi thinks it "unwise" for the U.S. to move into Najaf, does he? Why didn't he think of the possible consequences back when he was demanding a U.S. invasion of Iraq? Are these neocons afflicted with the ideological equivalent of Alzheimer's disease, or is something else going on here? After a years-long high-decibel campaign, during which Chalabi and his American fan club connived, finagled, and lied us into war, the War Party has suddenly begun to switch sides. Recently deprived of his monthly $350,000 subsidy, Chalabi turns on his former sponsors and employers, embracing the rebel Shi'ite leader, Muqtada al-Sadr - and Hitchens, who denounced war opponents as "anti-American" Ba'athist sympathizers, turns with him. Having dragged down the President by embroiling him in an unwinnable and increasingly expensive war, the neocons are not only getting ready to abandon Bush but also sending some sniper fire his way. More evidence that the neocons are repositioning themselves for a post-Bush era: Michael Rubin, a former CPA official, and one of the youngest and most militant of the neocon cadre, is taking on the Bushies. Rubin is cited in a story in The Oregonian that broke the news of torture inflicted on Iraqi detainees by Iraqis - and detailed how U.S. National Guardsmen were prevented from rescuing them. It seems some National Guardsmen on patrol came upon a horrifying scene: Iraqi soldiers beating, abusing, and otherwise torturing other Iraqis. The Guardsmen disarmed the soldiers, and administered first aid to their victims, but were told to back off by their commander, on the grounds that they must show the proper respect for Iraqi sovereignty. Rubin, rather than take responsibility for the inevitable consequences of the policy he fought for - and implemented - points the finger of blame at his former boss Paul Bremer, and, by implication, his boss, George W. Bush: "'Iraqis want us to respect their sovereignty, but the problem is we will be blamed for leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse,' said Michael Rubin, a former adviser to the interim Iraqi government who is now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. 'We did not generally put good people in.'" "Good people" - you know, like Se?or Chalabi, who is not without reason known as the thief of Baghdad, the man who betrayed the innermost secrets of U.S. intelligence to his Iranian paymasters and now has returned to Iraq - only to go back into hiding. Anything to avoid facing the charge of counterfeiting. As to whether Chalabi would be as bad, or worse, than Iyad Allawi, the current U.S. sock-puppet, it is hard to say. While Allawi is reputed to have personally executed detainees just days prior to his ascension to the Iraqi presidency, one reason Chalabi is still staying out of sight is doubtless because he doesn't want to get mixed up in the murder charges filed against his nephew, Salem, also a close associate of Washington neocons, war profiteer par excellence, and key INC member. The idea that Chalabi is or ever was any kind of Iraqi "democrat" - or that his neocon amen corner in the U.S. gives a fig about "democracy" - doesn't merit a hollow chuckle, especially when one considers that Chalabi is now repositioning himself as an ally of the Sadrists - radical proponents of an Iranian-style theocracy. As the war goes horribly wrong, and the casualty count nears the thousand-mark, with no end in sight, the neocons are slinking away from their own bloody handiwork, blaming others - the President, Rumsfeld's faulty "implementation," a "loss of nerve" on the part of the American people: anything or anyone but the war and its most militant proponents. Rubin's concern for the victims of Allawi's thugs is touching, but you'll forgive me if I don't take it too seriously, considering his response to the Abu Ghraib torture revelations in an op-ed piece written less than three months ago: "Professors and pundits may say that the sky has fallen, but Iraqis have a broader perspective. They may forgive the actions of a few soldiers. While the American media focus on car bombs and prison abuse, in the year since liberation, Iraqis have also watched thousands of soldiers and contractors repair schools, repave roads and revitalize the electrical grid." Torture is apparently an American privilege, the exclusive prerogative of conquerors. Once the Iraqis try to get in on the act, that's where Rubin draws the line. Sheesh, you couldn't make this stuff up. But if Rubin's hypocrisy takes on epic proportions, the ultimate in sheer chutzpah has got to be Chalabi's lawsuit charging the government of Jordan - and his enemies in the U.S. government - of conspiring with Saddam Hussein to destroy him over a period of some 15 years. The only proper answer to this outrageous display of unmitigated gall is an arrest warrant issued by a U.S. court. Chalabi ought to be charged not only with bilking the American taxpayers out of untold millions of dollars for "intelligence" that turned out to be a pack of lies, but also with espionage for telling the Iranians that we had broken their code. Hitchens confidently claims "the Iranians had apparently used their 'broken' code to alert their HQ that the code had been broken," but doesn't say how he knows this. Presumably he has it straight from Tehran. Hitchens, as usual, fails to provide any links, leading one to wonder why he even bothers publishing on the internet, or why the editors of Slate continue to embarrass themselves with these linkless, clueless diatribes. The neocons are a stealthy bunch, and opportunistic to a fault: just as long as they could use George W. Bush they were glad enough to ride his coattails and surf the wave of irrationality and fear unleashed by 9/11. Now that it looks like, maybe, the "war President' is going to be a one-termer, these rats are jumping ship - but not before taking a few bites out of their former patron. This, of course, is what being a true parasite is all about: if it doesn't outright kill its host, then it does as much damage as it can before being forced out. - Justin Raimondo -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Fri Aug 13 21:00:50 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Fri Aug 13 21:00:53 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] [...] a possible widening and reactivation of Mai-Not In-Reply-To: <1092435938.3614.120.camel@localhost> References: <1092435938.3614.120.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040814105444.02e6bc58@central.murdoch.edu.au> I agree that the group should be action-oriented, but not exclusively so for every poster. What I read from different posters, for example, finds its way into actions of my own or of the many others to whom I sent targeted reposts from the list, or where appropriate only summaries. It was more directly action-oriented when there was a specific target -- the MAI. It has changed considerably since then. Other comments interleaved with Yvas Bajard's suggestions At 06:25 14/08/2004, Yves wrote: >[snip] > >However, I would propose we add to this valuable aspect of Mai-Not in >the following manner: > > 1. Provide regularly a list of URLs for independent media, which > Mai-Not participants can access on the Web and though which they > can be even better informed on issues of importance to them Excellent idea. Also maybe Indymedia posting addresses, or a steer to them, considering the call Janice made to write to them. > > 2. Subdivide mailings by subjects: We should open several threads > and group our articles by threads and open our scope more widely > beyond the USA Australia and Canada. A most worthwhile ambition, to open the scope beyond those areas (and of course New Zealand). Many posts focus on other regions, but the posters are virtually exclusively from North America and Australasia. How do we do it? Maybe one way is for current list members to try to publicise the list, its structure and benefits, and the advantages (and means) of joining it. Other comments below. I don't think dividing posts into threads -- any more than subject lines do already -- would help achieve this. I have tried lists like Australia's "Online Opinion" where this is done and find it highly restrictive both for browsing and for contributing. It is interesting that the Australian Democrats run a number of separate lists -- e.g. one on defence policy and one on privatisation policy -- and these are successful (especially the one on defence policy). I believe they would be less so if they were internally divided into threads. There are also two general discussion lists. One is informal, un-"managed" and vibrant. The other is formal, password-guarded, divided into threads, and sporadic and boring. (Incidentally I have resigned from the Democrats mainly because the party has switched to supporting Howard in leaving the enforcers in Iraq). > > 3. Also,w e could and should in my opinion, do some editorial work, > or synthesis of the posts sent to the group on each threads, so > that constructive discussions can take place on these subjects. I can't see this happening -- even if we divided our posts into threads. Somebody has to actually do it, and wear the flak for calling it differently from others. > > 4. For all that to be possible we should widen our audience and do > a few things: > > * review and change the guidelines for Mai-Not, and make it > attractive and corresponding to what we agree to do, Yes. Guidelines would need fairly deep discussion. > > * invite people we know to join and spread a wider invitation on > the Web Absolutely. > > * assemble among us a team of persons among the subscribers who > would work at editorials and synthesis, and help me coordinate > the group. Not so sure about that. It seems to rest on funnelling posts into threads, and editorials are more or less what we often post anyway without formalisation. (I have one myself in the drawing board stage re the conflation of capitalism, neoliberalism, neoconservatism and fascism) > Dion Giles Western Australia From janice_g at free.net.nz Fri Aug 13 21:48:00 2004 From: janice_g at free.net.nz (Janice) Date: Fri Aug 13 23:27:20 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] List moderation?? Message-ID: <380-220048614448015@free.net.nz> Yes I get one of these messages after I post a message to the list. It usually comes between the time I sent it and when the message is actually posted. Why? Don't you get one too? j ---- Original Message ---- From: dgiles@central.murdoch.edu.au To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Subject: RE: [Mai-not] List moderation?? Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 00:56:27 +0800 >Is anyone, on posting to this list, receiving the following response? > I'm >not, but is anyone else? Is it a glitch that can be brought about by >the >manner of posting? > >Dion Giles >Western Australia > >The response: > >Your mail to 'Mai-not' with the subject > > Re: [Mai-not] [...etc...] >Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. > >The reason it is being held: > > Post to moderated list > >Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive >notification of the moderator's decision. If you would like to >cancel >this posting, please visit the following URL: > > >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/confirm/mai-not/c669fab >8f49ed0112af7e21db14bc1d38eb9dba6 > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Sat Aug 14 00:42:37 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sat Aug 14 00:42:49 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] List moderation?? In-Reply-To: <380-220048614448015@free.net.nz> References: <380-220048614448015@free.net.nz> Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040814153236.02cf54e0@central.murdoch.edu.au> At 12:48 14/08/2004, Janice wrote: >Yes I get one of these messages after I post a message >to the list. It usually comes between the time I sent >it and when the message is actually posted. > >Why? > >Don't you get one too? ---------- No. Do others? Can anyone explain how come Janice is (apparently) moderated? There is nothing in her posting history, as far back as I have been following her posts which is several years, that can explain it. Moderation, because of the delays it imposes, damps the interactive nature of an email list. If it is to be practised it needs to be on the basis of accepted guidelines, and it is inexplicable that it could be applied to specific individuals and not everybody. Can anyone figure out how this comes about? Can Yves help? Dion Giles Western Australia From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Sat Aug 14 06:38:04 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Sat Aug 14 06:38:16 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] List moderation?? In-Reply-To: <6.1.2.0.0.20040814153236.02cf54e0@central.murdoch.edu.au> References: <380-220048614448015@free.net.nz> <6.1.2.0.0.20040814153236.02cf54e0@central.murdoch.edu.au> Message-ID: >No. Do others? Can anyone explain how come Janice is (apparently) >moderated? There is nothing in her posting history, as far back as >I have been following her posts which is several years, that can >explain it. Moderation, because of the delays it imposes, damps >the interactive nature of an email list. If it is to be practised >it needs to be on the basis of accepted guidelines, and it is >inexplicable that it could be applied to specific individuals and >not everybody. Can anyone figure out how this comes about? Can >Yves help? > >Dion Giles >Western Australia > I have gotten similar messages. I am not worried about it. I just assume it is part of Yves "teething" problems for the new list. I post what I do to friends who include: A neighbor running for the statehouse as a DFLer A brother from Florida who is a master builder A friend who does amazingly well creating greeting cards for progressive women A Minnesota gay activist An animals rights advocate A video documentary maker etc.etc. I have added the new mai-not list to this group. This causes some problems for Yves. His software does not seem to like Bcc-ing or long articles. But it seems to be getting better. And, I really spend too much time doing what I do already so it is really quite impossible for me to modify what I post for this list alone. I consider what I do a valuable gift to my best friends--I have read a very great deal in life and my notions of what is worth reading is pretty well developed. If the new mai-not can figure out how to deal with my posts, it will continue to be included in this group of close friends. And let's not pile on Yves. Getting these things working correctly isn't as easy as it looks. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Sat Aug 14 07:07:10 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Sat Aug 14 07:07:49 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Mea Culpas at the Washington Post Message-ID: If anyone wants to know why 'Merikuns are so amazingly ignorant, just consider, the WP is one of the two most important papers in the land. Nuff said. ********************************** Mea Culpas at the Washington Post August 14, 2004 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=21&ItemID=6038 Even as the bombs were dropping on Najaf, Nasiriya and Kut, the Washington Post was ladling out heaps of remorse for its abysmal coverage in the lead up to the war. "We did our job but we didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder," opined veteran Bob Woodward Following a tradition established by the New York Times, the Post offered soothing bromides to assuage their guilt, producing a lengthily front page story apologizing for its role in misleading the American people to war. One can only hope that the Iraqis whose lives have been ruined or whose family members have been killed will receive a copy for their sacrifice. Perhaps, it could be used as a blanket after their homes are turned into rubble by the latest "coalition" bombing raids. The war in Iraq was as much the Post's invention as it was Bush's or Cheney's. Presidents don't lead the charge to war?.the media does. The best Bush could have done was stand in front of the camera and thump his chest. It takes a well-oiled propaganda machine to whip the public into war fever. Noam Chomsky calls it "manufacturing consent", the manipulating of information to produce support for (otherwise) unpopular policies. At the Post they just call it "a good day's work." Buried in the rambling, prevaricating 3000 word mea culpa, Thomas Ricks admits, "The paper was not front-paging stuff. Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?" Yeah, why worry? No one at the Post would be dragging around in the dessert in 120 degree heat getting shot at by the natives. No one at the Post would have family members vaporized by errant coalition missiles or "trigger-happy" MP's. Ricks remarks manifest the cavalier attitude towards the suffering generated by this "unnecessary" war. It's also a tacit admission of the Post's servility to Washington powerbrokers?."We're going to war, why worry about it?" "The result was," as the Post admits, "coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times." One sided? Along with the New York Times, the Washington Post is perhaps the most widely syndicated news in the country. Their stories not only inform the national debate (on any given topic), but also establish the rationale for military action. The apocryphal stories that appeared on the front page of the Post were the basis for an illegal invasion and countless deaths. Perhaps, the editors of the Post would like to disguise (with false modesty) the fact that the case for war can only be made with the complicity of American media elites. It is the "Judith Millers" who adroitly bend the facts to make aggression seem like the only option. It's clear that the Post understood the effect of leading with stories that supported the Administrations allegations: "The front page is a newspaper's billboard, its way of making a statement about what is important, and stories trumpeted there are often picked up by other news outlets. Woodward, for his part, said it was risky for journalists to write anything that might look silly if weapons were ultimately found in Iraq. Woodward said of the weapons coverage: 'I think I was part of the groupthink.'" (Post) Absent from "backpedaling Bob" Woodward's lighthearted approach to news gathering ("It was just groupthink") is any mention of the dissenting or skeptical voices that were at "full throat" before the war, but scrupulously omitted from the pages of the Post. Also, absent was any debate on the inane assumption that weapons "in and of themselves" (without any proof of aggressive intent) are reason for military action. (a notion that is still unchallenged by any western media) Once again, this illustrates how the media has shifted the debate on the legitimacy of "preemption" ("unprovoked aggression") further to the right. (If lethal weapons alone were the criteria for vindicating hostile action, the US and Israel would be in grave danger.) Instead, "from August 2002 through the March 19, 2003, launch of the war, The Post ran more than 140 front-page stories that focused heavily on administration rhetoric against Iraq. Some examples: "Cheney Says Iraqi Strike Is Justified"; "War Cabinet Argues for Iraq Attack"; "Bush Tells United Nations It Must Stand Up to Hussein or U.S. Will"; "Bush Cites Urgent Iraqi Threat"; "Bush Tells Troops: Prepare for War." (Post) It would be interesting to know whether Bob Woodward considered this plethora of stories just more innocent "groupthink" or a concerted effort to feed the pre-war hysteria. Regardless, we can see by its own admission that the Post contributed immeasurably to the propaganda campaign that misled the American public about the imaginary Iraqi threat. And, what happened when a reporter finally came forward and produced a story that reflected skepticism about the Administrations claims: "In October 2002, (Thomas) Ricks, a former national security editor for the Wall Street Journal who has been covering such issues for 15 years, turned in a piece that he titled "Doubts." It said that senior Pentagon officials were resigned to an invasion but were reluctant and worried that the risks were being underestimated. Most of those quoted by name in the Ricks article were retired military officials or outside experts. The story was killed by Matthew Vita, then the national security editor and now a deputy assistant managing editor." (Post) So, the few stories the Post actually produced that veered from "saber-rattling" of the Bush claque were quickly run through the office shredder and consigned to the ash heap. Undoubtedly, just another oversight. Or as one of the Post editors blithely summarized, "Overall, in retrospect, we underplayed some of those stories." Conversely, stories that seemed to lack any credibility were boldly printed on the front page. "On Dec. 12, 2002, investigative reporter Barton Gellman wrote a controversial piece: "U.S. Suspects Al Qaeda Got Nerve Agent from Iraqis." The story, attributed to "two officials with firsthand knowledge of the report" to the Bush administration "and its source," said in the second paragraph that "if the report proves true" -- a whopper of a qualifier -- it would be "the most concrete evidence" yet to support Bush's charge that Iraq was helping terrorists." (Post) In other words, any story that registered disbelief was abandoned, but even the most far fetched story (like Gellman's) that supported an invasion was slapped up on the front page. Is this what the editors at the Post call "underplayed"? How is this any different from the way FOX News "underplays" their coverage? Similarly, any of the prominent members of the Administration could make whatever assertions that supported their case for war and be assured of a spot on page one. As reporter Karen DeYoung averred, "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power. If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said." The Forth Estate is frequently chided for being the "stenographers to power," but it's rare when someone (like DeYoung) accepts that moniker with such apparent pride. No Regrets Rather than wrapping up their feeble apology with some well deserved humility, the Post article withers into an apathetic disclaimer that absolves them of any responsibility: "Whether a tougher approach by The Post and other news organizations would have slowed the rush to war is, at best, a matter of conjecture." (Post) "People who were opposed to the war from the beginning and have been critical of the media's coverage in the period before the war have this belief that somehow the media should have crusaded against the war. They have the mistaken impression that somehow if the media's coverage had been different, there wouldn't have been a war." (Post) What? So, after providing the reader with a 3000 word article detailing the months of shoddy reporting and warmongering hype (including the myriad misleading headlines) the Post is shrugging its shoulders and denying any responsibility for the war? Unbelievable. Their concluding remarks can only be construed as a blanket disclaimer that absolves them of all accountability. What fools we are to think that those who are entrusted with "maintaining the institutions of democracy through an informed public" have any responsibility to report the truth. The Post may succeed in convincing its readership that it is blameless, but the soaring body count in devastated Iraq tells a different story. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From papadop at peak.org Sat Aug 14 07:23:08 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat Aug 14 07:23:18 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Dim Bulb in White House Message-ID: To: papadop@peak.org [ Sender authorized by author to copy in full MP] One Year Later ...Power Outage Traced to Dim Bulb in White House Saturday, August 14, 2004 by Greg Palast *Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" (Penguin USA) and with Theo MacGregor and Jerrold Oppenheim, "Democracy and Regulation," a guide to electricity deregulation published by the United Nations/Pluto Press, winner of the ACLU's 2004 Freedom of Expression Award. www.DemocracyAndRegulation.com One year ago today, the lights went out. Even when the Big Blackout ended, the power pirates who have us by the bulbs kept us in the dark, fibbing, fabricating and faking their way through a series of bogus excuses for a disaster created by greed overload. Instead of fixing the system, the fix is in. We now know that goof-ups and bone-headed moves started the power outage rolling; but it's spread, from a few tree branches out of Ohio to a third of the continent, occurred because power companies -- First Energy and Niagara-Mohawk to name two -- had slashed staffing and maintenance. The under-manning and the under-spending all occurred beneath the banner of "deregulation." In the bad old days of bureaucrats with thick rule books, the government told the power companies exactly how much to spend on repairs. Under "deregulation," the rules went out the windows and repair cash was carted off as special dividends to stockholders. I'm sitting here with Jerry Oppenheim and Theo MacGregor, two of this planet's most respected experts on electricity systems. They are just shaking their heads in disgust: nothing learned a year after the disaster. Rather, we have a blackout on reason, with "deregulation" -- the disease -- sold as the cure. George Bush's Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is allowing the power companies to reach into our wallets and take out more cash to add wires to the transmission system -- in effect replacing the loot these guys carted off in the last ten years of deregulation. "But that won't keep the lights on," says Oppenheim, former Assistant Attorney General in New York in charge of investigating utilities. "It's not a lack of wires or lack of power plants that caused the blackout. The Administration is adding complexity to an overly complex system all to avoid acting on the obvious conclusion: deregulation has failed." As long as the lights are still on, I'm reprinting the commentary I wrote one year ago on my dying laptop ... OUTAGE TRACED TO DIM BULB IN WHITE HOUSE ZNet - August 14, 2003 -- I can tell you all about the ne're-do-wells that sent us back to the Dark Ages last week. I came up against these characters -- First Energy and the Niagara Mohawk Power Company -- some years back.  You see, before I was a journalist, I worked for a living, as an investigator of corporate racketeers. The power outage began in First Energy's Ohio operation. This company was the model for the film, "China Syndrome." Really. Then First Energy's Pennsylvania unit fumbled the power ball. These are the very same Homer Simpsons who melted Three Mile Island. Next, Niagara-Mohawk blacked out and took down New York. Ni-Mo's claim to fame goes back to the 1980s. They built a nuclear plant, Nine Mile Point, a brutally costly piece of hot junk for which NiMo and its partner companies charged billions to New York State's electricity ratepayers. To pull off this grand theft by kilowatt, the NiMo-led consortium fabricated cost and schedule reports, then performed a Harry Potter job on the account books. In 1988, I showed a jury a memo from an executive from one partner, Long Island Lighting, giving a lesson to a NiMo honcho on how to lie to government regulators. The jury ordered LILCO to pay $4.3billion and, ultimately, put them out of business. I'm not surprised that the Three Stooges of the power industry knocked their heads together and blacked us out. What's surprising is that the US media is clueless about how we ended up with Larry, Moe and Curley in control of our nation's electronic lifeline. Here's what happened. After LILCO was hammered by the law, after government regulators slammed Niagara Mohawk and dozens of other book-cooking, document-doctoring utility companies all over America with fines and penalties totaling in the tens of billions of dollars, the industry leaders got together to swear never to break the regulations again. Their plan was not to follow the rules, but to ELIMINATE the rules. They called it "deregulation." It was like a committee of bank robbers figuring out how to make safecracking legal. But they dare not launch the scheme in the USA. Rather, in 1990, one devious little bunch of operators out of Texas, Houston Natural Gas, operating under the alias "Enron," talked an over-the-edge free-market fanatic, Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, into licensing the first completely deregulated power plant in the hemisphere. And so began an economic disease called "regulatory reform" that spread faster than SARS. Notably, Enron rewarded Thatcher's Energy Minister, one Lord Wakeham, with a bushel of dollar bills for 'consulting' services and a seat on Enron's board of directors. The English experiment proved the viability of Enron's new industrial formula: that the enthusiasm of politicians for deregulation was in direct proportion to the payola provided by power companies. The power elite first moved on England because they knew Americans wouldn't swallow the deregulation snake oil easily. The USA had gotten used to cheap power available at the flick of a switch. This was the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt who, in 1933, caged the man he thought to be the last of the power pirates, Samuel Insull. Wall Street wheeler-dealer Insull created the Power Trust, and six decades before Ken Lay, faked account books and ripped off consumers. To frustrate Insull and his ilk, FR gave us the Federal Power Commission and the Public Utilities Holding Company Act which told electricity companies where to stand and salute. Detailed regulations limited charges to real expenditures plus a government-set profit. The laws banned power "trading" and required companies to keep the lights on under threat of arrest -- no blackout blackmail to hike rates. Of particular significance as I write here in the dark, regulators told utilities exactly how much they had to spend to insure the system stayed in repair and the lights stayed on. Bureaucrats crawled along the wire and, like me, crawled through the account books, to make sure the power execs spent customers' money on parts and labor. If they didn't, we'd whack'm over the head with our thick rule books. Did we get in the way of these businessmen's entrepreneurial spirit? Damn right we did. Most important, FDR banned political contributions from utility companies -- no 'soft' money, no 'hard' money, no money PERIOD. But then came George the First. In 1992, just prior to is departure from the White House, President Bush Senior gave the power industry one long deep-through-the-teeth kiss good-bye: federal deregulation of electricity. It was a legacy he wanted to leave for his son, the gratitude of power companies which ponied up $16 million for the Republican campaign of 2000, seven times the sum they gave Democrats. But Poppy Bush's gift of deregulating of wholesale prices set by the feds only got the power pirates halfway to the plunder of Joe Ratepayer. For the big payday they needed deregulation at the state level. There were only two states, California and Texas, big enough and Republican enough to put the electricity market con into operation. California fell first. The power companies spent $39 million to defeat a 1998 referendum pushed by Ralph Nader which would have blocked the de-reg scam. Another $37 million was spent on lobbying and lubricating the campaign coffers of the state's politicians to write a lie into law: in the deregulation act's preamble, the Legislature promised that deregulation would reduce electricity bills by 20%. In fact, when in the first California city to go "lawless," San Diego, the 20% savings became a 300% jump in surcharges. Enron circled California and licked its lips. As the number one contributor to the George W. Bush campaigns, it was confident about the future. With just a half dozen other companies it controlled at times 100% of the available power capacity needed to keep the Golden State lit. Their motto, "your money or your lights." Enron and its comrades played the system like a broken ATM machine, yanking out the bills. For example, in the shamelessly fixed "auctions" for electricity held by the state, Enron bid, in one instance, to supply 500 megawatts of electricity over a 15 megawatt line. That's like pouring a gallon of gasoline into a thimble-- the lines would burn up if they attempted it. Faced with blackout because of Enron's destructive bid, the state was willing to pay anything to keep the lights on. And the state did. According to Dr. Anjali Sheffrin, economist with the California State Independent System Operator which directs power deliveries, between May and November 2000, three power giants physically or "economically" withheld power from the state and concocted enough false bids to cost the California customers over $6.2 billion in excess charges. It took until December 20, 2000, with the lights going out on the Golden Gate, for President Bill Clinton, once a deregulation booster, to find his lost Democratic soul and impose price caps in California and ban Enron from the market. But the light-bulb buccaneers didn't have to wait long to put their hooks back into the treasure chest. Within seventy-two hours of moving into the White House, while he was still sweeping out the inaugural champagne bottles, George Bush the Second reversed Clinton's executive order and put the power pirates back in business in California. Enron, Reliant (aka Houston Industries), TXU (aka Texas Utilities) and the others who had economically snipped California's wires knew they could count on Dubya, who as governor of the Lone Star state cut them the richest deregulation deal in America. Meanwhile, the deregulation bug made it to New York where Republican Governor George Pataki and his industry-picked utility commissioners ripped the lid off electric bills and relieved my old friends at Niagara Mohawk of the expensive obligation to properly fund the maintenance of the grid system. And the Pataki-Bush Axis of Weasels permitted something that must have former New York governor Roosevelt spinning in his wheelchair in Heaven: They allowed a foreign company, the notoriously incompetent National Grid of England, to buy up NiMo, get rid of 800 workers and pocket most of their wages - producing a bonus for NiMo stockholders approaching $90 million. Is last week's black-out a surprise? Heck, no, not to us in the field who've watched Bush's buddies flick the switches across the globe. In Brazil, Houston Industries seized ownership of Rio de Janeiro's electric company. The Texans (aided by their French partners) fired workers, raised prices, cut maintenance expenditures and, CLICK! the juice went out so often the locals now call it, "Rio Dark." So too the free-market British buckaroos controlling Niagara Mohawk raised prices, slashed staff, cut maintenance and CLICK! -- New York joins Brazil in the Dark Ages. Californians have found the solution to the deregulation disaster: re-call the only governor in the nation with the cojones to stand up to the electricity price fixers. And unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gov. Gray Davis stood alone against the bad guys without using a body double. Davis called Reliant Corp of Houston a pack of "pirates" --and now he'll walk the plank for daring to stand up to the Texas marauders. So where's the President? Just before he landed on the deck of the Abe Lincoln, the White House was so concerned about our brave troops facing the foe that they used the cover of war for a new push in Congress for yet more electricity deregulation. This has a certain logic: there's no sense defeating Iraq if a hostile regime remains in California. Sitting in the dark, as my laptop battery runs low, I suspected the truth about deregulation will never see the light -- until we change the dim bulb in the White House. ----- See Palast's reports for BBC Television and the Guardian papers of Britain at www.GregPalast.com. Interviews/reprints: Media@gregpalast.com From papadop at peak.org Sat Aug 14 07:41:47 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat Aug 14 07:41:52 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] List moderation?? In-Reply-To: References: <380-220048614448015@free.net.nz> <6.1.2.0.0.20040814153236.02cf54e0@central.murdoch.edu.au> Message-ID: On Sat, 14 Aug 2004, Jonathan Larson wrote: I have gotten similar messages. I am not worried about it. I just assume it is part of Yves "teething" problems for the new list. I have added the new mai-not list to this group. This causes some problems for Yves. His software does not seem to like Bcc-ing or long articles. ===================== To which I can only add -- that - yes - Yves can (hopefully) modify the innards of this new list to meet dificulties. The "moderator" message is what I received as a result of my bcc-ing and I've stopped getting it now BECAUSE Yves took the trouble to learn how to modify the list configuration -- which of course takes time. And yes he may be able to track down why some subscribers still get the "moderator" message. There should be no difficulty in enlarging the "size" limitation. The set of current subscribers doesn't seem to wish to send large audio or video or graphics files to the list - and that's usually the only reason for cutting down on size [ list providers don't like to deal with multiplying a Megabyte attachment by the 20 or 200 or 2000 it takes to post to a subscriber list] Michael From netcfs at shaw.ca Sat Aug 14 07:42:04 2004 From: netcfs at shaw.ca (Yves Bajard) Date: Sat Aug 14 07:50:39 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] List moderation?? In-Reply-To: <380-220048614448015@free.net.nz> References: <380-220048614448015@free.net.nz> Message-ID: <1092494524.2288.1519.camel@localhost> No, you are the only person on the list whose posts have to be approved, Janice. I systematically approve all pots anyway. I'll have to try and find why and correct the flaw. Don't worry in the meantime. You are not submitted to Big Brother's censorship Cordially Yves Bajard Le ven 13/08/2004 ? 21:48, Janice a ?crit : > Yes I get one of these messages after I post a message > to the list. It usually comes between the time I sent > it and when the message is actually posted. > > Why? > > Don't you get one too? > > j > ---- Original Message ---- > From: dgiles@central.murdoch.edu.au > To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net > Subject: RE: [Mai-not] List moderation?? > Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 00:56:27 +0800 > > >Is anyone, on posting to this list, receiving the following response? > > I'm > >not, but is anyone else? Is it a glitch that can be brought about by > >the > >manner of posting? > > > >Dion Giles > >Western Australia > > > >The response: > > > >Your mail to 'Mai-not' with the subject > > > > Re: [Mai-not] [...etc...] > >Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval. > > > >The reason it is being held: > > > > Post to moderated list > > > >Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive > >notification of the moderator's decision. If you would like to > >cancel > >this posting, please visit the following URL: > > > > > >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/confirm/mai-not/c669fab > >8f49ed0112af7e21db14bc1d38eb9dba6 > > > >_______________________________________________ > >Mai-not mailing list > >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > > > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From netcfs at shaw.ca Sat Aug 14 07:50:46 2004 From: netcfs at shaw.ca (Yves Bajard) Date: Sat Aug 14 08:01:23 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] List moderation?? In-Reply-To: References: <380-220048614448015@free.net.nz> <6.1.2.0.0.20040814153236.02cf54e0@central.murdoch.edu.au> Message-ID: <1092495046.2288.1548.camel@localhost> Reply to Jonathan: Your bcc-ing problem has been resolved, and so has MichaelP's, who had very kindly put Mai-Not for separate mailing while I was looking for the reason why bcc sendind did not pass without list-owner's approval. I fo8und the reason a ffew days afo, corected it and inforemd all of the resolution of teh issue.. Nows, let me deal with JKanice's problem.. Cordially Yves Bajard Le sam 14/08/2004 ? 06:38, Jonathan Larson a ?crit : > >No. Do others? Can anyone explain how come Janice is (apparently) > >moderated? There is nothing in her posting history, as far back as > >I have been following her posts which is several years, that can > >explain it. Moderation, because of the delays it imposes, damps > >the interactive nature of an email list. If it is to be practised > >it needs to be on the basis of accepted guidelines, and it is > >inexplicable that it could be applied to specific individuals and > >not everybody. Can anyone figure out how this comes about? Can > >Yves help? > > > >Dion Giles > >Western Australia > > > > I have gotten similar messages. I am not worried about it. I just > assume it is part of Yves "teething" problems for the new list. > > I post what I do to friends who include: > > A neighbor running for the statehouse as a DFLer > A brother from Florida who is a master builder > A friend who does amazingly well creating greeting cards for progressive women > A Minnesota gay activist > An animals rights advocate > A video documentary maker > etc.etc. > > I have added the new mai-not list to this group. This causes some > problems for Yves. His software does not seem to like Bcc-ing or > long articles. > > But it seems to be getting better. And, I really spend too much time > doing what I do already so it is really quite impossible for me to > modify what I post for this list alone. I consider what I do a > valuable gift to my best friends--I have read a very great deal in > life and my notions of what is worth reading is pretty well > developed. If the new mai-not can figure out how to deal with my > posts, it will continue to be included in this group of close friends. > > And let's not pile on Yves. Getting these things working correctly > isn't as easy as it looks. From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Sat Aug 14 08:22:18 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sat Aug 14 08:22:26 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] The various isms Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040814230348.02be6890@central.murdoch.edu.au> Capitalism, Keynesianism, neoliberalism, neoconservatism, fascism, totalitarianism all have markedly different meanings. In addition to this we can differentiate between an activity (capitalist activity), a form of organisation of society, or an ideological trend or theory. It may seem simple merely to conflate the whole lot under the term "fascism" but it robs people of the means of seeking allies in combating social maladies. It is perfectly possible, for instance, to oppose fascism without having to oppose capitalism. Fascism was brought to a standstill during the war by millions of people who were determined to stop fascism but had not the slightest interest in dismantling capitalism. At the same time, nations covering one-third of the earth's population ran a sustained and determined attempt for more than half a century to dismantle capitalism, and made capitalist activity impossible -- yet managed to subject the populations to a regime with all the vilest features of fascism. Even conflating neoliberalism and neoconservitism -- close cousins -- throws away the possibility of encouraging neoliberals like Soros to stand against the PNAC and its lunatic gang of conspirators. By using terms of differentiation one can make intelligent choices for alliances. By lumping them all together one can not. Dion Giles Western Australia From thinker at uniserve.com Sat Aug 14 14:06:19 2004 From: thinker at uniserve.com (Ed Deak) Date: Sat Aug 14 14:06:15 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Emergency protest! Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20040814140603.03b02800@pop.uniserve.com> >******************************** >EMERGENCY VIGIL: Stop the killing in Iraq, End the occupation! > >WHEN: Sunday, 15 August, Noon-2pm >WHERE: 10 Downing Street, Central London > >Called by Iraq Occupation Focus and Voices in the Wilderness UK. >(Speakers to be announced). > >Densely-populated Iraqi cities are under fire from US-UK forces. On >Thursday, more than 75 Iraqis were killed in the US bombardment of Kut. >British troops have killed at least twenty in their assault on Amara. > >The attack on Najaf, led by US warplanes, has been condemned by public >opinion across Iraq. Sixteen members of Najaf's 30 member provincial council >have resigned in protest at the assault. > >In the last 48 hours, hundreds of civilians have been killed by occupying >forces in the cities of Najaf, Kut, Sadr City, Sammara, Nasiriya, Amara, >Basra, Ramadi and elsewhere. > >The occupiers are the problem, not the solution. > >Stop the slaughter! > >For more information contact: > >Iraq Occupation Focus: >Munir Chalabi 07952 683415 >Liz Davies 07958 673840 ><mailto:iraqfocus@riseup.net>iraqfocus@riseup.net > ><http://www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk>www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk > > >Voices in the Wilderness >Gabriel Carlyle >0845 458 2564 ><mailto:voices@viwuk.freeserve.co.uk>voices@viwuk.freeserve.co.uk > ><http://www.voicesuk.org>www.voicesuk.org > From hermann at picknowl.com.au Sat Aug 14 18:08:03 2004 From: hermann at picknowl.com.au (John Hermann) Date: Sat Aug 14 18:09:36 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right In-Reply-To: <380-220048513123931500@free.net.nz> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20040815100630.01f97ac8@mail.picknowl.com.au> At 12:39 AM 14/08/2004 +1200, Janice wrote: > >> >>Which really underlines the invalidity of "anti-capitalism" as a > >> >>movement. The same grabbing class will not permit any real > >> >>competition in globalisation therefore capitalism as an > >> >>economic system does not exist. Only fascism exists. > >> > > >> >Fascism is totalitarian capitalism. > >> > >>If this is true then how do we explain the fact that it is occurring > >>in democracies everywhere? > > > > > > The world operated in a qualitatively different manner between > > 1945 and 1975. At that stage the neoclassical school was little > > more than a minor sect. Things really changed for the worse > > after 1980 with the advent of Thatcher and Reagan. > > >This does not answer the question, John. If fascism is totalitarian >capitalism then explain how fascism is occurring in democracies ? > >Either totalitarianism is an absolute dictatorship or it is not >totalitarianism. You can't have it both ways. :-) I don't accept that fascism is currently "occurring in democracies", for the simple reason that these two systems of government are incompatible. I think it was Abe Lincoln who defined democracy as "government of the people, by the people and for the people". That seems like a pretty good definition to me. Democracy is most definitely NOT government of the people, by (or on behalf of) the corporations and for the corporations -- which is what we have in the USA today and in other countries to a lesser extent. I might add that circuses disguised as elections do not of themselves establish democracy, particularly in circumstances where news and other vital information is censored, distorted or suppressed by mainstream media controlled by multinational empires, and where citizens have little or no understanding of the forces which are influencing, moulding and directing their lives. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20040815/d5cfbe35/attachment.html From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Sat Aug 14 21:13:35 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Sat Aug 14 21:13:47 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] U.S. Trade Deficit Increased 19% in June Message-ID: U.S. Trade Deficit Increased 19% in June Analysts Worry That Burgeoning Gap Will Lead to Higher Interest Rates, Lower Dollar By Nell Henderson Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, August 14, 2004; Page E01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63863-2004Aug13?language=printer U.S. businesses and consumers spent more in June on imported machinery, clothing, jewelry and other goods and services. Everybody paid more for oil. Meanwhile, U.S. businesses sold far less corn, chemicals, computers and other items overseas. By the end of June, imports exceeded exports by $55.8 billion, another record U.S. trade deficit, the Commerce Department reported yesterday. The size of the gap forced many economists to trash their forecasts and pencil in lower estimates of the economy's strength in coming months. The trade gap, 19 percent wider than the one in May, reflected the recent sharp economic slow-down in the United States and abroad, analysts said. More worrisome, several economists said, is the possibility that the swelling trade deficit will eventually cause a steep drop in the dollar and a rapid rise in interest rates, lowering Americans' living standards. "The U.S. as a nation is just living way beyond its means," said Nigel Gault, U.S. economist for Global Insight, an economic research firm, noting that household debt has soared in recent years and that the federal budget deficit is ballooning to a record size. "There is a worry that at some point, U.S. spending growth will have to slow sharply to get this under control." The size of the trade gap surprised many analysts because it showed the U.S. economy had slowed more significantly than thought in the spring. Several analysts said they also expect weaker U.S. economic growth in coming months as trade provides an additional drag on a recovery that may be faltering under the weight of high energy prices, stalling job creation and tepid consumer spending. "Unless there is significant improvement in coming months, the deficit's trajectory poses serious questions about the growth outlook in the second half," Joseph Abate, of Lehman Brothers Global Economics, wrote in a note to clients, calling the trade figures "shockingly dismal." Such concerns provided new fuel for election year debate over the Bush administration's handling of the economy, a top voter concern in the last months of the campaign. The trade report showed that "this administration hasn't come close to doing enough to enforce trade agreements and fight for jobs here at home," said Phil Singer, spokesman for the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.). The Bush campaign countered that the president has vigorously enforced trade agreements while lowering taxes and reducing regulations to make U.S. businesses more competitive globally. "The president believes the key to improving our economic growth is aggressive trade policies that promote U.S. goods and services overseas," said Terry Holt, a Bush campaign spokesman. Stocks were little changed yesterday from Thursday's close, when the major indexes touched new lows for the year. Oil prices hit a new high yesterday, with benchmark U.S. crude scheduled for September delivery rising to $46.58 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Beyond the short-term implications, some economists said the bigger worry is the long-term risk to the economy posed by ever-growing trade and budget deficits. The deficits reflect that Americans consume more than they produce and borrow the difference from abroad. At some point, economists think, foreigners will not want to continue investing ever-greater amounts of money in U.S. stocks, bonds and other assets. The broadest measure of the trade deficit, which includes investment flows, stood at more than $500 billion last year, equivalent to about 5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. The Federal Reserve research staff, in a presentation to top central bank policymakers in June, said a trade gap of that size "could not be sustained indefinitely," according to minutes of the meeting released Thursday. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has said many times this year that he thinks global markets are probably large and flexible enough for the deficit to be reduced relatively smoothly to a more sustainable size. The Fed staff agreed in June that such an adjustment "might well proceed in a relatively benign fashion . . . but the possibility that the adjustment could involve more wrenching changes could not be ruled out," according to the meeting's minutes. The "wrenching" version could occur if financial market psychology shifts, foreign investors decide to dump U.S. assets, the dollar plummets and U.S. interest rates soar. The trade deficit's recent growth "is a portent of a highly probable crash of the dollar within the next couple of years," said C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics. And, he added, the June numbers imply that will happen sooner rather than later. The Fed staff, however, said in June -- before the June trade figures were known -- that "the adjustment of such imbalances was not necessarily imminent." Some economists are more sanguine. James Glassman, senior economist at J. P. Morgan Securities, Inc., said the June figure shows that "our basic problem is global demand is too weak." But he said that over time, free trade will spur more economic growth overseas, benefiting the U.S. and global economies. Part of the concern arises from the trend over recent months, Bergsten said. The trade gap has hit a new record in seven of the last eight months. With economic growth slowing in China, and disappointing in Japan and Europe, some analysts said, it is hard to see how export growth can rebound in coming months. "Record oil prices and slower growth in the rest of the world argue against a significant improvement in the trade deficit any time soon," Jay Bryson, an economist with Wachovia Economics Group, wrote in an analysis for clients. U.S. exports fell 4.3 percent in June, while imports rose 3.3. percent, the Commerce Department reported. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Sat Aug 14 22:22:48 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sat Aug 14 22:23:03 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Letter to an Australian pollie Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040815131709.02c964a8@central.murdoch.edu.au> I am reproducing this here because although the people concerned operate only in Australia the implied demand on politicians is of more widespread concern, even in the USA where crossing the floor is (thankfully) a common practice. I apologise for cross-posting which means some people will receive it more than once. Dion Giles Western Australia Senator Ruth Webber Labor Senator for Western Australia Unit 1, 153 Trappers Drive Woodvale 6026 Dear Senator Webber Thank you for your letter of August 4. You have stated that you in common with others of your party have achieved temporary cosmetic improvements in a treasonable "Free Trade" Agreement (FTA) with the United States -- but omit to acknowledge that you didn't have to pass it at all. There is overwhelming evidence, of which every member of parliament has been made abundantly aware, that the agreement embodies a major ceding of Australian sovereignty while bringing the Australian people zero benefits, unless further opportunities for US investors to acquire Australian enterprises are supposed to be a benefit. It has been well known that the purpose of negotiating this FTA has been to cement relations among the Coalition of the Lying who are involved in a deadly colonial adventure in Iraq. You know it, I know it, and everyone else who has seen the facts knows it. Yet I could not find your name among the senators who voted against the enabling legislation. Undoubtedly your defence will be that you had to follow a caucus decision as your party did not give you a "conscience vote". But you would be wrong. It is the electors who grant you a "conscience vote" -- expecting you as an elected representative to represent the electors' interests, not the interests of foreign business predators. This is quite independent of votes in your party room. But if you respect democracy you can go further than just crossing the floor on behalf of those who elected you. You can insist, through your party and otherwise, that major pieces of legislation such as an FTA be put to referendum, and that you will not vote for such legislation otherwise or if a subsequent referendum rejects it. Representative government is government of the people by the representatives for whatever corporations can suborn them by suborning and their parties and threatening to sool the Rupert Murdoch lie factory on them. Why not become known and respected as the first politician in Australian history to stand up consistently for the right of the people themselves to make the major decisions (that is, government of the people for the people by the people)? Be ready to cross the floor for the people and you will lift the dismal public perception of politicians and parliament. Yours sincerely Dion Giles 9/34 Waterloo Street Joondanna 6060 email dgiles@central.murdoch.edu.au (Formerly 53 Wood Street Fremantle 6160) From jfos at net-tech.com.au Sun Aug 15 10:23:36 2004 From: jfos at net-tech.com.au (John) Date: Sun Aug 15 00:07:07 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] DEPLETED URANIUM BLAMED FOR CANCER CLUSTERS AMONG IRAQ WAR VETS Message-ID: <6.1.0.6.1.20040816031516.02a5c2b0@redback.net-tech.com.au> [DU-WATCH] DU Blamed for cancer cluster among iraq war veterans DU article number 2 from American Free Press to be published this weekend. There will be 2 more articles following this one. Read Article #1 at DEPLETED URANIUM BLAMED FOR CANCER CLUSTERS AMONG IRAQ WAR VETS By Christopher Bollyn American Free Press A discovery by American Free Press that nearly half of the recently returned soldiers in one unit from Iraq have ?malignant growths? is ?critical evidence,? according to experts, that depleted uranium weapons are responsible for the huge number of disabled Gulf War vets ? and damage to their DNA. A growing number of U.S. military personnel who are serving, or have served, in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan have become sick and disabled from a variety of symptoms commonly known as Gulf War Syndrome. Depleted uranium (DU) weapons have been blamed for causing many of the symptoms. [athough the U$ administration and military forces were heavily involved in the "humanitarian intervention"in the former republic of Yugoslavia, their participation was largely limited to dropping hundreds of tonnes of "depleted"Uranium bombs and other ordinance upon innocent civilian populations ...SORRY, "COLLATERAL DAMAGE" in Bosnia and other parts of the former federated (COMMUNIST) Republic. The British military - part of the NATO 'allies' who deployed troops there ON THE GROUND - also used "depleted" Uranium weapons and munitions: today, many of their veterans and those from several Eurpoean/NATO countries are pursuing legal actions against their governments for the "mysterious" and debilitating "Balkans Syndrome" contracted while serving in that "theatre"of war.] ?Gulf War vets are coming down with these symptoms at twice the rate of vets from previous conflicts,? said Barbara A. Goodno from the Dept. of Defense?s Deployment Health Support Directorate. A recent discovery by American Free Press that nearly half the soldiers in one returned unit have malignant growths has provided the scientific community with ?critical evidence,? experts say, to help understand exactly how depleted uranium affects humans ? and their DNA. One of the first published researchers of Gulf War Syndrome, Dr. Andr?s Kor?nyi-Both told AFP that 27-28 percent of Gulf War veterans have suffered chronic health problems, more than 5 times the rate of Viet Nam vets, and 4 times the rate of Korean War vets. Kor?nyi-Both said his son had recently returned from Iraq, where he had been part of the initial assault from Kuwait to Baghdad. From his unit of 20 men, 8 now have ?malignant growths,? Kor?nyi-Both said. Dr. Kor?nyi-Both is not an expert on DU, but has written extensively about how the fine desert sand blowing around Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula provides a ideal vehicle for toxins, increasing the range and effect of biological and chemical agents, such as DU, that attach themselves to the particles of sand. Kor?nyi-Both described how, during the 1991 Gulf War, he and others had inhaled large quantities of sand dust that could have been laden with chemical or biological agents. The sand ?destroyed our immune systems,? he said. FULK?S THEORY Marion Fulk, a former nuclear chemical physicist at Lawrence Livermore lab, is investigating how DU affects the human body. Fulk said that 8 malignancies out of 20, in 16 months, ?is spectacular ? and of serious concern.? The high rate of malignancies found in this unit appears to have been caused by exposure to DU weapons on the battlefield. If DU were found to be the cause, this case would be ?critical evidence? of Fulk?s theory on how the DU particulate affects DNA. Such quick malignancies are caused by the particulate effect of DU, according to Fulk: When DU (Uranium 238) decays, it transforms into two short-lived and ?very hot? isotopes ? Thorium 234 and Protactinium 234. As it transforms in the body, the DU particle is firing off faster and faster ?bullets? into the DNA, Fulk said, or wherever it is lodged. Because uranium has a natural attraction to phosphorus, however, it is drawn to the phosphate in the DNA. As the Uranium 238 decays, it releases alpha and beta particles with millions of electron volts. When a DU particle makes this transformation in the human body it releases ?huge amounts of energy in the same location doing lots of damage very quickly,? Fulk said. Thorium 234 has a half-life of 24 days and emits a beta particle of .270 million electron volts as it transforms into Protactinium 234, which has a half-life of less than 7 hours. Protactinium then emits a beta particle of 2.19 million electron volts as it transforms into the more stable Uranium 234. The chemical binding energy in the molecules of the human cell is less than 10 electron volts. One alpha particle from U-238 is over 4 million electron volts, which is like ?nuking a cell.? Leuren Moret, a scientist who is opposed to the use of DU, compared it to sitting in front of a fire and putting a red-hot coal in your mouth. ?The nuclear establishment wants us to believe that it is like sitting in front of the fire and warming the whole body evenly ? and that no harm is done, but that is not the reality,? she said. ?We can expect to see multiple cancers in one person,? Moret said. ?These multiple unrelated cancers in the same individual have been reported in Yugoslavia and Iraq in families that had no history of any cancer. This is unknown in the previous studies of cancer,? she said. ?A new phenomenon.? The Pentagon?s Goodno questioned Dr. Kor?nyi-Both?s report that 8 of 20 recently returned soldiers from one unit had experienced malignant growths. Goodno and Kor?nyi-Both did agree, however, that Iraqi chemical and biological agents had not played a role in the 2003 invasion. This is significant because three factors have generally been blamed for causing Gulf War Syndrome: Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, the cocktail of vaccinations given to coalition soldiers, and depleted uranium. The absence of any detectable chemical or biological agents during the 2003 invasion of Iraq reduces the number of potential factors for the malignancies in the veterans to pre-war vaccinations and DU. Statistics published in Encyclopedia Britannica?s 2003 Almanac indicate that 325,000 Gulf War vets were receiving compensation for service-related disabilities in 2000. The almanac lists 580,400 combatants in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, yet only 467 U.S. personnel were actually wounded during the conflict. The 325,000 disabled Gulf War vets are equivalent to 56 percent of the number of military personnel ?serving in the theater of operation.? Furthermore, in 2000, nine years after the three-week war in Iraq had ended, the number of disabled vets from the Gulf War was increasing yearly by more than 43,000. While the number of disabled vets from previous wars is decreasing by about 35,000 per year, since the ?War on Terror? began in 2001, the total number of disabled vets has grown to some 2.5 million. MORE DISABLED VETS ?More than ever before,? Brad Flohr of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs said about the total number of disabled vets. Asked if there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II, Flohr said he believed so. Terry Jemison of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs told AFP that current statistics indicate that more than half a million veterans of the 14-year-old ?Gulf War era? are now receiving disability compensation. During this period, some 7,035 soldiers are reported having been wounded in Iraq. With 518,739 disabled ?Gulf-era veterans? currently receiving disability compensation, according to Jemison, the number of veterans disabled after the war is more than 73 times the total number of wounded, in and out of combat, from the entire 14-year conflict with Iraq. DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS Last December, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a nuclear medicine expert who has conducted extensive research on depleted uranium, examined nine soldiers from the 442nd Military Police Company of New York and found that four of the men had absorbed or inhaled depleted uranium (U-238). Several of the men had traces of another uranium isotope, U-236, which is only produced in a nuclear reaction process. Both U-238 and U-236 are man-made forms of uranium. ?These men were almost certainly exposed to radioactive weapons on the battlefield,? Durakovic said. ?Due to the current proliferation of DU weaponry, the battlefields of the future will be unlike any battlefields in history,? Durakovic, then Chief of Nuclear Medicine for the Veterans Administration said after the first Gulf War, in which he served. Since 1991, the U.S. military has used DU in munitions as penetrating rods, which destroy enemy tanks and their occupants, and as armor on U.S. tanks. When DU penetrating rods strike a hard target some of the radioactive and chemically toxic DU is vaporized into ultra-fine particles that are easily inhaled or absorbed through the skin. According to a survey of 10,051 Gulf War veterans, conducted between 1991 and 1995 by Vic Sylvester and the Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm Association, 82 percent of veterans reported having entered captured Iraqi vehicles. ?This would suggest that 123,000 soldiers have been directly exposed to DU,? Durakovic said. ?Since the effects of contamination by uranium cannot be directed or contained, uranium?s chemical and radiological toxicity will create environments that are hostile not only to the health of enemy forces but of one?s own forces as well,? Durakovic said. ?Because of the chemical and radiological toxicity of DU, the small number of particles trapped in the lungs, kidneys, and bone greatly increase the risk of cancer and all other illnesses over time,? Durakovic, an expert of internal contamination of radio-isotopes, said. According to Durakovic, other symptoms associated with DU poisoning are: emotional and mental deterioration, fatigue, loss of bowel and bladder control, and numerous forms of cancer. Such symptoms are increasing showing up in Iraq?s children and among Gulf War veterans and their offspring, he said. ?Although I personally served in Operation Desert Shield as Unit Commander,? Durakovic said, ?my expertise of internal contamination was never used because we were never informed of the intended use of DU prior to or during the war.? ?The numbers are overwhelming, but the potential horrors only get worse,? Robert C. Koehler of the Chicago-based Tribune Media Services wrote in his March 25 article on DU weapons, ?Silent Genocide.? ?DU dust does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems of those who breathe it or touch it; the substance also alters one?s genetic code,? Koehler wrote. ?The Pentagon?s response to such charges is denial, denial, denial. And the American media is its moral co-conspirator.? As AFP reported last week, the smallest particles of DU, when inhaled, are capable of moving throughout the human body, passing through cell walls and affecting the person?s Master Code, according to Fulk, and the ?_expression of the DNA.? Four years after the Gulf War of 1991, Life magazine published a photo-essay entitled ?The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm,? which focused on the numerous cases of severe birth defects that had occurred in families of veterans from that war. Life reported, ?Of the 400 sick vets who had already answered [Don Riegle?s Senate Banking] committee inquiries, a startling 65 percent reported birth defects or immune-system problems in children conceived after the war.? AFP asked the Dept. of Veterans Affairs if they kept records of the birth defects occurring among the families of veterans, and was told they do not. [Brought to you by HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 15 00:42:31 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 15 00:42:31 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Chavez referendum; report from the scene Message-ID: Verbatim from a journalist friend of a journalist friend - Please respect the author - share with friends but don't publish on public sites. Michael Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2004 23:29:14 -0400 a hurried update from here. feel free to forward to friends if you want. But, please don't publish or post to public sites. I was going to forward some of the many articles flowing out of caracas this week from the US press, but I'm finally fed up with them. Even more so now that I know them personally. Most of these correspondents are trying to be fair, and they're really nice people. But while their articles will give you some who's, when's, and what's, they will only distract you from the why's. Please, if you read any more about Latin America in the Nytimes and elsewhere just picture them writing from the roof of the Marriot, trying to see the barrios with a pair of binoculars, receiving calls from the US embassy with one phone and ordering room service with the other. I also wanted to give a long review of what I've seen this week -- from the barrios to the opposition march to Chavez grabbing me on the shoulder -- but there isn't time. We're at the moment of truth here, so I will go straight to the "nut graph" as these correspondents like to say, and leave the flowery narrative about the last few days till later. You will have to take me at my word regarding the state of things and allow me to give the evidence and background at a later date. Caracas is surprisingly calm, but the bars are closed and the suspense is very real: no one knows what's going to happen starting tomorrow. Orderly election; stable government; civil war; military coup; run-off election; another counter-coup from the barrios?? (Chavez needs to win more than 50% to stay. If he loses there will be new Presidential elections in a month and he will probably be allowed to run.) Chavistas believe it's decided -- that there is no way they lose unless the referendum is stolen, and the polls seem to back them up (even Juan Forero of the NYTimes said "it's over"). In the elite neighborhoods of Caracas, the opposition is just as convinced they will win, and on Thursday backed it up with a massive, spirited march the likes of which I have never seen. Neither side believes it can lose a fair election. There could be fraud or it could be, as Jimmy Carter said: "fairer than Florida." There could be serious violence as the press warns, or there could be complete calm as Chavez promises. But one thing is clear to me: Chavez isn't going anywhere. No independent person believes the opposition could win a new presidential election in September. And, in the end, the Chavistas--at least half of this country, overwhelming poor people of color--aren't going to let him go anywhere. There's a conviction in their voices and eyes which is unmistakeable. If April, 2002 didn't convince you, they will do it again, or there will be war. The intensity of their commitment to the "Bolivarian Revolution" and the level of organization in the barrios is scary. But, as Jeremy Bigwood keeps reminding me, it's been in the bag before and some big guys have stepped in. In 1990 Nicaragua, polls predicted a big victory for the Sandanistas. After groups like the Carter Center, OAS (Organization of American States), and NED (National Endowment for Democracy) oversaw the process and poured in $12 per Nicaraguan voter in their campaigns, the Sandanistas were done. Guess who's overseeing this election? As far as I am concerned the referendum on Chavez is a showdown between the social movements of the poor in Latin America (and the political leaders that have sprung from them), vs. the US political establishment, from the Miami Gusanos and Otto Reich all the way "left" to Howard Dean. It is a struggle that may define the near future of Latin American nations in transition. Should the US method of buying recall elections and funding its favored parties prove successful in overturning an elected government before its term ends, it will have found an effective tool to impose its will wherever its interests are threatened: a much cleaner alternative to the Contras or Pinochet's henchmen. As millions of dollars flow from quasi-government agencies in the US to prop up defeated political parties and oligarchies in Bolivia and elsewhere, the traditionally voiceless movements of the poor have to fight that much harder to achieve their democratic will. As we well know, money can change the outcomes of elections, and this is particularly so in less-developed nations which lack the institutional checks that maintain a semblance of fair elections. So far, neither violent coups, nor well-funded propaganda campaigns have been capable of toppling Chavez, Lula, or Evo's MAS party. Should the US win in Venezuela they will up their efforts further south. And social movements which have chosen peaceful means by investing in electoral politics will be forced to reconsider that path. On the other hand, should Venezuelans overcome the US' campaign finance system and re-elect their President, you will see a re-energized movement in Venezuela move even faster on its social reforms, and re-energized movements across Latin America that will feel empowered to take on entrenched elites and their "yankee" backers. And you will see more and more elites flee to Miami. (What I don't want to consider is how US strategies will evolve if their tampering fails.) For these reasons, all eyes from Miami to La Paz will be on Venezuela tomorrow. From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 15 00:57:59 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 15 00:57:59 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] (Old) info about U$ aid to oust Chavez Message-ID: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1190 Declassified Documents Back Venezuelan Presidents Claim of US Aid to Opposition Groups Tuesday, Feb 10, 2004 By: Eva Golinger, Venezuelanalysis.com Caracas, Venezuela. Feb 10, 2004 (Venezuelanalysis.com).- On his weekly live radio and television show, Hello Mr. President, Venezuelan head of state, Hugo Chavez, announced that his administration has obtained proof of direct funding from the United States government to virulent opposition groups in Venezuela seeking to oust him. President Chavez declared that the proof of US financing of groups working to destabilize and overthrow his government through unconstitutional means is now circulating on the Internet. Specifically, Chavez confirmed the existence of documents indicating the opposition group Sumate, had received USD $53,400 from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED). This is part of more than $800,000 distributed to various anti-Chavez organizations over the last two years. The evidence referred to by the Venezuelan leader was made available to the public via the World Wide Web on the newly launched website, www.Venezuelafoia.info. The site, funded by a private 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in the United States, the Venezuela Solidarity Committee, contains hundreds of documents evidencing the direct chain of financial aid from various U.S. government departments to Venezuelan opposition groups. The documents on Venezuelafoia.info were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by veteran investigative journalist Jeremy Bigwood, an expert in FOIA requests. This act enables citizens to formally request access to classified U.S. government documents belonging to different agencies and departments. The respective government agency then analyzes the documents, and decides whether or not to release them to the solicitor. Often such documents are released, but certain sentences, names, or whole pages may be crossed-out with marker if determined in the interest of national security. HOW THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT HAS BEEN USED The FOIA has been used to uncover US government involvement in the 1973 coup detat against President Salvador Allende, as well as numerous other US covert wars and interventions throughout the world. FOIA has also been used by U.S. citizens to uncover the brutal actions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. governments domestic intelligence agency that destroyed entire social movements in the 1960s and 1970s, such as the American Indian Movement and the Black Panthers Party. Once the intrusive, aggressive and unconstitutional tactics of former FBI head J. Edgar Hoovers COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) were revealed, public outcry forced the U.S. Congress to put the program to rest through denial of funding. MONEY FOR RECALL AGAINST CHAVEZ The documents discovered through Bigwoods FOIA requests on Venezuela reveal a consistent pattern of funding from various U.S. agencies and entities, such as the Department of State and the National Endowment for Democracy, to several known anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela. One of these groups, Sumate, received USD$53,400 for Electoral Education during the period September 2003 September 2004. The funds awarded to Sumate were, according to the NED grant, to train citizens throughout Venezuela in the electoral process and to promote participation in a recall referendum. Sumate is the organization that led an unapproved referendum drive back in February 2003, attempting to remove President Chavez before half of his term, which is not permitted by Venezuelan law. Sumate claimed to have collected 27 million signatures in one day, yet it was later discovered that a majority of these signatures were gathered through fraudulent means, including photocopied from bank records and credit card receipts. Other groups funded by the NED and the State Department that are included on Venezuelafoia.info include groups linked to Primero Justicia, an outspoken anti-Chavez right-wing party that has promoted undemocratic measures to oust the Venezuelan leader. Although they have acknowledged that it was wrong for them to have participated in the April 2002 coup and the lock-out of December 2002, Primero Justicia is presently refusing to accept a decision by Venezuelas National Elections Council on the possibility of a constitutional recall referendum against President Chavez, if it is not in their favor. A CONTINUOUS AND INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE US AND THE OPPOSITION Venezuelafoia.info includes pages and pages of internal memoranda and email communications between the NED and the State Department and the NED and the various Venezuelan opposition groups. These communications evidence a continuous intimate relationship between the parties that demonstrates a profound support coming out of the U.S. government for these groups. Numerous email communications between Chris Sabatini, Senior Program Director of NEDs Latin America and Caribbean Department, and the various NED benefactors in Venezuela express his concern for the political developments in Venezuela and his reinforcement of support for the grant recipients. One memorandum between the State Department and the NED reveals a supplemental $1,000,000 awarded in April 2002, right after the failed coup detat against President Chavez, that was slighted for NEDs Venezuelan benefactors. The primary grant recipients include the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity and the Center for International Private Enterprise. Smaller grant recipients include Accion Campesina, Asociacion Civil Asamblea de Educacion, Fundacion Momento de la Gente, Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, Asociacion Civil Liderazgo y Vision and Asociacion Civil Consorcio Justicia, amongst others. HOW THE GROUPS UTILIZE THE FUNDS Accion Campesina (Farmers Action) received a combination of over $80,000 to engage in efforts to hinder the passage and implementation of Venezuelas new land reform law in 2002-2003. The Asamblea de Educacion group (Assembly on Education) received approximately $57,00 to monitor and distribute information on education policy issues, a respectable objective. Yet the director of this Association was to be named Minister of Education under the brief dictatorial regime of Pedro Carmona implemented after the coup detat of April 2002. U.S. possible involvement in the coup has been documented by Newsweek, the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets. Asamblea de Educacion president Leonardo Carvajal, confirmed on Monday that they have received international aid , but said that the aid was cut six months ago. He declared that his group is a non-partisan organization, yet at the time he made these statements, he was at the headquarters of the opposition coalition, Coordinadora Democratica (Democratic Coordinator). Along these lines, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity has donated several hundred thousand dollars of its funding to the Confederacion de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV), the corrupt pro-bosses labor union that participated in the coup against President Chavez in April 2002 and later co-led, along with the national chamber of commerce FEDECAMARAS, the economically devastating 64-day business lockout in December 2002 February 2003 that caused 10 billion dollars in losses to the country. Other NED major award recipients, such as the Center for International Private Enterprise, which received over $200,000 last year for Venezuela activities and the International Republican Institute, which was awarded almost $300,000 for its work during the past two years in Venezuela, have poured their financial aid into support for Fedecamaras, the radicalized business association at the forefront of the opposition movement and into the development and strengthening of political parties to successfully oppose Chavez in future elections. US GOVERNMENTS WEAK RESPONSE After President Chavez brought the newly declassified documents to light on Sunday, the Bush Administration responded first thing Monday morning in a State Department daily briefing. Spokesperson Richard Boucher did not deny the funding of Venezuelan organizations and admitted the NED had awarded grants to groups that promote democracy and strengthen civil society in Venezuela. He also claimed that such funding falls clearly within U.S. policy to strengthen democratic institutions around the world. However, Boucher only mentioned U.S. government funding to two groups, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and failed to mention the more than $800,000 that has been funneled into specific opposition groups in Venezuela through those two groups and through others. Boucher also did not explain how the funds were aiding the promotion of democracy considering that a majority of grant benefactors have participated in and endorsed two unconstitutional attempts to remove President Chavez. Nor did Boucher explain why groups such as Sumate, that has utilized fraud to achieve its electoral goals, would receive funds intended to promote democracy. Boucher added that pro-government groups have received U.S. funds in the past and that aid is available to them also. From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Sun Aug 15 02:45:03 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sun Aug 15 02:45:10 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] US soldiers do the right thing Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040815170304.02c935b0@central.murdoch.edu.au> When US soldiers act decently in Iraq, you can be sure of several things: 1. It will be a rare event 2. It will get them into trouble 3. They will not be trained professionals 4. They will definitely not be marines On June 29, the first full day of rule through the quisling "government" foisted on the country by the invaders, the quislings quickly got into stride. They were busy brutally torturing resisters when a unit of National Guard troops -- part-time citizen-soldiers from Oregon -- rescued them. The incident was buried by U.S. brass, who repudiated their own soldiers -- and backed the Iraqi torturers. The story is told in full at http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/08/13/120.html and in great detail in with pictures and eyewitness accounts at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2001999719&zsection_id=268448413&slug=iraqprisoners08&date=20040808 . It is reminiscent of the Croatian quislings during the war, whose behaviour was so vile (throat-cutting contests, eye collections) that even the Nazi occupiers had to shoot a few every now and again to quieten them down. Responsibility lies with the occupiers who enforce the quislings' ascendance over the people. Dion Giles Western Australia From gdy52150 at spiritone.com Sun Aug 15 14:47:53 2004 From: gdy52150 at spiritone.com (gdy52150) Date: Sun Aug 15 14:35:50 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20040815100630.01f97ac8@mail.picknowl.com.au> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20040815100630.01f97ac8@mail.picknowl.com.au> Message-ID: <411FDA09.10405@spiritone.com> John Hermann wrote: > At 12:39 AM 14/08/2004 +1200, Janice wrote: > >> >> >>Which really underlines the invalidity of "anti-capitalism" as a >> >> >>movement. The same grabbing class will not permit any real >> >> >>competition in globalisation therefore capitalism as an >> >> >>economic system does not exist. Only fascism exists. >> >> > >> >> >Fascism is totalitarian capitalism. >> >> >> >>If this is true then how do we explain the fact that it is occurring >> >>in democracies everywhere? >> > >> > >> > The world operated in a qualitatively different manner between >> > 1945 and 1975. At that stage the neoclassical school was little >> > more than a minor sect. Things really changed for the worse >> > after 1980 with the advent of Thatcher and Reagan. >> > >> This does not answer the question, John. If fascism is totalitarian >> capitalism then explain how fascism is occurring in democracies ? >> >> Either totalitarianism is an absolute dictatorship or it is not >> totalitarianism. You can't have it both ways. :-) > > > I don't accept that fascism is currently "occurring in democracies", > for the simple reason that these two systems of government are > incompatible. I think it was Abe Lincoln who defined democracy as > "government of the people, by the people and for the people". That > seems like a pretty good definition to me. Democracy is most > definitely NOT government of the people, by (or on behalf of) the > corporations and for the corporations -- which is what we have in the > USA today and in other countries to a lesser extent. I might add that > circuses disguised as elections do not of themselves establish > democracy, particularly in circumstances where news and other vital > information is censored, distorted or suppressed by mainstream media > controlled by multinational empires, and where citizens have little or > no understanding of the forces which are influencing, moulding and > directing their lives. > > John there is one problem with your analysis---you assume all fascist states to exist as the full-blown variety of fascism such as the Nazis after about late 1938. Even the Nazis took several years to consolidate their power and bring about the full blown variety of fascism. I would define any step the government takes that places the rights of corporations or the rights of a group of elites above the rights of the people as a step towards fascism. There is no clear divide between a democracy and fascism---even after Hitler was appointed chancellor there was an election--not entirely what we would call a free election but just as close to a free election as the present presidential election in the US. But the US is certainly a police state at this time--the 3 factors for a police state are --the federal law enforcement begins to protect and serve the government rath than the people. The f3ederal law enforcement begins focusing on "crimes" against the government instead of criminal behavior. The federal law enforcement begins to spy on the people. the patriotic act was Bush's enabling act. > > > > > > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > > From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Sun Aug 15 18:59:36 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sun Aug 15 18:59:39 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right In-Reply-To: <411FDA09.10405@spiritone.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20040815100630.01f97ac8@mail.picknowl.com.au> <411FDA09.10405@spiritone.com> Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040816095524.02f54688@central.murdoch.edu.au> GDY's message doesn't so much negate John Herman's analysis as refine it. It is a reason why we not only have to differentiate between the various isms rather than conflate them, but we also need to differentiate between predominant systems and forces operating within them. Dion Giles Western Australia At 05:47 16/08/2004, gdy wrote: >John Hermann wrote: > >>At 12:39 AM 14/08/2004 +1200, Janice wrote: >> >>> >> >>Which really underlines the invalidity of "anti-capitalism" as a >>> >> >>movement. The same grabbing class will not permit any real >>> >> >>competition in globalisation therefore capitalism as an >>> >> >>economic system does not exist. Only fascism exists. >>> >> > >>> >> >Fascism is totalitarian capitalism. >>> >> >>> >>If this is true then how do we explain the fact that it is occurring >>> >>in democracies everywhere? >>> > >>> > >>> > The world operated in a qualitatively different manner between >>> > 1945 and 1975. At that stage the neoclassical school was little >>> > more than a minor sect. Things really changed for the worse >>> > after 1980 with the advent of Thatcher and Reagan. >>> > >>>This does not answer the question, John. If fascism is totalitarian >>>capitalism then explain how fascism is occurring in democracies ? >>> >>>Either totalitarianism is an absolute dictatorship or it is not >>>totalitarianism. You can't have it both ways. :-) >> >> >>I don't accept that fascism is currently "occurring in democracies", >>for the simple reason that these two systems of government are >>incompatible. I think it was Abe Lincoln who defined democracy as >>"government of the people, by the people and for the people". That >>seems like a pretty good definition to me. Democracy is most >>definitely NOT government of the people, by (or on behalf of) the >>corporations and for the corporations -- which is what we have in the >>USA today and in other countries to a lesser extent. I might add that >>circuses disguised as elections do not of themselves establish >>democracy, particularly in circumstances where news and other vital >>information is censored, distorted or suppressed by mainstream media >>controlled by multinational empires, and where citizens have little or >>no understanding of the forces which are influencing, moulding and >>directing their lives. >> >>John > > >there is one problem with your analysis---you assume all fascist states to >exist as the full-blown variety of fascism such as the Nazis after about >late 1938. Even the Nazis took several years to consolidate their power >and bring about the full blown variety of fascism. > >I would define any step the government takes that places the rights of >corporations or the rights of a group of elites above the rights of the >people as a step towards fascism. There is no clear divide between a >democracy and fascism---even after Hitler was appointed chancellor there >was an election--not entirely what we would call a free election but just >as close to a free election as the present presidential election in the >US. But the US is certainly a police state at this time--the 3 factors for >a police state are --the federal law enforcement begins to protect and >serve the government rath than the people. The f3ederal law enforcement >begins focusing on "crimes" against the government instead of criminal >behavior. The federal law enforcement begins to spy on the people. >the patriotic act was Bush's enabling act. > > >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >>------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >>_______________________________________________ >>Mai-not mailing list >>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not >> > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au Sun Aug 15 19:07:01 2004 From: dgiles at central.murdoch.edu.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sun Aug 15 19:07:16 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Why Sadr can blood US nose Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.0.20040816091709.02e06e70@central.murdoch.edu.au> These three items are definitely good enough to be worth the trouble of selecting and reading -- it is most convenient via Truthout (http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/printer_081604A.shtml) where they are grouped. In the first story, at http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=941632004 , the Shia backlash against imperialists they first mistook for liberators is examined by Scotsman correspondent Tim Ripley, in overall strategic terms, and its consequences for the occupation and for the quisling "government" considered. In the second, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1455-2004Aug14.html (in which the Washington Post momentarily gets honest), reporters Saad Sarhan and Doug Struck describe the same phenomenon at the level of the street and in the heart of a middle-aged professional man preparing to die for his country. In the third, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/15/international/middleeast/15SADR.html , New York Times reporter Sabrina Tavernise looks at how a so-called rebel cleric manages to hold off the armies of the Coalition of the Lying and the Iraqi quislings. Dion Giles Western Australia From papadop at peak.org Sun Aug 15 20:30:31 2004 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Aug 15 20:30:23 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Venezuela - exit polls forbidden Message-ID: The news stories in various places are mentioning opposition exit polls. BUT " no exit polls or extra official reports on results" are allowed. That's what Voice of america tells me. http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=3476707E-5924-4579-A2CDAAD8775ED99E "In an attempt to stem potential violence, no exit polls or extra official reports on results are allowed in this election. But the Electoral Council has promised to have at least partial results within hours after the polls close. Given the delays, however, there is not likely to be a full accounting of results until sometime Monday." From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Sun Aug 15 21:11:00 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Sun Aug 15 21:10:59 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Attacking Neo-Cons From the Right In-Reply-To: <6.1.2.0.0.20040816095524.02f54688@central.murdoch.edu.au> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20040815100630.01f97ac8@mail.picknowl.com.au> <411FDA09.10405@spiritone.com> <6.1.2.0.0.20040816095524.02f54688@central.murdoch.edu.au> Message-ID: >GDY's message doesn't so much negate John Herman's analysis as >refine it. It is a reason why we not only have to differentiate >between the various isms rather than conflate them, but we also need >to differentiate between predominant systems and forces operating >within them. > >Dion Giles >Western Australia > > > >At 05:47 16/08/2004, gdy wrote: > >>John Hermann wrote: >> >>>At 12:39 AM 14/08/2004 +1200, Janice wrote: >>> >>>> >> >>Which really underlines the invalidity of "anti-capitalism" as a >>>> >> >>movement. The same grabbing class will not permit any real >>>> >> >>competition in globalisation therefore capitalism as an >>>> >> >>economic system does not exist. Only fascism exists. >>>> >> > >>>> >> >Fascism is totalitarian capitalism. >>>> >> >>>> >>If this is true then how do we explain the fact that it is occurring >>>> >>in democracies everywhere? >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > The world operated in a qualitatively different manner between >>>> > 1945 and 1975. At that stage the neoclassical school was little >>>> > more than a minor sect. Things really changed for the worse >>>> > after 1980 with the advent of Thatcher and Reagan. >>>> > >>>>This does not answer the question, John. If fascism is totalitarian >>>>capitalism then explain how fascism is occurring in democracies ? >>>> >>>>Either totalitarianism is an absolute dictatorship or it is not >>>>totalitarianism. You can't have it both ways. :-) >>> >>> >>>I don't accept that fascism is currently "occurring in democracies", >>>for the simple reason that these two systems of government are >>>incompatible. I think it was Abe Lincoln who defined democracy as >>>"government of the people, by the people and for the people". That >>>seems like a pretty good definition to me. Democracy is most >>>definitely NOT government of the people, by (or on behalf of) the >>>corporations and for the corporations -- which is what we have in the >>>USA today and in other countries to a lesser extent. I might add that >>>circuses disguised as elections do not of themselves establish >>>democracy, particularly in circumstances where news and other vital >>>information is censored, distorted or suppressed by mainstream media >>>controlled by multinational empires, and where citizens have little or >>>no understanding of the forces which are influencing, moulding and >>>directing their lives. >>> >>>John >> >> >>there is one problem with your analysis---you assume all fascist >>states to exist as the full-blown variety of fascism such as the >>Nazis after about late 1938. Even the Nazis took several years to >>consolidate their power and bring about the full blown variety of >>fascism. >> >>I would define any step the government takes that places the rights >>of corporations or the rights of a group of elites above the rights >>of the people as a step towards fascism. There is no clear divide >>between a democracy and fascism---even after Hitler was appointed >>chancellor there was an election--not entirely what we would call a >>free election but just as close to a free election as the present >>presidential election in the US. But the US is certainly a police >>state at this time--the 3 factors for a police state are --the >>federal law enforcement begins to protect and serve the government >>rath than the people. The f3ederal law enforcement begins focusing >>on "crimes" against the government instead of criminal behavior. >>The federal law enforcement begins to spy on the people. >>the patriotic act was Bush's enabling act. My turn. Definitions define little unless they describe the current facts on the ground. Capitalism as practiced today is VERY different from the Capitalism of the 1930s. It is the difference between finance capitalism and industrial capitalism. So if Fascism of the 1930s represented Industrial Capitalism run amok, today's problems are caused by the banksters run amok. If folks want to call today's monsters Fascists, they had better be prepared to explain why they are using a term that originally applied to very different people with almost polar opposite agendas. Now I know that political redefinition is possible. We see Lincoln and Strom Thurmond both called themselves "Republicans." Go figure. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Sun Aug 15 21:51:27 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Sun Aug 15 21:51:44 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] Destructive power of 100,000 A-bombs Message-ID: Friends. My brother was directly in the path of Hurricane Charley. He was about 200 km inland from where Charley made landfall. This means the winds had probably dropped from 145 mph to somewhere like 90mph (150 kph). Bad enough to do a LOT of damage. He is MUCH better prepared for such event than most people and he lives in a house he built himself--so I would imagine THAT stayed screwed together. Below is a note he sent. I am also attaching an article from the Guardian because I cannot seem to get real information from Florida yet. It is a MESS with millions of lives made MUCH more difficult. ********************* Hurricane Charley paid us a visit last night and I now have a significant amount of work to do around here for the next few months. We are fine, first of all, and who knows when we might get our electricity back on. We have phone service, which is a major plus and very amazing since we hardly ever survive a rain storm with a working phone. The power went off at 9pm last night and is still down now. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 trees down, 5 of which are across the driveway and I will have to cut up and move before Monday. There are none on the house or garage and only one nice oak went down on a fence and part of the fence is damaged. I have the motorhome sitting in the front yard with the generator running, a/c on, satellite TV tuned in, and a cord run into the house so the refrigerator has power and another cord run to the computer. The motorhome is full of fuel, water, and propane and the holding tanks are empty, we can survive for a while. We will be fine, a lot better off than most, a little pre-planning goes a long way. Lisa and Dan are fine too, about 10 trees down and no structural damage. Mark just called and his biggest problem is lack of electricity. Lisa and Dan have no power either. Well I better get to work, it isn't going to get any cooler until tonight. I wish these things came during the winter, the leaves being off the trees would make them less susceptible to damage and it would be cooler to cut them up if they did blow down. We will let you know any more details as we learn them. ******************************** Destructive power of 100,000 A-bombs Tim Radford, science editor Monday August 16, 2004 The Guardian Hurricane Charley may not be the most terrible storm to have hit the US coastline, but it could be a warning of worse to come. In the course of its brief life, a typical Caribbean hurricane releases the destructive power of 100,000 Hiroshima bombs. Most of this is spent over water. When hurricanes hit land, their energy dissipates very swiftly, but any settlements on the coast are at risk. Experts rate Charley as a category 4 event (the worst is category 5), with winds strong enough to sweep away mobile homes, dismantle roofs and snap mature trees. Climate scientists, relief agencies such as the Red Cross and insurance chiefs have been warning for years that climate-related disasters are on the increase, at least partly because of global warming. In 2003, a total of around 700 natural catastrophes killed more than 50,000 people worldwide and caused economic losses estimated at $60bn (?32bn), according to the insurance giant Munich Re. Windstorms made up only about a third of the disasters, but accounted for three-quarters of all the insured losses. Tornadoes and hailstorms in April and May 2003 cost the US cities and towns of the midwest insured losses of $5bn. In September 2003, Hurricane Isabel swept the US east coast and devastated 360,000 homes, with estimated economic losses of another $5bn. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 cost the US around $30bn, however, and may still be the single most costly disaster ever to hit the US. Climate scientists began warning 20 years ago that global warming could bring a greater frequency of "extreme" weather events. Hurricanes follow a 10-year cycle of relative calm and increasing violence. "Our forecasts warned that this was going to be one of the most active hurricane seasons since 1950," said Bill McGuire, who heads the Benfield hazards research centre at University College London. "We forecast a couple of hurricanes on the US coast. This is one of them and it is likely that we will be waiting for another one before November." More than half of the world's population lives in coastal areas, with the most vulnerable concentrations in the tropics. In 1970, a catastrophic storm claimed 300,000 lives in Bangladesh. In 1991, a cyclone in similar conditions swept away 139,000 people from the same region. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch tore through Central America and claimed more than 9,000 lives. More than 1.4 million people had to leave their homes. Warning systems, even in the most poorest and most vulnerable regions, have improved since then, but the economic losses after storms have multiplied through the decades. This is partly because population growth means there are another 70 million potential victims every year. -- ------------------ warmest regards Jonathan web site at: http://elegant-technology.com From eltechno at clear.lakes.com Sun Aug 15 22:28:59 2004 From: eltechno at clear.lakes.com (Jonathan Larson) Date: Sun Aug 15 22:29:22 2004 Subject: [Mai-not] If Chavez Wins, What Will They Try Next? Message-ID: If Chavez Wins, What Will They Try Next? The Media and Venezuela By YVES ENGLER http://www.counterpunch.org/engler08142004.html The media --left media included --has been relatively silent regarding Venezuela's upcoming presidential recall referendum. Little has been reported about the importance of a Chavez win both domestically and internationally. What exactly is at stake in Venezuela's presidential recall referendum this Sunday? A "yes" vote on the recall to remove Chavez from the presidency would be devastating for Cuba. The new regime would likely halt the shipment of subsidized oil, presently being exchanged for Cuban doctors, sports officials and educators. An opposition victory would also have broader geopolitical consequences throughout the Caribbean. Venezuela provides Caribbean countries with oil on good terms and as a result these states are increasingly sympathetic to the present Venezuelan regime. (i.e. they are decreasingly submissive in the face of US pressure, especially in the Organization of American States (OAS)). The Caribbean community (Caricom) recently made the decision to refuse to recognize the regime in Haiti. Right-wing commentators, nervous about newfound Caribbean independence, have been citing this decision as example of Venezuela's influence on the region. (In fact, Caricom's action, stem mainly from the fear that accepting such blatant disregard for the democratic process may increase the likelihood similar events in their own countries.) If the opposition wins the recall referendum we can expect any counterweight influence Venezuela exerts on the Caribbean nations to cease. Victory for the opposition would also have the effect of halting fiery denunciations of US imperialism characteristic of the Chavez regime. Opposition forces would be more likely to send Venezuelan troops to Iraq, Haiti or whichever country is next on Washington's list Odds are the opposition would harm the various "mission" programs the government has set up. There are ten different kinds of "missions" including food, micro credit and literacy programs. These have been a huge boost in basic services to the poor majority. They have also genuinely empowered the poor, laying the ground for future social gains. As evidence of the "missions" popularity, even the opposition has been forced to embrace them, publicly at the very least. The opposition's new position is that efficient missions should be kept. In reality it is almost certain that the new regime would abolish the Barrio Adentro (Health mission) mainly because the clinics are staffed by 17,000 Cuban doctors who work in under-serviced slums and poor rural communities. Venezuela is endowed with a wealth o