From gdy52150 at spiritone.com Wed Oct 1 03:14:12 2008
From: gdy52150 at spiritone.com (gdy52150)
Date: Wed Oct 1 02:52:28 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Some political ideas for responding to the ransom demand
(re-posted)
In-Reply-To: <20080930214414.E22A911021@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
References: <20080930214414.E22A911021@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Message-ID: <48E33154.9080608@spiritone.com>
you forgot the growing group of hang em all
Dion Giles wrote:
> *[This one seems to have been Al-Jazeera-ed last night. Here it is again]
>
> *ABC and SBS gave us wall to wall talking heads tonight lamenting that
> the US Congress gave in to popular anger over the breathtaking
> corporate ransom demand and the complicity of the leading politicians
> across the board. Nothing (SBS) and nearly nothing (ABC) on the views
> of the massive majority who are split only between "no" and "hell,no".
>
> Any Grand Economic Plan is a crock unless it includes measures like
> the following (each measure able to stand alone and each to be pressed
> only if the public an be persuaded to warm to it):
>
> * Junk NAFTA and WTO and erect as many barriers to trade as are
> needed to restore sovereignty of the people over wages and
> conditions (in the current case, the people of America but
> applicable to every country)
> * Require all foreign investment in the USA to be transferred to
> US nationals at market rates, and establish strict controls on
> any further foreign investment (a Foreign Investment Review
> Board whose default position is "NO").
> * Legislate federally to declare all foreclosures void and all
> mortgage payments frozen until each is investigated and declared
> free of crookery. Strip bailiffs of power to evict. Huge prison
> sentences for anyone at all who tries to evict anyone without
> first winning a civil case before a jury (no lawyers).
> * Nationalise the Fed and all other supervisory authorities and
> place them under the authority of the people.
> * Not one penny for Wall Street - instead, legislation to force
> CEOs to empty their onshore and offshore bank accounts and
> transfer the proceeds to the servicing of "toxic debt"
> * Deregister all banks that are so dishonest they can't be trusted
> by one another, and confiscate their assets without compensation.
> * Immediately institute universal health care that is effective
> enough to ensure that illness doesn't cause mortgage default.
> Crash plan first, iron out glitches later.
> * Abandon the imperial project (PNAC), shred the military
> colossus, walk out of occupied territory and restore the
> American republic
> * Impeach Bush and his henchmen.
>
> Similar measures in other countries to reverse the damage done by
> signing on to neoliberalism in the first place.
>
> Gamal Abdul Nasser had by and large the right approach (e.g. see
> http://i-cias.com/e.o/nasser.htm) but not enough guns to make it
> stick. America on the other hand is well capable of making it
> stick. Unlike the British and French in 1956, no thwarted foreign
> owners could do squat.
> Impractical? Only if one defines unacceptable to Mr Greed as
> "impractical".
>
> Dion Giles
> Western Australia
>
>
>
> *
>
> E-mail message checked by Spyware Doctor (6.0.0.385)
> Database version: 5.10800
> http://www.pctools.com/spyware-doctor-antivirus/
>
> *
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Mai-not mailing list
>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
>
>
From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Wed Oct 1 07:10:08 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Wed Oct 1 07:10:18 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] The Meltdown: A little problem with capitalism Thomas
Walkom The Toronto Star
Message-ID: <48E33E70.26483.A80E0F7@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
What's happening now on Wall Street is seen as a new story. It is
not. It is a very old one. Karl Marx wrote about it; so did John
Maynard Keynes. More recently, tycoon George Soros has pronounced on
it, as has the redoubtable Economist, a decidedly pro-free market
financial magazine.
This old story is quite simple: Capitalism is unstable. It is an
economic system that can be ruthlessly productive. But is also one of
wheels within wheels ? internal contradictions Marx called them ?
that can, and regularly do, spin out of control....
Ironically, what they are groping for is the kind of solution that
we've spent the past 40 years dismantling. It's time for another
grand bargain ? not necessarily the one that gave us the post-war
welfare state, but one that delivers a similar quid pro quo. And it
will go something like this: We'll save your damned old capitalism;
we'll let you have the big houses and big salaries (although not
necessarily quite as big as they were). But in return, you'll have to
give us something back ? on jobs, on wages, on the things that we
need to live a civilized life. Nor will we let you destroy everything
we hold dear just so you can make a buck.
And don't give us all that free-market guff. Because we know, just as
you know, that at times of great stress, the free market doesn't
work. This crisis has reminded us of that.
fyi-janet
===============================
http://www.thestar.com/article/507302
THE MELTDOWN
A little problem with capitalism
The financial crisis gripping the U.S. isn't an anomaly. We just
have short memories
Sep 27, 2008 04:30 AM
Thomas Walkom, National Affairs Columnist
Toronto Star, Saturday, September 27, 2008
What's happening now on Wall Street is seen as a new story. It is
not. It is a very old one.
Karl Marx wrote about it; so did John Maynard Keynes. More recently,
tycoon George Soros has pronounced on it, as has the redoubtable
Economist, a decidedly pro-free market financial magazine.
This old story is quite simple: Capitalism is unstable. It is an
economic system that can be ruthlessly productive. But is also one of
wheels within wheels ? internal contradictions Marx called them ?
that can, and regularly do, spin out of control.
Marx, a German philosopher suffering from boils, saw these
contradictions as opportunities; he figured that capitalism's self-
destruction would lead to a better world.
Keynes, a British economist who liked to speculate in foreign
currency over his morning tea and toast, saw them as problems that
could destroy a world he rather liked. The welfare state edifice that
bears his name was designed in the post-1945 period to, literally,
save capitalism from itself.
Banks would be regulated to keep financiers from scamming the economy
into the ground. Labour unions would be encouraged, in order to give
workers a stake in the status quo and inoculate them against radical
politics.
The rich would agree to government tax-and-spend policies, knowing
that ? in the end ? it's always better to feed the poor than have
them slit your throat.
It was a giant, unspoken bargain ? forced by the Depression of the
`30s, tempered by war and hammered into shape under the threat of
Communism.
For a long time, it worked.
But the great bargain could never resolve those inconsistencies
inherent in the world economy. Over time, new forces came into play.
The very foreign investment that allowed U.S.-based firms to prosper
in the post-1945 world encouraged rivals to develop: first West
Germany and Japan, latterly China and the European Union.
Throughout the industrial West, unionized workers cushioned by the
full-employment policies of the welfare state demanded and won pay
hikes that exceeded their productivity gains. Which is why, in the
`70s, inflation took off.
Meanwhile, the collapse of Communism and the discrediting of
revolutionary politics removed pressure from employers. Why bother
forging a great bargain with your workers if they don't pose a
threat?
And so came phase one of the retrenchment ? the destruction of the
welfare state. In England, it began as Thatcherism, in the U.S.
Reaganomics. Both leaders set out to limit trade union power in their
respective countries. Both did so, Thatcher by facing down the
miners, Reagan by firing unionized air controllers.
Their aim was not traditional fiscal conservatism. Indeed, under
Reagan, U.S. federal finances spiralled into deficit.
Rather it was to alter the balance of forces within society. Reagan's
tax cuts were designed to help the rich; Thatcher's monetarism
focused on squeezing wages.
In Canada, we had Paul Martin and Mike Harris ? similar policies but
on a different scale.
As a result, the income gap widened throughout much of the industrial
world. The rich got richer; the middling classes lagged; the poor got
poorer.
Phase two involved the dismantling of the very financial safeguards
erected after the debacle of the `30s. The specifics varied from
country to country, but the aim was the same: Deregulate financial
industries so they would centralize and focus their tremendous
resources into new, more profitable areas.
In the U.S., financial deregulation involved scrapping laws that had
protected small depositors ? which led in the late `80s to the
collapse of so-called savings and loans banks.
This in turn caused the U.S. government to engineer its first big
post-1945 bailout.
In Canada, deregulation led to the scrapping of a system that had
kept various portions of the financial industry isolated from one
another. Under the new regime, insurers, trust companies and
investment dealers merged and melded. Lending restrictions were
eased.
Phase three was sparked, ironically, by the industrial world's very
success in fighting inflation. As inflation went down so did returns
offered through standard investment channels. Investors seeking
higher returns began to search out riskier ? and better-paying ?
options.
And so came the fascination with so-called new financial instruments.
Many households were satisfied with nothing more exotic than mutual
funds. But for well-heeled individuals and firms, the new frontier
was far more exotic: derivatives, hedge funds, index funds,
collateralized debt obligations.
All worked on the venerable principle of leverage: Putting in a
little in order to earn a lot. Alas, as we should have remembered
from the `30s, leverage only works when the economy is going up. When
things start to falter, a leveraged asset can become an intolerable
millstone.
In the end, the private equity companies and sub-prime mortgage
buyers were doing much the same thing: borrowing money they couldn't
afford to repay, in the hope that whatever assets they purchased
would keep rising in value.
It was a gigantic ponzi scheme that couldn't possibly last. And it
didn't.
So, now we're back at square one. The system is near collapse. U.S.
Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke may remember his history (he's an
authority on the depression of the `30s). But few others do.
On television, a baffled U.S. President George W. Bush resembles the
proverbial deer caught in the headlights. Here in Canada, Prime
Minister Stephen Harper insists that this country's fundamentals are
fine, a sentiment that, while true, is largely irrelevant in the
context of a potential world collapse.
American taxpayers are understandably miffed at being asked to bail
out the entire global capitalist system. Right now, their ire is
aimed at Wall Street tycoons. But in their hearts, they recognize
that this isn't much of a deal.
The $700-billion (U.S.) bailout may save the financial system. But
after ordinary people have anted up the cash, will their reward be
nothing more than a return to the way things were? Even politicians
are beginning to recognize that any lasting solution must deal with
more than the barebones economics of the crisis.
Ironically, what they are groping for is the kind of solution that
we've spent the past 40 years dismantling. It's time for another
grand bargain ? not necessarily the one that gave us the post-war
welfare state, but one that delivers a similar quid pro quo. And it
will go something like this: We'll save your damned old capitalism;
we'll let you have the big houses and big salaries (although not
necessarily quite as big as they were). But in return, you'll have to
give us something back ? on jobs, on wages, on the things that we
need to live a civilized life. Nor will we let you destroy everything
we hold dear just so you can make a buck.
And don't give us all that free-market guff. Because we know, just as
you know, that at times of great stress, the free market doesn't
work. This crisis has reminded us of that.
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From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Wed Oct 1 07:20:08 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Wed Oct 1 07:20:18 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Ireland's full scale financial system rsecue -guarantee
of banks is twice country's GNP
Message-ID: <48E340C8.16682.A8A0646@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
Ireland's guarantee of banks is twice country's GNP
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegraph, London
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/
3111122...
Ireland has launched a full-scale rescue of its financial system,
issuing a state guarantee worth E400 billionn (L316 billion) to cover
the key liabilities of its biggest banks and mortgage lenders.
It is the most dramatic and comprehensive bank bailout in Europe since
the Scandinavian rescues of the early 1990s and may serve as a model
for
Britain and other countries that so far have been muddling through
from
one mishap to another with a mish-mash of ad-hoc policies.
The state guarantee exceeds 200 percent of Irish GDP, marking a new
phase in the escalation of the crisis.
The move came as Standard & Poor's cut Iceland's sovereign credit
rating
from AA- to A+ following its nationalisation of Glitnir Bank. It is a
warning that the cascade of bank bailouts on both sides of the
Atlantic
could start to undermine the creditworthiness of Western states.
S&P warned that the tiny Nordic island is now saddled with liabilities
that dwarf its economy.
The euro suffered the sharpest drop since the launch of the currency,
dropping almost 3 percent at one stage to $1.40 against the dollar in
a
day of high drama across Europe.
Belgium, France, and Luxembourg stepped in to rescue Dexia, the
world's
biggest lender to local authorities. The trio agreed to inject E6.4
billion in fresh capital after the share priced crashed on Monday.
Dexia's top management stepped down.
"We must have total confidence in the safety of the French banking
system: there is absolutely no reason to panic," said Christian Noyer,
head of the Banque de France.
"The credit crisis is working its way up the food chain," said Chris
Whalen, head of Institutional Risk Analytics.
"Now states that sponsored the idiocy of the credit bubble are being
challenged themselves. Unfortunately this could lead to global debt
deflation. We are seeing a shrinkage of bank capital and this will
cause
a depression unless we stop it," he said.
The Irish measures amounts to a state rescue of Allied Irish Bank,
Bank
of Ireland, Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Life and Permanent, and Irish
Nationwide, which all suffered a frightening share slide on Monday.
"We can't bail out a particular bank; that wouldn't be right," said
Brian Lenihan, the Irish finance minister.
"What we have decided to do is give a general guarantee that the banks
can lend in security and safety," he said.
RBC Capital Markets said it was unclear whether wholesale support for
Irish banks is legal under EU state aid rules.
"This may be one Guinness too many for the EU Commission. The action
may
affect trade between EU member states and raise the ire of other
governments," it said.
The EU Competition watchdog said it was in "urgent" consultations with
Dublin.
The Irish banks have been bleeding money as the property bust sets
off a
chain of defaults. House prices have fallen for 18 months, and are now
down 13 percent from their peak. Construction reached 21 percent of
gross domestic product at the height of the bubble.
Under EMU membership the Irish authorities have been unable to cut
interest rates to cushion the hard-landing. The European Central Bank
raised rates in July to 4.25 percent. With Euribor now at record
levels,
the borrowing cost for Irish homeowners on floating rates (55pc of the
total) has risen by 1.5 percentage points since the credit crunch
began.
Ireland is now the first eurozone state in official recession.
Unemployment has risen from 5 to 6.1 percent since January.
Moritz Kraemer, head of European sovereign ratings at S&P, said there
is
no immediate threat to Ireland's AAA rating. The country has tiny
national debt (25 percent of GDP) and may not have to commit state
funds
for the rescue plan to restore confidence.
"If it all goes terrible wrong in the property market, there could be
significant losses for the treasury given the size of the Irish
banking
system. This could hit the sovereign rating," he said.
It is another matter for Iceland, where the three biggest banks have
ammassed liabilities equal to 800 percent of the country's GDP in a
breackneck expansion across Europe.
S&P said the Glitnir nationalisation had alone cost 5.9 percent of
GDP,
but the taxpayer burden could reach well beyond that figure.
"The Icelandic banks are super-sized compared to the Icelandic budget.
If there is a systemic crisis it could be very hard for the
authorities
to stop it. Moreover, the banks have used aggressive leverage, so
their
funding base is volatile," he said.
The euro suffered the sharpest drop since the launch of the currency,
dropping almost 3pc at one stage to $1.40 against the dollar in a day
of
high drama across Europe.
Mr Whalen, who advises the Icelandic authorities, said the country
would
muddle through.
"Iceland has an open economy, so it has been easy for the hedge funds
to
come in and rape the currency. But the country is really like a giant
private equity fund. Its banks buy real things so its liabilities are
matched by assets. I am not really worried," he said.
From siamdave at yahoo.ca Wed Oct 1 11:29:04 2008
From: siamdave at yahoo.ca (Dave Patterson)
Date: Wed Oct 1 11:29:14 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] The Financial Crash - some thoughts and reasons
why - A talk to the Theosophical Society Sep 23, 2008
In-Reply-To: <48E23CBD.6060106@ozemail.com.au>
References: <623C1011E8B746B687DDBE5D51EAA4EE@Murray2PC>
<48E23CBD.6060106@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <200810012329040718.02FF6E76@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
Clem, that is truly beautiful. I was/am very moved. You're onto something here - not so much in the content (which is good, don't mistake my meaning), but moreso in the McLuhanian sense of 'the medium is the message'. Imagine a whole lot of 'ordinary' people doing this, making a short vid of just themselves talking about what they think is important,, and sharing those things, and all of us watching and sharing our own thoughts back, and talking, and then doing - a huge meaningful agora, leading to a true democracy .... instead of, as we have now, almost everyone sitting for hours every day in front of their televisions, being TOLD what to think and do etc, being turned in passive acceptors of whatever the rulers wanted - gotta think some more about this, but well done, Clem, VERY well done - and nice to 'meet' you finally, in the sense of seeing you -
dave
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 08-09-30 at 10:50 PM Clem Clarke wrote:
There has been a lot said about the Financial Crash. About greed, Wall street and so on. But what is really going on? Why is it happening at all?
Some 30 years ago, I lived in the US of A off and on for about 5 years. I just couldn't understand how they could speak English, and yet be so totally different in their heads, or how they see life. I now have some feeling for that, which I explored in a talk I gave to the Theosophical Society this week in Perth.
Why is America (and some parts of Europe) so totally money oriented? What is really behind their thinking? What I say in my recent talk is very different from what most people say, and I have put two pieces of information together to explain it. These are explained in the video clips I have put together that were created by others. The two vital things to understand are:
1. Despite all our feeling about money, and how valuable it is, it has been debased over the last few years. It is not based on Gold or Silver anymore. Money is created effectively from "thin are" as is shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8 The previous Treasurer Peter Costello and I spoke about this about ten years ago. It is a FACT!
2. If you believe that you have to be blessed - materially - to get to heaven, then you will do anything you can to make money.
These are explained in the video below.
My talk commences with ten minutes or so given by myself about the planet, John Calvin and money, then there is a video by Servern Suzuki (David Suzuki’s daughter), a talk by an economist about Calvinism, a 6 minute clip by JFK, and more, eventually with some video clips of new ways for society to think and use money.
All in all, the DVD is about 70 minutes all together, and you may skip sections to save time.
This talk is also available as two 40 minutes segments on Google. You can just watch or download the videos from there.
Part 1: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8288364776029027999
Part 2: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3357222356733819567
Or search for Making A Beautiful World in Google Video.
If you would like a DVD instead of watching on the Internet, please send me your address, and I will send you a DVD. It is FREE, however if you wish to help defray copy and postage costs, you can send say $5.00 at the bottom of page at www.ConnectingMe.com And please copy it and send it to others.
Cheers,
Clement Clarke
PS: Pushed for time? See it as a play list below. You can listen to roughly ten minute segments, and stop and restart at any time.
You can see the first part of my talk here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4591948339215048579&ei=6NbgSM2-MIq6wgPg5d2gCw&q=clement+clarke
And to see what effect Calvin had on Capitalism, see below. I have been saying the same thing for 10 years. But this is an American saying the same thing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lzDv4_lbDo
And please spend about 10 minutes to view part 1 of Money as Debt? It will tell you LOTS. It is a delightful animated movie, and it is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8
The whole thing is 45 minutes, and gives an excellent background to money.
There are links to a better future which I will do tomorrow
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From creuss at bluewin.ch Wed Oct 1 13:02:06 2008
From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss)
Date: Wed Oct 1 13:03:32 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] The Financial Crash - some thoughts and reasons why -
A talk to the Theosophical Society Sep 23, 2008
Message-ID:
Clem Clarke wrote:
> Why is America (and some parts of Europe) so totally money oriented?
...
> 1. Despite all our feeling about money, and how valuable it is, it has been
> debased over the last few years. It is not based on Gold or Silver anymore.
This is true for just about ANY country today. Even Switzerland abolished
the gold standard. And besides, even if there was still one country based
on gold, why should this country NOT be material-wealth-oriented?
> 2. If you believe that you have to be blessed - materially - to get to
> heaven, then you will do anything you can to make money.
Who cares about getting to heaven anyway? And your statement #2 is
circular "logic": "If you believe that you have to be rich, you are greedy."
This as an "answer" to the question WHY Americans are greedy!?
Sorry, but these "reasons" don't make sense. And spelling them out in
80 minutes doesn't give sense to them either. It just wastes people's
time (time they could use to find the real answers). Wasn't that the
purpose of David Icke's lengthy speech too... *argh*
> Theosophical Society
Uh-hum. Smoke & mirrors.
Chris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword
"igve".
From McPogo at aol.com Wed Oct 1 13:18:33 2008
From: McPogo at aol.com (McPogo@aol.com)
Date: Wed Oct 1 13:19:09 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] The Rich Get Richer & Get Away!
Message-ID:
Skipped content of type multipart/related
From McPogo at aol.com Wed Oct 1 14:02:14 2008
From: McPogo at aol.com (McPogo@aol.com)
Date: Wed Oct 1 14:02:26 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] WANTED: Top executive for train-wreck bank
Message-ID:
Talk about the American Dream! Wonder if Joe stockholder is laughing all the
way to the bank?
_The best temp gig in history_
(http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2008/09/30/the-best-temp-gig-in-history.aspx)
Posted Sep 30 2008, 12:47 PM by Kim Peterson
Filed under: _Kim Peterson_
(http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/tags/Kim+Peterson/default.aspx) , _JPMorgan_
(http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/tags/JPMorgan/default.aspx) , _Washington Mutual_
(http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/tags/Washington+Mutual/defaul
t.aspx)
="">Congress wants to _crack down on CEO mega-salaries_
(http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2008/09/29/bailout-will-have-no-effect-on-exec
utive-pay.aspx) for banks participating in the bailout. And while the
politicians argue how best to do that, Alan Fishman of _Washington Mutual_
(http://moneycentral.msn.com/detail/stock_quote?Symbol=wamuq&getquote=Get+Quote) is
headed for the doors with $19 million in his pocket.
If that wasn't outrageous enough, consider this: Fishman started the job
three weeks ago. I never saw the employment ad Fishman answered, but it must
have read something like this:
WANTED: Top executive for train-wreck bank about to be seized by federal
regulators. Must be able to look busy while FDIC sells business from under you.
Previous experience with angry shareholders sitting on worthless stock a
plus. Perks: $7.5 million hiring bonus and $11.6 million cash severance.
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From papadop at peak.org Wed Oct 1 22:13:36 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Wed Oct 1 22:42:33 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] AMY GOODMAN FIRST JOURNALIST TO WIN "ALTERNATIVE NOBEL"
Message-ID:
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2008/10/1/amy_goodman_first_journalist_to_win_alternative_nobel
October 01, 2008
New York City, NY - Award-winning journalist and host of Democracy Now!
Amy Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood
Award, widely recognized as the world's premier award for personal courage
and social transformation. The annual prize, also known as the Alternative
Nobel, will be awarded in the Swedish Parliament on December 8, 2008.
The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980 to honor and support
those "offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent
challenges facing us today". Goodman has been selected for "developing an
innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that
brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by
the mainstream media."
Pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the country,
Democracy Now! is a daily grassroots, global TV/radio/internet news hour
airing on more than 750 public radio and television stations and at
democracynow.org.
Goodman said, "I am deeply honored that grassroots, independent
journalism and the hard work of my colleagues at Democracy Now! are being
recognized in these critical times. I strongly believe that media can be
a force for peace. It is the responsibility of journalists to give
voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken and beaten down by the
powerful. It is the best reason I know to carry our pens, cameras and
microphones out into the world. The media should be a sanctuary for dissent.
It is our job to go to where the silence is."
Goodman and two Democracy Now! producers were arrested last month at the
Republican National Convention while reporting on street
demonstrations. Charges were dropped after widespread public outcry. The
video of Goodman's arrest was among the most watched YouTube video's
during the convention week. It has now been viewed over 860,000 times.
Amy Goodman writes a weekly syndicated column with King Features which runs in
major newspapers throughout North and South America. She is co-author with
her brother, journalist David Goodman, of three New York Times bestsellers:
Standing Up To the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times; Static:
Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back; and The
Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the
Media That Love Them.
Goodman's reporting on East Timor and Nigeria won the George Polk Award,
the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, and the Alfred I.
DuPont-Columbia Award. Her other awards include the first ever Communication
for Peace Award presented by the World Association of Christian
Communication, the Puffin/Nation Institute Award for Creative Citizenship,
The Paley Center for Media "She Made It" Award, and the Gracie Award for
American Women in Radio and Television Public Broadcasting. Goodman has also
received awards from the Associated Press, United Press International, and the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Goodman shares the 2008 Right Livelihood Award with Krishnammal and
Sankaralingam Jagannathan of India, and their organisation, Land for the
Tillers' Freedom, for their work dedicated to realising in practice the
Gandhian vision of social justice and sustainable human development; Asha Hagi
of Somalia "for continuing to lead at great personal risk the female
participation in the peace and reconciliation process in her war-ravaged
country."; and Monika Hauser of Germany, gynaecologist and founder of medica
mondiale, "for her tireless commitment to working with women who have
experienced the most horrific sexualised violence in some of the most
dangerous countries in the world, and campaigning for them to receive social
recognition and compensation."
From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Thu Oct 2 02:59:43 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Thu Oct 2 02:59:56 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Heist: Michael Moore presents his solution.
Message-ID: <20081002075944.7F25512D19@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From siamdave at yahoo.ca Thu Oct 2 06:42:22 2008
From: siamdave at yahoo.ca (Dave Patterson)
Date: Thu Oct 2 06:42:29 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Heist: Michael Moore presents his solution.
In-Reply-To: <20081002075944.7F25512D19@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
References: <20081002075944.7F25512D19@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Message-ID: <200810021842220109.0211A8E5@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
Pretty much on the ball - you can be 100% sure crazy ideas like that will get nowhere near any mainstream media
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 08-10-02 at 3:59 PM Dion Giles wrote:
It's at http://yubanet.com/opinions/Michael-Moore-Here-s-How-to-Fix-the-Wall-Street-Mess.php and it's a good one. Here's why (from my rave on his bulletin board):
Bravo. Measures that everyone can readily understand in a context that everyone can readily understand. No Grand Plans from ideologues or social engineers or corporate crooks which encourage people to sigh helplessly: "It's all beyond me - have to follow the sirs as they know what they are doing." The danger is that Obama-McCain-Biden-Poulson-Pelosi-Mr Greed will get away with it and later tell the people that much worse would have happened if the ransom hadn't been paid. Only relentless counter-pressure against the professional politicians over a long period will seal in the necessary sea-change in attitudes.
Dion Giles
Western Austraia
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From jomut at yahoo.com Thu Oct 2 14:39:13 2008
From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa)
Date: Thu Oct 2 14:39:20 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Re:Heist: Michael Moore presents his solution.
In-Reply-To: <200810021842220109.0211A8E5@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
Message-ID: <443852.66674.qm@web31101.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake)
jomut@yahoo.com
chakane@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
?
Hi,
?
Great suggestions! He does Stiglitz even one better if you compare his suggestions with?what Stiglitz is saying at Democracy Now and at The Nation -- that the current deal is quite flawed but should be provisionally accepted till there is a new prez in the White House.
?
I am not sure I agree with Moore's slight downplaying of the current crisis though -- says its comparable to the pinprick that was the Savings and Loans crisis of the 80s.? I think Stiglitz is right in pointing out that the current crisis hits right at the heart of the U.S. banking system and, compared with it, the Savings and Loan's crisis was just a schoolboy's prank!
?
Good that he (Moore)?emphasizes that the Wall Street (and elsewhere)?big shouts (always do it via their megaphone-equipped PR lackeys) MUST not be handled with any kid gloves.? Better pull of those suede mitts when dealing with these economic saboteurs!? Trouble is that, over a generation of frenzied bouts of?misinformation?these substantial citizens have won too much of an unmerited reputation as level-headed men-of-affairs rather than the freemarket?business fanatics that they really are.? Ayn Rand does that to you of course!!
?
John.
?
=========================
--- On Thu, 10/2/08, Dave Patterson wrote:
From: Dave Patterson
Subject: Re: [Mai-not] Heist: Michael Moore presents his solution.
To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net
Date: Thursday, October 2, 2008, 11:42 AM
Pretty much on the ball - you can be 100% sure crazy ideas like that will get nowhere near any mainstream media
?
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 08-10-02 at 3:59 PM Dion Giles wrote:
It's at http://yubanet.com/opinions/Michael-Moore-Here-s-How-to-Fix-the-Wall-Street-Mess.php ? and it's a good one.? Here's why (from my rave on his bulletin board):
Bravo. Measures that everyone can readily understand in a context that everyone can readily understand. No Grand Plans from ideologues or social engineers or corporate crooks which encourage people to sigh helplessly: "It's all beyond me - have to follow the sirs as they know what they are doing." The danger is that Obama-McCain-Biden-Poulson-Pelosi-Mr Greed will get away with it and later tell the people that much worse would have happened if the ransom hadn't been paid. Only relentless counter-pressure against the professional politicians over a long period will seal in the necessary sea-change in attitudes.
Dion Giles
Western Austraia
_______________________________________________
Mai-not mailing list
Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Thu Oct 2 22:34:01 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Thu Oct 2 22:34:08 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Re:Heist: Michael Moore presents his solution.
Message-ID: <20081003033402.2E857F2BF@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Fri Oct 3 04:22:23 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Fri Oct 3 04:22:40 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Well well, Canada has an election coming up
Message-ID: <20081003092225.3707EF6B7@fep03.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Canadian PM revokes Iraq war support
ABC News
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/03/2381807.htm?section=justin
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper has suddenly reversed his once
fierce support for the US invasion of Iraq, saying it is "absolutely an error".
"Let's be clear. It was absolutely an error," Mr Harper said under
fire from rivals in a televised political debate ahead of October 14 elections.
"It's obviously clear the evaluation of weapons of mass destruction
proved not to be correct," he said.
"That's why we're not sending anybody to Iraq."
In March 2003 Mr Harper, then in opposition, delivered a speech in
Parliament in support of the US-led Iraq war.
He became embroiled this week in a row about plagiarism after his
former speech writer admitted to copying almost half of it from a
speech delivered by former Australian prime minister John Howard two
days earlier.
In 2003, Canada's then Liberal government refused President George W
Bush's request to support its Iraq invasion, but supported the US
incursion in Afghanistan.
Canadians have not been surveyed on the Iraq war of late, but most
were opposed to the Iraq invasion at the time.
Dion Giles
Western Australia
From jomut at yahoo.com Fri Oct 3 13:55:24 2008
From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa)
Date: Fri Oct 3 13:55:37 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Re: Well well, Canada has an election coming up
In-Reply-To: <20081003092225.3707EF6B7@fep03.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Message-ID: <593255.38367.qm@web31107.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake)
jomut@yahoo.com
chakane@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
?
Hi,
?
No doubt that he would have more than readily?made Canada?a part of the "coalition of the killing" had he been the P.M. then.? In fact one would be not very far wrong were one to hypothesize that he, at times, is afflicted with bouts of sullenly unfulfilled wistfulness?for not having been given a chance to send Canadian troops?to Iraq if one considers his, by all semblances, vindictive unwillingness to do anything to secure the release of?a Canadian who has been languishing in Guano Bay as a "willing combatant" since the formal cessation of the Afghani war.? The kid was only fifteen years old at the time of his arrest, under circumstances in which the evidence against him is/was not clear-cut but the mood for retributive measures was clearly in the ascendant.
?
The kid's harrowing experience since then cannot be expected to do anything to move Harper -- What, with his new found enthusiasm in advocating?that kids who commit horrible crimes (though juridically unproven, not only in this case, but also in the recent ruling that curiously found another kid guilty of a hypothetical, would-be, agent-provocateur-inspired crime of terrorism) ought to be subjected to the same no-nonsense, penal system as adults!!
?
John
===============
--- On Fri, 10/3/08, Dion Giles wrote:
From: Dion Giles
Subject: [Mai-not] Well well, Canada has an election coming up
To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net
Date: Friday, October 3, 2008, 9:22 AM
Canadian PM revokes Iraq war support
ABC News
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/03/2381807.htm?section=justin
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper has suddenly reversed his once
fierce support for the US invasion of Iraq, saying it is "absolutely an
error".
"Let's be clear. It was absolutely an error," Mr Harper said
under
fire from rivals in a televised political debate ahead of October 14 elections.
"It's obviously clear the evaluation of weapons of mass destruction
proved not to be correct," he said.
"That's why we're not sending anybody to Iraq."
In March 2003 Mr Harper, then in opposition, delivered a speech in
Parliament in support of the US-led Iraq war.
He became embroiled this week in a row about plagiarism after his
former speech writer admitted to copying almost half of it from a
speech delivered by former Australian prime minister John Howard two
days earlier.
In 2003, Canada's then Liberal government refused President George W
Bush's request to support its Iraq invasion, but supported the US
incursion in Afghanistan.
Canadians have not been surveyed on the Iraq war of late, but most
were opposed to the Iraq invasion at the time.
Dion Giles
Western Australia
_______________________________________________
Mai-not mailing list
Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
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From papadop at peak.org Fri Oct 3 13:48:19 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Fri Oct 3 14:17:22 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] History's view of Prezidential Debates
Message-ID:
http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/dean/20081003.html
What History Has Taught Us to Expect About the Palin/Biden Debate
By JOHN W. DEAN Friday, Oct. 03, 2008
*John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former NIXON
counsel.
When you read this column, Governor Sarah Palin's vice presidential
debate with Senator Joe Biden may already have occurred. As I write, it
is scheduled for tonight.
Like the millions of Americans who will watch the debate, I am curious as
to how Palin will do. Unfortunately, I will be in an airplane while Palin
and Biden are debating. Yet from experience, I know that Palin's debate
performance is extremely unlikely to make any real difference given the
nature of presidential and vice presidential debates and their lack of
electoral impact. They offer, at most, moments of political theater -
as I will explain in this column.
The only thing that was on the line for Governor Palin in the debate,
then, was her future on the national stage - a topic that I will
address in a later column.
THE NATURE OF PRESIDENTIAL AND VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES
Modern presidential debates began in 1960, when Vice President Richard
Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy engaged in the first three of them.
This first series of debates forever changed the nature of
presidential politics. Once governed by the written word and
photographs, presidential campaigns increasingly became contests of
moving images, which importantly changed the nature of the
campaigning.
Indeed, television defeated the less-than-telegenic and humorless
Nixon in 1960, for Kennedy was Hollywood-handsome and witty. In 1964,
President Lyndon Johnson, who could never find a television camera
that liked him, refused to debate his ruggedly handsome opponent
Senator Barry Goldwater. When Nixon returned to the arena in 1968, he won
the presidential election without debates; he did the same when
reelected in 1972.
Not until 1976 would presidential candidates - Jimmy Carter and
President Gerald Ford - again engage in televised debates. But ever
since, these "debates" - perhaps better described as ninety-minute
dueling press conferences - have become part and parcel of
presidential campaigns.
Nixon's loss in 1960 - when radio listeners thought he had won -
caused others to understand that images dominated, and that
appearances overpower substance. One study of presidential debates
summed it up as follows: "In almost every debate, impressions are
privileged over substance. The character of our future leader is on
display in the debates and, as research indicates, when candidates
appear on television viewers tend to use the pictures to judge
personality traits such as competence, integrity, leadership, and
empathy." (The writer is Ian Watson and his work, entitled "Theatre and
the Presidential Debates: the Role of Performance in Voter Choice,"
appeared in the New Theatre Quarterly.)
In short, these debates are political theater. But, notwithstanding all
their hype, and the passing attention they garner during
presidential campaigns, it is not clear they make any significant
difference in the outcome of an election. Since Nixon, no one has lost a
presidential bid because of the debates. Recently, too, George W. Bush,
who many thought performed poorly in the debates in 2000 and 2004,
still won both presidential elections.
THE VOTES OF PRESIDENTIAL AND VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE VIEWERS ARE
LARGELY UNAFFECTED BY THE DEBATES
The debates are the most-viewed aspect of presidential campaigns; they are
the Super Bowl and World Series of presidential politics. They draw
viewing audiences ranging between forty and seventy million
Americans.
Based on studies of those who watched presidential debates in 2000 and
2004, it can be assumed that this year's hardcore and predominant
audience will be similar -- people with strong partisan attachments and
high levels of political interest. In short, it is the activists who
make up the leading numbers of the audience, and they will watch all of
the debates from start to finish. In 2000 and 2004, more Republicans
than Democrats viewed the debates; in the first debate of 2008, more
Democrats than Republicans were in the audience.
Political scientists have established (in repeated studies) that few of
these hardcore political partisans change their minds based on the
debates. To the contrary, regardless of their candidate's true
performance, Republicans will believe McCain and Palin won their
debates, while Democrats will believe that Obama and Biden prevailed.
(See, for example, Jeffrey W. Jarman, "Political Affiliation and
Presidential Debates," The American Behavioral Scientist.)
However, and importantly, it is not necessary for Americans to watch
even an entire debate, and certainly not all three presidential
debates, to be influenced by them. As Malcolm Gladwell established in
Blink, it does not take long for us to assess if we think a man or
woman is presidential or vice presidential timber. And if anyone
thinks that they will be voting for either McCain/Palin or Obama/Biden
based on their myriad policy positions, they are wrong. We vote with our
hearts, not our heads.
The debates are important for undecided voters, who at this late stage of
the campaign when the debates are taking place, are also often
so-called "low information" voters - those who care little about the
contest, but want some information to help them make up their minds.
Polling on the first debate of 2008 indicates that Obama won the first
debate against McCain, with some polls showing Obama impressed this
undecided group in the first debate.
Ian Watson noted in his study (cited above) the widely-understood
reality that political scientists find that "there is no firm evidence to
suggest [presidential or vice presidential debates] influence the outcome
of election." Nonetheless, political professionals understand their
importance, particularly with undecided voters. One seasoned political
consultant describes how "subtle cues of gesture, posture, syntax, and
tone of voice account for as much as seventy-five per cent of a viewer's
judgment about the electability of a candidate."
Thus, while the debates are not game-changing events, they reinforce the
views of supporters (regardless of their candidates' performance) and can
influence less-sophisticated voters.
Republicans Will Love Palin Regardless of Her Debate Performance
Because of the nature of presidential/vice presidential debates, where
form trumps substance, and assuming that Palin continues to respond
during the debate with the kind of upbeat jabber she gave CBS News
anchor Katie Couric, or the gibberish she employed when running for
governor - where a few salient facts accidentally slip in from time to
time - as of this writing, I expect her to do just fine.
In fact, it will be inexplicable if she does not. A presidential
debate is not a test. With her college degree in television
journalism, work as a television sportscaster, and experience as
practicing politician she certainly understands television, probably
better than many candidates, and she has demonstrated that she can
work a television audience to her favor. I have no doubt that Paris
Hilton would have done as well, maybe better.
With respect to the debate, Palin is similar to an athlete who
accidentally finds herself in the Olympics but is not really qualified to
be there. While she can play the sport she is not a world-class talent,
a fact she has clearly established with her conspicuous prior stumbling.
Still, she has an appealing nature and personality, so she can gain the
sympathy of the crowd, and her fans will love her merely for going
through with the contest. Most Republicans do not care that she has no
experience or true knowledge.
Strikingly, many social and religious conservatives who have watched or
heard Palin's pre-debate interviews with Katie Couric, Charles Gibson,
Sean Hannity and Hugh Hewitt have found nothing wrong with her answers.
To the contrary, they think that commentators like George Will and
CNN's Jack Cafferty are being snobs for putting her down, and claiming
she is out of her league. Conservative operatives claim that she answers
questions just as an average American might, which is why people like
her. The fact that she could be a heartbeat away from the presidency
(should the seventy-two-year- old John McCain, with his recurring
melanomas, win) does not trouble them. One religious conservative
asserted with a straight face, "God will take care of her, and our
nation, if she suddenly were to become president."
In sum, as I write this column, prior to the debate, I am convinced
that Palin will survive with, at a minimum, her base of support
intact. But surviving this debate does not mean she is qualified to be the
Vice President of the United States. To the contrary, her place on the
ticket should scare the hell out of any sane American, and provide an
overwhelming reason to vote against McCain in November, even if you like
his positions.
From papadop at peak.org Fri Oct 3 14:06:45 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Fri Oct 3 14:35:46 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] An important legal victory for OPEN SOURCE licensing
Message-ID:
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3775446/Bruce+Perens:+A+Big+Change+for+Open+Source.htm
Bruce Perens: A Big Change for Open Source
October 2, 2008
By Bruce Perens
*About the Author -- Bruce Perens is
the creator of the Open Source Definition, the manifesto of Open
Source and the criterion for Open Source software licensing.
Perens represented Open Source at the United Nations World Summit on the
Information Society, at the request of the United Nations Development
Program.
##########
An appeals court has erased most of the doubt around Open Source
licensing, permanently, in a decision that was extremely favorable toward
projects like GNU, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and Linux. The man who
prompted that decision could be described as the worst enemy a Free
Software project could have. This is the story of how our community was
able to benefit from that enemy.
For a decade there'd been questions: Are Open Source licenses enforceable
at all? Are their terms, calling for a patent detente or disclosure of
source code, legal?
Are they contracts, which require agreement by all parties to be valid, or
licenses, which are binding even if you don't agree to then? What legal
penalties can a Free Software developer employ: only token damages, or
much more?
The court's ruling makes the answers to these clear. Did such weighty
questions come up in cases involving IBM, Sun, HP, or Red Hat? No, this is
the quirky world of Free Software: it was a court case about model trains.
The reason for so many questions about Open Source licenses was simple:
there weren't any court cases about them, so nobody could say with any
confidence how a judge would rule. The few cases that did start up never
reached a verdict, because the parties settled their dispute and kept the
details of their agreement secret.
The one high-publicity case we've ever had, SCO's self-destructive pursuit
of Linux users and IBM, established the originality of Linux, but didn't
concern Free Software licensing. So, we had waited 10 years for the magic
lawsuit that would establish the legal solidity of Open Source licensing,
and hadn't gotten it.
Enter the two opponents: on the left, Bob Jacobsen: by day on the staff
of a government nuclear research lab, by night a model train hobbyist.
Jacobsen built what might be the ultimate nerd product: "Java Model
Railroad Interface" or "JMRI," computer software for controlling model
trains. Jacobsen gave JMRI to the world as Free Software, never expecting
to make a cent from the project but only asking to share the software he
created with other train hobbyists.
On the right: Matthew Katzer, owner of a company that sells model train
software, who has filed patents that essentially cover all use of
computers to control model trains. Katzer has brought and later withdrawn
a few lawsuits against other model train hobbyists, who in turn allege
that the technology Katzer claims to have invented recently is not his,
and has actually existed since the 1960's.
Jacobsen alleges that in 2002, Katzer filed for patents on features that
were already available in Jacobsen's JMRI, and that Katzer didn't tell the
patent office about the "prior art," evidence that other people made the
invention before Katzer did. Oddities of U.S. patent law allow applicants
to claim that they created an invention long before they file the patent
application, and Katzer's 2002 application claims to be the continuation
of a 1998 patent application - thus side-stepping the pre-existence of
Jacobsen's work. Unfortunately, the U.S. Patent Office does little to
verify that people actually made their invention when they say they did,
and doesn't do a thorough check for "prior art" either.
Once Katzer's patent was granted, he started sending bills to Jacobsen,
asking for $200,000 and threatening to sue. Jacobsen could have waited for
the inevitable lawsuit, but felt that turning the tables would work
better. He brought suit against Katzer, asking the court to decide that
Katzer's patent was not valid.
After he filed the suit, Jacobsen found that Katzer's commercial product
copies some of Jacobsen's JMRI (which Katzer has admitted in court,
according to the finding of the appeals court) and that's where this story
gets even more complicated. By putting Jacobsen's JMRI software in his
product, Katzer bound himself to the terms in JMRI's Open Source license,
which prohibit Katzer from asserting his patents against the developers of
JMRI - Jacobsen and his friends.
This, folks, is one big reason why Free Software developers use licenses.
Open Source projects give their work away for free, and their developers
can't spend millions in court when someone attacks them with a
questionable patent. They especially can't do that while the patent
aggressor makes the Open Source project's own work into part of the patent
aggressor's commercial products.
Jacobsen amended his case against Katzer to include a claim that Katzer
was infringing the copyright on Jacobsen's software by using it in his
product without honoring the license terms or giving any attribution that
the software was Jacobsen's.
Instead of trying to show that he did not copy Jacobsen's software, Katzer
attempted to defend himself by asserting that the terms of Jacobsen's Open
Source license were not valid and could not be enforced on Katzer, and
that JMRI was essentially in the public domain.
The judge agreed with Katzer. This put a shadow over almost every Free
Software license, bringing further into question whether any of them could
be enforced. If the terms of JMRI's license weren't valid, what of the
Wikipedia, the GNU project, Linux, Creative Commons, the Apache project,
etc.? All of their licenses had some similarities to Jacobsen's.
The judge's decision was appealed in the Federal Circuit Court. A large
number of Open Source projects and their attorneys, working for free,
filed a "friend of the court" brief. What the appeals court found was,
essentially, that the Free Software license was a license, rather than a
contract, that it does not require that both parties agree before it can
be binding, that its terms can be enforced, that if you violate the
license you're a copyright infringer, and that violation of an Open Source
license causes real economic damage to the copyright holder even though
the copyright holder doesn't charge money for his software.
The court's finding actually seems rather enthusiastic about Free
Software. I can't blame them - most of the people who come to that court
have motivations other than a desire to share their own work for free.
And having made their finding, the appeals court sent the case back to the
lower court. With Katzer's key defense rejected by the appeals court,
Jacobsen now has a pretty good chance of prevailing against him.
Now that a reasonably high court in the U.S. has made such a finding, Open
Source developers are sure that they aren't restricted to the legal
penalties against people who violate contracts, which are generally just
the amount of money lost, but can pursue the far greater penalties against
copyright infringers. So, all of the tools that publishers, movie studios,
and record companies have managed to win from a too-willing Congress over
the past century are suddenly available to the Free Software developer to
enforce their licenses.
That doesn't mean that the Open Source developers will form their own MPAA
or RIAA and go after college students and the poor. Their motivation is to
share.
So, Katzer's quest for money has so far only resulted in making Open
Source stronger, while so far gaining Katzer nothing. Thank you, Mr.
Katzer, and a more sincere thanks to the many attorneys who helped to win
the appeal, and to Jacobsen's attorney, all of whom are providing their
services to Jacobsen for free.
A LARGER QUESTION
Which brings us to a related question: Why would anyone violate a Free
Software license in the first place?
People who just use Open Source in their own operations will have little
reason to ever consult the license, unless they're out to sue the Free
Software developer, which is a losing proposition in any case.
People who put Open Source in their own products must heed the license,
but its terms are not nearly so bad as those that come with proprietary
software, nor are the Free Software developers even one percent as
litigious as proprietary software companies.
The developers aren't asking for money. They want to protect themselves,
as much as possible, from lawsuits, so that they can continue to give away
their own software. Sometimes, they are asking for the people who improve
their software to share the improvements, just as the original developers
shared their own work. But they aren't doing that without limit - for
example, the GPL license as it's applied to the Linux kernel doesn't ask
for the source code to applications that run on top of Linux.
In my consulting, enforcement, and expert-witness work, I've found that
nobody ever violates a Free Software license for a smart reason. Mostly,
it happens because engineers and attorneys aren't connecting well in their
own companies. I teach classes for management, legal staff, and
engineering on how to avoid these problems, and they aren't very long
classes.
I've found three ways to combine any proprietary work with GPL and other
Free Software, without a need to give away any source code, even when the
Free part is under the new and most rigorous GPL3 license. And thus, as
far as I can tell, there's never any good technical reason to break the
Open Source license, because you can do anything you want without breaking
the license. It just takes a working partnership with legal and
engineering staff, and a few rules.
But Katzer and SCO are different from most companies, because both seem to
have convinced themselves that they have rights to a Free Software project
they didn't write, and are owed a great deal of money. Fortunately, both
seem to be doing equally poorly in court. Hopefully, their performance is
a message to others: taking adversary action against an Open Source
project is like boxing with a beehive.
Jacobsen's case against Katzer is ongoing, although this most important
appeal is completed. He has not yet convinced the judge that Katzer lied
on his patent application, but what if he does? There has been no criminal
prosecution of anyone for lying ("perjury") on a patent application since
1974, when the patent office eliminated its enforcement department.
Contrast that to what the defendant in a suit brought by the holder of a
bogus patent faces: between $3 and $5 million dollars in legal fees per
case. Without the beneficent legal team that came to Jacobsen's aid,
winning such a case is so expensive that it's really losing.
The current system of software patents in the United States makes it too
easy for the Katzers of the world to come after others for big bucks, even
when there is significant doubt regarding the validity of their own
patents. The poor defendants have to spend millions just to prove that the
patent being pursued against them isn't valid, bankrupting themselves in
the process.
The patent holders have little prospect of punishment when they game the
system. That's a system with no sign of balance. We need to restore
justice to the patent system, and we also need to take a good look at the
motivation for software patents, which many economists and others feel do
more to hurt innovation than to promote it.
This article only touches on the highlights of this fascinating case.
The full court papers are online at
.
From jomut at yahoo.com Fri Oct 3 14:53:15 2008
From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa)
Date: Fri Oct 3 14:53:24 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Re: Re:Heist: Michael Moore presents his solution.
In-Reply-To: <20081003033402.2E857F2BF@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Message-ID: <265208.20979.qm@web31103.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake)
jomut@yahoo.com
chakane@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
?
Hi
?
Dunno much?about costing the damage wrought by the Wall St. desperadoes and estimating how much assistance should be thrown its way, BUT it (the wailing woe)?is definitely sending shockwaves throughout the global financial system.? I understand that some?Scandinavian banks have been nationalized in consequence, so have many other financial institutions in Europe, Canadian institutions are ever on tenterhooks.? This is something that the Savings and Loans crisis never did.
?
I?agree with you though on the costing of the crisis.? No transparency here as usual and Paulson is a Wall St. firewall protection enthusiast?via ideological affinity.
?
John
==========
--- On Fri, 10/3/08, Dion Giles wrote:
From: Dion Giles
Subject: [Mai-not] Re:Heist: Michael Moore presents his solution.
To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net
Date: Friday, October 3, 2008, 3:34 AM
I think what Moore is getting at is that a pinprick "crisis" is being manipulated into a threatened total shutdown and blown up into a massive ransom demand.
Ayn Rand's philosophy is very rational until it breaks down at the pursuit of (carefully undefined) individual "happiness", - founded on refusal to recognise the objective reality of anyone's self but one's own, which is exactly where the capitalist economy is breaking down. The non-producing "winners" laugh all the way to the bank, and when the bank isn't working any more they stop laughing and start whining until they work themselves up into a destructive tantrum screaming gimme gimme gimme or you'll be sorry.
Dion Giles
Western Australia
At 03:39 03/10/2008, John Mutambirwa wrote:
John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake)
jomut@yahoo.com
chakane@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
?
Hi,
?
Great suggestions! He does Stiglitz even one better if you compare his suggestions with what Stiglitz is saying at Democracy Now and at The Nation -- that the current deal is quite flawed but should be provisionally accepted till there is a new prez in the White House.
?
I am not sure I agree with Moore's slight downplaying of the current crisis though -- says its comparable to the pinprick that was the Savings and Loans crisis of the 80s.? I think Stiglitz is right in pointing out that the current crisis hits right at the heart of the U.S. banking system and, compared with it, the Savings and Loan's crisis was just a schoolboy's prank!
?
Good that he (Moore) emphasizes that the Wall Street (and elsewhere) big shouts (always do it via their megaphone-equipped PR lackeys) MUST not be handled with any kid gloves.? Better pull of those suede mitts when dealing with these economic saboteurs!? Trouble is that, over a generation of frenzied bouts of misinformation these substantial citizens have won too much of an unmerited reputation as level-headed men-of-affairs rather than the freemarket business fanatics that they really are.? Ayn Rand does that to you of course!!
?
John.
?
=========================
--- On Thu, 10/2/08, Dave Patterson wrote:
From: Dave Patterson
Subject: Re: [Mai-not] Heist: Michael Moore presents his solution.
To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net
Date: Thursday, October 2, 2008, 11:42 AM
Pretty much on the ball - you can be 100% sure crazy ideas like that will get nowhere near any mainstream media
?
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 08-10-02 at 3:59 PM Dion Giles wrote:
It's at http://yubanet.com/opinions/Michael-Moore-Here-s-How-to-Fix-the-Wall-Street-Mess.php ?? and it's a good one.? Here's why (from my rave on his bulletin board):
Bravo. Measures that everyone can readily understand in a context that everyone can readily understand. No Grand Plans from ideologues or social engineers or corporate crooks which encourage people to sigh helplessly: "It's all beyond me - have to follow the sirs as they know what they are doing." The danger is that Obama-McCain-Biden-Poulson-Pelosi-Mr Greed will get away with it and later tell the people that much worse would have happened if the ransom hadn't been paid. Only relentless counter-pressure against the professional politicians over a long period will seal in the necessary sea-change in attitudes.
Dion Giles
Western Austraia
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From papadop at peak.org Fri Oct 3 18:53:16 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Fri Oct 3 19:22:16 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] GUARDIASN - two economy pieces
Message-ID:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/03/us.bush.financial.crisis
A financial panic provoked by President Bush was designed to stampede
Congress into passing the bail-out for Wall Street
The Guardian (London) Friday October 03 2008 22:30 BST
This is the first time in the history of the United States that the
president has sought to provoke a financial panic to get legislation
passed through Congress. While this has proven to be a successful
political strategy - after the House of Representatives finally passed the
bank bail-out plan today - it marks yet another low point in American
politics.
It was incredibly irresponsible for George Bush to tell the American
people on national television that the country could be facing another
Great Depression. By contrast, when we actually were in the Great
Depression, President Roosevelt said: "We have nothing to fear, but fear
itself."
It was even more irresponsible for President Bush to seize on the decline
in the stock market five days later as evidence that his bailout was
needed for the economy. President Bush must surely understand, as all
economists know, that the daily swings in the stock market are driven by
mass psychology and have almost nothing to do with the underlying strength
in the economy.
The scare tactics of President Bush, Henry Paulson, the Treasury
secretary, and Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, created
sufficient panic, so that by the time of the first vote on the emergency
package in Congress, much of the public believed that the defeat of the
bail-out may actually have had serious consequences for the economy.
Millions of people have changed their behaviour because of this fear, with
many pulling money out of bank and money market accounts, and adjusting
their financial plans in other ways.
This effort to promote panic is especially striking since the country's
dire economic situation is almost entirely the result of the Bush
administration's policy failures. First and foremost, the decision of
Paulson and Bernanke (and previously Alan Greenspan) to ignore the housing
bubble, allowed for the growth of an $8tn bubble, which is now collapsing.
It is the collapse of this bubble - which has already destroyed more than
$4tn in housing wealth, and is likely to destroy another $4tn over the
next year - that is at the root of the economy's problems. While competent
economists were warning of the bubble and the dire consequences of its
collapse, the top officials in the Bush administration were celebrating
the rise in homeownership rates.
The Bush administration made the crisis even worse by deregulating Wall
Street. This led to the huge over-leveraging of financial institutions,
which has vastly complicated the country's economic policies. It is
especially disturbing that Secretary Paulson personally profited from
these policies, earning millions of dollars in compensation from Goldman
Sachs during his years there as its chief executive.
The collapse of the housing bubble, while falling short of the magnitude
of the Great Depression, is likely to lead to the worst recession since
the second world war. Repairing the damage caused by this bubble will be a
long and difficult process. Cleaning up the damage to the political system
from President Bush's unprecedented fear campaign may prove to be even
more difficult.
##############
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/04/useconomy
How the 1929 Wall Street Crash unfolded
See how the Guardian reported the crash in 1929
(http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2008/10/03/1929guardian40.pdf)
* The Guardian, (London) October 4 2008
How it began
The bull market on Wall Street began in 1923 and led to an unprecedented
period of share trading. However, by 1929 there were signs of instability.
On September 3 the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its peak, closing
at 381.7.
On September 5 the economist Roger Babson gave a speech saying 'Sooner or
later, a crash is coming, and it may be terrific'. He had predicted a
crash for years but this time the market fell.
'Black Tuesday': 24.10.29
The bubble finally burst on October 24 1929. A then record of 13m shares
were traded and newspapers reported losses as high as $5bn. Bankers poured
money into the market and President Herbert Hoover reassured Americans
that business was sound.
'Black Monday': 28.10.29
On October 28, European newspapers were reporting that some brokers
believed the worst was over. But when the American markets opened, they
went into freefall, and the contagion spread around the world. 'Black
Monday' saw huge falls in the US stock market.
'Black Tuesday': 29.10.29
'Black Tuesday' continued the losses as investors tried to sell all their
stocks at once. The market recorded $14bn in paper losses. The volume was
so great that tickers could not keep up. By the end of the day the market
was down more than 12%, another large drop. Millions of people lost their
savings.
Battle to save the market
America's financial elite tried to rescue the market - members of the
Rockefeller family and William C Durant of General Motors bought large
quantities of stocks to demonstrate their confidence in the market but the
move could not stem the tide.
The market hit new lows in November, but it was not until July 1932 that
it reached the lowest point of the Great Depression, down 89% from its
peak.
The consequences
The crash led to higher trade tariffs as governments tried to shore up
their economies, and higher interest rates in the US after a worldwide run
on US gold deposits. In American unemployment went from 1.5 million in
1929 to 12.8 million - or 24.75% of the workforce - by 1933, a pattern
replicated around the world. It took 23 years for the US market to
recover.
##########
From papadop at peak.org Sat Oct 4 00:45:06 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Sat Oct 4 01:14:19 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] It didn't happen herte - yet.
Message-ID:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/martial-law-will-be-declared-if-banker-bill-not-passed-in-house.html
Kurt Nimmo Prison Planet Friday, October 3, 2008
In House debate on the banker "rescue" bill, Rep. Brad Sherman told his
fellow Congress critters the government will declare martial law and the
stock market will drop 3,000 points if the bill is not passed. "The
panic-mongers were to the point of telling people the market would
drop 3,000 points and there would be martial law," said Sherman.
Sherman's comment was not in the same context as a comment issued by
Rep. Michael Burgess earlier in the week. Burgess, who appeared on the
Alex Jones Show, said Pelosi threatened to invoke House rule
XIII(6)(a), described as "martial law," intended to suspend normal
procedures and safeguards and thus allowing the House leadership to
operate in a more authoritarian fashion. Sherman, however, said
martial law would be declared on Wall Street, not in the House.
Rep. Sherman said the "exaggerated fear-mongering turned out not to be
true" and the House "can draft a good bill," regardless of the
pressure put on representatives to pass the banker bailout bill.
The bailout plan is not only "economic fascism," as Richard Viguerie has
correctly noted, designed to loot the U.S. Treasury and reorganize and
further consolidate elite control over the economy, but it is also a
brazen effort to impose a martial law and dictatorship. Paulson's role
as financial dictator, not answerable to Congress or the American people,
fully compliments additional steps taken over the last few years.
As former California congressman Dan Hamburg said earlier this year, the
2007 National Defense Authorization Act gives the executive the power to
invoke martial law in case of "major public emergencies," not limited to
"a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack," but
also "any other condition in which the President determines that
domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials
cannot maintain public order." Obviously, a financial crash and ensuing
social chaos of the sort now being implemented by the ruling elite would
be characterized as a dire emergency and a near perfect excuse to
impose martial law, a long standing goal of the elite.
As well, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, codifying indefinite
imprisonment of dissidents, and the National Security Presidential
Directive 51, ensuring the "continuity of government" in the event of a
"catastrophic emergency," are tools the government will most
assuredly use after the economy implodes, now a foregone conclusion
according to many economists.
Numerous Bilderberg pronouncements, dutifully reported here at
Infowars and Prison Planet but ignored by the larger corporate media,
reveal what the global elite have in mind for us -- an engineered
economic crash followed by a consolidation of wealth under fire sale
conditions. In order to successfully accomplish this, the elite must
impose martial law and "maintain public order," that is to say force the
public to accept their terms by military force.
As the Army Times reported last month, a battle-hardened "homeland"
brigade is now "going domestic" after spending time in Iraq. It
appears this illegal deployment (under Posse Comitatus) is designed to
respond to "public disorder" as the economy is deliberately and
cynically dismantled at the behest of our rulers who are now investing in
the Treasury and the executive, with the complicity of Congress,
dictatorial powers heretofore unheard of in America.
From papadop at peak.org Sat Oct 4 00:48:44 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Sat Oct 4 01:17:50 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] lowered debate standards
Message-ID:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/03/sarah.palin.debate.feminism
Flirting her way to victory
Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both
female candidates and US political discourse
The Guardian (London) Friday October 03 2008 18:30 BST
At least three times last night, Sarah Palin, the adorable,
preposterous vice-presidential candidate, winked at the audience. Had a
male candidate with a similar reputation for attractive vapidity made
such a brazen attempt to flirt his way into the good graces of the
voting public, it would have universally noted, discussed and mocked.
Palin, however, has single-handedly so lowered the standards both for
female candidates and American political discourse that, with her
newfound ability to speak in more-or-less full sentences, she is now
deemed to have performed acceptably last night. By any normal
standard, including the ones applied to male presidential
candidates of either party, she did not. Early on, she made the
astonishing announcement that she had no intentions of actually
answering the queries put to her. "I may not answer the questions
that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk
straight to the American people and let them know my track record also,"
she said.
And so she preceded, with an almost surreal disregard for the subjects she
was supposed to be discussing, to unleash fusillades of scripted attack
lines, platitudes, lies, gibberish and grating references to her own
pseudo-folksy authenticity.
It was an appalling display. The only reason it was not widely
described as such is that too many American pundits don't even try to
judge the truth, wisdom or reasonableness of the political rhetoric
they are paid to pronounce upon. Instead, they imagine themselves as
interpreters of a mythical mass of "average Americans" who they both
venerate and despise.
In pronouncing upon a debate, they don't try and determine whether a
candidate's responses correspond to existing reality, or whether he or she
is capable of talking about subjects such as the deregulation of the
financial markets or the devolution of the war in Afghanistan. The
criteria are far more vaporous. In this case, it was whether Palin
could avoid utterly humiliating herself for 90 minutes, and whether
urbane commentators would believe that she had connected to a public
that they see as ignorant and sentimental. For the Alaska governor,
mission accomplished.
There is indeed something mesmerising about Palin, with her manic
beaming and fulsome confidence in her own charm. The force of her
personality managed to slightly obscure the insulting emptiness of her
answers last night. It's worth reading the transcript of the
encounter, where it becomes clearer how bizarre much of what she said
was. Here, for example, is how she responded to Biden's comments about how
the middle class has been short-changed during the Bush
administration, and how McCain will continue Bush's policies:
Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again.
You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush
administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans
what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned
education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are
passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and
god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who
I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a
shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary
School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.
Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of
speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to
simply disregard questions that did not invite memorised talking points
or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky
average-ness, which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty.
Asked what her achilles heel is - a question she either didn't
understand or chose to ignore - she started in on how McCain chose her
because of her "connection to the heartland of America. Being a mom,
one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs
child, about kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those
tuition bills?"
None of Palin's children, it should be noted, is heading off to
college. Her son is on the way to Iraq, and her pregnant 17-year-old
daughter is engaged to be married to a high-school dropout and
self-described "fuckin' redneck". Palin is a woman who can't even
tell the truth about the most quotidian and public details of her own
life, never mind about matters of major public import. In her only
vice-presidential debate, she was shallow, mendacious and phoney. What
kind of maverick, after all, keeps harping on what a maverick she is?
That her performance was considered anything but a farce doesn't show how
high Palin has risen, but how low we all have sunk.
###########
From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sat Oct 4 01:20:53 2008
From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster)
Date: Sat Oct 4 01:21:16 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: When the going gets tough, economists go very quiet
Message-ID: <014301c925e9$5fa58320$8cad57ca@jfos>
real-world economics review, issue no. 47 When the going gets tough,
economists go very quiet Simon Jenkins [United Kingdom]
Copyright: Simon Jenkins, 2008
They're happy to take the credit in the good times, but the disciples of
this false science are hard to find as recession looms.
So the Footsie has tumbled again. Forgive me for asking, but where are the
economists? As the nation approaches recession, an entire profession seems
to have vanished over the horizon, like conmen stuffed with cash, and
thousands left destitute behind. They said recessions were over. They told
politicians to leave things to them and all would be fine. Yet they failed
to spot the sub-prime housing crash, and now look at the mess.
When I studied economics we were told we would be masters of the universe.
Ours was not a dismal but a noble science. It had harnessed the verities of
maths to those of human behaviour and would go on to conquer politics.
Rampant recession would go the way of hyperinflation. Like leprosy and
cholera, they were epidemics that modern medicine had rid from our shores.
It did not matter if the economists were welfare Keynesians such as Myrdal,
Robinson and Galbraith or free-marketeers such as Marshall, Friedman and the
Institute of Economic Affairs. All were "social scientists". They claimed to
have cracked the DNA of economic exchange, to have turned the base metal of
money into political gold.
We believed them. We believed the Keynesians until we slumped into
stagflation. We believed light-regulation capitalists such as Margaret
Thatcher and Gordon Brown, that they could convert boom-bust into an upward
sloping plane of glory. We believed the Bank of England when it said that,
in its hands, inflation was dead and prosperity eternal. Bliss was it in
that dawn to be alive - and an economist.
If Britain were now in the grip of bubonic plague, there would be all hell
to pay from some profession or other. An "influential" Commons committee
would be summoning the chief medical officer and subjecting him to the third
degree. Why no national rat strategy? Why no crash inoculation? Why so many
planning delays on plague pits?
The espionage pundits were likewise castigated for wrongly leading the
nation to war against Iraq, for giving dud professional assessments on
fallacious intelligence. The architectural profession has taken the rap
(very occasionally) for the grotesque failures of public housing in the
1970s. Climate scientists may yet be damned for the costly lunacy of new
energy sources, such as wind turbines and biofuels.
Yet economics is a Teflon profession. A quarter of a century ago 364
practitioners wrote a letter denouncing the policies of the then Thatcher
government as having "no basis in economic theory". They were wrong in fact
and wrong in judgment. Thatcher's policies laid the groundwork for a
strategic shift in the underpinning of British prosperity. There was no
inquiry, no hearing, no peep of retraction or remorse.
Since then economists have flooded into government; there were roughly a
thousand at the last count. What do they all do? Despite reports of
demoralisation in the Treasury, that
268 RER, issue no. 47
department remains the home base for public sector management through
financial aggregates. During the Blair/Brown era it has held government in
thrall.
Economic managers have always claimed credit for the success of Brown's
Treasury regime. They have espoused quantifiable outputs, targets and
delivery indicators. They invented the celebrity consultant and the maxim
that only what measures matters. Above all, the economics profession (and
its house journal, the Economist) was ecstatic when Brown delegated monetary
control to the Bank of England. This was supposed to isolate the economy
from political pressure, subcontracting the regulation of interest rates and
markets.
Today we are older and wiser. Controlling the agencies of credit has proved
beyond the finest professional minds in the game. Where now are the
effortless pundits of the Treasury and the Bank? Where now the gilded ones
of Moody's and Standard & Poor's, credit raters to the mightiest in the
land? They should have stuck to goose entrails.
Alan Greenspan, former chief of the US Federal Reserve Board and a Brown
adviser, is unrepentant. He recently declared that "anticipating the next
financial malfunction ... has not proved feasible". There is nothing so
unseeing as a wronged economist. The Bank of England's apologias over
Northern Rock have been protests that regulation is a mess and government
indecisive.
When muck hits fan, economists always blame politicians. They would have
some justice if they did not take credit when things go right. I was always
uncomfortable at the overselling of economics as a science, when it is
rather a branch of psychology, a study of the peculiarities of human nature.
Its spurious objectivity, manifest in its ridiculous love affair with maths,
induced a "Jupiter complex", a conviction that scientific certainty, applied
with enough rigour to any problem, triumphs over all.
Economic management is and always will be about politics, about the clash of
needs and demands resolved through the constitutional process. The
delegation of interest rates to the Bank of England worked when it ran in
parallel with politics, but not any more. Now that reflation seems urgent
for recovery, the system is biased against common sense, yet no politician
dare tell the Bank to cut rates and risk inflation.
The newest craze is "nudge" economics, from the Americans, Richard Thaler
and Cass Sunstein. They put the subject firmly among the behavioural
sciences - if not the arts. Human actions are too mysterious and
unpredictable to be liable to quantification and modelling. They are
responsive to what the academic Paul Ormerod called "butterfly economics".
Nudge steers, but does not order or plan.
This requires knowledge of the working of markets, incentives, expectations
and panics. But converting micro-economics into macro has always been a
dangerous game. Much has been made of the success of Spain's dirigiste
banking regulators in putting security before runaway profit. But this was a
triumph of politics over economics. Greenspan may laconically remark that
"we can never have a perfect model of risk", but we can have alertness to
risk and we can have caution.
Economics has long traded on being a science when it is not. In this it is
like war. For a third of a century since the 1976 IMF crisis it has enjoyed
great influence over British policy.
269 real-world economics review, issue no. 47 270
Now it has met its Waterloo and a little humility would be in order. Once
again economics must be rescued by that true master of all things, politics.
simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk
________________________________
SUGGESTED CITATION:
Simon Jenkins, "When the going gets tough, economists go very quiet",
real-world economics review, issue no. 47, 3 October 2008, pp. 268-270,
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue47/Jenkins47.pdf
------------------------------------------------------
Provided by Australis
http://www.australis.com.au/
From creuss at bluewin.ch Sat Oct 4 09:53:22 2008
From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss)
Date: Sat Oct 4 09:54:52 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Obama admits U$ has 58 States
Message-ID:
Obama admits that Germany, France, UK, Israel, ... are part of the Empire!
Obama said: "... over the last 15 months we have traveled to every corner
of the United States ... I have now been in 57 states ... I think one left
to go."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7S5V2es9Dw
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword
"igve".
From papadop at peak.org Sat Oct 4 19:41:02 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Sat Oct 4 20:10:03 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Sharpened tone of campaign.
Message-ID:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20081004/twl-us-vote-2802f3e.html
Agence France Presse October 4 '08
CARSON, California (AFP) - The war of words between rival White House
camps escalated Saturday, one month from the vote, with Republican
vice presidential pick Sarah Palin charging Democrat Barack Obama of
"palling around with terrorists."
Speaking early Saturday at a fundraiser in Englewood, Colorado, Palin
told supporters Obama "is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so
imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their
own country."
She was referring to William Ayers, a member of the radical 1960s
group the Weathermen who placed bombs at the Pentagon and the Capitol, who
supported Obama's first run for public office in 1995.
The Obama campaign described Palin's guilt-by-association attack as
"desperate and false."
"Governor Palin's comments, while offensive, are not surprising, given the
McCain campaign's statement this morning that they would be
launching Swiftboat-like attacks in hopes of deflecting attention from the
nation's economic ills," said Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan.
The Illinois senator, meanwhile, charged that Republican rival John
McCain's healthcare was "radical."
"He taxes health care benefits for the first time in history; millions
lose the health care they have; millions pay more for the health care
they get; drug and insurance companies continue to make exorbitant
profits; and middle-class families watch the system they rely on begin to
unravel before their eyes," Obama said.
The sharpened tone was in line with Republican promises to ramp up the
rhetoric ahead of the November 4 election.
On Friday, top McCain adviser Greg Strimple promised a "very
aggressive last 30 days" of campaigning to erode Obama's growing lead in
the polls.
"We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis and
getting back to discussing Mr Obama's aggressively liberal record and how
he will be too risky for Americans," he told reporters.
In pushing back against Palin's charge, Obama's camp condemned Ayers'
"detestable acts," and noted that they occurred when the senator was
only eight-years-old.
The Obama camp was leveling its own accusations of extremism,
launching an advertising onslaught on TV and radio charging that
McCain's policies would cause 20 million more Americans lose their
employer-funded health insurance.
With the economy threatened by recession and a credit crisis on Wall
Street, Obama's attacks may resonate with voters fearful of losing
their jobs and health care.
Addressing a sun-kissed rally of 18,000 people next to Virginia's
naval shipbuilding yards, Obama noted that McCain proposed to give
families a tax credit of 5,000 dollars towards paying for rocketing
health care costs.
"But like those ads for prescription drugs, you got to read the fine
print to learn the rest of the story, to find out the side-effects,"
said Obama, who is proposing subsidies and tax breaks to bring in
near-universal health care.
McCain insists his health care plan would generate more competition and
drive down costs, and that Obama's plan would deprive voters of their
choice of doctor through creating a "vast new bureaucracy" run by the
government.
The Republican, who has retreated to his Arizona ranch to prepare for
Tuesday's debate in Tennessee, is meanwhile rolling out an ad blitz to
portray Obama as a radical tax-and-spend liberal.
Following Friday's approval by US lawmakers of the financial rescue
plan, McCain is trying to shift the narrative away from the economy.
"I guarantee you, you're going to learn a lot about who's the liberal and
who's the conservative and who wants to raise your taxes and who wants
to lower them," the Arizona senator told voters in Colorado on Friday.
Obama has emerged strengthened from the financial crisis, projecting an
image of calm under fire that has boosted his polling lead to an average
of six points over McCain, according to RealClearPolitics.com.
The latest Gallup tracking poll of registered voters put Obama on 50
percent and McCain on 42, the eighth straight day the Democrat has
enjoyed a statistically significant lead.
#########
From siamdave at yahoo.ca Sun Oct 5 10:12:11 2008
From: siamdave at yahoo.ca (Dave Patterson)
Date: Sun Oct 5 10:12:23 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] on those who are getting the Billion Bailout
In-Reply-To: <48DFFE24.24691.24A0B486@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
References: <48DFFE24.24691.24A0B486@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
Message-ID: <200810052212110593.02E39511@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
- this is good -
http://www.canadiandimension.com/blog/2008/10/great-laugh-bill-maher-new-rules-white-prejudice/
From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sat Oct 4 02:07:25 2008
From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster)
Date: Sun Oct 5 17:59:41 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: Sub-prime lending market (satire)
Message-ID: <003501c9273e$05e5ed60$41ad57ca@jfos>
Following the problems in the sub-prime lending market in America and the
run on Northern Rock in the UK, uncertainty has now hit Japan. In the last
7 days the Origami Bank has folded, the Sumo Bank has gone belly up and
the Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches. Yesterday, it
was announced that the Karaoke Bank is up for sale and will likely go for
a song, while today shares in the Kamikaze Bank were suspended after they
nose-dived. While the Samurai Bank is soldiering on following sharp
cutbacks, the Ninja Bank is reported to have taken a hit, but they remain
in the black. Furthermore, 500 staff at the Karate Bank got the chop and
analysts report that there is something fishy going on at the Sushi Bank
where it is feared that staff may get a raw deal.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Oct 5 21:48:48 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Sun Oct 5 21:48:55 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Retirement investment plan
Message-ID: <20081006024849.E5721128ED@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
RETIREMENT PLAN INVESTMENT TIP (valid for Americans, iffy where
there is no aluminium recycling refund)
If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would
now be worth $49.00.
With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1000.
With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.
If you had purchased $1000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have
$49.00 left.
If you had purchased United Airlines, you would have nothing left.
But, if you had purchased $1000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drunk
all; he beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling
refund you would have $214.00.
Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink
heavily and recycle.
This is called the 401-Keg Plan
Unfortunately it doesn't work in WA where there is no recycling
refund, but the aluminium can be sold to Sim's Scrap Metal.
Dion Giles
Western Australia
From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Oct 6 07:02:06 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Mon Oct 6 07:02:19 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Has Harper grown a spine
Message-ID: <20081006120208.0780612B85@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
...or is he dry-running a template for attaching Canada to the
USA? Not keen on the second-last par.
Dion Giles
Western Australia
---------
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081003.CHAREST03/TPStory/National
FOREIGN AFFAIRS: PROPOSAL EXCEEDS SCOPE OF NAFTA
Provinces key to EU trade deal, Quebec Premier says
KAREN HOWLETT
October 3, 2008
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONT. -- Canada's premiers will play a pivotal
role in the country's efforts to integrate its economy with the 27
nations of the European Union, Quebec Premier Jean Charest says.
Preliminary talks between Canadian and European officials will begin
on Oct. 17 at a summit in Montreal. The provinces' role in the
negotiations will be instrumental to the fate of the proposed massive
agreement because it involves issues that primarily fall under their
jurisdiction, Mr. Charest told The Globe and Mail yesterday.
No deal could happen without the premiers at the table, he said.
"Unless we are fully involved in the negotiations, we are not going
to get the deal we want," Mr. Charest said.
Print Edition - Section Front
He described the proposed pact as a groundbreaking initiative on a
scale that has never been attempted. The accord would go well beyond
the scope of the NAFTA agreement between Canada and the United States
by encompassing not only trade in goods and services but also the
free movement of skilled workers and an open market in government
services and procurement.
Mr. Charest said the federal government can sign a treaty with other
countries dealing with these areas. But he said Ottawa does not have
the power to commit the provinces to areas that fall under their
jurisdiction. "It is without effect if we don't sign on," he said.
The fact that provinces will be at the negotiating table reflects
their efforts to play a major role in charting the country's destiny
on key issues where their interests are at stake. The push to remove
trade and investment barriers with the EU countries comes as Canada
is making an effort to lessen its dependence on the United States,
its largest trading partner.
Mr. Charest was in Niagara-on-the-Lake yesterday, where he and
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty spoke on a panel at the Ontario
Economic Summit about the toll the weakened U.S. economy has taken on
Central Canada. Thousands of manufacturing jobs have vanished in
Ontario and Quebec in the past few years, and the pain is far from
over, economists say.
Mr. McGuinty told the audience that Canada's premiers will lead their
first-ever trade mission to China later this fall. "We need to find
more ways to market ourselves as a nation," he said.
Mr. Charest has been involved in the initiative involving the EU
countries for two years, including lobbying business leaders in its
member countries. He said it is up to Canada to "hustle" for the
proposed trans-Atlantic accord because no one is going to come
knocking on its door.
"There's no one who gets up in the morning in the world community
saying, 'why don't we make a deal with Canada today?' " Mr. Charest
said. "If we want these types of agreements, we have to go out there
and fight for them and hustle for them."
The pitch he is making to Europeans is to do a deal with Canada that
can serve as a model for something far more ambitious with the United States.
"We've always had a very clear view that it's our responsibility to
promote our interests abroad," Mr. Charest said.
From thinker at this1.ca Mon Oct 6 10:08:21 2008
From: thinker at this1.ca (Ed Deak)
Date: Mon Oct 6 10:06:26 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Mobile phone fraud ?
Message-ID: <200810061506.m96F6GRM011750@karma.reboot.ca>
Subject: Mobile phone fraud ?
I received the following from England and forward it without
comment. No idea whether it is true, or not, but worth thinking about.
Cheers, Ed.
Subject: Fw: Mobile Phone Fraud
FYI
----- Dear All
If you receive a phone call on your mobile from any person, saying
that he or she is a company engineer, or telling that they're
checking your mobile line, and you have to press #90 or #09 or any
other number, end this call immediately without pressing any numbers.
The re is a fraud company using a device that once you press #90 or
#09 they can access your 'SIM' card and make calls at your expense.
Forward this message to as many colleagues, relatives and friends as
you can, to stop it.
Many thanks for your time regarding this matter, take care and regards.
Phil Corris
Police Constable/Crime Prevention Officer
Ext 496696 (Internal)
01524 596696 (External)
Email PhilCorris@lancashire.pnn
..police.uk
----------
P Save paper and reduce waste - Do not print this Email out unless it
is really necessary.
Disclaimer - this email is private and confidential and is for the
addressee only. If misdirected, please notify us and confirm that it
has been deleted from your system and any hard copies destroyed. You
are strictly prohibited from using, printing, distributing or
disseminating it or any information contained in it save to the
intended recipient. Keller Limited Registered Company No. 485692
Registered Office: Oxford Road, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Coventry, CV8 3EG.
From thinker at this1.ca Mon Oct 6 10:10:35 2008
From: thinker at this1.ca (Ed Deak)
Date: Mon Oct 6 10:08:36 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Has Harper grown a spine
In-Reply-To: <20081006120208.0780612B85@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
References: <20081006120208.0780612B85@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Message-ID: <200810061508.m96F8TRM011951@karma.reboot.ca>
Harper always had a spine, albeit a very crooked one. Enclosed my
last column.
Cheers, Ed.
To: record@cablerocket.com
Subject: Fiat lux # 221
Fiat lux #221 Oct,3, 2008.
As a dedicated private enterpriser, a registered voter in BC since
May 1956, independent business and property owner since Nov. 1957, a
WW2 combat vet, work/life experience in four countries under every
known ideology, a student of history for over 60 and of economics for
the past 26 years, I've never been so scared of corrupt politics and
politicians since the beginning of my 45 year record of fighting
communist dictatorships, as I am now of a Harper majority government.
Mr. Harper has been hopelessly brainwashed in his student days with
the deadly economic and pro-ruling class theories of Milton Friedman
and Leo Strauss, not to mention his future directorship hopes, and
now all he can do is to promote laissez faire, neoclassical market
economics, that has now become the biggest crime wave in human
history. The overall, long standing plan of this theory is, not even
denied by many of its proponents, global corporate dictatorship
eliminating any power still left in the hands of elected governments,
all public control and ownership, services and democracy. And all
this in the name of "freedom", of course.
The criminal neoclassical theory is now not only destroying the
Earth's ecology, but kills tens of millions of people every year ,
most of them little children, through starvation and destitution, all
in the name of becoming "globally competitive" and "productive",
which means more powers and bigger profits into the hands of their
slave drivers.
The textbook definition of economics is "The science for the
management and distribution of scarce resources". Maynard Keynes came
close to this ideal, but through deliberate distortions going on for
generations, the theories of all the other prophets have become the
tools for oppression, colonization, enslavement and mass murder. As
we have now with this presently ongoing Friedmanite crime wave,
serving the same predator class, whether they call themselves
communists, nazis, or capitalists. The human predators, their
priesthoods, theorists and executioners are always the same, no
matter under what flag they happen to operate. And the historical
results of their actions are also always the same disasters repeating
themselves, because people never learn and foolishly sell their lives
into their hands.
The presently ongoing neo-conservative plan is nothing less than just
another Soviet type, global collectivization under the rule of a few
mega corporations, operating under hundreds of phony names,
pretending to be "free enterprises". They already control most of the
world's markets like oil and food, making huge profits by price
fixing and extortion from producers and consumers alike. The
disgusting cattle prices breaking our ranchers right now have long
been fixed in corporate head offices in the USA, with our governments
closing their eyes, while there's a daily growing, worldwide food
shortage and prices are jumping in the stores for the same items the
producers are receiving virtually nothing.
The strongest weapon in the hands of ruling classes has always been
the exploitation of human gullibility, otherwise known as "faith",
through the artificial installation of the most ridiculous
philosophies, claims, stories and ideologies into people's minds,
then used to enslave them .
The present control over resources and lives is sold to and forced on
the gullible public by the fraudulent definition of economic
efficiency as "the biggest profits for the least monetary inputs",
ignoring and contradicting the real definition of efficiency as "The
most work done with the least physical inputs".
Then we come to the rest of the fraud with the phony GDP, Growth and
Productivity figures.
The sale of resources is the sale of capital, and not an income,
service jobs are not assets but liabilities, yet they all are
accounted as GDP, Growth and Productivity benefits. The GDP includes
all transactions, regardless how damaging they are to the environment
and people, the repair and the funeral costs of natural disaster and
accident victims, as "products" and "growth", without any debits for
losses. When human labour is replaced by huge inputs of other forms
of energy, the "productivity" and "efficiency" figures jump,
regardless of the damage and wasteful depletion, while the public is
urged to "save energy".
The Harper government has long been engaged in secret negotiations
with the other two NAFTA countries, and the EU, for the sale of
Canadian sovereignty, the complete takeover of our economy, resources
and the free importation of foreign labour to become "more efficient"
by replacing Canadians. As Mr.Harper's Reform Party used to claim:
"Canadian workers priced themselves out of jobs", while living costs,
controlled by the corporate mafia, were and still are going through the roof.
As Mr. Harper's good old Reform's Blue Book said it: "Unions may
insure standards, but should not block qualified people from working
in trade or profession or gaining the necessary qualifications":
One of his old cohorts, Herb Grubel, Professor Emeritus at the SFU
said it even better:" A special target of all my interest is really
unions. Free trade will put pressure on the elimination of these
kinds of institutions which I believe are unjust".
Of course, in Herbie's warped imagination the multinational mega
corporations and their conspiracies, like the Bilderbergers, the
Trilaterals, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the North
American Competitiveness Council, stealing trillions from people's
pockets worldwide every year are only "wealth creators".
The excuse and justification for the "deep integration" of Canada
into EU, and ultimately the NAU, is that it will open a market for
our "products" to 800 million people. Another fraud, because with the
deindustrialization of Canada by the FTA, NAFTA and the WTO, the only
things we have left to sell are our resources and infrastructure, in
short "CANADA FOR SALE", planned to come into effect at the Oct.17.
summit in Montreal and Mr.Harper wants to start sharpening his pen to
sign on the dotted line, without even bothering to tell the public
what he's selling.
But then, this is called democracy in our 21st Century.
At 05:02 AM 06/10/2008, you wrote:
>...or is he dry-running a template for attaching Canada to the
>USA? Not keen on the second-last par.
>
>Dion Giles
>Western Australia
>
>---------
>http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081003.CHAREST03/TPStory/National
>
>
>FOREIGN AFFAIRS: PROPOSAL EXCEEDS SCOPE OF NAFTA
>
>Provinces key to EU trade deal, Quebec Premier says
>
>KAREN HOWLETT
>
>October 3, 2008
>
>NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONT. -- Canada's premiers will play a pivotal
>role in the country's efforts to integrate its economy with the 27
>nations of the European Union, Quebec Premier Jean Charest says.
>
>Preliminary talks between Canadian and European officials will begin
>on Oct. 17 at a summit in Montreal. The provinces' role in the
>negotiations will be instrumental to the fate of the proposed
>massive agreement because it involves issues that primarily fall
>under their jurisdiction, Mr. Charest told The Globe and Mail yesterday.
>
>No deal could happen without the premiers at the table, he said.
>
>"Unless we are fully involved in the negotiations, we are not going
>to get the deal we want," Mr. Charest said.
>
>Print Edition - Section Front
>
>He described the proposed pact as a groundbreaking initiative on a
>scale that has never been attempted. The accord would go well beyond
>the scope of the NAFTA agreement between Canada and the United
>States by encompassing not only trade in goods and services but also
>the free movement of skilled workers and an open market in
>government services and procurement.
>
>Mr. Charest said the federal government can sign a treaty with other
>countries dealing with these areas. But he said Ottawa does not have
>the power to commit the provinces to areas that fall under their
>jurisdiction. "It is without effect if we don't sign on," he said.
>
>The fact that provinces will be at the negotiating table reflects
>their efforts to play a major role in charting the country's destiny
>on key issues where their interests are at stake. The push to remove
>trade and investment barriers with the EU countries comes as Canada
>is making an effort to lessen its dependence on the United States,
>its largest trading partner.
>
>Mr. Charest was in Niagara-on-the-Lake yesterday, where he and
>Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty spoke on a panel at the Ontario
>Economic Summit about the toll the weakened U.S. economy has taken
>on Central Canada. Thousands of manufacturing jobs have vanished in
>Ontario and Quebec in the past few years, and the pain is far from
>over, economists say.
>
>Mr. McGuinty told the audience that Canada's premiers will lead
>their first-ever trade mission to China later this fall. "We need to
>find more ways to market ourselves as a nation," he said.
>
>Mr. Charest has been involved in the initiative involving the EU
>countries for two years, including lobbying business leaders in its
>member countries. He said it is up to Canada to "hustle" for the
>proposed trans-Atlantic accord because no one is going to come
>knocking on its door.
>
>"There's no one who gets up in the morning in the world community
>saying, 'why don't we make a deal with Canada today?' " Mr. Charest
>said. "If we want these types of agreements, we have to go out there
>and fight for them and hustle for them."
>
>The pitch he is making to Europeans is to do a deal with Canada that
>can serve as a model for something far more ambitious with the United States.
>
>"We've always had a very clear view that it's our responsibility to
>promote our interests abroad," Mr. Charest said.
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Mai-not mailing list
>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
>
>
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com
>Version: 8.0.173 / Virus Database: 270.7.6/1709 - Release Date:
>10/5/2008 9:20 AM
From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Oct 6 10:58:42 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Mon Oct 6 10:58:55 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Has Harper grown a spine
In-Reply-To: <200810061508.m96F8TRM011951@karma.reboot.ca>
References: <20081006120208.0780612B85@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
<200810061508.m96F8TRM011951@karma.reboot.ca>
Message-ID: <20081006155843.8C75912C48@fep01.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
That sums it up pretty neatly. -- D
At 23:10 06/10/2008, Ed wrote:
>Harper always had a spine, albeit a very crooked one. Enclosed my
>last column.
>
>Cheers, Ed.
>
>To: record@cablerocket.com
>Subject: Fiat lux # 221
>
>
>Fiat lux #221 Oct,3, 2008.
>
>
>As a dedicated private enterpriser, a registered voter in BC since
>May 1956, independent business and property owner since Nov. 1957, a
>WW2 combat vet, work/life experience in four countries under every
>known ideology, a student of history for over 60 and of economics
>for the past 26 years, I've never been so scared of corrupt politics
>and politicians since the beginning of my 45 year record of fighting
>communist dictatorships, as I am now of a Harper majority government.
>
>
>Mr. Harper has been hopelessly brainwashed in his student days with
>the deadly economic and pro-ruling class theories of Milton Friedman
>and Leo Strauss, not to mention his future directorship hopes, and
>now all he can do is to promote laissez faire, neoclassical market
>economics, that has now become the biggest crime wave in human
>history. The overall, long standing plan of this theory is, not even
>denied by many of its proponents, global corporate dictatorship
>eliminating any power still left in the hands of elected
>governments, all public control and ownership, services and
>democracy. And all this in the name of "freedom", of course.
>
>
>The criminal neoclassical theory is now not only destroying the
>Earth's ecology, but kills tens of millions of people every year ,
>most of them little children, through starvation and destitution,
>all in the name of becoming "globally competitive" and "productive",
>which means more powers and bigger profits into the hands of their
>slave drivers.
>
>
>The textbook definition of economics is "The science for the
>management and distribution of scarce resources". Maynard Keynes
>came close to this ideal, but through deliberate distortions going
>on for generations, the theories of all the other prophets have
>become the tools for oppression, colonization, enslavement and mass
>murder. As we have now with this presently ongoing Friedmanite crime
>wave, serving the same predator class, whether they call themselves
>communists, nazis, or capitalists. The human predators, their
>priesthoods, theorists and executioners are always the same, no
>matter under what flag they happen to operate. And the historical
>results of their actions are also always the same disasters
>repeating themselves, because people never learn and foolishly sell
>their lives into their hands.
>
>
>The presently ongoing neo-conservative plan is nothing less than
>just another Soviet type, global collectivization under the rule of
>a few mega corporations, operating under hundreds of phony names,
>pretending to be "free enterprises". They already control most of
>the world's markets like oil and food, making huge profits by price
>fixing and extortion from producers and consumers alike. The
>disgusting cattle prices breaking our ranchers right now have long
>been fixed in corporate head offices in the USA, with our
>governments closing their eyes, while there's a daily growing,
>worldwide food shortage and prices are jumping in the stores for the
>same items the producers are receiving virtually nothing.
>
>
>The strongest weapon in the hands of ruling classes has always been
>the exploitation of human gullibility, otherwise known as "faith",
>through the artificial installation of the most ridiculous
>philosophies, claims, stories and ideologies into people's minds,
>then used to enslave them .
>
>
>The present control over resources and lives is sold to and forced
>on the gullible public by the fraudulent definition of economic
>efficiency as "the biggest profits for the least monetary inputs",
>ignoring and contradicting the real definition of efficiency as "The
>most work done with the least physical inputs".
>
>
>Then we come to the rest of the fraud with the phony GDP, Growth and
>Productivity figures.
>
>The sale of resources is the sale of capital, and not an income,
>service jobs are not assets but liabilities, yet they all are
>accounted as GDP, Growth and Productivity benefits. The GDP includes
>all transactions, regardless how damaging they are to the
>environment and people, the repair and the funeral costs of natural
>disaster and accident victims, as "products" and "growth", without
>any debits for losses. When human labour is replaced by huge inputs
>of other forms of energy, the "productivity" and "efficiency"
>figures jump, regardless of the damage and wasteful depletion, while
>the public is urged to "save energy".
>
>
>The Harper government has long been engaged in secret negotiations
>with the other two NAFTA countries, and the EU, for the sale of
>Canadian sovereignty, the complete takeover of our economy,
>resources and the free importation of foreign labour to become "more
>efficient" by replacing Canadians. As Mr.Harper's Reform Party used
>to claim: "Canadian workers priced themselves out of jobs", while
>living costs, controlled by the corporate mafia, were and still are
>going through the roof.
>
>
>As Mr. Harper's good old Reform's Blue Book said it: "Unions may
>insure standards, but should not block qualified people from working
>in trade or profession or gaining the necessary qualifications":
>
>
>One of his old cohorts, Herb Grubel, Professor Emeritus at the SFU
>said it even better:" A special target of all my interest is really
>unions. Free trade will put pressure on the elimination of these
>kinds of institutions which I believe are unjust".
>
>
>Of course, in Herbie's warped imagination the multinational mega
>corporations and their conspiracies, like the Bilderbergers, the
>Trilaterals, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the North
>American Competitiveness Council, stealing trillions from people's
>pockets worldwide every year are only "wealth creators".
>
>
>The excuse and justification for the "deep integration" of Canada
>into EU, and ultimately the NAU, is that it will open a market for
>our "products" to 800 million people. Another fraud, because with
>the deindustrialization of Canada by the FTA, NAFTA and the WTO, the
>only things we have left to sell are our resources and
>infrastructure, in short "CANADA FOR SALE", planned to come into
>effect at the Oct.17. summit in Montreal and Mr.Harper wants to
>start sharpening his pen to sign on the dotted line, without even
>bothering to tell the public what he's selling.
>
>
>But then, this is called democracy in our 21st Century.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>At 05:02 AM 06/10/2008, you wrote:
>>...or is he dry-running a template for attaching Canada to the
>>USA? Not keen on the second-last par.
>>
>>Dion Giles
>>Western Australia
>>
>>---------
>>http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081003.CHAREST03/TPStory/National
>>
>>
>>FOREIGN AFFAIRS: PROPOSAL EXCEEDS SCOPE OF NAFTA
>>
>>Provinces key to EU trade deal, Quebec Premier says
>>
>>KAREN HOWLETT
>>
>>October 3, 2008
>>
>>NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONT. -- Canada's premiers will play a pivotal
>>role in the country's efforts to integrate its economy with the 27
>>nations of the European Union, Quebec Premier Jean Charest says.
>>
>>Preliminary talks between Canadian and European officials will
>>begin on Oct. 17 at a summit in Montreal. The provinces' role in
>>the negotiations will be instrumental to the fate of the proposed
>>massive agreement because it involves issues that primarily fall
>>under their jurisdiction, Mr. Charest told The Globe and Mail yesterday.
>>
>>No deal could happen without the premiers at the table, he said.
>>
>>"Unless we are fully involved in the negotiations, we are not going
>>to get the deal we want," Mr. Charest said.
>>
>>Print Edition - Section Front
>>
>>He described the proposed pact as a groundbreaking initiative on a
>>scale that has never been attempted. The accord would go well
>>beyond the scope of the NAFTA agreement between Canada and the
>>United States by encompassing not only trade in goods and services
>>but also the free movement of skilled workers and an open market in
>>government services and procurement.
>>
>>Mr. Charest said the federal government can sign a treaty with
>>other countries dealing with these areas. But he said Ottawa does
>>not have the power to commit the provinces to areas that fall under
>>their jurisdiction. "It is without effect if we don't sign on," he said.
>>
>>The fact that provinces will be at the negotiating table reflects
>>their efforts to play a major role in charting the country's
>>destiny on key issues where their interests are at stake. The push
>>to remove trade and investment barriers with the EU countries comes
>>as Canada is making an effort to lessen its dependence on the
>>United States, its largest trading partner.
>>
>>Mr. Charest was in Niagara-on-the-Lake yesterday, where he and
>>Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty spoke on a panel at the Ontario
>>Economic Summit about the toll the weakened U.S. economy has taken
>>on Central Canada. Thousands of manufacturing jobs have vanished in
>>Ontario and Quebec in the past few years, and the pain is far from
>>over, economists say.
>>
>>Mr. McGuinty told the audience that Canada's premiers will lead
>>their first-ever trade mission to China later this fall. "We need
>>to find more ways to market ourselves as a nation," he said.
>>
>>Mr. Charest has been involved in the initiative involving the EU
>>countries for two years, including lobbying business leaders in its
>>member countries. He said it is up to Canada to "hustle" for the
>>proposed trans-Atlantic accord because no one is going to come
>>knocking on its door.
>>
>>"There's no one who gets up in the morning in the world community
>>saying, 'why don't we make a deal with Canada today?' " Mr. Charest
>>said. "If we want these types of agreements, we have to go out
>>there and fight for them and hustle for them."
>>
>>The pitch he is making to Europeans is to do a deal with Canada
>>that can serve as a model for something far more ambitious with the
>>United States.
>>
>>"We've always had a very clear view that it's our responsibility to
>>promote our interests abroad," Mr. Charest said.
>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Mai-not mailing list
>>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
>>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
>>
>>
>>No virus found in this incoming message.
>>Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com
>>Version: 8.0.173 / Virus Database: 270.7.6/1709 - Release Date:
>>10/5/2008 9:20 AM
>
>_______________________________________________
>Mai-not mailing list
>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
>
>
>--
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>Release Date: 10/5/2008 9:20 AM
From creuss at bluewin.ch Mon Oct 6 13:44:21 2008
From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss)
Date: Mon Oct 6 13:45:54 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Has Harper grown a spine
Message-ID:
> ...or is he dry-running a template for attaching Canada to the
> USA? Not keen on the second-last par.
The second-last par. sounds more like he's dry-running (and then wet-running)
a template for attaching the U$ to the ?U. "You VILL be assimilated!"
You know, bankrupt companies are bought out by the competition...
Chris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword
"igve".
From d_a_d at telusplanet.net Mon Oct 6 15:29:57 2008
From: d_a_d at telusplanet.net (David A Davidson)
Date: Mon Oct 6 15:30:12 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Emailing: GovtEmblem
Message-ID: <88A8F119077D45818AB82C20556B2C9C@davidson>
The message is ready to be sent with the following file or link attachments:
GovtEmblem
Note: To protect against computer viruses, e-mail programs may prevent
sending or receiving certain types of file attachments. Check your e-mail
security settings to determine how attachments are handled.
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From d_a_d at telusplanet.net Mon Oct 6 15:31:49 2008
From: d_a_d at telusplanet.net (David A Davidson)
Date: Mon Oct 6 15:32:32 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] (no subject)
Message-ID: <79C600B83E7B496D8EFD5A73CA9307FB@davidson>
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From duanebehrens at cox.net Mon Oct 6 17:42:48 2008
From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens)
Date: Mon Oct 6 17:42:51 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Non Sequitur
Message-ID: <20081006184248.PXBSO.632297.imail@fed1rmwml39>
--
"They're gonna make it look like suicide, I know how these bastards think..." Hunter S. Thompson
=============
From: "Karen Thomas"
To: "Short List"
Subject: Non Sequitur
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 12:36:46 -0500
Good one, I thought --
k
AuntieKaren@earthlink.net=============
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From oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au Mon Oct 6 20:32:45 2008
From: oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au (Clem Clarke)
Date: Mon Oct 6 20:33:23 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] The Financial Crash - some thoughts and reasons why
- A talk to the Theosophical Society Sep 23, 2008
In-Reply-To: <200810012329040718.02FF6E76@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
References: <623C1011E8B746B687DDBE5D51EAA4EE@Murray2PC> <48E23CBD.6060106@ozemail.com.au>
<200810012329040718.02FF6E76@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
Message-ID: <48EABC3D.1010501@ozemail.com.au>
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From oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au Mon Oct 6 21:25:02 2008
From: oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au (Clem Clarke)
Date: Mon Oct 6 21:25:25 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] The Financial Crash - some thoughts and reasons why
- A talk to the Theosophical Society Sep 23, 2008
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID: <48EAC87E.7090001@ozemail.com.au>
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From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Oct 6 23:20:53 2008
From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta)
Date: Mon Oct 6 23:34:50 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Financial crisis; climate change;
Nepal; Peru; Canada; Venezuela; red postie; Bolivia; India
Message-ID: <48EAE3A5.4020306@greenleft.org.au>
Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed
(http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@dsp.org.au
*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links./*
* * *
The financial crisis: A socialist perspective
By Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin
September 30, 2008 -- The Bullet -- 'They say they won't intervene. But
they will.' This is how Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's treasury secretary,
responded to Paul O'Neill, the first treasury secretary under George W.
Bush, who openly criticised his predecessor's interventions in the face
of what Rubin called 'the messy reality of global financial crises.'[1]
The current dramatic conjuncture of financial crisis and state
intervention has proven Rubin more correct than he could have imagined.
But it also demonstrates why those, whether from the right or the left,
who have only understood the era of neoliberalism ideologically - i.e.
in terms of a hegemonic ideological determination to free markets from
states - have had such a weak handle on discerning what really has been
going on over the past quarter century. Clinging to this type of
understanding will also get in the way of the thinking necessary to
advance a socialist strategy in the wake of this crisis.
* Read more
Climate change -- the case for public ownership
By Trent Hawkins
Arising out of the UK Climate Camp in August 2008 there has developed an
interesting debate between Ewa Jasiewicz, an activist in Britain, and
well-known radical columnist George Monbiot about the role of so-called
"state solutions" to climate change. Jasiewicz's article, published on
the Guardian website[i] and entitled "Time for a Revolution", was an
attack on Monbiot for a "controversial presentation [at climate camp]
... in which he endorsed the use of the state as a partner in resolving
the climate crisis".
* Read more
Nepal: Prachanda in New York -- A Maoist vision for a new Nepal
`A Maoist Vision for a New Nepal' -- MP3 recordings of a talk by Nepal's
Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda), followed by questions and
answers, presented to the India China Institute of New School
University, New York City, on September 26, 2008. The MP3 audio clips
were first presented on the Hegemonik site, and are posted here with
permission
* Read more
Peru: Hugo Blanco -- My arrest
By Hugo Blanco
Cuzco, Peru, October, 3 2008 -- First, I would like to express my
profound gratitude to all of the people and institutions who, upon
hearing of my arrest, demanded my liberation.* Every one of those was
important. But among those that touched me most, I should mention the
pronouncement made by my Canadian brothers and sisters with whose
support I am able to continue publishing Lucha Ind?gena the call from
the Conacami (The Peruvian National Confederation of Communities
Affected by Mines) with whom I share the anxious desire for a political
project that emanates from the indigenous, campesino and grassroots
organisations; and the support of Wilbert Rozas, the mayor who
instituted the indigenous communities' municipal government and went
immediately to Paruro after learning of my arrest. Thanks to this
solidarity, I was quickly--though temporarily--released.
* Read more
Canadian election: Left and labour movement discuss way forward
A selection of articles from Canadian socialists discussing the October
14 federal election and the debates and discussions in the Canadian and
Quebec left and labour movements on electoral tactics.
* Read more
The global financial crisis: implications for Asia
By Reihana Mohideen
The Wall Street crisis seems light years away from the side streets of
Manila's urban poor slums. For the labouring masses in the Philippines
the capitalist system has been in crisis for some time now, unable to
deliver life's basic necessities: jobs and a living wage; affordable
quality healthcare and education; and food security.
According to official National Statistics Office data poverty levels
have increased between 2003 and 2006, and 2008 is expected to be the
worst year since the 1998 Asian economic crisis. Between April 2007 and
April 2008 the labour force grew by only 81,000, while the number of
unemployed rose by 249,000, i.e. triple the increase in the labour
force. In 2008 the number of employed persons fell by 168,000 and there
was no employment generation in April of this year. Jobs were being lost
at a time when prices and inflation were skyrocketing.
* Read more
France: `Red postie' Olivier Besancenot makes international
headlines
* Read more
Racism, domination and revolution in Bolivia
By Adolfo Gilly
September 22, 2008 -- Mexico -- "The problem in Bolivia is that the
country is undergoing a process of reforms, without abandoning the
democratic framework, but both the opposition and the government act as
if they were facing a revolution", stated Marco Aurelio Garc?a, a close
international affairs advisor to [Brazil's president] Lula, according to
an article by Jos? Natanson in the newspaper Pagina 12.
Allowing myself to not take this declaration literally, but instead in
an ironic sense, Marco Aurelio Garc?a, an intelligent and well-informed
man, can't help but realise that if the two protagonists of the Bolivian
confrontation believe that they are dealing with a revolution, this
belief is the best confirmation that, in effect, it is. The
vice-president of Bolivia, ?lvaro Garc?a Linera, on the other hand, has
said that what is happening is "an increase in elites, an increase in
rights, and a redistribution of wealth. This, in Bolivia, is a revolution."
* Read more
Walden Bello: A primer on the Wall Street meltdown
By Walden Bello, Focus on the Global South
[Read more on the capitalist economic crisis HERE
.]
September 25, 2008 -- The Wall Street meltdown is not only due to greed
and to the lack of government regulation of a hyperactive sector. It
stems from the crisis of overproduction that has plagued global
capitalism since the mid-seventies.
* Read more
Human Rights Watch report on Venezuela: An echo of US propaganda
Statement by the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network
September 30, 2008 -- As a broad network of organisations and
individuals that has closely studied the significant changes in
Venezuelan society since 1998 - including organising eight study tours
to Venezuela involving more than 150 Australians from diverse
backgrounds -- we are obliged to respond to the biases, distortions and
lies contained in the Human Rights Watch report A Decade Under Chavez:
Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights
in Venezuela, released in September 2008.
* Read more
India: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it explode?
* Read more
Australia's Socialist Alliance urges a 10-point plan to cut
atmospheric CO2
September 25, 2008 -- The Australian federal government's climate change
adviser, Professor Ross Garnaut, has released his recommendations for
medium-term cuts to Australian greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
* Read more
* * *
/Links/ seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
*
ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Oct 7 00:28:25 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Tue Oct 7 00:28:37 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] US hears Iran's message
Message-ID: <20081007052825.C7F06F96D@fep04.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From duanebehrens at cox.net Tue Oct 7 07:10:33 2008
From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens)
Date: Tue Oct 7 07:10:41 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Paul Craig Roberts on the "Bailout"
Message-ID: <20081007081033.V74YA.641110.imail@fed1rmwml39>
[Surprisingly candid - here's an excerpt: DB]
This is all the bailout does. It rescues the guilty.
The Paulson bailout does not address the problem, which is the defaulting home mortgages.
The defaults will continue, because the economy is sinking into recession. Homeowners are losing their jobs, and homeowners are being hit with rising mortgage payments resulting from adjustable rate mortgages and escalator interest rate clauses in their mortgages that make homeowners unable to service their debt.
Shifting the troubled assets from the financial sectors? books to the taxpayers? books absolves the people who caused the problem from responsibility. As the economy declines and mortgage default rates rise, the US Treasury and the American taxpayers could end up with a $700 billion loss.
Initially, the House, but not the Senate, resisted the bailout of the financial institutions,whose executives had received millions of dollars in bonuses for wrecking the US financial system. However, the people?s representatives could not withstand the specter of martial law and Great Depression with which Paulson and the Bush administration threatened them. The people?s representatives succumbed as they did during the New Deal.
END EXCERPT
Read it all here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10062008.html
--
"They're gonna make it look like suicide, I know how these bastards think..." Hunter S. Thompson
From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Oct 7 07:36:04 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Tue Oct 7 07:36:29 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Banknote
Message-ID: <20081007123605.44BDB1309B@fep08.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Oct 7 22:55:42 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Tue Oct 7 22:55:50 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Who the bailout was really for
Message-ID: <20081008035543.EFFC3FA2D@fep05.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
As Bush told assembled Fortune 500 crooks (reproduced in Fahrenheit
911).: "You are my base" .
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/08/2385116.htm?section=justin
Dion Giles
Western Australia
From papadop at peak.org Tue Oct 7 23:30:10 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Tue Oct 7 23:59:12 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Kucinich on the Dems' Bailout Betrayal
Message-ID:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081006_dennis_kucinich_on_the_democrats_bailout_betrayal/?ln
Rep. Dennis Kucinich does bailout battle in the halls of Congress.
By Chris Hedges
The passing of the $850-billion bailout pulled the plug on the New
Deal. The Great Society is now gasping for air, mortally wounded,
coughing up blood. It will not recover. It was murdered by the
Democratic Party.
We are on our own. And don't expect any help from Barack Obama and Joe
Biden, who lobbied hard for the bill and voted for it. Ignore their
rhetoric. Look coldly at the ballots they cast against us. We, as
citizens, have only a handful of representatives left in Washington,
most of whom were left sputtering in rage and frustration on the House
floor. The sad irony is that some of them were Republican.
"This was the largest single act of class warfare in the modern
history of this country," Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who led the
fight in the House against the bailout, told me by phone from
Cleveland. "It is a direct attack on the American people's ability to be
able to stabilize their homes and their neighborhoods. This single vote
will define the careers of everyone. We are back to taxation without
representation, to markets that are openly rigged."
"We buried the New Deal," he said of the vote. "Instead of Democrats
going back to classic New Deal economics where we prime the pump of the
economy and start money circulating among the population through saving
homes, creating jobs and building a new infrastructure, our leaders
chose to accelerate the wealth of the nation upwards. They did so in a
way that was destructive of free-market principles. They ripped away
all the familiar moorings. We are in an uncharted sea where the
traditional roles of the political parties are being switched. The
Democrats have unfortunately become so enamored and beholden to Wall
Street that we are not functioning to defend the economic interest of
the broad base of the American people. It was up to the Republicans to
protect not just a so-called free market but the American taxpayer and
attempt to block this. This is an outrage. This was democracy's Black
Friday."
Obama arrived on the Senate floor Brutus-like to thrust a knife into the
back of the working and middle class. He lobbied hard for the bill.
He did so, according to some who met with him on Capitol Hill, because
he feared that if he opposed the bailout and it triggered a market
collapse it could cost him the election. Better to placate the thieves on
Wall Street than stand up for the masses of enraged and swindled
citizens.
Obama's betrayal is the betrayal of the Democratic Party. The
Democrats gave us the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999,
which ripped down the firewalls that were put in place by the 1933
Glass-Steagall Act. The 1933 act, designed to prevent the kind of
meltdown we are now experiencing, established the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corp. (FDIC). It set in place banking reforms to stop
speculators from hijacking the financial system. With Glass-Steagall
demolished, and the passage of NAFTA, the Democrats, led by Bill
Clinton, tumbled gleefully into bed with corporations and Wall Street
speculators. They achieved fundraising parity with the Republicans.
They used institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a welfare
gravy train. The Democrats, including Obama, are as compromised as the
Republicans.
Obama's voting record in the Senate is in line with the corrupt
Democratic mainstream, including Biden, who works on behalf of
corporations and especially the credit card industry. Obama knows
where power lies in the United States. It is not with the citizens, who
with ratios of 100 to 1 pleaded with their representatives in
Washington not to loot the national treasury to bail out Wall Street
investment firms. Power lies with the corporations. These
corporations, not us, pick who runs for president. You cannot be a
candidate without their blessing and money. These corporations,
including the Commission on Presidential Debates, a private
corporation, determine who gets to speak and what issues candidates can
or cannot challenge, from universal, not-for-profit, single-payer health
care to Wall Street bailouts to NAFTA. If you do not follow the corporate
script you become as marginal and invisible as Ralph Nader or Bob Barr or
Cynthia McKinney.
Obama has always served his corporate masters. He opposed Rep. John
Murtha's call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and supported
continued funding for the war. He voted in July 2005 to reauthorize the
Patriot Act. He did not support an amendment that was part of a
bankruptcy bill that would have capped credit card interest rates at 30
percent. He opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining
Law of 1872, which allows mineral companies to rape federal land for
profit. He did not back the single-payer health care bill HR 676,
sponsored by Kucinich and John Conyers. He advocates the death penalty
and nuclear power. He backed the class-action "reform" bill--the
Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA)--that was part of a large lobbying
effort by financial firms, which make up Obama's second-biggest
single bloc of donors. CAFA would effectively shut down state courts as
a venue to hear most class-action lawsuits. Workers, under CAFA, would
no longer have redress in many of the courts where these cases have a
chance of defying powerful corporations. CAFA moves these cases into
corporate-friendly federal courts dominated by Republican judges.
Obama's support for the bailout, however, is his most egregious
betrayal. He had a brief, shining moment to prove he could lead, to
capitalize on a popular revolt that cut across the political spectrum. He
never attempted to address or mobilize the aspirations and passions of
the vast majority of Americans. He was as craven, servile and
cowardly as the party he represents. He returned to the campaign trail
after Friday's vote as a slick and polished sales representative for our
corporate state, telling us to calm down and accept the
inevitable.
"Some of the most powerful speeches against this were given by members of
the Republican Party who are on the political right," Kucinich said.
"They did a superb job in poking holes in the underlying
assumptions of the bailout. They say what they believe. Give me
somebody who says what they believe and I can figure out how to get
them to a new place. When people say one thing and do another it is
very hard to be able to move a debate."
So let us honor, in our moment of defeat, the handful of elected
officials who valiantly defied their party leaderships in the House to
stage a remarkable revolt that at first succeeded. Kucinich is one.
There were others--Brad Sherman, Marcy Kaptur, Peter DeFazio, Lloyd
Doggett and Robert C. "Bobby" Scott. They are about all that is left of
the old Democratic Party, the party that once looked out for the poor
and the working class. Send them a note of thanks. They deserve it. And
if you live in their districts make sure you get to the polls in November.
They did not sell you out.
"We had two take-it-or-leave-it propositions and the second one was
worse than the first," Kucinich said, referring to the plan that came
loaded with pages of tax cuts. "Tax cuts are antithetical to a
bailout. We never solved the problem. There were never any hearings on the
bill. This premise, that we could prop up the stock market with a
$700-billion investment and create some liquidity, was flawed. The
problem is that banks do not want to loan to each other. It is not a
liquidity problem. Banks are afraid they are going to collapse in
short selling. There is a war going on between security firms and
banks. Banks are under assault. They are not loaning. The dynamic is
driven by the Accounting Standards Board, the Securities and Exchange
Commission and the Fed."
The root of the financial crisis, as critics of the bailout plan point
out, is that millions of homeowners cannot pay their mortgages. The
bailout, as the market decline on Friday following the vote
illustrated, does not address the crisis. It solves nothing for the 10
million Americans who face foreclosure. It solves nothing for the
growing numbers of unemployed and underemployed. It may well be the
equivalent of tossing $850 billion of taxpayer money (including $150
billion in tax cuts) into a furnace and watching passively as our
economy continues its plunge.
"We face a perfect financial storm," Kucinich warned. "The elements are
the deficit spending for the war of 3 to 4 trillion dollars, the trillion
and more tax cuts, the war itself and the lack of serious investment in
the country. We are being hollowed out. We are going to see more
unemployment and more people losing their homes. With $700 billion we
could have made a real investment in the country, in jobs, in
infrastructure and in homes. Instead, we got robbed."
From papadop at peak.org Tue Oct 7 23:44:01 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Wed Oct 8 00:13:13 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] CINDY SHEEHAN REVEALS PLAN FOR NEW "FIRST PARTY"
Message-ID:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20963.htm
Cindy Sheehan (for the first time to press) reveals intentions in forming
a new political party, and reflects on her chances in unseating Nancy
Pelosi in her race for Congress.
By Stephen Dohnberg
Digital Journal -- 07/10/08
Anti War activist and challenger for House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Congressional Seat (CD 8, California), Cindy
Sheehan has indicated her intention to launch a National political party
after the U.S. Election of Nov. 4
Inspired in part by Mark Twain's involvement in The American Anti
Imperialist League in reaction to the annexation of the Philippines by the
United States in the late 19th Century, Sheehan said that the party will
have a progressive platform and that after Nov. 4, "no matter what
happens, we need to consolidate the energy against Imperialism and work on
building another party movement."
While discussing a potential third party unity movement, Sheehan indicated
that her own candidacy against House Speaker Pelosi has seen a broad
coalition of support from Greens, independents, disillusioned Democrats
such as herself (Sheehan left the Democratic Party in May of 2007 in
response to the Democratic Party led House support for a funding bill to
continue Iraq War funding), and Republicans, many of whom made up the
traditional base of the GOP represented by Ron Paul.
Sheehan revealed that name of the new party would be The First Party.
She reasoned "We don't want to do third-party politics which has a stigma
in the United States" The First Party, with a populist-progressive agenda,
will be the first party that "cares about the people, will work for the
people, and will actually be a viable party."
"I have spoken to Green Party Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney and
the Nader Campaign" and as disillusionment with the two party system
increases, "this is the time to build on that energy." Reflecting on her
own chances in unseating incumbent Pelosi, she is pragmatic and
acknowledges it has been "upward momentum, the only way we could go" but
believes the success of the recent $700 billion bailout proposal could
turn the tide in her favor. "When we're out on the streets, we have
overwhelming support , especially since this bailout." Sheehan indicates
that she notices that "people have a new rage and a new fire in their
belly because of the corporate bailout.
People are just so angry"
More importantly, some public opinions of her ability to lead have
changed, and could indicate a tipping point for the Sheehan Campaign.
She notes that responses have been favorable pointing to an email she
recently received, "Two weeks ago I thought you should be shot, but now
I'm awake, I'm not going to be a slave anymore, and I support what you
do."
Sheehan believes that Members of Congress voting in favor of the bill did
so at the peril of their own House seats and they have underestimated the
voters. "I was watching the debates on the House floor and the Congress
people kept saying 'my constituents are overwhelmingly against this but I
have to do it because it's for the good of the country', what a load of
crap!"
From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Wed Oct 8 00:53:29 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Wed Oct 8 00:53:43 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Kucinich on the Dems' Bailout Betrayal: Why they
caved in
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID: <20081008055330.599A912897@fep04.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
For why they caved in, see brief video at
http://www.thepiratescove.us/2008/10/04/rep-brad-sherman-martial-law-if-bailout-bill-not-passed/.
That thug unit being brought home from Iraq to combat civil unrest
isn't there for R&R but to spearhead a fascist coup if the
ultragreedies don't get their money and martial law is declared, or
if they do get their money and the American public makes too much of
a fuss over being robbed.
Dion Giles
Western Australia
From oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au Wed Oct 8 08:50:50 2008
From: oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au (Clem Clarke)
Date: Wed Oct 8 08:51:03 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Alan Greenspan on creating money - Limitless amounts -
from Thin Air.
Message-ID: <48ECBABA.7070909@ozemail.com.au>
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20081008/b43c3417/attachment.html
From papadop at peak.org Wed Oct 8 09:43:26 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Wed Oct 8 10:12:33 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Moscow Radio
Message-ID:
Separate Note - Moscow News is that Iceland seeks to stave off financial
collapse by seeking Russian loan. That's what I heard on BBC
Michael
###########
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/09/22/080922fa_fact_remnick
* The New Yorker September 22, 2008
Letter from Moscow
Echo in the Dark
A radio station strives to keep the airwaves free.
by David Remnick
In the land of the Soviets, the voice of the Kremlin was everywhere, an
omnipresent reality-via-radio that long preceded Orwell's dystopia. Lenin
and Trotsky fomented revolution primarily in print--in the commanding
editorials of Iskra and Pravda, in the frenzied leaflets passed around
in St. Petersburg meeting halls and later reprinted in "Ten Days That
Shook the World"--but the leading instrument of enculturation and
inundation under Joseph Stalin was a broadcast technology called
radio-tochka, literally "radio point," a primitive receiver with no dial
and no choice. These cheap wood-framed devices were installed in
apartments and hallways, on factory floors, in train stations and bus
depots; they played in hospitals, nursing homes, and military barracks;
they were nailed to poles in the fields of collective farms and
blared along the beaches from the Baltic to the Sea of Okhotsk.
The radio day commenced at 6 A.M.
First, the Soviet anthem, then "Govorit Moskva . . ." ("Moscow
speaking").
If someone in a communal apartment shut off the radio, he was
considered suspect, defiant, a potential "enemy of the people." The
broadcasts issued the edicts of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party, announced the details of the Five-Year Plan, declared the
latest triumph of the Soviet Army and the perfidies of the capitalist
West. In addition to the news, there was classical music and readings of
classical Russian literature, along with "radio meetings" of village
workers and soldiers' mothers. The Soviet people rarely heard Stalin's
actual voice--halting, dry, with a thick Georgian accent--but through the
radio they absorbed his pronouncements, his view of culture and the
world, his implicit message of paternalism and threat. It is hard to
imagine now the totality of the instrument and the perverse imagination
required to conceive it, but radio-tochka existed for decades, as
present as water and electricity and twice as reliable. It was
such a successful tool of propaganda that when, in 1942, Hitler visited
occupied Ukraine he expressed his admiration for Stalin's methodology and
bemoaned the fact that the German people were still listening to shortwave
broadcasts from the BBC.
With Stalin's death, in 1953, and the liberalizing thaw under
Khrushchev, the Soviet radio dial eventually expanded to include Radio
Mayak (Lighthouse) and Radio Yunost (Youth). Mayak's and Yunost's
programming was slightly less rigid in tone and more open to popular
music, though the ideology was no less reflective of the Kremlin line. For
the next three decades, the Soviet regime took great care to jam the
Russian-language broadcasts of the BBC, the Voice of America, Radio
Liberty, and Deutsche Welle. Jamming was an ongoing battle between
state and subject. Especially in the sixties and seventies, urban
intellectuals typically committed their first anti-Soviet act by
purchasing a decent radio--either a Soviet Latvian-made Spidola or, if
possible, a German-made Grundig--and attempting to listen to the
"foreign voices." They would try anything to catch an aural glimpse of the
world beyond, turning the radio sideways or upside down to get a signal
or sticking the antennas out the window; better yet, they escaped
from the big cities to the surrounding dacha communities, where the
jamming was less effective. The fortunate listener caught some foreign
news on Deutsche Welle, the Beatles on the BBC, Willis Conover's famous
jazz broadcasts on VOA.
"We would even listen to Vatican radio, which would give you a good
report on what was happening in the Soviet Union, and you didn't care
that the announcer would then add `God bless you,' " the historian
Sergei Ivanov said.
When the Soviet Army invaded Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968,
Soviet vacationers listened to news of the events on the beaches of the
Baltic sea. The political analyst Masha Lipman, who is married to Ivanov,
was in Lithuania at the time, and she recalled, "That summer on the
beach, antennas were shooting up all over the place. And, in our
circles, when you said that you heard about it `on the radio' it meant
only one thing--that you'd heard it on the Russian-language broadcasts
of the VOA, the BBC, or Deutsche Welle." In those circles, there was
also a popular rhyme: "Est' obychai na Rusi--noch'iu slishat'
Bi-bi-si." ("There's a custom in Russia--at night we listen to the
BBC.") At a meeting of the Central Committee's presidium in 1963,
Khrushchev pleaded, "Let's . . . figure out a solution so that we
produce radio sets that work only for the reception of our
stations." But, according to Kristin Roth-Ey, a specialist on
Soviet-era media at University College, London, nothing ever came of
Khrushchev's ambition.
Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power, in 1985, and the institution of his
policy of glasnost ended the jamming of foreign radio. Newspapers,
literary magazines, theatre, television, and film flourished under the new
freedoms, and, in broadcasting, Radio Liberty was permitted to open a
bureau in Moscow--a vivid sign that the old taboos were falling away and
Russia was fitfully joining the world.
In 1990, a few refugees from Soviet radio decided to start a station in
the capital that would combine straightforward news, discussion, and
even call-in shows that allowed people to say precisely what they
wanted--a plan that might seem a banality elsewhere. The founders
called the station Ekho Moskvy, Echo of Moscow, and they set up shop in
a tiny, overheated single-room studio situated just a couple of blocks
from Red Square. Echo went on the air on August 22, 1990, with an extended
news program, including an interview with one of the young leaders of
the Moscow reformers, Sergei Stankevich, and then played the Beatles song
"All My Loving."
From thinker at this1.ca Wed Oct 8 10:35:41 2008
From: thinker at this1.ca (Ed Deak)
Date: Wed Oct 8 10:33:41 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Moscow Radio
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID: <200810081533.m98FXWwa031656@karma.reboot.ca>
The Icelandic PM was shown on last night's TV news, admitting the borrowing.
Cheers, Ed.
At 07:43 AM 08/10/2008, you wrote:
>Separate Note - Moscow News is that Iceland seeks to stave off
>financial collapse by seeking Russian loan. That's what I heard on BBC
>Michael
>
>###########
>
>http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/09/22/080922fa_fact_remnick
>
>* The New Yorker September 22, 2008
>
>Letter from Moscow
>
>Echo in the Dark
>
>A radio station strives to keep the airwaves free.
>
>by David Remnick
>
>"I can't restrain myself from doing what we are here to do.">
>
>
>In the land of the Soviets, the voice of the Kremlin was
>everywhere, an omnipresent reality-via-radio that long preceded
>Orwell's dystopia. Lenin
>and Trotsky fomented revolution primarily in print--in the
>commanding editorials of Iskra and Pravda, in the frenzied
>leaflets passed around in St. Petersburg meeting halls and later
>reprinted in "Ten Days That
>Shook the World"--but the leading instrument of
>enculturation and inundation under Joseph Stalin was a
>broadcast technology called radio-tochka, literally "radio point,"
>a primitive receiver with no dial and no choice. These cheap
>wood-framed devices were installed in apartments and hallways, on
>factory floors, in train stations and bus depots; they played in
>hospitals, nursing homes, and military barracks;
>they were nailed to poles in the fields of
>collective farms and blared along the beaches from the Baltic to
>the Sea of Okhotsk.
>
>The radio day commenced at 6 A.M.
>
>First, the Soviet anthem, then "Govorit Moskva . . ."
>("Moscow speaking").
>
>If someone in a communal apartment shut off the radio, he
>was considered suspect, defiant, a potential "enemy of the
>people." The broadcasts issued the edicts of the Central Committee
>of the Communist Party, announced the details of the Five-Year
>Plan, declared the latest triumph of the Soviet Army and the
>perfidies of the capitalist West. In addition to the news, there
>was classical music and readings of
>classical Russian literature, along with "radio meetings" of
>village workers and soldiers' mothers. The Soviet people rarely
>heard Stalin's actual voice--halting, dry, with a thick Georgian
>accent--but through the
>radio they absorbed his pronouncements, his view of culture and
>the world, his implicit message of paternalism and threat.
>It is hard to imagine now the totality of the instrument and
>the perverse imagination required to conceive it, but radio-tochka
>existed for decades, as
>present as water and electricity and twice as
>reliable. It was such a successful tool of propaganda that when,
>in 1942, Hitler visited occupied Ukraine he expressed his
>admiration for Stalin's methodology and bemoaned the fact that the
>German people were still listening to shortwave broadcasts from the BBC.
>
>With Stalin's death, in 1953, and the liberalizing thaw
>under Khrushchev, the Soviet radio dial eventually expanded to
>include Radio Mayak (Lighthouse) and Radio Yunost (Youth).
>Mayak's and Yunost's programming was slightly less rigid in tone
>and more open to popular music, though the ideology was no less
>reflective of the Kremlin line. For the next three decades, the
>Soviet regime took great care to jam the
>Russian-language broadcasts of the BBC, the Voice of America,
>Radio Liberty, and Deutsche Welle. Jamming was an ongoing
>battle between state and subject. Especially in the sixties and
>seventies, urban intellectuals typically committed their first
>anti-Soviet act by purchasing a decent radio--either a Soviet
>Latvian-made Spidola or, if
>possible, a German-made Grundig--and attempting to listen to
>the "foreign voices." They would try anything to catch an aural
>glimpse of the world beyond, turning the radio sideways or upside
>down to get a signal or sticking the antennas out the window;
>better yet, they escaped from the big cities to the surrounding
>dacha communities, where the jamming was less effective. The
>fortunate listener caught some foreign news on Deutsche Welle, the
>Beatles on the BBC, Willis Conover's famous jazz broadcasts on VOA.
>
>"We would even listen to Vatican radio, which would give you a
>good report on what was happening in the Soviet Union, and you
>didn't care that the announcer would then add `God bless you,' "
>the historian Sergei Ivanov said.
>
>When the Soviet Army invaded Czechoslovakia in the summer of
>1968, Soviet vacationers listened to news of the events on the
>beaches of the Baltic sea. The political analyst Masha Lipman, who
>is married to Ivanov, was in Lithuania at the time, and she
>recalled, "That summer on the beach, antennas were shooting up all
>over the place. And, in our circles, when you said that you heard
>about it `on the radio' it meant
>only one thing--that you'd heard it on the Russian-language
>broadcasts of the VOA, the BBC, or Deutsche Welle." In those
>circles, there was also a popular rhyme: "Est' obychai na
>Rusi--noch'iu slishat' Bi-bi-si." ("There's a custom in Russia--at
>night we listen to the BBC.") At a meeting of the Central
>Committee's presidium in 1963, Khrushchev pleaded, "Let's . . .
>figure out a solution so that we
>produce radio sets that work only for the reception of our
>stations." But, according to Kristin Roth-Ey, a specialist
>on Soviet-era media at University College, London, nothing ever
>came of Khrushchev's ambition.
>
>Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power, in 1985, and the institution of
>his policy of glasnost ended the jamming of foreign radio.
>Newspapers, literary magazines, theatre, television, and film
>flourished under the new freedoms, and, in broadcasting, Radio
>Liberty was permitted to open a bureau in Moscow--a vivid sign that
>the old taboos were falling away and Russia was fitfully joining the world.
>
>In 1990, a few refugees from Soviet radio decided to start a
>station in the capital that would combine straightforward news,
>discussion, and even call-in shows that allowed people to say
>precisely what they wanted--a plan that might seem a banality
>elsewhere. The founders called the station Ekho Moskvy, Echo of
>Moscow, and they set up shop in a tiny, overheated single-room
>studio situated just a couple of blocks from Red Square. Echo went
>on the air on August 22, 1990, with an extended news program,
>including an interview with one of the young leaders of the Moscow
>reformers, Sergei Stankevich, and then played the Beatles song "All My Loving."
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Mai-not mailing list
>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
>
>
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com
>Version: 8.0.173 / Virus Database: 270.7.6/1709 - Release Date:
>10/5/2008 9:20 AM
From papadop at peak.org Wed Oct 8 10:12:41 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Wed Oct 8 10:41:23 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Czech info ?
Message-ID:
http://wweek.com/editorial/3448/11620/
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
PORTLAND, OREGON'S NEWS WEEKLY. NEWS AND CULTURE FOR OCTOBER 8TH AND BEYOND.
Klaus-trophobia -- WW's Czechered past prompts an international incident.
WEillamette Week -- October 8th, 2008
Praguematist: Vaclav Klaus. BY JAMES PITKIN
When I left my job as a reporter in Prague six years ago, I never thought
my work would make waves again in the tiny Czech Republic. But fallout from a
story last week on our website now has me covering the Czech coverage of my
WW coverage of President Vaclav Klaus' visit to Portland.
Confused? Pour a Pilsner and read on.
Klaus is a second-term Czech president who also may be the world's
highest-elected global-warming denier. Portland was his first stop on a
six-day U.S. tour, sponsored by the local Cascade Policy Institute and other
libertarian groups, where Klaus questioned climate-change science and warned
that environmentalism is undermining liberty.
That may sound prehistoric to Portlanders, and it's embarrassing to many
Czechs as well. But in his home country, few question him publicly.
Although he occupies a largely ceremonial post, Klaus looms large as a former
prime minister who still grips the levers of power. "What's the difference
between Klaus and God?" goes one Czech joke. "God never thinks he's Klaus."
I also recalled Klaus being a notoriously difficult interview to land, at least
in his own country. So I was surprised when just two other reporters, from
KOIN TV and KBOO radio, showed up for his Sept. 30 news conference at the
Portland Hilton (see Murmurs, WW, Oct. 1, 2008). The Oregonian also ran a
story Oct. 1 about Klaus visiting the BridgePort brewpub.
I was set to ask Klaus some tough questions since I never got the chance
in Prague. First, was it really the best time to be talking free-market
orthodoxy amid a financial meltdown? Actually, Klaus said, the problem was
over-regulation, not de-regulation.
Remembering the adoring crowds that used to follow Klaus' predecessor in
office, Vaclav Havel, I raised my hand for a second question and asked Klaus
whether he was concerned the apparent lack of local interest in his
visit might reflect a diminished standing for his country.
Klaus paused before purring coolly: "I'm sure my predecessor would be in favor
of cap and trade," a system of regulating carbon emissions that's been
proposed for Oregon.
After the news conference, Jody Clarke, one of Klaus' hosts from the
Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, approached me. "I can't
believe you asked such an arrogant question," she said. "And you are an
asshole."
My story on wweek.com set off a tiny tempest in the Czech Republic, where
the country's largest daily and the national wire service picked it up. They
lingered on the fact that a U.S. reporter had criticized the president,
quoting sections on Klaus' famous arrogance and his rivalry with Havel. I
was getting calls for TV interviews, but they never happened because of the
nine-hour time lag. Clarke wrote a letter to WW this week that's one part
apology, nine parts criticism of my reporting. About the only person I haven't
heard from is Klaus. But in his online diary of his Oregon sojourn, written
in Czech, he had some choice words about Portland.
"I woke up early and went for a short morning walk," he wrote Oct. 1. "But
there is nothing going on in quiet Portland. There is almost nothing to
see."
He also visited Multnomah Falls. "People at the waterfall completely ignored
the importance of an appropriate and smart dress code," Klaus wrote. "On my
last trip abroad I went to Tokyo, Japan. There couldn't be a bigger
difference in the quality of, and attention paid to, clothing."
FACT: Pitkin lived in Prague from 1996 to 2002 and spent much of that time
working at The Prague Post, an English-language weekly.
From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Thu Oct 9 07:07:47 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Thu Oct 9 07:09:31 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Capitalist vs socialist state interventiom in the economy
by Martin Saatdjian, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Venezuela,
Message-ID: <48EDC9E3.29684.33B2CE5A@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
Summary excerpts from a lenghty analysis:
The current financial crisis reveals the first symptoms of a major,
perhaps revolutionary, socioeconomic change in world affairs. Much
has been said how, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, capitalism
overshadowed socialism and "the end of history" was decreed in much
of the intellectual world. Not surprisingly, less has been mentioned
that while socialism was dying in Europe, it was also blossoming in
Latin America....
Here, precisely, is where difference can be drawn between
intervention in the economy by the Bush administration (capitalist
state intervention) .... It's not so much that capitalists are
against the intervention of the state; they just want the
intervention to strengthen the wealth and power of the richest
people, this time by $700 billion dollars.
On the other hand, the socialist state intervention prioritises the
most basic needs of people. This is the type of controlled and
planned intervention that has been carried out by Hugo Chavez in
Venezuela, while at the same time maximising democracy, political
consciousness and the participation of the people in managing their
own affairs. The enterprises that have been nationalised in
Venezuela, such as the main communications company (CANTV), the iron
and steel corporation SIDOR and one of the main banks (Bank of
Venezuela), are highly profitable enterprises... The resources that
previously went into the pockets of rich people or became capital
flight, are now being used by the government of Hugo Chavez to
finance public healthcare projects that are highly beneficial to the
neediest people.... Thanks to the Chavez government, Venezuela's
national oil company PDVSA has been strengthened and its revenue has
allowed the Venezuelan state to finance countless social projects,
which include: primary medical care access for the entire population,
along with secondary- and tertiary-level medical care facilities free
of charge; the complete eradication of illiteracy; the building of
new schools, hospitals, bridges and roads, the enhancement of public
transportation and the development of a huge train transportation
system across the whole country.... It is worth remembering that at
the peak of neoliberalism in Latin America, during the 1990s, highly
profitable publicly owned corporations were handed over to the
private sector....
Clearly, how Venezuela and the US allocate public funds differs
greatly. While the US government has abandoned the interests of its
own people with its careless healthcare policies, dwindling education
funding, increased military spending and lowered taxes for the
highest income brackets, the Venezuelan government has sought the
careful use of public funds for developing an inclusive society,
eradicating poverty, enhancing education and heathcare facilities,
and fostering the growth of a productive economy. All of which has
been carried out by fomenting greater democracy and the participation
of the people in all aspects of politics.
-- Martin Saatdjian, third secretary at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Oct 1, 2008 .
=========================
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3846
Capitalist versus socialist state intervention in the economy
By Martin Saatdjian
October 1, 2008 -- Venezelanalysis --
The current financial crisis reveals the first symptoms of a major,
perhaps revolutionary, socioeconomic change in world affairs. Much
has been said how, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, capitalism
overshadowed socialism and "the end of history" was decreed in much
of the intellectual world. Not surprisingly, less has been mentioned
that while socialism was dying in Europe, it was also blossoming in
Latin America. In 1989, events known as El Caracazo -- major protests
in Venezuela against neoliberalism and the "Washington Consensus"
aimed at reducing the role of the state in the economy -- erupted.
The election of Hugo Chavez as president of Venezuela in 1998 was a
reaction not only to people's dislike [of neoliberalism] and the
failure of neoliberalism, but also to the strong repression that
followed the 1989 protests.
Today most people watch with close attention how the biggest economy
on Earth is on the verge of a major crisis. However, it is not yet
known what the impact will be for the American people or, more
importantly, for the rest of the world. Certainly, many questions
remain unanswered -- not only for those in line with the Bush
administration, but especially for the US working class. It is this
section of US society that pays the price for the crisis, via
foreclosures and job lay-offs (which, for many, translates into
losing necessary health insurance). Also, they will carry the burden
of the so-called "bailout" package that the Bush administration has
proposed in the hope of preventing a major economic collapse. This
package fails to acknowledge that while the US working class carries
the burden, it will get nothing in return.
Of course it is a different story for the speculators, corporate
managers and major shareholders. These privileged and exclusive
segments of US society will benefit from the money of taxpayers,
earned by their long working hours, declining wages and worsening
labor conditions -- reaching an astronomical US$700 billion. This
amount of money the Bush administration plans to insert into the US
economy is surprising.
Just to give an idea of what it amounts to: the sum of the entire
economic activity for an entire year (gross domestic product) of
Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba combined. The GDP of the whole African
continent for the year 2007 reached $2150 billion.[1] This means,
that the Bush administration bailout plan represents roughly one-
third of the entire African continent's GDP.
US election
A particular aspect of this economic crisis is the context in which
it occurs, just a few weeks before the presidential election in the
United States. The Bush administration's decline in approval ratings
is likely to affect its party's presidential nominee, John McCain.
Despite huge efforts, this candidate has tried to distance himself
from Bush, but the current administration's colossal failure to
guarantee peace in the Middle East, along with its stubborn attitude
towards multilateralism and global warming, leave many people
wondering if McCain will follow in the footsteps of George W. Bush.
On the other hand, Democratic candidate Barack Obama may use the
present economic crisis to his advantage, with hopes of increasing
his support among the working class and by fomenting nostalgia for
the Clinton years -- a reminder of better economic times.
Apart from the two candidates' political rhetoric, the truth is that
both political parties bear a huge responsibility for the current
deteriorating economic condition. Both parties have been promoters of
neoliberal economic policies, privatisation and free trade
agreements. In addition to that, both parties have always sought the
use of public funds for the benefit of their rich campaign
contributors and in the interests of lobbyists in Washington DC. This
is why Bush's proposed bailout plan should only surprise people by
its absurd amount -- not because it contradicts the recurrent
``invisible hand [of the market] theory'', which has remained
consistent throughout recent capitalist history. The root of the
problem regarding the current economic crisis is not the slight
difference (if any) between the Democrats and Republicans; rather, it
is the nature by which the economic system sustains itself.
Recently, during the 63rd session of the United Nations General
Assembly, the president of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez, made a very
interesting comment regarding the Bush administration's proposed
bailout plan. According to her, "The most formidable state
intervention that there's memory of comes precisely from the place
that had told us that the state wasn't necessary, in the context,
moreover, of a fiscal and commercial deficit." [2]. Most likely, she
was referring not only to the bailout plan to revive the US economy,
but also to US federal government's purchase of companies that
declared bankruptcy as a result of the current economic crisis. Once
again, the hard working money of the working class and collected by
the federal government via payments of taxes are used by the Bush
administration against the interests of the people and for the
protection of the wealthiest.
Capitalist and socialist interventions
Here, precisely, is where difference can be drawn between
intervention in the economy by the Bush administration (capitalist
state intervention) and the recent announcements by Latin American
governments, such as Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, of
nationalisations and the strengthening of publicly owned companies
(socialist state intervention). It's not so much that capitalists are
against the intervention of the state; they just want the
intervention to strengthen the wealth and power of the richest
people, this time by $700 billion dollars.
As Noam Chomsky correctly mentioned in April 13, 1996, regarding the
contradictions between words and deeds in regards to the ``free
market'':
[T]he principle of really existing free market theory is: free
markets are fine for you, but not for me. That's, again, near a
universal. So you -- whoever you may be -- you have to learn
responsibility, and be subjected to market discipline, it's good for
your character, it's tough love ... But me, I need the nanny State,
to protect me from market discipline, so that I'll be able to rant
and rave about the marvels of the free market, while I'm getting
properly subsidized and defended by everyone else, through the nanny
State. And also, this has to be risk-free. So I'm perfectly willing
to make profits, but I don't want to take risks. If anything goes
wrong, you bail me out. So, if Third World debt gets out of control,
you socialize it. It's not the problem of the banks that made the
money. When the S&Ls collapse, you know, same thing. The public bails
them out. When American investment firms get into trouble because the
Mexican bubble bursts, you bail out Goldman Sachs. [3]
On the other hand, the socialist state intervention prioritises the
most basic needs of people. This is the type of controlled and
planned intervention that has been carried out by Hugo Chavez in
Venezuela, while at the same time maximising democracy, political
consciousness and the participation of the people in managing their
own affairs. The enterprises that have been nationalised in
Venezuela, such as the main communications company (CANTV), the iron
and steel corporation SIDOR and one of the main banks (Bank of
Venezuela), are highly profitable enterprises. In the case of CANTV,
its nationalisation cost the Venezuelan state roughly $1.6 billion;
however, after a full year of operation this company earned nearly
$400 million in net profits. At this pace, the Venezuelan state will
recover its initial investment is just three years of operations. The
resources that previously went into the pockets of rich people or
became capital flight, are now being used by the government of Hugo
Chavez to finance public healthcare projects that are highly
beneficial to the neediest people. It is worth remembering that at
the peak of neoliberalism in Latin America, during the 1990s, highly
profitable publicly owned corporations were handed over to the
private sector. One example was Venezuela's national oil company
(PDVSA). Although this company was never fully privatised, previous
governments before Chavez welcomed transnational oil companies by
signing "Conjuncture Agreements" with PDVSA that would allow them to
extract oil by giving a small portion back to the Venezuelan state,
16% at the most. Thanks to a new Hydrocarbons Law drafted by the
government of Hugo Chavez, these "Conjuncture Agreements" were
replaced by mixed ventures in which PDVSA will have the majority
stake. Long before that, President Chavez was widely criticised by
the administration of US President Bill for a trip made to OPEC
countries in an effort to recover the price of oil, which was $8 a
barrel at the time.
Venezuelan people benefit, not the rich
Thanks to the Chavez government, PDVSA has been strengthened and its
revenue has allowed the Venezuelan state to finance countless social
projects, which include: primary medical care access for the entire
population, along with secondary- and tertiary-level medical care
facilities free of charge; the complete eradication of illiteracy;
the building of new schools, hospitals, bridges and roads, the
enhancement of public transportation and the development of a huge
train transportation system across the whole country. At the same
time, the health of the economy is probably its best shape ever, with
international reserves and economic growth at its greatest levels,
and the lowest unemployment rate in the history of Venezuela.
Certainly the recent hike in the price of oil has factored
favourably for the Venezuelan economy. Nevertheless, this increment
in the price of oil has been accompanied by the greatest weakening of
the US dollar, which in real terms makes the price similar to the oil
price hikes of 1981. However, back then the Venezuelan state was in
the hands of capitalist and corrupt politicians and PDVSA was managed
as a transnational corporation, rather than as a vital institution
for the development and growth of the economy.
As previously mentioned, today PDVSA has a greater participation in
the production and export of Venezuelan oil than ever before and
royalty increases for transnational corporations have allowed the
Venezuelan state to collect a greater portion of profits than ever.
Additionally, according to the Central Bank of Venezuela, the
Venezuelan economy has grown not only in the oil sector but also in
the communications, construction and service sectors.
Clearly, how Venezuela and the US allocate public funds differs
greatly. While the US government has abandoned the interests of its
own people with its careless healthcare policies, dwindling education
funding, increased military spending and lowered taxes for the
highest income brackets, the Venezuelan government has sought the
careful use of public funds for developing an inclusive society,
eradicating poverty, enhancing education and heathcare facilities,
and fostering the growth of a productive economy. All of which has
been carried out by fomenting greater democracy and the participation
of the people in all aspects of politics
[Martin Saatdjian is third secretary at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.] Notes [1] Figures
gathered at: https://www. cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/ [2] Entire speech available at: http://www.un.
org/ga/63/generaldebate/pdf/argentina_es.pdf [3] Chomsky (1996).
Obtained from: http://www.un.
org/ga/63/generaldebate/pdf/argentina_es.pdf
http://links.org.au/node/672
From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Thu Oct 9 07:24:38 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Thu Oct 9 07:26:08 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Time [for the West] To Face The Facts On Afghanistan By
Eric Margolis Oct 8
Message-ID: <48EDCDD6.15466.33C24536@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
The doomsday news from New York and Washington has obscured most
other world affairs. This is unfortunate because for the first time
there is a flicker - and I mean only a flicker - of light at the end
of the Afghanistan tunnel. It may only be an oncoming truck bomb.
The US-installed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, revealed last week
he had asked Saudi Arabia to broker peace talks with the alliance of
tribal and political groups resisting Western occupation collectively
known as Taliban. Saudi Arabia had been one of the few nations to
recognize the Taliban government and retains considerable influence
in Afghanistan and remains a loyal friend of Pakistan.....
The current war in Afghanistan is not really about al-Qaida and
`terrorism,? but about opening a secure corridor through Pashtun
tribal territory to export the oil and gas riches of the Caspian
Basin of Central Asia to the West. The US and NATO forces in
Afghanistan are essentially pipeline protection troops fighting off
the hostile natives..
Both Barack Obama and John McCain are wrong about Afghanistan. It is
not a `good? fight against `terrorism,? but a classic, 19th century
colonial war to advance western geopolitical power into resource-rich
Central Asia. The Pashtun Afghans who live there are ready to fight
for another 100 years. The western powers certainly are not.
As that great American founding father Benjamin Franklin said, `there
is no good war, and no bad peace.? Time for the West to face reality
in Afghanistan. --Eric Margolis, Oct 8th
fyi-janet
=============================
http://www.ericmargolis.com/political_commentaries/time-to-face-facts-
in- afghanistan_7.aspx
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20971.htm
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/5243725/
Time To Face The Facts On Afghanistan
By Eric S. Margolis
08/10/08 -- - Toronto October 06, 2008 -- For those who savor
historical irony, the Soviet Empire collapsed in the years 1989-1991
because of an implosion of its economy brought on by a ruinous arms
race with the United States and the heavy costs of occupying
Afghanistan. Seventeen years later came the turn of the world?s other
great imperial power, the United States. Lethally bloated by runaway
debt, and burdened by 50% of the world?s military spending, the house
of cards known as the US economy finally collapsed.
The doomsday news from New York and Washington has obscured most
other world affairs. This is unfortunate because for the first time
there is a flicker - and I mean only a flicker - of light at the end
of the Afghanistan tunnel. It may only be an oncoming truck bomb.
The US-installed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, revealed last week
he had asked Saudi Arabia to broker peace talks with the alliance of
tribal and political groups resisting Western occupation collectively
known as Taliban. Saudi Arabia had been one of the few nations to
recognize the Taliban government and retains considerable influence
in Afghanistan and remains a loyal friend of Pakistan.
Taliban leader Mullah Omar quickly rejected Karzai?s offer, and
claimed the US was heading toward the same kind of catastrophic
defeat in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union had met. The ongoing
financial panic in North America lent substance to his words.
The US economy is in grave peril and its big three automakers may
soon face bankruptcy. In a crazy sidebar, as Wall Street and the Us
banking system faced meltdown, the insouciant Pentagon just announced
it would spend $300 million with American `contractors? to spread pro-
US propaganda in Iraq. This remarkable idiocy notwithstanding,
Washington could soon run out of money necessary to keep paying for
operations in Iraq, and bribing Pakistan with $250-300 million a
month to wage war against its own rebellious Pashtun tribes people
along the Afghanistan border.
The able and forthright US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David
McKiernan, urgently called for at least 10,000 more troops. US and
NATO forces in Afghanistan are increasingly on the defensive, hard
pressed to defend vulnerable supply lines in spite of massive fire
power and total control of the air.
Attacks on US and NATO convoys are even beginning at the port of
Karachi. The prospect of the US spreading a war it can?t win in
Afghanistan into Pakistan is military and political madness.
Startlingly, Gen. McKiernan appeared to break with Bush
administration policy by proposing political talks with Taliban and
admitting the war had to be ended by diplomacy. The military men know
this war cannot be won on the battlefield. McKiernan?s predecessor
told Congress that 400,000 US troops would be needed to pacify
Afghanistan. There are currently 80,000 western troops in
Afghanistan, many of them unwilling to enter combat.
By sharp contrast, I recently asked Karl Rove, President Bush?s
former senior advisor, how the US could ever hope to win the war in
Afghanistan. His eyes dancing with imperial hubris, Rove brightly
replied, `More Predators(missile armed drones) and helicopters! Then
we?ll go into Pakistan.?
Which reminded me of poet Hilaire Beloc?s wonderful line about 19th
century British imperialism that I use in my new book, `American
Raj:? `Whatever happens/we have got/the Maxim gun* /and they have
not.?
*Maxim gun - early machine gun
Though Karzai?s olive branch was rejected, the fact he made it public
is very important. By doing so, both he and Gen. McKiernan broke the
simple-minded Western taboo against negotiations with Taliban and its
allies.
Let us remember that Taliban is not a `terrorist movement,? as
claimed by western war propaganda, but was founded as an Islamic
religious movement dedicated to fighting Communism and the drug
trade.
Taliban received US funding until May, 2001. In fact, CIA keep close
contacts with Taliban, many of whose members were US-backed mujahidin
from the anti-Soviet war of the 1980?s, for possible future use
against the Communist regimes of Central Asia and against China. The
9/11 attacks made CIA immediately cut its links to Taliban and burn
the associated files.
In recent years, Western war propaganda has so demonized Taliban that
few politicians have the courage to propose the obvious and
inevitable: a negotiated settlement to this pointless seven-year war.
A noteworthy exception came last April when NATO?s secretary general,
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who admitted the war could only be ended by
negotiations, not military means.
The Karzai government cannot extend its authority beyond Kabul
because that would mean overthrowing the very same Uzbek and Tajik
drug- dealing warlords and Communists chiefs that are its base of
power. There is no real Afghan national army, just a bunch of
unenthusiastic mercenaries who pretend to fight.
The current war in Afghanistan is not really about al-Qaida and
`terrorism,? but about opening a secure corridor through Pashtun
tribal territory to export the oil and gas riches of the Caspian
Basin of Central Asia to the West. The US and NATO forces in
Afghanistan are essentially pipeline protection troops fighting off
the hostile natives..
Both Barack Obama and John McCain are wrong about Afghanistan. It is
not a `good? fight against `terrorism,? but a classic, 19th century
colonial war to advance western geopolitical power into resource-rich
Central Asia. The Pashtun Afghans who live there are ready to fight
for another 100 years. The western powers certainly are not.
As that great American founding father Benjamin Franklin said, `there
is no good war, and no bad peace.? Time for the West to face reality
in Afghanistan.
Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated
columnist. His articles appear in the New York Times, the
International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Times of London,
the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times and Dawn. Visit his blog -
------- End of forwarded message -------
From jomut at yahoo.com Thu Oct 9 14:55:44 2008
From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa)
Date: Thu Oct 9 14:55:50 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] strut or smart
Message-ID: <121219.9678.qm@web31107.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake)
jomut@yahoo.com
chakane@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
?
Hi
?
Just mailed out the the following to some correspondents of mine.? Just thought I couldnt leave mai-notters out.? John
=======================
?
Hi
?
Thanks?to Michael P for the Truthdig commentary!
?
Quite some interesting observations, doing the rounds lately, on both the desirability and appropriateness of the recent trillion dollar lifeline that was thrown Wall Street's way.? A Truthdig commentary has it that the bailout is testament to the spell cast on both Democratic and Republican poohbahs by the mesmeric jingle of Wall Street's commercial activity, which results in the same poobahs'?profitable?blindness to the crying needs of Main Street America. In this respect, if one may be?forgiven for?an unsolicited blurting out,?the current situation in the U.S. differs very little from the callous disregard of the world's dispossessed?that has characterized civilized, global social policy of late.??The commentary is unsparingly trenchant in its criticism of Obama?for exhibiting support for a spectacularly flawed piece of legislation that does not even begin to address the straitened circumstances of the beleagured little people.
?
A bit more commentary, along the same lines, is provided, via a submission forwarded by Janet Eaton, by a Venezuelan commentator who observes on the difference between state intervention for the benefit of the rich and state intervention?for the?benefit of the generality of society.
?
Very interesting commentary by Murray Dobbin --?authored way back in 2005 --?on how corporate thinking, methods and direct legislative?intervention?have come to permeate every facet of social policy.? Was especially impressed by Murray's reference to how the amorality of corporate management methods have cotributed to the current economic free-for-all.? This, in turn, put me in mind of the mailout I sent to some correspondents of mine, a week or so ago, in which I referred to C Wright Mills incisive observations on the Higher Immorality.? Rather than?go over all that again, I have decided to append the comments I made then (the link to Mills' comments is imbedded) immediately below.
?
John.
=======================
?
John Mutambirwa (dreaming awake)
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
chakane@hotmail.com
john.mutambirwa@gmail.com
?
Hi
?
Just wrote the brief commentary below, some time last week,?in response to Janet Eaton's posting (on the mai-not list)?of a commentary in the Guardian?on the tangled web of the financial crisis unraveling in the US and beyond. An aside on this theme might be necessary, for,?since my briskly uncharitable reference to the maistream media's tepid efforts at unearthing the hideous truth underlying the current financial?ravelling, the CBC, on Sunday, featured a report on the tragedy that, for the first time, in so far as I can remember,?tried to?throw a faint?glimmer of light on?the welter of destructive financial transactions that have brought the global financial system to such a pass.? One of the critics of the current debacle, whose wisdom the CBC avidly solicited, was non other than George Soros, whose compromised position, as both critic and handsome beneficiary of the current crisis will forever remain one of the worlds enticing enigmas.?
Yesterday's Toronto Star had an insighful report on a former derivatives trader whose insights?into the dicey world of high finance is more than worth taking?a peek at.
?
Rather than din anyone's?ears with more querulous wails on this particular?I should rather?only content myself with a comment to the effect that its better late than never.
?
One more aside, though, I have included a commentary on the Higher Immorality by the late and very great sociologist, C. Wright Mills, which some might find both morally and intellectually bracing.? Part of the reason that I have included it is that Mills wrote with such facility and clarity which was of great assistance to his readers in understanding the practical relevance of such?esoteric sociological terms?as "stratification" -- the formation of classes in society -- and the attitudes?as well as?exhibited?behaviors?that accompanied such social phenomena. Were one to think of Mills' comments here in terms of relating to?a structural feature, of a thoroughly business permeated society, that masquerades as?a?fillip of economic behavior in the guise of the caveat emptor -- let the buyer beware -- principle, then, I think one would be just bowled over by the contemporary relevance of Mills' observations. For, again in my modest estimation, the
convergence of the caveat emptor principle and the quest, in the business world, of success at all costs (as defined by pecuniary indicators) goes a long way towards explaining why the amoral quest for success winds up subverting all other?centres and inspirations?of moral guidance, religious or otherwise, for the?individual caught in the rat race.
?
Aw shucks!? Let Mills do his own talking!
?
John
==================
?
?
Hi
?
Such a tangled web actually.? Dunno that coming to the assistance of the subprime homeowners would not have been tantamonut to an indirect bailing out of the same financial gougers that initially?authored this whole debacle, since the same gougers would have been the ultimate receivers of the proceeds from the bailout anyway.
?
The?calamitous fate of the whole network of financial gimmickry?(derivatives and harrowingly complex, off-ledger transactions, resorted to, by the respectable pickpockets,?to evade both regulatory brakes and the inquisitive probes of an interested public) might have been provisionally deferred to a later date.
?
Interesting to note that?knowledgeable critics?have been saying, since the Enron debacle, and the few revelatory corporate scandals that immediately followed it, that that was (Enron)?just a tip of the iceberg and underneath it most of corporate America was awash with self-destructive,?Enronian corporate malpractice.
?
Guess who is vindicated now.
?
And what?a tribute to the mainstream press!? Just as?imbedded in the murky?world of corporate?finance?as Judith "New York Times" Miller?ever was in Iraq war reportage.? Thus far I have not witnessed any of?them consulting the opinions of independent critics of Wall Street (Greider, Chomsky etc) so that the public may have a much more informed view of the welter of shenanigans occurring in the rarefied world of high finance and what all that duplicitous tommyrot about deregulation and relaxation of capital controls is actually?all about.
?
Pity that in this season of compulsively controlled electoral posturing (in both Canada and the US) this issue and?its deeply embarrasing relevance to the fundamental economic and political philosophy that shores up the belief-system of the major political parties (a philosophy now under the adverse siege of hostile, reactive, and - let us hope - sobering?events) will almost certainly?be treated - and actually?is being so treated?--?just like any?other issue of temporary significance.
?
Need I mention that?the same gougers, who unrelentingly counselled governments all over the globe to lay relentless siege on the financing of public services so that public monies devoted to such?collective enterprises would be redirected to their enormous pocketbooks -- thus fabulously enriching themselves in the process, at the same time?that the?vulgar, great unwashed of the world squirmed in well merited wretchedness --, are the ones whom the world is now bailing out with?globally aroused?trepidation.
?
Wonder who authored my tawdry values?
?
John
=======================
?
--- On Thu, 9/18/08, Janet M Eaton <
jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca> wrote:
From: Janet M Eaton
Subject: [Mai-not] Socialism for the rich -Spalshing out billions failing to treat the causes
To: "a renewed Mai-Not
Date: Thursday, September 18, 2008, 2:24 AM
This article concludes:
So far the Fed and Treasury reaction has been firefighting.? The root of all of this is the bursting of the US housing market bubble and the resulting fallout. Rather than treat the symptoms, as the US government has been frantically doing this last week, it would be better off treating the cause: the housing market. Instead of bailing out feckless banks and their toxic derivatives, bailing out US citizens with subprime mortgages or negative equity might actually turn the housing market around - and so begin to solve this mess.? But as Gore Vidal once noted, the US government prefers that "public money go not to the people but to big business. The result is a unique society in which we have free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich."?
fyi-janet
=============================
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/17/wallstreet.useconomy
?
Socialism for the rich
The US government is splashing out billions of dollars in bailouts but is failing to treat the causes of this financial crisis
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From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Thu Oct 9 21:16:51 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Thu Oct 9 21:19:13 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] LISTEN: CBC Radio: The Current - Oct. 9 - Atwood's
"Paback" / The Next Chapter - Oct. 11 at 3 p.m.
Message-ID: <48EE90E3.26236.36BCEA46@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent: Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:58:09 -0600
From: Elaine Hughes
Part 1: Payback
There's an old Chinese proverb that goes, better eight hundred in
cash than a thousand in credit, sage advice in these uncertain times.
Both Americans and Canadians are struggling with the highest amounts
of personal debt ever seen in history.
And as world stock and commodity markets limp along due to the sub
prime mortgage crisis in the US many people are seeing what money
they DO have - slip away. One person who has been watching all of
this unfold is Canadian author Margaret Atwood. She saw this
financial catastrophe coming a few years back and decided to explore
our relationship with debt in her new book called, Payback: Debt and
the Shadow Side of Wealth. It's also the subject of her upcoming CBC
Massey Lectures. Margaret Atwood joined Anna Maria in our Toronto
studio.
Listen to Part One:
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2008/200810/20081009.html
======================================================
Also:
CBC Radio One - The Next Chapter - Saturday Oct. 11, 2008, 3-4 p.m.
Shelagh Rogers will talk to Margaret Atwood about her new book
------- End of forwarded message -------
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Thu Oct 9 22:59:17 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Thu Oct 9 22:59:19 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Slap in the face for Zionist lobby on Iran
Message-ID: <20081010035917.DC57A19581@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Fri Oct 10 00:04:54 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Fri Oct 10 00:05:08 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Meltdown: A class-based remedy for the deserving
Message-ID: <20081010050454.F2639F1C0@fep01.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au Fri Oct 10 02:41:01 2008
From: oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au (Clem Clarke)
Date: Fri Oct 10 02:41:28 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Michael Moore: Here's How to Fix the Wall Street Mess
Message-ID: <48EF070D.3020401@ozemail.com.au>
http://yubanet.com/opinions/Michael-Moore-Here-s-How-to-Fix-the-Wall-Street-Mess.php
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From duanebehrens at cox.net Fri Oct 10 08:37:44 2008
From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens)
Date: Fri Oct 10 08:37:56 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Thought for the Day
Message-ID: <20081010093744.7CVU6.707314.imail@fed1rmwml34>
"Journalism is publishing what someone doesn't want us to know. The rest is propaganda." -Horacio Verbitsky,
From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Fri Oct 10 09:49:18 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Fri Oct 10 09:51:55 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] ALERT Naomi WolfeVideo on martial law & coup in US -
Comment & transcript by Janet M Eaton
Message-ID: <48EF413E.19872.396DCF64@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
Dear All:
Naomi Wolfe , author of Fascist America in 10 easy Steps, a Guardian
newspaper article based on her book The End of America, says in a
YouTube interview with Mike McCormick, that the US faces the imminent
threat of martial law. Drawing on her earlier book the End of America
and pointing to the ten steps to Fascism she ups the ante in warning
about the looming threat of fascism in America by going one step
further alerting the American public that indeed a coup occurred on
Monday October first. She argues that several of the steps were
already in place at the time including: hyping an internal and
external threat that's terrifying; creating a secret prison system
outside the rule of law; Torture taking place, creating a para-
military force not answerable to the people; and setting up a
surveillance apparatus. And she notes that the targeting of citizens
as terrorists has reached a new level of control most recently at the
RNC Republican National Convention where even journalists like Amy
Goodman were arrested and detained over night. Most ominous in her
warning is the recent deployment of the 1st brigade of the 3rd
Infantry division, recenlty returned from Iraq, in the streets of the
US . Along side this development she cites the recent Bailout bill
with $100 Billion allocated for the President with no ties attached.
Another compelling piece of the evidence is reference to US
Representative Brad Sherman, from California who said that the US
Congress was pressured by the White House to pass the Bailout Bill
under threat of martial law.
Here are my notes on this threat from her interview:
"This morning go to CSPAN youtube type in representative Brad Sherman
Martial law which explains a lot if its true and no reason to not
believe him - he says admin has hyped an emergency. Rep
Sherman said they were told in private conversation ..if we didn?t
pass the bailout- markets would go down 1000 points each day and by
Monday they would be facing martial law- several members in private
conversations were threatened with martial law- if they didn't do
as said. Now why should we take it seriously - this is my other
terrible piece of news . We have to wake up We have to wake up On Oct
1st brigade of the 3rd Infantry division was deployed in United
States America. For first time since 1807 when a bright line was
placed preventing military from policing American streets- a military
brigade that's 3-4,000 soldiers has been brought in to police our
streets- The Army Times reported it ."
All these factors convince Naomi Wolfe that a Coup has occurred and
that the American people face a crisis as great as that which
occurred in Nazi Germany in 1933.
Read on for a brief overview of her
[1] Article on Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
[2] Overview of her book The End of America
[3] My partial transcript of her youtube interview with Michael
McCormick -- which outlines her reasons for alerting the public to
take action against the quickening slide into fascism in the US,
which she has now framed as a `coup? and an overview of her recent
book - "Give Me Liberty...A Handbook for American Revolutionaries."
which outlines steps American citizens need to be taking at this
time. In addition she is adding new actions to those she prescribed
in her book based on the fact that a coup, has occurred in her -
interpretation. First and foremost she says to stop this `coup?
citizens must meet with their representatives and find District
Attorneys who can begin the necessary steps to arrest the President
and the perpetrators.
all the best,
janet m eaton,PhD
Part time academic, researcher, activist, and corporate
globalization critic.
p.s Naomi Wolfe implores viewers not only to take action but also to
take time to check out the references she is offering [see below]. As
for Naomi Wolfe?s credentials:
Naomi Wolf (born 1962) is an American author, political consultant,
and public intellectual who graduated from Yale in 1984 and was a
Rhodes scholar at New College, Oxford University. She is the author
of the bestselling feminist books "The Beauty Myth," "Fire with
Fire," "Promiscuities," and "Misconceptions." The New York Times
called "The Beauty Myth" one of the 70 most significant books of the
century. Wolf was a consulting editor at George Magazine. Her essays
appear regularly in The New Republic, The New York Times, The Wall
Street Journal, The Washington Post, Glamour, Ms., and other
publications.
========================================
[1] Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
>From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain
steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional
freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration
seem to be taking them all
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment
[2] The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot (ISBN
978-1933392790) is the most recent book released by author Naomi
Wolf.
Referenced in April 2007 in her Guardian article titled Fascist
America in Ten Steps, The End of America argues that events of the
last six years parallel steps taken in the early years of the
twentieth century's worst dictatorships and claims that Americans to
take action to "restore" their constitutional values before they
suffer the same fate. The book illustrates ten common steps which
Wolf states can be witnessed in the transition of any democratic
state to one of fascist rule. The book was published in September
2007 by Chelsea Green Publishing of White River Junction, Vermont.
[edit] The ten steps
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to
citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Treat all political dissents to be traitors.
10. Suspend the rule of law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_America:_A_Letter_of_Warning_t
o_a_Young_Patriot
[3] Interview with Naomi Wolf author of "Give Me Liberty...
A Handbook for American Revolutionaries."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI
Partial Transcript by Janet M Eaton, PhD
Part time academic, researcher, activist, and corporate
globalization critic.
" I wrote 'Give me Liberty' as a sequel to 'The End of America'
because when I was traveling around the country warning people about
these ten steps- to fascism, that these ten steps to a closed
society that I saw always are put in place when a would-be dictator
wants to crush an open society - many people rightly saw that what I
was saying was true- they saw the signs all around them everything
from Steps 1- hyping an internal and external threat that's
terrifying, step 2 , creating a secret prison system outside the
rule of law, Step 3 Torture taking place, creating a para-military
force not answerable to the people step 4 , a surveillance apparatus
etc. and they freaked out understandably as they should and they
said what do we do-so I wrote a sequel. What do we do first ? We get
terrified and then we get down to work and that's "Give me Liberty" -
I looked at times and places where citizens had faced the
closing of an open society and successfully fought back and because
we're in an emergency and a crisis I want to get to that today
quickly..
Second thing I did I looked back at the founders and I don't
just mean the well known white men property holders , the whole
founding generation of ordinary people, many of them not named by
history- farmers and artisans and washer women and enslaved African
Americans, all of whom had this vision of liberty and moved it
forward and put their lives on the line to make it real - and I
wanted to go back to what are the core principles that America is
supposed to give us because we're being manipulated and brain washed
so far away from that - with fake democracy - fake patriotism.
And the last part of the book is a practical how to - we need a
battle plan - A coup has taken place and people need to know how to
fight back. I mean the worst thing to happen when there's a coup is
confusion.... Americans are facing a coup as of this morning- as of
October 1st and confirmed this morning ..it's happened and we have
almost no time to push back- and we have to understand it's an
emergency so in the last third of the book it's a practical how to -
everything from : become your own media, write the op-eds, frame the
debate, to .. start your own political movement, organize as
democracy commando units to put pressure on your representatives.
But now that the coup is here rather than looming- I'm adding pieces
to the battle plan.
We've got a movement you can join at myamericaproject.org
You can screen a film to alert them to the threat at
endofamericamovie.com
but most crucial thing is to understand the nature of the threat- so
on Monday I'll be posting more urgent how to among them how to
arrest the President."
[The above has been transcribed from first five minutes or so of the
video. Towards the end of her interview she describes the seven
principles from her most recent book "Give me Liberty". She explains
how in the early days of the people?s struggle for freedom , ordinary
people rose up again and again and describes the many ways they
opposed the denial of their liberties - from the Boston tea party to
setting fire in NY to palatial carriages of tax collectors, to when
Washington issued edicts they didn?t agree with riots up and down
the eastern seaboard. She says that the first contract in the
Declaration of Independence these citizen took into their hearts-
that you are committed to as an American is to stand up against
tyranny- and oppression. She gives an example of how African
Americans who were enslaved risked their lives to do bring many many
lawsuits before the legislatures in colonial America for their
freedom because ordinary people understood these rights were
universal rights and when a tyrant looms you have to do everything
you can to oppose it. She goes on to say:]
"So I go back to core principles they wanted us to remember
1. You're not entitled to speak you are obliged to speak-you have to
speak freely
2. You have to rebel continually against injustice and oppression
3. Ordinary people are supposed to run things- we?ve been told again
and again leave it to us - to the politicians and the pundits. The
constitutional scholars know ordinary people in America are supposed
to be the leaders the agents of change, an d right now your country
needs you- transpartisan right or left your country needs you to see
this coup for what it is.
4. Americans cherish the rule of law- we're not supposed to sit idly
by when it is subverted and perverted- Why do people all over the
world envy us - its not our standard of living - although that?s
nice, It's how we feel inside because we are so free o we have been
because we cherish the rule of law -- judges tend not to be corrupt;
the constitution has protected us- that's what people envy- that?s
going to disappear unless we rise up against this violation of the
rule of law.
5. America had no established God- this is so important - these
people are seizing power in the name of a theocracy- I didn?t used
to thin this is true- not that they are driven by faith but they are
using faith as a mobilizing tool- Sarah Palin is going to extend that
theocracy - I?ve written a piece about that- The founders wanted to
ensure that this was a country of religious freedom -where you were
free in your conscience because they had come from places where
religious minorities, Christian minorities, were persecuted by the
states. America establishes no God .
6. We're supposed to deliberate with our neigbours- we're the ones
who are supposed to be having the debates not the right over here and
left over there not whipped up by demigods- we are supposed to be
face to face with one another -
In town meetings, in city meetings, deliberating, setting the agenda
ourselves.
7. We cannot maintain an oppressive empire and still be Americans -
America is supposed to understand that liberty is a universal human
right. We are supposed to divest of an oppressive empire - and
become a Republic again and truly send out and support liberty abroad
rather than subverting democracies and turning a blind eye to them as
citizens .
Finally this new American revolution again it begins psychologically-
it begins by taking into our hearts that each of us is called upon by
our founders to stand up for freedom.
And the good news- we have to get the word out- is that historically
when millions of people rise up in time but the time it?s past
midnight Now . I used to say it is October of 1931. N o but now I?m
going to say it?s February 1933 and everything closed down for good
in April of 1933 in Germany. There is no more time - so we have to
understand that when millions of people rise up together- oppressors
are bullies and bullies are tyrants and historically what happens is
they flee, they cave and they turn each other in. That?s why you have
to move aggressively. You have to arrest these people. You have to
move into the rest of the cabal - You have to get a warrant to get
their computers, declare what has happened i.e that a coup has taken
place- and when you find these people are charged and they?re in
custody that?s when they start to back off and turn on one another -
it happened with the Stasi and it happened with Joe McCarthy, But
the time is NOW!!
Thank you so much Mike I appreciate you giving me the time to get the
word out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI (ca.30 MINUTES)
IMPLICATIONS FOR CANADA:
Note also that Canada is deeply integrated with the US through NAFTA,
the SPP and bi-national military planning agreement. Although some
SPP proponents indicated after the Montebello Summit that, from their
perspective, it had failed because of lack of transparency and
inability of business leaders to implement, because of the scrutiny
and opposition from civil society and opposition parties, we do know
that at the same time a myriad of committees are in place attempting
to deregulate to the lowest common denominator a range of regulatory
regimes in regard to health, environment and food safety as well as
furthering the degree of both economic integration and a major number
of security rules, provisions and legislation which runs contrary in
some cases to international law, and our own beliefs and values as
Canadians about the kind of public policy we prefer. The SPP is also
moving us toward a custom's union and some aspects of a common market
, working on changes to allow that process to move ahead. We are
currently locked into a NAFTA agreement shown to be detrimental in
many ways to both workers and the environment and now the SPP, NAFTA
plus agreement is forcing deeper integration in regard to energy,
water, investment etc. with attempts at harmonization of related
regulations. In the past there have been many arguments for a common
monetary system i.e the Amero - This crisis should be warning enough
to avoid any further integration with the US and to heed the growing
resistance to NAFTA and the calls for renegotiation which are many
and varied. We must also scrap the SPP and we must avoid at all
costs letting Harper achieve a majority government. We don't know
what kind of talks to further North American Union could suddenly
emerge as a done deal if this were so especially under should martial
law be declared in the US. .
And don't forget legislation is in place under the SPP allowing US
troops on our soil in case of an natural or manmade emergency.
.
And finally as the SPP falls under criticism not only from civil
society but also from business executives critical of the delays in
both process and implementation of border initiatives to speed trade
across the border, we now find out that thinking has begun in the
Institutes, think tanks and universities as to how a bi-lateral
economic and trade agreement with the US might be more useful than
being stuck in a three way deal with Mexico with all of its unique
problems.
This should be an election issue !!
It is not that we should refrain from trading with our neighbours if
it is within reasonable distance, within bio-regions, and by
transport that reduces GHG emissions but we must insist on 'fair
trade' and ecologically sustainable principles to guide our trading
relationships. The existing free trade regimes are the instruments of
laissez-faire neo-conservative, Chicago School economic doctrines
that have led the world to the brink of financial and economic
disaster, the the end of cheap oil, and to ecological collapse in
many of the world's ecosystems elevating to the global level the
issue, already felt in the developing world of food and water
security.
Please post this far and wide . Even if it seems to some a bit
alarmist - it appears well documented - And NOW is the time to take
into account the breadth of conseqeunces of the potential disasters
and Collapse scenarios that have emerged at this time in history and
which should be framing any considerations for the future
FURTHER REFERENCES ON POTENTIAL OF US DECLARING MARTIAL LAW
And note Naomi Wolfe?s concerns about martial law and a coup are not
alone. Professor Michel Chossudovsky has written extensively during
the past few years about growing developments under the PNAC inspired
Bush Cheney regime moving the US toward martial law. More recently
on his globalresearch.ca website note the following:
[ ] Secret Bush Administration Plan to Suspend US Constitution
- by Tom Burghardt - 2008-10-06
Exercising sweeping emergency powers, unelected officials could
suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and create an Executive
Branch dictatorship that rests solely on the power of the U.S.
military.
[ ] Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland. US
Combat Troops in Iraq repatriated to "help with civil unrest"
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2008-09-26
See also
[ ] Is the Annexation of Canada Part of Bush's Military Agenda?
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2007-07-18
Territorial control over Canada is part of Washington's geopolitical
and military agenda as formulated in April 2002 by Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld.
[ ] Is America Preparing for Martial Law?
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2005-04-10
These exercises must be understood in the broader context of
America's National Security doctrine, which presents Al Qaeda as the
main threat to the American homeland.
====================================
From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Fri Oct 10 10:58:23 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Fri Oct 10 11:00:55 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Please use this version -> Naomi WolfeVideo on US martial
law & coup - Commentary and Transcript Janet M Eaton
Message-ID: <48EF516F.23575.39AD0C0D@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
Naomi Wolf Video Interview on Looming Martial Law in the US and her
prescription for action from her recent book "Give Me Liberty...A
Handbook for American Revolutionaries." .
Commentary and Partial Transcript by Janet M Eaton, PhD, academic,
researcher, activist and critic of neo-liberal globalization
October 9, 2008
---------------------------
Naomi Wolf , author of Fascist America in 10 easy Steps, a Guardian
newspaper article based on her book The End of America, says in a
YouTube interview with Mike McCormick, that the US faces the imminent
threat of martial law. Drawing on her earlier book the End of America
and pointing to the ten steps to Fascism she ups the ante in warning
about the looming threat of fascism in America by going one step
further alerting the American public that indeed a coup occurred on
Monday October first. She argues that several of the steps were
already in place at the time including: hyping an internal and
external threat that's terrifying; creating a secret prison system
outside the rule of law; Torture taking place, creating a para-
military force not answerable to the people; and setting up a
surveillance apparatus.
And she notes that the targeting of citizens as terrorists has
reached a new level of control most recently at the RNC Republican
National Convention where even journalists like Amy Goodman were
arrested and detained over night. Most ominous in her warning is the
recent deployment of the 1st brigade of the 3rd
Infantry division, recently returned from Iraq, in the streets of the
US . Along side this development she cites the recent Bailout bill
with $100 Billion allocated for the President with no ties attached.
Another compelling piece of the evidence is reference to US
Representative Brad Sherman, from California who said that the US
Congress was pressured by the White House to pass the Bailout Bill
under threat of martial law.
Here are my notes on this threat from her interview:
"This morning go to CSPAN youtube and type in representative Brad
Sherman Martial law which explains a lot if its true and no reason to
not believe him - he says the administration has hyped an emergency.
Rep Sherman said they were told in private conversation ..if we
didn?t pass the bailout- markets would go down 1000 points each day
and by Monday they would be facing martial law- several members in
private conversations were threatened with martial law- if they
didn't do as said. Now why should we take it seriously - this is my
other terrible piece of news . We have to wake up We have to wake up
On Oct. 1st the 1st brigade of the 3rd Infantry division was
deployed in United States America. For first time since 1807 when a
bright line was placed preventing military from policing American
streets- a military brigade that's 3-4,000 soldiers has been brought
in to police our streets- The Army Times reported it ."
All these factors convince Naomi Wolfe that a Coup has occurred and
that the American people face a crisis as great as that which
occurred in Nazi Germany in 1933.
Read on for a brief overview of her
[1] Article on Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
[2] Overview of her book The End of America
[3] My partial transcript of her youtube interview with Michael
McCormick -- which outlines her reasons for alerting the public to
take action against the quickening slide into fascism in the US,
which she has now framed as a `coup? and an overview of her recent
book - "Give Me Liberty...A Handbook for American Revolutionaries."
Her recent book outlines steps American citizens need to be taking
at this time. In addition she is adding new actions to those she
prescribed in her book based on the fact that a coup, has occurred in
her interpretation. First and foremost she says to stop this `coup?
citizens must meet with their representatives and find District
Attorneys who can begin the necessary steps to arrest the President
and the perpetrators.
[4] SPP and Deep Integration Implications for Canada and North
American Union under US martial law
[5] More references on US Martial law from globalresearch.ca
all the best,
janet
p.s Naomi Wolf implores viewers not only to take action but also to
take time to check out the references she is offering [see below]. As
for Naomi Wolf?s credentials:
Naomi Wolf (born 1962) is an American author, political consultant,
and public intellectual who graduated from Yale in 1984 and was a
Rhodes scholar at New College, Oxford University. She is the author
of the bestselling feminist books "The Beauty Myth," "Fire with
Fire," "Promiscuities," and "Misconceptions." The New York Times
called "The Beauty Myth" one of the 70 most significant books of the
century. Wolf was a consulting editor at George Magazine. Her essays
appear regularly in The New Republic, The New York Times, The Wall
Street Journal, The Washington Post, Glamour, Ms., and other
publications.
========================================
[1] Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
>From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain
steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional
freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration
seem to be taking them all
http://www.guardian .co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment
<><><><><><><><><><>< ><><>
[2] The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot (ISBN
978-1933392790) is the most recent book released by author Naomi
Wolf.
Referenced in April 2007 in her Guardian article titled Fascist
America in Ten Steps, The End of America argues that events of the
last six years parallel steps taken in the early years of the
twentieth century's worst dictatorships and claims that Americans to
take action to "restore" their constitutional values before they
suffer the same fate. The book illustrates ten common steps which
Wolf states can be witnessed in the transition of any democratic
state to one of fascist rule. The book was published in September
2007 by Chelsea Green Publishing of White River Junction, Vermont.
[edit] The ten steps
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to
citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Treat all political dissents to be traitors.
10. Suspend the rule of law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_America:_
A_Letter_of_Warning_t
o_a_Young_Patriot
<><><><><><><><><><>< ><><>
[3] Interview with Naomi Wolf author of "Give Me Liberty...
A Handbook for American Revolutionaries."
http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI
Partial Transcript by Janet M Eaton, PhD
Part time academic, researcher, activist, and corporate
globalization critic.
" I wrote 'Give me Liberty' as a sequel to 'The End of America'
because when I was traveling around the country warning people about
these ten steps- to fascism, that these ten steps to a closed
society that I saw always are put in place when a would-be dictator
wants to crush an open society - many people rightly saw that what I
was saying was true- they saw the signs all around them everything
from Steps 1- hyping an internal and external threat that's
terrifying, step 2 , creating a secret prison system outside the
rule of law, Step 3 Torture taking place, creating a para-military
force not answerable to the people step 4 , a surveillance apparatus
etc. and they freaked out understandably as they should and they
said what do we do-so I wrote a sequel.
What do we do first ? We get terrified and then we get down to work
and that's "Give me Liberty" - I looked at times and places where
citizens had faced the
closing of an open society and successfully fought back and because
we're in an emergency and a crisis I want to get to that today
quickly.. Second thing I did I looked back at the founders and I
don't just mean the well known white men property holders , the
whole founding generation of ordinary people, many of them not named
by history- farmers and artisans and washer women and enslaved
African Americans, all of whom had this vision of liberty and moved
it forward and put their lives on the line to make it real - and I
wanted to go back to what are the core principles that America is
supposed to give us because we're being manipulated and brain washed
so far away from that - with fake democracy - fake patriotism.
And the last part of the book is a practical how to - we need a
battle plan - A coup has taken place and people need to know how to
fight back. I mean the worst thing to happen when there's a coup is
confusion.... Americans are facing a coup as of this morning- as of
October 1st and confirmed this morning ..it's happened and we have
almost no time to push back- and we have to understand it's an
emergency so in the last third of the book it's a practical how to -
everything from : become your own media, write the op-eds, frame the
debate, to .. start your own political movement, organize as
democracy commando units to put pressure on your representatives.
But now that the coup is here rather than looming- I'm adding pieces
to the battle plan.
We've got a movement you can join at myamericaproject.org
You can screen a film to alert them to the threat at
endofamericamovie.com
But most crucial thing is to understand the nature of the threat- so
on Monday I'll be posting more urgent how to among them how to
arrest the President."
[The above has been transcribed from first five minutes or so of the
video. Towards the end of her interview she describes the seven
principles from her most recent book "Give me Liberty". She explains
how in the early days of the people?s struggle for freedom , ordinary
people rose up again and again and describes the many ways they
opposed the denial of their liberties - from the Boston tea party to
setting fire in NY to palatial carriages of tax collectors, to when
Washington issued edicts they didn?t agree with rioting up and down
the eastern seaboard. She says that the first contract in the
Declaration of Independence these citizen took into their hearts-
that you are committed to as an American is to stand up against
tyranny- and oppression. She gives an example of how African
Americans who were enslaved risked their lives to do bring many many
lawsuits before the legislatures in colonial America for their
freedom because ordinary people understood these rights were
universal rights and when a tyrant looms you have to do everything
you can to oppose it. She goes on to say:]
"So I go back to core principles they wanted us to remember
1. You're not entitled to speak you are obliged to speak-you have to
speak freely
2. You have to rebel continually against injustice and oppression
3. Ordinary people are supposed to run things- we?ve been told again
and again leave it to us - to the politicians and the pundits. The
constitutional scholars know ordinary people in America are supposed
to be the leaders the agents of change, an d right now your country
needs you- transpartisan right or left your country needs you to see
this coup for what it is.
4. Americans cherish the rule of law- we're not supposed to sit idly
by when it is subverted and perverted- Why do people all over the
world envy us - its not our standard of living - although that?s
nice, It's how we feel inside because we are so free o we have been
because we cherish the rule of law -- judges tend not to be corrupt;
the constitution has protected us- that's what people envy- that?s
going to disappear unless we rise up against this violation of the
rule of law.
5. America had no established God- this is so important - these
people are seizing power in the name of a theocracy- I didn?t used
to thin this is true- not that they are driven by faith but they are
using faith as a mobilizing tool- Sarah Palin is going to extend that
theocracy - I?ve written a piece about that- The founders wanted to
ensure that this was a country of religious freedom -where you were
free in your conscience because they had come from places where
religious minorities, Christian minorities, were persecuted by the
states. America establishes no God .
6. We're supposed to deliberate with our neigbours- we're the ones
who are supposed to be having the debates not the right over here and
left over there - we are supposed to be face to face with one another
-
In town meetings, in city meetings, deliberating, setting the agenda
ourselves.
7. We cannot maintain an oppressive empire and still be Americans -
America is supposed to understand that liberty is a universal human
right. We are supposed to divest of an oppressive empire - and
become a Republic again and truly send out and support liberty abroad
rather than subverting democracies and turning a blind eye to them as
citizens .
Finally this new American revolution again it begins psychologically-
it begins by taking into our hearts that each of us is called upon by
our founders to stand up for freedom.
And the good news- we have to get the word out- is that historically
when millions of people rise up in time but the time it?s past
midnight Now . I used to say it is October of 1931. N o but now I?m
going to say it?s February 1933 and everything closed down for good
in April of 1933 in Germany. There is no more time - so we have to
understand that when millions of people rise up together- oppressors
are bullies and bullies are tyrants and historically what happens is
they flee, they cave and they turn each other in. That?s why you have
to move aggressively. You have to arrest these people. You have to
move into the rest of the cabal - You have to get a warrant to get
their computers, declare what has happened i.e. that a coup has taken
place- and when you find these people are charged and they?re in
custody that?s when they start to back off and turn on one another -
it happened with the Stasi and it happened with Joe McCarthy, But
the time is NOW!!
Thank you so much Mike I appreciate you giving me the time to get the
word out!
http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI (ca.30 MINUTES)
<><><><><><><><><><>< ><><>
[4] SPP and Deep Integration Implications for Canada and North
American Union under US martial law:
Note also that Canada is deeply integrated with the US through NAFTA,
the SPP and bi-national military planning agreement. Although some
SPP proponents indicated after the Montebello Summit that, from their
perspective, it had failed because of lack of transparency and
inability of business leaders to implement, because of the scrutiny
and opposition from civil society and opposition parties, we do know
that at the same time a myriad of committees are still in place
attempting to deregulate to the lowest common denominator a range of
regulatory regimes in regard to health, environment and food safety
as well as furthering the degree of both economic integration and a
major number of security rules, provisions and legislation which runs
contrary in some cases to international law, and our own beliefs and
values as Canadians about the kind of public policy we prefer. The
SPP is also moving us toward a custom's union and some aspects of a
common market , working on changes to allow that process to move
ahead. We are currently locked into a NAFTA agreement shown to be
detrimental in many ways to both workers and the environment and now
the SPP, NAFTA plus agreement is forcing deeper integration in
regard to energy, water, investment etc. with attempts at
harmonization of related regulations. In the past there have been
many arguments for a common monetary system i.e. the Amero - This
crisis should be warning enough to avoid any further integration with
the US and to heed the growing resistance to NAFTA and the calls for
renegotiation which are many and varied. We must also scrap the SPP
and we must avoid at all costs letting Harper achieve a majority
government. We don't know what kind of talks to further North
American Union could suddenly emerge as a done deal if this were so
especially under should martial law be declared in the US. .
And don't forget legislation is in place under the SPP allowing US
troops on our soil in case of an natural or manmade emergency.
And finally as the SPP falls under criticism not only from civil
society but also from business executives critical of the delays in
both process and implementation of border initiatives to speed trade
across the border, we now find out that thinking has begun in the
Institutes, think tanks and universities as to how a bi-lateral
economic and free trade agreement with the US might be more useful
than being stuck in a three way deal with Mexico with all of its
unique problems.
This should be an election issue !!
It is not that we should refrain from trading with our neighbours if
it is within reasonable distance, within bio-regions, and by
transport that reduces GHG emissions but we must insist on 'fair
trade' and ecologically sustainable principles to guide our trading
relationships. The existing free trade regimes are the instruments of
laissez-faire neo-conservative, Chicago School economic doctrines
that have led the world to the brink of financial and economic
disaster, the end of cheap oil, and to ecological collapse in
many of the world's ecosystems elevating to the global level the
issue, already felt in the developing world of food and water
scarcity.
Please post this far and wide . Even if it seems to some a bit
alarmist - it appears well documented - And NOW is the time to take
into account the breadth of potential consequences of the disasters,
chaos and collapse scenarios that have emerged at this time in
history and which should be framing any and all debates and
conversations about the future.
<><><><><><><><><><>< ><><><>
[5] FURTHER REFERENCES ON POTENTIAL OF U.S. DECLARATION OF MARTIAL
LAW
And note Naomi Wolf?s concerns about martial law and a coup are not
alone. Professor Michel Chossudovsky has written extensively during
the past few years about growing developments under the PNAC inspired
Bush Cheney regime moving the US toward martial law. Note the
following references on his globalresearch.ca website.
[ ] Secret Bush Administration Plan to Suspend US Constitution
- by Tom Burghardt - 2008-10-06
Exercising sweeping emergency powers, unelected officials could
suspend the Constitution, declare martial law and create an Executive
Branch dictatorship that rests solely on the power of the U.S.
military.
[ ] Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland. US
Combat Troops in Iraq repatriated to "help with civil unrest"
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2008-09-26
See also
[ ] Is the Annexation of Canada Part of Bush's Military Agenda?
- by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky - 2007-07-18
Territorial control over Canada is part of Washington's geopolitical
and military agenda as formulated in April 2002 by Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld.
[ ] Is America Preparing for Martial Law?
- by Michel Chossudovsky - 2005-04-10
These exercises must be understood in the broader context of
America's National Security doctrine, which presents Al Qaeda as the
main threat to the American homeland.
====================================
.
__,_._,___
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From McPogo at aol.com Fri Oct 10 21:26:01 2008
From: McPogo at aol.com (McPogo@aol.com)
Date: Fri Oct 10 21:26:10 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Alaska legislative panel: Palin abused authority
Message-ID:
Since Mr. Palin was subpoenaed (which he resisted contemptuously!) would it
then beg the question that he testified under Oath? Would his false testimony
not then be perjury? Isn't that a criminal offence for ordinary citizens?
Just wondering,
P.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------
(http://www.newsminer.com/)
_newsminer.com_ (http://www.newsminer.com/)
The voice of Interior Alaska since 1903
Alaska legislative panel: Palin abused authority
Matt Apuzzo/The Associated Press
Originally published Friday, October 10, 2008 at 10:21 a.m.
Updated Friday, October 10, 2008 at 5:21 p.m.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by
trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief
investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday. The politically
charged inquiry imperiled her reputation as a reformer on John McCain's
Republican ticket.
Investigator Stephen Branchflower, in a report by a bipartisan panel that
investigated the matter, found Palin in violation of a state ethics law that
prohibits public officials from using their office for personal gain.
The inquiry looked into her dismissal of Public Safety Commissioner Walter
Monegan, who said he lost his job because he resisted pressure to fire a state
trooper involved in a bitter divorce with the governor's sister. Palin says
Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.
The report found that Palin let the family grudge influence her
decision-making even if it was not the sole reason Monegan was dismissed. "I feel
vindicated," Monegan said. "It sounds like they've validated my belief and opinions.
And that tells me I'm not totally out in left field."
Branchflower said Palin violated a statute of the Alaska Executive Branch
Ethics Act.
Palin and McCain's supporters had hoped the inquiry's finding would be
delayed until after the presidential election to spare her any embarrassment and
to put aside an enduring distraction as she campaigns as McCain's running mate
in an uphill contest against Democrat Barack Obama.
But the panel of lawmakers voted to release the report, although not without
dissension. There was no immediate vote on whether to endorse its findings.
"I think there are some problems in this report," said Republican state Sen.
Gary Stevens, a member of the panel. "I would encourage people to be very
cautious, to look at this with a jaundiced eye."
The nearly 300-page report does not recommend sanctions or a criminal
investigation.
The investigation revealed that Palin's husband, Todd, has extraordinary
access to the governor's office and her closest advisers. He used that access to
try to get trooper Mike Wooten fired, the report found.
Branchflower faulted Sarah Palin for taking no action to stop that. He also
noted there is evidence the governor herself participated in the effort.
(http://ad.doubleclick.net/click;h=v8/3756/0/0/*/w;208154682;0-0;1;30374079;4307-300/250;28569445/28587324/1;;~aopt=2/1/ff/0;~sscs=?http://www.uaf.edu/muse
um/exhibits/special/)
**************
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From papadop at peak.org Fri Oct 10 22:01:48 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Fri Oct 10 22:30:54 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] The financial problem -- and a solution
Message-ID:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20985.htm
A Solution?
By Paul Craig Roberts
10/10/08
ICH
-- - Readers have been pressing for a solution to the financial crisis.
But first it is necessary to understand the problem.
Here is the problem as I see it. If my diagnosis is correct, the solution
below might be appropriate.
Let s begin with the fact that the financial crisis is more or less
worldwide. The mechanism that spread the American-made financial crisis
abroad was the massive US trade deficit. Every year the countries with
which the US has trade deficits end up in the aggregate with hundreds of
billions of dollars.
Countries don t put these dollars in a mattress. They invest them.
They buy up US companies, real estate, and toll roads. They also purchase
US financial assets. They finance the US government budget deficit by
purchasing Treasury bonds and bills. They help to finance the US mortgage
market by purchasing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds.
They buy financial instruments, such as mortgage-backed securities and
other derivatives, from US investment banks, and that is how the US
financial crisis was spread abroad. If the US current account was close to
balance, the contagion would have lacked a mechanism by which to spread.
One reason the US trade deficit is so large is the practice of US
corporations offshoring their production of goods and services for US
markets. When these products are brought into the US to be sold, they
count as imports.
Thus, economists were wrong to see the trade deficit as a non-problem and
to regard offshoring as a plus for the US economy.
The fact that much of the financial world is polluted with US toxic
financial instruments could affect the ability of the US Treasury to
borrow the money to finance the bailout of the financial institutions.
Foreign central banks might need their reserves to bail out their own
financial systems. As the US savings rate is approximately zero, the only
alternative to foreign borrowing is the printing of money.
Financial deregulation was an important factor in the development of the
crisis. The most reckless deregulation occurred in 1999, 2000, and 2004.
See Roberts,
http://www.electricpolitics.com/2008/10the_end_of_american_hegemony.ht ml
Lax mortgage lending policies grew out of pressures placed on mortgage
lenders during the 1990s by the US Department of Justice and federal
regulatory agencies to race-norm their mortgage lending and to provide
below-market loans to preferred minorities. Subprime mortgages became a
potential systemic threat when issuers ceased to bear any risk by selling
the mortgages, which were then amalgamated with other mortgages and became
collateral for mortgage-backed securities.
Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan s inexplicable low interest rate
policy allowed the systemic threat to develop. Low interest rates push up
housing prices by lowering monthly mortgage payments, thus increasing
housing demand. Rising home prices created equity to justify 100 percent
mortgages. Buyers leveraged themselves to the hilt and lacked the ability
to make payments when they lost their jobs or when adjustable rates and
interest escalator clauses pushed up monthly payments.
Wall Street analysts pushed financial institutions to increase their
earnings, which they did by leveraging their assets and by insuring debt
instruments instead of maintaining appropriate reserves. This spread the
crisis from banks to insurance companies.
Finance chiefs around the world are dealing with the crisis by bailing out
banks and by lowering interest rates. This suggests that the authorities
see the problem as a solvency problem for the financial institutions and
as a liquidity problem. US Treasury Secretary Paulson s solution, for
example, leaves unattended the continuing mortgage defaults and
foreclosures. The fall in the US stock market predicts a serious
recession, which means rising unemployment and more defaults and
foreclosures.
In place of a liquidity problem, I see an over-abundance of debt
instruments relative to wealth. A fractional reserve banking system based
on fiat money appears to be capable of creating debt instruments faster
than an economy can create real wealth. Add in credit card debt, stocks
purchased on margin, and leveraged derivatives, and debt is pyramided
relative to real assets.
Add in the mark-to-market rule, which forces troubled assets to be
under-valued, thus threatening the solvency of institutions, and
short-selling, which drives down the shares of troubled institutions,
thereby depriving them of credit lines, and you have an outline of the
many causes of the current crisis.
If the diagnosis is correct, the solution is multifaceted.
Instead of wasting $700 billion on a bailout of the guilty that does not
address the problem, the money should be used to refinance the troubled
mortgages, as was done during the Great Depression. If the mortgages were
not defaulting, the income flows from the mortgage interest through to the
holders of the mortgage-backed securities would be restored. Thus, the
solvency problem faced by the holders of these securities would be at an
end.
The financial markets must be carefully re-regulated, not over-regulated
or wrongly regulated.
To shore up the credibility of the US Treasury s own credit rating and the
US dollar as world reserve currency, the US budget and trade deficits must
be addressed. The US budget deficit can be eliminated by halting the Bush
Regime s gratuitous wars and by cutting the extravagant US military
budget. The US spends more on military than the rest of the world
combined. This is insane and unaffordable. A balanced budget is a signal
to the world that the US government is serious and is taking measures to
reduce its demand on the supply of world savings.
The trade deficit is more difficult to reduce as the US has stupidly
permitted itself to become dependent not merely on imports of foreign
energy, but also on imports of foreign manufactured goods including
advanced technology products. Steps can be taken to bring home the
offshored production of US goods for US markets. This would substantially
reduce the trade deficit and, thus, restore credibility to the US dollar
as world reserve currency. Follow-up measures would be required to insure
that US imports do not greatly exceed exports.
The US will have to set aside the racial privileges that federal
bureaucrats pulled out of the Civil Rights Act and restore sound lending
practices. It the US government itself wishes to subsidize at taxpayer
expense home purchases by non-qualified buyers, that is a political
decision subject to electoral ratification. But the US government must
cease to force private lenders to breech the standards of prudence.
The issuance of credit cards must be brought back to prudent standards,
with checks on credit history, employment, and income.
Balances that grow over time must be seen as a problem against which
reserves must be provided, instead of a source of rising interest income
to the credit card companies.
Fractional reserve banking must be reined in by higher reserve
requirements, rising over time perhaps to 100 percent. If banks were true
financial intermediaries, they would not have money creating power, and
the proliferation of debt relative to wealth would be reduced.
Does the US have the leadership to realize the problem and to deal with
it? Not if Bush, Cheney, Paulson, Bernanke, McCain and Obama are the best
leadership that America can produce.
The Great Depression lasted a decade because the authorities were unable
to comprehend that the Federal Reserve had allowed the supply of money to
shrink. The shrunken money supply could not employ the same number of
workers at the same wages, and it could not purchase the same amount of
goods and service at the same prices. Thus, prices and employment fell.
The explanation of the Great Depression was not known until the 1960s when
Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz published their Monetary History of the
United States. Given the stupidity of our leadership and the stupidity of
so many of our economists, we may learn what happened to us this year in
2038, three decades from now.
From papadop at peak.org Fri Oct 10 23:34:59 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Sat Oct 11 00:04:07 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SCANDAL ALMOST BURIED BY CRISIS
Message-ID:
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081010/COLUMNIST13/810109970
TOLEDO BLADE -- Saturday, October 10, 2008
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SCANDAL ALMOST BURIED BY FINANCIAL CRISIS
AT ANY other time, what happened in the U.S. Justice Department last week
would have been big news. At any other time, when internal reports by
Justice Department call for more investigation into a case of unethical,
if not criminal, conduct on the part of lawmakers and the White House, the
administration would have a lot of explaining to do.
But the Bush Administration got lucky. As its Treasury and Federal Reserve
chiefs warned that the sky was falling and the economic crash and
continuing tumult on Wall Street made them seem prophetic, the Justice
Department released a nearly 400-page scalding indictment of the
administration over the controversial firings of several U.S. attorneys in
2006.
It was an overlooked bombshell in breaking news cycles preoccupied with
financial crisis, rescue plans, presidential politics, and a vice
presidential debate.
But what the Justice Department's exhaustive investigation and blistering
report concluded about the enormous damage done to the department through
improper politicization is far more troubling than even Sarah Palin in
disjointed attack mode.
Investigators from both the department's Office of Inspector General and
Office of Professional Responsibility found that political pressure did
indeed drive the dismissal action against at least three of the nine
federal prosecutors abruptly fired. At the time, then-Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales insisted the individuals were all dismissed for
inadequate performance, or failure to implement the Presidents law
enforcement agenda.
But it appears the longtime pal and adviser to President Bush was lying
through his teeth. Turns out the real reason some of the top federal
lawyers were removed from the job, according to the Justice Department
report, was that either the U.S. attorneys had the audacity to prosecute
Republicans or because they failed to aggressively prosecute Democrats.
Either way, their behavior ticked off well-connected GOP politicians who
had come to expect a politically loyal Justice Department. A couple of
calls from powerful New Mexico Republican officeholders helped push former
U.S. attorney David Iglesias out of a job.
Evidently, the top New Mexico prosecutor was remiss in his duty to produce
criminal charges against Democrats in the run-up to the 2006 election.
Another U.S. attorney in Missouri lost his post over a petty complaint
from Republican Sen. Christopher Bond, and still another was bumped to
make room for a protege of White House political adviser Karl Rove.
There was a pervading culture of partisanship/loyalty-above-all-else in
the department, recalled one of the fired attorneys.
Not only were my colleagues and I not insulated from politics as we should
have been in our jobs as prosecutors but we were fired for the most
partisan reasons, Mr. Iglesias said.
But it mattered not to the Machiavellian Bush Administration that justice
was compromised with appalling political interference. It operates under
the premise that the ends always justify the means.
LOOK AT THE PATTERN.
The administration used fear about nonexistent WMDs as a means to justify
the ends of invading Iraq. It outed a CIA operative to punish critics,
eliminated civil rights under the misnamed Patriot Act to expand executive
authority, crafted energy policy with energy companies to benefit the
energy industry, and allowed the subprime mortgage mess to perpetuate to
generate obscene wealth for a few.
And now there are official findings of fact about the politically charged
dismissals of U.S. attorneys conducted to satisfy a White House agenda.
Scandal-weary Americans may be inclined to dismiss yet another
administration disgrace, but what happened at the Justice Department is
too big a deal to ignore.
We're supposed to be a country that requires equal justice under the law,
not tainted justice under political consideration. But that's what we had
under shameless administration zealots like Mr. Rove and Mr. Gonzalez.
The former administration officials allowed the most invaluable assets of
the Justice Department its integrity and independence to be jeopardized
for political ends. They permitted wholesale politicization of the
department, as one commentary put it, by subjecting new hires and sitting
U.S. attorneys to rigid ideological litmus tests.
Even though new Attorney General Michael Mukasey has appointed a federal
prosecutor to investigate whether criminal laws were violated all the way
to the Oval Office, the administration may luck out again.
As time runs out on its lamentable tenure, the injustice it perpetrated on
a once-venerated institution may go unpunished.
But before the next administration takes over, Americans need firm
assurance that the rule of law will be applied fairly by the Justice
Department. Never again can there be partisan allegiance required of
incoming professionals, or political criteria that outweigh the legal and
ethical.
The impartial administration of justice in this nation, its very
credibility, was nearly destroyed by the tyrannical ambitions of a few.
Hows that for big news almost buried?
From papadop at peak.org Fri Oct 10 23:44:37 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Sat Oct 11 00:13:40 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Official Alaska Probe accuses Palin of abuse of power
Message-ID:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081011/pl_afp/usvote_081011020526
Agence France Presse --Fri Oct 10, 10:05 PM ET
JUNEAU, Alaska (AFP) - Investigators found vice presidential nominee
Sarah Palin abused her powers as Alaska governor, dealing another blow to
Republican John McCain's struggling White House bid.
As McCain sought to restore control over his unruly rallies which have
seen a stream of invective, including a death threat, targeted at
Democratic rival Barack Obama, the "troopergate" scandal threatened to
torpedo his campaign.
In a long-awaited 263-page report released on Friday by Alaska's
Legislative Council, investigator Steve Branchflower said Palin was
guilty of violating ethics rules for public officials.
He said Palin had allowed her husband Todd Palin to use the Alaska
governor's office and its resources to pressure officials to fire her
former brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten.
"Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where
impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to
advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten
fired," the report said.
"She had the authority and power to require Mr Palin to cease
contacting subordinates, but she failed to act," the report added.
Palin, the first woman to be selected on a Republican ticket, was
plucked from political obscurity in Alaska by the Arizona senator in
late August to be his running mate in the November 4 elections.
A devout Christian mother-of-five who is pro-life and a committed
hunter, she fired up the party's conservative base, which had not
fully embraced McCain.
But her lack of national and foreign experience raised doubts among
observers about McCain's hasty judgment in assigning such a high
office to a young unknown.
Palin, 44, has become McCain's chief attack dog against Obama, drawing
thousands of people to her rallies, and accusing the Chicago senator at
the weekend of "palling around with terrorists."
As Obama, 47, took a hefty lead in the polls even in battleground
states, McCain's campaign sought to refocus its fight for the White
House away from the economy, with relentless, searing attacks.
But a series of negatives ads casting doubt on Obama's character and his
past associations backed by frequent pointed questions about who he is,
whipped up anger at the Republican rallies, causing widespread concern.
After the US Secret Service said Thursday it was investigating an
alleged death threat shouted at a Florida rally, McCain was forced to
tone down the attacks.
"We want to fight, and I will fight, but we will be respectful. I
admire Senator Obama and his accomplishments and I will respect him,"
McCain, 72, told a Minnesota rally Friday.
"I want to be president ... but I have to tell you that he is a decent
person and a person you don't have to be scared of as president of the
United States."
Crowds at the rallies had become increasing inflammatory shouting out
"terrorist" and "liar" when Obama was mentioned. At one Florida rally,
someone even shouted "kill him."
Obama, who has kept his campaign focused on the country's worst
economic crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s, on Friday
rebuked McCain for preaching a politics of "anger and division."
"In the last couple of days we have seen a barrage of nasty
insinuations and attacks and I am sure we will see much more over the
next 25 days," he told an Ohio rally.
"It's easy to rile up a crowd by stoking anger and division. But that is
not what we need now in the United States, the times are too
serious."
The economy is now voters' top concern, and for the first time in a
Newsweek poll, Obama was Friday given a double digit lead, of 52
percent with 41 percent for McCain.
The last poll by the magazine a month ago, before the economic crisis
began to bit, had the two men tied on 46 percent.
But with 25 days to go before Americans cast their ballots, McCain
vowed to come up from behind.
"How many times, my friends, have the pundits written off the McCain
campaign?" he told the cheering crowd. "We're going to fool 'em again, my
friend!"
From McPogo at aol.com Sat Oct 11 15:26:58 2008
From: McPogo at aol.com (McPogo@aol.com)
Date: Sat Oct 11 15:27:11 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Audio Expert Says Cadman Tape Not Altered
Message-ID:
Audio Expert Says Cadman Tape Not Altered
Source: CBC News
Posted: 10/11/08 9:41AM
Filed Under: _Canada_ (http://news.aol.ca/canada)
A tape recording at the centre of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's
$3.5-million defamation suit against the Liberal party was not altered as the prime
minister has claimed, a court-ordered analysis of the tape by Harper's own audio
expert has found.
Photo Gallery
(CP Images)
The key portion of the recorded interview of Harper by a B.C. journalist
contains no splices, edits or alterations, a U.S. forensic audio expert has
determined.
The findings may call into question Harper's testimony about the interview
during a sworn cross-examination conducted by a Liberal party lawyer in August.
The analysis was filed in Ontario Superior Court on Friday by lawyers for the
Liberal party, despite attempts by Harper's lawyer to keep the opinion out
of the court file until at least next week.
Harper sued the Liberals in the midst of a raging controversy earlier this
year over claims in a book by B.C. author Tom Zytaruk that the Conservatives
offered the late Independent MP Chuck Cadman a $1-million life insurance policy
in return for help defeating the minority Liberal government in 2005.
The prime minister maintains that Zytaruk doctored the tape of an interview
he conducted with Harper after Cadman died.
In an interview with CBC New Friday, Zytaruk said he felt vindicated by the
audio expert's findings.
"I've got these guys accusing me of doctoring the tape. No, you know. I don't
like the impact that it has on my family. It's just one ridiculous situation
after another over these past months," Zytaruk said.
"I'm finding some redemption in this thing. And I'm happy with our system
too, and that this is happening today and that this news is coming out.
"Our government, they can say whatever they want basically about the little
guy, and unless you have a barrel of money, you're going to just have to suck
it up, you know?"
Harper denies that he told Zytaruk he was unaware of the "details" of the
insurance policy offer. He insists that he only confirmed the party had offered
Cadman "financial considerations" in return for rejoining the Tories and
voting against the Liberals in a Commons confidence vote.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tom Hanson
But former FBI agent Bruce Koenig, the sound expert Harper hired to prove his
allegations, submitted a report dated Friday to Harper's lawyer, which also
had to be sent to the Liberal lawyer Chris Paliare.
In the report, Koenig concluded that the first part of Zytaruk's interview
with Harper, which contains the key portions that the prime minister has
contested, was intact.
The second part, beginning roughly one minute and 41 seconds into the tape,
was a new recording that was made over the final part of the original
recording, he said. But the first crucial minute and 41 seconds had not been altered.
Koenig reported that the tape "contains neither physical nor electronic
splices, edits or alterations, except for the over-recording start that erased
and replaced the end of the first part of the designated interview." Harper
spokesman says finding doesn't undermine case
Kory Teneycke, a spokesman for Harper, maintained that the findings do not
undermine the prime minister's case ? and in fact can be used to buttress
Harper's claims.
"This report supports our position that the tape does not represent the
complete interview, and as such is favourable to our case," said Teneycke.
But it's the first portion of the interview ? the first one minute and 41
seconds that Koenig says were not tampered with ? that is considered key.
That part of the recording includes Zytaruk's question to Harper on whether
he knew anything about a $1-million insurance policy that unidentified
Conservatives had allegedly offered to Cadman in return for his support in
Parliament against the Liberals.
"I don't know the details, I know that, um, there were discussions, um, but
this is not for publication?" Harper replies on the tape.
Zytaruk tells Harper his comments are intended for a book Zytaruk was writing
about Cadman, who had died earlier that summer in 2005.
Harper again says he "didn't know the details" but adds that he told
Conservatives who were going to approach Cadman they were unlikely to succeed.
"They were just, they were convinced there was, there were, financial
issues," Harper says. He later qualifies his response to Zytaruk by saying: "Of
the, uh, uh, the offer to Chuck was that, it was only to replace financial
considerations he might lose due to an election." Harper told court that tape was
edited
When Liberal lawyer Paliare questioned Harper during cross-examination in
August, Harper said of Zytaruk's question about the insurance policy: "That is
not the question as he put it. He has done some editing there.
"What I do know is that this answer is not the answer to this question, I
think there's been some editing in this question, so I don't think it goes from
this question to this answer."
Harper insisted in his testimony that at that point in the interview he told
Zytaruk he did not know about the offer of an insurance policy. He claimed
Zytaruk edited that response out of the recording.
Harper testified that he authorized his campaign manager, Doug Finley, and
former adviser Tom Flanagan to approach Cadman only with an offer of financial
help should Cadman vote against the Liberals and then run for the
Conservatives in the election that would have ensued.
Harper's lawyer, Richard Dearden, convinced Justice Charles Hackland last
month to postpone a hearing into the veracity of the audiotape until after the
federal election. The two sides have a conference scheduled with Hackland next
week on other aspects of the case.
? The Canadian Press, 2008
**************
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From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Sat Oct 11 19:34:25 2008
From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta)
Date: Sat Oct 11 19:49:35 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] John Bellamy Foster: Can the financial crisis be
reversed? | Links
Message-ID: <48F14611.4070104@greenleft.org.au>
``Will it work? Can they avoid a massive devaluation of capital across
the board? I doubt it. It is likely too late to stabilise things in this
way. Things have gone too far. The crux of the matter is that the whole
"Atlantic" economy is in trouble, not just the financial sector.
Consumption is collapsing in the United States, where it represents more
than two thirds of total demand, and a good part of world demand.
Fifteen per cent of the population is under water with their mortgages.
Real wages in the United States have not risen since the 1970s and
people are deeply in debt and their circumstances are eroding.
Unemployment is way up and jobs are vanishing. Where the productive base
of the economy is weakening drastically, a falling financial
superstructure, finding the ground shifting under it, is unlikely to be
able to right itself.
``As for the politics of nationalisation of banks in the US and UK, one
should not confuse this -- as is all too common -- with socialism or
even radicalism, unless one is talking about socialism for the rich.
This is just another desperate stop-gap measure aimed at preventing a
full-scale debt deflation. But as a sign of the total collapse of the
"US model" of "free market" finance capitalism, the moral and political
consequences are vast.''
Full article at http://links.org.au/node/677
For Links full coverage of the capitalist economic meltdown, see
http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/137
Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
From papadop at peak.org Sun Oct 12 00:42:48 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Sun Oct 12 01:12:13 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Vanity Fair piece on HOW U$ could regain economic sanity
Message-ID:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/11/stiglitz200811?printable=true¤tPage=all
Vanity Fair November 2008
This Vanity Fair piece is opened by a Margaret Bourke-White photo of 1937
destitution
########
THE ECONOMY
Lining up for food and water, Louisville, Kentucky, 1937 --
The past as prologue? Lining up for food and water, Louisville,
Kentucky, 1937. By Margaret Bourke-White/Time & Life Pictures/Getty
Images.
##############
REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
Describing how ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, and
sheer incompetence have left the U.S. economy on life support, the author
puts forth a clear, commonsense plan to reverse the Bush-era follies and
regain America's economic sanity.
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
################
When the American economy enters a downturn, you often hear the experts
debating whether it is likely to be V-shaped (short and sharp) or U-shaped
(longer but milder). Today, the American economy may be entering a
downturn that is best described as L-shaped. It is in a very low place
indeed, and likely to remain there for some time to come.
Virtually all the indicators look grim. Inflation is running at an annual
rate of nearly 6 percent, its highest level in 17 years. Unemployment
stands at 6 percent; there has been no net job growth in the private
sector for almost a year. Housing prices have fallen faster than at any
time in memory--in Florida and California, by 30 percent or more. Banks
are reporting record losses, only months after their executives walked off
with record bonuses as their reward. President Bush inherited a $128
billion budget surplus from Bill Clinton; this year the federal government
announced the second-largest budget deficit ever reported. During the
eight years of the Bush administration, the national debt has increased by
more than 65 percent, to nearly $10 trillion (to which the debts of
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae should now be added, according to the
Congressional Budget Office). Meanwhile, we are saddled with the cost of
two wars. The price tag for the one in Iraq alone will, by my estimate,
ultimately exceed $3 trillion.
Joseph E. Stiglitz
THE $3 TRILLION WAR, APRIL 2008 (WITH LINDA J. BILMES)
THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF MR. BUSH, DECEMBER 2007
This tangled knot of problems will be difficult to unravel. Standard
prescriptions call for raising interest rates when confronted with
inflation, just as standard prescriptions call for lowering interest rates
when confronted with an economic downturn. How do you do both at the same
time? Not in the way that some politicians have proposed. With gasoline
prices at all-time highs, John McCain has called for a rollback of gas
taxes. But that would lead to more gas consumption, raise the price of gas
further, increase our dependence on foreign oil, and expand our already
massive trade deficit. The expanding deficit would in turn force the U.S.
to continue borrowing gargantuan sums from abroad, making us even more
indebted. At the same time, the higher imports of oil and petroleum-based
products would lead to a weaker dollar, fueling inflationary pressures.
Millions of Americans are losing their homes. (Already, some 3.6 million
have done so since the subprime-mortgage crisis began.) This social
catastrophe has severe economic effects. The banks and other financial
institutions that own these mortgages face stunning reverses; a few, such
as Bear Stearns, have already gone belly-up. To prevent America's $5.2
trillion home financiers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, from following suit,
Congress authorized a blank check to cover their losses, but even that
generosity failed to do the trick. Now the administration has taken over
the two entities completely, a stunning feat for a supposedly
market-oriented regime. These bailouts contribute to growing deficits in
the short run, and to perverse incentives in the long run. Market
economies work only when there is a system of accountability, but
C.E.O.'s, investors, and creditors are walking away with billions, while
American taxpayers are being asked to pick up the tab. (Freddie Mac's
chairman, Richard Syron, earned $14.5 million in 2007. Fannie Mae's
C.E.O., Daniel Mudd, earned $14.2 million that same year.) We're looking
at a new form of public-private partnership, one in which the public
shoulders all the risk, and the private sector gets all the profit. While
the Bush administration preaches responsibility, the words are addressed
only to the less well-off. The administration talks about the impact of
"moral hazard" on the poor "speculator" who borrowed money and bought a
house beyond his ability to pay. But moral hazard somehow isn't an issue
when it comes to the high-stakes speculators in corporate boardrooms.
HOW DID WE GET INTO THIS MESS?
A unique combination of ideology, special-interest pressure, populist
politics, bad economics, and sheer incompetence has brought us to our
present condition.
Ideology proclaimed that markets were always good and government always
bad. While George W. Bush has done as much as he can to ensure that
government lives up to that reputation--it is the one area where he has
overperformed--the fact is that key problems facing our society cannot be
addressed without an effective government, whether it's maintaining
national security or protecting the environment. Our economy rests on
public investments in technology, such as the Internet. While Bush's
ideology led him to underestimate the importance of government, it also
led him to underestimate the limitations of markets. We learned from the
Depression that markets are not self-adjusting--at least, not in a time
frame that matters to living people. Today everyone--even the
president--accepts the need for macro-economic policy, for government to
try to maintain the economy at near-full employment. But in a sleight of
hand, free-market economists promoted the idea that, once the economy was
restored to full employment, markets would always allocate resources
efficiently. The best regulation, in their view, was no regulation at all,
and if that didn't sell, then "self-regulation" was almost as good.
The underlying idea was, on the face of it, absurd: that market failures
come only in macro doses, in the form of the recessions and depressions
that have periodically plagued capitalist economies for the past several
hundred years. Isn't it more reasonable to assume that these failures are
just the tip of the iceberg? That beneath the surface lie a myriad of
smaller but harder-to-assess inefficiencies? Let me venture an analogy
from biology: A patient arrives at a hospital in serious condition.
Now, it may be that the patient has simply fallen victim to one of those
debilitating ailments that go around from time to time and can be cured by
a massive dose of antibiotics. In this case we have a macro problem with
a macro solution. But it could instead be that the patient is suffering
from a decade of serious abuse--smoking, drinking, overeating, lack of
exercise, a fondness for crystal meth--and that it has not only taken a
catastrophic toll but also left him open to opportunistic infections of
every kind. In other words, a buildup of micro problems has led to a macro
problem, and no cure is possible without addressing the underlying issues.
The American economy today is a patient of the second kind.
We are in the midst of micro-economic failure on a grand scale. Financial
markets receive generous compensation--in the form of more than 30 percent
of all corporate profits--presumably for performing two critical tasks:
allocating savings and managing risk. But the financial markets have
failed laughably at both. Hundreds of billions of dollars were allocated
to home loans beyond Americans' ability to pay. And rather than managing
risk, the financial markets created more risk. The failure of our
financial system to do what it is supposed to do matches in destructive
grandeur the macro-economic failures of the Great Depression.
Economic theory--and historical experience--long ago proved the need for
regulation of financial markets. But ever since the Reagan presidency,
deregulation has been the prevailing religion. Never mind that the few
times "free banking" has been tried--most recently in Pinochet's Chile,
under the influence of the doctrinaire free-market theorist Milton
Friedman--the experiment has ended in disaster. Chile is still paying back
the debts from its misadventure. With massive problems in 1987 (remember
Black Friday, when stock markets plunged almost 25 percent), 1989 (the
savings-and-loan debacle), 1997 (the East Asia financial crisis), 1998
(the bailout of Long Term Capital Management), and 2001-02 (the collapses
of Enron and WorldCom), one might think there would be more skepticism
about the wisdom of leaving markets to themselves.
The new populist rhetoric of the right--persuading taxpayers that ordinary
people always know how to spend money better than the government does, and
promising a new world without budget constraints, where every tax cut
generates more revenue--hasn't helped matters. Special interests took
advantage of this seductive mixture of populism and free-market ideology.
They also bent the rules to suit themselves. Corporations and the wealthy
argued that lowering their tax rates would lead to more savings; they got
the tax breaks, but America's household savings rate not only didn't rise,
it dropped to levels not seen in 75 years. The Bush administration
extolled the power of the free market, but it was more than willing to
provide generous subsidies to farmers and erect tariffs to protect
steelmakers. Lately, as we have seen, it seems willing to write blank
checks to bail out its friends on Wall Street. In each of these cases
there are clear winners. And in each there are clear losers--including
the country as a whole.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
As America attempts to work its way out of the present crisis, the danger
is that we will listen to the same people on Wall Street and in the
economic establishment who got us into it. For them, our current
predicament is another opportunity: if they can shape the government
response appropriately, they stand to gain, or at least stand to lose
less, and they may be willing to sacrifice the well-being of the economy
for their own benefit--just as they did in the past.
There are a number of economic tools at the country's disposal. As noted,
they can yield contradictory results. The sad truth is that we have
reached the limits of monetary policy. Lowering interest rates will not
stimulate the economy much--banks are not going to be willing to lend to
strapped consumers, and consumers are not going to be willing to borrow as
they see housing prices continue to fall. And raising interest rates, to
combat inflation, won't have the desired impact either, because the prices
that are the main sources of our inflation--for food and energy--are
determined in international markets; the chief consequence will be
distress for ordinary people. The quandaries that we face mean that
careful balancing is required. There is no quick and easy fix. But if we
take decisive action today, we can shorten the length of the downturn and
reduce its magnitude. If at the same time we think about what would be
good for the economy in the long run, we can build a durable foundation
for economic health.
To go back to that patient in the emergency room: we need to address the
underlying causes. Most of the treatment options entail painful choices,
but there are a few easy ones. On energy: conservation and research into
new technologies will make us less dependent on foreign oil, reduce our
trade imbalance, and help the environment. Expanding drilling into
environmentally fragile areas, as some propose, would have a negligible
effect on the price we pay for oil. Moreover, a policy of "drain America
first" will make us more dependent on foreigners in the future. It is
shortsighted in every dimension.
Our ethanol policy is also bad for the taxpayer, bad for the environment,
bad for the world and our relations with other countries, and bad in terms
of inflation. It is good only for the ethanol producers and American corn
farmers. It should be scrapped. We currently subsidize corn-based ethanol
by almost $1 a gallon, while imposing a 54-cent-a-gallon tariff on
Brazilian sugar-based ethanol. It would be hard to invent a worse policy.
The ethanol industry tries to sell itself as an infant, needing help to
get on its feet, but it has been an infant for more than two decades,
refusing to grow up. Our misguided biofuel policy is taking land used for
food production and diverting it to energy production for cars; it is the
single most important factor contributing to higher grain prices.
Our tax policies need to be changed. There is something deeply peculiar
about having rich individuals who make their money speculating on real
estate or stocks paying lower taxes than middle-class Americans, whose
income is derived from wages and salaries; something peculiar and indeed
offensive about having those whose income is derived from inherited stocks
paying lower taxes than those who put in a 50-hour workweek. Skewing the
tax rates in the other direction would provide better incentives where
they count and would more effectively stimulate the economy, with more
revenues and lower deficits.
We can have a financial system that is more stable--and even more
dynamic--with stronger regulation. Self-regulation is an oxymoron.
Financial markets produced loans and other products that were so complex
and insidious that even their creators did not fully understand them;
these products were so irresponsible that analysts called them "toxic."
Yet financial markets failed to create products that would enable ordinary
households to face the risks they confront and stay in their homes. We
need a financial-products safety commission and a financial-systems
stability commission. And they can't be run by Wall Street. The Federal
Reserve Board shares too much of the mind-set of those it is supposed to
regulate. It could and should have known that something was wrong. It had
instruments at its disposal to let the air out of the bubble--or at least
ensure that the bubble didn't over-expand. But it chose to do nothing.
Throwing the poor out of their homes because they can't pay their
mortgages is not only tragic--it is pointless. All that happens is that
the property deteriorates and the evicted people move somewhere else.
The most coldhearted banker ought to understand the basic economics:
banks lose money when they foreclose--the vacant homes typically sell for
far less than they would if they were lived in and cared for. If banks
won't renegotiate, we should have an expedited special bankruptcy
procedure, akin to what we do for corporations in Chapter 11, allowing
people to keep their homes and re-structure their finances.
If this sounds too much like coddling the irresponsible, remember that
there are two sides to every mortgage--the lender and the borrower. Both
enter freely into the deal. One might say that both are, accordingly,
equally responsible. But one side--the lender--is supposed to be
financially sophisticated. In contrast, the borrowers in the subprime
market consist mainly of people who are financially unsophisticated. For
many, their home is their only asset, and when they lose it, they lose
their life savings. Remember, too, that we already give big homeowner
subsidies, through the tax system, to affluent families. With tax
deductions, the government is paying in some states almost half of all
mortgage interest and real-estate taxes. But many lower-income people,
whose deductions are meaningless because their tax bill is too small, get
no help. It makes much more sense to convert these tax deductions into
cashable tax credits, so that the fraction of housing costs borne by the
government for the poor and the rich is the same.
About these matters there should be no debate--but there will be. Already,
those on Wall Street are arguing that we have to be careful not to
"over-react." Over-reaction, we are told, might stifle "innovation."
Well, some innovations ought to be stifled. Those toxic mortgages were
certainly innovative. Other innovations were simply devices to circumvent
regulations--regulations intended to prevent the kinds of problems from
which our economy now suffers. Some of the innovations were designed to
tart up the bottom line, moving liabilities off the balance
sheet--charades designed to blur the information available to investors
and regulators. They succeeded: the full extent of the exposure was not
clear, and still isn't. But there is a reason we need reliable accounting.
Without good information it is hard to make good economic decisions. In
short, some innovations come with very high price tags. Some can actually
cause instability.
The free-market fundamentalists--who believe in the miracles of
markets--have not been averse to accepting government bailouts. Indeed,
they have demanded them, warning that unless they get what they want the
whole system may crash. What politician wants to be blamed for the next
Great Depression, simply because he stood on principle? I have been
critical of weak anti-trust policies that allowed certain institutions to
become so dominant that they are "too big to fail." The harsh reality is
that, given how far we've come, we will see more bailouts in the days
ahead. Now that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in federal receivership, we
must insist: not a dime of taxpayer money should be put at risk while
shareholders and creditors, who failed to oversee management, are
permitted to walk away with anything they please. To do otherwise would
invite a recurrence. Moreover, while these institutions may be too big to
fail, they're not too big to be reorganized. And we need to remember why
we're bailing them out: in order to maintain a flow of money into mortgage
markets. It's outrageous that these institutions are responding to their
near-monopoly position by raising fees and increasing the costs of
mortgages, which will only worsen the housing crisis. They, and the
financial markets, have shown little interest in measures that could help
millions of existing and potential homeowners out of the bind they're in.
The hardest puzzles will be in monetary policy (balancing the risks of
inflation and the risk of a deeper downturn) and fiscal policy (balancing
the risk of a deeper downturn and the risk of an exploding deficit). The
standard analysis coming from financial markets these days is that
inflation is the greatest threat, and therefore we need to raise interest
rates and cut deficits, which will restore confidence and thereby restore
the economy. This is the same bad economics that didn't work in East Asia
in 1997 and didn't work in Russia and Brazil in 1998. Indeed, it is the
same recipe prescribed by Herbert Hoover in 1929.
It is a recipe, moreover, that would be particularly hard on working
people and the poor. Higher interest rates dampen inflation by cutting
back so sharply on aggregate demand that the unemployment rate grows and
wages fall. Eventually, prices fall, too. As noted, the cause of our
inflation today is largely imported--it comes from global food and energy
prices, which are hard to control. To curb inflation therefore means that
the price of everything else needs to fall drastically to compensate,
which means that unemployment would also have to rise drastically.
In addition, this is not the time to turn to the old-time fiscal religion.
Confidence in the economy won't be restored as long as growth is low, and
growth will be low if investment is anemic, consumption weak, and public
spending on the wane. Under these circumstances, to mindlessly cut taxes
or reduce government expenditures would be folly.
But there are ways of thoughtfully shaping policy that can walk a fine
line and help us get out of our current predicament. Spending money on
needed investments--infrastructure, education, technology--will yield
double dividends. It will increase incomes today while laying the
foundations for future employment and economic growth. Investments in
energy efficiency will pay triple dividends--yielding environmental
benefits in addition to the short- and long-run economic benefits.
Joseph E. Stiglitz
###########
THE $3 TRILLION WAR, APRIL 2008 (WITH LINDA J. BILMES)
THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF MR. BUSH, DECEMBER 2007
The federal government needs to give a hand to states and
localities--their tax revenues are plummeting, and without help they will
face costly cutbacks in investment and in basic human services. The poor
will suffer today, and growth will suffer tomorrow. The big advantage of a
program to make up for the shortfall in the revenues of states and
localities is that it would provide money in the amounts needed: if the
economy recovers quickly, the shortfall will be small; if the downturn is
long, as I fear will be the case, the shortfall will be large.
These measures are the opposite of what the administration--along with the
Republican presidential nominee, John McCain--has been urging. It has
always believed that tax cuts, especially for the rich, are the solution
to the economy's ills. In fact, the tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 set the
stage for the current crisis. They did virtually nothing to stimulate the
economy, and they left the burden of keeping the economy on life support
to monetary policy alone. America's problem today is not that households
consume too little; on the contrary, with a savings rate barely above
zero, it is clear we consume too much. But the administration hopes to
encourage our spendthrift ways.
What has happened to the American economy was avoidable. It was not just
that those who were entrusted to maintain the economy's safety and
soundness failed to do their job. There were also many who benefited
handsomely by ensuring that what needed to be done did not get done. Now
we face a choice: whether to let our response to the nation's woes be
shaped by those who got us here, or to seize the opportunity for
fundamental reforms, striking a new balance between the market and
government.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, is a professor at
Columbia University.
From papadop at peak.org Sun Oct 12 00:59:50 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Sun Oct 12 01:28:51 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Meltdown Strategies: Financial Disaster and Climate Change
Message-ID:
From: Starhawk -- October 10, 2008 9:57:22 AM PDT
Subject: [starhawk] Meltdown Strategies: Financial Disaster and Climate
Change
Starhawk is a lifelong activist in peace and global justice movements, a
leader in the feminist and earth-based spirituality movements, author or
coauthor of ten books, including The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing,
Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, and her latest, The Earth
Path.
Starhawk's website is www.starhawk.org, and more of her writings and
information on her schedule and activities can be found there.
Feel free to repost this, just let me know where. And do check out the
longer Climate Change Primer at:
MELTDOWN STRATEGIES: FINANCIAL DISASTER AND CLIMATE CHANGE
By Starhawk
While the financial markets have been melting down around us, another sort
of meltdown has been occurring, one even more frightening and dangerous.
Climate change has been progressing, more quickly than anticipated, fueled
even more rapidly by methane bubbles released from a warming Arctic sea,
in just one of the self-reinforcing cycles that will trigger unstoppable
cascades of devastation unless we act now.
None of the presidential debates have addressed the central question of
our time: can we transform our energy, our economy, our food systems and
our culture rapidly enough to forestall complete global meltdown?
The present economic woes are frightening, but the environmental crisis is
truly terrifying. With all the furor about falling markets and frozen
credit, nothing real has changed in the economy. Granted, the
repercussions will be that many of us have less money in our pockets and
fewer opportunities. But we still have the natural resources we had a
month ago. We still have our skills, our knowledge, and our productive
capacity. What we've lost is a towering edifice of icing with no cake
underneath.
But environmental meltdown means we lose the real basis of economy and
survival. We will see more and more devastation like we've seen in the
Gulf Coast. We'll see droughts, floods, lowered food supplies, huge
losses in biodiversity and ecological resilience, rising seas that will
take out major cities around the world, and all the associated problems of
poverty, starvation, refugees and resource wars. Time is not running out
- it's out! What we do now and in the next ten years is absolutely
crucial.
The good news is, we don't have to take the path to disaster. We have the
knowledge and technology we need to make the change. But our politicians,
even the best of them, won't do it unless we make it a top priority.
To do that, it helps to know what the solutions are. In November, I'll be
presenting at an interfaith conference on climate change called by the
archbishop of Sweden. In preparation, I started writing a Climate Change
Primer, trying to briefly list the most important technologies and
approaches. It kept growing, and eventually became too big to send out as
an email. But go to the link below and you can read it or download it as
a PDF. If you want to better understand the issue and the spectrum of
solutions we need to put into place, it's a good introduction. If you are
a policy maker or an activist who likes to hound and harass policy makers
to do the right thing, it's a good guide. And if you're thinking about
how to invest your own time and energy and/or such dwindling funds as you
might have, it will suggest fruitful avenues and new approaches.
And here's the link:
And below are a few short, short, short lists to help get us thinking
about what priorities we should push for:
Things we can do right away in a lousy economy:
--Conserve. Obama almost said the "C" word in the debate -- " ...and you
would think this is something radicals, liberals and conservatives would
all agree on, as it requires no funding or investment and can produce huge
rewards. If we had continued to conserve energy at the rate we did in the
1970s, we would be energy independent today!
--Pass tax credits for renewables.
--Enact fuel efficiency standards for new cars, trucks, etc. and for all
big users of fossil fuels.
--Require energy efficiency in new construction, and white or reflective
roofs, porous paving, etc.
--Put caps on carbon emissions for big users that will decline over time
to zero by 2050 or sooner. (There's a longer discussion of this in the
Primer.)
--Take up Al Gore's challenge to generate 100 per cent of our energy from
renewables within ten years.
--Sequester carbon by building healthy soil through organic farming,
no-till techniques, and planned rotational grazing. (More on this on the
website.)
--Localize economies and food systems - farmers' markets, CSAs, city farms
and community gardens. Support barter systems and local currencies.
--End subsidies for nuclear energy, coal and oil.
--Bring the troops home - war has a carbon cost as well as a human cost
and a financial cost. Employ diplomacy, not troops.
--Ratify Kyoto - no, it's not nearly enough but gosh, if we can't even do
that, how are we going to have any global credibility on this issue?
Low Hanging Fruit: (Technologies and solutions that are already up and
running, or nearly so, that have the best Energy Return on Energy
Investment, will meet the least resistance and will give the biggest bang
for the buck in the short run.)
--Onshore and offshore wind - already up and running.
--Photovoltaics - larger scale production to bring down costs, tax
credits, rebates and cost-share programs for new construction and
retrofitting.
--Concentrated Solar Power and solar thermal on both large scale and home
scale.
--Electric cars and plug-in hybrids - in production or on the verge.
Economies of scale - government purchasing agreements, tax credits,
rebates or cost-shares or loan guarantees for purchasers can help replace
our current transport fleet. Mandates for energy efficiency and
requirements for zero-carbon vehicles, as were once in place in
California, can support their production and adoption.
--Biofuels from waste and recycled materials and algae.
--White roofs. (A study from the Lawrence Berkeley labs suggest that white
roofs not only save cooling costs but radiate heat outward and on a large
scale, could have a major impact.)
--Regenerative farming and grazing that build soil organic carbon.
--Forest protection - a moratorium on the logging of old growth. Tree
planting and restoration.
--Localization - building local food economies, sense of place,
encouraging famers' markets, urban agriculture, local small businesses,
walkable neighborhoods,
--Pedestrian zones, bike paths, good interface with bikes and public
transport - safe parking areas, allowing bikes on subways and busses.
Vital Investments: Even in a lousy economy, we absolutely need to do these
things, and they will provide jobs and a vital economic stimulus:
--The national grid needs to be upgraded to be able to handle distributed
sources of energy and Vehicle to Grid technology.
--Infrastructure for renewables needs to be built on the large scale.
--Technical help to developing countries: It's only fair, equitable and
good long-term security to help developing countries skip the 19th and
20th centuries and leap into the 21st with renewable energy sources. Offer
to replace Iran's nuclear plants with solar infrastructure, China's coal
plants with wind.
--Cost share programs and rebates for retrofitting existing homes for
energy efficiency.
--Training programs and green jobs in the inner city.
--Job training for the unemployed in green industries and regenerative
agriculture.
Long term investments: (Things we need to invest in now for the long term
future. If we're going to borrow billions, let's spend them on:)
--Public transportation in and around cities. Making it efficient, cheap,
easy and fun.
--Trains, busses, and other forms of transport to get people out of their
cars.
--Research on all the promising technologies: new batteries and forms of
energy storage, wave and tidal power, hydrogen from renewables - as a
store for energy and as a replacement fuel for air travel. Aquaculture to
produce biofuels. And so many more --(see that website for the full list!)
--Public infrastructure.
--Retrofitting of existing buildings for energy efficiency.
--Forest and wildland protection in large blocks to allow plants and
animals room to migrate in response to climate change. Habitat protection
and restoration.
--Quality education at every level on the environment.
Really Stupid Ideas We Should Oppose:
--Nuclear Power: It's not quick to build or license safely, it's not safe
- low level radiation is proven to cause cancer and other diseases. We
still don't know how to safely store the wastes. To build a plant we
actually produce huge amounts of carbon emissions as cement is one of the
big carbon hogs. Nuclear power plants provide new targets for terrorists
and makes it difficult to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons. And -
we don't need it!
--Offshore drilling and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -
The U.S. has 3% of the world's oil reserves and uses 25% of the energy. We
can't drill our way into energy independence, and drilling that
compromises the safety of fragile ecosystems can cause irreparable damage
for small, short-term gains. We need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels,
not drill for more. And new oil fields won't come on line for over a
decade and require huge energy investments to develop.
--"Clean" coal: There is no such thing.
--Cutting down rainforests to produce corn or palm oil for biofuels
--Replacing food crops with fuel crops.
--Solving problems with guns and weapons.
Okay, this short list has already gotten long. Again, that link is:
And if there's one important message we send, make it this:
The environment is not an afterthought: it's the ground of economy,
security and survival. Environmental protection, environmental justice
and regeneration must be our top priorities, because they are the only
sound foundation for every other endeavor.
This post has been sent to you from Starhawk@lists.riseup.net. This is an
announce-only listserve that allows Starhawk to post her writings
occasionally to those who wish to receive them.
To subscribe to this list, send an email to
Starhawk-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.
To unsubscribe, send an email to Starhawk-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net.
#############
From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Oct 12 04:08:09 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Sun Oct 12 04:08:36 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] The heist and the basics
Message-ID: <20081012090810.D196A12D58@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Sun Oct 12 06:24:03 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Sun Oct 12 06:26:34 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism [Chomsky The
Irish Times Oct 10]
Message-ID: <48F1B423.7467.42FE9BC9@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
The simultaneous unfolding of the US presidential
campaign and unraveling of the financial markets
presents one of those occasions where the political and
economic systems starkly reveal their nature....
Financial liberalisation has effects well beyond the
economy. It has long been understood that it is a
powerful weapon against democracy. Free capital
movement creates what some have called a "virtual
parliament" of investors and lenders, who closely
monitor government programmes and "vote" against them
if they are considered irrational: for the benefit of
people, rather than concentrated private power.
Investors and lenders can "vote" by capital flight,
attacks on currencies and other devices offered by
financial liberalisation. That is one reason why the
Bretton Woods system established by the United States
and Britain after the second World War instituted
capital controls and regulated currencies.*....
In dramatic contrast, in the neoliberal phase after the
breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, the
US treasury now regards free capital mobility as a
"fundamental right", unlike such alleged "rights" as
those guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights: health, education, decent employment, security
and other rights that the Reagan and Bush
administrations have dismissed as "letters to Santa
Claus", "preposterous", mere "myths".
FYI-Janet
=======================
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/1010/1223560345968.ht
ml
Anti-Democratic Nature of US Capitalism is Being
Exposed
By Noam Chomsky
The Irish Times
October 10, 2008
The simultaneous unfolding of the US presidential
campaign and unraveling of the financial markets
presents one of those occasions where the political and
economic systems starkly reveal their nature.
Passion about the campaign may not be universally
shared but almost everybody can feel the anxiety from
the foreclosure of a million homes, and concerns about
jobs, savings and healthcare at risk.
The initial Bush proposals to deal with the crisis so
reeked of totalitarianism that they were quickly
modified. Under intense lobbyist pressure, they were
reshaped as "a clear win for the largest institutions
in the system . . . a way of dumping assets without
having to fail or close", as described by James
Rickards, who negotiated the federal bailout for the
hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in 1998,
reminding us that we are treading familiar turf. The
immediate origins of the current meltdown lie in the
collapse of the housing bubble supervised by Federal
Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, which sustained the
struggling economy through the Bush years by debt-based
consumer spending along with borrowing from abroad. But
the roots are deeper. In part they lie in the triumph
of financial liberalisation in the past 30 years - that
is, freeing the markets as much as possible from
government regulation.
These steps predictably increased the frequency and
depth of severe reversals, which now threaten to bring
about the worst crisis since the Great Depression.
Also predictably, the narrow sectors that reaped
enormous profits from liberalisation are calling for
massive state intervention to rescue collapsing
financial institutions.
Such interventionism is a regular feature of state
capitalism, though the scale today is unusual. A study
by international economists Winfried Ruigrok and Rob
van Tulder 15 years ago found that at least 20
companies in the Fortune 100 would not have survived if
they had not been saved by their respective
governments, and that many of the rest gained
substantially by demanding that governments "socialise
their losses," as in today's taxpayer-financed bailout.
Such government intervention "has been the rule rather
than the exception over the past two centuries", they
conclude.
In a functioning democratic society, a political
campaign would address such fundamental issues, looking
into root causes and cures, and proposing the means by
which people suffering the consequences can take
effective control.
The financial market "underprices risk" and is
"systematically inefficient", as economists John
Eatwell and Lance Taylor wrote a decade ago, warning of
the extreme dangers of financial liberalisation and
reviewing the substantial costs already incurred - and
proposing solutions, which have been ignored. One
factor is failure to calculate the costs to those who
do not participate in transactions. These
"externalities" can be huge. Ignoring systemic risk
leads to more risk-taking than would take place in an
efficient economy, even by the narrowest measures.
The task of financial institutions is to take risks
and, if well-managed, to ensure that potential losses
to themselves will be covered. The emphasis is on "to
themselves". Under state capitalist rules, it is not
their business to consider the cost to others - the
"externalities" of decent survival - if their practices
lead to financial crisis, as they regularly do.
Financial liberalisation has effects well beyond the
economy. It has long been understood that it is a
powerful weapon against democracy. Free capital
movement creates what some have called a "virtual
parliament" of investors and lenders, who closely
monitor government programmes and "vote" against them
if they are considered irrational: for the benefit of
people, rather than concentrated private power.
Investors and lenders can "vote" by capital flight,
attacks on currencies and other devices offered by
financial liberalisation. That is one reason why the
Bretton Woods system established by the United States
and Britain after the second World War instituted
capital controls and regulated currencies.*
The Great Depression and the war had aroused powerful
radical democratic currents, ranging from the anti-
fascist resistance to working class organisation. These
pressures made it necessary to permit social democratic
policies. The Bretton Woods system was designed in part
to create a space for government action responding to
public will - for some measure of democracy.
John Maynard Keynes, the British negotiator, considered
the most important achievement of Bretton Woods to be
the establishment of the right of governments to
restrict capital movement.
In dramatic contrast, in the neoliberal phase after the
breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s, the
US treasury now regards free capital mobility as a
"fundamental right", unlike such alleged "rights" as
those guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights: health, education, decent employment, security
and other rights that the Reagan and Bush
administrations have dismissed as "letters to Santa
Claus", "preposterous", mere "myths".
In earlier years, the public had not been much of a
problem. The reasons are reviewed by Barry Eichengreen
in his standard scholarly history of the international
monetary system. He explains that in the 19th century,
governments had not yet been "politicised by universal
male suffrage and the rise of trade unionism and
parliamentary labour parties". Therefore, the severe
costs imposed by the virtual parliament could be
transferred to the general population.
But with the radicalisation of the general public
during the Great Depression and the anti-fascist war,
that luxury was no longer available to private power
and wealth. Hence in the Bretton Woods system, "limits
on capital mobility substituted for limits on democracy
as a source of insulation from market pressures".
The obvious corollary is that after the dismantling of
the postwar system, democracy is restricted. It has
therefore become necessary to control and marginalise
the public in some fashion, processes particularly
evident in the more business-run societies like the
United States. The management of electoral
extravaganzas by the public relations industry is one
illustration.
"Politics is the shadow cast on society by big
business," concluded America's leading 20th century
social philosopher John Dewey, and will remain so as
long as power resides in "business for private profit
through private control of banking, land, industry,
reinforced by command of the press, press agents and
other means of publicity and propaganda".
The United States effectively has a one-party system,
the business party, with two factions, Republicans and
Democrats. There are differences between them. In his
study Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the
New Gilded Age, Larry Bartels shows that during the
past six decades "real incomes of middle-class families
have grown twice as fast under Democrats as they have
under Republicans, while the real incomes of working-
poor families have grown six times as fast under
Democrats as they have under Republicans".
Differences can be detected in the current election as
well. Voters should consider them, but without
illusions about the political parties, and with the
recognition that consistently over the centuries,
progressive legislation and social welfare have been
won by popular struggles, not gifts from above.
Those struggles follow a cycle of success and setback.
They must be waged every day, not just once every four
years, always with the goal of creating a genuinely
responsive democratic society, from the voting booth to
the workplace.
Note* Bretton Woods was the system of global financial
management set up at the end of the second World War
to ensure the interests of capital did not smother
wider social concerns in post-war democracies. It
was hated by the US neoliberals - the very people
who have created the banking crisis.
The Bretton Woods system of global financial
management was created by 730 delegates from all 44
Allied second World War nations who attended a UN-
hosted Monetary and Financial Conference at the Mount
Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods in New Hampshire in
1944.
Bretton Woods, which collapsed in 1971, was the
system of rules, institutions, and procedures that
regulated the international monetary system, under
which were set up the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) (now one of
five institutions in the World Bank Group) and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), which came into
effect in 1945.
The chief feature of Bretton Woods was an obligation
for each country to adopt a monetary policy that
maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a
fixed value.
The system collapsed when the US suspended
convertibility from dollars to gold. This created the
unique situation whereby the US dollar became the
"reserve currency" for the other countries within
Bretton Woods.
(c) 2008 The Irish Times
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Oct 12 09:00:54 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Sun Oct 12 09:01:05 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] The heist and the basics - second try
Message-ID: <20081012140055.AF15313254@fep08.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Oct 12 09:07:28 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Sun Oct 12 09:07:33 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] smwa, alldems
Message-ID: <20081012140729.4F3EF129FD@fep08.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
US troops ion place for coup.
See Naomi Wolf and the readers' comments at
http://www.alternet.org/rights/101958/
Dion Giles
Western Australia
From gdy52150 at spiritone.com Sun Oct 12 10:18:04 2008
From: gdy52150 at spiritone.com (gdy52150)
Date: Sun Oct 12 09:55:52 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] smwa, alldems
In-Reply-To: <20081012140729.4F3EF129FD@fep08.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
References: <20081012140729.4F3EF129FD@fep08.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Message-ID: <48F2152C.8080603@spiritone.com>
all martial law will do is trigger a civil war. Look at the numbers so
they have a brigade of 5000 thats 100 for each state. A hundred soliders
even on just the west side of Portland wouldn;t amount to anything more
than target practice. What worries moe more is once civil war has broken
out would be the formation of private militias funded by some rich asshole.
Dion Giles wrote:
> US troops ion place for coup.
>
> See Naomi Wolf and the readers' comments at
> http://www.alternet.org/rights/101958/
>
> Dion Giles
> Western Australia
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mai-not mailing list
> Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
> http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
>
From radred at ix.netcom.com Sun Oct 12 18:09:35 2008
From: radred at ix.netcom.com (Carol)
Date: Sun Oct 12 18:09:42 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] When "martial law" is not what you think it is
Message-ID: <3326197.1223852975648.JavaMail.root@elwamui-milano.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
On September 28, this message was circulated around the web:
Rep. Michael Burgess - "we are under Martial Law"
September 28th, 2008 | Breaking News, Constitutional Crisis, Economy, Federal Reserve
By: D. H. Williams @ 4:20 PM - EST
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) reports from the floor of the House that the Republicans have been cut out of the process and called unpatriotic for not blindly supporting the fraudulent bailout. He says the only debate has been about what talking points to use on the American people. The most ominous revelation is when he claims the Speaker has declared martial law. " 'I have been thrown out of more meetings in this capital in the last 24 hours than I ever thought possible, as a duly elected representative of 825,000 citizens of north Texas," said Congressman Burgess. Burgess asks the Speaker of the House [Pelosi] to post the bailout bill on the internet for at least 24 hours instead of passing the largest piece of legislation in US financial history in the 'dark of night.' The most frightening part of Rep. Burgess' one-minute floor speech is when he says, 'Mr. Speaker I understand we are under Martial Law as declared by the speaker last night.'"
At the Digg website a couple of days earlier, a similar item [video] was posted naming a Rep. Brad Sherman , prompting me to go to the site to check out its veracity. According to a number of people who have left comments at BOTH websites (http://digg.com/business_finance/Rep_Brad_Sherman_Congress_told_Martial_Law_if_vote_is_NO and http://www.dailynewscaster.com/2008/09/28/rep-michael-burgess-we-are-under-martial-law/), martial law in this context refers to a Congressional procedural rule:
"This isn't "martial law" as in police state.
Martial law in congress means they will go ahead with the bill without votes.
It does not apply to any specific measure, but rather grants blanket authority.
http://rules-republicans.house.gov/ShortTopics/Read.aspx?id=220
It's always advisable to research such claims - not that they might not be true, but
just to verify them rather than spread inaccuracies. Naomi Wolf should know better.
The following article covers, among other issues, the destruction by Congress of
the prohibition against deployment of the military inside the U.S. once afforded
by the Posse Comitatus Act.
- Carol
Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the "Homeland"?
by Glenn Greenwald
Global Research (globalresearch.ca), September 29, 2008
Salon.com
Several bloggers today have pointed to this obviously disturbing article
from Army Times, which announces that "beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the
[1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division] will be under the
day-to-day control of U.S. Army North" -- "the first time an active unit has
been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established
in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts
and coordinate defense support of civil authorities." The article details:
They'll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone
and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to
deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos
in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield
explosive, or CBRNE, attack. . . .
The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to use "the first ever nonlethal
package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier
said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons
designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.
"It's a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they're fielding.
They've been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that
these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of
this mission we?re undertaking we were the first to get it."
The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips
for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and,
beanbag bullets.
"I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered," said Cloutier,
describing the experience as "your worst muscle cramp ever -- times 10
throughout your whole body". . . .
The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the
next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF
(pronounced "sea-smurf").
For more than 100 years -- since the end of the Civil War -- deployment of
the U.S. military inside the U.S. has been prohibited under The Posse
Comitatus Act (the only exceptions being that the National Guard and Coast
Guard are exempted, and use of the military on an emergency ad hoc basis is
permitted, such as what happened after Hurricane Katrina). Though there have
been some erosions of this prohibition over the last several decades (most
perniciously to allow the use of the military to work with law enforcement
agencies in the "War on Drugs"), the bright line ban on using the U.S.
military as a standing law enforcement force inside the U.S. has been more
or less honored -- until now. And as the Army Times notes, once this
particular brigade completes its one-year assignment, "expectations are that
another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the
mission will be a permanent one."
After Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration began openly agitating for
what would be, in essence, a complete elimination of the key prohibitions of
the Posse Comitatus Act in order to allow the President to deploy U.S.
military forces inside the U.S. basically at will -- and, as usual, they
were successful as a result of rapid bipartisan compliance with the Leader's
demand (the same kind of compliance that is about to foist a bailout package
on the nation). This April, 2007 article by James Bovard in The American
Conservative detailed the now-familiar mechanics that led to the destruction
of this particular long-standing democratic safeguard:
The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on Sept. 30, empowers
President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist
"incident," if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of "public
order," or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result
of government provocations. . . .
It only took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to raze one
of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the
Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president's ability to
deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of
1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on
anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the express permission
of Congress. But there is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the
president invokes the Insurrection Act.
Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for
Fiscal Year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book
from "Insurrection Act" to "Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order
Act." The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy
troops within the United States only "to suppress, in a State, any
insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy." The
new law expands the list to include ?natural disaster, epidemic, or other
serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other
condition" -- and such "condition" is not defined or limited. . . .
The story of how Section 1076 became law vivifies how expanding government
power is almost always the correct answer in Washington. Some people have
claimed the provision was slipped into the bill in the middle of the night.
In reality, the administration clearly signaled its intent and almost no one
in the media or Congress tried to stop it . . . .
Section 1076 was supported by both conservatives and liberals. Sen. Carl
Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Armed Services
Committee, co-wrote the provision along with committee chairman Sen. John
Warner (R-Va.). Sen. Ted Kennedy openly endorsed it, and Rep. Duncan Hunter
(R-Calif.), then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was an avid
proponent. . . .
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary
Committee, warned on Sept. 19 that "we certainly do not need to make it
easier for Presidents to declare martial law," but his alarm got no
response. Ten days later, he commented in the Congressional Record: "Using
the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of
our democracy." Leahy further condemned the process, declaring that it "was
just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study. Other
congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance
to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals."
As is typical, very few members of the media even mentioned any of this, let
alone discussed it (and I failed to give this the attention it deserved at
the time), but Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein wrote an excellent
article at the time detailing the process and noted that "despite such a
radical turn, the new law garnered little dissent, or even attention, on the
Hill." Stein also noted that while "the blogosphere, of course, was all over
it . . . a search of The Washington Post and New York Times archives, using
the terms 'Insurrection Act,' 'martial law' and 'Congress,' came up empty."
Bovard and Stein both noted that every Governor -- including Republicans --
joined in Leahy's objections, as they perceived it as a threat from the
Federal Government to what has long been the role of the National Guard. But
those concerns were easily brushed aside by the bipartisan majorities in
Congress, eager -- as always -- to grant the President this radical new
power.
The decision this month to permanently deploy a U.S. Army brigade inside the
U.S. for purely domestic law enforcement purposes is the fruit of the
Congressional elimination of the long-standing prohibitions in Posse
Comitatus (although there are credible signs that even before Congress
acted, the Bush administration secretly decided it possessed the inherent
power to violate the Act). It shouldn't take any efforts to explain why the
permanent deployment of the U.S. military inside American cities, acting as
the President's police force, is so disturbing. Bovard:
"Martial law" is a euphemism for military dictatorship. When foreign
democracies are overthrown and a junta establishes martial law, Americans
usually recognize that a fundamental change has occurred. . . . Section 1076
is Enabling Act-type legislation?something that purports to preserve
law-and-order while formally empowering the president to rule by decree.
The historic importance of the Posse Comitatus prohibition was also
well-analyzed here.
As the recent militarization of St. Paul during the GOP Convention made
abundantly clear, our actual police forces are already quite militarized.
Still, what possible rationale is there for permanently deploying the U.S.
Army inside the United States -- under the command of the President -- for
any purpose, let alone things such as "crowd control," other traditional law
enforcement functions, and a seemingly unlimited array of other uses at the
President's sole discretion? And where are all of the stalwart right-wing
"small government conservatives" who spent the 1990s so vocally opposing
every aspect of the growing federal police force? And would it be possible
to get some explanation from the Government about what the rationale is for
this unprecedented domestic military deployment (at least unprecedented
since the Civil War), and why it is being undertaken now?
UPDATE: As this commenter notes, the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act
somewhat limited the scope of the powers granted by the 2007 Act detailed
above (mostly to address constitutional concerns by limiting the President's
powers to deploy the military to suppress disorder that threatens
constitutional rights), but President Bush, when signing that 2008 Act into
law, issued a signing statement which, though vague, seems to declare that
he does not recognize those new limitations.
UPDATE II: There's no need to start manufacturing all sorts of scare
scenarios about Bush canceling elections or the imminent declaration of
martial law or anything of that sort. None of that is going to happen with a
single brigade and it's unlikely in the extreme that they'd be announcing
these deployments if they had activated any such plans. The point is that
the deployment is a very dangerous precedent, quite possibly illegal, and a
radical abandonment of an important democratic safeguard. As always with
first steps of this sort, the danger lies in how the power can be abused in
the future.
Global Research Articles by Glenn Greenwald
From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sun Oct 12 19:37:41 2008
From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster)
Date: Sun Oct 12 19:38:46 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Ironic Candidate for Economics Nobel Prize
Message-ID: <01fe01c92ccc$03c0b040$08ad57ca@jfos>
October 9, 2008, 3:59 pm
Ironic Candidate for Economics Nobel
The Nobel Prize in economics will be awarded on Monday, and many punters
apparently believe that Bank of Sweden has a deep sense of irony.
These guys don't find the markets so efficient right now. (Associated
Press)
University of Chicago economist Eugene Fama is the frontrunner for Labrokes,
the British betting firm, fetching two-to-one odds to win the prize (which
isn't technically a Nobel but "The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences
in Memory of Alfred Nobel"). Mr. Fama first proposed the efficient-market
hypothesis in the 1960s, which says that market-set asset prices - be they
for stocks, bonds or mortgage-backed securities - accurately reflect all
information available to investors. While he seems certain to eventually win
the Nobel for his insights into how markets convey information, given the
way the credit crisis has been batting prices around lately, perhaps this
won't be Mr. Fama's year.
Running second on Ladbrokes, with four-to-one odds, is Dartmouth economist
Kenneth French, Mr. Fama's frequent collaborator. Ladbrokes gives three
economists six-to-one odds. Princeton's Christopher Sims is known for
developing statistical methods that allow economists to tease out the lines
of cause and effect in complex relationships. Chicago's Lars Hansen has
studied the relationship between asset-price behavior and the macroeconomic
environment (which seems timely). New York University's Thomas Sargent is a
pioneer of the theory of "rational expectations," which lays out how
expectations of the future influence economic decisions.
In the top spot of a long-running Harvard prediction pool is Harvard's own
Robert Barro, a wide-ranging macroeconomist. Mr. Hansen, Mr, Fama, Mr.
Sargent and Harvard's Martin Feldstein and Oliver Hart are in a five-way tie
for second.
Other top picks in the pool are MIT's Peter Diamond, Mr. Sims, Chicago's
Richard Thaler and the UC San Diego's Halbert White. "No correct guess" - a
perennial favorite that pays only if nobody in the pool correctly guesses
the Nobel winner - is the sixth leading contract. -Justin Lahart
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Oct 12 22:18:34 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Sun Oct 12 22:22:28 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] When "martial law" is not what you think it is
In-Reply-To: <3326197.1223852975648.JavaMail.root@elwamui-milano.atl.sa.
earthlink.net>
References: <3326197.1223852975648.JavaMail.root@elwamui-milano.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <20081013031836.A2420134A9@fep04.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Confusing Pelosi's gratuitous actions as Speaker on behalf of her
corporate handlers with the fascist shift to military power over the
people is careless. I am surprised that any serious commentator got
the two mixed - it was always quite clear which was which. If they
are linked it is through Pelosi herself who has supported every
atrocity perpetrated by the White House administration.
However the careless conflation of the two "Martial laws" doesn't
detract from the seriousness of each - in the first instance an act
of treachery against the vestigial democratic content in
representative government and in the second instance an open
imposition of a Fourth Reich masquerading as "crowd control" - an
action which is treason whatever part, from the President to the
lowliest compliant grunt, cop or town official, the individual agrees
to play in enforcing it.
The growing evidence, some of which is presented here by Carol, that
major treason plans are either being drawn up or are already in
place, merits action including direct approaches to the low-level
personnel who would be asked to betray their country. If ever there
was a crime meriting capital punishment it is complicity in a
military coup and/or voluntary co-operation with enforcing the regime
it ushers in. This was at the heart of the principles followed at
Nuremberg - that "it was orders" is no excuse. Illegal orders must
not be obeyed, and suppressing the guarantees under the constitution
is illegal no matter what bought judges and fancy lawyers like
Gonzales might invent.
The smallness of the thug combat team from Iraq to be deployed
against the people of the USA is of little comfort considering the
very large network of mercenaries (such as Blackwater) and compliant
cops and officials who would be eager to back their play. Tasers and
beanbag bullets? The Third Reich Brownshirts used fists at the
start. The Fourth Reich Brownshirts are already upping the ante.
And the whole thing demonstrates the hollowness of the gunnies' claim
that the sacred right of individuals to be able to shoot up schools
and Macdonald's restaurants is a bulwark against government abuse of
power. When, in living memory, has any gun-hung militia stood in the
way of tyranny of any kind in the USA? Not since the days of Wyatt
Earp, surely? With fascism on the march, armed militias pledged to
defend the constitutional rights of the people really are needed, and
it's time for the gun lobby to put up or shut up.
I wonder if anyone is asking Obama publicly if he voted for the
abolition of Posse Comitatus, and if so how he can justify it and
what plans he has to atone for it
Dion Giles
Western Australia
At 07:09 13/10/2008, Carol wrote:
On September 28, this message was circulated around the web:
Rep. Michael Burgess - "we are under Martial Law"
September 28th, 2008 | Breaking News, Constitutional Crisis, Economy,
Federal Reserve
By: D. H. Williams @ 4:20 PM - EST
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) reports from the floor of the House that
the Republicans have been cut out of the process and called
unpatriotic for not blindly supporting the fraudulent bailout. He
says the only debate has been about what talking points to use on the
American people. The most ominous revelation is when he claims the
Speaker has declared martial law. " 'I have been thrown out of more
meetings in this capital in the last 24 hours than I ever thought
possible, as a duly elected representative of 825,000 citizens of
north Texas," said Congressman Burgess. Burgess asks the Speaker of
the House [Pelosi] to post the bailout bill on the internet for at
least 24 hours instead of passing the largest piece of legislation in
US financial history in the 'dark of night.' The most frightening
part of Rep. Burgess' one-minute floor speech is when he says, 'Mr.
Speaker I understand we are under Martial Law as declared by the
speaker last night.'"
At the Digg website a couple of days earlier, a similar item [video]
was posted naming a Rep. Brad Sherman , prompting me to go to the
site to check out its veracity. According to a number of people who
have left comments at BOTH
websites
(http://digg.com/business_finance/Rep_Brad_Sherman_Congress_told_Martial_Law_if_vote_is_NO
and
http://www.dailynewscaster.com/2008/09/28/rep-michael-burgess-we-are-under-martial-law/),
martial law in this context refers to a Congressional procedural rule:
"This isn't "martial law" as in police state. Martial law in
congress means they will go ahead with the bill without votes. It
does not apply to any specific measure, but rather grants blanket
authority. http://rules-republicans.house.gov/ShortTopics/Read.aspx?id=220
It's always advisable to research such claims - not that they might
not be true, but just to verify them rather than spread
inaccuracies. Naomi Wolf should know better.
The following article covers, among other issues, the destruction by
Congress of the prohibition against deployment of the military
inside the U.S. once afforded by the Posse Comitatus Act.
- Carol
Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the "Homeland"? by Glenn
Greenwald
Global Research (globalresearch.ca),
September 29, 2008
Salon.com
Several bloggers today have pointed to this obviously disturbing
article from Army Times, which announces that "beginning Oct. 1 for
12 months, the [1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division]
will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North" -- "the
first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to
NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and
control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense
support of civil authorities." The article details:
They'll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the
war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control
or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive
poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological,
radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. . . .
The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to use "the first ever
nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT commander Col.
Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment
and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous
individuals without killing them.
"It's a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they're
fielding. They've been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the
first time that these modules were consolidated and this package
fielded, and because of this mission we're undertaking we were the
first to get it."
The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike
strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and
batons; and, beanbag bullets.
"I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered," said Cloutier,
describing the experience as "your worst muscle cramp ever -- times
10 throughout your whole body". . . .
The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for
the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or
CCMRF (pronounced "sea-smurf").
For more than 100 years -- since the end of the Civil War --
deployment of the U.S. military inside the U.S. has been prohibited
under The Posse Comitatus Act (the only exceptions being that the
National Guard and Coast Guard are exempted, and use of the military
on an emergency ad hoc basis is permitted, such as what happened
after Hurricane Katrina). though there have been some erosions of
this prohibition over the last several decades (most perniciously to
allow the use of the military to work with law enforcement agencies
in the "War on Drugs"), the bright line ban on using the U.S.
military as a standing law enforcement force inside the U.S. has been
more or less honored -- until now. And as the Army Times notes, once
this particular brigade completes its one-year assignment,
"expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade
will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one."
After Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration began openly
agitating for what would be, in essence, a complete elimination of
the key prohibitions of the Posse Comitatus Act in order to allow the
President to deploy U.S. military forces inside the U.S. basically at
will -- and, as usual, they were successful as a result of rapid
bipartisan compliance with the Leader's demand (the same kind of
compliance that is about to foist a bailout package on the nation).
This April, 2007 article by James Bovard in The American Conservative
detailed the now-familiar mechanics that led to the destruction of
this particular long-standing democratic safeguard:
The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on Sept. 30, empowers
President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a
terrorist "incident," if he or other federal officials perceive a
shortfall of "public order," or even in response to antiwar protests
that get unruly as a result of government provocations. . . .
It only took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to
raze one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress
passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the
president's ability to deploy the military within the United States.
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions,
imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military
within the U.S. without the express permission of Congress. But there
is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the
Insurrection Act.
Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act
for Fiscal Year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the
statute book from "Insurrection Act" to "Enforcement of the Laws to
Restore Public Order Act." The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that
the president could deploy troops within the United States only "to
suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful
combination, or conspiracy." The new law expands the list to include
"natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health
emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition" -- and
such "condition" is not defined or limited. . . .
The story of how Section 1076 became law vivifies how expanding
government power is almost always the correct answer in Washington.
Some people have claimed the provision was slipped into the bill in
the middle of the night. In reality, the administration clearly
signaled its intent and almost no one in the media or Congress tried
to stop it . . . .
Section 1076 was supported by both conservatives and liberals. Sen.
Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democratic member on the Senate
Armed Services Committee, co-wrote the provision along with committee
chairman Sen. John Warner (R-Va.). Sen. Ted Kennedy openly endorsed
it, and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), then-chairman of the House
Armed Services Committee, was an avid proponent. . . . Sen.
Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary
Committee, warned on Sept. 19 that "we certainly do not need to make
it easier for Presidents to declare martial law," but his alarm got
no response. Ten days later, he commented in the Congressional
Record: "Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of
the founding tenets of our democracy." Leahy further condemned the
process, declaring that it "was just slipped in the defense bill as a
rider with little study. Other congressional committees with
jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone
hold hearings on, these proposals."
As is typical, very few members of the media even mentioned any of
this, let alone discussed it (and I failed to give this the attention
it deserved at the time), but Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein
wrote an excellent article at the time detailing the process and
noted that "despite such a radical turn, the new law garnered little
dissent, or even attention, on the Hill." Stein also noted that while
"the blogosphere, of course, was all over it . . . a search of The
Washington Post and New York Times archives, using the terms
'Insurrection Act,' 'martial law' and 'Congress,' came up empty."
Bovard and Stein both noted that every Governor -- including
Republicans -- joined in Leahy's objections, as they perceived it as
a threat from the Federal Government to what has long been the role
of the National Guard. But those concerns were easily brushed aside
by the bipartisan majorities in Congress, eager -- as always -- to
grant the President this radical new power.
The decision this month to permanently deploy a U.S. Army brigade
inside the U.S. for purely domestic law enforcement purposes is the
fruit of the Congressional elimination of the long-standing
prohibitions in Posse Comitatus (although there are credible signs
that even before Congress acted, the Bush administration secretly
decided it possessed the inherent power to violate the Act). It
shouldn't take any efforts to explain why the permanent deployment of
the U.S. military inside American cities, acting as the President's
police force, is so disturbing.
Bovard:
"Martial law" is a euphemism for military dictatorship. When foreign
democracies are overthrown and a junta establishes martial law,
Americans usually recognize that a fundamental change has occurred. .
. . Section 1076 is Enabling Act-type legislation, something that
purports to preserve law-and-order while formally empowering the
president to rule by decree.
The historic importance of the Posse Comitatus prohibition was also
well-analyzed here. As the recent militarization of St. Paul
during the GOP Convention made abundantly clear, our actual police
forces are already quite militarized. Still, what possible rationale
is there for permanently deploying the U.S. Army inside the United
States -- under the command of the President -- for any purpose, let
alone things such as "crowd control," other traditional law
enforcement functions, and a seemingly unlimited array of other uses
at the President's sole discretion? And where are all of the stalwart
right-wing "small government conservatives" who spent the 1990s so
vocally opposing every aspect of the growing federal police force?
And would it be possible to get some explanation from the Government
about what the rationale is for this unprecedented domestic military
deployment (at least unprecedented since the Civil War), and why it
is being undertaken now?
UPDATE: As this commenter notes, the 2008 National Defense
Authorization Act somewhat limited the scope of the powers granted by
the 2007 Act detailed above (mostly to address constitutional
concerns by limiting the President's powers to deploy the military to
suppress disorder that threatens constitutional rights), but
President Bush, when signing that 2008 Act into law, issued a signing
statement which, though vague, seems to declare that he does not
recognize those new limitations.
UPDATE II: There's no need to start manufacturing all sorts of
scare scenarios about Bush canceling elections or the imminent
declaration of martial law or anything of that sort. None of that is
going to happen with a single brigade and it's unlikely in the
extreme that they'd be announcing these deployments if they had
activated any such plans. The point is that the deployment is a very
dangerous precedent, quite possibly illegal, and a radical
abandonment of an important democratic safeguard. As always with
first steps of this sort, the danger lies in how the power can be
abused in the future.
Global Research Articles by Glenn Greenwald
_______________________________________________
From papadop at peak.org Sun Oct 12 23:09:27 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Sun Oct 12 23:38:21 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] SENIOR REPUBLICANS BREAK RANKS WITH JOHN MCCAIN
Message-ID:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/us-election/senior-republicans-break-ranks-with-john-mccain-14000407.html
Belfast Telegraph --Monday, 13 October 2008
Senior members of the Republican party are in open mutiny against John
McCain's presidential campaign, after a disastrous period which has seen
Barack Obama solidify his lead in the opinion polls.
And as disputes raged within the McCain camp yesterday, Democrats took
another symbolic step towards healing the party after their bitter primary
battles, as Bill and Hillary Clinton made their first joint appearance in
support of Mr Obama.
>From inside and outside his inner circle, Mr McCain is being told to
settle on a coherent economic message and to tone down attacks on his
rival which have sometimes whipped up a mob-like atmosphere at Republican
rallies.
Two former rivals for the party nomination, Mitt Romney and Tommy
Thompson, went on the record over the weekend about the disarray in the
Republican camp. And a string of other senior party figures said Mr
McCain's erratic performance risks taking the party down to heavy losses
not just in the presidential race but also in contests for Congressional
seats. Mr Thompson, a former governor of the swing state of Wisconsin,
said he thought Mr McCain, on his present trajectory, would lose the
state, and he told a New York Times reporter he was not happy with the
campaign. "I don't know who is," he added.
Some Republicans seeking election to Congress have begun distancing
themselves from Mr McCain. In Nebraska, a Republican representative, Lee
Terry, ran a newspaper ad featuring support from a woman who called
herself an "Obama-Terry voter".
The McCain camp was reportedly considering launching a new set of economic
policies last night, on top of the plan for government purchases of
mortgages which he unveiled in a surprise move at last week's presidential
debate. Possible options include temporary tax cuts on capital gains and
dividends. Mr Romney said he should "stand above the tactical alternatives
that are being considered and establish an economic vision that is able to
convince the American people that he really knows how to strengthen the
economy".
With just over three weeks to go to election day, a new Reuters/Zogby
tracking poll showed the Democratic candidate gaining momentum during the
past week. From a two-point lead four days ago, the latest reading has Mr
Obama up 6 points. A Gallup poll yesterday put him at plus-7 per cent.
The Clintons took to the stage yesterday in Scranton, a down-at-heel
Pennsylvania town that has taken on outsize significance in the
presidential election. The town, which has become symbolic of the decline
of industrial America, was childhood home of Joe Biden, Mr Obama's
vice-presidential running mate, and is where Hillary Clinton's father grew
up and is buried.
"This is an all hands on deck election," Mrs Clinton declared, adding that
only a Democrat could put the interests of struggling working families at
the centre of policy. John McCain sees the middle class as "not
fundamental, but ornamental," she said.
Her husband praised Mr Obama as having the best ideas, best instincts and
best team for the White House. However, he focused most of his speech on
his wife and Mr Biden, and quickly disappeared for a campaign appearance
in Virginia, raising eyebrows among those who worry he has still not fully
reconciled himself to the Obama candidacy and is still smarting from the
bitter reaction against his contributions to the primary race.
McCain campaign staffers lashed out at the media for focusing on a
minority of supporters at some rallies in the past week who have gone
beyond booing and hissing at Mr Obama's name, and begun calling out
"terrorist" and "kill him".
Senior Republicans have sharply conflicting views about the direction the
McCain campaign should take, with some arguing that their candidate has
not hit Mr Obama hard enough on the shady associates from his past. The
issue of the Rev Jeremiah Wright, Mr Obama's former pastor, whose
incendiary speeches about white racism almost derailed the Democrat's
primary race, should be brought back on to the table by Mr McCain, many
are counselling. Mr McCain, however, has ruled that issue off-limits, for
fear of being accused of playing a race card.
The Republican candidate appeared keen to cool the temperature at rallies
over the weekend, at one point snatching the microphone from a woman in
Minnesota who declared Mr Obama was an "Arab". He chided her, and another
man who said he was "scared" of an Obama presidency, and told a booing
crowd to be respectful. "He is a decent family man, a citizen, that I just
happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues," said Mr McCain.
Reining in the party's supporters may be harder. A minister delivering the
invocation at a rally on Saturday asked Christians to pray for a McCain
win. "There are millions of people around this world praying to their god
- whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah - that his opponent wins, for a
variety of reasons," said Arnold Conrad, the former pastor of Grace
Evangelical Free Church in Davenport. Those comments earned a rebuke from
a McCain spokesman, and both sides this weekend had to slap down
supporters for stirring issues of religion and race.
The Obama campaign disassociated itself from comments by Democratic
congressman John Lewis who compared Mr McCain to the late Alabama
segregationist George Wallace. "Senator McCain and Governor Palin are
sowing the seeds of hatred and division," he said. "George Wallace never
threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the
conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who
were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights."
From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Mon Oct 13 06:30:55 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Mon Oct 13 06:33:22 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Senior members of the Republican party in open mutiny vs
McCain's presidential campaign
Message-ID: <48F3073F.6058.482B4187@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/us-election/senior-
republicans-break-ranks-with-john-mccain-14000407.html
Belfast Telegraph --Monday, 13 October 2008
Senior members of the Republican party are in open mutiny against
John McCain's presidential campaign, after a disastrous period which
has seen Barack Obama solidify his lead in the opinion polls.
And as disputes raged within the McCain camp yesterday, Democrats
took another symbolic step towards healing the party after their
bitter primary battles, as Bill and Hillary Clinton made their first
joint appearance in support of Mr Obama.
>From inside and outside his inner circle, Mr McCain is being told to
settle on a coherent economic message and to tone down attacks on his
rival which have sometimes whipped up a mob-like atmosphere at
Republican rallies.
Two former rivals for the party nomination, Mitt Romney and Tommy
Thompson, went on the record over the weekend about the disarray in
the Republican camp. And a string of other senior party figures said
Mr McCain's erratic performance risks taking the party down to heavy
losses not just in the presidential race but also in contests for
Congressional seats. Mr Thompson, a former governor of the swing
state of Wisconsin, said he thought Mr McCain, on his present
trajectory, would lose the state, and he told a New York Times
reporter he was not happy with the campaign. "I don't know who is,"
he added.
Some Republicans seeking election to Congress have begun distancing
themselves from Mr McCain. In Nebraska, a Republican representative,
Lee Terry, ran a newspaper ad featuring support from a woman who
called herself an "Obama-Terry voter".
The McCain camp was reportedly considering launching a new set of
economic policies last night, on top of the plan for government
purchases of mortgages which he unveiled in a surprise move at last
week's presidential debate. Possible options include temporary tax
cuts on capital gains and dividends. Mr Romney said he should "stand
above the tactical alternatives that are being considered and
establish an economic vision that is able to convince the American
people that he really knows how to strengthen the economy".
With just over three weeks to go to election day, a new Reuters/Zogby
tracking poll showed the Democratic candidate gaining momentum during
the past week. From a two-point lead four days ago, the latest
reading has Mr Obama up 6 points. A Gallup poll yesterday put him at
plus-7 per cent.
The Clintons took to the stage yesterday in Scranton, a down-at-heel
Pennsylvania town that has taken on outsize significance in the
presidential election. The town, which has become symbolic of the
decline of industrial America, was childhood home of Joe Biden, Mr
Obama's vice-presidential running mate, and is where Hillary
Clinton's father grew up and is buried.
"This is an all hands on deck election," Mrs Clinton declared, adding
that only a Democrat could put the interests of struggling working
families at the centre of policy. John McCain sees the middle class
as "not fundamental, but ornamental," she said.
Her husband praised Mr Obama as having the best ideas, best instincts
and best team for the White House. However, he focused most of his
speech on his wife and Mr Biden, and quickly disappeared for a
campaign appearance in Virginia, raising eyebrows among those who
worry he has still not fully reconciled himself to the Obama
candidacy and is still smarting from the bitter reaction against his
contributions to the primary race.
McCain campaign staffers lashed out at the media for focusing on a
minority of supporters at some rallies in the past week who have gone
beyond booing and hissing at Mr Obama's name, and begun calling out
"terrorist" and "kill him".
Senior Republicans have sharply conflicting views about the direction
the McCain campaign should take, with some arguing that their
candidate has not hit Mr Obama hard enough on the shady associates
from his past. The issue of the Rev Jeremiah Wright, Mr Obama's
former pastor, whose incendiary speeches about white racism almost
derailed the Democrat's primary race, should be brought back on to
the table by Mr McCain, many are counselling. Mr McCain, however, has
ruled that issue off-limits, for fear of being accused of playing a
race card.
The Republican candidate appeared keen to cool the temperature at
rallies over the weekend, at one point snatching the microphone from
a woman in Minnesota who declared Mr Obama was an "Arab". He chided
her, and another man who said he was "scared" of an Obama presidency,
and told a booing crowd to be respectful. "He is a decent family man,
a citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on
fundamental issues," said Mr McCain.
Reining in the party's supporters may be harder. A minister
delivering the invocation at a rally on Saturday asked Christians to
pray for a McCain win. "There are millions of people around this
world praying to their god - whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah - that
his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons," said Arnold Conrad, the
former pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church in Davenport. Those
comments earned a rebuke from a McCain spokesman, and both sides this
weekend had to slap down supporters for stirring issues of religion
and race.
The Obama campaign disassociated itself from comments by Democratic
congressman John Lewis who compared Mr McCain to the late Alabama
segregationist George Wallace. "Senator McCain and Governor Palin are
sowing the seeds of hatred and division," he said. "George Wallace
never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate
and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent
Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional
rights."
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From radred at ix.netcom.com Mon Oct 13 13:13:28 2008
From: radred at ix.netcom.com (Carol)
Date: Mon Oct 13 13:13:37 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Worldwide Financial Crisis (Globalresearch.ca)
Message-ID: <11199551.1223921608307.JavaMail.root@mswamui-cedar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:11:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Globalresearch.ca"
Reply-To: crgeditor@yahoo.com
To: radred@ix.netcom.com
Subject: Worldwide Financial Crisis. CRG E-Newsletter
Anatomy of the American Financial Crisis: How It is Turning into a Worldwide Crisis
By Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10537
Global Research, October 12, 2008
"The basis for optimism is sheer terror." Oscar Wilde
[After the March 2008 Bear Stearns bailout] "As more firms lost access to funding, the vicious circle of forced selling, increased volatility, and higher haircuts and margin calls that was already well advanced at the time would likely have intensified. The broader economy could hardly have remained immune from such severe financial disruptions."Ben Bernanke, Fed Chairman (March 2008)
"In accounting 101 we learn that high yields equal high risk. We know the CEOs had an incentive to disregard this because they were getting huge bonuses." David Hartzell, dean of the University of Delaware's business college and a former vice-president of Salomon Brothers
"Intensifying solvency concerns about a number of the largest U.S.-based and European financial institutions have pushed the global financial system to the brink of systemic meltdown." Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Head of the IMF (October 11, 2008)
The Bush administration's way of dealing with the ongoing financial crisis has been frantic, but probably less than adequate. In fact, tragic errors may have been made that must be remedied as quickly as possible.
The most damaging error may have been to let the global investment bank Lehman Brothers fail ($691 billion of assets at the end of 2007), on Monday September 15. This fateful date may have to be remembered in the future. This was the largest failure of an investment bank since the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert in 1990. In contrast, the Fed and the U.S. Treasury moved quickly in mid-March (2008) to save a similar global investment bank in distress (but half the size of Lehman), Bear Stearns, by quickly lending and guaranteeing $29 billion to the large universal J. P. Morgan Chase bank in order to absorb it. ?(N.B.: Let us keep in mind that it was the collapse in June 2007 of two internal Bear Stearns hedge funds that had been heavily invested in mortgage securities that kicked off the full-fledged market panic that unfolded in August 2007, and which today has turned into a full-fledged international financial crisis).
Why was the same treatment not offered to Lehman? Possibly because of a personal lack of empathy between Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. (a former chief executive of rival investment bank Goldman Sachs) and Lehman's CEO Mr. Richard S. Fuld Jr., or possibly because the Bush administration wanted to make an example that all investment banks, no matter how large, could not count on being rescued by the government. The Bush administration did not even bother to appoint a trustee to supervise Lehman?s liquidation in order to make it orderly.
Such a liquidation of a large international bank, known for its worldwide interconnections and unsound banking practices, was nearly a repeat of the mistake made in letting the large Vienna-based Creditanstalt bank fail, on May 13, 1931. This was a bank that had borrowed large amount of money in London and in New York to finance its activities. Its failure created a domino effect among other international banks that had lent to each other in the international credit chain. So much so that the failure of the Creditanstalt forced them to severely tighten their lending to absorb their sudden losses.
Seventy-seven years later, in 2008, the Bush administration's decision to let the Lehman Brothers bank fail has produced a similar ripple effect throughout the international financial system. And, perhaps more important politically, it signaled to the markets that the Bush administration was willing to let a dangerous debt deflation and an ominous credit crunch proceed. This may turn out to have been a most tragic mistake.
Indeed, Lehman's bankruptcy forced the global investment bank to quickly write down its huge portfolio of debt, a fair amount of it in derivative products. But since banks are creditors of each other, especially Lehman which dealt with large institutions, this had the consequence of spreading the American financial disease all over the world, and especially in Europe. Why? Because Lehman's London office was a huge center of sale and distribution for its more or less toxic derivative products all over Europe. Indeed, many European banks had invested in Lehman's securitized paper, and when it failed, they were left with large losses. As a consequence, they had to curtail their domestic lending and that's the reason the credit crunch is now moving to Europe.
The second mistake was to address the "liquidity problem" of American investment and mortgage banks without tackling at the same time their underlying "solvency problem".
As we wrote right at the very beginning, on August 24, 2007, the financial crisis in the U.S. is not only a classic "liquidity problem", when banks find themselves short of cash to pay immediate redemptions and withdrawals while their longer term loans are secure, but also and above all a "solvency problem", because the huge losses that banks had to absorb when they wrote down the value of their toxic assets-backed securitized paper, eroded their capital base to an extent that they became de facto insolvent. Market operators saw that and they sold the banks' shares short and the price of these shares plummeted.
With many banks' solvency now in doubt, inter-bank lending has nearly stopped, and because of a 'flight to safety', the Ted spread [the difference between three-month U.S. Treasury bills yields and yields on three month eurodollar contracts, as represented by the London Inter Bank Offered Rate, called Libor] exploded, and banks cut down their lending. Credit became tight and scarce. Because banks as a whole ordinarily lend between 10 and 12 times their capital base, the most liquid money supply (M1) began to contract in real terms. Even money market funds suffered heavy losses, and a run on them was in full swing when the Treasury stepped in a month ago to offer an emergency $50 billion guarantee.
The U.S. economy may be approaching what can be called a classic "liquidity trap" situation, wherein the Fed is lowering interest rates while lending through its discount window and printing money on a high scale, however the liquid money supply figures, in real terms, are not increasing, but are rather falling. Thus, there is no immediate inflation, but the money supply is contracting as banks reduce their lending and make a rush to T-bills (their yields nearly fell to zero). The short-term result is a net deflationary effect for the overall economy and on the stock market (although the long term bond market sees inflation ahead, and long term rates are rising). ?The result is stock market crashes in repetition.
In fact, this is precisely what has happened over the last few weeks, not only in the United States, but also in the U.K and in other European countries. This is a very dangerous development for the real economy, because money data in real terms are a leading indicator of the future course of the economy. Six or nine months down the road, the consequences of the credit crunch will appear in production and employment declines, because the credit crunch has the effect of placing a serious squeeze on most companies. Since the credit contraction really began in June (2008), the early part of 2009 is bound to show severe economic weakness.
On Friday, September 19 (2008), the Bush administration announced its solution to the growing banking crisis. It made public the $700 billion Paulson plan (US Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act, EESA) that primarily focused on creating a government market for some of the bad mortgage-backed securities on the banks' books. ?But this was only half of the problem. The other half of the problem was the need to stop the money supply from declining, by restoring bank credit lending and allowing companies to have access to working capital financing. The goal here is to prevent banking problems from morphing into a general contraction of consumption and capital investment plans, thus slowing down production and raising unemployement in the coming months.
For this to happen, however, banks must be allowed to find badly needed new capital. But in a time of crisis, with stock markets declining, it is doubtful that much private capital can be found. The recent association of Warren Buffett with Goldman Sachs may be more of an exception than a rule.
When private capital is not available, the government has no other choice but to inject equity (by buying the banks' preferred shares) into the national banking system, while taking steps to safeguard the public interest by obtaining common share warrants that can be resold profitably later, when the situation stabilizes.
In conclusion, we may ask if it is possible to avoid a repetition of the U.S. Great Depression of the 1930s or the more recent Japan's protracted recession of the 1990s, both the result of a similar severe banking crisis? The answer is yes, if the vicious cycle of asset price decline, banking credit crunch and money supply contraction can be avoided, or, at the very least, stopped and reversed. ?In economics, as in medicine, it is never too late to do the right thing.
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at:
rodrigue.tremblay@ yahoo.com.
He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'.
Visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com/
Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at:
www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/
From radred at ix.netcom.com Mon Oct 13 13:20:30 2008
From: radred at ix.netcom.com (Carol)
Date: Mon Oct 13 13:20:40 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Le Monde Diplo: Saving Wall St from Itself
Message-ID: <30610050.1223922030472.JavaMail.root@mswamui-cedar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Le Monde diplomatique
-----------------------------------------------------
October 2008
SAVING WALL STREET FROM ITSELF
Welcome to the USA
___________________________________________________________
The $700bn rescue package proposed over-quickly by the US
Treasury and Federal Reserve was initially rejected by one tier
of US government. After horse-traded amendments, it was finally
accepted by both houses. But in an uncertain future, it is
already clear that 30 years of US financial policy, and Wall
Street as we know it, are over.
by Fr?d?ric Lordon
___________________________________________________________
Only a child could fail to be amused by the steely response
of the US authorities to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and
the speed with which the futility of that response became
apparent. The decision to let the struggling investment bank
go under was a risky gamble - and useless if it was supposed
to signal a change of strategy.
Each in the series of critical developments was hailed as the
crisis point, before the next broke, yet more serious and
more spectacular. Hardly surprising that this should have
plunged the regulators into confusion and bewilderment. The
weekend emergencies exploded one after another, faster and
faster: 16 March, the investment bank Bear Stearns; 12 July,
mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac part one;
6 September, Fannie and Freddie part two (see " US: from New
Deal to new New Deal"); 13 September, Lehman Brothers and the
financial services company Merrill Lynch; 16 September (less
than a week later), the insurance group AIG (American
International Group). Each time the Federal Reserve and the
Treasury Department believed they had surpassed themselves,
they quickly realised that nothing was working and they would
have to go through it all again.
Their achievements were not enough to halt the collapse of
the US financial system. And the cost wasn't merely
financial: neither Fed chairman Ben Bernanke nor Henry
Paulson (former boss of Goldman Sachs, the flagship of
uncompromising capitalism, and now Treasury Secretary in a
rightwing administration) could ever have imagined that they
would find themselves facing accusations of socialism each
time they were forced to use state money to rescue private
finance.
That sad paradox must have been one factor determining the
decision they took as they staggered away from the rescue of
Fannie and Freddie into the crisis at Lehman; they refused to
intervene - a signal that the financial community would have
to handle this one on its own. Personal humiliations apart,
the Fed-Treasury position was understandable. The authorities
were worried that each new intervention set a precedent, and
were nervous that private bankers might dash happily to the
brink of bankruptcy convinced that at the last moment they
too, like Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie, would have to be
saved. Such nonchalance was an affront; it was difficult to
ignore the way in which arrogant financial institutions lined
their pockets during the good times, then fled, screaming for
protection and special treatment, to a state that they had
previously dismissed as a quasi-Soviet absurdity.
Systemic risk
There is always a danger that moral indignation will preempt
analysis. Anger is legitimate, a necessary spur to gathering
the political resources necessary for an eventual, vigorous
reaction. But, analytically, clarity is essential. The
immediate issue is systemic risk: the danger that, given the
complexity of inter-bank commitments, the collapse of a
single institution might generate shock waves leading to a
cascade of collateral failures.
Let me remind any liberals who are slow on the uptake that
systemic risk means what it says: the entire system is at
risk, any and all institutions of private finance are now the
potential victims of a global collapse. The destruction of
the system of finance, of credit, would mean the end of all
economic activity. It is important to be clear about the
enormity of the consequences. Once a financial bubble has
burst and the genie of systemic risk has been released,
central banks lose any room for manoeuvre. Private finance
can take the rest of the economy hostage, fatally tying the
economy's fate to its own. Since the collapse of one entails
the collapse of the other, the state has no choice except to
come to the rescue. This lies at the heart of the crisis.
Financial re-regulation is pointless unless it is carried out
with the strategic objective of preventing bubbles from
reappearing.
Once systemic risk reconstitutes and reactivates itself the
battle is lost, so the only solution is to eradicate it. The
Fed may demonstrate no serious will to do this, but it is at
least aware of the degree to which it is strategically
outmatched in its campaign against the crisis in private
finance (which is all the stronger for being moribund). So
the Fed has submitted hopelessly to calls to bail out
tottering banks, terrified that a refusal could precipitate
an irreparable catastrophe.
In March 2008 Bear Stearns threatened to default on
$13.4 trillion in credit derivatives transactions (1), ten
times more than Long Term Capital Management, which almost
brought the US financial system down in 1998. In July Fannie
and Freddie threatened to default on their $1.5 trillion
debt. Leading financial institutions had invested in these
securities: pension funds representing the retired, mutual
funds holding the savings of ordinary people, and even
foreign central banks. Such a catastrophe threatened the
survival of the US financial system.
At the Treasury, Paulson didn't hesitate: on 12 July he made
$25bn of public money available as lines of credit and to
start recapitalisation. On 6 September it emerged that the
sum required was more like $200bn, which taxpayers duly
stumped up. "I didnwant to have to do that," said Paulson,
horrified by the socialist future before him. But he did it
all the same, because he had no choice.
A smaller fish
That Lehman was a smaller fish meant that the Fed and
Treasury did have a choice. Determined to send the right
signal, they decided to make Lehman pay for the sins of its
brethren. But although Lehman afforded an excellent excuse to
vent their anger, it required careful examination before
being condemned to death: given its size and the exposure of
the other banks that were its counterparties, did Lehman's
default constitute a systemic risk?
The bank's exposure to derivatives was infinitely less than
Bear Stearns' - $29bn against $13.4 trillion (2). But Lehman,
with debts of $613bn, overtook Worldcom to become the hugest
bankruptcy in US history. Technically the default was not
equivalent since Lehman had assets and the object of
liquidation was to realise them. But what were those assets
worth?
There was at least $85bn in damaged assets, $50bn of which
was in subprime derivatives. The initial rescue plan,
discussed over the weekend of 12 September but abandoned, was
to warehouse these in an ad hoc "bad bank". Their value would
have dropped after liquidation, even if the authorities,
conscious of the risk of letting the value fall even further,
envisaged an orderly liquidation over several months.
The dramatic downgrading of its assets was just one of the
problems created by Lehman. The accounting convention of
mark-to-market, whereby assets are valued at what they would
currently fetch in the open market, would have forced all the
other financial institutions to set a Lehman special
knockdown price on their holdings of similar assets, with
additional collateral depreciations.
Because Lehman was involved in many unsettled transaction,
there was further counterparty risk. And there was the
activation of credit default swaps (CDS), derivatives that
insure their purchasers against any fall in the value of
their bond holdings. Since you can't have insurance without
an insurer, Lehman's collapse would trigger the CDSs issued
to cover its debts; and the settlement was likely to be
costly.
The CDS insurance system looks better on paper than it has
proved in practice. The market in CDSs is shaky and creates
shockwaves every time it is called upon to respond to another
failure. The Lehman catastrophe came soon after the threat to
the CDS market from the nationalisation of Fannie and
Freddie.
The Fed and the Treasury hoped such fears would help justify
their refusal to bail Lehman out and help persuade other
major investment banks to take it over. But no private rescue
plan emerged from the discussions: Wall Street is an abstract
concept that covers a collection of individual, sometimes
contradictory, interests.
A game of poker
There was a rescue plan - its failure led to Lehman's
liquidation - and it involved Barclays and Bank of America
(which eventually picked up Merrill Lynch) acquiring Lehman's
good assets, and Wall Street paying collectively for its bad
assets to be warehoused. But this meant that those banks that
couldn't afford the good assets were left to absorb the
losses on the bad assets. They were reluctant to subsidise
two more fortunate institutions, while they were left to
rebuild the ruined edifice.
The weekend of 12-14 September was spent over the poker
table. The Fed and the Treasury refused to give way. Wall
Street wrongly interpreted this as an attempt to bully a
greater commitment out of the private banks. Some of these
were raiders after a killing; but others were there under
pressure and were struggling to balance their reluctance to
do their opportunistic colleagues a favour against the
awareness that their own interests depended upon Lehman's
survival.
True to their word, the Fed and the Treasury let events take
their course. But what they failed to foresee was that this
renunciation of socialism would only last two days. They did
their best. For almost a week their supporters, somewhat
disoriented, offered their enthusiastic backing. The
Financial Times commented: "It is time for the authorities to
step back... What has been done so far should be enough" (3).
But the situation, not the FT, decided what was enough. Only
48 hours later the Fed's renunciation of socialism looked
premature.
A textbook case
AIG is a textbook demonstration of the insanity of
contemporary finance. Bored with being a simple insurance
company, it set up a subsidiary, AIG Financial Products, and
launched itself into the specialist CDS insurance market.
When the financial crisis hit, AIG found itself providing
insurance on $441bn of securities, ?57.8bn of it related to
subprime mortgages (4). Its losses were colossal. It had
already lost $18bn over the previous three quarters; now,
with CDSs kicking in and collateral devaluations, the
collapse of Lehman seemed likely to raise AIG's total losses
to $30bn, $600m of it due to the complete collapse in Fannie
and Freddie's shares after nationalisation.
The rating agencies, desperate to repent for previous
mistakes, dramatically downgraded AIG's credit rating. This
immediately forced it to meet margin calls to compensate for
the damage to its credibility as the insurer on the CDSs it
had written. But where was AIG to find $10bn-$13bn when it
was already sinking?
The Fed and the Treasury, still euphoric after their weekend
escape from the clutches of socialism, but shaken by the
scale of the potential damage, came up with a plan for a
private rescue. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan would front a
$75bn syndicated loan to AIG. Coming only a couple of days
after Wall Street's 10 leading banks had refused to put up
$70bn to underpin the orderly liquidation of Lehman, the
failure of a private rescue plan for AIG was predictable and
the necessity of state intervention inescapable. Even so, the
form that this took was astonishing: in return for an $85bn
bridging loan from the central bank, the state acquired 79.9%
of AIG stock.
The brief statement issued by the Fed on 16 September was
extraordinary. The fact that there was no precedent for it to
lend to a non-banking institution is a measure of the scale
of the crisis. In March it had decided to allow investment
banks to refinance, something that only deposit banks had
been able to do since 1929. And now here was an insurance
company knocking at its door.
With the Fed and the Treasury working together, as if
conjoined, the state's 79.9% stake in AIG looked like
compensation for the Fed's loan. But since when has a loan
been granted in exchange for a share of capital? The loan has
to be repaid; it is guaranteed by all AIG's assets and was
deliberately set at a penal rate to encourage speedy
repayment. But once the Fed's loan has been repaid, the state
will remain a 79.9% shareholder in AIG. It has taken control
without spending a cent, a shocking act of expropriation.
The New York Times reported that when Paulson and Bernanke
appeared on the evening of 16 September to announce their
plan, they looked grim. Compared with them, Venezuela's
president Hugo Ch?vez is a puppet in the hands of capital. At
least he pays when he nationalises.
But this was just the beginning of the socialist contortions
of Paulson and Bernanke. The crisis had moved on from the
liquidity problems that the Fed was equipped to handle. With
astronomical losses undermining the foundations of equity
capital, the financial sector had a general solvency crisis.
Since March there had been a frenzy of recapitalisations in
which each new crisis - Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie,
Lehman -- had been precipitated by doubts about the ability
of the banks to raise capital (5).
Recapitalisation requires capital. But by now, with the banks
fighting to save what little capital they still had, there
was nobody out there with enough money. The sovereign wealth
funds (6), upon which everyone had, perhaps excessively,
counted, examined their recent disappointments. Their
dramatic intervention in March had been based upon the
assumption that the prices of homes and shares had bottomed
out; their subsequent losses made them more cautious. That
left only the state to pick up the pieces.
So "Karl" Bernanke and "Vladimir Ilyich" Paulson still had
work to do. They at least, unlike the mad neoliberals still
calling for a moral purge in which the failed banks would be
allowed to go under, understood what was required. The former
head of Goldman Sachs was forced to recognise that there is
an explosive instability built into unregulated finance:
guaranteed to spark off endless catastrophes, but incapable
of resolving them itself. Only the state had the sovereign
power to ride roughshod over the law, nationalise now and pay
later, unilaterally grab all the dividends, even from shares
it didn't own. It alone had the power to halt the disaster
provoked by the mechanisms of the sacred market. It was
socialism or the apocalypse.
Unknown territory
Another danger is looming. After the subprime crisis comes
the threat from Alternative A-paper (Alt-A) mortgages. Alt-A
loans are considered riskier than prime mortgages and less
risky than subprime. They supposedly depend upon borrowers
answering questions, with allowances made for incomplete
information or "mistakes". According to a study by the
Mortgage Asset Research Institute, almost all Alt-A
applications (drawn up by brokers for the banks) overstate
borrowers' incomes by from 5% to 50%. The Alt-A category
includes option adjustable rate mortgages (Option-ARMs),
which offer a range of repayment choices. Under one
attractive option, for the first few years borrowers are
exempt from repaying the principal and don't even have to pay
the full interest rate. The offer of an initial rate of 1% is
hard to turn down.
Of course the inevitable has merely been postponed until
later, when the reset - the readjustment of repayments -
comes as even more of a shock. The average Option-ARM
borrower can expect to see repayments increase by 63% at a
stroke. According to the financial services company
Bloomberg, 16% of holders of Alt-A mortgages agreed since
January 2006 are more than two months in arrears. Since there
is a delay of between three and five years before the rate is
reset, defaults can be expected to increase next year and
continue until 2011.
Subprime loans totalled $855bn; Alt-A mortgages amount to
?1,000bn, of which Fannie Mae holds or guarantees ?340bn.
Wachovia (now taken over by Citigroup) holds ?122bn in
Option-ARMs; and Countrywide, saved from bankruptcy by Bank
of America, ?27bn. Washington Mutual (WaMu) held $53bn, ?13bn
of which was due for reset next year. On 15 September
Standard & Poor's (S&P) cut WaMu's credit rating to junk bond
level, the lowest. On 25 September it collapsed in the
largest bank failure in US history and was sold to JP Morgan.
WaMu is a savings and loan association that holds the savings
of ordinary people, who are beginning to feel the cold wind.
Money market funds, hitherto assumed to be as liquid and safe
as current accounts, have been overwhelmed by withdrawals
since clients saw their assets devalued following the
collapse of the Lehman shares in which the funds had so
cleverly invested. A rush by savers would be the last straw.
Given the significant and widespread need for bank
recapitalisation, and the refusal of those institutions still
afloat to come to the rescue, that leaves only the state to
act as the lender, shareholder and recapitaliser of last
resort, and to confront a financial challenge that is
becoming less susceptible to conventional solutions. On top
of the $200bn it spent bailing out Fannie and Freddie, the
federal state will end up buying warrants (7) and then
shares, giving it ownership of AIG. Now - despite the House
of Representatives' initial rejection of Bush's massive
rescue plan on 29 September, causing further panic on the
financial markets - it intends to commit a further $700bn to
buying up toxic debts held by the banks.
Whether it requires across-the-board recapitalisation or a
massive warehousing operation to rescue private finance from
all its toxic assets, S&P puts the eventual total cost at
10 points of US GDP. If this comes, as seems likely, from
taxpayers' pockets, it will destroy what little growth still
remains. If the public deficit and debt are allowed to
increase, this will undermine Treasury bonds and the dollar,
and extend the current private financial crisis to the public
finances and the currency.
Judged by the usual rules of financial orthodoxy, every
solution is bad. Which is why Bernanke and Paulson will take
every necessary step to do what must be done; and also why
the beliefs of so many of the faithful have been destroyed.
Recapitalisation by currency issuance, confiscations or
exchange controls - if things turn nasty, that could just be
the beginning. We're in unknown territory.
________________________________________________________
Fr?d?ric Lordon is an economist and the author of Jusqu'?
quand? L'?ternel retour de la crise financi?re (Raisons
d'agir, Paris, 2008)
(1) This was not a net exposure since commitments to buy/pay
compensated for others to sell/receive.
(2) Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, New York, 30
September 2007.
(3) "Decisive inaction", The Financial Times, 11 September
2008.
(4) Housing loans to borrowers with questionable credit or
even with no bank account at all.
(5) The Lehman crisis was precipitated by the collapse of
negotiations for the Korea Development Bank to buy a stake in
the company.
(6) See Ibrahim Warde, "Are they saviours, predators or
dupes?", Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, May 2008.
(7) Securities conferring the right to buy stock.
Translated by Donald Hounam
From papadop at peak.org Mon Oct 13 15:46:01 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Mon Oct 13 16:17:09 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] NEW EVIDENCE OF SYSTEMIC BIAS IN GITMO TRIALS
Message-ID:
http://rinf.com/alt-news/surveillance-big-brother/new-evidence-of-systemic-bias-in-guantanamo-trials/4719/
Monday, October 13th, 2008
By Andy Worthington - andyworthington.co.uk |
Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files, continues his
analysis of the corrupt command structure of the Military
Commissions at Guantanamo, with new information from Maj. David Frakt,
one of the Commissions' military defense lawyers.
In the last three weeks, two events have occurred that have dealt what
should have been a knockout blow to the Military Commissions at
Guantanamo, the system of trials for "terror suspects" -- outside of the
US court system and the US military's own judicial system -- that was
created by Vice President Dick Cheney and his close advisers (in
particular, his legal counsel David Addington) in November 2001.
On September 24, Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, the prosecutor in the case of
Mohamed Jawad (an Afghan accused of throwing a grenade at a jeep
containing two US soldiers and an Afghan interpreter), resigned,
expressing his frustration and disappointment that "potentially
exculpatory evidence" had "not been provided" to Jawad's defense team, and
on September 19 Brig. Gen. Hartmann, the Commissions' legal adviser,
was "reassigned" after three Commission judges -- all US military
officers, appointed by the government -- had disqualified him from two
trials (and one post-trial review) because of his transparent
pro-prosecution bias. This was particularly worrying, because his job
description -- as laid down in the Military Commissions Act of 2006,
which revived the Commissions after the Supreme Court ruled them
illegal -- stipulated that he was required to "remain neutral and
unbiased."
Last week, following further analysis -- including important work by law
professor Scott Horton -- I wrote a detailed article, The Dark Heart
of the Guantanamo Trials, in which I drew on examples of
pro-prosecution bias on the part of Hartmann's boss, Susan Crawford, the
Commissions' Convening Authority, and traced this systemic bias up the
chain of command, via the Pentagon's General Counsel, to Dick Cheney
and David Addington, the creators of the entire Commission process.
Cheney and Addington's zeal for unfettered executive power indicated,
in no uncertain terms, that the impartiality of both Hartmann and
Crawford was nothing more than a cloak to disguise the Commissions'
naked political aims: securing convictions in a rigged system designed
to prevent acquittals.
As the Washington Post recently explained, the Convening Authority is
"required to exercise a neutral role in the commissions, overseeing but
not dictating the work of prosecutors and allocating resources to both
the prosecution and defense," but a clear example of Crawford's
pro-prosecution bias was revealed by Col. Morris Davis, the
Commissions' former chief prosecutor, who resigned in October 2007,
primarily because of political interference in the process.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times last December, Davis wrote that Crawford,
unlike her predecessor Maj. Gen. John Altenburg, whose staff had "kept its
distance from the prosecution to preserve its impartiality," had
overstepped her administrative role, and "had her staff assessing evidence
before the filing of charges, directing the prosecution's pre-trial
preparation of cases" and "drafting charges against those who were accused
and assigning prosecutors to cases." Davis' stark conclusion -- that
"Intermingling convening authority and prosecutor roles perpetuates the
perception of a rigged process stacked against the accused" -- was
unerringly accurate, but with Hartmann shielding her from criticism (and
taking all the flak himself), Crawford has so far avoided calls for her
resignation, even though, as Scott Horton pointed out in February, she is
"a Cheney protege," and is, moreover, "particularly close to Cheney's
chief of staff David Addington."
Shortly after my article about the corrupt command structure of the
Commissions was published, I received an enlightening email from Maj.
David Frakt, Mohamed Jawad's military defense lawyer, which provided
additional details confirming the bias of both Brig. Gen. Hartmann and
Susan Crawford.
More criticism of Brig. Gen. Hartmann
Maj. Frakt was kind enough to point out that "Hartmann was fired," and
that "his claim that he was promoted is nonsense." He cited testimony by
Hartmann in Jawad's case on June 19, and in a subsequent affidavit, in
which he stated that he had three different duties as legal
adviser: he was responsible for logistics, planning and resources, he was
the supervisor of the prosecution, and he was the legal adviser. As Maj.
Frakt explained, "His promotion consisted of removing two of those three
duties. He is now responsible only for logistics, planning and resources."
He added that most of this work is done by the Commissions Support
Group (CSG) at Guantanamo, headed by Brig. Gen. Zanetti, who testified in
a hearing on Jawad's case in August that "Hartmann had tried to have
the CSG assigned to his `command' even though he was in
Washington and lawyers do not generally command anything," and
confirmed that Hartmann "was definitely trying to take charge of the
whole process." I found Zanetti's comment that "lawyers do not
generally command anything" (as paraphrased by Maj. Frakt) to be
particularly telling, as it reflects the way in which lawyers
(Addington, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales) have actually played crucial
roles in driving the cruelest manifestations of the administration's
"War on Terror" policies.
Maj. Frakt also drew my attention to other examples of Hartmann's
overreach: in particular, a timeline for the trials that he created in
November 2007, and reports about the ways in which he had briefed
commanders at Guantanamo on his plans, both of which exceeded his
remit as an impartial adviser.
According to Capt. Patrick McCarthy, the Staff Judge Advocate of Joint
Task Force Guantanamo, who made a deposition in Jawad's case on June 30
at Maj. Frakt's request, Hartmann (who, he said, was "remarkably
aggressive" to him during meetings at Guantanamo) briefed him in
November 2007 on "a plan for a way forward on the number of cases that
would be charged in each month." He explained, "He has a large foldout
chart that's probably three or three and a half, four feet long. It's a
well-known chart and it has on that chart the kind of lay down of how
many cases will be proceeding and sort of monthly times as they will
proceed."
Hartmann admitted the existence of this timeline during the hearing on
June 19, and as Maj. Frakt demonstrated in a motion to dismiss in
August, when he compared the dates on Hartmann's chart with the dates the
prisoners were actually charged he realized that they were
remarkably similar. "It is easy to come up with a sinister explanation for
the congruence of the chart and the scheduling order," he wrote, adding,
"It is hard to come up with an innocent one."
Capt. McCarthy also testified that, as well as being bullying and
dismissive to himself and, it seemed, every other officer below the
rank of General or Admiral at Guantanamo, Hartmann had held several
secure video teleconferences with the commanders at Guantanamo, and two
face-to-face meetings, which, it appeared, were also part of his mission
to "brief" commanders on how and when the trials would proceed,
rather than allowing these issues to be developed by the prosecutors.
As McCarthy described it, Hartmann "would closely identify himself
with prosecutorial efforts," was "involved at a level of detail that no
other general or flag officer that I've ever worked for or with has ever
been involved at," and gave the impression that he was "responsible for
moving forward with military commissions in all respects."
More disturbing revelations about the Convening Authority
Maj. Frakt also revealed more disturbing details about Susan
Crawford's role. After revisiting the August ruling of Col. Stephen
Henley, the judge in Jawad's case, who disqualified Hartmann for a
second time, and "ordered that the defense be given an opportunity to
submit matters in extenuation and mitigation, and that Crawford
reconsider her referral decision and either ratify the earlier
decision or take other appropriate action without further input from
Hartmann," Maj. Frakt explained that in early September "the
prosecutors sought reconsideration of the judge's ruling, filing a
brief which included an affidavit from Hartmann and an affidavit from
Crawford herself."
This is enormously significant, as it provides another concrete
example of Crawford's interference, to add to Col. Davis' account, and it
is made all the more disturbing by Maj. Frakt's subsequent
explanation of how Hartmann and Crawford seemed to connive to sway the
judge's opinion. Their argument, he wrote, centered on claims that
Crawford "had not been misled by Hartmann's recommendation that the
case against Jawad be referred as non-capital," which, as he pointed
out, "was misleading because it suggested that capital punishment was an
option, when it was not an authorized punishment for the offenses with
which Jawad is charged." The end result, he noted, was that "The brief
filed by the government severely distorted the facts."
Despite this, Col. Henley amended his ruling the next day, authorizing
Hartmann to review the matters submitted by the defense and to
supplement his original pre-trial advice. Maj. Frakt was appalled. He had
been denied the opportunity to respond (as he stated, he was
"supposed to get one week to respond to filings from the opposing
party"), and he immediately filed a motion "pointing out the factual
errors in the government brief and protesting this action, including the
fact that the judge acted without input from the defense." Most
importantly, he "requested that Crawford be disqualified since she had
made herself a witness in a contested matter before the commission." He
noted, however, that "The judge never responded."
In addition, Maj. Frakt explained that, although he knew that it was
"completely futile" to submit a request for reconsideration, he
nevertheless "put together a detailed memorandum explaining the
evidentiary, factual and legal deficiencies in the case and detailing the
extensive mitigating and extenuating circumstances," which he
submitted on September 15. He also included letters from concerned
citizens, a petition urging Crawford to drop the case, and various
legal documents, but explained that, although he "repeatedly requested a
personal audience" with Crawford, "she refused to meet with me, citing
a policy of not having ex parte communications with either party."
Cutting once more to the heart of the problem -- Crawford's
thinly-veiled bias -- Maj. Frakt added, "This is utter nonsense. She is
not a judge and is specifically authorized to discuss matters with either
party."
Mohamed Jawad and the fog of "war crimes"
Moreover, Hartmann's departure has clearly done nothing to stem
Crawford's enthusiasm for referring charges without paying any heed to
arguments made by the defense, and in this she seems to have the full
support of Hartmann's replacement, Col. Mike Chapman. Maj. Frakt
explained that on September 22 (Chapman's first day as legal adviser) he
issued a new pre-trial advice to Crawford -- "chock full of
misleading characterizations of the facts and misstatements of the
law," as Maj. Frakt put it -- in response to his submissions, in which he
stated that there was "no merit to the defense arguments." The
following day, as Maj. Frakt proceeded to explain, "Crawford
`ratified' her referral decision and confirmed that she wanted the
case to go forward." However, while this appears to be another example of
Crawford's predetermined inflexibility, which leads me to wonder if
anything could persuade her not to go forward with the cases before
her, Jawad, at least, appears to have some support from the judge in his
case.
On September 24, Col. Henley issued three rulings on motions to
dismiss that were filed in May and June, and Maj. Frakt explained
that, although he "declined to dismiss the charges," he "came very
close." Essentially, as Maj. Frakt described it, Col. Henley "ruled
that the government had offered no persuasive authority for their
legal position on the meaning of the elements of `murder in violation of
the law of war'" (the offense Jawad is accused of committing, even though
no one died in the grenade attack). According to the government,
Jawad's status as an "unlawful combatant" or "unprivileged belligerent"
(variants on the familiar label of "enemy combatant") is all that is
required to prove that his acts were "in violation of the law of war."
This is actually nonsense, and Maj. Frakt proceeded to explain that a
violation of the law of war should actually mean that there was
"something in the nature of the act allegedly committed by Jawad that
violated the law of war (e.g. an illegal weapon was used, or protected
persons were targeted)." He added, "Because Jawad is accused of using a
lawful weapon to attack lawful targets (uniformed enemy soldiers) there
is no independent violation of the law of war."
Col. Henley seemed to agree, but he "declined to dismiss the case
because he said he did not know what evidence the government had and
would give them a chance to prove their case," although he added that if
the prosecution "didn't have any facts that would tend to prove a
violation of the law of war, then they had an independent ethical
obligation to go to the Convening Authority and ask her to dismiss the
charges."
He then ordered the government to provide a "bill of particulars" (a
statement of facts detailing how the prosecution would prove the
elements of the offense), but as Maj. Frakt described it, this
document "simply rehashed the government's prior stance that the
violation of the law of war consisted of not being a lawful combatant and
wearing civilian clothes to blend in with the local population." Pointing
out the absurdity of this position, he explained, "The government
states he is an unlawful combatant because he was not a member of a
regular army in military uniform, but then claims his violation of the
law of war was wearing civilian clothes." He added, "I have noted
several times that Jawad was part of the local population. He is an
Afghan citizen."
Quite how this absurd trial will pan out remains to be seen, but if
there is hope for Mohamed Jawad, the same cannot be said for the
Commissions in general, which are suffering from inbuilt problems that
cannot be remedied by the dismissal of either the legal adviser to the
Convening Authority or the Convening Authority herself -- although the
accumulating evidence certainly suggests that, like Brig. Gen.
Hartmann, Susan Crawford should be removed from her post.
Enshrining political manipulation
Several legal scholars have been noting these problems for some time. In
August, for example, Professor Gregory S. McNeal, a former academic
consultant to the Commissions' chief prosecutor, wrote that the
structure and rules for the Commissions, as crafted by the Department of
Defense, "allowed for political manipulation of nearly all aspects of the
trials."
One of the major flaws identified by McNeal was the nature of the
Convening Authority's role. In the courts-martial system, from which the
Commissions are vaguely derived, the Convening Authority is a military
commander, who is presumed to be capable of "unbiased and apolitical
decision-making." In the Military Commissions Act, however, it is stated
that Military Commissions "may be convened by the Secretary of
Defense or by any officer or official of the United States designated
by the Secretary for that purpose"; in other words, that civilians, like
Susan Crawford, can be brought in to deliberately exert the "undue command
influence" with which both she, and her legal adviser, have repeatedly
been identified.
In my opinion, this is a crucial distinction, deliberately tailored by the
administration to allow a puppet of the executive to fulfil her master's
commands, and it explains, I think, why there will be no justice at
Guantanamo until the whole system is dismantled and the trials are
moved to the US mainland, where judges are free to throw out risible
and/or rigged charges like those against Mohamed Jawad, and to grapple,
independently, with the problems they will undoubtedly face in
prosecuting the handful of genuinely dangerous individuals at Guantanamo
in a court that can claim legitimacy.
Until this time comes, I am thankful to Maj. Frakt for sharing his
insights with me, and I will continue to expose the "undue command
influence" that poisons Dick Cheney and David Addington's
ill-conceived, quasi-legal system of show trials.
From papadop at peak.org Mon Oct 13 15:53:12 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Mon Oct 13 16:24:14 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] FISK debates on Palestinian-Israel conflict
Message-ID:
http://rinf.com/alt-news/war-terrorism/fisk-shocked-by-us-failure-to-debate-conflict-in-israel/4717/
A feisty debate between Robert Fisk and the author Professor Sir Lawrence
Freedman brought The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival to a close on
a high note last night.
#########
The absence of a debate on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians
in the US presidential elections was "shocking", Fisk told a packed hall
at Blenheim Palace, the grand 18th-century home in Woodstock, Oxfordshire,
which hosted the festival.
"America must pull its military forces out of Iraq and the Middle East,
leaving the peoples of the region to decide their own future said Fisk, an
author and Middle East correspondent for The Independent. He said the US
and its allies had "built a new Iron Curtain from the ice cap to the
equator", and added that the result of the elections on 4 November "would
not make the slightest bit of difference in the Middle East".
"America's uncritical support for Israel is going to continue," he said.
Professor Freedman, of King's College, London, however, provided stiff
resistance, arguing that the United States must play a constructive role
in the region and around the globe.
The debate was one of a series of discussions with leading figures from
the worlds of literature, the arts and politics that have engrossed
audiences since the festival began last week.
Only a few hours before Fisk and Professor Freedman?s appearance, the
acclaimed historian, Simon Schama, spoke to The Independent columnist
Deborah Orr about his new book The American Future: A History, which
accompanies a current BBC series.
Hundreds watched Schama lament the collapse of American self-confidence
under George Bush. The historian, who spent much of his career at Oxford
but is now based at Columbia University in New York, made no attempt to
hide his view that the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, could help
renew the ideals that inspired the birth of the American nation.
Speaking in the splendour of the palace Orangery, Schama described Mr Bush
as a "comical little front man" for what ought to be considered the
"Cheney administration".
Schama also derided the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain,
for running a divisive campaign that would backfire in states that didn't
already support him.
And he said that vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's comment at a
rally last week that Mr Obama "is not a man who sees America the way that
you and I see America" had racist undertones that made it "morally
repellent". It was, Schama said, "code for depicting Obama as the Other".
In one of the early highlights of the festival, the Conservative Party
leader, David Cameron, took to the stage on Friday in an apparent attempt
to cast himself as the heir to Tony Blair. In an interview with Simon
Kelner, editor-in-chief of The Independent, Mr Cameron, who celebrated his
42nd birthday last Thursday, declared: "I'm a very straightforward
person."
The comment invoked Mr Blair's assertion that he was "a pretty straight
kind of guy".
Other prominent speakers to draw large crowds included the typically
forthright war correspondents Martin Bell and Ann Leslie, novelists
Elizabeth Jane Howard and P D James, 85 and 88 respectively, and two
Independent columnists: novelist Howard Jacobson and chef Mark Hix.
Dame Ann, promoting an autobiography which includes compelling details
about her time on the front line, issued a hurried apology after uttering
a four letter expletive in Woodstock?s Church of St Mary Magdalene.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://link.mail2web.com/mail2web
From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Oct 13 17:05:00 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Mon Oct 13 17:05:08 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Le Monde Diplo: Saving Wall St from Itself
In-Reply-To: <30610050.1223922030472.JavaMail.root@mswamui-cedar.atl.sa.
earthlink.net>
References: <30610050.1223922030472.JavaMail.root@mswamui-cedar.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <20081013220501.46B00F5BD@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Oct 13 20:43:56 2008
From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta)
Date: Mon Oct 13 21:03:59 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Capitalist financial crisis -
articles, video,
audio; Darfur book excerpt; climate change; nationalisations;
Pilger on Mbeki's fall
Message-ID: <48F3F95C.80004@greenleft.org.au>
Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed
(http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@dsp.org.au
*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links./*
* * *
John Bellamy Foster: Can the financial crisis be reversed?
Interview with John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, for
P?gina/12 (Argentina). This interview was first posted at MRzine on
October 10, 2008, and has been posted at Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal with permission.
P?gina/12: What is your opinion about the decision of the US Treasury
Department to consider taking ownership stakes in many United States
banks? Do you think this is the right political-economic strategy? I
mean, will it lead to the recovery of the system?
* Read more
The financial meltdown: Roots of the economic crisis in
overaccumulation, financialisation and 'global apartheid'
By Patrick Bond
October 3, 2008 -- The global economy's vast financial sector expansion
- in the context of productive sector stagnation tendencies - has
increased the leading powerbrokers' capacity to devalue large parts of
the Third World (including major emerging market sites), as well as to
write down selected financially volatile and vulnerable markets in the
North (e.g. dot.com and real estate bubbles). In contrast to the 1930s,
this set of partial write-downs of overaccumulated financial capital has
not yet created such generalised panic and crisis contagion as to
threaten the entire system's integrity. Shifting and stalling the
necessary devalorisation of overaccumulated capital, particularly as it
bubbles up via financial sectors into speculative markets, entailed
spatial and temporal fixes.
* Read more
Exclusive book excerpt: A manifesto for principled Darfur activism
-- and beyond
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal publishes -- with the
authors' permission -- an exclusive excerpt from Kevin Funk and Steven
Fake's just published book, Scramble for Africa: Darfur Intervention and
the USA (Black Rose Books).
In Scramble for Africa Kevin Funk and Steven Fake provide a forensic and
astute examination of the Bush administration's politically cynical and
opportunist exploitation of the people of Darfur's terrible plight,
using them as pawns to regain access to Sudan's oil riches and to
promote the self-serving imperialist concept of ``humanitarian
intervention''. Funk and Fake reveal the hypocrisy of Washington, which
can in the same breathe declare the Sudan regime's slaughter of hundreds
of thousands of Darfuris ``genocide'' while -- out of the general
public's earshot -- praise and collaborate with the very same butchers
as allies in its ``war on terror''. The mainstream ``Save Darfur''
movement's leadership also comes in for a similar investigation for its
willingness to allow the interests of the people of Darfur to play
second fiddle to Washington's foreign policy double standards.
* Read more
Climate change -- the case for public ownership
By Trent Hawkins
Arising out of the UK Climate Camp in August 2008 there has developed an
interesting debate between Ewa Jasiewicz, an activist in Britain, and
well-known radical columnist George Monbiot about the role of so-called
"state solutions" to climate change. Jasiewicz's article, published on
the Guardian website[i] and entitled "Time for a Revolution", was an
attack on Monbiot for a "controversial presentation [at climate camp]
... in which he endorsed the use of the state as a partner in resolving
the climate crisis". It was also prompted
* Read more
Richard Wolff: Capitalism hits the fan: a socialist solution
Richard Wolff is professor of economics at UMass Amherst. He talks about
the underlying cause of the current capitalist crisis (NOT ``financial''
crisis) and capitalism in general. Socialism and workers' democracy is
presented as the alternative. The talk was presented by the Association
for Economic and Social Analysis and the journal Rethinking Marxism in
early October 2008.
* Watch at http://links.org.au/node/676
Videos on the Marxist theory of capitalism
These resources with notes are created by Brendan Cooney and are
available at Kapitalism 101. This page was compiled by Dave Riley.
* Read more
Capitalist versus socialist state intervention in the economy
By Martin Saatdjian
October 1, 2008 -- Venezelanalysis -- The current financial crisis
reveals the first symptoms of a major, perhaps revolutionary,
socioeconomic change in world affairs. Much has been said how, after the
collapse of the Berlin Wall, capitalism overshadowed socialism and "the
end of history" was decreed in much of the intellectual world. Not
surprisingly, less has been mentioned that while socialism was dying in
Europe, it was also blossoming in Latin America. In 1989, events known
as El Caracazo -- major protests in Venezuela against neoliberalism and
the "Washington Consensus" aimed at reducing the role of the state in
the economy -- erupted. The election of Hugo Chavez as president of
Venezuela in 1998 was a reaction not only to people's dislike [of
neoliberalism] and the failure of neoliberalism, but also to the strong
repression that followed the 1989 protests.
* Read more
John Pilger: The downfall of Mbeki -- The hidden truth
By John Pilger
October 7, 2008 -- The political rupture in South Africa is being
presented in the outside world as the personal tragedy and humiliation
of one man, Thabo Mbeki. It is reminiscent of the beatification of
Nelson Mandela at the death of apartheid. This is not to diminish the
power of personalities, but their importance is often as a distraction
from the historical forces they serve and manage. Frantz Fanon had this
in mind when, in The Wretched of the Earth, he described the "historic
mission" of much of Africa's post-colonial ruling class as "that of
intermediary [whose] mission has nothing to do with transforming the
nation: it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between
the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged".
* Read more
Four crises of the contemporary world capitalist system
By William K. Tabb
Monthly Review, October 8, 2008 -- This essay examines aspects of the
global political economy that I hope will inform progressive governments
and movements for social change. It evaluates the constraints and
opportunities presented in the current conjuncture of world capitalist
development by analysing four areas of crisis in the contemporary world
capitalist system. These are not the only contradictory elements in the
contemporary conjuncture, but they are, in my view, the most salient.
* Read more
* * *
/Links/ seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
*
ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
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From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Oct 13 20:43:56 2008
From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta)
Date: Mon Oct 13 21:04:05 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Capitalist financial crisis -
articles, video,
audio; Darfur book excerpt; climate change; nationalisations;
Pilger on Mbeki's fall
Message-ID: <48F3F95C.80004@greenleft.org.au>
Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed
(http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@dsp.org.au
*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links./*
* * *
John Bellamy Foster: Can the financial crisis be reversed?
Interview with John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, for
P?gina/12 (Argentina). This interview was first posted at MRzine on
October 10, 2008, and has been posted at Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal with permission.
P?gina/12: What is your opinion about the decision of the US Treasury
Department to consider taking ownership stakes in many United States
banks? Do you think this is the right political-economic strategy? I
mean, will it lead to the recovery of the system?
* Read more
The financial meltdown: Roots of the economic crisis in
overaccumulation, financialisation and 'global apartheid'
By Patrick Bond
October 3, 2008 -- The global economy's vast financial sector expansion
- in the context of productive sector stagnation tendencies - has
increased the leading powerbrokers' capacity to devalue large parts of
the Third World (including major emerging market sites), as well as to
write down selected financially volatile and vulnerable markets in the
North (e.g. dot.com and real estate bubbles). In contrast to the 1930s,
this set of partial write-downs of overaccumulated financial capital has
not yet created such generalised panic and crisis contagion as to
threaten the entire system's integrity. Shifting and stalling the
necessary devalorisation of overaccumulated capital, particularly as it
bubbles up via financial sectors into speculative markets, entailed
spatial and temporal fixes.
* Read more
Exclusive book excerpt: A manifesto for principled Darfur activism
-- and beyond
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal publishes -- with the
authors' permission -- an exclusive excerpt from Kevin Funk and Steven
Fake's just published book, Scramble for Africa: Darfur Intervention and
the USA (Black Rose Books).
In Scramble for Africa Kevin Funk and Steven Fake provide a forensic and
astute examination of the Bush administration's politically cynical and
opportunist exploitation of the people of Darfur's terrible plight,
using them as pawns to regain access to Sudan's oil riches and to
promote the self-serving imperialist concept of ``humanitarian
intervention''. Funk and Fake reveal the hypocrisy of Washington, which
can in the same breathe declare the Sudan regime's slaughter of hundreds
of thousands of Darfuris ``genocide'' while -- out of the general
public's earshot -- praise and collaborate with the very same butchers
as allies in its ``war on terror''. The mainstream ``Save Darfur''
movement's leadership also comes in for a similar investigation for its
willingness to allow the interests of the people of Darfur to play
second fiddle to Washington's foreign policy double standards.
* Read more
Climate change -- the case for public ownership
By Trent Hawkins
Arising out of the UK Climate Camp in August 2008 there has developed an
interesting debate between Ewa Jasiewicz, an activist in Britain, and
well-known radical columnist George Monbiot about the role of so-called
"state solutions" to climate change. Jasiewicz's article, published on
the Guardian website[i] and entitled "Time for a Revolution", was an
attack on Monbiot for a "controversial presentation [at climate camp]
... in which he endorsed the use of the state as a partner in resolving
the climate crisis". It was also prompted
* Read more
Richard Wolff: Capitalism hits the fan: a socialist solution
Richard Wolff is professor of economics at UMass Amherst. He talks about
the underlying cause of the current capitalist crisis (NOT ``financial''
crisis) and capitalism in general. Socialism and workers' democracy is
presented as the alternative. The talk was presented by the Association
for Economic and Social Analysis and the journal Rethinking Marxism in
early October 2008.
* Watch at http://links.org.au/node/676
Videos on the Marxist theory of capitalism
These resources with notes are created by Brendan Cooney and are
available at Kapitalism 101. This page was compiled by Dave Riley.
* Read more
Capitalist versus socialist state intervention in the economy
By Martin Saatdjian
October 1, 2008 -- Venezelanalysis -- The current financial crisis
reveals the first symptoms of a major, perhaps revolutionary,
socioeconomic change in world affairs. Much has been said how, after the
collapse of the Berlin Wall, capitalism overshadowed socialism and "the
end of history" was decreed in much of the intellectual world. Not
surprisingly, less has been mentioned that while socialism was dying in
Europe, it was also blossoming in Latin America. In 1989, events known
as El Caracazo -- major protests in Venezuela against neoliberalism and
the "Washington Consensus" aimed at reducing the role of the state in
the economy -- erupted. The election of Hugo Chavez as president of
Venezuela in 1998 was a reaction not only to people's dislike [of
neoliberalism] and the failure of neoliberalism, but also to the strong
repression that followed the 1989 protests.
* Read more
John Pilger: The downfall of Mbeki -- The hidden truth
By John Pilger
October 7, 2008 -- The political rupture in South Africa is being
presented in the outside world as the personal tragedy and humiliation
of one man, Thabo Mbeki. It is reminiscent of the beatification of
Nelson Mandela at the death of apartheid. This is not to diminish the
power of personalities, but their importance is often as a distraction
from the historical forces they serve and manage. Frantz Fanon had this
in mind when, in The Wretched of the Earth, he described the "historic
mission" of much of Africa's post-colonial ruling class as "that of
intermediary [whose] mission has nothing to do with transforming the
nation: it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between
the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged".
* Read more
Four crises of the contemporary world capitalist system
By William K. Tabb
Monthly Review, October 8, 2008 -- This essay examines aspects of the
global political economy that I hope will inform progressive governments
and movements for social change. It evaluates the constraints and
opportunities presented in the current conjuncture of world capitalist
development by analysing four areas of crisis in the contemporary world
capitalist system. These are not the only contradictory elements in the
contemporary conjuncture, but they are, in my view, the most salient.
* Read more
* * *
/Links/ seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
*
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From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Oct 13 20:43:56 2008
From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta)
Date: Mon Oct 13 21:04:06 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Capitalist financial crisis -
articles, video,
audio; Darfur book excerpt; climate change; nationalisations;
Pilger on Mbeki's fall
Message-ID: <48F3F95C.80004@greenleft.org.au>
Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed
(http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@dsp.org.au
*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links./*
* * *
John Bellamy Foster: Can the financial crisis be reversed?
Interview with John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, for
P?gina/12 (Argentina). This interview was first posted at MRzine on
October 10, 2008, and has been posted at Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal with permission.
P?gina/12: What is your opinion about the decision of the US Treasury
Department to consider taking ownership stakes in many United States
banks? Do you think this is the right political-economic strategy? I
mean, will it lead to the recovery of the system?
* Read more
The financial meltdown: Roots of the economic crisis in
overaccumulation, financialisation and 'global apartheid'
By Patrick Bond
October 3, 2008 -- The global economy's vast financial sector expansion
- in the context of productive sector stagnation tendencies - has
increased the leading powerbrokers' capacity to devalue large parts of
the Third World (including major emerging market sites), as well as to
write down selected financially volatile and vulnerable markets in the
North (e.g. dot.com and real estate bubbles). In contrast to the 1930s,
this set of partial write-downs of overaccumulated financial capital has
not yet created such generalised panic and crisis contagion as to
threaten the entire system's integrity. Shifting and stalling the
necessary devalorisation of overaccumulated capital, particularly as it
bubbles up via financial sectors into speculative markets, entailed
spatial and temporal fixes.
* Read more
Exclusive book excerpt: A manifesto for principled Darfur activism
-- and beyond
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal publishes -- with the
authors' permission -- an exclusive excerpt from Kevin Funk and Steven
Fake's just published book, Scramble for Africa: Darfur Intervention and
the USA (Black Rose Books).
In Scramble for Africa Kevin Funk and Steven Fake provide a forensic and
astute examination of the Bush administration's politically cynical and
opportunist exploitation of the people of Darfur's terrible plight,
using them as pawns to regain access to Sudan's oil riches and to
promote the self-serving imperialist concept of ``humanitarian
intervention''. Funk and Fake reveal the hypocrisy of Washington, which
can in the same breathe declare the Sudan regime's slaughter of hundreds
of thousands of Darfuris ``genocide'' while -- out of the general
public's earshot -- praise and collaborate with the very same butchers
as allies in its ``war on terror''. The mainstream ``Save Darfur''
movement's leadership also comes in for a similar investigation for its
willingness to allow the interests of the people of Darfur to play
second fiddle to Washington's foreign policy double standards.
* Read more
Climate change -- the case for public ownership
By Trent Hawkins
Arising out of the UK Climate Camp in August 2008 there has developed an
interesting debate between Ewa Jasiewicz, an activist in Britain, and
well-known radical columnist George Monbiot about the role of so-called
"state solutions" to climate change. Jasiewicz's article, published on
the Guardian website[i] and entitled "Time for a Revolution", was an
attack on Monbiot for a "controversial presentation [at climate camp]
... in which he endorsed the use of the state as a partner in resolving
the climate crisis". It was also prompted
* Read more
Richard Wolff: Capitalism hits the fan: a socialist solution
Richard Wolff is professor of economics at UMass Amherst. He talks about
the underlying cause of the current capitalist crisis (NOT ``financial''
crisis) and capitalism in general. Socialism and workers' democracy is
presented as the alternative. The talk was presented by the Association
for Economic and Social Analysis and the journal Rethinking Marxism in
early October 2008.
* Watch at http://links.org.au/node/676
Videos on the Marxist theory of capitalism
These resources with notes are created by Brendan Cooney and are
available at Kapitalism 101. This page was compiled by Dave Riley.
* Read more
Capitalist versus socialist state intervention in the economy
By Martin Saatdjian
October 1, 2008 -- Venezelanalysis -- The current financial crisis
reveals the first symptoms of a major, perhaps revolutionary,
socioeconomic change in world affairs. Much has been said how, after the
collapse of the Berlin Wall, capitalism overshadowed socialism and "the
end of history" was decreed in much of the intellectual world. Not
surprisingly, less has been mentioned that while socialism was dying in
Europe, it was also blossoming in Latin America. In 1989, events known
as El Caracazo -- major protests in Venezuela against neoliberalism and
the "Washington Consensus" aimed at reducing the role of the state in
the economy -- erupted. The election of Hugo Chavez as president of
Venezuela in 1998 was a reaction not only to people's dislike [of
neoliberalism] and the failure of neoliberalism, but also to the strong
repression that followed the 1989 protests.
* Read more
John Pilger: The downfall of Mbeki -- The hidden truth
By John Pilger
October 7, 2008 -- The political rupture in South Africa is being
presented in the outside world as the personal tragedy and humiliation
of one man, Thabo Mbeki. It is reminiscent of the beatification of
Nelson Mandela at the death of apartheid. This is not to diminish the
power of personalities, but their importance is often as a distraction
from the historical forces they serve and manage. Frantz Fanon had this
in mind when, in The Wretched of the Earth, he described the "historic
mission" of much of Africa's post-colonial ruling class as "that of
intermediary [whose] mission has nothing to do with transforming the
nation: it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between
the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged".
* Read more
Four crises of the contemporary world capitalist system
By William K. Tabb
Monthly Review, October 8, 2008 -- This essay examines aspects of the
global political economy that I hope will inform progressive governments
and movements for social change. It evaluates the constraints and
opportunities presented in the current conjuncture of world capitalist
development by analysing four areas of crisis in the contemporary world
capitalist system. These are not the only contradictory elements in the
contemporary conjuncture, but they are, in my view, the most salient.
* Read more
* * *
/Links/ seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
*
ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
-------------- next part --------------
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From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Oct 13 20:43:56 2008
From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta)
Date: Mon Oct 13 21:04:07 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Capitalist financial crisis -
articles, video,
audio; Darfur book excerpt; climate change; nationalisations;
Pilger on Mbeki's fall
Message-ID: <48F3F95C.80004@greenleft.org.au>
Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed
(http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@dsp.org.au
*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links./*
* * *
John Bellamy Foster: Can the financial crisis be reversed?
Interview with John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, for
P?gina/12 (Argentina). This interview was first posted at MRzine on
October 10, 2008, and has been posted at Links International Journal of
Socialist Renewal with permission.
P?gina/12: What is your opinion about the decision of the US Treasury
Department to consider taking ownership stakes in many United States
banks? Do you think this is the right political-economic strategy? I
mean, will it lead to the recovery of the system?
* Read more
The financial meltdown: Roots of the economic crisis in
overaccumulation, financialisation and 'global apartheid'
By Patrick Bond
October 3, 2008 -- The global economy's vast financial sector expansion
- in the context of productive sector stagnation tendencies - has
increased the leading powerbrokers' capacity to devalue large parts of
the Third World (including major emerging market sites), as well as to
write down selected financially volatile and vulnerable markets in the
North (e.g. dot.com and real estate bubbles). In contrast to the 1930s,
this set of partial write-downs of overaccumulated financial capital has
not yet created such generalised panic and crisis contagion as to
threaten the entire system's integrity. Shifting and stalling the
necessary devalorisation of overaccumulated capital, particularly as it
bubbles up via financial sectors into speculative markets, entailed
spatial and temporal fixes.
* Read more
Exclusive book excerpt: A manifesto for principled Darfur activism
-- and beyond
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal publishes -- with the
authors' permission -- an exclusive excerpt from Kevin Funk and Steven
Fake's just published book, Scramble for Africa: Darfur Intervention and
the USA (Black Rose Books).
In Scramble for Africa Kevin Funk and Steven Fake provide a forensic and
astute examination of the Bush administration's politically cynical and
opportunist exploitation of the people of Darfur's terrible plight,
using them as pawns to regain access to Sudan's oil riches and to
promote the self-serving imperialist concept of ``humanitarian
intervention''. Funk and Fake reveal the hypocrisy of Washington, which
can in the same breathe declare the Sudan regime's slaughter of hundreds
of thousands of Darfuris ``genocide'' while -- out of the general
public's earshot -- praise and collaborate with the very same butchers
as allies in its ``war on terror''. The mainstream ``Save Darfur''
movement's leadership also comes in for a similar investigation for its
willingness to allow the interests of the people of Darfur to play
second fiddle to Washington's foreign policy double standards.
* Read more
Climate change -- the case for public ownership
By Trent Hawkins
Arising out of the UK Climate Camp in August 2008 there has developed an
interesting debate between Ewa Jasiewicz, an activist in Britain, and
well-known radical columnist George Monbiot about the role of so-called
"state solutions" to climate change. Jasiewicz's article, published on
the Guardian website[i] and entitled "Time for a Revolution", was an
attack on Monbiot for a "controversial presentation [at climate camp]
... in which he endorsed the use of the state as a partner in resolving
the climate crisis". It was also prompted
* Read more
Richard Wolff: Capitalism hits the fan: a socialist solution
Richard Wolff is professor of economics at UMass Amherst. He talks about
the underlying cause of the current capitalist crisis (NOT ``financial''
crisis) and capitalism in general. Socialism and workers' democracy is
presented as the alternative. The talk was presented by the Association
for Economic and Social Analysis and the journal Rethinking Marxism in
early October 2008.
* Watch at http://links.org.au/node/676
Videos on the Marxist theory of capitalism
These resources with notes are created by Brendan Cooney and are
available at Kapitalism 101. This page was compiled by Dave Riley.
* Read more
Capitalist versus socialist state intervention in the economy
By Martin Saatdjian
October 1, 2008 -- Venezelanalysis -- The current financial crisis
reveals the first symptoms of a major, perhaps revolutionary,
socioeconomic change in world affairs. Much has been said how, after the
collapse of the Berlin Wall, capitalism overshadowed socialism and "the
end of history" was decreed in much of the intellectual world. Not
surprisingly, less has been mentioned that while socialism was dying in
Europe, it was also blossoming in Latin America. In 1989, events known
as El Caracazo -- major protests in Venezuela against neoliberalism and
the "Washington Consensus" aimed at reducing the role of the state in
the economy -- erupted. The election of Hugo Chavez as president of
Venezuela in 1998 was a reaction not only to people's dislike [of
neoliberalism] and the failure of neoliberalism, but also to the strong
repression that followed the 1989 protests.
* Read more
John Pilger: The downfall of Mbeki -- The hidden truth
By John Pilger
October 7, 2008 -- The political rupture in South Africa is being
presented in the outside world as the personal tragedy and humiliation
of one man, Thabo Mbeki. It is reminiscent of the beatification of
Nelson Mandela at the death of apartheid. This is not to diminish the
power of personalities, but their importance is often as a distraction
from the historical forces they serve and manage. Frantz Fanon had this
in mind when, in The Wretched of the Earth, he described the "historic
mission" of much of Africa's post-colonial ruling class as "that of
intermediary [whose] mission has nothing to do with transforming the
nation: it consists, prosaically, of being the transmission line between
the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged".
* Read more
Four crises of the contemporary world capitalist system
By William K. Tabb
Monthly Review, October 8, 2008 -- This essay examines aspects of the
global political economy that I hope will inform progressive governments
and movements for social change. It evaluates the constraints and
opportunities presented in the current conjuncture of world capitalist
development by analysing four areas of crisis in the contemporary world
capitalist system. These are not the only contradictory elements in the
contemporary conjuncture, but they are, in my view, the most salient.
* Read more
* * *
/Links/ seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
*
ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at
http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
-------------- next part --------------
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From papadop at peak.org Tue Oct 14 00:10:46 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Tue Oct 14 00:41:55 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] THE REPUBLICAN VOTER FRAUD HOAX
Message-ID:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/13/election-acorn-voter-fraud
Donald Duck and the Dallas Cowboys won't steal the election for Obama.
Acorn's only crime is registering Democratic voters
GUARDIAN (London) Monday October 13 2008 20.30 BST
Barack Obama and the Democrats are stealing the election. Massive
voter fraud is being carried out, even as we speak, by their henchmen,
known by the innocuous sounding Association for Community
Organisations for Reform Now, or Acorn. Clever bastards.
The only problem? Despite the screaming wall-to-wall coverage of
"Democratic voter fraud in 11 swing states" as seen on Fox News and
even the once-respectable CNN, none of it's true. None of it.
In just the last week, we've had a phoney stunt raid in swing state
Nevada (where Acorn had been cooperating with officials for months,
concerning problem canvassers they'd long ago fired); a Republican
election official in swing state Missouri tell Fox News that she's
being beseiged with fraudulent registration forms from Acorn (in a
county where they've not done any registration work since August); a
Republican sheriff in swing state Ohio, who, the very next day,
suddenly requested the names and addresses of hundreds of early voters
(with evidence of exactly zero wrong doing, but lots of
Democratic-leaning college student in the particular county, and John
McCain's state campaign chair as a partner in the investigation); and a
screaming front page headline in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post about
a guy who claims he was somehow tricked by Acorn into
registering 72 times (but read the article closely to note he says he
registered at the same address each time, which, even if true, would
allow him - you guessed it - precisely one legal vote.)
It's an old Republican scam, but it's never been carried out with more
zeal than this year. The Republicans have been putting so much time,
money and resources into the propaganda leading up to this over the
last four years, we should have expected no less.
As luck would have it, the Democrats have a man who, as an attorney
years ago, actually had the temerity to join the US department of
justice in representing Acorn in a successful lawsuit, forcing the
state of Illinois to follow the law by allowing citizens to register to
vote at the department of motor vehicles. What a scoundrel.
That, of course, was before the department of justice, under George
Bush's corrupt command, would itself become politicised by the very
Republicans so desperate to keep low-income voters from voting, that
they were willing to fire their own US attorneys for failing to bring
phoney charges of voter fraud in key swing states like Nevada and
Missouri.
So what are the crimes that have caused all the Sturm und Drang on US
television and talk radio, and in several otherwise respectable
newspapers and even by the McCain campaign itself? The only actual crime
here is that Acorn managed to register some 1.3m low-income (read:
Democratic-leaning) voters over the past two years.
The rest is, pretty much, just made up.
But in the bloody and desperate trenches of the Republican war on
democracy, that's more than enough to kick in a last minute surge of
lies that may - with the help of a compliant and lazy corporate US
media - wreak enough havoc, scare enough voters, confuse enough people and
plant enough seeds to call an Obama victory into doubt on November 4.
If you can't win it, steal it. If you can't steal it, claim the other guy
stole it. If you can't claim the other guy stole it (yet), say they're
about to and then kick up smoke that maybe someone will believe you.
(Heckuva job, CNN.) Here are the facts. Acorn verifies the
legitimacy of every registration its canvassers collect. If they
can't authenticate the registration, or it's incomplete or questionable
in other ways, they flag that form as problematic ("fraudulent",
"incomplete", et cetera).
They then hand in all registration forms, even the problematic ones, to
elections officials, as they are required to do by law. In almost every
case where you've heard about fraud by Acorn, it's because Acorn itself
notified officials about the fraud that's been perpetrated on them by
rogue canvassers. Most officials who run to the media screaming
"Acorn is committing fraud" know all of the above but don't bother to
share those facts with the media they've run to. None of this is about
voter fraud. None of it. Where any fraud has occurred, it's voter
registration fraud and has resulted in exactly zero fraudulent
votes.
You'll hear that Donald Duck, Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, Mickey Mouse and
(new this year) the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team
have all had fraudulent registrations submitted in their names.
That's true. And we know this, why? Because Acorn told officials about it
when they followed the law and turned in those registrations, flagged
as fraudulent.
What you won't hear is that federal law requires anybody who does not
register to vote in person at the county office to show an ID when
they go to vote the first time. So, unless Donald Duck shows up with his
ID, he won't be voting this November. You needn't worry, no matter how
much even John McCain himself cynically and dishonourably tries to mislead
you.
If it quacks like a duck, in this case, it's likely another Republican
Acorn voter fraud lie. They haul it out every two years.
Just days before the 2004 presidential election, rightwing whack job
Michelle Malkin claimed that Acorn was registering terrorists to vote in
swing state Ohio. Problem was, that was a lie.
In 2006, again just days before the election, the new US attorney in
swing state Missouri (recently appointed, since the one before him
refused to bring such charges), filed voter fraud indictments against
Acorn workers in the state. Problem was, bringing election-related
indictments that close to an election was a violation of the
department of justice's own written policy. And Acorn had nothing to do
with it, other than turning in the employees to officials.
Getting the picture? It's a hoax. All of it.
But it's been an effective one, as it's served to distract from very
real concerns about tens of thousands of voters who have been
illegally purged from the voting rolls in dozens of states, as the New
York Times reported in a remarkable front page investigative story.
That story followed a report the week before from CBS News detailing
still more wholesale purges of voting rolls in some 20 states.
That will be the November surprise, when thousands, if not millions
show up to vote only to find they are no longer welcome to do so and are
forced to vote on a "provisional ballot" which may or may not be counted.
These real concerns of election fraud, such as voting roll purges,
electronic voting machines that don't work and so much more that
actually matters, have been obscured by the smoke and mirrors and
sleight of hand of the Republican party's phoney Acorn voter fraud
charade.
And where they can, they'll parlay it all into new photo ID
restrictions at the polls (knowing full well that some 20m, largely
Democratic-leaning voters don't own the type of ID they'd need to jump
over that next Republican hurdle.)
Yet, with all of the unsubstantiated, wholly bogus claims of voter
fraud being carried out by Democrats, there remains at least one case of
absolutely ironclad, documented, yet still-unprosecuted case of voter
fraud that, for some reason, Republicans don't much like to talk about.
From papadop at peak.org Tue Oct 14 00:36:03 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Tue Oct 14 01:07:09 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Columbus Day: Recall BAILOUT BANK FRAUD,
SUBVERSION & TREASON
Message-ID:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Bailout-Bank-Fraud-Subver-by-Allen-Heart-081013-157.html
October 13, 2008 at 22:59:08
BAILOUT BANK FRAUD, SUBVERSION AND TREASON
by Allen Heart
A little more than a century ago, philosopher George Santayana warned,
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." We ought
to take note of that wisdom more often because the past is the mother of
today and the grandmother of tomorrow.
In the American Revolution, we had won the recall of British troops from
American soil but not the bankers. Even though we are taught that we won
our independence from England, we actually were able to remain free from
the international bankers for only a few years at the close of the
presidency of Andrew Jackson. The most visible part of the power structure
was the East India Company owned by the bankers and the Crown in London,
England. This was an entirely private enterprise whose flag was adopted
by Queen Elizabeth in 1600-thirteen red and white horizontal stripes with
a blue rectangle in its upper left-hand corner. We've added some stars,
but otherwise we fly the same flag.
Even though the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War in 1783, the
simple fact of our existence threatened the Money Powers where it hurts
most: financially. The United States stood as a heroic role model for
other nations, which inspired them to also struggle against oppressive
Money Powers. The French Revolution (1789-1799) and the Polish uprising
(1794) were, in part, encouraged by the American Revolution. Though we
stood like a beacon of hope for most of the world, the Money Powers
regarded the United States as a political infection, the principle source
of radical democracy that was destroying the control by Money Powers
around the world. The Money Powers realized that if the principle source
of that infection could be destroyed, the rest of the world might avoid
the contagion and the control by the Money Powers would be saved.
Knowing they couldn't destroy us militarily, they resorted to covert
methods of political and financial subversion, employing spies and secret
agents skilled in bribery and legal deception; it was perhaps the first
"cold war." In the 1794 Jay Treaty, the United States agreed to pay
600,000 sterling to King George III, as reparations for the American
Revolution. The US Senate ratified the treaty in secret session and
ordered that it not be published.
When Benjamin Franklin's grandson published it anyway (perhaps our first
whistleblower), the exposure and resulting public uproar so angered the
Congress that it passed the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) so federal
judges could prosecute editors and publishers for reporting the truth
about the government. Since we supposedly had won the Revolutionary War,
why would our Senators agree to pay reparations to the loser? And why
would they agree to pay 600,000 sterling, eleven years after the war
ended? It doesn't make sense, especially in light of the Senate's secrecy
and later fury over being exposed... unless we assume our Senators had
been bribed to serve Money Powers and betray the American people! That's
treason! It's treason today.
>From the beginning, the United States Bank had been opposed by the
Democratic-Republicans lead by Thomas Jefferson, but the Federalists (the
pro-Money Power Tories) won the vote. The initial capitalization was
$10,000,000 -- 80% of which would be owned by foreign bankers.
Since the bank was authorized to lend up to $20,000,000 (double its paid
capital), it was a profitable deal for both government and the bankers,
because they could lend, and collect interest on $10,000,000 that didn't
exist.
However, the European bankers outfoxed the US government, and by 1796, the
US government owed the bank $6,200,000 and was forced to sell most of its
shares. By 1802, our government owned no stock in the United States Bank!
Thomas Jefferson warned:
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of
their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks...will
deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless
on the continent their fathers conquered.... The issuing power should be
taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly
belongs.
Chief among the international financiers was Amschel Bauer of Frankfurt,
Germany who, in 1748 opened a goldsmith shop under the name of Red Shield.
("Rothschild" in German is pronounced Rote-shilld). In 1787, Amschel
(Bauer) Rothschild is reported to have said, "Let me issue and control a
Nation's money, and I care not who writes the laws." He had five Sons
Amschel Mayer, Solomon, Jacob, Nathan, and Carl. In 1798, the five
Rothschild brothers opened banks in Germany, Vienna, Paris, London, and
Naples.
The objective of the United States Bank was to receive special privilege
to use the unjust fractional reserve banking to print money and loan it to
the government and industry. No money could go into circulation without
interest being paid to the bankers. Fractional reserve banking is very
simple. It is simply a special privilege given to a man or group of men to
create credit out of nothing; by extending this credit/debt to everyone
else in society who does not have the same privilege and then collecting
from society the money plus interest they become very rich without having
to produce anything of value.
The basic mathematics behind this system is very clear. If this system is
left in place long enough, the man or group who controls this system of
debt creation will own all the gold available in the nation.
Once the supply of real money (gold)is in his or their hands, this man or
group of men becomes the master of the entire nation. Why? Because this
man or group of men controls the only source of operating medium (money)
available through which the nation functions. Only the man who has the
privilege of printing the money and loaning it at interest can determine
who gets special funding-his friends and allies. Everyone else is limited
to how much money they have access to; therefore, after two or three
generations, the friends and allies of this "banker" will own all of the
nation-just as America is now owned by a very small cadre of very wealthy
men, most of them not American.
How long this process takes to work its way through the wealth of the
nation depends upon how successful the "banker" is in forcing, through
bribery and corruption, the restriction of the formal government's
issuance of real money backed by gold or silver. As the supply of real
money shrinks, the people of the nation are forced to rely on the creation
of a fictitious debt by the privileged few to a greater and greater
extent, until finally, the only thing left is a massive amount of
"unpayable debt," created from nothing and consisting only of the interest
charged upon the fictitious debt, and collecting interest for every moment
of its existence...all for the benefit of the privileged, who become the
de facto (illegally usurped) government because of the "money power" they
wield.
Through the Bank of England, the Rothschilds demanded a private bank in
the United States to hold the securities of the United States as the
pledged assets to the Crown of England in order to secure the debt to
which our government had defaulted. As one of his first acts, President
Washington declared a financial emergency. William Morris with the help of
Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of Treasury, heavily promoted the creation
of a private bank to service the debt to the international bankers. In
1791, Congress chartered the first national bank for a term of 20 years,
to hold the securities of the same European bankers who had been holding
the debts before the war. The bankers loaned worthless, un-backed,
non-secured printed money to each other to charter this first bank. In
December 12, 1791, the Bank of the United States opened its doors in
Philadelphia. The holder of the securities was the private bank. So under
public international law, the creditor banks forced the United States to
establish a private bank to hold the securities as the collateral for the
national debt.
James Madison warned:
"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse,
intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control
over governments by controlling money and its issuance."
After what has occurred in the first week of October 2008 isn't it clear
that we haven't learned from our past? Too busy making a living, too busy
being hockey moms or soccer dads, too busy with anything else than staying
free. You could say that we've taken our eye off the ball and whiffed on
that high fast ball that the Tories in the Senate threw us. We have to
refocus on taking back our power. Stop paying taxes that are not legal or
lawful. Stop paying bills you don't really owe.
Stop using THEIR money. There ARE ways if you open your mind and look for
the gaps in their fences that keep the sheeple in their pasture.
Are you chattel or a real person? You are the one who makes that choice.
You can't have something for nothing, you can't have your freedom for
free.
You won't get wise with the sleep still in your eyes, no matter what your
dreams might be. - Rush
My life came to a watershed in 1988 when I was forced to either teach what
was in the selected history text or end my teaching career. I couldn't lie
to my students so I ended my teaching career. Today, through my websites,
I teach thousands each day instead of a little over a hundred public
school students each year. I've taken my art across the USA, Europe, and
Australia, taught over 10,000 people on three continents about the art and
culture of my people, and more than 13 million on my websites. I cannot
live a lie or an illusion. An authentic life has been my goal for many
years. I wish that for my children and grandchildren. I wish that for all
children and grandchildren. When I brought my Native American art to my
family reunion, my eldest aunts and uncles admitted that I was probably
doing these "Indian things" because Grandma Bertha was Indian. My friend,
Larry Cloud Morgan, died in 1998 but he had been my mentor in bringing me
to understand the ways of the Ojibwe. I learned many things that were
outside my experience and training. I learned to step out of the frame of
reference that had been created to contain me and now I show others how to
step outside of the frame into freedom. I've created two main websites to
replace the one stolen from me in 2006. First,
www.real-debt-elimination.com and second, www.real-dream-catchers.com.
I've moved www.real-debt-elimination.com into the top 100 of over 2
million competing websites for debt elimination and
www.real-dream-catchers.com to #18 out of 308,000, finally passing the
stolen website after only a year and a half of steady work. Several more
websites are in the planning stages awaiting their turn to hit the
Internet, tires squealing. The other website saw traffic of more than 4.5
million hits a month. My megaweb will eventually see that many each day.
From papadop at peak.org Tue Oct 14 00:46:02 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Tue Oct 14 01:17:12 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] MONBIOT _ on denial
Message-ID:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/10/14/this-is-what-denial-does/
Monbiot.com
Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it.
Tell them something new and they will hate you for it.
THIS IS WHAT DENIAL DOES
Published in the Guardian (London) 14th October 2008
The economic crisis is petty by comparison to the nature crunch. But
they have the same cause.
By George Monbiot.
#############
This is nothing. Well, nothing by comparison to what's coming. The
financial crisis for which we must now pay so heavily prefigures the
real collapse, when humanity bumps against its ecological limits.
As we goggle at the fluttering financial figures, a different set of
numbers passes us by. On Friday, Pavan Sukhdev, the Deutsche Bank
economist leading a European study on ecosystems, reported that we are
losing natural capital worth between $2 trillion and $5 trillion every
year, as a result of deforestation alone(1). The losses incurred so far
by the financial sector amount to between $1 trillion and $1.5
trillion. Sukhdev arrived at his figure by estimating the value of the
services - such as locking up carbon and providing freshwater - that
forests perform, and calculating the cost of either replacing them or
living without them. The credit crunch is petty when compared to the
nature crunch.
The two crises have the same cause. In both cases, those who exploit the
resource have demanded impossible rates of return and invoked debts
that can never be repaid. In both cases we denied the likely
consequences. I used to believe that collective denial was peculiar to
climate change. Now I know that it's the first response to every
impending dislocation.
Gordon Brown, for example, was as much in denial about financial
realities as any toxic debt trader. In June last year, during his
Mansion House speech, he boasted that 40 per cent of the world's
foreign equities are now traded here. "I congratulate you Lord Mayor and
the City of London on these remarkable achievements, an era that history
will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of
London."(2) The financial sector's success had come about, he said, partly
because the government had taken "a risk-based regulatory approach".
In the same hall three years before, he pledged that "in budget after
budget I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers"(3). Can
anyone, surveying this mess, now doubt the value of the precautionary
principle?
Ecology and economy are both derived from the Greek word oikos - a
house or dwelling. Our survival depends upon the rational management of
this home: the space in which life can be sustained. The rules are the
same in both cases. If you extract resources at a rate beyond the level
of replenishment, your stock will collapse. That's another noun which
reminds us of the connection. The OED gives 69 definitions of stock.
When it means a fund or store, the word evokes the trunk - or stock -
of a tree, "from which the gains are an outgrowth"(4). Collapse
occurs when you prune the tree so heavily that it dies. Ecology is
the stock from which all wealth grows.
The two crises feed each other. As a result of Iceland's financial
collapse, it is now contemplating joining the European Union, which
means surrendering its fishing grounds to the Common Fisheries Policy.
Already the prime minister Geir Haarde has suggested that his
countrymen concentrate on exploiting the ocean(5). The economic
disaster will cause an ecological disaster.
Normally it's the other way around. In his book Collapse, Jared
Diamond shows how ecological crisis is often the prelude to social
catatrosphe(6). The obvious example is Easter Island, where society
disintegrated soon after the population reached its highest historical
numbers, the last trees were cut down and the construction of stone
monuments peaked. The island chiefs had competed to erect ever bigger
statues. These required wood and rope (made from bark) for transport and
extra food for the labourers. As the trees and soils on which the
islanders depended disappeared, the population crashed and the
survivors turned to cannibalism. (Let's hope Iceland doesn't go the
same way.) Diamond wonders what the Easter islander who cut down the
last palm tree might have thought. "Like modern loggers, did he shout
`Jobs, not trees!'? Or: `Technology will solve our problems, never
fear, we'll find a substitute for wood.'? Or: `We don't have proof
that there aren't palms somewhere else on Easter ... your proposed ban on
logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering'?"(7).
Ecological collapse, Diamond shows, is as likely to be the result of
economic success as of economic failure. The Maya of Central America, for
example, were among the most advanced and successful people of their
time. But a combination of population growth, extravagant
construction projects and poor land management wiped out between 90 and
99% of the population. The Mayan collapse was accelerated by "the
competition among kings and nobles that led to a chronic emphasis on war
and erecting monuments rather than on solving underlying
problems"(8). Does any of this sound familiar?
Again, the largest monuments were erected just before the ecosystem
crashed. Again, this extravagance was partly responsible for the
collapse: trees were used for making plaster with which to decorate
their temples. The plaster became thicker and thicker as the kings
sought to outdo each other's conspicuous consumption.
Here are some of the reasons why people fail to prevent ecological
collapse. Their resources appear at first to be inexhaustible; a
long-term trend of depletion is concealed by short-term fluctuations;
small numbers of powerful people advance their interests by damaging
those of everyone else; short-term profits trump long-term survival. The
same, in all cases, can be said of the collapse of financial systems.
Is this how human beings are destined to behave? If we cannot act until
stocks - of either kind - start sliding towards oblivion, we're
knackered.
But one of the benefits of modernity is our ability to spot trends and
predict results. If fish in a depleted ecosystem grow by 5% a year and the
catch expands by 10% a year, the fishery will collapse. If the global
economy keeps growing at 3% a year (or 1700% a century) it too will hit
the wall.
I'm not going to suggest, as some scoundrel who shares a name with me did
on these pages last year(9), that we should welcome a recession. But the
financial crisis provides us with an opportunity to rethink this
trajectory; an opportunity which is not available during periods of
economic success. Governments restructuring their economies should read
Herman Daly's book Steady-State Economics(10).
As usual I haven't left enough space to discuss this, so the details
will have to wait for another column. Or you can read the summary
published by the Sustainable Development Commission(11). But what Daly
suggests is that nations which are already rich should replace growth
("more of the same stuff") with development ("the same amount of
better stuff"). A steady state economy has a constant stock of capital
maintained by a rate of throughput no higher than the ecosystem can
absorb. The use of resources is capped and the right to exploit them is
auctioned. Poverty is addressed through the redistribution of wealth.
The banks can lend only as much money as they possess.
Alternatively, we can persist in the magical thinking whose results
have just come crashing home. The financial crisis shows what happens
when we try to make the facts fit our desires. Now we must learn to
live in the real world.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. Richard Black, 10th October 2008. Nature loss `dwarfs bank crisis'. BBC
Online. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7662565.stm
2. Gordon Brown, 20th June 2007. Speech to Mansion House.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/2014.htm
3. Gordon Brown, 16th June 2004. Speech to Mansion House.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/1534.htm
4. Oxford English Dictionary, 1989. Second Edition.
5. Niklas Magnusson, 10th October 2008. Iceland Premier Tells Nation to
Go Fishing After Banks Implode.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=azZ189JG.1S8&refer=home
6. Jared Diamond, 2005. Collapse: how societies choose to survive or
fail. Allen Lane, London.
7. Page 114.
8. Page 160.
9. George Monbiot, 9th October 2007. Bring on the Recession. The
Guardian.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/10/09/bring-on-the-recession/
10. Herman E. Daly, 1991. Steady-State Economics - 2nd Edition. Island
Press, Washington DC.
11. Herman E. Daly, 24th April 2008. A Steady-State Economy.
Sustainable Development Commission.
http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications/downloads/Herman_Daly_thinkpiece.pdf
From duanebehrens at cox.net Tue Oct 14 03:28:10 2008
From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens)
Date: Tue Oct 14 03:54:35 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Thought for the Day
Message-ID: <20081014042810.EFK01.761942.imail@fed1rmwml34>
"I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace." -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)
From oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au Tue Oct 14 10:26:38 2008
From: oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au (Clem Clarke)
Date: Tue Oct 14 10:27:10 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Australian Federal Politician Email And Postal Addresses
In-Reply-To: <20081014094342.F274AF63B@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
References: <48F45D65.3010201@eftel.com.au>
<20081014094342.F274AF63B@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Message-ID: <48F4BA2E.6030805@ozemail.com.au>
Greetings.
I spent a considerable number of hours last Sunday gathering our Federal
Politicians email addresses and adding them to a data base that can be
used by Microsoft and Open Office (I think..) to individually address
our beloved leaders, and send them emails.
Please, hammer them about a better economic system. We can have one ...
Let's do it.
If you need a hand to make an email document to send, please let me know.
Also, note that http://www.informaction.org/ has a data base of all the
Presidents, Ministers and so on. You can use the data base there to
either email or post letters. It is a great source of information about
Global Change and the Environment - and more.
Cheers,
Clem
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From d_a_d at telusplanet.net Wed Oct 15 00:16:19 2008
From: d_a_d at telusplanet.net (David A Davidson)
Date: Wed Oct 15 00:16:33 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] FW: NEW STOCK MARKET TERMS
Message-ID:
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From duanebehrens at cox.net Wed Oct 15 06:35:41 2008
From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens)
Date: Wed Oct 15 06:35:48 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] (no subject)
Message-ID: <20081015073541.NL59C.783513.imail@fed1rmwml34>
--
"They're gonna make it look like suicide, I know how these bastards think..." Hunter S. Thompson
From jomut at yahoo.com Wed Oct 15 17:55:50 2008
From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa)
Date: Wed Oct 15 17:55:52 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Re: Le Monde Diplo: Saving Wall St from Itself
In-Reply-To: <20081013220501.46B00F5BD@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Message-ID: <8214.46226.qm@web31106.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake)
jomut@yahoo.com
chakane@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
?
Hi,
?
Part of the problem is that events (deep-going ones, of earth-shattering effect)?are taking place at a rate that is quite difficult for the ordinary man to comprehend adequately, with a view to coming?up with substantive solutions to the massive problems that have been created by a few respectable business zealots.? Given our familiarity with the procedural evasiveness of "Disaster Capitalism", such a state of affairs is the characteristic?stock-in-trade of both the unaccountable (corporate robber baron) and evasively accountable (political yesman) shills for the prevailing economic creed.
?
Not surprising at all that the ordinary human being -- conveniently and permanently?kept at arms length by the gospel of privatism of the former and the administrative slavishness of the latter -- is unsurprisingly kept?in the dark?with regard the seismic goings-on that have been generated by the organized irresponsibility of higher-ups, whose actions affect society at very deep levels of its wellbeing (both psychic and physical) even as the same higher-ups boast an unchallenged autonomy in?leadership of the commanding heights of the economy?and?leading rights to?enjoyment of the ambrosia garnered therefrom.
?
There has been an election in Canada and none, in the cast of electoral actors, even came close to mentioning -- at least in a sustained and popularly educating?manner --?the?near unprecedented gravity of?the malign global ramifications of the effects, of the economic acts, that have been set in motion by a few privileged and haughtily unaccountable individuals.
?
Why? One doesn't lippily question the motives of the royalty of disaster c..
?
And, by the way, the same higher-ups take advantage of the interelatedness of the economy, in which tragic?knock-on effects everywhere will knock everyone for a loop, in their efforts to stampede the multitudes to come to the assistance of the same autonomous higher-ups!
?
John
==========================
--- On Mon, 10/13/08, Dion Giles wrote:
From: Dion Giles
Subject: Re: [Mai-not] Le Monde Diplo: Saving Wall St from Itself
To: "A renewed Mai-Not"
Cc: alldems@yahoogroups.com, StopMAI_WA_list@yahoogroups.com, eraNet@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, October 13, 2008, 10:05 PM
The comments by Professor Rodrigue Tremblay and? Frederic London of Le Monde Diplomatique typify the academic economics departments' fascination with the intricacies while blind to the real world.? (I'll be happy to pass on both commentaries to anyone who has not seen them and hopes for something different from the rest of the academic commentariat's urgings).? It has been very helpful of Carol to pass their comments to Mai-Not as exemplars of the academic economic establishment so that this establishment can be more clearly understood for its enforced disconnect from the real world.
There are indeed two economies - the real economy (producing those goods and services that humanity requires) and the parasitical economy (which focuses on acquiring and divvying up surplus value from what the real economy produces).
The challenge is to decouple the real economy from the parasitical economy and let the parasitical economy wither on the vine.
Bush was not mistaken in letting the Lehman parasites go bust, but was more than mistaken in failing to address the problem of the real economy being held in thrall to the parasitical economy.? Bush could not address this problem, because the parasites as a class are his "base" even when members of that class are not averse from kicking some of their own in the face.
This decoupling need not be a constructed Grand Plan, with its risk of a new parasitical economy taking the place of the old as in the USSR and its successor, but a sustained but generally piecemeal attack (focused where the shoe most hurts) on the mechanisms that have the deserving (especially the productive) perpetually having to sustain the guilty.? The parasites, left in place, have acquired more than enough wealth to buy the political process of representative democracy (or outright dictatorship when that fails them), the university spivmanship departments and the public "service".
Decoupling means no, the deserving must NOT have to sit by while the parasites' political and administrative servants trash the national treasury to sustain their (the parasites') sequestered wealth and power.? The deserving can't any longer afford it - that's the meltdown the parasites fear and for which they are building a police state.?
Some commentators have drawn attention to a ticking derivatives time bomb in which resides an amount dwarfing the world's sum total of accumulated tax dollars.? Then what?? The first real move towards cutting the parasites adrift might well be to wipe out the value of derivatives by cancelling all derivative debt.
Then there is relief for home occupants through cancelling mortgage debt.? Cancelling, not buying out.? Redeployment of the bailiffs to productive work.
Further, permanent nationalisation of the banking system at firesale prices (maybe simple confiscation) should replace these vast bailouts.? Handing the economics experts the job of devoting their expertise to making the banks work for the real economy.? Most professional economists would almost certainly much prefer that to looking after parasites.? More than likely Rodrigue Tremblay and? Frederic London would.
Ending the use of international trade to enforce a race to the bottom employment standards and shift great wealth from producers to predators.
And how about enforced re-mutualisation through cutting off lending institutions' access to wholesale credit?? Especially foreign (and thus unaccountable) wholesale credit.
These and many other issues have a more useful place in the political agenda than plans to use tax dollars and national future funds to maintain Mr Greed's power to steal.?
Dion Giles
Western Australia.
PS:? I pinched the derivatives cancellation idea from Emmanuel Goldstein whom social engineers right, left and centre love to hate.? In a later post I'll pass Goldstein's words on this to those I haven't passed them to already.? Many will twig to the name under which he writes.
? _______________________________________________
Mai-not mailing list
Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
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From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Wed Oct 15 19:09:11 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Wed Oct 15 19:11:34 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fair Vote Canada: Electoral dysfunction,
with PR would be Greens 23 seats, NDP 57, Liberals 81,
Conservatives 117, BQ 28
Message-ID: <48F65BF7.28876.552E32B8@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
Fair Vote Canada - October 15, 2008
contact: Barbara Odenwald at 819-921-6037 (Ottawa)
Larry Gordon at 647-519-7585 (Toronto)
Electoral dysfunction, yet again - Greens deserved more than 20 seats
- voting system also punished New Democrats, western Liberals and
urban Conservatives
Once again, Canada?s antiquated first-past-the-post system wasted
millions of votes, distorted results, severely punished large blocks
of voters, exaggerated regional differences, created an
unrepresentative Parliament and contributed to a record low voter
turnout.
[Note: The following commentary is based on returns at 2am ET.]
The chief victims of the October 14 federal election were:
- Green Party: 940,000 voters supporting the Green Party sent no one
to Parliament, setting a new record for the most votes cast for any
party that gained no parliamentary representation. By comparison,
813,000 Conservative voters in Alberta alone were able to elect 27
MPs.
- Prairie Liberals and New Democrats: In the prairie provinces,
Conservatives received roughly twice the vote of the Liberals and
NDP, but took seven times as many seats.
- Urban Conservatives: Similar to the last election, a quarter-
million Conservative voters in Toronto elected no one and neither did
Conservative voters in Montreal.
- New Democrats: The NDP attracted 1.1 million more votes than the
Bloc, but the voting system gave the Bloc 50 seats, the NDP 37.
"How can anyone consider this democratic representation?" asked
Barbara Odenwald, President of Fair Vote Canada.
Had the votes on October 14 been cast under a fair and proportional
voting system, Fair Vote Canada projected that the seats allocation
would have been approximately as follows:
Conservatives - 38% of the popular vote: 117 seats (not 143)
Liberals - 26% of the popular vote: 81 seats (not 76)
NDP - 18% of the popular vote: 57 seats (not 37)
Bloc - 10% of the popular vote: 28 seats (not 50)
Greens - 7% of the popular vote: 23 seats (not 0)
Fair Vote Canada also has data for each province on the number of
seats won and number of seats actually deserved by each party.
Odenwald emphasized that any projection on the use of other voting
systems must be qualified, as specific system features would affect
the exact seat allocations.
"With a different voting system, people would also have voted
differently," said Larry Gordon, Executive Director of Fair Vote
Canada. "There would have been no need for strategic voting. We would
likely have seen higher voter turnout. We would have had different
candidates - more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We would
have had more real choices."
Fair Vote Canada (FVC) is a national multi-partisan citizens?
campaign to promote
voting system reform. FVC was founded in 2001 and has a National
Advisory Board of distinguished Canadians from all points on the
political spectrum
- 30 -
http://www.fairvote.ca/
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From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Thu Oct 16 10:01:08 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Thu Oct 16 09:59:44 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Battle in Seattle hits [Canadian] theatres Oct 17!
Message-ID: <48F72D04.4611.585B8143@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
See also:
http://www.filmofilia.com/2008/07/17/battle-in-seattle-new-trailer/
[1] Battle of Seattle hits Seattle Movie Theaters
http://silencedmajority.blogs.com/silenced_majority_portal/2008/09/bat
tle-of-seatt.html
[2] Final Poster and Trailer for 'Battle in Seattle' Taking on the
demonstrators
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/final_poster_and_trailer_for_batt
le_in_seattle
fyi-janet
================
[1]------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:54:51 -0700 (PDT)
From: Hello Cool World
To: jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca
Subject: Battle in Seattle hits theatres Oct 17! The whole world is
watching...
Can't see this email? Go here | Forward this email
Opens October 17
Battle in Seattle is a dramatization of the historic 1999 protests
that shut down WTO talks when 50,000 people took a stand against
corporate globalization. The film combines Hollywood A-listers
Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson and Ray Liotta with actual footage
of one of the most important mass social actions of our time
(including footage shot by the makers of The Corporation). For many
activists, the Battle in Seattle marks an invigorating moment when
the global justice movement finally broke through. The film captures
the inspiring power of unified grassroots resistance, as well as the
chaos and violence that came when the authorities responded with a
heavy hand.
Watch the Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmQzw-O8eRY
Drama and Reality
Writer/Director Stuart Townsend and David Solnit, one of the key
organizers of the WTO protests and co-founder of the Seattle WTO
People?s History Project discuss the film.
>>Democracy Now!
The Impact of the "Battle In Seattle"
Is 'Taking it to the Streets' Worth the Bruises, Tear Gas and
Arrests?
>>By Mark Engler on Alternet
Coming to Canadian Theatres!
TORONTO
AMC Yonge & Dundas
AMC Kennedy Commons
VANCOUVER
Tinseltown
MONTREAL
AMC Forum (English)
Latin Quarter (French)
Cineplex, St Foye (French)
More info at:
battleinseattlemovie.com
Support the Launch
Forward this email and encourage everyone to hit theatres opening
weekend and keep the film alive! Let?s make sure the Battle in
Seattle continues to incite public resistance.
Blogging from the Inside
Good Company/Hello Cool World Founder Kat Dodds shares her battle
story:
It was the first protest of my life (and I?ve been to more then a
few) where everyone became the media. It was also an example of how
grassroots organizing online could really mobilize people. [more]
Stay Connected
Tell your story. Learn about the issues. Join the battle:
whocontrolstheworld.com
Receive this from a friend? Join our network to find out what?s up
next.Can't see this email? Go here | Forward this email
------- End of forwarded message -------
[1] Battle in Seattle hits theatres Oct 17! The whole world is
watching. Canadian locals.
http://silencedmajority.blogs.com/silenced_majority_portal/2008/09/bat
tle-of-seatt.html
[2]
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/article/final_poster_and_trailer_for_batt
le_in_seattle
Final Poster and Trailer for 'Battle in Seattle' Taking on the
demonstrators
Comments [1]By: Brad Brevet | Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Redwood Palms has just made available the final poster and the final
trailer for their upcoming rehash of the WTO debacle in Seattle with
Battle in Seattle. The ensemble film stars Charlize Theron, Andr?
Benjamin, Martin Henderson, Woody Harrelson, Ray Liotta, Michelle
Rodriguez, Jennifer Carpenter, Channing Tatum, Tzi Ma and Joshua
Jackson and was written and directed by Theron's main squeeze Stuart
Townsend.
The film takes an in-depth look at the five days that rocked the
world in 1999 as tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the
streets in protest of the World Trade Organization. What began as a
peaceful protest intended to stop the WTO talks quickly escalated
into a full-scale riot and eventual State of Emergency that squared
off peaceful and unarmed protestors against the Seattle Police
Department and the National Guard. Suffice to say, it was not one of
Seattle's proudest moments... or was it?
You can check out the trailer and the poster below and more stills
here. Battle in Seattle hits limited theaters on September 19."
TRAILER
POSTER
GALLERY OF IMAGES
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/movie/battle_in_seattle/stills/7
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From jomut at yahoo.com Thu Oct 16 15:11:17 2008
From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa)
Date: Thu Oct 16 15:11:21 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] liu and naomi's echoes
Message-ID: <860454.5108.qm@web31104.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake)
jomut@yahoo.com
chakane@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
?
Hi,
?
Interesting parallels between Henry C.K. Liu's and Naomi Klein's?takes on the proposed monument to Milton Friedman's generous contribution to the wretchedness of a greater portion of mankind.
?
Naomi's speech to the U. of Chicago has already been broadcast by Michael P.? There are some hairy portions in Liu's essay (those relating to "positive"?vs "normative" economics, the Kant and Hume references, and the contributions to economic thought of some early Chicago U. economists)?which require quite a bit of elaboration rather than passing reference, but, on the whole, a very rewarding read.
?
Thoroughly enjoyed the following:
?
Edward Snyder, dean of the university's Graduate School of Business, told Bloomberg News, "Naming the institute for Friedman will honor the economist, whose libertarian theories helped the spread of capitalist systems of government, and will attract donors from around the world. When you think about the big battle between socialism and free markets - he led the charge on behalf of the University of Chicago.
?
"There are a lot of people?who will give back because of his name and effort and legacy." Crony capitalism is giving birth to crony intellectualism.
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Fri Oct 17 01:48:31 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Fri Oct 17 01:48:48 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Forrest Gulp explains mortgage-backed securities
Message-ID: <20081017064832.844D112C6A@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From creuss at bluewin.ch Fri Oct 17 07:43:31 2008
From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss)
Date: Fri Oct 17 07:45:15 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Forrest Gulp explains mortgage-backed securities
Message-ID:
They should have bought Swiss chocolate...
Chris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword
"igve".
From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sat Oct 18 05:01:15 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Sat Oct 18 05:01:32 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] The real purpose of the "crisis"
Message-ID: <20081018100116.19A2612AD4@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Crony capitalism
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2008/10/tape-blows-cover-on-true-treasury.html
The follow-up comments are interesting too even if not always literate.
Dion Giles
Western Australia
From papadop at peak.org Sat Oct 18 09:31:37 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Sat Oct 18 10:04:42 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Turning Home Mortgages Into Economic WMDs
Message-ID:
http://www.alternet.org/story/103514/
Alternet - October 18, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/103514
How Wall Street's Scam Artists Turned Home Mortgages Into Economic WMDs
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
**********************
If the ABCs of the financial meltdown leave your head spinning -- if
"default swaps" and "collateralized debt obligations" and "high-rated
tranches" are all just so much gobbledygook -- don't worry. You're not
alone.
The alphabet soup of exotic investments that represent the immediate cause
of the banking mess is so complex that many of those "innovative"
financiers responsible for bringing the global economy to the brink of
collapse are now making a fortune in consulting fees explaining just what
the hell it is that they created. According to the Financial Times, Robert
Reoch, the London banker who may be responsible for creating the first of
the now-infamous debt-based securities, is now "swamped by investors who
want to extricate themselves from derivatives-linked messes, or simply to
understand the products that came out of the past few years of intense
financial innovation." The Washington Post reported that Joe Cassano, the
financial products manager "whose complex investments led to (AIG's) near
collapse," is raking in $1 million per month in consulting fees from the
ailing financial giant to help sort out the toxic sludge on (and off) the
bank's books.
But despite the dense jargon, it's important to get a handle on this
stuff. The global economy is at risk of a crash that would cause intense
pain among millions of ordinary people, and not because of a few million
homeowners overextending themselves, but rather as a result of a small
number of savvy wheeler-dealers rigging an unregulated investment market
in such a way that they'd always win no matter who else lost.
This is a story that's easily lost in the mumbo-jumbo of market-speak, and
the investment banking community -- and its political allies -- have been
working feverishly to shift the blame for the mess onto the poor and
people of color, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- the large government-backed
lenders -- community groups, "Congressional liberals" and even gay people.
Those charges don't even rise to the level of an argument, but that only
becomes clear when you have a grasp of what all these "toxic" securities
that everyone's talking about really are.
It's certainly true that people got in over their heads during a frenzy of
home-buying and refinancing, and it's also true that lawmakers from across
the political spectrum have long tried to increase American home ownership
-- it's a politically attractive antidote to inequality.
In 2002, George Bush announced an ambitious goal to increase "the number
of minority homeowners by at least 5.5 million before the end of the
decade," and in 2005, before the house of cards came tumbling down, he
said, "I like the idea of home ownership. ... What I want is more and more
people from all walks of life, including our African-Americans, opening up
the door where they live and saying, welcome to my home; welcome to my
piece property [sic]."
But the focus on home mortgages misses a crucial point: Through mid-July,
banks had written off about $435 billion in bad American mortgages, a drop
in the bucket relative to the size of the global economy. There's simply
no way that even a major drop in the value of the U.S. housing market
could possibly threaten the economic health of most of the planet.
That's where "derivatives" come in. These instruments, which Warren Buffet
called "the real Weapons of Mass Destruction," are "worth" about $500
trillion, or roughly 10 times the output of the global economy.
So just what is a derivative? A derivative is a piece of paper that can be
bought and sold for real money but isn't attached to a real asset. Its
value is simply derived from something tangible -- hence the name. You
hear a lot of talk these days about the "real" nuts-and-bolts economy, and
derivatives are in essence the exact opposite: They represent an unreal
economy, created by financiers in mahogany-paneled office suites in New
York and London, and it's this shadow economy that teeters on the edge of
collapse today, threatening to bring down much of the real economy with
it.
There are all sorts of derivatives. They are essentially bets -- you can
bet that a market will go up, or down, or that a particular company will
do well or poorly. You can bet on interest rates going up or down, or the
value of a country's currency, or you can make more exotic bets about just
about anything in the world -- even what the weather will be like at some
point in the future.
But the current meltdown was caused by debt-backed securities tied, at
some point, to the U.S. housing market. When you buy a home, that's an
asset. Presuming you make your monthly payments, the mortgage held by the
bank is an asset as well. When a number of mortgages are cut up and
bundled together and then sold off as a security, that's a derivative.
Writing in Salon, Andrew Leonard offered a useful metaphor. He suggested
that we think of the real economy like a football game, with real
flesh-and-blood players running around on a real field, hitting each other
and moving a real ball toward a real goal post. All those guys, the field,
the equipment -- they're tangible, the same way that an asset like your
house is tangible.
There are some people who have a direct stake in the game -- like the
teams' owners and the players' families, agents, etc. But there are also
millions of people who might bet on the outcome of the game but are in no
way directly involved in the play. It's these bets that parallel the
trillions of dollars in debt-based derivatives that have become so "toxic"
-- they were making some people rich when the housing market was flying,
but now that it's tanked, they've turned out to be bad bets, and the
amount of money at stake is enormous -- far, far larger than the entire
value of the U.S. housing market.
Now, we've also heard a lot about "credit default swaps," "collateralized
debt obligations," "structured finance products" and a lot of other
finance-speak in recent weeks. Collateralized debt obligations are
collections of debt -- any kind of debt, but in this case bundles of
mortgages -- that are sliced and diced and sold off to investors. Credit
default swaps are like a form of insurance that allows those investors to
hedge their bets, in case their guts prove wrong and the debt that they're
betting will be repaid turns bad on them.
All these exotic financial vehicles are essentially contracts between two
parties -- like bets between two fans -- that lay largely outside of the
regulatory system that governs most of the banking sector.
In theory, there's nothing inherently wrong with any of this -- these are
tools that allow sophisticated investors to control the amount of risk
they're taking on when they plunk down their money to buy into some sort
of security. But in practice, these exotic financial instruments have the
potential to devastate the world economy. And you don't need an MBA and an
intimate understanding of how "obligation acceleration derivatives" work
to understand how.
You only need to understand a few central aspects of the huge market in
debt-based securities that's grown up over the past three decades. In
large part, they exist in a shadowy world free of regulation or oversight,
they allow investment bankers to repackage risky investments into
something that appears to be relatively safe (or at least safer than they
really are), and they allow investors to "leverage" their investments --
essentially buying securities that they don't have the money to purchase
-- to a far greater degree than traditional investments allow.
During the 1990s, when interest rates were low around the world, the
demand for more exotic "structured" investments -- including various
derivatives and swaps -- skyrocketed. And the investment bankers who were
structuring these fancy new bets had little to lose in giving investors
what they wanted, as long as the housing market -- the hard assets
underpinning all this theoretical wealth -- held up.
In order to meet the demand, those financial gurus also put enormous
pressure on the lending industry to lower its standards and pump out more
and more loans for everything from houses to small businesses to
consumers' spending -- the raw materials for the new investment vehicles
they were creating out of the ether.
By doing so, speculators in the "unreal" financial economy had an enormous
amount of influence over events in the real economy.
Think about that last point. It's the equivalent of people who are
gambling on that football game paying off the ref, or bribing a player to
fumble the ball on the five-yard line.
From papadop at peak.org Sat Oct 18 09:34:52 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Sat Oct 18 10:07:54 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Semantic Shift -
Message-ID:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2008 01:13:31 -0700
From: Jim Thompson
Just happened to notice this. There was always Election Fraud (which is
serious and affects thousands of voters), and there was Voter Fraud (which
is extremely rare -- no sane person would accept the risks). Now there is
something new -- it's called Voter Registration Fraud!
Voter Registration Fraud is something new under the sun. I'd not heard it
before today, or at least not noticed. Searching the internets (with
Google), the earliest reference to that phrase is around Oct. 7, this
year. I looked in news, groups and blogs.
It seems this phrase is a neologism, and a sneaky one. They must have been
listening to folks making the point that a phony registration does not
constitute voter fraud. I can imagine Rove saying, "Hey, we can't call it
that anymore. Let's slip in another word and see if anyone notices..."
From oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au Sat Oct 18 21:51:30 2008
From: oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au (Clem Clarke)
Date: Sat Oct 18 21:51:55 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] [Fwd: [GJM] Fw: [globalnetnews-summary] Tape Blows Cover
On True Treasury Intentions]
Message-ID: <48FAA0B2.8020307@ozemail.com.au>
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sat Oct 18 22:03:41 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Sat Oct 18 22:03:48 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Semantic Shift -
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID: <20081019030342.8321313A1F@fep08.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
For how the actual voter registration fraud is worked, see the
Washington Post at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/17/AR2008101703360.html?wpisrcewsletter&sid=ST2008101702930&s_pos=
Voter registration fraud took a long time to develop. In 2000 it
took the form of blocking hundreds of thousands of black voters, on
false grounds of non-existent felony convictions, from reaching the
polls - especially in Florida. Even the real convictions were more
often than not for "walking while black". Al Gore had to bust a gut
to divert attention away from that fraud which was the big-ticket
reason why with a little electronic tweaking Florida could be
delivered to the Fourth Reich.
Australia has compulsory voting and citizens are REQUIRED by law to
register on turning 18. None the less there has been a long tug of
war between Howard's crew and the electoral office over the Libs'
efforts to sabotage this. One result is legislative changes to make
it much more difficult to register, or to record changes of address,
in the narrow window after elections are called and before the
polling. Another result, on the other end of the tug of war, has
been the establishment of a practice in which electoral officials to
to all the schools and get students to fill in advance enrolment
forms. When they turn 18 they automatically become registered voters
for life. (I guess Rove's lie factory would dub that practice "voter
registration fraud").. It is probable that current Australian PM
Howard-lite will keep the restrictions in place and use the
artificial "financial crisis" to put an end to the advance-enrolment
visits to the schools.
Where did these voter registration restriction ideas embraced by
Howard come from? Well, his frequent visits to Washington weren't
simply to see the sights. Nor are Rudd's.
As for the semantics, that's the neoliberals to a T - including the
name neoLIBERAL. After all, it is they who foisted on a
long-suffering English language the term "reforms" for unwinding
every hard-fought-for reform won since the Middle Ages., and
"efficiencies" (including the gross Newspeak use of the plural as if
there is such a thing as "an efficiency") for reducing the delivery
of services to the people while continuing to pay for the managerial
superstructure.
For semantic shift, let's watch the election between the "Democrats"
who abhor democracy and the "Republicans" who abhor the republic.
Dion Giles
Western Australia
At 22:34 18/10/2008, Michael wrote:
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2008 01:13:31 -0700
>From: Jim Thompson
>
>Just happened to notice this. There was always Election Fraud (which
>is serious and affects thousands of voters), and there was Voter
>Fraud (which is extremely rare -- no sane person would accept the
>risks). Now there is something new -- it's called Voter Registration Fraud!
>
>Voter Registration Fraud is something new under the sun. I'd not
>heard it before today, or at least not noticed. Searching the
>internets (with Google), the earliest reference to that phrase is
>around Oct. 7, this year. I looked in news, groups and blogs.
>
>It seems this phrase is a neologism, and a sneaky one. They must
>have been listening to folks making the point that a phony
>registration does not constitute voter fraud. I can imagine Rove
>saying, "Hey, we can't call it that anymore. Let's slip in another
>word and see if anyone notices..."
>_______________________________________________
>Mai-not mailing list
>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
>
>
>--
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.549 / Virus Database: 270.8.1/1731 -
>Release Date: 10/17/2008 7:01 PM
From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Sat Oct 18 22:57:26 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Sat Oct 18 22:55:26 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] 20bn barrel oil discovery puts Cuba in the Big League
Message-ID: <48FA85F6.28541.656E8EE7@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/18/cuban-oil
20bn barrel oil discovery puts Cuba in the big league
o Self-reliance beckons for communist state
o Estimate means reserves are on a par with US
Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
The Guardian, Saturday October18 2008
A worker walks at an oil rig in Havana, Cuba. Photograph: Enrique De
La Osa/Reuters
Friends and foes have called Cuba many things - a progressive beacon,
a quixotic underdog, an oppressive tyranny - but no one has called it
lucky, until now .
Mother nature, it emerged this week, appears to have blessed the
island with enough oil reserves to vault it into the ranks of energy
powers. The government announced there may be more than 20bn barrels
of recoverable oil in offshore fields in Cuba's share of the Gulf of
Mexico, more than twice the previous estimate.
If confirmed, it puts Cuba's reserves on par with those of the US and
into the world's top 20. Drilling is expected to start next year by
Cuba's state oil company Cubapetroleo, or Cupet.
"It would change their whole equation. The government would have more
money and no longer be dependent on foreign oil," said Kirby Jones,
founder of the Washington-based US-Cuba Trade Association. "It could
join the club of oil exporting nations."
"We have more data. I'm almost certain that if they ask for all the
data we have, (their estimate) is going to grow considerably," said
Cupet's exploration manager, Rafael Tenreyro Perez.
Havana based its dramatically higher estimate mainly on comparisons
with oil output from similar geological structures off the coasts of
Mexico and the US. Cuba's undersea geology was "very similar" to
Mexico's giant Cantarell oil field in the Bay of Campeche, said
Tenreyro.
A consortium of companies led by Spain's Repsol had tested wells and
were expected to begin drilling the first production well in mid-
2009, and possibly several more later in the year, he said.
Cuba currently produces about 60,000 barrels of oil daily, covering
almost half of its needs, and imports the rest from Venezuela in
return for Cuban doctors and sports instructors. Even that barter
system puts a strain on an impoverished economy in which Cubans earn
an average monthly salary of $20.
Subsidised grocery staples, health care and education help make ends
meet but an old joke - that the three biggest failings of the
revolution are breakfast, lunch and dinner - still does the rounds.
Last month hardships were compounded by tropical storms that shredded
crops and devastated coastal towns.
"This news about the oil reserves could not have come at a better
time for the regime," said Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a Cuba energy
specialist at the University of Nebraska.
However there is little prospect of Cuba becoming a communist version
of Kuwait. Its oil is more than a mile deep under the ocean and
difficult and expensive to extract. The four-decade-old US economic
embargo prevents several of Cuba's potential oil partners - notably
Brazil, Norway and Spain - from using valuable first-generation
technology.
"You're looking at three to five years minimum before any meaningful
returns," said Benjamin-Alvarado.
Even so, Cuba is a master at stretching resources. President Raul
Castro, who took over from brother Fidel, has promised to deliver
improvements to daily life to shore up the legitimacy of the
revolution as it approaches its 50th anniversary.
Cuba's unexpected arrival into the big oil league could increase
pressure on the next administration to loosen the embargo to let US
oil companies participate in the bonanza and reduce US dependency on
the middle east, said Jones. "Up until now the embargo did not really
impact on us in a substantive, strategic way. Oil is different. It's
something we need and want."
From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Sat Oct 18 23:05:54 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Sat Oct 18 23:04:01 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] ROLLING STONE: It's Already Stolen - Investigation by
Robert F Kennedy Jr & Greg Palast
Message-ID: <48FA87F2.7398.65765179@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
See also
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/23638322/block_the_vote
Block the Vote: Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and
discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?
fyi-janet
===========================================
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. & GREG PALASTPosted Oct 30, 2008 11:10 AM
http://www.gregpalast.com/rolling-stone-its-already-stolen/
ROLLING STONE: IT'S ALREADY STOLEN
Investigation by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast released today
Don't worry about Mickey Mouse or ACORN stealing the election.
According to an investigative report out today in Rolling Stone
magazine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, after a year-long
investigation, reveal a systematic program of "GOP vote tampering" on
a massive scale.
- Republican Secretaries of State of swing-state Colorado have quietly
purged one in six names from their voter rolls.
Over several months, the GOP politicos in Colorado stonewalled every
attempt by Rolling Stone to get an answer to the massive purge - ten
times the average state's rate of removal.
- While Obama dreams of riding to the White House on a wave of new
voters, more then 2.7 million have had their registrations REJECTED
under new procedures signed into law by George Bush.
Kennedy, a voting rights lawyer, charges this is a resurgence of 'Jim
Crow' tactics to wrongly block Black and Hispanic voters.
- A fired US prosecutor levels new charges - accusing leaders of his
own party, Republicans, with criminal acts in an attempt to block
legal voters as "fraudulent."
- Digging through government records, the Kennedy-Palast team
discovered that, in 2004, a GOP scheme called "caging" ultimately took
away the rights of 1.1 million voters. The Rolling Stone duo predict
that, this November 4, it will be far worse.
There's more:
- Since the last presidential race, "States used dubious 'list
management' rules to scrub at least 10 million voters from their
rolls."
Among those was Paul Maez of Las Vegas, New Mexico - a victim of an
unreported but devastating purge of voters in that state that left as
many as one in nine Democrats without a vote. For Maez, the state's
purging his registration was particularly shocking - he's the county
elections supervisor.
The Kennedy-Palast revelations go far beyond the sum of questionably
purged voters recently reported by the New York Times.
"Republican operatives - the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle
politics," report Kennedy and Palast, under the cover of fighting
fraudulent voting, are "systematically disenfranchis[ing] Democrats."
The investigators level a deadly serious charge:
"If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat
McCain at the polls - they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the
level of GOP vote tampering."
Block the Vote by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. & Greg Palast in the current
issue (#1064) of Rolling Stone. [Media enquiries - Dave Falkenstein,
Sunshine Sachs & Assoc, via interviews@gregpalast.com.]
Note - Kennedy and Palast are releasing, simultaneously with the
Rolling Stone investigative report what they call, the vote-theft
'antidote': a 24-page full-color comic book, Steal Back Your Vote,
which can be downloaded or obtained in print from their non-partisan
website, StealBackYourVote.org
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
______________________
Iver Bogen
616 N. 18th Ave. E.
Duluth, MN 55812
218-728-3987
___________________________
Iver Bogen
ibogen@d.umn.edu
616 N. 18th Ave. E. Duluth 55812
218-728-3987
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Checked by AVG.
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From oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au Sat Oct 18 23:29:33 2008
From: oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au (Clem Clarke)
Date: Sat Oct 18 23:29:55 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Jump
Message-ID: <48FAB7AD.1010809@ozemail.com.au>
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Oct 19 02:04:24 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Sun Oct 19 02:04:40 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Sound advice to Wall Street
Message-ID: <20081019070425.5F034134C9@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Oct 19 04:03:53 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Sun Oct 19 04:04:11 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Finance cloud has a silver lining
Message-ID: <20081019090354.641741365F@fep05.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Lack of funds to pay for freight is cutting world trade.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ahkq91XcsKnY
Dion Giles
Western Australia
From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sun Oct 19 16:59:39 2008
From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster)
Date: Sun Oct 19 16:59:48 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: wisdom 1802?
Message-ID: <015b01c93235$fd969710$18ad57ca@jfos>
Working Americans have obviously failed to study their own history
John Foster
Victoria, Australia
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties
than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to
control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation,
the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive
the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the
continent their fathers conquered."
Thomas Jefferson 1802
From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sun Oct 19 20:59:04 2008
From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster)
Date: Sun Oct 19 21:01:52 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Shipping Lines Say Tight Credit Cutting World Trade
(Update2)
Message-ID: <036301c93257$c28b1c50$0100007f@jfos>
Extract -
"About 90 percent of world trade moves by sea.(snip)
Banks worldwide have curbed lending because of increased concerns about
getting their money back.
Shipowners are already struggling to obtain funding for new vessels."
* * * *
*
This will most likely result in rising costs and shortages of food & other
essentials: stock up well people
& expand your vegie garden!
John
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ahkq91XcsKnY
Shipping Lines Say Tight Credit Cutting World Trade (Update2)
By Chan Sue Ling
Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Pacific Basin Shipping Ltd., Hong Kong's biggest
dry-bulk carrier, and Precious Shipping Pcl. said demand for moving coal,
iron ore and other commodities will fall because banks are guaranteeing
fewer loads.
``Letters of credit and the credit lines for trade currently are frozen,''
Khalid Hashim, managing director of Precious Shipping, Thailand's
second-largest shipping company, said in Singapore yesterday. ``Nothing is
moving because the trader doesn't want to take the risk of putting cargo on
the boat and finding that nobody can pay.''
The lack of letters of credit, in which banks guarantee payment for
merchandise, could become a ``big issue'' for world trade, according to
Klaus Nyborg, Deputy Chief Executive Officer at Pacific Basin. Tighter
credit has contributed to this year's 80 percent drop in the Baltic Dry
Index, a measure of commodity-shipping costs. About 90 percent of world
trade moves by sea.
``This can have a significant effect on demand because you won't see the
same volume of cargo moved,'' Harold L. Malone III, senior vice president at
Jefferies & Co., said at a Marine Money conference in Singapore. ``You have
to figure out other ways to get trade done.''
The Baltic Dry Index dropped 8.5 percent to 1,809 points yesterday, the
lowest since August 2005. Pacific Basin dropped 6.5 percent to HK$4.75 in
Hong Kong and Precious Shipping declined 5.5 percent to 12.1 baht in
Bangkok.
Vessel Owners
Banks worldwide have curbed lending because of increased concerns about
getting their money back. Shipowners are already struggling to obtain
funding for new vessels. Precious Shipping took as long as 15 months to
secure financing for 18 vessels it has on order, Hashim said.
The maritime sector needs about $300 billion over the next three to four
years to fund construction of vessels that are already on order, according
to Nordea Bank Finland Plc. At least a quarter of container ships, dry-bulk
vessels and oil tankers on order are not financed, according to Seaspan
Corp., the Hong Kong-based ship lessor.
Swings in the London interbank offered rate, which lenders typically use as
a base for writing new loans, have made it difficult to decide what price to
charge new customers.
``The banks cannot fund at Libor rates at the moment,'' said Keishi Iwamoto,
head of shipping for Asia at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. ``The question is
how do we tackle the additional costs for lenders.''
Borrowing Costs
German banks with funds to lend are offering about 200 basis points above
Libor, double previous rates, while in Singapore the rate is plus-350
points, according to Tobias Koenig, managing partner of Koenig & Cie. In the
main though, shipping lines aren't able to borrow, he added.
``There is no rate because all banks are closed for business,'' he said.
``You have a few banks rescuing their best customers, but that's it.''
More than two-thirds of 104 bankers polled said they were unable to obtain
funding at or close to Libor, according to an October survey by trade
publication Marine Money Asia. About 80 percent expect shipping bankers will
not be able to raise enough financing for clients this year and next, the
survey showed.
``There are a lot of banks that will do deals today but they will do it on a
bilateral basis with good clients, which they have long relationships
with,'' Tom Zachariassen, an executive at Nordea Bank, said yesterday.
Libor, set by 16 banks in a survey conducted by the British Bankers'
Association each day in London, determines rates on $360 trillion of
financial products worldwide, from home loans to derivatives. The cost of
borrowing in dollars for three months fell 12 basis points to 4.64 percent
yesterday.
To contact the reporters on this story: Chan Sue Ling in Singapore
slchan@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: October 15, 2008 05:54 EDT
------------------------------------------------------
Provided by Australis
http://www.australis.com.au/
------------------------------------------------------
Provided by Australis
http://www.australis.com.au/
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Oct 19 21:05:15 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Sun Oct 19 21:05:32 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Graph tells who hollowed out US economy
Message-ID: <20081020020517.58B90F9C3@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From jomut at yahoo.com Mon Oct 20 14:26:20 2008
From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa)
Date: Mon Oct 20 14:26:25 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] goblin powell
Message-ID: <267830.73115.qm@web31105.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake)
jomut@yahoo.com
chakane@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
?
Hi,
?
Some interesting commentary on Colin Powell's decision to sound the bugle in support of Wham Bam Obama in the next election.
?
I personally am not in the least impressed by the reasons cited by Ghoulin?for his unexpected and suspiciously welcome?change of heart.? I do not see any way that one will ever persuade me, through whatever form of labyrinthine logical construction, that the unmistakable sharp turn towards social retrogressivism, that clearly occurred with the ascendancy of Reagan's woolly-headed perversity?to the pinnacle of political power, had not impinged itself upon Colin's awareness all these years.? Please dont tell me that there?was then?a highly infectious germ of intellectual asininity that was responsible for all this, thereby absolving Ghoulin from an apposite share of merited blame.
?
So was Ghoulin's,?just one of?an inexhaustible list of?grimy political details,?inexplicable decision to hang on with the Bushite crowd (Please don't insult my irremediable stupidity by?telling me that?he was innocently?unaware of the sea of retrograde conservatism that surrounded him all those years!) given the catena of mindboggling administrative boners committed by the Bush presidency from day one.? Which he nobly rejected by hanging on to his cabinet post for as long as possible,?of course!!
?
And the snakeoil pitch for the Iraq war, responsible for the unforgivable?wastage of countless, innocent?lives!
?
Ghoulin needs the isolation and silence of the Trappist orders, not this resort to revisionist balderdash!
?
John
=============
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
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From jomut at yahoo.com Mon Oct 20 15:51:32 2008
From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa)
Date: Mon Oct 20 15:51:37 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] pay dear
Message-ID: <401648.59488.qm@web31103.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake)
jomut@yahoo.com
chakane@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
?
Hi,
?
Appears as though the Wail Streeters aint gonna be crying about lack of adequate compensation any time soon.? Lessons from Enron have been well learnt and religiously adhered to!
?
John
======================
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Oct 20 18:15:15 2008
From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta)
Date: Mon Oct 20 18:35:02 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: John Bellamy Foster on economic
crisis; Spratt
on climate; Obama; Evo Morales; Marxism; Cuba; India; Tamils
Message-ID: <48FD1103.1030500@greenleft.org.au>
Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed
(http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@dsp.org.au
*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links./*
* * *
John Bellamy Foster: Monopoly finance capital and the crisis
Interview with John Bellamy Foster for the Norwegian daily Klassekampen
(posted from MRzine
with permission), conducted on October 15, 2008.
Klassekampen: Is the credit crisis a symptom of overaccumulation of
capital? It seems to me that investments worldwide, but especially in
the United States, were funneled into the traditionally "safe" housing
market following the bursting of the dotcom bubble. This overinvestment
in turn generated a new bubble, thus causing today's havoc. Is this correct?
* Read more
Global warming - No more business as usual: This is an emergency!
By David Spratt
October 10, 2008 -- A year ago I was researching what was intended to be
a short submission to the Garnaut review [commissioned to advise the
Australian federal government of Labor Party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd],
when events in the polar north turned the world of climate policy upside
down. It was found that eight million square kilometres of sea-ice -- an
area the size of Australia -- was melting, in the immortal words of one
glaciologist, "a hundred years ahead of schedule".
Yet the international policy debate carried on as if this had not
happened. Out-of-date scenarios, research and observations were being
used to propose emission reduction targets that would still lead to
catastrophe even if fully implemented.
And so a short submission became a long detour into how the climate
debate is being constructed, and the result, with Philip Sutton, was a
book we did not intend to write, Climate Code Red.
* Read more
United States: The financial calamity, African Americans and Obama
By Malik Miah
October 8, 2008 -- The deepening financial calamity exposes how the
"fundamentals" of the economy impact on working people, particularly
African Americans. The so-called unfettered free market system has been
a failure. The issue of the economy has given the presidential campaign
of Barack Obama, the first Black candidate for a major party, a big
boost. After eight years of Bush-Cheney, Obama should be a shoo-in.
Democrats are expected to garner big majorities in the Senate and the
House of Representatives.
* Read more
Final declaration of the International Political Economy Conference:
Responses from the South to the Global Economic Crisis
October 11, 2008 -- Academics and researchers from Argentina, Australia,
Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Mexico, Peru,
Phillipines, South Korea, Spain, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay
and Venezuela participated in the International Political Economy
Conference: Responses from the South to the Global Economic Crisis, held
in Caracas October 8-11, 2008. The conference stimulated a wide-ranging
debate on the current economic and financial health of the global
economy, the new perspectives and the challenges to the governments and
peoples of the South posed by the international financial crisis.
The meeting concluded that the situation has worsened in the last few
weeks. It has progressed rapidly from being a series of crises in the
financial markets of countries in the centre and has turned into an
extremely serious international crisis. This means that countries in the
South are in a very difficult situation.
The crisis threatens the real economy and, if energetic and effective
actions are not taken immediately, all peoples in the world could be
drastically punished; especially the least-protected and most-neglected
sectors.
* Read more
Evo Morales: Ten commandments to save the planet
By Evo Morales Ayma, president of the Republic of Bolivia
Message to the Continental Gathering of Solidarity with Bolivia in
Guatemala City
October 9, 2008 -- Sisters and brothers, on behalf of the Bolivian
people, I greet the social movements of this continent present in this
act of continental solidarity with Bolivia.
We have just suffered the violence of the oligarchy, whose most brutal
expression was the massacre in Panda, a deed that teaches us that an
attempt at power based on money and weapons in order to oppress the
people is not sustainable. It is easily knocked down, if it is not based
on a program and the consciousness of the people.
We see that the re-founding of Bolivia affects the underhanded interests
of a few families of large landholders, who reject as an aggression the
measures enacted to favour the people such as a more balanced
distribution of the resources of natural gas for our grandfathers and
grandmothers, as well as the distribution of lands, the campaigns for
health and literacy, and others.
* Read more
Free download: Marxist Economics -- A handbook of basic definitions
This handbook is not, of course, a substitute for the study of Marxist
political economy, but an aid to that study. It will perhaps prove most
useful as an aid to review. It was first developed for the Fourth
International's cadre school in Europe. It was subsequently also used by
the Democratic Socialist Party in its cadre school. Along the way, many
of the definitions and explanations were modified to take account of
students' difficulties or further questions.
* Read more
Don't pay for a failed system
By Tony Iltis
October 11, 2008 -- "Meltdown" is a word that one hears a lot on the
news these days.
Despite the US$700 billion government bailout of banks in the US,
similar (albeit smaller) bailouts in Europe, and various forms of state
intervention in the finance industry on both sides of the Atlantic,
sharemarkets worldwide are in free fall. Comparisons with the Great
Depression of the 1930s are common. Homelessness and unemployment are
rising and are set to increase dramatically.
Meanwhile, more quietly but even more relentlessly, another meltdown is
occurring: that of the polar icecaps. According to the Western world's
establishment politicians and corporate media, the way to avert
catastrophic climate change lies in setting up elaborate emissions
trading schemes and carbon markets: that is, relying on precisely the
mechanisms that have created the economic meltdown!
* Read more
Refounding Bolivia: Morales calls for vote on a new democratic
constitution
By Raul Burbano
October 13, 2008 -- Bolivian President Evo Morales has called for a
national referendum on the country's new draft constitution on December
7. The demand of the Bolivian people for a new and socially, politically
and economically inclusive constitution is at the heart of the present
political upheaval in that country. Right-wing forces representing the
country's traditional ruling oligarchy have launched a secessionist
movement to balkanise the country, in an attempt to block the
constitutional referendum. They have organised murderous fascist gangs
to terrorise the population. They are backed by the US government, whose
ambassador, Philip Goldberg, has recently been expelled from Bolivia for
his support of the opposition and openly admitted interference in
Bolivian political life. On the other side the vast majority of the
Bolivians, more than 67% of whom just voted support President Evo
Morales in a recall referendum.
* Read more
Cuba: Lift the blockade!
Statement from the National Assembly of People's Power
Calling on parliamentarians worldwide to demand that the USA
unconditionally lift the blockade
Havana, October 13, 2008 -- The United Nations General Assembly on
October 29 will discuss and put to the vote the draft resolution
"Necessity to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial
blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba".
For 16 consecutive years, this same General Assembly has approved
similar resolutions by a growing and overwhelming majority. The last of
these, which was put to the vote on October 30, 2007, was supported by
184 countries.
However, as was irrefutably demonstrated in the report presented by Cuba
to the General Assembly on the resolution adopted last year, the
government of the United States, with its customary arrogance, has
ignored the express mandate of the international community and, far from
ending that genocidal policy, is intensifying it in an attempt to kill
our people by means of hunger and sickness.
* Read more
Nuke deal a conduit to import US crisis into India
By Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary, Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist) Liberation
October 14, 2008 -- India's United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government
finally sealed the nuclear deal with the US on October 10. For the
Congress Party and the coalition of ``Unashamed Partners of America''
headed by it, the nuclear deal is the supreme achievement of the
government. On the eve of signing the deal, India's external affairs
minister Pranab Mukherjee reiterated India's commercial commitment to
the US nuclear energy industry: "We look forward to working with US
companies on the commercial steps that will follow to implement this
landmark Agreement." In a second statement issued after the agreement's
signing he also reiterated India's commitment to implement the agreement
in good faith even though no such reciprocal assurance was made by the
US to confirm New Delhi's claim regarding the so-called US ``guarantee''
on uninterrupted fuel supply.
* Read more
The Tamil question in Sri Lanka
By Chris Slee
October 5, 2008 -- On January 2, 2008, the Sri Lankan government
formally renounced the ceasefire agreement with the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which a previous government had signed in February
2002. But by the beginning of 2008 the ceasefire already existed only on
paper. Violence, which had been escalating for several years, had by
then reached the level of full-scale war.
* Read more
/Links/ seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
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From papadop at peak.org Tue Oct 21 11:25:59 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Tue Oct 21 11:59:08 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] GITMO - sick farce continues
Message-ID:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-10-21-gitmo_N.htm
USAToday 21 Oct.
U.S. drops charges against 5 Gitmo detainees FOR NOW
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- The Pentagon announced Tuesday it
dropped war-crimes charges against five Guantanamo Bay detainees after the
former prosecutor for all cases complained that the military was
withholding evidence helpful to the defense.
America's first war-crimes trials since the close of World War II have
come under persistent criticism, including from officers appointed to
prosecute the alleged terrorists. The military's unprecedented move was
directly related to accusations brought by the very man who was to bring
all five prisoners to justice.
Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld had been appointed the prosecutor for all
five cases, but at a pretrial hearing for a sixth detainee earlier this
month, he openly criticized the war-crimes trials as unfair. Vandeveld
said the military was withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense,
and was doing so in other cases.
The chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay has now appointed new trial
teams for the five cases to review all available evidence, coordinate
with intelligence agencies and recommend what to do next, a military
spokesman, Joseph DellaVedova, said in an e-mail.
DellaVedova said the military might renew the charges against the five
later.
Clive Stafford Smith, a civilian attorney representing detainee Binyam
Mohamed, said he has already been notified that charges against his
client would be reinstated.
"Far from being a victory for Mr. Mohamed in his long-running struggle for
justice, this is more of the same farce that is Guantanamo," Stafford
Smith said. "The military has informed us that they plan to charge him
again within a month, after the election."
Army Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles, who represents one of the prisoners whose
charges were dropped, said the military might be preparing the
tribunals to face increased scrutiny following next month's
presidential election. John McCain and Barack Obama have both said
they want to close Guantanamo.
The five detainees are Noor Uthman Muhammed, Binyam Mohamed, Sufyiam
Barhoumi, Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi and Jabran Said Bin al Qahtani.
#########
http://voanews.com/english/2008-10-21-voa18.cfm
US COURT BLOCKS RELEASE OF CHINESE MUSLIMS FROM GUANTANAMO for one month
VOA News 21 October 2008
A U.S. federal appeals court has blocked the immediate release of 17
Chinese Muslims from the Guantanamo Bay military prison.
The court ruled two to one Monday that the men must stay behind bars
until at least November 24, when the court hears the Bush
administration's appeal of a judge's order to release them.
The two judges, A. Raymond Randolph and Karen Henderson, who ruled in
favor of the government gave no comment. But dissenting judge Judith
Rogers said the court does have the authority to order release of the
detainees.
A federal judge in June ordered the men freed, saying the government
does not have the right to keep them in detention since it has decided
they are no longer enemy combatants. The men have been held at
Guantanamo for seven years.
The government argues that they should remain imprisoned until U.S
authorities find new homes for them. It also says the men received
weapons training at a terrorist camp.
Washington has balked at China's demand that the 17 be sent back home,
fearing they would be tortured if returned to China.
The Chinese Muslims are members of the Uighur minority in far-western
China's Xinjiang region. Beijing has cracked down on those in the
region it calls violent separatists.
From papadop at peak.org Tue Oct 21 22:37:47 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Tue Oct 21 23:10:57 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] SCOTUS put ideology aside
Message-ID:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20081021.html
FindLaw Writ Legal Commentary Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008
The Supreme Court Puts Ideology Aside in Deciding a Small But Important
Ohio Election Case that Could Affect the 2008 Presidential Election
By MICHAEL C. DORF
*Michael C. Dorf is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at
Cornell University. He is the author of No Litmus Test: Law Versus
Politics in the Twenty-First Century and he blogs at michaeldorf.org.
#############
During his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, then-Judge and
now-Chief Justice John Roberts likened the judicial role to that of an
umpire calling balls and strikes. His personal and ideological views, he
said, would not play a role in his decision-making.
The simile was and is inapt, however. In fact Supreme Court cases
afford Justices many opportunities to make decisions based on value
judgments. In just three terms, for example, Chief Justice Roberts has
come down on the conservative side in cases involving abortion, free
speech, gun control, and racial segregation. If he is an umpire, he has
a strike zone that is markedly wider to the right.
Nonetheless, occasionally the Justices do remind us that while
ideological factors undoubtedly enter their decision-making, active
partisanship of the sort many observers perceived in Bush v. Gore is
rare. A terse ruling last week in Brunner v. Ohio Republican Party-a
case that could have important ramifications for the Presidential
election-should serve as a reminder that the Supreme Court is, for all of
its imperfections, capable of genuinely putting aside politics to apply
the law.
THE UNDERLYING DISPUTE: DID OHIO'S SECRETARY OF STATE VIOLATE THE
POST-BUSH V. GORE FEDERAL VOTING STATUTE?
In the wake of Bush v. Gore, Congress enacted the Help America Vote Act
(HAVA), a statute that, among other things, sets standards for federal
elections. In important respects, HAVA lives up to its name: One of its
provisions requires that states permit people whose eligibility to
vote is questioned by election officials to cast provisional
ballots, so that if these voters are later determined to be eligible
(and if the outcome is sufficiently uncertain that provisional
ballots could make a difference), they will not be unfairly
deprived of their votes.
Another provision of HAVA is less about helping Americans vote than it is
about preventing some people from voting. It obligates relevant state
officials to match registered voter lists (typically kept at the county
level) against motor vehicle records (typically kept statewide) "to the
extent required to enable each such official to verify the accuracy of
the information provided on applications for voter registration."
In the political realm, this provision is typically extolled by
Republicans who worry about fraudulent voting, and derided by Democrats
who worry that manufactured concerns about voter-level fraud have been
used to suppress the votes of minorities and other core Democratic
constituencies.
Ohio is a swing state that President Bush narrowly carried in 2004
amidst allegations of irregularities that disproportionately
suppressed the votes of Democrats. Ohio's current Secretary of State is
a Democrat, Jennifer Brunner. She was recently sued by the Ohio
Republican Party and a Republican state representative in Ohio, who
claimed that by failing to provide county election officials with
lists of newly registered voters whose registration information did not
match their motor vehicle information, she had violated HAVA.
Secretary Brunner in turn responded that HAVA does not specifically
require her to provide lists to county officials; that doing so would be
unduly burden her office; and that, in any event, another federal law-the
National Voter Registration Act or "Motor Voter"-forbids systematic
purging of voters from the rolls within 90 days of an election, so
that there would be no point in providing this information to
county election officials at this late date.
A federal district judge originally ruled in favor of the Ohio
Republican Party, granting a temporary restraining order (TRO) against
Secretary Brunner. However, a panel of the Sixth Circuit quickly
reversed that decision, only to be reversed in turn by the full (en
banc) Sixth Circuit.
Last week's en banc opinion in Ohio Republican Party v. Brunner
rejected Secretary Brunner's reading of HAVA and also rejected the
argument, advanced by the Secretary, that private parties could not sue
to enforce HAVA. The en banc court said this was a close question, but
that the district judge acted within his authority in finding a
sufficient likelihood of success on the merits to grant the plaintiffs
their TRO. (To gain the temporary relief of a TRO, a plaintiff must
show only that he is likely to succeed in proving the allegations of the
complaint, not that he actually will succeed in doing so, and that he will
suffer irreparable injury absent the TRO.)
Faster than you can say "Bush v. Gore," the Supreme Court reversed the
Sixth Circuit's en banc decision. It held that the legal standard
governing who can sue to enforce statutes is simply too demanding for the
plaintiffs to have established a likelihood of success on the merits.
It was probable, instead, that they lacked the right to bring the case in
the first place. As a consequence, the federal court suit was dismissed.
Thus, it now appears that Secretary Brunner's decision not to flag
discrepancies between voter registrations and motor vehicle records
for county election officials will stand.
Had the Supreme Court not reversed the en banc Sixth Circuit ruling,
thousands of newly registered Ohio voters might have been purged from the
rolls. Because the Democrats have registered more new Ohio voters than
have the Republicans, last week's ruling was no doubt welcome news to
the Obama campaign and a disappointment to the McCain campaign.
Should Senator Obama capture Ohio by a razor-thin margin, and should
Ohio prove decisive in the Electoral College race, he will have the
Supreme Court to thank on Inauguration Day.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE DOCTRINE OF IMPLIED RIGHTS OF ACTION: HOW THE LAW
TURNED RIGHT
By contrast with 2000, however, the Supreme Court ruling in Brunner v.
Ohio Republican Party cannot be characterized as partisan. Notably, the
key line of cases on which the Supreme Court relied is the product of
years of judicial conservatives' efforts to limit the ability of
plaintiffs to sue to enforce federal statutes. This seemingly
technical area of the law concerns what lawyers call a "cause of
action," a "right of action," or in lay parlance, simply a right to
sue.
Sometimes, when Congress enacts a law, it includes provisions
specifying who can and who cannot sue to enforce the legal rights and
duties the law creates. However, Congress does not always address this
issue expressly. Some laws, for example, authorize enforcement by
federal administrative agencies but are silent on the question of
whether, in addition, private parties can sue other private parties or the
government on the basis of the legal rights and duties these laws create.
What happens when a private party sues either another private party or the
government, invoking a federal law that is silent on the question of
whether it creates a private cause of action? Then the federal courts
must decide whether the statute creates an "implied" right of action.
During the Warren Court era, the Supreme Court freely found implied
rights of action. As the Court explained in the 1964 case of J.I. Case Co.
v. Borak , "it is the duty of the courts to be alert to provide such
remedies as are necessary to make effective the congressional purpose."
Courts operating under this framework frequently found that private rights
of action were an appropriate supplement to administrative action, even
where Congress had not expressly authorized private rights of action.
More recently, however, the Supreme Court has taken a tougher line on
implied rights of action. Judicial conservatives distrust the notion
that there even exists any such thing as a "congressional purpose"
that goes beyond a statute's text. Conservatives also tend to dislike
lawsuits more generally. Thus, as the Court has turned to the right in the
last forty years, it has enunciated a stricter standard for finding
an implied right of action.
How strict? Consider the 2001 decision in Alexander v. Sandoval.
There, the Court accepted that there is a private right of action to
enforce Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars certain
forms of invidious discrimination by entities that receive federal
funding. The Court also accepted (at least for the sake of argument)
that the Department of Justice could, by regulation, bar not only
intentional discrimination but also practices that have a
discriminatory effect on protected groups. Nonetheless, Justice Scalia
said for the Court in Sandoval that there was no private right of
action to enforce the Justice Department's disparate impact
regulation.
Why? Because, Justice Scalia claimed, the language of the Civil Rights Act
did not create any individual right to be free of practices that have a
discriminatory impact. In other words, rather than ask-as the Court would
have asked in the 1960s-whether the Civil Rights Act's purposes would be
advanced by an implied right of action, the Sandoval Court asked simply
whether the statutory text manifested an intent to create a private right
of action.
Application of that very conservative, text-focused test to the facts of
Brunner v. Ohio Republican Party leads ineluctably to the
conclusion that there is likewise no implied cause of action for
private parties to enforce the provision of HAVA requiring that new
voter registrations be checked against motor vehicle records. That
aspect of HAVA may create a legal duty on state officials like
Secretary Brunner, but it creates no correlative right for private
parties.
To its credit, the Supreme Court reversed the Sixth Circuit en banc
court, citing Sandoval on this point. The conservatives who had
fashioned a test that makes it very hard for plaintiffs to bring civil
rights lawsuits, were consistent enough to say that the test must be
equally difficult for Republican plaintiffs to satisfy. Whether or not one
agrees with that strict test, one should at least respect the Justices
for applying it in a way that did not focus on the results-in this case
a benefit to a Democratic Secretary of State and, more importantly,
the Democratic Party.
The Relevance of the Ku Klux Klan Act: A Right to Sue for Violations of
Constitutional and Statutory Rights, But Not to Sue Under Every Federal
Statute
The plaintiffs did not simply rely on HAVA, however. Even if HAVA
itself does not confer a private cause of action, the plaintiffs
argued, the Ku Klux Klan Act, enacted in 1871 and codified in relevant
part today as section 1983 of Title 42 of the U.S. Code, grants them a
right to sue. Section 1983 is the general civil rights law that
permits plaintiffs to sue government officials for violations of their
federal constitutional and statutory rights.
However, the same conservative Justices who have narrowed the scope of
implied rights of action over the last forty years have imposed
roughly the same requirement under Section 1983: A plaintiff suing to
enforce a federal statute must show not only that the statute has been
violated, but that the statute conferred upon him a "right" that the
defendant violated. Accordingly, a law that confers duties on
government officials without using the language of rights for the
beneficiaries of those duties, the Court has said, cannot be enforced by
a Section 1983 action.
Recall that the Ohio plaintiffs could not rely directly on the
provision of HAVA that they want to see enforced because it does not
contain any rights-conferring language. Due to that very same
omission, the Supreme Court said that these plaintiffs are also
unlikely to succeed in a Section 1983 action. Therefore, the Court
concluded that the district court was mistaken in granting the
temporary restraining order, and the en banc Sixth Circuit court was
mistaken in reinstating that order.
It is no doubt faint praise to laud the Supreme Court for having the
intellectual honesty to apply its legal principles even-handedly,
regardless of whether those principles favor Democrats or Republicans. At
a minimum, justice is supposed to be blind. Still, given the
lingering shadow that Bush v. Gore casts over the Supreme Court's
objectivity in cases involving Presidential elections, even such
minimal fairness is heartening.
_________________________________________________________________
From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Wed Oct 22 01:12:37 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Wed Oct 22 01:12:50 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] SCOTUS put ideology aside
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID: <20081022061237.F1197F510@fep01.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
From a most unlikely source (an issue of "Awake" that my mother
reluctantly accepted in order to get rid of the Jehovah's Witness
canvassers) I learned something of a kerfuffle that was going on in
Italy at the time. There was a very tense election that was to
determine whether post-war Italy would be run from Moscow or from the
Vatican. A duty that fell on every member of every branch of the
Communist Party was to pick out a nun or priest or other known
"Christian [sic] Democrat [sic]" and follow the person for the whole
of.the election day. The purpose - to make quite sure s/he voted
only once. According to "Awake", the US Air Force flew B 52s up and
down the Italian peninsula for days to remind the Italians that if
they voted the wrong was there would be consequences (Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were still all but glowing). They got the message and the
CDs were elected. That set Italy's tone for the future. Musso's
shadow is still cast over Italy, as demonstrators against
globalisation in Genoa a few years ago learned when they were
arrested, taken to the cop shop, beaten up and made to salute a
picture of "Il Duce". Could have been even worse if the Communists
had won, though I seem to remember their boss Togliatti was something
of a Titoite.
The "Awake" article didn't come to any conclusion except that all
answers were in the hands of the Mighty Jehovah, King of Kings, God
of Gods -- but the referenced information in the article was unforgettable.
Dion Giles
Western Australia
PS: I wonder if there is a message in those US military aircraft
continually traversing Canada today?
From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Wed Oct 22 01:52:39 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Wed Oct 22 01:53:08 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Do they have buses in Alaska?
Message-ID: <20081022065253.77230F892@fep01.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20081022/f5a1cc4f/attachment.html
From thinker at thelakebc.ca Sun Oct 19 13:25:24 2008
From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak)
Date: Wed Oct 22 12:20:42 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Email problems
Message-ID: <200810191823.m9JIN015021549@karma.reboot.ca>
To: lpinter@iisd.ca
Subject: Problems
Cc: csaba.kancz2@t-online.hu, csaba.kancz2@t-online.hu
Hi Everybody ,
My mail server crashed in a big way a week ago and I just got it back
, but had to change my email address, as they've switched domains .
The new one is above thinker@thelakebc.ca
This is a trial message, hoping that this time it will go
through. Please let me know.
Cheers, Ed.
From thinker at thelakebc.ca Wed Oct 22 11:54:59 2008
From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak)
Date: Wed Oct 22 12:20:43 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] test
Message-ID: <200810221652.m9MGqT5B001177@karma.reboot.ca>
test
From radred at ix.netcom.com Wed Oct 22 15:00:42 2008
From: radred at ix.netcom.com (Carol)
Date: Wed Oct 22 15:00:50 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Curbing Social Protest in America: Microwave weapons
Message-ID: <698438.1224705642373.JavaMail.root@mswamui-swiss.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
"As a consequence, the ADS provides the technical possibility to
produce burns of second and third degree. Because the beam of
diameter 2 m and above is wider than human size, such burns would
occur over considerable parts of the body, up to 50% of its
surface. Second- and third-degree burns covering more than 20% of
the body surface are potentially life-threatening--due to toxic
tissue-decay products and increased sensitivity to infection--and
require intensive care in a specialised unit. Without a technical
device that reliably prevents re-triggering on the same target
subject, the ADS has a potential to produce permanent injury or
death. (Altmann, op. cit., p. 24)"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10564
Curbing Social Protest in America: Microwave "Non-lethal" Weapons to
be used for "Crowd Control"
Just in Time for the Capitalist Meltdown: Army, Justice Department to
Field 'Pain Ray'.
By Tom Burghardt
Global Research, October 14, 2008
Antifascist Calling...
Back in July I reported that Raytheon (No. 4 on Washington
Technology's "Top 100 List of Prime Defense Contractors," with
$5,170,829,645 in revenue) was developing a microwave "non-lethal"
weapons (NLW) system for the U.S. Army.
At a cost of $25 million, five truck-mounted NLWs will soon be
shipped off to Iraq for heavy-lifting in Iraqi cities for use against
militant oil workers and citizens should U.S. energy multinationals
finally get their greedy little hands on that nation's oil wealth. A
slimmed-down version of the Active Denial System (ADS) is sought for
deployment in the "homeland. According to Aviation Week,
Raytheon is kicking off a U.S. Army program to mount Joint Silent
Guardian non-lethal, directed energy weapons--with a range of more
than 250 meters--on Ford 550 commercial trucks for crowd control.
The high power microwave (HPM) device heats water in a person's outer
layers of skin to the point of pain. Tests have shown that the
effects can reach through cracks in and around concrete walls and
even through the glass of automobiles, company officials say. (David
A. Fulghum, "High Power Microwave Nearly Operational," Aviation Week,
October 9, 2008)
Aviation Week also reports "the program is expected to be awarded by
year's end. A year after the contract is signed, the combination
vehicle/weapons will start be fielded at the rate of one per month."
With the American automative industry in a death-spiral as a result
of capital's historic credit crunch, what better means to "rescue"
the industry than buying a fleet of Ford 550's for "crowd control."
Particularly handy for deployment in American cities should "rioters"
object to a stolen presidential election or the state moves to
terminate what little is left of the social "safety net" (in the
interest of kick-starting the "recovery," of course) Silent Guardian
is a product whose time has come!
Raytheon describes the system as "a revolutionary less-than-lethal
directed energy application that employs millimeter wave technology
to repel individuals or crowds without causing injury." Without a
hint of irony considering its intended use, Silent Guardian is touted
as a "protection system" that can "save lives" and even "de-escalate
aggression." Designed as a tool for "law enforcement, checkpoint
security" and "peacekeeping missions," the Department of Justice's
(DoJ) National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has been hawking its
"benefits" for several years. According to the NIJ:
NIJ is leveraging a less-lethal technology developed by the U.S.
Department of Defense for use in law enforcement and corrections. The
technology, called the Active Denial System, causes people to
experience intolerable discomfort. It makes them stop, turn away and
leave the area.
The Active Denial System emits electromagnetic radiation
(radiofrequency waves) at 95 GHz. The system stimulates nerve endings
and causes discomfort but does not cause permanent injury--the
radiation penetrates less than 1/64th of an inch into a person's
skin. Symptoms dissipate quickly when the device is turned off or the
person moves away from the radiation beam. ...
NIJ has created a small working prototype of the military Active
Denial System that law enforcement and correction officers can carry.
("Active Denial System Deters Subject without Harm," National
Institute of Justice, October 25, 2007)
It now appears that Silent Guardian is ready for prime time.
But not so fast. A new report by Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung
(DSF, German Foundation for Peace Research) physicist Dr. J|rgen
Altmann, states that the ADS may be highly-damaging or even lethal.
According to Dr. Altmann,
The Active Denial System (ADS) produces a beam of electromagnetic
millimetre waves; such radiation is absorbed in the upper 0.4 mm of
skin. The beam stays approximately 2 m wide out to many hundreds of
metres. With a power of 100 kilowatts, the beam can heat the skin of
target subjects to pain-producing temperature levels within seconds.
With a prototype weapon, mounted in a military multi-purpose vehicle,
the effects have been tested on hundreds of volunteers. In order to
produce pain while preventing burn injury, the power and duration of
emission for one trigger event is controlled by a software program.
Model calculations show that with the highest power setting, second-
and third-degree burns with complete dermal necrosis will occur after
less than 2 seconds. Even with a lower setting of power or duration
there is the possibility for the operator to re-trigger immediately.
(Dr. J|rgen Altmann, "Millimetre Waves, Lasers, Acoustics for Non-
Lethal Weapons? Physics Analyses and Inferences," Deutsche Stiftung
Friedensforschung (DSF), 2008, p. 4)
Between 1995 and 2006, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)
and the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) have spent
approximately $51 million on the technology. What have U.S. taxpayers
gotten for their money? Dr. Altmann avers,
In 2005 the military press reported about requests from the armed
forces and mentioned fast deployment to Iraq. However, in September
2006 Secretary of the Air Force Wynne was quoted as being reluctant
to deploy ADS on the battlefield; to avoid vilification in the world
press it should be used on crowds in the US first.
In January 2007 a media day with live demonstrations of ADS system 1
was held at Moody AFB, Georgia. A deployment date of 2010 was
mentioned; press reports said that the beam heats the skin to 50C
[122F] without lasting harm, not mentioning the fact that this
depends on the beam being switched off immediately when such a
temperature is reached. (Altmann, op. cit., p. 18) [emphasis added]
Yes, you did read that correctly: "to avoid vilification" it was
recommended that the pain beam "should be used on crowds in the US
first." Dr. Altmann continues,
As a consequence, the ADS provides the technical possibility to
produce burns of second and third degree. Because the beam of
diameter 2 m and above is wider than human size, such burns would
occur over considerable parts of the body, up to 50% of its surface.
Second- and third-degree burns covering more than 20% of the body
surface are potentially life-threatening--due to toxic tissue-decay
products and increased sensitivity to infection--and require
intensive care in a specialised unit. Without a technical device that
reliably prevents re-triggering on the same target subject, the ADS
has a potential to produce permanent injury or death. (Altmann, op.
cit., p. 24)
Never mind that the system may cause permanent injury or even death
via "complete dermal necrosis," our capitalist masters are plowing
full-speed ahead! A June 2007 accident report, initially covered-up
by the JNLWD, reveals that a lack of operator training and the
removal of ADS safety features led to a "test subject" suffering
painful burns that required hospitalization in a burn unit. Obtained
by Wired defense analyst Sharon Weinberger the internal JNLWD
document describes how,
Crucially ... the "ADS Crew did not realize that the ADS, when it
came back to 'stand-by' mode, had defaulted to the previous setting
of 100% power and allowed at least a 4 second trigger pull." A
casual, or secondary, factor was related to hardware: specifically,
there was no working built-in range finder during the test, which
could have helped prevent over-exposure.
Two people who reviewed the unredacted report for DANGER ROOM said
the accident raises some basic questions about the weapon. Built-in
range finders "have been basic features of high tech line-of-sight
weapons and sensors for decades" and typically will prevent operators
from using systems in an unsafe fashion, says one Pentagon official
familiar with weapon's development. "Yet those critical safety
features, that were integrated into the HMMWV [Humvee] ADS System 1,
were removed by the AFRL [Air Force Research Lab] prior to testing,
exposing the test subjects to unconscionable risks." (Sharon
Weinberger, "Pain Ray Test Subjects Exposed to 'Unconscionable
Risks'," Wired, October 14, 2008)
Just another day at the office for Pentagon weaponeers. And given how
local beat cops love tasering "suspects," imagine the hijinks when
the riot squad lets loose on a bunch of commie protesters down at the
old Stock Exchange!
As University of Bradford researcher Neil Davison points out, the
United States and their NATO "partners" are resisting any moves to
restrict NLWs from being developed or deployed, despite risks to
their intended "targets": "homeland" citizens rebranded as "rioters"
and "domestic terrorists."
For emerging acoustic and directed energy weapons, however, there are
no international agreements restricting their development and
proliferation beyond compliance with international humanitarian law,
and the additional protocol to the Convention on Certain Conventional
Weapons (CCW) that prohibits laser weapons intentionally designed to
blind. Military establishments are keen to resist additional
constraints on the development and use of "non-lethal" weapons
technologies, as exemplified in a recent NATO report: "In order to
ensure that NATO forces retain the ability to accomplish missions, it
will be important that nations participating in NATO operations
remain vigilant against the development of specific legal regimes
which unnecessarily limit the ability to use NLWs." (Neil Davison,
"The Contemporary Development of 'Non-Lethal' Weapons," Bradford Non-
Lethal Weapons Research Project (BNLWRP), May 2007, p. 37)
In a telling--and chilling--description of why the ADS is "needed,"
the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, informs us,
The ADS will support a full spectrum of operations ranging from non-
lethal methods of crowd and mob dispersal, checkpoint security,
perimeter security, area denial, port protection, infrastructure
protection and clarification of intent (identifying combatants from
non-combatants). Most currently available non-lethal weapons use
kinetic energy, where the size and range of the target can limit or
change the effectiveness of the weapon. The range of the ADS is 10
times greater than other non-lethal weapons and will have the same
compelling non-lethal effect on all human targets, regardless of
size, age and gender. ("Frequently Asked Questions Regarding the
Active Denial System," Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, no date)
[emphasis added]
Yet despite these risks, the National Institute of Justice in a cool
"risk-benefit" analysis worthy of Dr. Mengele, is very much
interested in a "hand-held, probably rifle-sized, short range weapon
that could be effective at tens of feet for law enforcement officials."
As global capitalism enters a new and potentially "terminal" phase of
its disintegration, the U.S. ruling class and their European
"partners" will increasingly resort to escalating levels of violence--
from the criminalization of dissent to martial law--should "domestic
terrorist" threats "get out of hand." A general deployment of "non-
lethal weapons" for use in "homeland" cities clearly has a prominent
role to play along this repressive continuum. As Durham University
geographer Stephen Graham avers,
Those experiencing frequent 'terrorist' labelling by national
governments or sympathetic media since 9/11 include anti-war
dissenters, critical researchers, anti-globalization protestors, anti-
arms-trade campaigners, ecological and freedom of speech lobbyists,
and pro-independence campaigners within nations like Indonesia allied
to the US. Protagonists of such a wide spectrum of opposition to
transnational US dominance are thus all too easily dehumanized or
demonized. Above all, they become radically delegitimized. Who, after
all, will speak out in favour of 'terrorists' and their sympathizers?
("Cities and the 'War on Terror'," International Journal of Urban and
Regional Research, Volume 30.2, June 2006, p. 257)
And so it goes during the never-ending "Year Zero" of the Bush
regime. Silent Guardian: Coming soon to a city near you!
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco
Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and
Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers,
scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles
can be read on Dissident Voice and The Intelligence Daily. He is the
editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance"
Planning, distributed by AK Press.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole
responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of
the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this
article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for
Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any
inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.
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From radred at ix.netcom.com Wed Oct 22 15:02:29 2008
From: radred at ix.netcom.com (Carol)
Date: Wed Oct 22 15:02:33 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Amerikka: What to expect when martial law is declared
Message-ID: <22232544.1224705749761.JavaMail.root@mswamui-swiss.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
http://www.nolanchart.com/article5188.html
Topic: Politics
What To Expect When Martial Law Is Declared
Coming Soon To A Neighborhood Near You After The World-Wide Economic
Collapse
by Timothy K. Perry
(Libertarian)
Sunday, October 12, 2008
After the coming economic financial collapse, a state of world-wide
martial law will be declared. Considering the current events which
are in direct alignment with documented plans for totalitarian one-
world government, (white paper plans published by the Tri-Lateral
Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, and Club of Rome), martial
law will be imposed without official dissent upon the various
countries of the world. Martial law is military rule imposed upon
civilian populations in a time of war or during a (sic) "State of
Emergency". The following elements can be expected to occur once the
t.v. news anchors tell people not to panic, but that a State of
Emergency has been declared due to the crash, and a (sic) temporary
state of martial law has been declared, which will be rescinded once
the State of Emergency has passed.
What the news people won't tell you is that given the history of
martial law, the suspension of such a draconian state is far more
difficult to achieve than its original imposition. Esteemed reader,
ask yourself the question, why dictator or group of dictators ever
voluntarily relinquished their dictatorial powers? I'm searching
really hard through the history files of the world to find out the
handful of amazing people who did so. So far, all I can find is
George Washington who declined being elected "King".
Whenever the "Powers That Be" decide to impose martial law, the
following items can be expected:
:1. CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS ARE ENDED-Under martial law, the U.S.
Constitution is suspended and the citizens immediately lose all the
protections, safeguards, and human rights guaranteed by that
document. The citizens also lose every rights and privileges granted
under The Bill of Rights. The constitutions of other countries will
likewise be suspended with similar conditions imposed upon the
citizens of those other countries.
2. CURFEW ENFORCEMENT-Anyone caught outside after curfew can be shot
dead. There are no exceptions for personal emergencies unless of
course, these people have some sort of official written permission or
are in possession of other material which gives them a "Get Out Of
Jail Free" card.
3. WRIT OF HABEUS CORPUS SUSPENDED-This means that soldiers can bust
into your house, or arrest you on the street without warrants, and
can throw you into prison without explanation or access to legal
counsel. They can hold you there for months, even years, since there
are no time limits imposed on how long you can be imprisoned.
4. PERSONAL FIREARMS WILL BE SEIZED-Armed forces can invade your home
and force you to surrender any weapons you have, regardless of your
constitutional right or need to bear arms for your self-defense. If
you refuse, you could be shot dead in your living room, and all your
possessions seized. If you're lucky, you might just get Tasered, or
butt-ended with an AK-47, to eventually wake up in a Federal
Emergency Management Agency (F.E.M.A.) Detention Center with a Prison
Identification Number which you will go by as a "name" instead of
your old name, the one on your birth certificate.
5. PERSONAL PROPERTY CAN BE SEIZED-This means that under the excuse
of "requisitioning", soldiers can kick you out of your home, and
seize both your home, all the contents inside that home, as well as
any vehicles, or other items you have on your grounds. They also can
claim the actual real estate of the acreage as well. If you refuse or
resist in some way well....I guess you can fill in the blanks or use
your imagination.
The following list of Executive Orders have already been signed by
past U.S. presidents are in effect immediately upon declaration of a
national State of Emergency or Martial Law:
Executive Order 10995: All communications media will be taken over by
federal authority: radio, television, websites, newspapers, even CB
and Ham radio systems. Freedom of expression, otherwise known as the
First Amendment will be canceled until further notice.
Executive Order 10997: All fossil fuels, related substances as well
as all electrical power, both corporate as well as privately owned
devices and generators will be seized by the federal government.
Executive Order 10998: All food, means to produce such food and
related products and machinery, warehouses and collectives which
obviously include corporate and private farms will be seized by the
government. You will not be allowed to hoard food since this is
regulated. If you are caught hoarding food, you could be shot dead,
or perhaps you will be lucky enough to be Tasered, knocked to the
ground, sent to a FEMA camp and be immediately classified as a
"domestic terrorist", otherwise known as an "Enemy of the State".
Executive Order 10999: All modes of transportation will be placed
under complete government control. Any vehicle can be seized.
Executive Order 11000: All civilians will be drafted into forced
labor which the t.v. anchors will euphemistically call "volunteer
labor" at a variety of designated work places or camps under federal
supervision. Go watch old film reels of the slave labor images under
Nazi prison camps, or if you prefer, go watch a copy of Cool Hand
Luke with Paul Newman, to get a more modern updated "American flavor"
of what it's like to be part of a slave labor chain gang. Of course,
you must always remember, that if you go against the Boss, you will
be accused of "A Failure To Communicate."
Executive Order 11490: Absolute dictatorial "presidential" control
will be exercised over all US citizens, business as well as church
institutions during a State of Emergency where martial law is
declared necessary.
Executive Order 12919: At the direction of the president, this
Executive Order allows various Cabinet officials to take over all
aspects of the US economy during a State of National Emergency.
Executive Order 13010: This Executive Order allows FEMA to take
control over all other government agencies.
Executive Order 12656: "ASSIGNMENT OF EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS
RESPONSIBILITIES" -This order allows for the declaration of a State
of Emergency during natural disaster, military attack,
technological emergency, or other emergencies that seriously
threaten the national security of the United States. This order
allows for total, unquestioned federal takeover of every local police
enforcement agencies, as well as local price fixing and wages. It
also forbids reassignment of personal financial assets within or
outside of the United States.
All in all, it makes me wish I was born several hundred years in the
future, because by then, we will be genetically designed to obey
without question, with no personal will or identity of our own. So in
that case, we won't know what we've lost, because all the history
books, or shall I say history "discs" will have been rewritten.
Hopefully, this game plan will be abandoned, and the planned scenario
will never happen to us, even though plans have been written for just
such a scenario. Hopefully, the decision will be made to abandon this
plan and revitalize the world economy without dramatic incident so
such draconian methods are not necessary to unite all countries under
the one world globalist banner. I don't think anyone is going to
resist the transition to a one world police state anyway. Most people
just want to be able to pay their bills and get by, and enjoy what
little free time they have, no matter what group is ruling. After
all, this transition is already being achieved as we speak.
2008 Timothy K. Perry, all rights reserved.
Published: Sunday, October 12, 2008
Last modified: Monday, October 13, 2008
The views expressed in this article are those of Timothy K. Perry
only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its
affiliates. Timothy K. Perry is solely responsible for the contents
of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with
Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
From d_a_d at telusplanet.net Wed Oct 22 15:58:59 2008
From: d_a_d at telusplanet.net (David A Davidson)
Date: Wed Oct 22 15:59:06 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Email problems
In-Reply-To: <200810191823.m9JIN015021549@karma.reboot.ca>
References: <200810191823.m9JIN015021549@karma.reboot.ca>
Message-ID:
Came in loud and clear Ed. All the best
David
-----Original Message-----
From: mai-not-bounces@globalproblematique.net
[mailto:mai-not-bounces@globalproblematique.net] On Behalf Of Ed Deak
Sent: October 19, 2008 12:25 PM
To: mai-not-request@globalproblematique.net
Cc: mai-not@globalproblematique.net
Subject: [Mai-not] Email problems
To: lpinter@iisd.ca
Subject: Problems
Cc: csaba.kancz2@t-online.hu, csaba.kancz2@t-online.hu
Hi Everybody ,
My mail server crashed in a big way a week ago and I just got it back
, but had to change my email address, as they've switched domains .
The new one is above thinker@thelakebc.ca
This is a trial message, hoping that this time it will go
through. Please let me know.
Cheers, Ed.
_______________________________________________
Mai-not mailing list
Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
From jomut at yahoo.com Wed Oct 22 16:31:17 2008
From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa)
Date: Wed Oct 22 16:31:19 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Email problems
In-Reply-To:
Message-ID: <148976.6445.qm@web31105.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Got it through David's message.? Yours did not show on my list.? The messages that I send do not show either, I have to go to the mailer list to check if they have gotten through.
?
John
====================
John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake)
jomut@yahoo.com
chakane@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
--- On Wed, 10/22/08, David A Davidson wrote:
From: David A Davidson
Subject: RE: [Mai-not] Email problems
To: "'A renewed Mai-Not'"
Date: Wednesday, October 22, 2008, 8:58 PM
Came in loud and clear Ed. All the best
David
-----Original Message-----
From: mai-not-bounces@globalproblematique.net
[mailto:mai-not-bounces@globalproblematique.net] On Behalf Of Ed Deak
Sent: October 19, 2008 12:25 PM
To: mai-not-request@globalproblematique.net
Cc: mai-not@globalproblematique.net
Subject: [Mai-not] Email problems
To: lpinter@iisd.ca
Subject: Problems
Cc: csaba.kancz2@t-online.hu, csaba.kancz2@t-online.hu
Hi Everybody ,
My mail server crashed in a big way a week ago and I just got it back
, but had to change my email address, as they've switched domains .
The new one is above thinker@thelakebc.ca
This is a trial message, hoping that this time it will go
through. Please let me know.
Cheers, Ed.
_______________________________________________
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
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From thinker at thelakebc.ca Wed Oct 22 14:45:12 2008
From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak)
Date: Wed Oct 22 16:53:15 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] test
Message-ID: <200810221942.m9MJgrLf017915@karma.reboot.ca>
My server changed domains and we all had to change our
addresses...................as above,
Cheers, Ed.
From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Wed Oct 22 17:13:42 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Wed Oct 22 17:12:02 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] NAFTA Ch 11 case against Quebec's pesticide ban brought
by US Chemical Giant DOW Oct 22
Message-ID: <48FF7B66.18183.78CD4EF7@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
Dear All:
According to Luke Eric Peterson, a columnist for Embassy magazine and
the editor of an investigative reporting service tracking NAFTA-style
arbitrations, the issue of free trade was largely a non-issue during
our recent federal election. However, the North American Free Trade
Agreement might have garnered a few headlines if the Feds had
disclosed that U.S. chemical giant Dow signalled in late August that
it is gearing up to sue Canada. Dow Agrosciences insists Quebec's
province-wide ban on the residential use of weed-killing chemicals
breaches legal protections owed by Canada to U.S. investors under the
NAFTA. The U.S. company, which has an extensive manufacturing and
sales operation in Canada, wants to be compensated by the Feds for
losses incurred to its star product, 2,4-D, one of the most popular
chemical ingredients used in commercial pesticides.
fyi-janet
This provides further reason amidst growing resistance to mount a
coordinated effort calling for the renegotiation or abrogation of
NAFTA. Our health, environment, sovereignty, economy and food
security are at stake as long as we continue to submit to NAFTA and
its dictates.
To see just how extensive the calls are to renegotiate NAFTA click
on: http://www.stopthehogs.com/pdf/nafta-resistance.pdf
Note also
As of January 1 2008, there have been 49 investor-state claims:
18 against Canada,
14 against the U.S. and
17 against Mexico.
Nearly half of these claims have involved investor challenges to
how governments protect the environment or manage natural resources
________________________________________________________
1. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. 2008. NAFTA Challenges
Grow www.policyalternatives.ca/
Note also:
The number of challenges launched by foreign investors against Canada
under NAFTA?s controversial investment rules continues to grow. A
recent CCPA study looked at the six new NAFTA cases filed against
Canada over the last two years and found the targeting of
environmental protection and natural resource management regulations
particularly disturbing. These included:
A challenge by multinational oil giant Exxon-Mobil to
Newfoundland?s local economic development policies.
A challenge over the province of Ontario?s decision to halt a
controversial project to dispose of Toronto?s landfill in a man-made
lake. 1
There has been a recent challenge over a Canadian Environmental
Assessment Agency Panel decision to not grant permission for a mega-
quarry in Digby - Neck, Nova Scotia. 2
_____________________________________________________________
1. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. 2008. NAFTA Challenges
Grow www.policyalternatives.ca/ 2.NAFTA Challenge blatant attempt
to intimidate.
http://www.sierraclub.ca/atlantic/programs/economies/digbyquarry/press
.htm
==============================
http://www.embassymag.ca/page/view/peterson_nafta-10-22-2008
U.S. Chemical Company Challenges Pesticide Ban
by Luke Eric Peterson
PRINT SMALL LARGE
Published October 22 2008
The issue of free trade was largely a non-issue during our recent
federal election.
However, the North American Free Trade Agreement might have garnered
a few headlines if the Feds had disclosed that U.S. chemical giant
Dow signalled in late August that it is gearing up to sue Canada.
Dow Agrosciences insists Quebec's province-wide ban on the
residential use of weed-killing chemicals breaches legal protections
owed by Canada to U.S. investors under the NAFTA.
The U.S. company, which has an extensive manufacturing and sales
operation in Canada, wants to be compensated by the Feds for losses
incurred to its star product, 2,4-D, one of the most popular chemical
ingredients used in commercial pesticides.
The Dow claim is the latest in a long string of disputes to arise
under Chapter 11 of the NAFTA-a legal back channel which permits
foreign investors to detour around local courts and sue the federal
government before an international tribunal.
The company triggered a 90-day waiting period in August, after which
it can bring the federal government to binding arbitration.
For cross-border investors, these types of legal protections can come
in handy if a tin-pot dictator sends in the tanks and seizes your
factories or oil fields. But when such legal provisions are invoked
by foreign investors in an effort to ward off health or environmental
regulations, eyebrows drift skyward.
Kathleen Cooper, a senior researcher with the Canadian Environmental
Law Association, says the Quebec ban has been warmly endorsed by
medical and environmental organizations-and enjoys wide support in
public opinion surveys. She's troubled that chemical producers can
invoke NAFTA in an effort to "undermine the decisions of
democratically-elected governments."
The spectre of a NAFTA lawsuit comes at an auspicious moment.
The Province of Ontario has signalled that it will follow Quebec's
lead, passing legislation earlier this year, and working on
regulations that could come into force next spring.
Such regulatory moves will eventually draw wider attention and
scrutiny in other jurisdictions-including the far more lucrative U.S.
market. If the U.S. chemical industry hopes to avert a domino effect,
it may need to borrow a page from the War on Terrorism tactics book:
fighting tougher regulation abroad, so they don't have to fight it on
the homefront.
For its part, Dow insists Quebec and Ontario are out of step with the
international consensus on a product that has been used for decades
in dozens of countries.
The company points to a 2007 risk assessment by Canada's own Pest
Management Regulatory Agency which said the product could continue to
be used safely on lawns. Dow stresses that Quebec's decision to ban
certain uses of the product is not based on scientific evidence.
Spokesperson Gary Hamelin says it is a real problem when companies
are "making investments of tens of millions of dollars for products
that-based on a scientific assessment-[are] acceptable."
While Dow jousts with its critics over the scientific evidence,
Quebec (and now Ontario) have taken the view that more stringent
standards should be imposed by provincial health
regulators-particularly where the product is not necessary, but is
used for purely cosmetic purposes.
It could fall to a panel of three arbitrators to decide whether such
provincial regulations run afoul of Canada's NAFTA commitments.
Of course, threatening to file a NAFTA claim is hardly a guarantee of
success. Nevertheless, chemical producers seem to be warming to the
NAFTA option.
Already, the government is defending against another NAFTA Chapter 11
claim filed by another U.S.-based chemical producer. When Canada's
Pest Regulatory Management Agency moved to ban the use of Lindane-
based seed treatments, U.S.-based Chemtura Corporation sued for $100
million in damages. That arbitration is currently going on behind
closed doors, following a January confidentiality order.
One wonders if this is the tip of the legal iceberg. After all, the
Feds are now undertaking a broad review of thousands of under-tested
chemicals currently on the market.
Just last week, the government added the controversial substance
Bisphenol A (BPA)-which is used widely in plastics-to a registry of
toxic substances. Although there are no immediate plans to ban the
use of the substance as a lining in food and drink cans, it is very
likely that BPA will be eliminated from polycarbonate baby bottles.
It remains to be seen whether tougher regulations on BPA and other
chemicals will also be challenged under NAFTA Chapter 11.
For almost two months, the federal government has been mum about the
latest legal salvo from Dow.
Although Dow formally signalled its intentions in late August-setting
in motion a 90-day consultation period-the Department of Foreign
Affairs only disclosed the potential lawsuit yesterday.
Until now, Canadian taxpayers-who foot the bill to defend NAFTA
lawsuits and pay any compensation awarded by arbitrators-have been
denied the opportunity to weigh in with their own views on the
matter.
However, given that nearly 7,000 members of the public submitted
comments on the Ontario Government's proposed pesticides ban, one can
guess that the Feds will receive plenty of feedback in the weeks to
come.
Luke Eric Peterson is a columnist for Embassy and the editor of an
investigative reporting service tracking NAFTA-style arbitrations,
the Investment Arbitration Reporter (www.iareporter.com).
editor@embassymag.ca
From papadop at peak.org Wed Oct 22 20:34:59 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Wed Oct 22 21:08:04 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Brit highest Courts support Brit obedience to U$ over
justice.
Message-ID:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2462554.0.Exiled_islanders_barred_from_going_home.php
EXILED ISLANDERS BARRED FROM GOING HOME
Exiled families longing to return to their native islands in the
Indian Ocean had their hopes dashed yesterday when the Law Lords
upheld the government's last-ditch bid to stop them going home.
The House of Lords judges who sit at the highest court in the land
overturned all the decisions made by the High Court and Court of
Appeal allowing them to return.
Although the Law Lords admitted the government of the day was wrong to
force out some 2000 residents of the Chagos Islands, a British colony, to
make way for a US air base in the 1960s, three out of five upheld the
government's appeal.
The courts ruled in 2000 that the Chagossians could return to 65 of the
islands, but not Diego Garcia where the air base was built.
In 2004, the government used the royal prerogative to nullify the
rulings but this was overturned by the High Court and Court of Appeal.
In June this year, the government went to the House of Lords to argue
that allowing the islanders to return would seriously affect defence and
security. Olivier Bancoult, the Chagossian leader who brought the action
on behalf of the islanders, said the courts had found in their favour
three times but the Law Lords "had not been able to understand our
position".
He said the government had been prepared to "spend a huge amount of
money" to pay lawyers to fight its case.
"I can say we, the Chagossian people, will not give up. We will
continue our struggle," he added.
From papadop at peak.org Wed Oct 22 20:52:25 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Wed Oct 22 21:25:26 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Brit law lords dismiss "the right of abode"
Message-ID:
The right of return - in this case - is said to be a creature of law - the
law giveth and the law taketh away.
I don't put any hope in the brit. population, ( or the Brit Politicians)
to persuade the government to change its mind - over the last half century
parts of the UK have been taken over by US occupiers for security/defence
reasons without much opposition - France is the only state I remember
having forced US military bases off its metropolitan territory. I place a
little more hope on the Euro's Human Rights court.
Michael
##############
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/23/chagos-islands-human-rights
Evicted Chagos islanders have no right to return home, law lords rule
o 3-2 decision after 10-year battle by families -- Case may now go to
human rights court
The Guardian (London) , Thursday October 23 2008
Families evicted from their homes on an island in the Indian Ocean
lost their long-running battle to return yesterday when the law lords
ruled by a majority of three to two in favour of the Foreign Office.
The islanders, some of whom had travelled from their current home in
Mauritius to hear the decision, were removed from Chagos to
accommodate the US military base on Diego Garcia in the 1970s.
They greeted yesterday's ruling with dismay. "We are deeply
disappointed," said the Chagossians' leader, Olivier Bancoult. "But we
will never give up."
Lords Hoffmann, Carswell and Rodger found in favour of the Foreign
Office in its appeal against earlier court rulings that the
Chagossians had a right to return. Lords Bingham and Mance dissented
from the majority decision.
In his judgment, Hoffmann said the Chagossians had been removed with "a
callous disregard" for their interests, but that did not affect the case
now.
"The right of abode is a creature of the law. The law gives it and the law
may take it away," he wrote, adding: "The deed has been done, the wrong
confessed, compensation agreed and paid."
Hoffmann said the UK government's obligations to the Chagossians ended in
1982 when it paid them compensation. He noted that the government had
said it was acting "in the interests of the defence of the realm,
diplomatic relations with the US and the use of public funds in
supporting any settlement on the islands".
But Bingham, in his dissenting judgment, wrote: "It is not, I think,
suggested that those whose homes are in former colonial territories may
be treated in a way which would not be permissible in the case of citizens
in this country."
He challenged the government's claim that security issues had to be
considered. "Despite highly imaginative letters written by American
officials to strengthen the secretary of state's hand in this
litigation, there was no reason to apprehend that the security
situation had changed."
The Chagossians, their legal team and their supporters lambasted the
decision. "How can we be expected to live outside our birthplace when
there are other people living there now?" said Bancoult.
The Chagossians are now considering taking their case to the European
court of human rights. They are also looking at other ways to
influence the government, which has spent 5m fighting the action.
"The government has finally scored a narrow victory, but the victory has
been achieved at a great price," said Richard Gifford, the
solicitor who has acted for the Chagossians in the action, originally
launched in 1998.
He said that it was now up to parliament and public opinion to play
their part so that the Chagossians could return.
David Snoxell, the former high commissioner to Mauritius, said: "This
would have been a great opportunity to right a great wrong and wipe out
a national shame."
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, said the government's decision to
appeal against the earlier decisions had been vindicated. He added: "It
is appropriate on this day that I should repeat the government's regret
at the way the resettlement of the Chagossians was carried out."
The Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, a leading campaigner for the Chagossians,
said he was saddened by the ruling and added: "I hope the foreign
secretary understands that Olivier Bancoult will never give up."
From papadop at peak.org Wed Oct 22 21:06:55 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Wed Oct 22 21:39:51 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] How Canadians share intelligence with the U$
Message-ID:
Isn't there a oxymoron hidden somewhere ?
M.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081022.wcoiacobucci23/BNStory/specialComment/home
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) October 22, 2008 at 9:24 PM EDT
*BY Wesley Warks - a security specialist at the University of
Toronto.
Commissions of inquiry into national security matters in Canada used to
be held in a stately procession, with goodly periods of quiet time between
each. Thus, we had the 1946 royal commission into Igor Gouzenko's
evidence of Soviet spies in Canada, followed by the Mackenzie
inquiry of the late 1960s into the Cold War security sector, followed by
the epic McDonald commission into the improprieties of the RCMP Security
Service in its battle with the FLQ that ultimately gave birth to a
civilian intelligence service (CSIS) in 1984 and a new era of
accountability. The mere decade that separated Mackenzie from
McDonald seemed a rush for a country unused to gazing at its secret
navel.
Since 9/11, the pace has changed dramatically. First came Mr. Justice
Dennis O'Connor's 2006 report into the role that Canadian officials
played in the rendition of Maher Arar to Syria to face torture. On the
back of that report now comes its sequel, retired Supreme Court
justice Frank Iacobucci's report into the parallel question of the
Canadian role in the detention and torture of three Canadians in Syria and
Egypt.
The public concern that underlies both inquiries is whether Canadian
intelligence, security and Foreign Affairs officials have so lost
their way in the "war on terror" that they have systematically and
deliberately engaged in practices that are repugnant to democratic
values. It's an important concern, enough to throw the old stately
procession out the window.
It's to the credit of successive Liberal and Conservative governments
that they were prepared to take the risk of throwing a public
spotlight on a highly sensitive activity and on potential misdeeds. The
risk is not just a question of embarrassment and loss of
reputation, a risk attenuated by the fact that governments that call
inquiries of this sort generally know the outlines of what will be
found. The bigger risk is one of public confusion and
misunderstanding.
Nothing could be worse than if Canadians emerged with the wrong set of
ideas and expectations from two long and expensive commissions of
inquiry designed to learn lessons, improve the performance of
government agencies engaged in national security and, to be frank,
offer reassurance.
Judge O'Connor's 2006 report did signal service in telling Canadians
some important truths. He found that, while Canadian officials were not
complicit in the rendition of Mr. Arar by the U.S. to Syria, they had
inappropriately shared flawed intelligence with their American
counterparts that shaped Mr. Arar's fate. Judge O'Connor also reminded
Canadians that intelligence sharing was a fact of life and a vital
necessity for national security. The key, as far as he was concerned, was
that the RCMP had to get much better at national security
investigations in a post-9/11 age. He made plenty of recommendations to
that effect, which we are told (though not shown) are being
implemented.
Mr. Iacobucci faced similar questions in his report. He had to decide on
Canadian complicity in the detention and torture of three Arab
Canadians in the Middle East. He had to pronounce on the nature of
Canadian intelligence sharing with traditional partners (the U.S.) and
some newfound, expedient "friends" (Syria and Egypt).
The good news is that Mr. Iacobucci found no evidence that Canadian
security officials were engaged in any nefarious practice to push
Canadians they believed were terrorists into the waiting arms of
Middle Eastern jailors and torturers. The bad news, as with Judge
O'Connor's findings, is that Canadian officials contributed
"indirectly" to the plight of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou El Maati and
Muayyed Nureddin. That plight was lengthy detention and
mistreatment amounting, under United Nations conventions, to torture. The
indirect contribution was a product of intelligence sharing and
inadequate consular care.
Where Mr. Iacobucci runs into difficulties is deciding what this
indirect role amounted to and what needs to be done about it.
Admittedly, he faced large expectations that his own findings would
somehow go beyond and improve on what we learned from Judge O'Connor.
Yet, something of the crystalline nature of Judge O'Connor's report
goes missing in the Iacobucci sequel. The lessons grow opaque, the
language gets knotted -- it's all about "deficiencies," while
"findings" never grow up into muscular policy recommendations.
Mr. Iacobucci has compelling things to say about the inadequacies of the
consular practices of the Department of Foreign Affairs at the time
(between 2001 and 2004). Tangible fixes clearly are needed.
But what of the other main issue in his terms of reference --
intelligence sharing? He is less sure of his ground and less
convincing. The essential balance between civil-rights concerns and the
need for intelligence sharing in a borderless world of terrorism and
counterterrorism goes missing. It's hard to read Mr. Iacobucci and not
worry that the degrees of sanitation and bubble wrapping of shared
intelligence that he sees as desirous could ultimately lead to little or
no intelligence sharing at all. Certainly the RCMP and CSIS have to
exercise care and discretion in the ways they share intelligence with new
and old partners. There are indications in the Iacobucci report that
they sometimes failed to meet that standard. But find a way to share,
with appropriate safeguards, they must, a message that gets lost.
In a reflection on other inquiries into intelligence misdeeds, from
Pearl Harbor to the Yom Kippur War of 1973 to 9/11, Malcolm Gladwell
coined the phrase "creeping determinism." This is a neat term for the
pernicious habit of simplifying the past by stripping away its
complexities and substituting what is known later for what was known at
the time. Creeping determinism has crept into the Iacobucci report and
stripped away the political realities of a post-9/11 age, and
simultaneously deprived readers of a usable picture of the complex and
always ambiguous world of intelligence. Judicially inspired degrees of
caution about the sharing of intelligence might save some Canadians
from harm; it might also expose many Canadians to harm.
From siamdave at yahoo.ca Wed Oct 22 22:49:11 2008
From: siamdave at yahoo.ca (Dave Patterson)
Date: Wed Oct 22 22:49:17 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Brit law lords dismiss "the right of abode"
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID: <200810231049110984.002608F0@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
That 'highly imaginative' line was a good one - could be used for probably 90% of the modern mythology spread by the government and press. There was a section on The Current last night (http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2008/200810/20081022.html ) that was quite 'highly imaginative' as well, about the Toronto 'terrorists' and their foiled nefarious plot to blow up some section of Toronto with a 'huge' fertilizer bomb, and their connections to the nefarious international internet terrorist Aabid Khan, just sentenced to 12 years in English gaol for such things as keeping several years worth of internet records on a number of hard drives, and having books and other materials on the same hard drives that could be used for terrorist purposes, the fiend! And ONE of this vast body of emails etc made a connection to one of the accused Toronto terrorists, thus proving beyond doubt the monstrous plan to blow up Toronto!! It used to be the adults who listened to the CBC, but only mind-destroyed children who watch FAR too much tv could believe this stuff. And yet there are Anna Marie and the Current's 'security correspondent' (!!! belly laughs excused, kids in the sandbox aspiring to adult work) chatting in hushed breaths as if all of this stuff was just soooo true!!!
I don't think there's much hope, really, for sanity returning before the fall.
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 08-10-22 at 6:52 PM MichaelP wrote:
>The right of return - in this case - is said to be a creature of law -
>the
>law giveth and the law taketh away.
> I don't put any hope in the brit. population, ( or the Brit Politicians)
>to persuade the government to change its mind - over the last half century
>parts of the UK have been taken over by US occupiers for security/defence
>reasons without much opposition - France is the only state I remember
>having forced US military bases off its metropolitan territory. I place a
>little more hope on the Euro's Human Rights court.
>
>Michael
>
>
>##############
>
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/23/chagos-islands-human-rights
>
>Evicted Chagos islanders have no right to return home, law lords rule
>
>o 3-2 decision after 10-year battle by families -- Case may now go to
>human rights court
>
>
>
>The Guardian (London) , Thursday October 23 2008
>
>Families evicted from their homes on an island in the Indian Ocean
>lost their long-running battle to return yesterday when the law lords
>ruled by a majority of three to two in favour of the Foreign Office.
>
>The islanders, some of whom had travelled from their current home in
>Mauritius to hear the decision, were removed from Chagos to
>accommodate the US military base on Diego Garcia in the 1970s.
>
>They greeted yesterday's ruling with dismay. "We are deeply
>disappointed," said the Chagossians' leader, Olivier Bancoult. "But we
>will never give up."
>
>Lords Hoffmann, Carswell and Rodger found in favour of the Foreign
>Office in its appeal against earlier court rulings that the
>Chagossians had a right to return. Lords Bingham and Mance dissented
>from the majority decision.
>
>In his judgment, Hoffmann said the Chagossians had been removed with "a
>callous disregard" for their interests, but that did not affect the case
>now.
>
>"The right of abode is a creature of the law. The law gives it and the law
>may take it away," he wrote, adding: "The deed has been done, the wrong
>confessed, compensation agreed and paid."
>
>Hoffmann said the UK government's obligations to the Chagossians ended in
>1982 when it paid them compensation. He noted that the government had
>said it was acting "in the interests of the defence of the realm,
>diplomatic relations with the US and the use of public funds in
>supporting any settlement on the islands".
>
>But Bingham, in his dissenting judgment, wrote: "It is not, I think,
>suggested that those whose homes are in former colonial territories may
>be treated in a way which would not be permissible in the case of citizens
>in this country."
>
>He challenged the government's claim that security issues had to be
>considered. "Despite highly imaginative letters written by American
>officials to strengthen the secretary of state's hand in this
>litigation, there was no reason to apprehend that the security
>situation had changed."
>
>The Chagossians, their legal team and their supporters lambasted the
>decision. "How can we be expected to live outside our birthplace when
>there are other people living there now?" said Bancoult.
>
>The Chagossians are now considering taking their case to the European
>court of human rights. They are also looking at other ways to
>influence the government, which has spent 5m fighting the action.
>
>"The government has finally scored a narrow victory, but the victory has
>been achieved at a great price," said Richard Gifford, the
>solicitor who has acted for the Chagossians in the action, originally
>launched in 1998.
>
>He said that it was now up to parliament and public opinion to play
>their part so that the Chagossians could return.
>
>David Snoxell, the former high commissioner to Mauritius, said: "This
>would have been a great opportunity to right a great wrong and wipe out
>a national shame."
>
>The foreign secretary, David Miliband, said the government's decision to
>appeal against the earlier decisions had been vindicated. He added: "It
>is appropriate on this day that I should repeat the government's regret
>at the way the resettlement of the Chagossians was carried out."
>
>The Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, a leading campaigner for the Chagossians,
>said he was saddened by the ruling and added: "I hope the foreign
>secretary understands that Olivier Bancoult will never give up."
>
>_______________________________________________
>Mai-not mailing list
>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
>
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From creuss at bluewin.ch Thu Oct 23 07:56:28 2008
From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss)
Date: Thu Oct 23 07:58:11 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Sarkozy sues publisher over Voodoo Doll
Message-ID:
[According to the tongue-in-cheek advertising for the doll, the voodoo magic
enables buyers to "prevent Sarkozy from doing even more harm". ;-)) ]
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/238262,sarkozy-to-sue-publisher-over
-voodoo-doll.html
Sarkozy to sue publisher over voodoo doll
Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy is going to court to force a
French publisher to take off the market a voodoo doll in his image, French
media reported on Thursday. The doll, 20,000 of which went on sale on
October 9, comes with a manual and a dozen pins that can be stuck through
well-known quotes of his - such as "Work more and earn more," or "Bugger
off, you ass" - which are printed on the doll.
The daily Le Monde reported that Sarkozy's attorney, Thierry Herzog, sent a
letter to K&B Publishers, which makes the doll, asserting that Sarkozy "has
an exclusive and absolute right" over his image and demanding that the doll
be withdrawn from public sale.
However, a spokesperson for K&B said that the demand was "over the top" and
that the publisher had no intention of removing the doll or the manual from
bookstore shelves.
K&B has also put out a voodoo doll of Sarkozy's Socialist Party opponent in
the 2007 presidential election, Segolene Royal.
Royal's attorney, Jean-Pierre Mignard, said that the effigy was "an affront
to her dignity as a human being" and declared that she was also considering
taking legal action.
The two dolls can be purchased together as a kit, or individually for 12.95
euros (16.64 dollars) each. They are also available, for a 5 per cent
discount, from the French branch of the internet sales outlet Amazon.
Photo of the doll:
http://www.20min.ch/images/content/1/9/0/19057445/3/topelement.jpg
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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From McPogo at aol.com Thu Oct 23 10:09:32 2008
From: McPogo at aol.com (McPogo@aol.com)
Date: Thu Oct 23 10:09:45 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Effective Use of Tax Dollars?
Message-ID:
Can you believe 160 feet of fencing in Owen Sound, Ontario Canada is going
to protect an American cement barge that comes once a year! Our government is
nuts! We already know the Bush bunch is nuts but why do we have to go along?
_http://basicsnewsletter.blogspot.com/2008/01/anti-terrorist-fence-in-owen-sou
nd.html_
(http://basicsnewsletter.blogspot.com/2008/01/anti-terrorist-fence-in-owen-sound.html)
(http://basicsnewsletter.blogspot.com/)
Saturday, January 12, 2008
_Anti-Terrorist Fence in Owen Sound?!?_
(http://basicsnewsletter.blogspot.com/2008/01/anti-terrorist-fence-in-owen-sound.html)
Your tax dollars at work: a chain-link and barbed wire fence to stop
terrorist infiltration of Owen Sound.
How far will the federal government go to make people afraid of ?terrorism?
? All the way to Owen Sound from the looks of it.
The Canadian Government has build a 2 metre high, 60 metre long barb-wired
fence along the east harbour wall of Owen Sound - much to the surprise of the
local City government.
The Mayor and City Council of Owen Sound have written a letter of complaint
to Harper. During a recent council meeting, Mayor Ruth Lovell called the
fence ?a big disgrace?.
The federal government is justifying putting up the fence as a way to ?keep
out terrorists?. Why terrorists would want to attack Owen Sound - a Georgian
Bay city of 21,753 that only welcomes an international ship once every few
years - was left unexplained.
According to Transport Canada, more than $930 million has been spent on
such ?marine security enhancements?.
This sort of ridiculous act would be hilarious if it wasn?t for the fact
that the government uses this sort of fear mongering to keep Canada involved in
the bogus ?War on Terror?.
Posted by Basics free community newsletter
(http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=31364947&postID=3514113159654389488)
1 comments:
Anonymous said...
see the video of the Owen Sound Anti-Terrorist Fence here:
_http://youtube.com/watch?v=keVTHFwV5Ko_
(http://youtube.com/watch?v=keVTHFwV5Ko)
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From papadop at peak.org Thu Oct 23 10:02:42 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Thu Oct 23 10:35:47 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] GITMO Torture case : Brit Judges attack U$ refusal
Message-ID:
Brit courts don't get any respect by U$ administration.
Obama could agree to have Chagos islanders return home to Diego Garcia,
could agree to release GITMO torure evidence, could show respect for human
rights. Keep fingers crossed
##############
Democracy Now! | Headlines for October 23, 2008
URL: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/23/headlines
British Judges Threaten Intervention in Gitmo Torture Case
The British High Court has condemned the Bush administration for refusing
to turn over documents in the case of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner who says
he was tortured in US custody. The prisoner, Binyam Mohamed, alleges his
confession to terrorism charges was given only after he had his penis
sliced by a blade. The State Department has previously warned releasing
the documents would cause "serious and lasting damage" to security
relations between the US and Britain and jeopardize British "national
security." In a new ruling, the British judges say they might intervene to
compel the White House to hand over the documents to Mohamed's lawyers.
##########
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/23/guantanamo-bay-human-rights
Court attacks US refusal to disclose torture evidence
Information is vital to UK resident's case
British judges say claims are unprecedented
* Richard Norton-Taylor
* The Guardian,(London) * Thursday October 23 2008
The high court yesterday condemned as "deeply disturbing" a refusal by the
US to disclose evidence that could prove a British resident held at
Guantnamo Bay was tortured before confessing to terrorism offences.
The court said there was "no rational basis" for the American failure to
reveal the contents of documents essential to the defence of Binyam
Mohamed, who faces the death penalty.
In a particularly damning passage, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice
Lloyd Jones said claims by Mohamed's lawyers that the US was refusing to
release the papers because "torturers do not readily hand over evidence of
their conduct" could not be dismissed and required an answer.
The judges said they were unaware of any precedent for such serious
allegations against "the government of a foreign friendly state and our
oldest and closest ally" as those made in this case.
The US had not provided any explanation for its conduct, though it had had
"ample time" to do so, the judges said.
Thomas and Lloyd said the documents provided the "only independent
evidence" capable of helping Mohamed and his defence. Suppressing the
material "would be to deny him the opportunity of timely justice in
respect of the charges against him", which was a principle dating back to
"at least the time of Magna Carta and which is a basic part of our common
law and of democratic values".
They said David Miliband, the foreign secretary, conceded there was an
"arguable case" that Mohamed had been subjected to torture and inhuman
treatment. Yet Miliband also wanted to suppress relevant documents, not
because they would reveal any intelligence operations but because the US
claimed that if they were disclosed serious harm would be done to
"intelligence sharing" between the UK and the US.
The judges said it was clear Britain had "facilitated" Mohamed's
interrogation when he was unlawfully detained in Pakistan before being
secretly rendered to Morocco, Afghanistan, and then to Guantnamo. The US
was using confessions made after two years of unlawful "incommunicado
detention" on charges where the death penalty might be sought, the judges
said yesterday.
They noted that a military prosecutor at the US base had recently resigned
in protest against the treatment of prisoners, including the use of a
"frequent flyer programme". The judges described this as a "euphemism for
a sleep deprivation programme". They added: "This is a practice which the
United Kingdom expressly prohibits."
Charges against Mohamed- including that he was involved in a dirty bomb
plot - have been dropped, allegedly to prevent the US from revealing
torture evidence. The US authorities now planned to charge him with other
offences, the judges noted yesterday.
The judges took the extraordinary step of inviting the media to challenge
previous decisions to hold many of the case's hearings in camera.
"Although the argument took place in closed session," they said, "the
issue is one of considerable importance in the context of open justice
[and] to the rule of law."
They suspended proceedings pending a case in the US courts, where defence
lawyers are also trying to force disclosure. That federal court, the
British judges said yesterday, might be given explanations about US
conduct "denied to this court".
Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the charity Reprieve, described
Mohamed's treatment by the US as a "litany of misconduct".
"First they tortured him, then they held him for more than six years
without trial, now they want to cover up evidence that could set him
free," he said. "What is the point of a 'special relationship' if the UK
government cannot secure basic justice for Mr Mohamed?"
Richard Stein, one of Mohamed's lawyers, said: "The grave concerns
expressed by the court about the dealings of the Americans in this case
are not surprising, given the torture Mr Mohamed has suffered. This
underlines the British government's duty to do more than gently nudge its
ally across the Atlantic when it comes to criminal acts taken against a
British resident."
Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian national and British resident, was held in
Pakistan in 2002, when he was questioned by an MI5 officer. He was later
secretly rendered to Morocco, where he says he was tortured by having his
penis cut with a razor blade. The US subsequently flew him to Afghanistan
and he was transferred to Guantnamo Bay in September 2004.
BACKSTORY
Attempts to get the UK courts and parliament to take notice of the case of
Binyam Mohamed began more than three years ago. Clive Stafford Smith,
director of the charity Reprieve, told the Guardian about a hunger strike
by Guantnamo Bay prisoners, including Mohamed, who was rendered to the US
base in Cuba. Mohamed's case was taken up by the all-party parliamentary
group on extraordinary rendition, chaired by Andrew Tyrie MP
UK citizens and residents held at Guantnamo were released between 2005 and
2007, but Mohamed was kept. This summer, the high court heard about the
way the US and British governments tried to stop the release of evidence
about his case. Defence lawyers argued that MI5 misled MPs about his
treatment. In August, in an interim judgment, the high court ruled that
MI5 had participated in Mohamed's unlawful interrogation.
From thinker at thelakebc.ca Thu Oct 23 11:50:06 2008
From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak)
Date: Thu Oct 23 11:57:13 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Sarkozy sues publisher over Voodoo Doll
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID: <200810231647.m9NGlbn8026960@karma.reboot.ca>
How does a guy with a typical Hungarian name get elected French
prez? His name translates to "From between mud".
The "a" is supposed to have an apostrophe on top, like the "a" in my
name, and the "o" a couple of umlaut dots. The "y" at the end
indicates former nobility, meaning that his family must have owned
some village called "Sarkoz", or "between mud". Otherwise an "i"
would be used, which would translate into "from" .
Cheers, Ed.
At 05:56 AM 23/10/2008, you wrote:
>[According to the tongue-in-cheek advertising for the doll, the voodoo magic
> enables buyers to "prevent Sarkozy from doing even more harm". ;-)) ]
>
>
>http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/238262,sarkozy-to-sue-publisher-over
>-voodoo-doll.html
>
>Sarkozy to sue publisher over voodoo doll
>
>Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy is going to court to force a
>French publisher to take off the market a voodoo doll in his image, French
>media reported on Thursday. The doll, 20,000 of which went on sale on
>October 9, comes with a manual and a dozen pins that can be stuck through
>well-known quotes of his - such as "Work more and earn more," or "Bugger
>off, you ass" - which are printed on the doll.
>
>The daily Le Monde reported that Sarkozy's attorney, Thierry Herzog, sent a
>letter to K&B Publishers, which makes the doll, asserting that Sarkozy "has
>an exclusive and absolute right" over his image and demanding that the doll
>be withdrawn from public sale.
>
>However, a spokesperson for K&B said that the demand was "over the top" and
>that the publisher had no intention of removing the doll or the manual from
>bookstore shelves.
>
>K&B has also put out a voodoo doll of Sarkozy's Socialist Party opponent in
>the 2007 presidential election, Segolene Royal.
>
>Royal's attorney, Jean-Pierre Mignard, said that the effigy was "an affront
>to her dignity as a human being" and declared that she was also considering
>taking legal action.
>
>The two dolls can be purchased together as a kit, or individually for 12.95
>euros (16.64 dollars) each. They are also available, for a 5 per cent
>discount, from the French branch of the internet sales outlet Amazon.
>
>Photo of the doll:
>http://www.20min.ch/images/content/1/9/0/19057445/3/topelement.jpg
>
>
>
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>
>
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>
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From creuss at bluewin.ch Thu Oct 23 12:54:50 2008
From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss)
Date: Thu Oct 23 12:56:35 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Sarkozy sues publisher over Voodoo Doll
Message-ID:
Hi Ed,
> How does a guy with a typical Hungarian name get elected French prez?
I guess the zionists needed a reliable buddy for the EU bankster shake-down
and the empire's Eastern extension...
Cheers,
Chris
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From papadop at peak.org Thu Oct 23 15:36:02 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Thu Oct 23 16:09:09 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] What U$ contempt looks like. -- Doea anybody care ?
Message-ID:
"The judges made it clear, however, that if a satisfactory conclusion is
not reached, the high court would reconvene to order disclosure. After
noting that the court regarded as significant Dinah Rose QC's submission
that the US government "is deliberately seeking to avoid disclosure of the
42 documents", Lord Justice Thomas reached the following dark conclusion:
"We must record that we have found the events set out in this judgment
deeply disturbing. This matter must be brought to a just conclusion as
soon as possible, given the delays and unexplained changes of course which
have taken place on the part of the United States government."
##########
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/10/23/high-court-shocked-by-us-obstruction-in-guantanamo-torture-case/
BRIT High Court shocked by US obstruction in GITMO torture case --
-- 23.10.08
* Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantnamo Files: The Stories of the
774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto
Press/the University of Michigan Press).
Binyam Mohamed "Contempt of court" is the title of an article I wrote
for the Guardian's "Comment is free" section today, in which I looked at
the UK High Court's latest judgment in the case of British resident and
Guantnamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed, a victim of "extraordinary rendition"
and torture who is engaged in a transatlantic struggle to secure
exculpatory evidence proving that his confessions -- of involvement with
al-Qaeda and a "dirty bomb" plot -- were extracted through the use of
torture.
On Tuesday I reported how the US Defense Department had dropped Binyam's
proposed trial by Military Commission (and those of four other prisoners)
following the resignation of Lt.Col.Darrel Vandeveld, the prosecutor in
all five cases, and this latest article brings the British side of the
story up to date. It is, of necessity, inconclusive, as the judges are
awaiting a ruling on the exculpatory evidence in a US court, but it was
clear yesterday that Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Lloyd Jones were
appalled by the lengths to which the US administration seems prepared to
go to avoid having to release the evidence.
I intend to write about the judgment in more detail in the near future,
but in the meantime I hope that this article captures the essence of
yesterday's ruling.
##################
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/23/guantanamo-humanrights
The US authorities have shown cynical disregard for British justice in the
case of Binyam Mohamed, but time is running out
The Guardian (London) guardian.co.uk, + Thursday October 23 2008 09.30 BST
In August, after a judicial review in the UK high court, Lord Justice
Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones ruled that the British government had a
duty to disclose 42 documents containing potentially exculpatory evidence
relating to the alleged rendition and torture of British resident and
Guantnamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed.
Seized in Pakistan in April 2002, Mohamed maintains that the CIA rendered
him to Morocco to be tortured, and then transferred him to a CIA prison in
Afghanistan, and that the charges against him - of involvement with
al-Qaida and a "dirty bomb" plot - were extracted through the use of
torture. The judicial review focused on securing information relating to
the period from July 2002 to May 2004, because, although the US
authorities have refused to provide any information about his whereabouts,
British agents visited him in Pakistani custody, and allegedly maintained
an intelligence relationship with the US after his "disappearance".
On Tuesday, I reported how the US administration had dropped the charges
against Mohamed (and four other prisoners) in their proposed trial by
military commission, and today Mohamed nudged one step closer to justice
when the high court reconvened to make a new judgment on his case.
Following the high court's initial ruling, a transatlantic game of
cat-and-mouse ensued, as the US state department provided the judges with
a few carefully calibrated concessions designed to prevent them from
ordering full disclosure, and the British government protested that
releasing the documents would jeopardise its intelligence relationship
with the United States. When the US courts stepped in, demanding the
release of the documents as the result of a ruling by the supreme court in
June, which granted the prisoners constitutional habeas corpus rights and
allowed them to challenge the basis of their detention, the responsibility
for releasing the documents was left in the hands of the US government.
Last week, the high court met for a week to establish the latest state of
play in Mohamed's case, in which, as his lawyers explained, Lord Justice
Thomas was informed that the US administration had "only turned over seven
of the documents to his lawyers, each heavily censored in direct violation
of the agreement between the two governments".
This afternoon, Lord Justice Thomas delivered a judgment on the US refusal
to release the documents, which, despite his careful language, can only be
regarded as a stern rebuke to the US authorities, in which a tone of
incredulity - at their arrogant and uncommunicative intransigence - was
readily apparent.
He declared that the court "could see no rational basis for the refusal by
the US government to provide the documents" to the lawyers, adding that,
after being given "ample time" to provide them, no "explanation has been
provided by the Government of the United States" for its refusal to comply
with the agreement in full.
The court recognised that Mohamed's plight remains desperate, noting that
there was "the clearest evidence" that he is "suffering from a continuing
deterioration of his mental health as a result of his detention without
trial for over six years", but agreed to delay a final decision about
whether to order the British government to hand over the documents to
Mohamed's lawyers until after the next federal hearing in the United
States on October 30, in the expectation that Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is
reviewing Mohamed's habeas petition - and has access to the 42 documents -
will be able to resolve the outstanding issues.
The judges made it clear, however, that if a satisfactory conclusion is
not reached, the high court would reconvene to order disclosure. After
noting that the court regarded as significant Dinah Rose QC's submission
that the US government "is deliberately seeking to avoid disclosure of the
42 documents", Lord Justice Thomas reached the following dark conclusion:
"We must record that we have found the events set out in this judgment
deeply disturbing. This matter must be brought to a just conclusion as
soon as possible, given the delays and unexplained changes of course which
have taken place on the part of the United States government."
From papadop at peak.org Thu Oct 23 16:10:00 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Thu Oct 23 16:43:08 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] GUARDIAN --HOW MCCAIN IS BLOWING IT
Message-ID:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/23/john-mccain-losing-election
John McCain is losing for three reasons: his war on the media, his choice
of Sarah Palin and his vile lies about Barack Obama
Comments () * Dan Kennedy * + Dan Kennedy The Guardian.(London) --
Thursday October 23 2008 18.00 BST
If Barack Obama wins the presidential election, at least part of the
reason will be that John McCain failed to recognise a landmark
cultural shift.
The one-time bipartisan moderate cast his lot with the Republican
party's hard right just as it was losing influence. Rather than
battling for independents and conservative Democrats, McCain chose
instead to excite the passions of his party's narrowest constituency. In
so doing, he ended up running not just against Obama, but against his own
history of bipartisan outreach.
I do not intend to write McCain's political obituary. Though Obama
leads in many polls by a substantial margin today, the election is
still nearly two weeks away. A lot could happen between now and then.
But assuming McCain really does go on to lose, there are three major
blunders he made that arise from his attempt to connect with the
right's sense of resentment and us-against-them populism: his war
against the news media, with whom he had long been so friendly that he
once jokingly called them "my base"; his inexplicable choice of Sarah
Palin as his running mate and his deeply personal attacks against
Barack Obama.
Let me take them one at a time.
1. McCain and the media. In 2000 McCain nearly upset George
Bush's march to the nomination by inviting reporters aboard the Straight
Talk Express and charming them with anecdotes and access. In 2008 he
didn't even give the press a chance, trashing it on the assumption that
it would be in the tank for Obama - and possibly in the hopes that he
might be able to tap into the anti-media anger of Hillary Clinton
supporters.
Perhaps the paradigmatic moment was McCain's bizarre August interview
with Time magazine, in which he answered standard-issue questions with
undisguised hostility and contempt. No doubt this played well with the
right, which has long detested what it sees as an elite liberal media.
What McCain seems to have missed is that even if reporters, on the
whole, favoured Obama, they still liked him, too. By cutting them off,
McCain essentially gave them permission to dump on him at will. And
many have.
2. The Palin pick. The Alaska governor is a talented
political performer, and McCain's choice worked for about two weeks. But
among her numerous deficits as a general-election candidate is the fact
that she may be the most extreme religious candidate since William
Jennings Bryan.
At a time when the economy is melting down, and when McCain could have
been putting, say, Mitt Romney front and centre as an experienced
businessman and financial manager, we were learning that Palin had
once prayed that God would build a natural-gas pipeline - and had
stood by while the minister of her former church spoke of God's
special plans for Alaska in a post-Apocalypse world.
You think this is what the folks wielding those people metres on CNN are
looking for? Think again.
3. Getting personal. Attacks on an opponent's policies are fine.
Even attacks that stretch the truth are hardly cause for consternation.
But McCain has gone after Obama in the most vile terms imaginable.
There are many examples from which to choose. I'll pick two.
The first was McCain's claim, earlier in the campaign, that Obama
would rather "would rather lose a war in order to win a political
campaign". By characterising Obama as deeply unpatriotic, and perhaps
even treasonous, McCain played directly into unstated fears about a
black candidate with a Muslim-sounding name.
The second was a McCain ad about Obama's support as an Illinois
legislator for a sex-education bill that would have taught
kindergarteners how to ward off predators. Except that's not what the ad
said. Instead, it claimed that the bill would have mandated
"comprehensive sex education" for kindergarten pupils - as sleazy a lie
as has ever appeared in a major-party candidate's advertisements.
Trouble is, the truism that negative campaigning works didn't seem to
hold this time. It may have energised the sorts of people who turn out at
Palin rallies, but it appeared to turn off the undecided moderates who
will actually choose the next president.
What happened to McCain would be sad if he hadn't done it to himself.
You'll sometimes hear an old defender of his try to claim that McCain is
better than his campaign. Nonsense. There is no such thing as a
candidate who is better than his campaign.
It could be that victory was never a realistic possibility for McCain
following eight years of an unpopular Republican president and an
economic crisis. But if he couldn't come out of this with the
presidency, he could have at least preserved his reputation.
Barring a truly astonishing comeback, McCain is likely to emerge with
neither.
From fresch at ica.net Fri Oct 24 14:43:44 2008
From: fresch at ica.net (Fred Schneider)
Date: Fri Oct 24 14:44:00 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd.: "Economics as if People Mattered"
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081024153021.0244f008@ica.net>
I read E. F. Schumacher's book, "Small is Beautiful", some years ago
myself and wondered why he is not more considered in modern economy teaching.
- Fred Schneider
Forwarded message:
"Small is Beautiful" "Economics as if People Mattered"-
October 15, 2008
by Jerry Lobdill
A Reprise 30-plus Years Later
I first read this book by E. F. Schumacher in 1976. A few days ago I
picked it up again. I wondered if I'd see it in a different light
more than 30 years later. I was amazed that the forecasts Schumacher
had made had mostly come true in the interim.
Schumacher is not one of the economists that our modern economists
like to quote. As a matter of fact they have all continued preaching
the paradigm that Schumacher debunked. They'd like to forget about
Schumacher. And therein lies our problem.
Schumacher said, effectively, that the single-minded relentless
pursuit of financial gain and methods by which these gains can be
maximized in the minimum amount of time--the goal of modern
economics, is insane. Further, the degradation of the environment or
the depletion of irreplaceable natural resources as a result of
economic activity cannot be considered to be zero cost effects as
modern economics does. That is also insanity.
Instead, Schumacher says the aim of economic activity should be to
obtain the maximum of well being with the minimum of consumption.
What a concept!
Is it any wonder that economists tried to relegate him to the dustbin
of history? Modern economists in 1976, and indeed, to this very day
considered consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic
activity and the maximization of production to be the cherished goal of it all.
Since 1976 the world's consumption of goods has grown very steeply in
pursuit of this goal. There is absolutely no distinction made between
consumption of renewable and non-renewable materials that are taken
from the environment, converted to a marketable product, and sold.
Even as we face the strong likelihood that China and India will soon
demand a shocking increase in their consumption of oil while our own
demands will continue to increase steeply, there is no substantive
discussion of moderation of humanity's race to deplete the Earth's
supply of this non-renewable resource. That would be uneconomic, and,
by definition a heretical idea.
Our leaders have begun a perpetual war to gain and maintain control
of the remaining reserves of the world's oil. That is what the
invasion and occupation of Iraq is all about, and the problem of
dwindling oil supply and the fears it engenders in our corporate
elite was clearly the prime topic of discussion in Cheney's secret
energy discussions with industry in 2001. So, the United States is
pushing the world toward a conflict over the remaining oil reserves.
This is the worst case scenario envisioned by Schumacher in Small is
Beautiful, though he doesn't go so far as to predict that it would be
the US that would tip the balance of the world in that direction or
even suggest that this scenario would be the likely outcome.
In defiance of Schumacher's warnings, we have attempted to modernize
the third world at breakneck speed without concern for what
Schumacher said that would do to the poor in such countries. We have
done this because in so doing we have given our own financial elites
new ways to profit. The IMF and World Bank and the WTO are merrily
raping every developing nation they can, and the US taxpayers are
being made to pay to bail out private investors when the inevitable
scams collapse financially. Where possible, the poor and shrinking
middle class of client states of the IMF and World Bank are made to
shoulder the burden of whatever bad loans have been made to the
governments of the client states.
Also in defiance of Schumacher's warnings we have tried to make
"trade"- with underdeveloped nations a major part of our economic
activity, resulting in the impoverishment of most of the people not
only in the developing nations, but also in the US. And, of course,
it's not really trade; it's a scam to use their cheap labor and our
capital to produce goods in their countries to sell to us at a much
higher profit margin.
All this was foretold in a general way in Small is Beautiful as the
result of the path we have chosen, and yet Paul Krugman, Joseph
Stiglitz, and every other macroeconomist involved with the US
government, including Robert Reich, has endorsed the globalization
feeding frenzy that has taken place over the past twenty years. To
this day, none of these people have admitted the reality of the
damage they've done.
If we are to survive--and I mean humanity--we must face up to these
failures, study Schumacher, and begin to behave in a sane and
responsible manner.
My home page: "http://home.ica.net/~fresch/index.htm"
========================================
Fred Schneider, 905-279-7199, Fax: same, call first!
#37-425 Meadows Blvd.
Mississauga, ON, L4Z 1N3
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From jomut at yahoo.com Fri Oct 24 14:57:42 2008
From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa)
Date: Fri Oct 24 14:57:49 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] interesting idiocy
Message-ID: <833309.3492.qm@web31102.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake)
jomut@yahoo.com
chakane@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
?
Hi
?
Just send this to another list and am sending a copy to mai-not!
?
John
====================
?
Hi
?
Exceedingly important, in my usually errant estimation, of course, commentary on the tragically trained inability of those currently?occupying the highest circles of?the most important institutions today to comprehend clearly?what is taking place and explain it adequately to the underlying population.? The fact that the title of the commentary is somewhat?brusquely harsh?does not in anyway detract from the discomfitingly relevant content of the message.
?
I am tempted to comment, with neither polite?restraint nor spatial limitation, on the same theme?were it not?for the time restraints that serve as stern disciplinarians of my frustrated thought processes.? Suffice it to say, I have watched people like Jim Flaherty, Canadian Mininster of Finance, and Stephen Harper, Canadian PM, hem and haw their way to respectably admissible, but explicatively jejune, sermonizing sprees about not rocking the boat?, "Keep-a-steady-hand-on-the-tiller" type of dodgy explanations.
?
I suspect that the ideological cataracts, that have accumulated by several layers over the years, of?current conventional belief can no longer permit an invigorating reading of some of the most penetrating insights?into the workings of?unregulated capitalism that go all the way back to Marx.? Pity because the current brood of conservative pundits (unlike those of yesteryear, like Raymod Aron, Schumpeter and Daniel Bell, to name a few) are quite blind to the compelling relevance of Marxist analysis that served as a?sobering influence?on their forbears.? That is one of the key reasons, in my estimation, why a thoroughgoing public explanation of the current financial imbroglio has neither been entered?into nor encouraged.
?
It is interesting to observe, on this particular, that the late John Kenneth Galbraith once observed that events like the current ones would repeat themselves once a new brood of "suckers" found itself in the economic driver's seat.
?
You can think of the interview between Mike Whitney and David Pollin as a continuation of my aborted commentary.
?
Thanx J
?
John
======================
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Fri Oct 24 21:03:59 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Fri Oct 24 21:04:12 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] China set to retaliate big time for finance meltdown
Message-ID: <20081025020400.5C625132A7@fep05.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From siamdave at yahoo.ca Fri Oct 24 23:55:11 2008
From: siamdave at yahoo.ca (Dave Patterson)
Date: Fri Oct 24 23:55:18 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd.: "Economics as if People Mattered"
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20081024153021.0244f008@ica.net>
References: <7.0.1.0.2.20081024153021.0244f008@ica.net>
Message-ID: <200810251155110828.00445A0C@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
Modern economics 'teaching', and related mainstream commentary, has the single goal of justifying the Washington Consensus and banker-corporate-'investor' greed. Period. Anything which shows that 'theory' to be the self-serving nonsense (polite word) it is must be eradicated from the 'minds' of the young aspiring economist - who is usually quite willing to 'think' as instructed, as they are on career paths in which 'truth' is merely a lesser consideration when considering what those who dispense favors wish to hear. Those who do not learn appropriately are never going to receive their degrees, but can look forward to a life with few perqs and small salary. That may sound cynical. It is also quite true.
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 08-10-24 at 3:43 PM Fred Schneider wrote:
I read E. F. Schumacher's book, "Small is Beautiful", some years ago myself and wondered why he is not more considered in modern economy teaching.
- Fred Schneider
Forwarded message:
"Small is Beautiful" "Economics as if People Mattered"-
October 15, 2008
by Jerry Lobdill
A Reprise 30-plus Years Later
I first read this book by E. F. Schumacher in 1976. A few days ago I picked it up again. I wondered if I'd see it in a different light more than 30 years later. I was amazed that the forecasts Schumacher had made had mostly come true in the interim.
Schumacher is not one of the economists that our modern economists like to quote. As a matter of fact they have all continued preaching the paradigm that Schumacher debunked. They'd like to forget about Schumacher. And therein lies our problem.
Schumacher said, effectively, that the single-minded relentless pursuit of financial gain and methods by which these gains can be maximized in the minimum amount of time--the goal of modern economics, is insane. Further, the degradation of the environment or the depletion of irreplaceable natural resources as a result of economic activity cannot be considered to be zero cost effects as modern economics does. That is also insanity.
Instead, Schumacher says the aim of economic activity should be to obtain the maximum of well being with the minimum of consumption. What a concept!
Is it any wonder that economists tried to relegate him to the dustbin of history? Modern economists in 1976, and indeed, to this very day considered consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity and the maximization of production to be the cherished goal of it all.
Since 1976 the world's consumption of goods has grown very steeply in pursuit of this goal. There is absolutely no distinction made between consumption of renewable and non-renewable materials that are taken from the environment, converted to a marketable product, and sold. Even as we face the strong likelihood that China and India will soon demand a shocking increase in their consumption of oil while our own demands will continue to increase steeply, there is no substantive discussion of moderation of humanity's race to deplete the Earth's supply of this non-renewable resource. That would be uneconomic, and, by definition a heretical idea.
Our leaders have begun a perpetual war to gain and maintain control of the remaining reserves of the world's oil. That is what the invasion and occupation of Iraq is all about, and the problem of dwindling oil supply and the fears it engenders in our corporate elite was clearly the prime topic of discussion in Cheney's secret energy discussions with industry in 2001. So, the United States is pushing the world toward a conflict over the remaining oil reserves.
This is the worst case scenario envisioned by Schumacher in Small is Beautiful, though he doesn't go so far as to predict that it would be the US that would tip the balance of the world in that direction or even suggest that this scenario would be the likely outcome.
In defiance of Schumacher's warnings, we have attempted to modernize the third world at breakneck speed without concern for what Schumacher said that would do to the poor in such countries. We have done this because in so doing we have given our own financial elites new ways to profit. The IMF and World Bank and the WTO are merrily raping every developing nation they can, and the US taxpayers are being made to pay to bail out private investors when the inevitable scams collapse financially. Where possible, the poor and shrinking middle class of client states of the IMF and World Bank are made to shoulder the burden of whatever bad loans have been made to the governments of the client states.
Also in defiance of Schumacher's warnings we have tried to make "trade"- with underdeveloped nations a major part of our economic activity, resulting in the impoverishment of most of the people not only in the developing nations, but also in the US. And, of course, it's not really trade; it's a scam to use their cheap labor and our capital to produce goods in their countries to sell to us at a much higher profit margin.
All this was foretold in a general way in Small is Beautiful as the result of the path we have chosen, and yet Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and every other macroeconomist involved with the US government, including Robert Reich, has endorsed the globalization feeding frenzy that has taken place over the past twenty years. To this day, none of these people have admitted the reality of the damage they've done.
If we are to survive--and I mean humanity--we must face up to these failures, study Schumacher, and begin to behave in a sane and responsible manner.
My home page: " http://home.ica.net/~fresch/index.htm"
========================================
Fred Schneider, 905-279-7199, Fax: same, call first!
#37-425 Meadows Blvd.
Mississauga, ON, L4Z 1N3
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From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Sat Oct 25 04:49:16 2008
From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta)
Date: Sat Oct 25 05:02:06 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Three left views on Obama: Howard Zinn, Mike Davis,
Todd Chretien | Links
Message-ID: <4902EB9C.7030900@greenleft.org.au>
*Howard Zinn:* `Obama creates an opening for change but direct action
needed'
*Mike Davis:* Can Obama see the Grand Canyon?* *On presidential
blindness and economic catastrophe*
Todd Chretien: *Why I'm not voting for Barack
Obamahttp://links.org.au/node/702
http://links.org.au/node/702
Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
From thinker at thelakebc.ca Sat Oct 25 14:53:14 2008
From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak)
Date: Sat Oct 25 14:50:51 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] China set to retaliate..........
Message-ID: <200810251950.m9PJogUW030056@karma.reboot.ca>
To: A renewed Mai-Not
Subject: Re: [Mai-not] China set to retaliate big time for finance meltdown
This is typical economist/politician baloney.
For one thing, as I've been writing for 15 years,
much of it on this list for 11 or so
years, that the purpose bank of deregulation
was for taking control and colonize the world's
resources with the perceived power of imaginary
money created from the air. I wrote about this on
several WB forums 8-9 years ago and said even
then that the USA was bankrupt.
So, what is new kiddies ??????????
Secondly, China was the biggest beneficiary of
this criminal action, as much of this imaginary
money was taken to the country and used for the
purpose to build it up as a major industrial
power, pulling it up from the mud from a dirt poor, primitive society.
Also, it was China and Japan that kept up the
value of the US dollar, by buying and hoarding
it, until China now has some $3. trillion of
worthless toy money accumulated, while North
America and Europe have been deindustrialized for China's benefit.
At the same time, anybody with a bit of brains
could expect it that once China gets strong
enough, they'll just tell the "wealth creating foreign investors"
to bugger off, and this story may be a hint that
it is coming. They're not stupid to keep
foreigners virtually run their economy.
In short, the chickens are coming home to roost.
All this was predictable for many years, but our
politicians and economists had and still have
their heads up their own butts and can't see
logic even when it is kicking them into the gutter.
Cheers, Ed.
At 07:03 PM 24/10/2008, you wrote:
>The US dollar is riding high for some reason
>(violent twitching of a fresh cadaver?) but this
>Reuters dispatch suggests China is thinking
>about promoting a global shift to other
>currencies. One might ignore the item if it
>came from a lesser source. But I'll be
>surprised if the currency market totally ignores
>this one from the flagship Peking People's Daily.
>
>Dion Giles
>Western Australia
>=============================
>http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSPEK466920081024
>
>
>[]
>
>
>U.S. has plundered world wealth with dollar -China paper
>
>Fri Oct 24, 2008 1:59am EDT
>
>BEIJING, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The United States
>has plundered global wealth by exploiting the
>dollar's dominance, and the world urgently needs
>other currencies to take its place, a leading
>Chinese state newspaper said on Friday.
>
>The front-page commentary in the overseas
>edition of the People's Daily said that Asian
>and European countries should banish the U.S.
>dollar from their direct trade relations for a
>start, relying only on their own currencies.
>
>A meeting between Asian and European leaders,
>starting on Friday in Beijing, presented the
>perfect opportunity to begin building a new
>international financial order, the newspaper said.
>
>The People's Daily is the official newspaper of
>China's ruling Communist Party. The
>Chinese-language overseas edition is a small
>circulation offshoot of the main paper.
>
>Its pronouncements do not necessarily directly
>voice leadership views. But the commentary, as
>well as recent comments, amount to a growing
>chorus of Chinese disdain for Washington's
>economic policies and global financial dominance
>in the wake of the credit crisis.
>
>"The grim reality has led people, amidst the
>panic, to realise that the United States has
>used the U.S. dollar's hegemony to plunder the
>world's wealth," said the commentator, Shi
>Jianxun, a professor at Shanghai's Tongji University.
>
>Shi, who has before been strident in his
>criticism of the U.S., said other countries had
>lost vast amounts of wealth because of the
>financial crisis, while Washington's sole
>concern had been protecting its own interests.
>
>"The U.S. dollar is losing people's confidence.
>The world, acting democratically and lawfully
>through a global financial organisation,
>urgently needs to change the international
>monetary system based on U.S. global economic
>leadership and U.S. dollar dominance," he wrote.
>
>Shi suggested that all trade between Europe and
>Asia should be settled in euros, pounds, yen and
>yuan, though he did not explain how the Chinese
>currency could play such a role since it is not
>convertible on the capital account.
>
>A two-day Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) of 27 EU
>member states and 16 Asian countries was set to
>open on Friday. Though few analysts expect much
>in the way of concrete agreements, Shi said it could prove momentous.
>
>"How can Europe and Asia grasp each other's
>hands and together confront the
>once-in-a-century global financial crisis
>sparked by the U.S.; how can they construct a
>new equitable and safe international financial order?" he said.
>
>"The world is waiting for this Asian-European
>meeting to achieve big results in financial
>cooperation." (Reporting by Simon Rabinovitch; Editing by Ken Wills)
>
>
>? Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved.
>Users may download and print extracts of content
>from this website for their own personal and
>non-commercial use only. Republication or
>redistribution of Thomson Reuters content,
>including by framing or similar means, is
>expressly prohibited without the prior written
>consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and
>its logo are registered trademarks or trademarks
>of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world.
>
>Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an
>Editorial Handbook which requires fair
>presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Mai-not mailing list
>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
>
>
>No virus found in this incoming message.
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>- Release Date: 10/24/2008 6:08 PM
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From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Sat Oct 25 21:38:44 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Sat Oct 25 21:41:02 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Centre-Left Coalition Badly Needed: Harper's agenda must
be stopped by Liberals, NDP and Bloc - Murray Dobbin
Message-ID: <4903AE04.25445.AEDFA88@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2008/10/22/LeftCoalition/
Centre-Left Coalition Badly Needed
Harper's agenda must be stopped by Liberals, NDP and Bloc
By Murray Dobbin
October 22, 2008
TheTyee.ca
Was the federal election just a bad dream? After five weeks of fear
and loathing, disappointment and disbelief, Canadians woke up to
election
results that were hardly different than when the election started.
Most of the commentary since has been about numbers and pro-Harper
media spin. The man who is claiming a new "enhanced" mandate actually
received 168,737 fewer votes than last time but garnered an
additional 19 seats. The turnout, at 59 per cent, was the lowest in
our history, which means that the Harper Conservatives will govern
the country with the support of fewer than 23 per cent of the
eligible voters. Democracy in Canada
has seldom seemed so corrupted or so unrepresentative.
For many of the 62 per cent who voted against Harper and his unhidden
agenda, there has been an outpouring of demands for a coalition
government of the Liberals, NDP and Bloc to form a minority
government as soon as they can conceivably bring down the Harper
government.
The movement for proportional representation suddenly has thousands
of new recruits and supporters as Fair Vote Canada's website is being
flooded with visitors and its petition has been sent out through
hundreds of individual e-mail lists.
Those of us on the left can be enraged by Harper's win, but we should
not be surprised. The political right has been working for this
result for some 20 years with a campaign deliberately aimed at
lowering Canadians' expectations of what is possible from government,
and hence elections. The campaign to give democracy a cold shower
actually started with the 1975 publication of a book called The
Crisis of Democracy. Put out by the Trilateral Commission, the most
powerful elite group in the world at the time, it concluded that
there was an "excess of democracy." The authors lamented that the
public now questioned "the legitimacy of hierarchy, coercion,
discipline, secrecy, and deception -- all of which are in some
measure inescapable attributes of the process of government." A
governable democracy, the American co-author Samuel P.
Huntington wrote, requires a large degree of "apathy and non-
involvement." That they now have it is no accident.
Deficit terrorism, surplus suppression
For the succeeding 30 years, corporate think tanks, media outlets and
foundations got down to work to rid the world of its excess of
democracy. In Canada, beginning with the national debate on the
Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the neo-liberal movement waged an
extremely effective campaign along the lines of "there is no
alternative" -- known by its acronym TINA. In the late '80s through
the early 1990s the focus was the deficit and it was relentless:
thousands of articles, TV programs, editorials, academic studies and
political campaigns warned about hitting the "debt wall."
But always connected with the deficit terror campaign was the
solution: cutting government spending -- specifically, social
spending. The result? In 1995, when Paul Martin slashed federal
social spending by 40 per cent, Canadians barely complained. Other
aspects of the campaign denigrated government and those who provided
its front line services.
Preston Manning characterized government as having its "hands in
taxpayers' pockets." Just two years after Martin's cuts, Ottawa began
racking up increasing, multi-billion dollar surpluses -- surpluses
which threatened to once again increases people's expectations. They
were quickly dispensed with, first by paying down the debt and second
by the biggest corporate and
high income tax cuts in Canadian history. Harper, of course,
continued with the project.
Where Layton and May stumbled
But given Canadians' resilient attachment to progressive values, this
world of lowered expectations could be challenged by genuine
visionary political leadership. Nothing can be expected from the Bay
Street Liberals whose shameless "running from the left" strategy
should fool no one. There is a temptation to feel sorry for Dion
given the ruthless personal attacks on him by Harper and Co. But this
was the man who supported every piece of legislation that Stephen
Harper could muster in his two and a half years as PM. Only as part
of a minority government
can we expect anything but corporate kow-towing from this politically
compromised machine.
And the NDP, which actually has a collection of progressive policies,
has yet to take on the challenge of raising expectations. Canadians
are looking for someone who gives them hope for the future. The NDP
gives
them clever tactics, catch phrases and a virtual prime minister.
Looking at the NDP campaign, as smooth and smart as it was, the whole
was far
less than the sum of its parts. The party seems incapable of getting
beyond the momentary imperative of strategy and tactics to offer a
vision that Canadians so desperately seek. We want leaders but we
still get managers.
Looking south, it is ironic that Barack Obama, whose policies are
almost universally mainstream Democratic Party (that is, mostly
reactionary) is running a campaign based on values and hope. But in
Canada, his ostensible counterpart, Jack Layton, a man whose policies
really are progressive, failed to provide hope or vision because, we
have to assume, he and his party thought Canadians weren't ready to
respond to such a bold campaign. They were wrong.
As for Elizabeth May, she actually sounded like a leader, not boxed
in by the careful scripting and focus-group-think that the other
leaders
demonstrated. But she, too, had a major flaw. May has always known
that in a first-past-the-post system a small party divides the
electorate.
She could easily have won the party's leadership based on this
understanding and made it clear from the beginning that she would not
run candidates in competitive ridings where the Conservatives could
be defeated. That is, until the country got proportional
representation.
Instead, she went for the money -- the $1.95 per vote trumped her
principles. But then she tried to have her cake and eat it, too.
Three times promoting strategic voting and then unconvincingly
denying she had, she failed to exhibit the one essential trait of any
successful political leader: good judgement.
What to expect of Harper now
For a smart politician, Stephen Harper has twice thrown away majority
victories with moves that are breathtaking in their stupidity. His
comments on culture (much worse than the actual cuts) and his pledge
to send 14-year-olds to prison for life are headed for the political
history books. For a party with an absolute lock on its core
supporters, both these policy initiatives were inexplicable. They not
only lost him the majority he desperately wanted, but may have set
him and his party back permanently in Quebec. After all, he has given
the province everything they asked for already, in a cynical strategy
to get seats. What will he do for an encore?
There is no hidden Harper agenda. It is there for all to see. A rigid
ideologue who detests government, he will continue to corrupt
Canadian democracy and political culture with negative advertising,
aggressive
partisanship, out-right lies and cynical policy initiatives aimed at
capturing carefully calculated segments of the population.
At the same time, Harper will resume the implementation of his plan
to diminish the nation through more tax cuts, a gradual end to
federal spending powers, and the devolution of more power to the
provinces. Harper's true vision of the federal government's role is
restricted to funding the military, the RCMP, CSIS and the Bank of
Canada. Medicare, post-secondary education, climate change, poverty
reduction, cultural and social development, indeed all collective
solutions to the problems facing Canada would be left up to a
balkanized state with 10 disparate parts pulling in 10 directions.
And on a parallel track with the Security and Prosperity Partnership,
Harper will facilitate the integration of a fatally weakened Canadian
nation into the U.S., just as that failed state enters the final
stages of its decline.
Stephen Harper must be forced from office at the earliest
opportunity, to be replaced by a new minority government representing
the vast majority of Canadians. The Liberals, NDP and the Bloc must
start planning for it now.
------- End of forwarded message -------
From oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au Sun Oct 26 08:06:48 2008
From: oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au (Clem Clarke)
Date: Sun Oct 26 08:07:14 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] New Scientist Magazine: Special report: How our economy
is killing the Earth
In-Reply-To: <48FEF95F.6030800@ozemail.com.au>
References: <48FC5B0D.8080904@ozemail.com.au>
<75255E98-EBAD-47A0-9797-C213612AFB84@optusnet.com.au>
<48FEADCF.6000903@ozemail.com.au>
<001601c93407$4a71b0b0$2101a8c0@netpro>
<48FEF95F.6030800@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <49046B68.5090206@ozemail.com.au>
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20081026/e814f287/attachment.html
From thinker at thelakebc.ca Sun Oct 26 09:37:02 2008
From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak)
Date: Sun Oct 26 09:34:38 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] New Scientist Magazine: Special report: How our
economy is killing the Earth
In-Reply-To: <49046B68.5090206@ozemail.com.au>
References: <48FC5B0D.8080904@ozemail.com.au>
<75255E98-EBAD-47A0-9797-C213612AFB84@optusnet.com.au>
<48FEADCF.6000903@ozemail.com.au>
<001601c93407$4a71b0b0$2101a8c0@netpro>
<48FEF95F.6030800@ozemail.com.au> <49046B68.5090206@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <200810261434.m9QEYUoo025979@karma.reboot.ca>
I hate to rub this in, but my 1991 "Principle for
the application of physical laws to economics"
has covered this on a single page.
I copyrighted it at the time, only to establish
the date, as I knew that sooner of later some
clever people will stumble on some logic.
"Wealth can not be created, only taken from other
sectors, the environment and the future"
"Costs can not be cut only transferred on other
sectors, the environment and the future"
It is that simple !!!!!!!!!!
Cheers, Ed.
At 05:06 AM 26/10/2008, you wrote:
>Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
>X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to
>quoted-printable by karma.reboot.ca id m9QD7EAJ020112
>
>The current Australian edition of New Scientist
>has a series of articles about "How Our Economy
>is Killing the Earth" that you you might
>interesting to read.? I have extracted a few
>paragraphs from the main article.?
>
>When the prestigious New Scientist magazine
>starts running articles about the economy
>killing the earth, I think we should all sit up and take notice.
>
>It is vital that we make up or minds - is it the
>planet (and we humans), or the
>economy?? Unpopular as it has made me, I have
>said for years that money is essentially created
>from nothing, and the economy would have to
>collapse.? It is in the process of doing just
>that - right now. We need to change our views
>about money, so that Earth is not destroyed in
>the search for profits.? Or the totally
>unsustainable belief that growth can continue for ever.
>
>
>Below is the main link to the New Scientist
>article.? And if you want to buy a copy in
>Australia, best do it soon, or it will all be
>sold out.? However, you can read most articles on the Web.
>
>Cheers.
>
>Clem
>http://media.newscientist.com/article/mg20026786.000-special-report-how-our-economy-is-killing-the-earth.html
>
>THE graphs climbing across these pages
>(see
>graph, right, or
>explore
>in more detail) are a stark reminder of the
>crisis facing our planet. Consumption of
>resources is rising rapidly, biodiversity is
>plummeting and just about every measure shows
>humans affecting Earth on a vast scale. Most of
>us accept the need for a more sustainable way to
>live, by reducing carbon emissions, developing
>renewable technology and increasing energy efficiency.
>
>But are these efforts to save the planet doomed?
>A growing band of experts are looking at figures
>like these and arguing that personal carbon
>virtue and collective environmentalism are
>futile as long as our economic system is built
>on the assumption of growth. The science tells
>us that if we are serious about saving Earth, we must reshape our economy.
>
>This, of course, is economic heresy. Growth to
>most economists is as essential as the air we
>breathe: it is, they claim, the only force
>capable of lifting the poor out of poverty,
>feeding the world's growing population, meeting
>the costs of rising public spending and
>stimulating technological development - not to
>mention funding increasingly expensive
>lifestyles. They see no limits to that growth, ever.
>
>In recent weeks it has become clear just how
>terrified governments are of anything that
>threatens growth, as they pour billions of
>public money into a failing financial system.
>Amid the confusion, any challenge to the growth
>dogma needs to be looked at very carefully. This
>one is built on a long-standing question: how do
>we square Earth's finite resources with the fact
>that as the economy grows, the amount of natural
>resources needed to sustain that activity must
>grow too? It has taken all of human history for
>the economy to reach its current size. On
>current form it will take just two decades to double.
>_______________________________________________
>Mai-not mailing list
>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
>
>
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com
>Version: 8.0.175 / Virus Database: 270.8.3/1745
>- Release Date: 10/25/2008 9:53 AM
From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Sun Oct 26 17:50:50 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Sun Oct 26 17:53:05 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Roubini Says `Panic' May Force Market Shutdown
[bloomberg.com Oct 23]
Message-ID: <4904CA1A.16665.F43AF30@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
Hundreds of hedge funds will fail and policy makers may need to shut
financial markets for a week or more as the crisis forces investors
to dump assets, New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini said.
``We've reached a situation of sheer panic,'' Roubini, who predicted
the financial crisis in 2006, told a conference of hedge-fund
managers in London today. ``There will be massive dumping of assets''
and ``hundreds of hedge funds are going to go bust,'' he said.....
``This is the worst financial crisis in the U.S., Europe and now
emerging markets that we've seen in a long time,'' Roubini said.
``Things will get much worse before they get better. I fear the worst
is ahead of us.''
fyi-janet
========================
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ax3ZRmJRccyo
Roubini Says `Panic' May Force Market Shutdown
By Alexis Xydias and Camilla Hall
Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Hundreds of hedge funds will fail and policy
makers may need to shut financial markets for a week or more as the
crisis forces investors to dump assets, New York University Professor
Nouriel Roubini said.
``We've reached a situation of sheer panic,'' Roubini, who predicted
the financial crisis in 2006, told a conference of hedge-fund
managers in London today. ``There will be massive dumping of assets''
and ``hundreds of hedge funds are going to go bust,'' he said.
Group of Seven policy makers have stopped short of market suspensions
to stem the crisis after the U.S. pledged on Oct. 14 to invest about
$125 billion in nine banks and the Federal Reserve led a global
coordinated move to cut interest rates on Oct. 8. Emmanuel Roman, co-
chief executive officer at GLG Partners Inc., said today that as many
as 30 percent of hedge funds will close.
``Systemic risk has become bigger and bigger,'' Roubini said at the
Hedge 2008 conference. ``We're seeing the beginning of a run on a big
chunk of the hedge funds,'' and ``don't be surprised if policy makers
need to close down markets for a week or two in coming days,'' he
said.
Roubini predicted in July 2006 that the U.S. would enter an economic
recession. In February this year, he forecast a ``catastrophic''
financial meltdown that central bankers would fail to prevent,
leading to the bankruptcy of large banks exposed to mortgages and a
``sharp drop'' in equities.
Bear, Lehman
The comments preceded the collapse of Bear Stearns & Cos. and Lehman
Brothers Holdings Inc. as well as the government seizure of Freddie
Mac and Fannie Mae. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, a benchmark for
American equities, has lost 37 percent this year, including its
biggest daily drop in more than twenty years on Oct. 15.
The Dow average rose 2.5 percent to 8728.73 as of 10:55 a.m. today in
New York.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi roiled international markets
on Oct. 10, first saying world leaders were discussing shutting down
global financial exchanges, and then saying he didn't mean it.
``In a fairly Darwinian manner, many hedge funds will simply
disappear,'' Roman said, speaking at the same event as Roubini.
The hedge fund industry is stumbling through its worst year in two
decades and posted its biggest monthly drop for a decade in
September. Hedge funds are mostly private pools of capital whose
managers participate substantially in the profits from their
speculation on whether the price of assets will rise or fall.
`Very Ugly'
``Things are getting very ugly also in the emerging markets,''
Roubini said. ``The usual saying is when the U.S. sneezes, the rest
of the world catches a cold. Unfortunately, this time around the U.S.
is not just sneezing, it has a severe case of chronic and persistent
pneumonia. It's becoming a mess in emerging markets.''
Developing nations' borrowing costs jumped to the highest in six
years today as Belarus joined Hungary, Ukraine and Pakistan in
seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund to help
weather frozen money markets and a slump in commodities. Argentina
risks defaulting for the second time this decade.
``There are about a dozen emerging markets that are now in severe
financial trouble,'' Roubini said. ``Even a small country can have a
systemic effect on the global economy,'' he added. ``There is not
going to be enough IMF money to support them.''
Roubini, a former senior adviser to the U.S. Treasury Department,
earlier this month said that the world's biggest economy will suffer
its worst recession in 40 years.
``This is the worst financial crisis in the U.S., Europe and now
emerging markets that we've seen in a long time,'' Roubini said.
``Things will get much worse before they get better. I fear the worst
is ahead of us.''
To contact the reporters for this story: Alexis Xydias in London at
axydias@bloomberg.net; Camilla Hall in London at
chall24@bloomberg.net.
.
__,_._,___
------- End of forwarded message -------
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From papadop at peak.org Mon Oct 27 07:11:13 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Mon Oct 27 07:44:24 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] U$ must reconsider what socialism really means
Message-ID:
The west is red
While rebuking 'European style socialism' John McCain neglects to mention
that Europeans enjoy a higher quality of life
Guardian (London) + Monday October 27 2008 12.00 GMT
#####################
John McCain accuses Barack Obama of wanting "European style socialism"
in the US. If only.
Apart from the irony that the Bush administration is effectively
nationalising the commanding heights of the economy in the course of the
current economic crisis, one would have thought that this is - shall we
say to be kind - an inappropriate time for a candidate to sing songs of
praise to capitalism red in tooth and claw.
Gore Vidal and many others have quipped over the years that the US
practices free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich, so what
we are seeing now is not really a fundamental change in approach. Money
in rich torrents for the banks and finance houses, and thin gruel for
those about to be made homeless is on a par with food stamps that passed
into legislation as a subsidy to US agriculture.
However, despite a natural tendency to disbelieve anything that McCain
says in McCarthy-ite mode, it is indeed a truth that should be universally
acknowledged that western Europe, even with the Thatcherite and Blairite
hiccups, is indeed social democratic in its outlook. At the end of the
second world war George Orwell predicted that western Europe was the most
likely to succeed in establishing some form of democratic socialism, and
he was right. Since 1950, western Europe has offered its citizens the
highest combined standards of human, civil and social rights in world
history. The west is red!
It may have been Franklin Delano Roosevelt who coined the slogan about the
four freedoms, from fear and want, and of belief and speech, but Europe
put them into effect while the US remained bogged down in 19th century
laissez-faire.
However, McCain's attempt to conflate Obama with European socialism and
both with Soviet-style communism is as self evidently absurd as his
conflation of Joe the Plumber's fiscal fate with Exxon-Mobil's. Even
European conservative parties are far to the left of Obama in their
professed conviction that some things are too important to leave to free
markets, that the pursuit of untrammeled greed alone will not benefit
society as a whole, and that societies have a collective responsibility to
ensure the welfare of their citizens.
Of course, European social-democracy is nothing like the Leninoid
totalitarianisms that some on the left still see as the litmus test for
socialism. My father, an eccentrically unrepentant fan of Stalin to his
deathbed, had it right "that Uncle Joe understood the dictatorship of the
proletariat - the workers need a bayonet up their arse".
The Georgian shared this view with American free-marketers who believe
that workers will only be productive when forced to work for less money by
the threatened lash of unemployment.
But we are at the end of a 60-year-old real-time experiment in the
relative success of American laissez-faire and European social democracy.
In 1945 Europeans were smaller and less healthy than the Americans. Some
60 years of European socialism later, the Dutch, for example are two
inches taller than Americans. Europeans can expect longer life spans, and
much less infant mortality than their erstwhile liberators, who are cursed
with a free market health system that leaves 45 million people uninsured,
and is the least efficient in the industrialised world. Not
coincidentally, it is the most expensive - and the most profitable.
Freedom from fear, as Roosevelt advocated in 1945, was implemented to a
much larger degree in Europe. Mothers can take serious, guaranteed, paid
maternity leave, compared with Clinton's big step forward - unpaid family
leave. Those socialist Europeans are guaranteed sick pay for months,
years, on end and guaranteed vacation time, which they can take without
fear of retribution. And the enterprises in which they work are prospering
and solvent on the basis that employees deserve some measure of the
prosperity and security that McCain assumes only CEOs need to motivate
them.
If Obama and the Democrats were socialists, then Americans could enjoy the
nearly universal health care of western Europe, not just in the sense of
hospitals and doctors, but the health of the population - they would live
longer for example instead of being 42nd in the world longevity league,
they would have something higher than the 29th place in the world infant
mortality tables.
American workers, who have been on an effective pay freeze since Ronald
Reagan took office, could enjoy the steadily rising incomes of their
European counterparts. Who knows, maybe the murder rate would drop to
civilised world standards and the "socialist" US could relinquish its
positions at the top of the world incarcerations and executions leagues.
Even justice suffers. At the time of the first OJ Simpson trial, I
remember asking an American defence attorney which courts he would prefer,
and he answered immediately, "if I were rich and guilty, I'd want to be
tried here. If I were poor and innocent - I'd prefer Europe".
There have been steps backward as European governments persuaded
themselves that Washington was showing the way economically. However, one
can only hope that Europeans, particularly social democrats, can surely
see further than the coast of Alaska and deduce that the main lesson from
McCain's United States are negative ones. It is time to put the clock
forward in Europe from where it stopped under the baneful influence of
Reagan, Thatcher and Blair.
From papadop at peak.org Mon Oct 27 07:20:21 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Mon Oct 27 07:53:22 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] RESENT with URL: U$ must reconsider what socialism really
means
Message-ID:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/27/tax-obama-mccain-socialism
The west is red
While rebuking 'European style socialism' John McCain neglects to
mention that Europeans enjoy a higher quality of life
Guardian (London) + Monday October 27 2008 12.00 GMT
#####################
John McCain accuses Barack Obama of wanting "European style socialism"
in the US. If only.
Apart from the irony that the Bush administration is effectively
nationalising the commanding heights of the economy in the course of the
current economic crisis, one would have thought that this is - shall we
say to be kind - an inappropriate time for a candidate to sing songs of
praise to capitalism red in tooth and claw.
Gore Vidal and many others have quipped over the years that the US
practices free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich, so what
we are seeing now is not really a fundamental change in approach. Money
in rich torrents for the banks and finance houses, and thin gruel for
those about to be made homeless is on a par with food stamps that passed
into legislation as a subsidy to US agriculture.
However, despite a natural tendency to disbelieve anything that McCain
says in McCarthy-ite mode, it is indeed a truth that should be universally
acknowledged that western Europe, even with the Thatcherite and Blairite
hiccups, is indeed social democratic in its outlook. At the end of the
second world war George Orwell predicted that western Europe was the most
likely to succeed in establishing some form of democratic socialism, and
he was right. Since 1950, western Europe has offered its citizens the
highest combined standards of human, civil and social rights in world
history. The west is red!
It may have been Franklin Delano Roosevelt who coined the slogan about the
four freedoms, from fear and want, and of belief and speech, but Europe
put them into effect while the US remained bogged down in 19th century
laissez-faire.
However, McCain's attempt to conflate Obama with European socialism and
both with Soviet-style communism is as self evidently absurd as his
conflation of Joe the Plumber's fiscal fate with Exxon-Mobil's. Even
European conservative parties are far to the left of Obama in their
professed conviction that some things are too important to leave to free
markets, that the pursuit of untrammeled greed alone will not benefit
society as a whole, and that societies have a collective responsibility to
ensure the welfare of their citizens.
Of course, European social-democracy is nothing like the Leninoid
totalitarianisms that some on the left still see as the litmus test for
socialism. My father, an eccentrically unrepentant fan of Stalin to his
deathbed, had it right "that Uncle Joe understood the dictatorship of the
proletariat - the workers need a bayonet up their arse".
The Georgian shared this view with American free-marketers who believe
that workers will only be productive when forced to work for less money by
the threatened lash of unemployment.
But we are at the end of a 60-year-old real-time experiment in the
relative success of American laissez-faire and European social democracy.
In 1945 Europeans were smaller and less healthy than the Americans. Some
60 years of European socialism later, the Dutch, for example are two
inches taller than Americans. Europeans can expect longer life spans, and
much less infant mortality than their erstwhile liberators, who are cursed
with a free market health system that leaves 45 million people uninsured,
and is the least efficient in the industrialised world. Not
coincidentally, it is the most expensive - and the most profitable.
Freedom from fear, as Roosevelt advocated in 1945, was implemented to a
much larger degree in Europe. Mothers can take serious, guaranteed, paid
maternity leave, compared with Clinton's big step forward - unpaid family
leave. Those socialist Europeans are guaranteed sick pay for months,
years, on end and guaranteed vacation time, which they can take without
fear of retribution. And the enterprises in which they work are prospering
and solvent on the basis that employees deserve some measure of the
prosperity and security that McCain assumes only CEOs need to motivate
them.
If Obama and the Democrats were socialists, then Americans could enjoy the
nearly universal health care of western Europe, not just in the sense of
hospitals and doctors, but the health of the population - they would live
longer for example instead of being 42nd in the world longevity league,
they would have something higher than the 29th place in the world infant
mortality tables.
American workers, who have been on an effective pay freeze since Ronald
Reagan took office, could enjoy the steadily rising incomes of their
European counterparts. Who knows, maybe the murder rate would drop to
civilised world standards and the "socialist" US could relinquish its
positions at the top of the world incarcerations and executions leagues.
Even justice suffers. At the time of the first OJ Simpson trial, I
remember asking an American defence attorney which courts he would prefer,
and he answered immediately, "if I were rich and guilty, I'd want to be
tried here. If I were poor and innocent - I'd prefer Europe".
There have been steps backward as European governments persuaded
themselves that Washington was showing the way economically. However, one
can only hope that Europeans, particularly social democrats, can surely
see further than the coast of Alaska and deduce that the main lesson from
McCain's United States are negative ones. It is time to put the clock
forward in Europe from where it stopped under the baneful influence of
Reagan, Thatcher and Blair.
From duanebehrens at cox.net Mon Oct 27 11:06:25 2008
From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens)
Date: Mon Oct 27 11:06:32 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Chris Warland on Right vs. Left
Message-ID: <20081027120625.VKQWA.61211.imail@fed1rmwml39>
R. Fleischer writes:
TV channels, except Fox, are rather Left;
Chris Warland responds:
No one has properly explained to me how this can be so. It certainly does not jibe with my perceptions. I still maintain that any entity funded by corporate sponsorship would not last long if it were "left" to any appreciable degree.
I concede that journalists in general tend to be liberal (not "left") as a result of occupational hazard; investigating and objectively observing a range of facets of fact-based reality, I think, can do that to a person. Nevertheless, corporate media producers and executives understand who signs the checks.
The answer is, I think, that in contemporary America any message that does not reflect the twisted weltanschauung manufactured by the far right is considered "left." In this sense, objective reporting of observed reality is often called "left" because it contradicts the false statements of the right-wing message machine.
From siamdave at yahoo.ca Mon Oct 27 12:13:01 2008
From: siamdave at yahoo.ca (Dave Patterson)
Date: Mon Oct 27 12:13:16 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] about telling the CBC they done good ...
References: <200810270030290812.02F30324@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
Message-ID: <200810280013010734.035F3DDE@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
- a letter I sent yesterday to the named people, who run a media research company, and got commissioned by the CBC to evaluate how well the CBC covered the election. I suppose not that surprisingly they found the CBC did an exemplarific job, and the CBC boss dutifully bragged to all and sundry on their website about how wonderful they all were. This sort of thing annoys me, so I wrote them a wee note ...... (all quite polite, of course, at least mostly ....)
===================
Dear Mr. Spears, et al.,
George Spears, President: george@erinresearch.com
Kasia Seydegart, Vice-President: kasia@erinresearch.com
Pat Zulinov, Director: pat@erinresearch.com
CC: CBC Ombudsman (please forward to mr Cruickshank, whose article this concerns)
I read with some amazement today that your company had given the CBC a good rating in terms of their election coverage,as they brag about here - Canada Votes, Well Done http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/10/22/f-vp-cruickshank.html . I must disagree seriously. I cannot speak for the television coverage, as I never watch television, but I listen to the CBC radio 3-4 hours a day, a local morning program plus the Current most days, and then the House on Saturday and Michael Enright's Sunday Edition on Sunday, with of course the hourly national and half-hourly local newscasts throughout. And it has been my perception the last couple of years, and throughout the recent election notably, that the CBC, far from any kind of neutral broadcasting such as one should expect from a public broadcaster which once was world-class, in actuality is engaged in promoting or marginalizing certain POVs through time allotted and preponderantly positive or negative presentation and spin, and simply ignoring other stories of importance. In no way, it is my opinion after long exposure to the CBC, could you call what they do 'balanced and fair', from any intelligent, neutral, engaged perspective. (all Canadian media, actually, but this involves the CBC only).
A couple of examples:
To say that 'more or less equal time was given to each major party' during the election coverage may be more or less true, but is a very superficial assessment, and quite meaningless, really. What about the quality of that time? For example, if the time spent with a Party A speaker is predominantly hostile time, with the 'host' attacking and otherwise being negative towards the guest, whilst the time given to a Party B person is in a genial mode, easy questions, supportive, etc, you cannot really call that 'equal' time, although of course if you judge only by minutes of time you would not be aware of that difference. (And this does not even begin to address the notion of a fair start for all people who would contest an election - you seem to find no quarrel with the idea that certain contestants start halfway or more around the track, with eager media appraisal and attendance to and analysis of their every word, whilst 'newcomers' start at the beginning, ignored for much if not all of the campaign. That's not really 'fair' at all, although standard behavior for our media and elections. But not the subject of this essay, either.)
I am fully aware that such judgements are quite subjective in nature, but a proper analysis of 'fair and balanced' would at least require acknowledging the existence of such potential problems, and making some effort to see if they did indeed exist, and if so, to quantify them at least with broad strokes. And it is not as difficult as one who wished to avoid such an examination might argue - there are some quite obvious instances to point to, where no reasonable listener could say that two given interviews were equal in terms of support or hostility of the interviewer, or general POV of the interview or report in question. And it has been my listening experience that the CBC regularly and frequently conducts its interviews or gives its news reports with quite blatant interviewer-reporter bias, either supportive or hostile. Strong interviewing can, of course, be a positive attribute of a good journalist - but when that strength is selectively applied to some interviewees, whilst others are treated much more gently, you cannot avoid the charge of at least apparent bias.
A couple of examples: Thurs Sept 11 on the Current, Ms Tremonti interivews NDP leader Jack Layton, and Wed Sept 17 interviews Liberal leader Dion on the Current, in both cases Ms Tremonti is very aggressive, shouting and interrupting, obviously dislikes both leaders, even though they handle themselves very well; there is no interview with Harper to compare her style with, if she would show the same aggressiveness or not, but there are various shows on which some Conservative is interviewed, or stories about them, that are much more favorable - for instance, Sept 20 on The House, several reports doing their best to put Harper and the Conservatives in a good light, softballing 'hard' questions and giving the respondents lots of chance to defuse the unfavorable points in calm and reassuring voices, very much unlike the attacks on Dion and Layton, in which they were regularly interrupted and shouted down as they tried to explain themselves. We might also note that Elizabeth May, leader of a party with no members elected, got considerable regular and favorable time, such as Tuesday Sept 16. (You may be able to find a segment with more friendly treatment of a Liberal or NDP member, or more hostile towards a Conservative, but it has been my observation over many months that overall Conservative spokespeople (and Ms May) have been dealt with gently, and NDP and Liberal people much more aggressively, and we are, of course, talking about the bigger picture, not individual examples - this is but a short letter, not a treatise, but I have no doubt my observations about preponderance of favorable - unfavorable treatment are accurate.) (I am attaching a 'CBC Chronicles' file which I have been keeping which gives some particulars - only notes, please note, for future reference, not written up in any academic way yet, but useful if you want to find some places to look for obviously biased 'reporting')
And aside from simply measuring time devoted to the major political parties, did you check the time and presentation devoted to issues rather than people, such things as the Afghanistan 'mission'? I can tell you for an absolute fact that the pro-mission coverage of the shows mentioned above, including the 'news', has been approximately 90% pro-'mission' (and this, of course, even though survey after survey tells us that somewhere around 60% of Canadians think we should not be in Afghanistan (and we can only assume that figure would be larger if the media was reporting fairly) - and this kind of disparity could only be called propaganda, trying to sell something to the people they do not want). For instance, just a few days after the election was called (Friday Sept 19), without to date a mention by anyone of this important issue in Canada, we got a full hour on the Current devoted to telling people why the Afghanistan invasion was (a) not an election issue at all, no matter what Canadians thought or wanted, and then (b) issue or not, it was a GOOD mission people so get with the program! (this is the dominant theme of 90% of CBC Afghanistan coverage) - with one short taped conversation with a woman near the end saying maybe it wasn't such a good idea at all, which the final few minutes of the show was then given to an on-air guest talking with the supportive host about why the lady was mistaken, and it was, really, a good mission, she just didn't understand etc. This is about as impartial as George Bush's attitude towards Iran.
There were a number of other issues of considerable importance that the media, including the CBC, did not even touch on during the election, such as the SPP/NAU. This does indeed speak to fairness - it is understandable that those promoting the SPP wish to keep it quiet, as they well know most Canadians do not want closer and closer ties to the US, although the business community does - so by not quizzing politicians about this, the CBC, and other media, are tacitly supporting the Big Business lobby, which is a quite small minority of people but certainly a majority of money and influence - and is anything but 'fair and balanced', when you consider the wishes of most Canadians as opposed to the wishes of the CCCE (Tom d'Aquino's elite business lobby group, influential FAR beyond their actual numbers,in no small part thanks to the media, which is quite fawning towards the business elite in Canada in general). There is no defence to be had in opining that the media follows the lead of the politicians - the media was VERY 'proactive' all summer long, for instance, in the leadup to the election, in looking for ways to tell Canadians that the Liberal Green Shift plan was too hard to understand, with very little Conservative pushing at all, and they have been aggressively pushing for Dion's resignation since the election ended, quite shamelessly at times, it has seemed to me - as always, there is a very large number of stories that could be presented on the media, and several perspectives from which any story could be spun, and there is a disturbing trend to the spin of the CBC the great majority of the time, in support of 'neocon' policies and people, and against progressive, democratic policies and people (en masse opposition to a PR electoral system, for instance).
Today, for instance, again, Saturday Oct the 25, the day that I begin this letter, not long after reading the article on the CBC website that provoked it, Kathleen Petty provided a perfect, and not uncommon, example of the CBC doing their best to direct the way Canadians think about 'news' on her The House. She started off with an interview with the governor of the Bank of Canada, which was nothing more than a puff piece designed to reassure worried Canadians that even though the financial world was crashing around them, all was more or less under control in Canada, and they were in good hands, and times might get a bit tough, but there was nothing more to be done than your able handlers were doing already. And then Ms Petty had a little documentary casting various aspersions on those darned NDP socialists, who apparently did a bit too well during the election and needed a bit of taking down. And then she finished with a piece on selecting the upcoming Harper cabinet - let's all think positive things about the new Harper gov, folks! And I won't go into details, but would note that all three pieces were giving very definite POVs that others could and would talk about very differently, if given a chance, and if the CBC was truly 'fair and balanced', such chances would be given, but rarely are when the CBC is in its 'this is the way it is' mode.
As a research group, did you consider doing a survey of 'we the people'to ask about how well 'we' thought we were served by the CBC (or the media in general) during the election, how 'fair and balanced' we thought their coverage was? You could ask if we/they thought the endless stories about bird poop and other trivialities, to the complete exclusion of much more relevant coverage of such things as the SPP etc, served them well. Did you think to get some input on your analysis from someone in the alternative Canadian media about the activities of the mainstream media, including the CBC? (For a bit on CBC television coverage from such alternative media, I would direct you to a recent piece in the alternative Canadian media called "MDD events look at 'what's missing in media' ( http://beta.rabble.ca/news/mdd-events-look-whats-missing-media ) , in which the following quote appears: "... Derrick O'Keefe, the editor of rabble.ca, is co-facilitating a workshop with Andrew Mindszenthy of the Housing Not War campaign with a title that he says is only slightly tongue-in-cheek, "Beyond CBC-Pravda," looking at media spin on Afghanistan as well as the coverage of the homelessness crisis... Such media criticism, he argues, "is really not even hyperbole at this point. The coverage that The National in particular but the public broadcaster in general has been providing represents a major disservice to democracy and public debate in Canada. Peter Mansbridge is, clearly, personally very committed to promoting Canada's war effort. In many ways, the anchor views himself, in my opinion accurately, as an important figure in the Canadian establishment."
I also wrote an essay near the beginning of the election that gives more detail of the things I talk about here in the bigger picture if you are interested - you can read it here - Canadian Media: Reporting or Managing the News of the 2008 Election? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/media-narrative.html .
Well, I shall leave it here for now, although a thorough deconstruction of the Canadian media could fill books (many have already been written, of course, with much different findings than yours in this survey) - I have written various people at the CBC before about this and related things, and found little interest (you could find many of these letters here http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/gi-morgue.html if you were interested in some serious criticism of the CBC, and the Canadian media), and to be honest I expect the same response from you, but in case you are truly well-intentioned but simply a bit - ummm - innocent in your researches and polling interpretations etc, I have given you enough to start with if you are seriously interested in an honest report about the activities of the CBC, and if you want more, you can certainly get in touch.
I would close by saying, Mr Spears et al., that the media in Canada, including the CBC, is very demonstrably NOT 'fair and balanced', and companies like yours which attempt to cast a favorable light on their activities through analyses as obviously telling less than the truth as the media themselves are not contributing to solving the various problems we currently face in our democracy, for which serious media reform is seriously needed.
Dave Patterson
Hat Yai, Thailand
Green Island http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greenisland.html
(this letter archived at http://www.rudemacedon.ca/lgi/08/1026-erin.html )
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Oct 27 16:29:29 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Mon Oct 27 16:30:02 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Chris Warland on Right vs. Left
In-Reply-To: <20081027120625.VKQWA.61211.imail@fed1rmwml39>
References: <20081027120625.VKQWA.61211.imail@fed1rmwml39>
Message-ID: <20081027212931.0AEA812BB8@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
The problem arises from accepting an imposed "leftwing"-"rightwing"
scale which is used to divert attention from true vs false, just vs
unjust, right vs wrong. Place anything whatsoever on such a scale
and the unthinking will plump for the middle (two and two are five,
not the extremes of four or six). Wings and scales belong to
pterodactyls, not human society.
Dion Giles
Western Australia
At 01:06 28/10/2008, you wrote:
>R. Fleischer writes:
>TV channels, except Fox, are rather Left;
>
>Chris Warland responds:
>No one has properly explained to me how this can be so. It certainly
>does not jibe with my perceptions. I still maintain that any entity
>funded by corporate sponsorship would not last long if it were
>"left" to any appreciable degree.
>
>I concede that journalists in general tend to be liberal (not
>"left") as a result of occupational hazard; investigating and
>objectively observing a range of facets of fact-based reality, I
>think, can do that to a person. Nevertheless, corporate media
>producers and executives understand who signs the checks.
>
>The answer is, I think, that in contemporary America any message
>that does not reflect the twisted weltanschauung manufactured by the
>far right is considered "left." In this sense, objective reporting
>of observed reality is often called "left" because it contradicts
>the false statements of the right-wing message machine.
>_______________________________________________
>Mai-not mailing list
>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
>
>
>--
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG.
>Version: 7.5.549 / Virus Database: 270.8.3/1748 - Release Date:
>10/26/2008 7:53 PM
From creuss at bluewin.ch Tue Oct 28 15:16:57 2008
From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss)
Date: Tue Oct 28 15:18:40 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] UN Advisor wants "Nuremberg Trial" on Banksters
Message-ID:
(Brief summary of 28-Oct-2008 article in the Zurich-based daily Tagesanzeiger at
http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wirtschaft/unternehmen-und-konjunktur/Finanzkris
e-Jean-Ziegler-fordert-Nuernberger-Prozess-fuer-Banker/story/17317119 )
Jean Ziegler calls for "Nuremberg Trial" on Bankers
Jean Ziegler, advisory committee member to the UN Human Rights Council,
expresses a shocking demand: "A Nuremberg Trial should sentence the
criminals who caused the global banking crisis."
Ziegler justifies his demand with the increased third-world poverty caused
by the banking crisis. Those who are responsible ought to be prosecuted
for crimes against humanity: "Every five minutes, a child dies of hunger."
Ziegler was heavily criticized in 2005 when he compared Israeli soldiers in
the Gaza strip to the Nazis' concentration camp guards, while he was UN
Special Envoy for the right to food.
Video interview with Jean Ziegler: (in French)
http://www.dailymotion.com/rue89/video/x774kj_la-haine-de-jean-ziegler-pour-
locci_news
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword
"igve".
From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Tue Oct 28 19:36:15 2008
From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta)
Date: Tue Oct 28 19:56:24 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Bellamy Foster on economics and
environment
crises; capitalist crash; Obama; France; Thailand; Quebec; Arabic; South
Africa; Peru
Message-ID: <4907AFFF.1070706@greenleft.org.au>
Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373
Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed
(http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to
consider an article, please send it to links@dsp.org.au
*Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links./*
* * *
John Bellamy Foster: `Capitalism has reached its limits'
October 26, 2008 -- Six months ago the United States was already deep in
a financial crisis -- the roots of which were explained in `The
Financialization of Capital and the Crisis' (Monthly Review, April
2008). Yet, the conditions now are several orders of magnitude worse and
are affecting the entire world.
We are clearly in the midst of one of the great crises in the history of
capitalism. More than a mere financial panic, what is taking place is a
major devaluation of capital of still undetermined dimensions. Marx
explained that capital was invariably over-extended in a boom and that
in the crisis that followed a part of that capital was devalued,
enabling the rest to return to profitability and to the process of
accumulation and expansion.
* Read more
Three left views on Obama: Howard Zinn, Mike Davis, Todd Chretien
October 22, 2008 -- Real News Network -- Howard Zinn says vote against
McCain, vote for Obama. Even though Obama does not represent any
fundamental change, he creates an opening for a possibility of change.
Obama will not fulfill that potential for change, unless he is enveloped
by a social movement, which is angry enough, powerful enough, insistent
enough, that he fills his abstract phrases about change with some
content. We need direct action, because only that kind of indignation is
going to have some affect on the people in Washington.
Howard Zinn is an historian, political scientist, social critic,
activist and playwright. He is best known as author of the best-seller A
People's History of the United States. Zinn has been active in the civil
rights and the anti-war movements in the United States.
* Read more
France: Olivier Besancenot -- `For a left that stops making excuses'
Hand in hand with the struggles of French workers and students has been
the massive growth in popularity of postal worker and Revolutionary
Communist League (LCR) spokesperson Olivier Besancenot (pictured).
Recent opinion polls listed "The Red Postie", as even the capitalist
media call him, as the second most credible opposition politician to the
right-wing government of President Nicolas Sarkozy. Besancenot was voted
second after the Socialist Party (PS) mayor of Paris and ahead of the
parliamentary leaders of the official PS "opposition".
Below is an excerpt of Besancenot's speech to an August open air rally
of 3500 members and supporters of the New Anti-capitalist Party (NAP),
initiated by the LCR, on the challenges for the project.
* Read more
John Bellamy Foster on climate change: `Demand solutions based on
necessity, not wealth and profits'
Thailand: Prison sentence for ex-PM Thaksin. What does it mean?
By Giles Ji Ungpakorn
went deOctober 22, 2008 -- Thaksin was found guilty of a ``conflict of
interest'' because he was prime minister at the time when his wife
bought a piece of land at a knock-down price from the Thai state. The
land originated from bankruptcies due to the 1997 economic crisis.
Earlier Prime Minister Samak was found guilty of appearing on a TV
cooking program and forced to resign. Samak was head of the Peoples
Power Party (PPP), the descendant of Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party (TRT)
which was dissolved by the courts during the time of the military junta.
* Read more
Quebec left's challenge to socialists in the rest of Canada
By Richard Fidler
October 19, 2008 -- Once again, the Bloc Qu?b?cois has taken a majority
of Quebec's seats in Canada's House of Commons -- 50 out of 75, one less
than in 2006, although down by three percentage points. In doing so, it
dashed Prime Minister Stephen Harper's hopes of a Conservative
breakthrough in Quebec that would deliver him a majority government in
Ottawa. Working people throughout Canada heaved a sigh of relief. The
Bloc's support is more than a rejection of the Tories' right-wing
policies. As Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe declared on election night,
October 14, it is a clear demonstration "that Quebec is a distinct
nation linguistically, culturally, socially and economically". This was
the sixth consecutive federal election since 1993 in which the
pro-sovereignty Bloc has won a majority of Quebec's seats under the
first-past-the-post system.
* Read more
The Flame, October 2008 - Green Left Weekly's Arabic supplement
With the help of Socialist Alliance members in the growing Sudanese
community in Australia, Green Left Weekly -- Australia's leading
socialist newspaper -- is publishing a regular Arabic language
supplement. The Flame will cover news from the Arabic-speaking world as
well as news and issues from within Australia. The editor-in-chief is
Soubhi Iskander, a comrade who has endured years of imprisonment and
torture at the hands of the repressive government in Sudan.
* Read more
South African Communist Party on capitalist economic crisis,
right-wing split in the ANC
Speech to the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) 8th
national congress by Blade Nzimande, South African Communist Party
(SACP) general secretary
* Read more
Hugo Blanco: `No contradiction between my indigenous struggle and
dialectical materialism'
Interview with veteran Peruvian Marxist Hugo Blanco, conducted by Y?sser
G?mez for Mari?tegui magazine, September 9, 2008. Translated by Sean
Seymour Jones for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal.
"The Self-organised Legislative Coup of the FTA [Free Trade Agreement],
Indigenous Peoples and Social Movements" was the name of the national
gathering of originario [indigenous] peoples, peasant communities and
social movements that took place in Lima. There Mari?tegui magazine
interviewed Hugo Blanco, who in the 1970s led land takeovers in La
Convenci?n, Cusco, before the agrarian reform of Juan Velasco Alvarado
was implemented. Today he continues in political combat from the
trenches together with the peasantry, and as director of the newspaper
Lucha Indigena (Indigenous Struggle).
* Read more
Latin America: In support of regional integration and a partial
delinking from the world capitalist market
By Eric Toussaint, translated by Federico Fuentes for Links
International Journal of Socialist Renewal
October 8, 2008 -- The economic and financial crisis, whose epicentre is
found in the United States, has to be utilised by Latin American
countries to build an integration favourable to the peoples and at the
same initiate a partial delinking from the world capitalist market.
* Read more
Fictitious capital and real compacts
By Anitra Nelson
October 15, 2008 -- Radical Notes -- Perhaps we need a Marxian to sort
out the world's financial woes. The insights of Karl Marx on capitalist
crises, especially speculation and financial crises, were sophisticated
for his time. Indeed, this nineteenth century communist revolutionary
called financial assets and loans 'fictitious capital' or 'imaginary
wealth' as distinct from 'real capital' -- industrial or productive
capital -- such as factories and commodity stocks.
* Read more
The global economic crisis: An historic opportunity for
transformation
An initial response from individuals, social movements and
non-governmental organisations in support of a transitional program for
radical economic transformation.
Beijing, October 15, 2008 -- Taking advantage of the opportunity of so
many people from movements gathering in Beijing during the Asia-Europe
People's Forum, the Transnational Institute and Focus on the Global
South convened informal nightly meetings between October 13 and 15,
2008. We took stock of the meaning of the unfolding global economic
crisis and the opportunity it presents for us to put into the public
domain some of the inspiring and feasible alternatives many of us have
been working on for decades. This statement represents the collective
outcome of our Beijing nights. We, the initial signatories, mean this to
be a contribution towards efforts to formulate proposals around which
our movements can organise as the basis for a radically different kind
of political and economic order.
* Read more
/Links/ seeks to promote the international exchange of information,
experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political
strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for
open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from
different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the
international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social
policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in
the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing
socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
*
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From duanebehrens at cox.net Tue Oct 28 20:02:19 2008
From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens)
Date: Tue Oct 28 20:02:24 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Re: Right vs. Left
Message-ID: <20081028210219.OBM4F.88501.imail@fed1rmwml39>
We should all reach into our hearts to find what is wrong, and what is right; what does the most good for the most people (or animals), versus what is good for only the few.
We should discuss each issue on the above merits, rather than arbitrarily prejudging - and thus damning - a viewpoint or principle based on the artificial labels of "Left" or "Right."
Duane Behrens
---- Michael Boyle wrote:
It's more than one issue. The quote from Dion that you posted in July,
as I saw it, had to do with absolutism, and whether or not anyone can
claim that his position represents truth, justice, and law to the
exclusion of all other positions. I took issue with that, and we can
return there if you wish.
But the quote [from Dion Giles] that you posted last night -
"The problem arises from accepting an imposed "leftwing"-"rightwing"
scale which is used to divert attention from true vs false, just vs
unjust, right vs wrong. Place anything whatsoever on such a scale
and the unthinking will plump for the middle (two and two are five,
not the extremes of four or six). Wings and scales belong to
pterodactyls, not human society."
- while still laden with the baggage of the author's arrogance (i.e.,
the suggestion that he is in a position to judge absolute truth,
justice, and right) also addresses a different idea - that the overlay
of labels, or scales, can dramatically change perceptions,
particularly when the spectrum is shifted and/or the choices are
limited. I don't disagree with you, or Dion, on that. There's a
beautiful illustration of the point in the current presidential
campaign, McCain essentially calling Obama a "socialist" even though
on any scale which included the full political spectrum or all the
world's players, he's not a leftist or socialist in any sense.
Another clear example would be the constant bleating from the American
right that the "media" has a leftist bias, when in fact it is
corporate owned and controlled, and in general toes the line
accordingly when viewed from any kind of broad perspective. But as
your quote suggests, if you shift the scale by the inclusion of faux
"news" media much farther to the right, voila! - everyone else is now
leftist by comparison, and therefore suspect.
I suspect that we agree in principle on most things political. What is
it about liberals - if you lock two in a room with access to sharp
objects, there will be blood.
Mikey
From duanebehrens at cox.net Tue Oct 28 20:02:26 2008
From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens)
Date: Tue Oct 28 20:29:20 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Re: Right vs. Left
Message-ID: <20081028210226.8OJ3R.88504.imail@fed1rmwml39>
We should all reach into our hearts to find what is wrong, and what is right; what does the most good for the most people (or animals), versus what is good for only the few.
We should discuss each issue on the above merits, rather than arbitrarily prejudging - and thus damning - a viewpoint or principle based on the artificial labels of "Left" or "Right."
Duane Behrens
---- Michael Boyle wrote:
It's more than one issue. The quote from Dion that you posted in July,
as I saw it, had to do with absolutism, and whether or not anyone can
claim that his position represents truth, justice, and law to the
exclusion of all other positions. I took issue with that, and we can
return there if you wish.
But the quote [from Dion Giles] that you posted last night -
"The problem arises from accepting an imposed "leftwing"-"rightwing"
scale which is used to divert attention from true vs false, just vs
unjust, right vs wrong. Place anything whatsoever on such a scale
and the unthinking will plump for the middle (two and two are five,
not the extremes of four or six). Wings and scales belong to
pterodactyls, not human society."
- while still laden with the baggage of the author's arrogance (i.e.,
the suggestion that he is in a position to judge absolute truth,
justice, and right) also addresses a different idea - that the overlay
of labels, or scales, can dramatically change perceptions,
particularly when the spectrum is shifted and/or the choices are
limited. I don't disagree with you, or Dion, on that. There's a
beautiful illustration of the point in the current presidential
campaign, McCain essentially calling Obama a "socialist" even though
on any scale which included the full political spectrum or all the
world's players, he's not a leftist or socialist in any sense.
Another clear example would be the constant bleating from the American
right that the "media" has a leftist bias, when in fact it is
corporate owned and controlled, and in general toes the line
accordingly when viewed from any kind of broad perspective. But as
your quote suggests, if you shift the scale by the inclusion of faux
"news" media much farther to the right, voila! - everyone else is now
leftist by comparison, and therefore suspect.
I suspect that we agree in principle on most things political. What is
it about liberals - if you lock two in a room with access to sharp
objects, there will be blood.
Mikey
From fresch at ica.net Tue Oct 28 21:10:24 2008
From: fresch at ica.net (Fred Schneider)
Date: Tue Oct 28 21:10:37 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd.: Europe's secret plan to boost GM crop production
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20081028213553.02525fb8@ica.net>
Europe's secret plan to boost GM crop production
Gordon Brown and other EU leaders in campaign to promote modified foods
By Geoffrey Lean
Sunday, 26 October 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/europes-secret-plan-to-boost-gm-crop-production-973834.html
(GM corn growing in France, which has since
suspended cultivation of modified crops)
Gordon Brown and other European leaders are
secretly preparing an unprecedented campaign to
spread GM crops and foods in Britain and
throughout the continent, confidential documents
obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal.
The documents ? minutes of a series of private
meetings of representatives of 27 governments ?
disclose plans to "speed up" the introduction of
the modified crops and foods and to "deal with" public resistance to them.
And they show that the leaders want "agricultural
representatives" and "industry" ? presumably
including giant biotech firms such as Monsanto ?
to be more vocal to counteract the "vested interests" of environmentalists.
News of the secret plans is bound to create a
storm of protest at a time when popular concern
about GM technology is increasing, even in
countries that have so far accepted it.
Public opposition has prevented any modified
crops from being grown in Britain. France, one of
only three countries in Europe to have grown them
in any amounts, has suspended their cultivation,
and resistance to them is rising rapidly in the other two, Spain and Portugal.
The embattled biotech industry has been
conducting a public relations campaign based
round the highly contested assertion that genetic
modification is needed to feed the world. It has
had some success in the Government, where
ministers have been increasingly speaking out in
favour of the technology, and in the European
Commission, with which its lobbyists have boasted
of having "excellent working relations".
The secret meetings were convened by Jose Manuel
Barroso, the pro-GM President of the Commission,
and chaired by his head of cabinet, Joao Vale de
Almeida. The prime ministers of each of the EU's
27 member states were asked to nominate a special representative.
Neither the membership of the group, nor its
objectives, nor the outcomes of its meetings have
been made public. But The IoS has obtained
confidential documents, including an attendance
list and the conclusions of the two meetings held
so far ? on 17 July and just two weeks ago on 10
October ? written by the chairman.
The list shows that President Nicolas Sarkozy of
France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany
sent close aides. Britain was represented by
Sonia Phippard, director for food and farming at
the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The conclusions reveal the discussions were
mainly preoccupied with how to speed up the
introduction of GM crops and food and how to
persuade the public to accept them.
The modified products have to be approved by the
EU before they can be sown or sold anywhere in
Europe. But though the Commission officials are
generally strongly in favour, European
governments are split, causing the Council of
Ministers, on which they are represented, to be deadlocked.
In that event the bureaucrats on the Commission
wave them through anyway. They are legally
allowed to do this, but overruled governments and
environmental groups are unhappy.
The conclusions of the first meeting called for
the "speeding up of the authorisation process
based on robust assessments so as to reassure the
public", while the second one added: "Decisions
could be made faster without compromising safety."
But the documents also make clear that Mr Barroso
is going beyond mere exhortation by trying to get
prime ministers to overrule their own agriculture
and environment ministers in favour of GM. They
report that the chairman "recalled the importance
for prime ministers to look at the wider
picture", "invited the participants to report the
discussions of the group to their heads of
governments", and "stressed the importance of
drawing their attention to ongoing discussions in the Council [of Ministers]".
Helen Holder of Friends of the Earth Europe said:
"Barroso's aim is to get GM into Europe as
quickly as possible. So he is going straight to
prime ministers and presidents to tell them to
step on their ministers and get them into line."
The conclusions of the meetings on public
opposition are even more incendiary. The
documents ponder "how best to deal with public
opinion" and call for "an emotion-free,
fact-based dialogue on the high standards of the
EU GM policy". And they record the chairman
emphasising "the role of industry, economic
partners and science to actively contribute to
such a dialogue". He adds that "the public feels
ill-informed" and says "agricultural
representatives should be more vocal". And in a
veiled swipe at environmental groups he says that
the debate "should not be left to certain
stakeholders who have a legitimate but vested interest in it".
What they say
'We have to feed an extra 2.5 billion people. It
would be extraordinary if we chose not to exploit
the most important breakthrough in biological science'
Professor Allan Buckwell
'New developments will benefit the world's
poorest farmers: GM rice that is
drought-resistant; transgenic crops with genes to protect against disease'
Lord Dick Taverne, Sense About Science
'GM crops pose unacceptable risks to farmers and
the environment and have failed to increase
yields despite funding at a cost of millions to UK taxpayers'
Kirtana Chandrasekaran, FoE
'GM crops do not increase yields. Scientists have
found genetically engineered insecticide in crops
can leak and kill beneficial soil fungi'
Peter Melchett, Soil Association
Q & A: The trouble with modified crops
How much GM is grown in Europe?
Very little. The documents boast the area
increased by 21 per cent last year, proving
"growing interest". But it still only covered
0.119 per cent of Europe's agricultural land.
What are the problems?
Mainly environmental. Official trials in Britain
showed that growing GM crops was worse for
wildlife than cultivating conventional ones.
Worse, genes escape from the modified plants to
create superweeds and to contaminate normal and
organic crops, denying consumers a choice to be GM-free.
Do they endanger health?
Hard to tell. Some studies show that they may do,
others (including almost all those by industry)
are reassuring. The trouble is that very few
truly independent, peer-reviewed research has
been done. Most consumers have sensibly concluded
that they would sooner be safe than sorry,
particularly as they get no benefit from buying GM.
Can they feed the world?
Almost certainly not. Despite all the hype,
present GM varieties actually have lower yields
than their conventional counterparts. The seeds
are expensive to buy and grow, so wealthy
developing-world farmers would tend to use them
and drive poor ones out of business, increasing
destitution. The biggest agricultural assessment
ever conducted ? chaired by Professor Robert
Watson, now Defra's chief scientist ? recently
concluded that they would not do the job.
To have your say on this or any other issue visit
www.independent.co.uk/IoSblogs
My home page: "http://home.ica.net/~fresch/index.htm"
========================================
Fred Schneider, 905-279-7199, Fax: same, call first!
#37-425 Meadows Blvd.
Mississauga, ON, L4Z 1N3
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From siamdave at yahoo.ca Wed Oct 29 00:04:30 2008
From: siamdave at yahoo.ca (Dave Patterson)
Date: Wed Oct 29 00:04:50 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Re: Right vs. Left
In-Reply-To: <20081028210219.OBM4F.88501.imail@fed1rmwml39>
References: <20081028210219.OBM4F.88501.imail@fed1rmwml39>
Message-ID: <200810291204300281.00A000C1@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
Just a quick thought on reading this - the problem is, is that people like you and I do this sort of thing (and all on this list, no doubt, and most people in the world, I suspect) - but there is that small group of people Dion and many refer to as 'predators' who do not do this sort of thing, and are not going to, but are quite happy to take advantage of the rest of us who do do this sort of thing. We need to get over this rather serious problem in our approach to the world - predators, at least the human variety, like rabid dogs, cannot be reasoned with. They need to be controlled, and we need to start trying to figure out ways of doing this, rather than letting them argue us into leaving them free to prey on us. Respect for another person's POV is good - but it does not apply to rabid dogs. And yes, I understand there are problems with defining who is what and so on, but we need to be working at it, not letting the rabid dog convince us that it has a right to bite. It doesn't. But it is quite happy to get us so confused with morals and rights and things we are incapable of controlling it.
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 08-10-28 at 6:02 PM Duane Behrens wrote:
>We should all reach into our hearts to find what is wrong, and what is
>right; what does the most good for the most people (or animals), versus
>what is good for only the few.
>
>We should discuss each issue on the above merits, rather than arbitrarily
>prejudging - and thus damning - a viewpoint or principle based on the
>artificial labels of "Left" or "Right."
>
>Duane Behrens
>
>---- Michael Boyle wrote:
>
>It's more than one issue. The quote from Dion that you posted in July,
>as I saw it, had to do with absolutism, and whether or not anyone can
>claim that his position represents truth, justice, and law to the
>exclusion of all other positions. I took issue with that, and we can
>return there if you wish.
>
>But the quote [from Dion Giles] that you posted last night -
>
>"The problem arises from accepting an imposed "leftwing"-"rightwing"
>scale which is used to divert attention from true vs false, just vs
>unjust, right vs wrong. Place anything whatsoever on such a scale
>and the unthinking will plump for the middle (two and two are five,
>not the extremes of four or six). Wings and scales belong to
>pterodactyls, not human society."
>
> - while still laden with the baggage of the author's arrogance (i.e.,
>the suggestion that he is in a position to judge absolute truth,
>justice, and right) also addresses a different idea - that the overlay
>of labels, or scales, can dramatically change perceptions,
>particularly when the spectrum is shifted and/or the choices are
>limited. I don't disagree with you, or Dion, on that. There's a
>beautiful illustration of the point in the current presidential
>campaign, McCain essentially calling Obama a "socialist" even though
>on any scale which included the full political spectrum or all the
>world's players, he's not a leftist or socialist in any sense.
>Another clear example would be the constant bleating from the American
>right that the "media" has a leftist bias, when in fact it is
>corporate owned and controlled, and in general toes the line
>accordingly when viewed from any kind of broad perspective. But as
>your quote suggests, if you shift the scale by the inclusion of faux
>"news" media much farther to the right, voila! - everyone else is now
>leftist by comparison, and therefore suspect.
>
>I suspect that we agree in principle on most things political. What is
>it about liberals - if you lock two in a room with access to sharp
>objects, there will be blood.
>
>Mikey
>
>_______________________________________________
>Mai-not mailing list
>Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
>http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
>
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com
>Version: 8.0.175 / Virus Database: 270.8.4/1753 - Release Date: 28/10/2551 21:20
From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Wed Oct 29 02:45:05 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Wed Oct 29 02:45:18 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Left vs right
In-Reply-To: <20081028210219.OBM4F.88501.imail@fed1rmwml39>
References: <20081028210219.OBM4F.88501.imail@fed1rmwml39>
Message-ID: <20081029074506.CE806F610@fep08.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Wed Oct 29 08:13:17 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Wed Oct 29 08:15:40 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] US ELECTION: The Potential Progressive Mandate by David
Sirota Oct 28
Message-ID: <4908373D.19979.1CA60036@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
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From jomut at yahoo.com Wed Oct 29 13:07:54 2008
From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa)
Date: Wed Oct 29 13:08:02 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Re: Left vs right
In-Reply-To: <20081029074506.CE806F610@fep08.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Message-ID: <894401.1533.qm@web31104.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake)
jomut@yahoo.com
chakane@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/jomut
?
Hi,
?
Got a small problem because I have not got the faintest clue as to what?led Michael to the conclusion that Dion was arguing from a morally absolutist position.? Besides, I have to know how Mike deals with?the highly?nuanced quilt of moral acclamations and arguments before I can rightly say anything pro or con anyone or any stance.? Difficult to judge where he is coming from from?the little that I have read so far.
?
If I understand Dion properly, he is arguing for a thoroughgoing examination of morally laden?labels that are pinned on those who engage in political and other forms of social debate, as it would appear that these labels vary in meaning with?the passage of time, prevailing?political sentiments -- both dominant and marginal, and the distribution of power in society?which, in may cases, can exercise an influence (benign or malign)?on how moral debate is conducted in any society and the resulting patterns of moral conviction generated by such debates.
?
The same labels, on top of being subject to varying intergenerational perceptions,??may very well acquire a?completely different complexion in cross-cultural comparisons -- something that can be inferred from Dion's allusion to complete sentences and paragraphs as well as chapters!
?
Too bad that Dion used (for illustrative purposes only) some examples of elusively calculated arithmetical equations, which those with a tendency to read too much into such illustrations might interpret as an attempt at mathematicizing moral debate and introducing dread absolutism into it!!
?
And he has just declaimed against a moral scale!!
?
John
===============
?
--- On Wed, 10/29/08, Dion Giles wrote:
From: Dion Giles
Subject: [Mai-not] Left vs right
To: "A renewed Mai-Not"
Date: Wednesday, October 29, 2008, 7:45 AM
It's a question of how you appraise people/movements/propositions etc. Those who do not want you to develop, in interaction with others, YOUR OWN principles of right vs wrong, just vs unjust, true vs false etc. and appraise things from those perspectives will try to hustle you into instead appraising things from on a phoney "leftwing"-"rightwing" scale compiled and periodically readjusted by pterodactyls whose mission is to manipulate, not enlighten. For example when anyone refers to leftist president Chavez, or rightwing "tough on crime" calls, that person or body is trying to snow you by the technique of conflation. And if someone tells you that seeking analyse from a perspective of rightness or justice or truth is playing God and that this is an "absolutist" claim to know (on others' behalf) what's right, true or just and what isn't, then, again, you are being snowed. You are being told not to use your own brains and your own observations and your own
interactions to judge according to what you believe is right (true, just etc), but instead to believe what some obscurantist is serving up to you as "too far left" and "too far right". Such a message is not worth considering, not worth absorbing, not worth blindly following, and not worth propagating. As Dave has pointed out, it's predators' poison for the plebs. The implication in leftwing vs rightwing is that the sirs will decide the boundaries of what is leftwing and what is rightwing, and you should try to plump for the centre somewhere and be ready to readjust when the sirs decide to move the boundaries. 2+2=4 or 6? Ans. 5. 2+2=5 or 7? Ans, 6. What? You say FOUR!! You're right off the planet - we've already decided where the planet starts and finishes. Buck that and you're an extremist. (Read O'Brien's questioning of Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four).
There's not a great deal I like about Obama, as he has obediently taken "off the table" practically every issue of real importance to the American people and, moreover, RECOGNISED by the American people as important to them, and offered them the choice of 2 + 2 = 5 and 2 + 2 = 7. No choice they make is anywhere near right or even touches on the issues that matter. The whole farce shows that representative government is not democracy.
However, something Obama does do, breaking ranks with McCain (doesn't do this often), is to talk to the people in whole sentences, and expect them to savvy whole sentences and not just the sort of sound bites that you get in idiot sitcoms and Bush-McCain speeches directed to knuckledraggers. Escaping the handmedown leftwing-rightwing framework does, unfortunately, require thinking in entire sentences, paragraphs and combinations of paragraphs, and not being scared into defaulting to the position that to ask for appraisal on real grounds is "absolutism" and accepting the handed-down relatives are being more comfortable. To judge right from wrong one must go to the trouble of integrating the many dichotomies that go into a moral choice, not fall for anyone's conflations.? ???????? ????????
Dion Giles
Western Australia
At 10:02 29/10/2008, you wrote:
We should all reach into our hearts to find what is wrong, and what is right; what does the most good for the most people (or animals), versus what is good for only the few.
We should discuss each issue on the above merits, rather than arbitrarily prejudging - and thus damning - a viewpoint or principle based on the artificial labels of "Left" or "Right."
Duane Behrens
---- Michael Boyle wrote:
It's more than one issue. The quote from Dion that you posted in July,
as I saw it,? had to do with absolutism, and whether or not anyone can
claim that his position represents truth, justice, and law to the
exclusion of all other positions. I took issue with that, and we can
return there if you wish.
But the quote [from Dion Giles] that you posted last night -
"The problem arises from accepting an imposed "leftwing"-"rightwing"
scale which is used to divert attention from true vs false, just vs
unjust, right vs wrong.? Place anything whatsoever on such a scale
and the unthinking will plump for the middle (two and two are five,
not the extremes of four or six).? Wings and scales belong to
pterodactyls, not human society."
?- while still laden with the baggage of the author's arrogance (i.e.,
the suggestion that he is in a position to judge absolute truth,
justice, and right) also addresses a different idea - that the overlay
of labels, or scales,? can dramatically change perceptions,
particularly when the spectrum is shifted and/or the choices are
limited.? I don't disagree with you, or Dion, on that.? There's a
beautiful illustration of the point in the current presidential
campaign, McCain essentially calling Obama a "socialist" even though
on any scale which included the full political spectrum or all the
world's players, he's not a leftist or socialist in any sense.
Another clear example would be the constant bleating from the American
right that the "media" has a leftist bias, when in fact it is
corporate owned and controlled, and in general toes the line
accordingly when viewed from any kind of broad perspective. But as
your quote suggests, if you shift the scale by the inclusion of? faux
"news" media much farther to the right, voila! - everyone else is now
leftist by comparison, and therefore suspect.
I suspect that we agree in principle on most things political. What is
it about liberals - if you lock two in a room with access to sharp
objects, there will be blood.
Mikey
_______________________________________________
Mai-not mailing list
Mai-not@globalproblematique.net
http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not
--
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG.
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From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Thu Oct 30 11:18:16 2008
From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton)
Date: Thu Oct 30 11:18:32 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Should an Obama Presidency Be Bill Clinton's Third Term?
David Sirota O30
Message-ID: <4909B418.8913.227401A1@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca>
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From siamdave at yahoo.ca Thu Oct 30 12:17:36 2008
From: siamdave at yahoo.ca (Dave Patterson)
Date: Thu Oct 30 12:17:55 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Australian internet filter to be compulsory
In-Reply-To: <48F4BA2E.6030805@ozemail.com.au>
References: <48F45D65.3010201@eftel.com.au>
<20081014094342.F274AF63B@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
<48F4BA2E.6030805@ozemail.com.au>
Message-ID: <200810310017360625.0341B2F0@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
whooee - this true, Dion?!?!?
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,24569780-948,00.html
Australian internet filter to be compulsory
Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson
October 29, 2008 08:02am
THE Federal Government plans to make internet censorship compulsory, putting Australia in the same league as China, Iran and North Korea.
The Government will not let users opt out of the proposed national internet filter, which could ban controversial websites on such subject as euthanasia or anorexia, when it is introduced.
Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy Minister Stephen Conroy admitted the Federal Government's $44.2 million internet censorship plan would now include two tiers - one level of mandatory filtering for all Australians and an optional level that will provide a "clean feed", censoring adult material.
Despite planning to hold "live trials" before the end of the year, Senator Conroy said it was not known what content the mandatory filter would bar, with euthanasia or pro-anorexia sites on the chopping block.
"We are talking about mandatory blocking, where possible, of illegal material," he told a Senate Estimates Committee.
Previously the net nanny proposal was going to allow Australians who wanted uncensored access to the web the option to contact their internet service provider and be excluded from the service.
From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Thu Oct 30 21:25:17 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Thu Oct 30 21:25:25 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Australian internet filter to be compulsory
In-Reply-To: <200810310017360625.0341B2F0@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
References: <48F45D65.3010201@eftel.com.au>
<20081014094342.F274AF63B@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
<48F4BA2E.6030805@ozemail.com.au>
<200810310017360625.0341B2F0@smtp-adsl.totonline.net>
Message-ID: <20081031022519.560E5127D2@fep05.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
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From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Oct 30 20:00:57 2008
From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster)
Date: Thu Oct 30 22:39:55 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: A Concise History of U$ Finance and Global Capitalism
to Date
Message-ID: <044001c93b0a$4ac9ca20$54ad57ca@jfos>
Extract -
" ... in the interests of space and relevance, I will only tell the story of
the historical development of the regime of global financial order under US
hegemony.
All in all, it was an era of unprecedented economic change as the capitalist
system expanded outwards from Britain to define the lives of millions across
the globe. This newly global form of capitalism rested on a system of
international trade and finance based on the gold standard.
The gold standard operated where banks held gold and gave their customers
notes entitling them to a certain amount of gold. ... The rapid expansion
of the world economy would never have been possible without the removal of
risk ensured by the gold standard. (snip)
World Wars, Economic Ruin and the Turn to Autarky
... the Bretton Woods system, was not a free market system i.e. it was not a
system where things were determined exclusively by the price mechanism; it
was a system that saw intense and constant state involvement in the
international economy. Under Bretton Woods, world trade, economic
integration and globalisation were in the hands of governments, whereas the
central premise of the pre-1914 global system was the absence of such
intervention.(snip)
By the end of the 70s, international financial flows (i.e. movement of money
between countries) dwarfed trade flows (i.e. movement of goods between
countries) by a ratio of about 25 to 1. This expansion created a truly
global form of Capital, capable of moving from one country to another at the
click of a button. This ability to move money enabled Capital to escape
government regulation or manipulation of the financial markets, and
empowered it to put pressure on governments with the threat of
disinvestment. (snip)
The 'End of History': The defeat of the Left
The 1980s were a turning point which saw the defeat of the working class
both in both the West and the Global South. Capital, through its increased
power via the freedom of movement granted by financial markets and was able
to force governments to enforce pro-capital, pro-market policies and abandon
the expansion in social spending which had defined capitalism since the end
of World War 2. (snip)
The decreased health of the US economy and its increased dependence on
foreign credit has left the US in a significantly decreased position of
world economic power. It is no longer possible to say that there are no
free-market economies that rival the US in terms of size. It is expected
that the Chinese economy will exceed the size of the US economy by 2030, and
added to this is the increased integration of the EU economy and the growth
of India.
How the decreased economic significance of the US will play out over the
forthcoming years is anyone's guess. It is worth remembering that Europe
lost its position as global economic hegemon largely due to excessive
borrowing from the US in the first half of this century. Considering how
indebted the US is today, this certainly doesn't bode well for its
future.(snip)
The US hit problems in 1971 but still prints it like confetti. President
Obama will mollify the foreign investors and keep printing it."
* * * * * *
http://gadgetsdirectory.blogspot.com/2008/09/us-national-debt-counter-gadget.html
US Finance and Global Capitalism
by George Stapleton - Workers Solidarity Movement
Friday October 17, 2008
The historical development of the global financial order under US hegemony
This is the second of a series of articles covering the financial and money
markets from a critical perspective.
In 'Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction',
http://www.wsm.ie/news_viewer/3613 Paul Bowman examined the derivatives
market and promised that the succeeding article would cover the 'story of
the historical development of successive regimes of global financial orders'
and would explain the role of the Eurodollars market 'in undermining the
Keynesian Bretton Woods system'.
However, in the interests of space and relevance, I will only tell the story
of the historical development of the regime of global financial order under
US hegemony. I will begin by examining how the centre of capital
accumulation shifted from Europe to the US in the first half of the
twentieth century, and how following World War II the global financial order
became centred around the US through the Bretton Woods system.
I will then look at how the Bretton Woods System was undermined,
concentrating as much on the role of workers' militancy as on the role of
the Eurodollars market. After considering the response to the crisis of
Bretton Woods, I'll look at the Clinton boom bringing us up to the current
situation of the US's current heavy dependence on foreign borrowing.
The Emergence of Capitalism as a World System and the Gold Standard
In order to get an understanding of how capitalism, a European invention,
shifted its centre across the Atlantic to the US, it's worth going back to
the period of European hegemony at the end of the nineteenth century.
The end of nineteenth century was the period when capitalism emerged as a
world system. Although it had established itself in Britain at the start of
the nineteenth century, it was not until its end that it became a truly
global system.
It was this period that saw the industrialisation of Germany, the Benelux,
France and America; it was the era of the scramble for Africa; the opening
of the Suez canal; the switch from sailboats to steamboats; the opening of
rail links all across the world; the telegraph etc. Added to this were the
mass migrations from the old world to the new and from the country to the
cities. All in all, it was an era of unprecedented economic change as the
capitalist system expanded outwards from Britain to define the lives of
millions across the globe. This newly global form of capitalism rested on a
system of international trade and finance based on the gold standard.
The gold standard operated where banks held gold and gave their customers
notes entitling them to a certain amount of gold. So if you had a ?10 note
you could go to the Bank of England and ask for ?10 worth of gold and they
would give it to you. As such, the value of a currency fluctuated only with
the value of gold (or on the odd occasion when a currency was revalued).
This made international trade and international finance very safe; it
removed a lot of risk. So for example, if you wanted to buy a French product
worth 100F, and 100F were worth ?10, the French seller would know that he
could go to the bank and get out 100F worth of gold with your ?10. It didn't
matter what the paper said; as long as a currency was convertible into gold
it was safe and almost entirely risk free.
The rapid expansion of the world economy would never have been possible
without the removal of risk ensured by the gold standard.
World Wars, Economic Ruin and the Turn to Autarky
However, this era of capitalism came to an end with World War 1. By November
1918, the world system that tied global capitalism together was in ruins.
World War 1 had marked a major crisis for Europe. Of the Allied Powers,
Russia had had a revolution in 1917, while Britain and France, the two major
European economies of the Allies had borrowed heavily from America to fund
their war effort. This placed Britain and France, previously two of the
world's strongest economies, into a position of massive debt.
The Central powers were both economically and politically destroyed. Both
the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires were dissolved, while a Revolution
toppled the Imperial German State. Germany was also burdened with massive
war reparations as punishment for 'starting' the war.
These reparations saw large quantities of money flow from the German economy
to the Allies and this money in turn flowed from the debt-ridden European
powers to their American financiers. Gold moved from Germany to Britain and
France and from there to America, greatly empowering the US on a global
scale. In 1913 America had 26.6% of the world's gold reserves; by 1924 it
had 45.7%.
The result was monetary chaos in Europe. European banks simply did not have
enough gold reserves to continue operating on the gold standard.
In any market if supply contracts then, with fixed demand, prices rise. What
this means in the money market is that if you reduce the supply of money
then interest rates increase. (If banks have less money to lend they will
charge the people they lend money to more. i.e. the price of money
increases.) If interest rates increase then it becomes more expensive to
borrow, so investors don't invest as much. This causes the economy to slow
down, jobs to be lost etc. This is precisely what happened in Europe in the
interwar period. The contraction in the money supply caused by the flow of
money towards America was followed by mass unemployment and a general
economic slow down.
This economic chaos created immense social tension in Europe as the working
class grew more and more militant and organised. In response to this
continent-wide tension, large sections of the bourgeoisie, backed by landed
interests, abandoned the free market and turned to fascism. Meanwhile, in
America, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 marked the end of free trade.
Quickly the internationally integrated capitalist system of the prewar
period became little more than a memory as country after country shifted to
beggar-thy-neighbour style economic policies. This turn to autarky (economic
self-reliance) was one of the driving forces behind World War 2. From
1939-1945 Europe again fell into a war of pointless self-destruction.
The Bretton Woods System
When it became evident that the Allies were going to win the Second World
War, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations met in Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire, USA to work out how the international capitalist system would
work post-war. What was agreed at Bretton Woods ultimately brought about the
creation of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the World Bank and the
World Trade Organisation. [The World Bank was originally called the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the WTO was
originally called the International Trade Organisation. The US Congress
vetoed the setting up of the ITO, so instead of it being an organisation it
was, until 1994, merely an 'agreement', the General Agreement on Trades and
Tariffs]
The reasoning behind this conference was the Allies' ruling class's fear of
a repetition of the chaos of the inter-war period. They wanted a return to
the pre-1914 situation of an internationally integrated and rapidly growing
world economy. However, it was clear that after the war Europe would not
have the gold to operate under the gold standard. They were right. By 1947,
America once again had the bulk of the world's gold reserve: 47%. In place
of the gold standard, a system, known as the Bretton Woods system, was
developed, whereby the American dollar would be convertible into gold and
every currency would have an exchange rate fixed to the US dollar. Thereby
every currency would be convertible into dollars, which, in turn, were
convertible into gold. The dollar was as good as gold, and every other
currency as good as the dollar.
This gave the rest of the world the economic stability it desired. But,
significantly, it also gave America unprecedented economic power as the
centre of global capitalism. The Bretton Woods system was managed through
the IMF, whose headquarters were in Washington DC. The headquarters of the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (i.e. the World Bank),
which oversaw post-war international loans for 'reconstruction and
development' was also in Washington DC. The GATT, which facilitated the
reduction in trade tariffs and the increase in international trade, was also
based in Washington DC.
It is worth noting that this system, the Bretton Woods system, was not a
free market system i.e. it was not a system where things were determined
exclusively by the price mechanism; it was a system that saw intense and
constant state involvement in the international economy. Under Bretton
Woods, world trade, economic integration and globalisation were in the hands
of governments, whereas the central premise of the pre-1914 global system
was the absence of such intervention.
The Underpinnings of the Bretton Woods System begin to Unravel
However, the overtly political nature of the Bretton Woods agreement threw
up its own problems. By the 1960s, these problems had generated a crisis
that threw its continued existence into doubt.
1. The Cold War and Vietnam
Firstly, the Vietnam War threw the legitimacy of US hegemony into question
within the US itself. An interesting aspect of the Bretton Woods agreement
was the difficulty with which it was sold to the American ruling class.
Although Bretton Woods did see America become the world hegemon, America had
historically been uninterested in world hegemony, preferring isolationist
policy and unilateral action. The infamous Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, which
effectively quadrupled previous import tariffs, drew a large degree of the
blame for the total collapse of international trade in the 1930s. As noted
above, even with the Bretton Woods agreement, Congress vetoed the creation
of an International Trade Organisation.
It must therefore be asked why the US agreed to take the position of world
hegemon despite such recent history of strongly isolationist stances. The
answer was given clearly by the contemporary Republican leader in the House
of Representatives, who identified it as a question of "whether there shall
be a coalition between the British sphere and the American sphere or whether
there shall be a coalition between the British sphere and the Soviet
sphere."
This question did not even need to be asked in countries such as France and
Italy, which would surely have gone Communist without American intervention.
The legitimacy of the Bretton Woods system in America was therefore tacked
to the Cold War and the threat that American Capital believed the USSR
posed. In the 60s, the Vietnam War threw the legitimacy of the Cold War and
the extent of the Soviet threat into question.
2. The Post-War Settlement and Workers' Militancy
Secondly, and more importantly, the international post-war peace between
labour and Capital was thrown into crisis. The Bretton Woods international
system was not, as noted above, a pure free market system. This shift from
the free market was mirrored on a national level in almost every Bretton
Woods country with the emergence of Social Democracy. The threat of the
Soviet Union on an international level was matched in most Western countries
by a domestic revolutionary movement.
Thus a major task in post war reconstruction was the need to bring about the
integration of the revolutionary labour movements. This was achieved by the
'Post War Settlement', which, simply put, meant that Capital agreed to low
profit rates, if labour agreed not to have a revolution and, more
immediately, agreed to wage restraint. This post-war period was one of
unprecedented economic growth, negligible unemployment, massive investment
in social housing, education and health care etc. largely brought about
through this post-war settlement.
Throughout the period, improvements in living conditions were matched by the
increased power of the working class, as its size, level of unionisation and
unemployment benefit increased. Then, in the mid- to late-sixties, workers
started demanding more than the settlement had granted them. For instance,
some 150 million strike days were taken in France in the revolutionary
period of May-June 1968. These strikes resulted in a 10% wage increase, an
increase in the minimum wage and extensions of union rights.
In Italy, in 1969, some 60 million strike days were taken in a movement led
from the shop floor. These also resulted in a 10% wage increase, reduced
working hours, parity of treatment when sick for blue and white collar
workers and increased union rights. In the UK in 1970/71, 25 million days
were taken by striking workers. Such increased working class militancy was
also seen in the US, which topped the OECD league table in days on strike
per worker in 1967 and again in 1970.
These struggles saw a significant increase in wages for workers across the
world, increases in unemployment benefit for unemployed workers across the
world, increased social investment and so on. Perhaps most significantly, it
saw a significant decrease in the rate of profit and an even more
significant decrease in the share of national income going to Capital. The
post-war settlement was over: the working class wanted more.
These problems were compounded by a further problem for the Bretton Woods
system; the emergence of the Eurodollar market.
3. Control of Financial Markets and the Eurodollar Market
The Eurodollar market began in 1957 when, following its 1956 invasion of
Hungary, the Soviet Union grew increasingly worried that the US government
would freeze (i.e. prevent the withdrawal of) its dollar deposits held in US
banks. For this reason, it started transferring its dollar holdings into
London based banks. Thus the London based banks were holding dollar deposits
outside of the country in which they were legal tender - the US. As these
deposits were outside of the US they were no longer under the jurisdiction
of the Federal Reserve (i.e. the US central bank).
A Eurodollar is therefore a dollar held outside of the US. You can of course
do this with other currencies creating what are known as Eurocurrencies. A
Eurocurrency is any currency held outside of the country in which it is
legal tender. For example you can have Euro-Yuan, Euro-Yen, Euro-Sterling or
even Euro-Euro. It's important to note, however, that Eurocurrencies have
nothing to do with the Euro.
Eurodollars became significant in the 1960s as US Multi-National
Corporations (MNCs) starting investing more and more outside of the US. This
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by US MNCs was directed primarily into
Europe, and, to a lesser degree, South-East Asia. As US MNCs started
investing heavily outside of the US they kept many of their deposits in
dollars. This migration of capital from the US to Europe lead to many US
banks entering the Eurodollars market. By 1961, US banks controlled 50% of
the market.
These developments created, in the Eurodollar market, a financial system
outside the control of the world's central banks, and therefore, largely
outside the control of the Bretton Woods arrangement.
With the growth of this unregulated liberal money market, and with the
growth of US FDI, total US liabilities to 'foreigners' soon far exceeded the
US's gold reserve [see graph]. To deal with this, President Kennedy tried to
restrict US foreign lending and investment in 1963. However this attempt
backfired. As Eugene Birnbaum of Chase Manhattan Bank explained, "[f]oreign
dollar loans that had previously come under the regulatory guidelines of the
US government simply moved out of the jurisdictional reach. The result has
been the amassing of an immense volume of liquid funds and markets - the
world of Eurodollar finance - outside the regulatory authority of any
country or agency".
In brief, a situation had been created whereby US finance had simply
migrated from the US into Europe, or more specifically, the City of London.
As Andrew Walter put it, "London regained its position as the centre for
international financial business, but this business was centred on the
dollar and the major players were American banks and their clients".
Collapse of Bretton Woods
Combined with this problem of increased liabilities was a decrease in the
US's gold reserves. This arose due to inflationary pressure as the increase
in government spending pushed down the value of the dollar, causing foreign
dollar holders to convert their dollars into gold.
With the continued growth in the power of the working class, government
investment in social services increased. In 1964, the US saw the start of
Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program. As the 60s wore on, this program
increased in scope, with the increased demands of African-Americans and
other sections of the working class for improved living conditions. Adding
to this growth in spending was the war in Vietnam, which cost $518bn (9.4
per cent of GDP). To fund these spending increases the US government
resorted to deficit spending and this borrowing drove inflation, meaning
that the dollar was able to buy less; it was worth less.
However, as the dollar was set as being worth a certain amount of gold, it
remained at the same value on the international market despite domestic
inflation; the dollar was artificially strong. Increasingly, holders of
dollars became aware of the fact that the value of the dollar was
artificially inflated and started converting their dollar holdings into
gold, running down the US's gold holding. [See graph]
The US government was faced with a choice; it could rein in its economy; cut
spending, thereby deflating the currency and maintain the gold value of the
dollar. Or it could simply refuse to convert dollars into gold. In August
1971, Nixon did the latter and by 1973, the Bretton Woods system had
completely collapsed.
Stagflation, Workers Militancy and the Collapse of Keynesianism
The collapse of Bretton Woods, matched with the explosion of the Eurodollar
market, enabled countries to pursue extremely loose monetary policies.
Countries cut interest rates to stimulate the economy. These cuts increased
the money supply, greatly driving inflation. There was too much money
chasing too few goods, so the price of those goods increased.
If prices increase then the real value of wages decrease as they can no
longer buy as much. Therefore, as prices increased, workers demanded higher
wages to compensate for the higher cost of living. This caused capitalists
to charge even higher prices to maintain profit levels. This system of
self-reinforcing inflation was referred to as stagflation because it saw
inflation without increased economic growth or decreased unemployment.
A theory that many economic planners at the time were relying on was one
element of Keynesian economics known as the Phillips curve. Essentially the
Phillips curve is a graphical exposition of the idea that if you have high
levels of inflation you will have low levels of unemployment and vice versa.
The rationale behind this theory was that if you decrease interest rates you
will stimulate the economy by making it easier to borrow, thereby
stimulating investment. As investment increases, the demand for labour
increases; unemployment falls and the economy grows.
However, in the 70s, this failed. The West experienced high levels of
unemployment despite the fact that by the end of the 1970s interest rates
around the world had fallen to below zero (i.e. borrowers were being paid to
borrow).
The first reason worth looking at was the aforementioned working class
militancy. Workers knew that Capital was using inflation to cut real wages
and the working class was strong enough to respond to this attack on living
conditions. Workers demanded wage increases that at the very least matched
inflation. Labour mobilised itself to protect its standard of living.
British coalminers slowed work and then went out on strike in early 1974,
forcing the country onto a three-day week. Between 1974 and 1979, an average
of 12 million days a year were lost to strike action in the UK compared with
an average of below 4 million for the 50s and 60s.
In Italy, intense class struggle saw the development of an "escalator",
which tied wages to inflation. In Portugal, workers took over factories
during the Carnation Revolution. In Spain, there was an explosion of class
struggle as Franco's rule came to an end. In Germany, the Social Democratic
government tried to assuage the class struggle with its project of
co-determination, which offered workers a voice in the management of the
companies they worked for, while in Sweden the government developed the much
more radical Meidner plan which was intended to see the gradual transferral
of ownership of all enterprises in Sweden to Labour Unions.
The second reason was the 1973 oil crisis, where OPEC massively increased
the price of oil creating sudden and unexpected price increases across the
world for almost every commodity. This increase in oil prices raised costs
and cut into profits, thereby discouraging investment. It also drove
inflation above the targeted level, creating uncertainty in the economy,
further discouraging investment.
Added to these domestic problems was the further growth of financial
markets. The Eurodollar markets received further stimulation from the
surplus funds accruing to OPEC countries due to the 1973 oil price hike. As
the industrial world experienced stagflation, international banks invested
Eurodollar capital in less developed countries, particularly in Latin
America. Combined with innovations in financial techniques and instruments,
the deregulation of the financial market and the possibilities opened up by
modern communications technology, this caused the financial markets to grow
rapidly, causing what some have called 'the financial revolution'.
By the end of the 70s, international financial flows (i.e. movement of money
between countries) dwarfed trade flows (i.e. movement of goods between
countries) by a ratio of about 25 to 1. This expansion created a truly
global form of Capital, capable of moving from one country to another at the
click of a button. This ability to move money enabled Capital to escape
government regulation or manipulation of the financial markets, and
empowered it to put pressure on governments with the threat of
disinvestment.
By the late 70s, western Capital was in crisis. It didn't know how to
respond. When a second round of OPEC oil shocks occurred in 1979, it was
clear to Capital that something drastic must be done.
Smashing the Unions, the 'Volcker Shock' and the Emergence of Neo-liberalism
On August 6th, 1979, President Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker as head
of the Federal Reserve. Immediately Volcker made clear his intentions as
head of the Fed: he would do whatever it took to bring inflation under
control and stabilise the currency. (This commitment became associated in
the popular mind with the monetarism of Milton Friedman, although this is
slightly inaccurate.) Volcker pushed the short term interest rate up 5% to
15%, eventually bringing it above 20%. Persistent in his drive to bring down
inflation, he kept interest rates at these astoundingly high levels until
1982. For Capital, these interest rate increases, known as the 'Volcker
Shock' were like putting brakes on the economy as it began to spin out of
control. In order to regain control, the Fed deliberately drove the economy
into two successive recessions over this three year period. This raised
unemployment to nearly 11%, drove down manufacturing output by 10% and drove
down the median family income by an equal 10%.
This attack on working class living standards was secured in 1981 with
Ronald Reagan's electoral victory. In this election, the Professional Air
Traffic Controllers Organisation (PATCO), along with the Teamsters and the
Air Line Pilots Association, had departed from tradition and backed Reagan,
a Republican, and not Carter, the incumbent Democratic candidate.
On August 3rd, 1981, PATCO went out on strike for higher pay, better working
conditions and a 32 hour week. This strike was technically illegal as
government unions are not allowed strike in the US, however, a number of
government unions had struck before without repercussions. This time was
different and Reagan ordered the PATCO workers back to work, threatening
dismissal if they continued the strike. Few complied with these orders and
on August 5th, President Reagan fired the 11,345 striking PATCO workers.
The PATCO strike and the 'Volcker Shock' marked the defeat of the working
class in the long cycle of struggles that had begun in the mid 60s, turning
the economy definitively in the interests of Capital. High interest rates
massively increased the return on capital. Financial investors who
previously could barely earn rates of return equal to the rate of inflation
could now earn the highest profit rates in memory. With the end of inflation
and the inspiration of the PATCO strike employers took a hard line when it
came to wage increases. Workers, they held, could no longer demand wage
rises in line with inflation so no more increases would be forthcoming.
Between 1978 and 1983 real wages in America decreased by over 10%. This
decline in real wages was continuous until 1993, by which time real wages
were 15% below 1978 levels.
This transformation had international ramifications. Due to the creation of
the global financial market through the growth of the Eurodollars market,
other countries were forced to follow suit in raising interest rates.
Otherwise, they risked the migration of capital to the higher interest rates
of the US. Investors would not buy German government bonds at 7% interest if
US government bonds had a rate of 15%.
The transformation was also matched by political shifts in Europe. Just
prior to Volcker taking charge of the Fed, Thatcher had been elected Prime
Minster of the UK. In Germany, for the first time since the mid-sixties, the
Social Democrats lost the election in 1982 and the Christian Democrats came
to power. In France, Mitterand's Socialist Party had come to power in 1981
amidst much fanfare, but had to abandon their program for government within
two years as Mitterand launched the 'Franc Fort' policy following the 1983
French macroeconomic crisis. As Jeffrey Sachs and Charles Wyplosz noted in
1986, "the government of the left has in the end introduced a tougher, more
market oriented programme than anything considered by the previous
centre-right administration."
It would be cavalier not to mention here the impact that these interest rate
increases had on the developing world, Latin America in particular. As
mentioned above, billions of petrodollars were lent to Latin American states
in the 70s through the newly global financial markets. When interest rates
increased, Latin American countries had difficulty meeting their debt
obligations and, one after another, defaulted, causing the 1982 Latin
American Debt Crisis. Latin America has yet to recover fully from this
crisis, as in the years following, investors were no longer willing to
invest in the region. This prolonged recession is referred to as 'the lost
decade'. It was this debt crisis and the associated crisis of confidence in
the Third World economy that caused and provided justification for the
infamous IMF Structural Adjustment Programs of the 80s and 90s
The 'End of History': The defeat of the Left
The 1980s were a turning point which saw the defeat of the working class
both in both the West and the Global South. Capital, through its increased
power via the freedom of movement granted by financial markets and was able
to force governments to enforce pro-capital, pro-market policies and abandon
the expansion in social spending which had defined capitalism since the end
of World War 2.
It's also worth mentioning that the contractionary policies of the Reagan
administration were directly undermined by its deficit spending. Reagan,
while committed to the fairy-tale idea of 'the magic of the marketplace',
was even more committed to the equally fairy-tale idea of defeating the
'evil empire' (i.e. the USSR). He massively increased military spending
while cutting taxes bringing the top rate down from 70% to 38% in a matter
of years. These tax cuts were based on a theory famously advanced by Arthur
Laffer, on the back of a napkin while having dinner with Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld and others.
This theory, known as the Laffer curve, argued that as taxes got higher
people worked less and saved less, and therefore that raising taxes could
decrease tax revenue. The idea follows that in order to raise tax revenue
you should cut taxes. Needless to say, it didn't work and the US spiralled
into debt. This continued under the Bush Sr. administration, which followed
Reagan's. Between the two administrations the federal debt rose from a
post-war low of 33% of GDP in 1981 to 66% in 1993.
By the mid-nineties the defeat of the left and the working class was secure.
The old communist parties crumbled and the old social democrats scrabbled
for the 'third way'. By the mid-nineties, former leftists began coming to
power again. In late 1992 Bill Clinton was elected on the back of a campaign
that focused clearly on the economy. His unofficial campaign slogan was
'It's the economy, stupid.' After the long years of the 1980s and the
jobless recovery following the 1990/91 recession, Americans were eager for
something new.
The Clinton Boom
Fortunately for Clinton, he was president during an unexpected surge in
productivity growth, i.e. the amount of value created by an hour's work. The
average annual rate of productivity growth from 1947 to 1973 had been 2.8%,
but following the crisis of the late 60s/early 70s productivity slumped to
1.4% between 1973 and 1995. Unexpectedly, productivity growth surged in 1995
and from the second half of the year through to the second half of 2000
productivity growth averaged 2.7% annually. This growth in productivity laid
the basis for the boom of the mid-late 90s, the now infamous 'New Economy'.
This boom was further facilitated by the lax monetary policy of the Fed
under Alan Greenspan.
When the Phillips curve ceased to operate in the 1970s, some economists,
most famously Milton Friedman, argued there was a 'natural rate of
unemployment'. When unemployment was at this rate decreasing the interest
rate would fail to stimulate the economy or reduce unemployment but would
simply drive inflation. This was their theory of how stagflation occurred.
As this theory grew in popularity the 'natural rate of unemployment' was
quickly renamed the more diplomatic 'Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of
Unemployment' or NAIRU.
Through the 1980s and into the 90s, the Fed had adhered to this doctrine and
estimated that NAIRU was 6%-6.2%. So, when unemployment fell below 6% in
1990, Greenspan increased interest rates to prevent inflation, or
'overheating' of the economy. This interest rate increase slowed down the
economy and helped cause the 1990/91 recession. Again in 1994, when
unemployment began to fall below 6%, he hiked up the interest rate. However,
in the second half of 1995 when unemployment fell to 5.7% and he saw no
inflationary pressures he broke from the NAIRU theory and didn't increase
interest rates. Greenspan then let unemployment fall even further without
increasing the interest rate. It fell below 5% in 1997, went to 4.5% in 1998
and in 1999 and 2000 settled at 4%; the lowest unemployment rate since 1969.
Throughout this there was little change in the underlying rate of inflation
and little change in the interest rate.
The Stock Market Boom and Bubble
This productivity boom drove a stock market boom. However, another major
factor contributing to the stock market boom worth mentioning was the
increase in stock ownership. This was driven by the changing nature of the
pension industry. Historically, most workers' pension plans were 'defined
benefit' pension plans, while today most workers have 'defined contribution'
pension plans. The names of these plans explain the difference between them.
Under a defined benefit plan, the benefit that workers receive when they
draw their pension is defined. Under a defined contribution pension plan,
the contribution that workers make to the plan while still working is
defined.
Defined contribution plans grew in America following changes in the tax code
in the late 70s. These changes encouraged workers to agree to defined
contribution plans where workers and their employers put money into a
tax-sheltered retirement account, such as 401(k) accounts. The money held in
these accounts, these pension funds, was then invested on the financial
markets. This meant that workers' pensions were then dependent on the
performance of these investments, as under defined contribution plans the
benefit at the end is not defined.
The growth in productivity, the expansion in demand in the financial markets
caused by the growth of pension funds, a growing amount of delirium caused
by the newness of the technology driving the productivity boom and the fact
that a similar boom hadn't been seen since the 60s, all combined to cause a
massive boom in the stock market which quickly turned into a bubble. As
share prices grew and grew a lot of nonsense began to be expounded. Talk
developed of a 'New Economy' where shares prices could only go up, where
recessions were a thing of the past, where the business cycle was over,
where productivity growth could only increase and increase.
Many bought into this euphoric idea, and as shares prices were driven up and
up, more and more people started speculating on the stock market driving
shares further upwards. The demand for shares was seemingly insatiable and
as such their price only went up. New internet companies, the dotcoms, which
had little to no real assets, saw their share value go through the roof as
everyone looked for the new Yahoo, or AOL. Even people who saw that share
prices were artificially inflated entered the market thinking that provided
they got out before the bubble burst they'd be safe. And of course, as with
all bubbles, burst it did. In March 2000 the value of shares in dotcoms and
IT companies began to tumble. Between 2000 and 2002, $5 trillion dollars in
market value of technology companies was wiped out.
This bursting of the bubble was worsened by the attacks of 9-11. The New
York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ were closed
until September 17th following the attacks. When markets reopened the Dow
Jones Industrial Index fell 7.1%, its biggest ever one day fall. By the end
of the week it was down 14.3%, its biggest ever one week fall. $1.4 trillion
dollars in stock value was lost over this week.
The Post 9-11 'Jobless Recovery': The Housing Bubble and Foreign Borrowing
The Fed responded by cutting interest rates sharply from 3.5% down to 3.0%.
Then following the bankruptcy of Enron and the accounting scandals that
followed, the rates were cut even further to a 50 year low of 1%. It stayed
at this level until 2004 when it was gradually increased until it reached
5.25% in 2006. These low interest rates stimulated the economy and it rose
out of recession, meaning that the 2000/2001 recession was one of the
briefest and mildest in history.
However, it is important to note that this recovery was not based on growth
in employment and did not result in increased earnings for the working class
but was almost exclusively fuelled by borrowing. Instead of job growth, 2002
saw net job losses, which continued into 2003. By November 2004 the economy
had still not regained the number of jobs it had lost in the 2000-2001
recession. Wage growth at first stalled, decreasing from 1.5% per annum in
the late 90s to 0% by 2003. Then wages began decreasing! From mid 2003 to
mid 2005 the median hourly wage fell by more than 1%.
People have referred to the post 9-11 recovery as a jobless recovery. This
'jobless recovery' was almost solely driven by consumer demand and
government spending. Despite falling income, consumer spending from November
2001 to August 2004 surged by 9%. This was driven by a $4 trillion increase
in household borrowing between 2000 and 2005. The government was also
borrowing heavily, running a current account deficit of more than $700
billion, the equivalent of 6% of GDP.
This borrowing-driven boom was fuelled firstly by house price inflation and
secondly by foreign borrowing, in particular from China.
Housing prices exploded between 2001 and 2007. The incredibly low interest
rates of 2001-2004 had made it extremely easy to borrow and acquire credit.
This availability of credit enabled more and more people to buy or invest in
property driving up the price of property and thereby causing a housing
boom.
It important to note that house price inflation is not wealth creation.
House prices do not go up because houses become more productive; they go up
because of a decrease in supply or, as in this case, an increase in demand.
House price inflation does not contribute to the productive capacities of an
economy; it merely transfers wealth from the house-buyer to the
house-seller. As the Economist points out, "[f]or a given housing stock,
when prices rise, the capital gain to the home-owners is offset by the
increased future living costs of non-home-owners. Society as a whole is no
better off. Rising house prices do not create wealth, they merely
redistribute it." In August 2007 the housing bubble burst, and one year
later we are still feeling the brunt of this.
US Debt and its Dependence on China
The US was spending far beyond its means during the 2001-2007 period. This
behaviour was financed primarily by foreign borrowing, largely from emerging
economies, China in particular.
China was buying large amounts of dollar denominated assets, in particular
US Treasury bills or T-bills. By buying these assets it drove up the dollar,
increasing US demand for Chinese goods & driving down the Yuan keeping the
price of Chinese goods low on the international market. An added reason for
China (and other emerging economies) to buy dollar denominated assets was to
mitigate risk. Following the 1997-98 East Asian Crisis most East Asian
countries have tried to accumulate large stocks of dollar denominated assets
in order to be able to respond should a speculative attack on their economy
occur.
The decreased health of the US economy and its increased dependence on
foreign credit has left the US in a significantly decreased position of
world economic power. It is no longer possible to say that there are no
free-market economies that rival the US in terms of size. It is expected
that the Chinese economy will exceed the size of the US economy by 2030, and
added to this is the increased integration of the EU economy and the growth
of India.
How the decreased economic significance of the US will play out over the
forthcoming years is anyone's guess. It is worth remembering that Europe
lost its position as global economic hegemon largely due to excessive
borrowing from the US in the first half of this century. Considering how
indebted the US is today, this certainly doesn't bode well for its future.
However, as of yet, the US faces no realistic challenger and we certainly
shouldn't rule out the US economy bouncing back and reasserting its
centrality in, and hegemony over global capitalism.
Related Link: http://www.wsm.ie/index.php
by southern comfort - Popular Peoples' Bank of Judea
Sat Oct 18, 2008 23:40
1. The Dutch east India company got into debt around 1700 to pay its
dividends and only hit a floor in 1788.
2. The British loans from the Napoleonic wars to 1918 were considered
impossibly big, but they staggered on to 1947; just.
3. The US hit problems in 1971 but still prints it like confetti. President
Obama will mollify the foreign investors and keep printing it.
Inflation is to be the solution, and will be a huge issue for all of us in
3 - 5 years (trade unions please note). Don't be caught holding cash when
that happens.
What can you do right now? Umm, er, not much more than adding this clock
below to your google page.
Related Link:
http://gadgetsdirectory.blogspot.com/2008/09/us-nationa....html
Jobless men keep going. We can't take care of our own.
http://garizo.blogspot.com/2008/10/1929_22.html#links
by dunk
Thu Oct 30, 2008
Good stuff lads, thorough analysis of whats going on in these strange times,
the start of the end? In recent discussions here in Barcelona at the ASPO
Peak Oil Open Day, Ugo Bardi, was outlining in simply nature science terms
that the capitalist system is over! His scietific reasoning outlined how
capitalism was very efficient at exploitation of natural resources, the fuel
for the system, but that the cheap oil is running out and that this, the
financial crisis, is but the first step of the downfall of the capitalist
system due to lack of reserves. Its natural, as predicted by Hubberts
secret: We are running out of oil!, watch accompanying vid for more on this.
So its time for us to get creative and come up with sustainable solutions,
which is what we are busy here in BCN doing...
On that note, I included this IMC-IE feature in a recent blog post with many
others, offering analysis and critique as well as solutions, perhaps you?ll
browse etc...
>From OIL AGE financial crisis, to sustainable communities + COP 15
the intro of which is...
Now that the flawed financial system has taken its first fall due to absurd
reliance on endless cheap energy, and the financial crisis has hit and is
hitting further, now that the climate camp movement is growing, now that we
are preparing for COP 15 in Denmark( cop15 call out + The Other call on
COP - Nov 30 '09 global day of action: 10 year aniversary from N30 @
Seattle), .
Id like to pass on healthy ideas that are moving about: that now is the time
to build truly sustainable communities and cities.
As eco city guru Richard Register recently said: Build out, don't Bail out.
Ecologically tuned cities are the answer....
Related Link: http://itsafunnyoldworld.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/oilage/
------------------------------------------------------
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http://www.australis.com.au/
------------------------------------------------------
Provided by Australis
http://www.australis.com.au/
From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Fri Oct 31 00:57:41 2008
From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster)
Date: Fri Oct 31 00:58:01 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: Industrial Over-production a Hidden Crisis Behind the
Financial Fiasco.
Message-ID: <05c701c93b1d$96fd1ab0$54ad57ca@jfos>
Extract -
"While it took 20,000 workers to produce 100,000 GM cars in the mid 1970s,
today the job is done by 6,000 workers. The same is true for misnamed
"post-Fordist" industries, e.g. call centers, where 100 or 200 agents easily
displace1,000 white-collar workers, e.g. in banking or insurances. ... The
enormous increase in productivity meets its consequence: falling relative
income and falling profits in the production sphere. This emerges as an
over-production crisis. The back-bone of Neo-Keynesianism (give people
more money and the economy will recover) has now been broken twice.(snip)
... this crisis reveals that capitalism is not a consumer society: a
decreasing share of the social product is dedicated for private consumption,
the increasing share flows into the extension of the (war/factory)
machinery...
Dot.com dead: No new product-cycle in sight!
Despite all the talk about an information society and post-industrial
relations, no social product and mode of production has emerged which
would have replaced industrial products like cars, mobile-phones etc.
The hailed new consumer goods (DVD-Players, mobile phones etc.) need a
tiny fraction of social labor, the Nokia plant in Bochum manufactured
100,000 to 150,000 phones per day and was closed because it was not
productive enough.(snip)
The dot.com crisis was the final straw, the new sector which was
supposed to be the way out of the automobile crisis and it collapsed
within no time! The flight into finance accelerated.(snip)
... industrial capital had to bet on future profits by increasing the
amount
of credits. This became obvious even before the current financial crisis;
major industrial companies had liquidity problems, GM and Ford lost
millions with their pension funds on the stock market, Chrysler's leasing
bank was close to bankruptcy.
The run for money started on a global scale. Proletarians did the same,
low wages were compensated with private debts and mortgages - but
compared to the state and to companies their indebtedness remained
marginal (and within the global proletariat the average Indian rural
proletarian household is probably deeper indebted than a US-American
working-class family, relatively to both economic output and income).(snip)
Another problem for the "globalized" hunt for cheap wages is the increasing
transport costs due to rising oil prices: the production chains are
over-stretched.
No low wage paradise left: The crisis won't be re-located anymore!
* * * * * *
prol-position news #10 - 10/2008 - http://www.prol-position.net
Editorial
Since we published the first issue of prol-position news in March 2005
the world-wide transformation of the conditions of exploitation
continued, factories and call centers kept on moving around the globe,
workers followed them or went ahead, markets boomed and slumped, laws
were made and broken, assembly-lines and offices got re-shuffled and
re-connected to the world wide web of transport and divided labor. The
newsletters reflected these changes. More on web-site...
Comments on Crisis
The current financial crisis is rooted in the crisis of social production:
profit squeeze / over-accumulation in the industrialized regions of the
world,
workers unrests and increasing desires in the newly industrialized
periphery,
major pressure from the roaming rural proletariat of the South, trying to
escape the misery of the soil and village life. More...
China's Migrant Workers
Even before the beginning of the reforms in 1978 socialist China had
experienced migration movements. In the early 1950s millions came from
the countryside to the cities to work in the new state industries. At
first, they were needed there, but with unemployment and problems with
supplies of e.g. food in the mid-50s the government introduced a strict
household registration system (hu kou). The hukou-system restricted the
mobility of most Chinese and kept them in the countryside for the next
decades. More...
The Generation of Unhappy Workers in China
During the restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s the urban proletariat of
the state-owned factories - the gongren - was the focus of the
restructuring and experienced massive layoffs after 1997. Before the
reforms the differences between the gongren and the peasants and migrant
workers were all too obvious. A part of the gongren had a number of
benefits, like a guaranteed work place and better health care, and were
considered a strong pillar of the socialist regime. But after the reforms,
the urban proletariat became the losers. More...
Female Workers Under Maoist Patriarchy
One may think socialism wiped out the Chinese form of "feudalistic"
patriarchy. At least, Maoism improved the women's situation in
comparison to the time before "liberation", in the cities as well as on
the countryside. After "liberation" in 1949 most urban women did wage
labor in state-owned factories or other businesses, while rural women
were drawn into the people's communes' labor service. That changed their
position in the family, also because due to the low wages in the Mao-era
the women's wage was an important part of the family income. More...
Dacia-Renault in Romania
On March 24, 2008, about 8,000 of the 13,000 workers at the Dacia car
factory in Romania went on an open-ended strike. One of their demands
was a wage increase of 50 to 70 percent. For the first time in a strike
in Romania, the strikers did not base their demands on standard wages in
Romania but compared themselves to Renault workers in Turkey or France,
who earn between 900 and 2,000 Euros for the same work (the workers at
Dacia earn about 300 Euros). This strike at Dacia is the most significant
struggle in the Romanian private sector since 1989 and could be the
beginning
of a wave of strikes for better living conditions across the country.
More...
Docker Strike in Romania
In Romania the strike wave continues: on Thursday morning, 17th of July
2008, five hundred dock workers at the Agigea Sud terminal went on
indefinite strike. The terminal belongs to the container port of Constanta ,
a town at the Romanian coast of the Black Sea. Their main demands: a
wage increase of 700 Ron (about 200 Euros), a bonus for seniority,
extra-payment for overtime and a clear regulation of the working-time.T
he author of this article was in Constanta and talked to the workers.
More...
Filipina Textile Workers in Romania
Like many other companies in the Romanian tex tile and construction
sectors, textiles firm Mon dostar has had to struggle with a persistent
labor shortage for several years. Amongst the local workers hardly
anyone is willing to work for the low wages paid in the textile industries.
Since three months ago Mondostar has employed 95 women from
the Philippines in order to counteract the shrinking supply of labor.
Hoping for a good job in Europe, the workers from the Philippines
borrowed money while still in their home country. More...
Bangladeshi Workers in Romania
The first workers from Bangladesh that we meet in the town-center of
Bacau belong to the 74 construction-workers who have been employed for
three months by the firm Rombet S.A. They are working with local
construction-workers on the large construction-site for a new shopping
mall. They cannot complain about the food and accommodation. "But the
wages are much too low! We have a contract for 500 US-Dollars on 8 hours
a day. But we work10 hours each day, including Saturday, and we only
get 375 US-Dollars!" More...
Machine Plant in Germany
Winter 2008. Lunch break at MOB, a special ma chine manufacturing
company in Luckenwalde, 60 kilometers south of Berlin, an industrial
dormi tory town, high unemployment, and the home town of Rudi Dutschke,
the 1968 SDS student leader. China and the international supply chains
reverberate in this German small town proletarian daily life. The 80
workmates are from the hinter land of Brandenburg and Saxony, mostly
village types, but they have assembled giant engine washing-machines in
car factories around the globe: for VW in Poznan, Poland, Chery in
China, Daimler in Western Germany, Volvo in Sweden, BMW in the USA,
Conti in Japan or for wheel rim manufacturing plants in Tijuana, Mexico.
More...
Organizing
(Former) left radicals and unions work together - not only in political
alliances, e.g. when organiz ing certain campaigns (clean clothes,
campaigns for global social rights etc.). In wildcat #78 we ex plained
and criticized the "organizing"-approach which has created illusions
concerning a "new type of union". The illusions prevail mainly amongst
those lefties who got engaged in the de bate about 'precarity' during
the last years. If we start from the general critique of unions as
organi zations of representation of workers then we have to state that
'organizing' is not better than the tra ditional union work, but rather
its continuation. 'Organizing' certainly does not stand for a rupture
neither with the traditional claim to represent and nor with social
partnership. More...
---------------------------------------
Comments on Crisis
The following are rather more preliminary and turmoiled thoughts in
turmoiled times than a collectively debated position...
Stop looking into the headlights - It's a production affair!
The current financial crisis is rooted in the crisis of social production:
profit squeeze/over-accumulation in the industrialized regions of the
world, workers unrests and increasing desires in the newly industrialized
periphery, major pressure from the roaming rural proletariat of the South,
trying to escape the misery of the soil and village life.
There might be a crash, but no short-cut!
We have to understand the real limits of capitalist social production
which are hidden behind the current crisis, not only in order to avoid
false short-cuts (demands for regulation of the financial sphere from
the moderate left, un-rooted voluntaristic proclamations or
"direct-action" from the radicals), but also in order to find a
revolutionary answer within the proletariat: not as bank-scratching
paupers who have lost their little savings, but as producers who have
fueled the frenzy and who are able to produce a different social
community.
In the following we will try to lay out some of the material limitations
of the current capitalist cycle. We will mainly refer to the global
automobile industry and we have a reason for doing so: it was and
still is the main industry of this capitalist cycle, the "American Century",
it is one of the most socialized industries with the longest production
chains within the international division of labor, the most resource
and human labor consuming sector.
Under the surface of over-production and financial bubbles: a way to
productive social cooperation!
The industrial crisis has been simmering since the early 1970s, since
then "de-industrialization" was the word of the day, everyone focused on
rust-belts and increasing unemployment. In fact most industries were not
dismantled but underwent a productivity boost. While it took 20,000
workers to produce 100,000 GM cars in the mid 1970s, today the job is
done by 6,000 workers. The same is true for misnamed "post-Fordist"
industries, e.g. call centers, where 100 or 200 agents easily displace
1,000 white-collar workers, e.g. in banking or insurances. The
expenditure for capital to surround and suck out the remaining workers
with ever more machinery increases, the real unemployment and
unproductive jobs, too. The enormous increase in productivity meets its
consequence: falling relative income and falling profits in the
production sphere. This emerges as an over-production crisis. The
back-bone of Neo-Keynesianism (give people more money and the
economy will recover) has now been broken twice. Firstly, people
had the deficit spending power, but it didn't help. Secondly, this crisis
reveals that capitalism is not a consumer society: a decreasing share of
the social product is dedicated for private consumption, the increasing
share flows into the extension of the (war/factory) machinery...
Dot.com dead: No new product-cycle in sight!
Despite all the talk about an information society and post-industrial
relations, no social product and mode of production has emerged which
would have replaced industrial products like cars, mobile-phones etc.
The hailed new consumer goods (DVD-Players, mobile phones etc.)
need a tiny fraction of social labor, the Nokia plant in Bochum manufactured
100,000 to 150,000 phones per day and was closed because it was not
productive enough. A micro-wave plant in China supplies half of the
world demand for micro-waves: you cannot build a capitalist cycle on
that! And you cannot build it on IT services. The dot.com crisis was the
final straw, the new sector which was supposed to be the way out of the
automobile crisis and it collapsed within no time! The flight into
finance accelerated.
The crisis won't be exported: China and India have to cope with the
increasing unrest of a mobile urban/rural proletariat!
The last WTO talks failed, the global South, namely India and China, did
not want to swallow the over-production of the North, particularly the
agrarian surplus production. This is not due to any kind of
anti-imperialist attitude, but due to the major challenge of global
capitalism: a rapidly growing proletariat in the global rural South.
Most of the rural population in India and China (about 1.7 billion
people) depend on wages and commodities - the ups and downs of
markets! They have left the misery of village's personal hierarchies
and exploitation and find themselves in the social whirlpool of
proletarianization: increase of insecurity and desire. The states of the
South need a relatively calm hinterland; they are busy copying with the
new urban working class, migrating workers and growing slums. The
state tries to tackle the rural proletariat with migration control and
histories' largest job schemes. The complete opening of the regional
market for the excess production from the North would cause major
disruption in a situation of simmering social turmoil: millions of
semi-proletarianized households (half depending on wage work, half
on agricultural production) would have to compete with industrialized
agriculture and be thrown into the social void.
No low wage paradise left: The crisis won't be re-located anymore!
So far the core plants of the automobile sector have not been re-located
to low-wage countries, mainly due to the major share of fixed capital: a
car plant is heavier than sewing machines or head-sets. If we take a
closer look at those industries which actually are relocated, e.g. the
textile industry and call centers, then we can state there is no low
wage region left to further relocate to in order to solve the profit
squeeze by finding even cheaper workers. The textile industry moved
from Indonesia, to China, to Vietnam, to Bangladesh and fueled workers'
unrest and pressure on wages from below on the way. The same is true,
though less riotous, for the new generation of call center workers in
the Spanish and English-speaking periphery. Wherever new car plants
opened in the periphery, major strikes and demands emerged, e.g. during
the last months in the "global car" plant of Dacia in Romania or at Ford
in St. Petersburg, Russia. Another problem for the "globalized" hunt for
cheap wages is the increasing transport costs due to rising oil prices:
the production chains are over-stretched.
Social death of the peasant worker: The migrants won't do the job!
So far one of the main ways to undermine a local working class and to
re-structure industries was to suck in peasant workers into the new
industrial areas. This was true for the beginning of the "Fordist" era
in the US, for the "re-construction" in Europe after World War II, for
the dictatorships of development of the 1960s to 1980s (from South
Korea to Brazil) to India and China today. The problem is that this
"peasant"-worker is a dying social figure. In China today the second
generation of industrial migrant workers refuses to go back to the
country-side, this is what the Turkish "guest-worker" did in Germany in
the 1960s and 1970s. Capital has to face migrating proletarians which
already have made their experiences with urban life, with factory or
wage work, with modern forms of class struggle: e.g. migrating women
workers from the Philippines or Bangladesh, who have worked in Dubai,
Liberia and Romania and who have learnt how to fight.
The food riots showed a new subject: not the starving desperate poor,
but an urban working class!
So far capitalism has been able to "starve out" the poor; the main
famines and poverty related massacres took place on the countryside, on
the bloody soil itself. The recent food riots showed that capital and the
state have to face a desperate, hungry and angry, but also highly
organized urban proletariat. The food riots in Bangladesh were
organized mainly by female textile workers, in Cameroon by taxi drivers
and local youth. The forms of urban struggles seem to become more
similar, be it in Parisian banlieus or industrial suburbs of Dhaka. The
ruling class will need one, two,... many Katrinas in order to beat the
urban poor, given that even the missiles on Bagdad or Kabul, the CCTV
systems in London or job schemes in Villeurbanne do not seem to be
able to sort things out.
Impasses in the factories in the North: neither low wage temp jobs nor
humanized team-work solved the crisis!
Facing this dead-lock situation in the periphery, capital has to try
harder to solve its crisis in the factories and other spheres of
exploitation in the North. In order to do this capital has met a further
situation of impasse concerning the development of a "post-Fordist"
production model, the attacks of the core workers, the employment of
precarious or temp workers, outsourcing to suppliers or sweat-shops.
Following short glimpses on the matter.
Fordism re-loaded: capital was not able to overcome the assembly-line!
There were two specters haunting the shop-floor of factories in the
North during the 1980s: the automated production and the humanization
of work. It became clear quite early on that the new technologies
(IT) are first of all used to speed-up work (particularly in logistics) and
to tighten control, but that the actual physical work remained more or
less untouched. The "humanization" of work got another turn in the1990s,
when everyone was talking about Toyotism, job enrichment and team-work.
Since then "team-work" in most factories is a synonym for
"peer-pressure" and institutionalized group bullying. Actual "team-work"
turned out to be unproductive once placed under the necessity of
valorization: role model manufacturers like Volvo returned to the
assembly line. There seems to be no way out: value production, abstract
labor, has to be met by a material form of production - factory work
based on a rigid division of labor and connected to the rhythms of
machines. Capital was not able to "revolutionize" its very own fundament
- the focal point of workers' reformism was crushed.
Expensive attacks on the core workforce: future focal point of popular
discontent?
The last decades have seen hundreds of examples of expensive attacks on
the core work-force in the North: Rover in England, VW in Brussels,
several GM plants in the US. In the "best cases" capital and state had
to pay quite high redundancy payments or social benefits. In "worse
cases" workers managed to organize a collective response, e.g. the
wildcat strike at GM in Germany 2004 against outsourcing and dismissals.
During the last weeks car makers announced major job cuts or production
stops. With the aggravating crisis, the struggle against closures of
major plants and or other job cuts could become a focal point attracting
everyone who felt fucked over by the current crisis regime. This is much
more likely than an organized unemployed movement or spontaneous
looting of the stock-market. Therefore capital and state will also calculate
the "political price" of a direct attack on the core workers.
Relatively low labor costs compared to costs for capital: Low wages
won't help!
If we talk about the major industries, e.g. automobile, chemical,
agro-business etc., we can see that low wages won't be the solution for
capitalist crisis. In a modern car factory only four to five per cent of
the total production costs are spent on wages (including those of the
managers). At GM in Germany a temp worker might only get 6 to 7
Euros before tax compared to 14 to 17 Euros of a permanent worker.
Mathematically, lower wages would not change the general costs
calculation too much, but in times of crisis every cent counts. Actually
the increasing use of temp and low wage work has hit productivity:
recently Spain got an official warning by the EU that too many temp
contracts would cause a major increase in sick leave and lowering of
work performance. Today most industrial workers are not able to
identify with "their" company anymore, which for capital is a very high
price to pay.
The crisis won't be out-sourced: Crisis and re-concentration of the
supplying industries!
One attempt to lower production and wage costs was by increasing the
out-sourcing of certain departments. In this process some major car part
suppliers grew nearly as big as the actual car manu facturers, e.g.
Delphi, Bosch, Visteon. Everything seemed to fit the picture: a flexible
production on demand, just-in-time, and a fragmented work-force.
During the last years these myths collapsed: the strike at Fiat Melfi in
2004 finally showed the vulnerability of the supplier-assembly plant link,
for a stable production the suppliers started to manufacture in close
spatial distance, the wages at the suppliers increased, and in 2005 the
crisis of Delphi and Visteon showed the still existing mutual
dependency: GM had to save Delphi, pay its workers' pensions and wages,
Ford had to jump in and pay out its former outsourced daughter Visteon
in order to guarantee production.
In this dead-lock situation credits become crucial: preparing the
financial crisis!
Having met these various impasses the industrial capital had to bet on
future profits by increasing the amount of credits. This became obvious
even before the current financial crisis; major industrial companies had
liquidity problems, GM and Ford lost millions with their pension funds
on the stock market, Chrysler's leasing bank was close to bankruptcy.
The run for money started on a global scale. Proletarians did the same,
low wages were compensated with private debts and mortgages - but
compared to the state and to companies their indebtedness remained
marginal (and within the global proletariat the average Indian rural
proletarian household is probably deeper indebted than a US-American
working-class family, relatively to both economic output and income).
Once the financial crisis kicked in, once the "credits" turned bad it
swung back and aggravated the industrial crisis further: particularly
the BRIC states (Brazil, Russia, India, China), the only states where,
e.g. car production and sales were still increasing, are badly hit by
the crisis. Neo-liberalism is dead, major parts of the left have been
flogging a dead horse. Time for reorientation...
Stop staring into the headlights: more than ever before the global
character of this crisis can reveal the global character of the working
class today!
Instead of letting ourselves be hypnotized by the debt clock and share
price slumps we should first of all analyze the struggles which relate
to this crisis, e.g. the short wildcat strike of Renault workers against
the announced dismissal of 1,000 work-mates in Sandouville (France)
or of Greek airport workers against a pension scam. We will also
have to review the uprising in Argentina during the last crisis in December
2001: only during the first weeks of financial crash everyone seemed
united, then the middle-classes got appeased and went back to the
election ballots again, the employed workers only went on demos after
the end of their shift and the unemployed movement turned into thugs
for the new government or got occupied with the struggle for survival.
The crisis itself won't unite us, we have to reveal the global character
of social production today: within the chains of migration, the global
experience of industrial work and urban life, the growing desires of
the rural proletariat - which all demonstrates that neither the factory
work-organization nor profit margins or interest rate cuts will be able
to contain our collective productive unrest!
News from the Special Exploitation Zone -
www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
gurgaon workers news
LINKS:
Aufheben/Britain: [www.geocities.com/aufheben2]
Aut-op-sy: [aut-op-sy-forum]
Blaumachen/Greece: [www.blaumachen.gr]
Cercle social/France: [www.geocities.com/demainlemonde]
Collective Action Notes/USA: [www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2379]
Echanges et Mouvement/France: [www.geocities.com/echangesetmouvement]
Endangered Phoenix/Britain: [www.endangeredphoenix.com]
Freie ArbeiterInnen Union/Germany: [www.fau.org]
Kokkinonima/Greece: [www.kokkinonima.gr]
Kolinko/Germany: [www.nadir.org/kolinko]
Labournet.de/Germany: [www.labournet.de]
Labourstart.org: [www.labourstart.org]
Mondialisme.org/France: [www.mondialisme.org]
Motarbetaren/Sweden: [trouble.at/motarbetaren]
No War But The Class War/Britain:
[www.geocities.com/nowar_buttheclasswar]
ORA-S/Czech Republic: [alarm.solidarita.org]
Riffraff/Sweden: [http://www.riff-raff.se]
Thistuesday.org/Germany: [www.thistuesday.org]
Welt in Umw?lzung/Germany: [www.umwaelzung.de]
Wildcat/Germany: [www.wildcat-www.de]
Workers' Collective/Poland: [paspartoo.w.interia.pl]
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From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Fri Oct 31 03:14:06 2008
From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles)
Date: Fri Oct 31 03:14:17 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Following US election on Web? Help!
Message-ID: <20081031081407.48296F8B8@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Can anyone suggest a dedicated site devoted to ongoing election news?
Dion Giles
Western Austrlia
From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Fri Oct 31 05:59:33 2008
From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta)
Date: Fri Oct 31 06:12:19 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Will Obama mean change?
Message-ID: <490AE515.4090100@greenleft.org.au>
Socialists debate the meaning of Obama:
http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/248
From duanebehrens at cox.net Fri Oct 31 06:25:17 2008
From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens)
Date: Fri Oct 31 06:25:28 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Following US election on Web? Help!
In-Reply-To: <20081031081407.48296F8B8@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au>
Message-ID: <20081031072517.J2AOH.133035.imail@fed1rmwml39>
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/
http://www.gallup.com/Home.aspx
and, for the CIA's version:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/default.htm
=============
Can anyone suggest a dedicated site devoted to ongoing election news?
Dion Giles
Western Austrlia
From papadop at peak.org Fri Oct 31 22:13:41 2008
From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP)
Date: Fri Oct 31 22:54:39 2008
Subject: [Mai-not] Sheehan's Headquarters Heavily Damaged
Message-ID:
http://www.mathaba.net/rss/?x=610388
Cindy Sheehan`s Campaign Headquarters Heavily Damaged in Late Night Attack
Posted: 2008/11/01
The Cindy for Congress campaign recently chronicled a series of
unusual events, including other threats of violence, in a statement
issued on October 13th.
(PR Newswire)
Just 5 days before the election, at 3a.m. on October 30th, all of the
front windows of the Cindy Sheehan for Congress campaign offices were
shattered. Although staffers had been in the office less than an hour
earlier, no one was in the building at the time of the incident. No
one was hurt and there were no witnesses. Cindy Sheehan is a candidate
for Congress in Californias 8th Congressional District race against
incumbent Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
It seems to have been a calculated intimidation tactic, said Tiffany
Burns, the Cindy for Congress campaign manager. One of our computers
was stolen, but no other property was taken from our offices and no
surrounding buildings were targeted. Clearly they wanted to both
frighten us and to gather information. Total damage to the campaign
office is currently estimated at more than $5,000.
The Cindy for Congress campaign recently chronicled a series of
unusual events, including other threats of violence, in a statement
issued on October 13th. In that statement, Cindy Sheehan noted [t]he
past few weeks have been a little strange at Cindy for Congress [...]
the things that have been happening could just be coincidences, or a
run of bad luck, but the climate for the possibility of campaign
hanky-panky certainly exists.
Campaign staffers also note each incident, including todays early
morning incident, has followed closely on the heels of a confrontation
with Cindy Sheehans opponent Nancy Pelosi. This mornings incident
occurred after an on-air confrontation between the two candidates on
KQEDs public affairs program Forum with Michael Krasny on Wednesday
morning.
Each time we confront her, each time we ask her for a debate, each
time we gain ground in the polls, something horrible happens, said
Burns. Once or twice might be a coincidence, but such a consistent
correlation is hard to ignore.