From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Apr 1 15:17:47 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 1 15:18:22 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Obama escalates war in Central Asia Message-ID: <008f01c9b317$b0792980$41ad57ca@jfos> Excerpt: 30 March 2009 "Obama is preparing a bloody pacification campaign in Pakistan and Afghanistan, aiming to exterminate those sections of their populations that interfere with US control of the area. There will be a heavy price paid by the American people as well, in thousands of military casualties, the squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars, and an increased risk of terrorist attacks on Americans, as Washington reinforces the widely held perception that it is waging war on the Islamic world. Pakistan, a nominal US ally, is threatened with reduction to colonial status. A country with 173 million inhabitants and a nuclear-equipped military, Pakistan is desperately poor and riven by regional and ethnic divisions. An escalation of US attacks, which have already killed hundreds of Pakistanis living in tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, will further enrage Pakistani public opinion, antagonize sections of the Pakistani army and push the country towards civil war, with incalculable consequences in the region." full article @ http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/pers-m30.shtml ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Apr 1 15:37:35 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 1 15:38:19 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: Obama to Bring More Mercenaries to Afghanistan Message-ID: <029a01c9b31a$74853ba0$41ad57ca@jfos> Obama to Bring More Mercenaries to Afghanistan -- Sound Familiar? by Jim Hightower Global Research, March 28, 2009 alternet.org Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to war we go! As President Barack Obama begins winding down the Bush war in Iraq, he is building up his own war farther east. We're told that it will be a new, expanded, extra-special American adventure in Afghanistan, involving a vigorous surge strategy to "stabilize" this perpetually unstable land. The initial surge will add 17,000 troops to the 36,000 already there. Then, later this year, there is to be a second troop surge of another 17,000 or so. This mass of soldiers is expected to be deployed to a series of new garrisons to be built in far-flung regions of this impoverished, rural, mostly illiterate warlord state that is ruled by hundreds of fractious, heavily armed tribal leaders. We're not told how much this escalation will cost, but it will at least double the $2 billion a month that American taxpayers are already shelling out for the Afghan war. The extra-special part of this effort is to come from a simultaneous "civilian surge" of hundreds of U.S. economic development experts. "What we can't do," said Obama in an interview last Sunday, "is think that just a military approach in Afghanistan is going to be able to solve our problems." To win the hearts (and cooperation) of the Afghan people, this development leg of the operation will try to build infrastructure (roads, schools, etc.), create new crop alternatives to lure hardscrabble farmers out of poppy production and generally lift the country's bare-subsistence living standard. What Obama has not mentioned is that, in addition to soldiers and civilians, there is a third surge in his plan: private military contractors. Yes, another privatized army, such as the one in Iraq. There, the Halliburtons, Blackwaters and other war profiteers ran rampant, shortchanging our troops, ripping off taxpayers, killing civilians and doing deep damage to America's good name. Already, there are 71,000 private contractors operating in Afghanistan, and many more are preparing to deploy as Pentagon spending ramps up for Obama's war. The military is now offering new contracts to security firms to provide armed employees (aka, mercenaries) to guard U.S. bases and convoys. Despite the widespread contractor abuses in Iraq, Pentagon chief Robert Gates defends the ongoing privatization push: "The use of contractor security personnel is vital to supporting the forward-operating bases in certain parts of the country," he declared in a February letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee. What the gentle war secretary is really saying is this: "We don't have a draft, and I don't see a lot of senators' kinfolks volunteering to put their butts on the line in Afghanistan, so I've gotta pay through the nose to find enough privateers to guard America's Army in this forbidding place." Meanwhile, here's an interesting twist to Obama's contractor surge: the for-hire guards protecting our bases and convoys will not likely be Americans. The Associated Press has reported that of the 3,847 security contractors in Afghanistan, only nine are U.S. firms. Actually, being an American contractor is not a plus in the eyes of the Afghan people, for they've had bitter experiences with them. They point to DynCorp, a Virginia-based contractor that got nearly a billion dollars in 2006 to train Afghan police. The bumbling "Inspector Clouseau" of comic fame could've done a better job. At least he might have amused the people. What they got from DynCorp was a bunch of highly paid American "advisors" who were unqualified and knew nothing about the country. Some 70,000 police were to be trained, but less than half that number actually went through the ridiculous eight-week program, which included no field training. A 2006 U.S. report on the DynCorp trainees deemed them to be "incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work." Meanwhile, no one knows how many of the trainees ever reported for duty, or what happened to thousands of missing trucks and other pieces of police equipment that had been issued for the training. The punch line of this joke is that DynCorp got another contract ($317 million) last August to "continue training civilian police forces in Afghanistan." Excuse me for saying it, but Obama is about to sink us -- and his presidency -- into a mess. Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer. ? 2009 Creators Syndicate All rights reserved. ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Apr 1 15:46:22 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 1 23:26:14 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] Victory in Guadeloupe After Six-Week Strike Reverberates Across French Caribbean and France Message-ID: <006101c9b35b$da864c00$46ad57ca@jfos> March 27, 2009 - Labour Victory in Guadeloupe After Six-Week Strike Reverberates Across French Caribbean and France The financial crisis has had reverberations beyond the United States and Europe, with people taking to the streets in cities across the globe to protest rising wealth inequality and to call for economic and labor rights. Perhaps the most significant action took place in the French Caribbean, on the island of Guadeloupe. Amid rising costs of living, labor leaders in Guadeloupe led a forty-four-day general strike that closed down roads, schools, gas stations and public transportation. The strikers claimed a victory earlier this month with a plan to improve wages and living standards. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/27/ labor_victory_in_guadeloupe_after_six Guest: Kali Akuno, the national organizer for the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and organizer in the US solidarity effort with the struggle of the workers and people of Guadeloupe. JUAN GONZALEZ: The financial crisis has had reverberations far beyond the United States and Europe, with people taking to the streets in cities across the globe to protest rising wealth inequality and to call for economic and labor rights. Perhaps the most significant action took place in the French Caribbean on the island of Guadeloupe. Labor leaders in Guadeloupe led a forty-four-day general strike that completely paralyzed the island. Starting on January 19th, workers revolted against the French government over the exorbitant cost of living by closing down roads, schools, gas stations and public transportation. The strike was led by a coalition of union leaders called the LKP, an acronym in Creole that translates to the League Against Profiteering. They accused the ruling white business minority of exploiting the island?s black majority. While legally a full part of France and the European Union, Guadeloupe is one of the poorest parts of the national territory, with 23 percent unemployment and a high cost of living. AMY GOODMAN: The strike has been described as the most significant in the island?s history. The six-week struggle saw one activist shot dead, hundreds of extra police deployed from mainland France. The strikers held out and claimed victory earlier this month with a detailed plan to improve wages and living standards on the island. Meanwhile, on the nearby island of Martinique, a similar strike ended two weeks later, after officials signed an agreement that included salary increases for low-wage earners. For more on all of this, we?re joined by Kali Akuno. He is the national organizer for the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and organizer with the US solidarity effort with the struggle for the workers and people of Guadeloupe. He is joining us via video stream from New Orleans. Kali, welcome to Democracy Now! Explain to us exactly what this struggle in Guadeloupe was about. KALI AKUNO: Good morning, Amy. The struggle was about the fundamental human rights of the people of Guadeloupe. The cost of living in Guadeloupe had been rising exponentially since kind of the escalation of the crisis, particularly around food prices and rents going up, beginning in 2007. And particularly the UGTG, the General Union of Workers in Guadeloupe, have been raising and agitating the government of Guadeloupe in France since 2007 to kind of increase the wages and ameliorate the living conditions of the people in Guadeloupe. That led to, in December of 2008, the first strike which happened, which preceded the general strike, which commenced in January and ended on March 5th in a great victory of the people of Guadeloupe. And I think it, as you mentioned, set a firm tone of struggle, I think, for international?you know, for people all over the world and workers all over the world. But their conditions of unemployment, their conditions, particularly of the youth, of unemployment, the exclusion primarily of the majority of people from ownership in the island was a major concern. And it?s not over. Even though the?you know, there was an agreement on March 5th, many of the so-called?the employers? association on the island are still refusing to pay the 100 euros that are part of the settlement demand. So there are still aspects of the strike which are ongoing. And, of course, there?s the defense of Emile, who was one of the leaders of the strike. He?s been charged with a racial kind of defamation charge in France. But this is really an attack to kind of undermine the moral and legitimate basis of the strike itself and undermine the agreement, which France and the [inaudible] parties of Guadeloupe are very insistent on doing, primarily to keep it from spreading. It also spread to Reunion, and it?s now starting to have some blowback into France itself. So these are issues which are still kind of part of an ongoing process. JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, Kali Akuno, I?d like to ask you about that, precisely, because this was a massive movement here that lasted for more than a month. It got virtually no press coverage here in the United States, but it did have an enormous impact in the Caribbean. What kind of impact did it have within France itself? KALI AKUNO: Well, I mean, there was a general strike in France, a one-day general strike in France, recently, that put some tremendous pressure on Sarkozy and his government to transform and to deal with this crisis a bit different than how they?ve been dealing with it thus far, in terms of agreeing with the basic settlement aspects of the EU plan, which is going to be discussed at the G20 summit in London. But major sectors that came out?and over three million people came out in the general strike?major sectors are now pressing that we need the same basic kind of rights and concessions that were granted from the French government in Martinique and in Guadeloupe. Those need to be applied also in France. And so, a section of French workers are organizing now, to my understanding, to launch a general strike and to launch it on the example of what took place in Guadeloupe and stay out in the streets and, you know, disrupt business and disrupt the regular order of business, the exploitation on a day-to-day level, to extend that to France. So this is something that myself and, I know, a lot of folks here who gave some solidarity to the struggle in Guadeloupe are really paying some close attention to, because it?s going to have a long-term impact on what happens in the Caribbean possession of France, Martinique and Guadeloupe and some of the other so-called overseas possessions, which are still basically colonies. So we?re looking at this very closely. And the impact it?s going to have, you know, on workers in Europe and ultimately here in the United States and throughout the world, we think will be pretty significant, given the nature of this crisis. JUAN GONZALEZ: And why, particularly, did this develop in Guadeloupe? It reminds us a lot of the struggle that occurred in Mexico, the strike of the teachers there. What?s a particular reason why this island became a leader in the struggle? KALI AKUNO: Well, number one, the General Union, the General Guadeloupan Trade Union, has been a very strong and militant union throughout most of its history. They?ve been very active in its international solidarity. They played a pretty significant role here in New Orleans in the tribunal that we held in August and September of 2007, which was looking and investigating into the various human rights abuses of the United States government. So, you know, they have a very internationalist outlook as part of their foundation. And the leadership that they gave to the struggle there, I think, you know, that?s kind of a fundamental thing. But the material conditions which led to it, you know, the?Guadeloupe is a French overseas possession. Its economy is regulated in euros. It doesn?t have its own currency. And folks get paid in euros. And with the kind of escalating prices, particularly around food, starting in 2007, and in rents and in oil and gas, the living conditions of the majority of people deteriorate quickly. In the militant tradition and the history of the UGTG, you know, they [inaudible] forward, they built a broad coalition of over forty-nine different unions and community organizations and popular organizations on the island. And, you know, they pressed, like I said, beginning in December, and tried to kind of meet some basic standards with the government, some basic compromises. When that wasn?t met, they did what I would say they had to do, you know, to restore some dignity to their lives and some balance in the?cohesion of where the economy stands on the global [inaudible] the government and press, you know, the private enterprises on the island for some justice. And they won, but like I said, it?s an ongoing struggle, and people should be very much aware [inaudible]. AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Kali Akuno, there were massive protests in the streets earlier this month in France and the biggest demonstration since Sarkozy?s election. And then, next week, the G20 is going to be meeting. Where do you think the significance of the Guadeloupe protest and victory fits into? And can it have any bearing on G20 and its blowback to France? KALI AKUNO: I think it will have a major impact, Amy. You know, workers all over Europe that I?m in contact with are using it as a kind of a standard-bearer. And I think with the earlier victory in Bolivia with the constitutional referendum and also the victory that happened in Venezuela, this is one of the key early victories in this crisis I think people all over the world are looking to as an example. AMY GOODMAN: Kali Akuno, thanks so much for being with us, national organizer for the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, organizer with the US solidarity effort with the struggle of the workers and people of Guadeloupe. He was actually speaking to us by video stream from New Orleans. From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Apr 1 23:27:51 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 1 23:28:18 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: Globalise Struggle, Globalise Hope! Message-ID: <009b01c9b35c$26a43a70$46ad57ca@jfos> From: La Via Campesina Date: 31 March 2009 7:57:12 PM La Via Campesina youth from South East and East Asia mobilise! La Via Campesina - South East Asia and East Asia held it?s second youth assembly in Dili, Timor Leste on March 25-29, 2009. Youth leaders from Thailand, Indonesia, Philippine, South Korea, Japan, Australia and Timor Leste shared and discussed the youth situation and the role of youth in the country and our commitment to struggle for food sovereignty. The youth spent a few days in Timor Leste where they lived and learnt from the community of Uma Kaduak village, district of Manatutu. There we Shared the local food, culture, and planted trees together for their future. La via campesina youth shared experience of struggle in each country and learnt the worries of Timorese youth, and their current situation. The use of 100.000 ha of fertile land for sugar cane plantation for agrofuel, the promotion of a heavy oil power plant project, the development of hybrid seeds on more than 3000 ha in Maliana district, the distribution of hand tractors to the farmers, the shift from environmentally friendly agriculture into mechanization, migration of the youth from villages to foreign countries to become low wage workers. Similar problems also occur in other countries. In Australia, farm sizes have become much larger and the number of farmers is decreasing sharply, in Japan young people migrate to the cities in search of work and if they do not find work they become homeless in the cities. The struggle for agrarian reform in Philippine, Thailand and Indonesia increase the peasant rights violation in these countries. Our struggle to defend our rights as peasants is becoming stronger and stronger, we are heading towards the adoption of an international convention on the rights of peasants. The ASEAN human rights body will be our opportunity to introduce peasant rights in the region. The crisis in the world threatens people mental and physical well-being. Over the past three years, more than 3000 farmers committed suicide in South Korea because of their heavy debt and because cheap imported food is flooding the markets. In Australia an estimated 1, 5 million people under the age of 18 are considered obese. This means that about 20-25% of Australian children are overweight. WTO and the liberalisation of agriculture had caused the prices of agriculture product drop. This has increased hunger and poverty and as a result million of farmers suffer in many countries. Trade liberalisation and the Economic Partnership Agreements and Free Trade Agreements hit farmers who are losing their livelihood. Transnational Corporations promote GMO seed and chemical fertilizers, which makes peasants very dependent on buying their products. As a result we also lose our local seeds. A dam construction in the Mekong river is affecting more than one million people in six countries. The dam is blocking the river and causing the destruction to the rivers' ecosystem. Fisher folk are losing their livelihood along the river. Faced with this harsh reality, the young women and men of la Via Campesina, with strength and passion : ? We express our solidarity with Timorese youth on their struggle to strengthen the national youth and agrarian reform. ? We commit ourselves to build alliances between youths and to organize exchanges among the youth in various countries in the region. ? We struggle to have access to agricultural land and to create jobs for youth to stay in the countryside in order to ensure food and the future of our planet. ? We reject all forms of neo-liberalism policies which do not stand for the people. ? La Via Campesina youth will organize various actions during the April 17th on the occasion of the international day of peasant?s struggles. Dili, March 30th, 2009 Globalize struggle, Globalize hope!! International Operational Secretariat ----------------------------------------------------------------------- La Via Campesina - International Secretariat: Jln. Mampang Prapatan XIV No. 5 Jakarta Selatan, Jakarta 12790 Indonesia Phone : +62-21-7991890, Fax : +62-21-7993426 E-mail: viacampesina@viacampesina.org, Website: http://www.viacampesina.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090402/96582de5/attachment.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Apr 1 23:43:09 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 1 23:43:39 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] A Quiet Revolution Grows in the Muslim World ? Message-ID: <00ee01c9b35e$49ea2830$46ad57ca@jfos> A Quiet Revolution Grows in the Muslim World By Robin Wright http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1886539-4,00.html Three decades after Iran?s upheaval established Islamic clerical rule for the first time in 14 centuries, a quieter and more profound revolution is transforming the Muslim world. Dalia Ziada is a part of it. When Ziada was 8, her mother told her to don a white party dress for a surprise celebration. It turned out to be a painful circumcision. But Ziada decided to fight back. The young Egyptian spent years arguing with her father and uncles against the genital mutilation of her sister and cousins, a campaign she eventually developed into a wider movement. She now champions everything from freedom of speech to women?s rights and political prisoners. To promote civil disobedience, Ziada last year translated into Arabic a comic-book history about Martin Luther King Jr. and distributed 2,000 copies from Morocco to Yemen. (See pictures of Islam?s revolution.) Now 26, Ziada organized Cairo?s first human-rights film festival in November. The censorship board did not approve the films, so Ziada doorstopped its chairman at the elevator and rode up with him to plead her case. When the theater was suspiciously closed at the last minute, she rented a tourist boat on the Nile for opening night?waiting until it was offshore and beyond the arm of the law to start the movie. Ziada shies away from little, including the grisly intimate details of her life. But she also wears a veil, a sign that her religious faith remains undimmed. ?My ultimate interest,? she wrote in her first blog entry, ?is to please Allah with all I am doing in my own life.? That sentiment is echoed around the Muslim world. In many of the scores of countries that are predominantly Muslim, the latest generation of activists is redefining society in novel ways. This new soft revolution is distinct from three earlier waves of change?the Islamic revival of the 1970s, the rise of extremism in the 1980s and the growth of Muslim political parties in the 1990s. Today?s revolution is more vibrantly Islamic than ever. Yet it is also decidedly antijihadist and ambivalent about Islamist political parties. Culturally, it is deeply conservative, but its goal is to adapt to the 21st century. Politically, it rejects secularism and Westernization but craves changes compatible with modern global trends. The soft revolution is more about groping for identity and direction than expressing piety. The new revolutionaries are synthesizing Koranic values with the ways of life spawned by the Internet, satellite television and Facebook. For them, Islam, you might say, is the path to change rather than the goal itself. ?It?s a nonviolent revolution trying to mix modernity and religion,? Ziada says, honking as she makes her way through Cairo?s horrendous traffic for a meeting of one of the rights groups she works with. The new Muslim activists, who take on diverse causes from one country to another, have emerged in reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks and all that has happened since. Navtej Dhillon, director of the Brookings Institution?s Middle East Youth Initiative, says, ?There?s a generation between the ages of 15 and 35 driving this soft revolution?like the baby boomers in the U.S.?who are defined by a common experience. It should have been a generation outward looking in a positive way, with more education, access to technology and aspirations for economic mobility.? Instead, he says, ?it?s become hostage to post-9/11 politics.? Disillusioned with extremists who can destroy but who fail to construct alternatives that improve daily life, members of the post-9/11 generation are increasingly relying on Islamic values rather than on a religion-based ideology to advance their aims. And importantly, the soft revolution has generated a new self-confidence among Muslims and a sense that the answers to their problems lie within their own faith and community rather than in the outside world. The revolution is about reform in a conservative package.. Text-Messaging The Koran The soft revolution is made concrete in hundreds of new schools from Turkey to Pakistan. Its themes echo in Palestinian hip-hop, Egyptian Facebook pages and the flurry of Koranic verses text-messaged between students. It is reflected in Bosnian streets honoring Muslim heroes and central Asian girls named after the holy city of Medina. Its role models are portrayed by action figures, each with one of the 99 attributes of God, in Kuwaiti comic books. It has even changed slang. Young Egyptians often now answer the telephone by saying ?Salaam alaikum???Peace be upon you??instead of ?Hello.? Many add the tagline ?bi izn Allah???if God permits??when discussing everything from the weather to politics. ?They think they?re getting a bonus with God,? muses Ziada. Even in Saudi Arabia, the most rigid Muslim state, the soft revolution is transforming public discourse. Consider Ahmad al-Shugairi, who worked in his family business until a friend recruited him in 2002 for a television program called Yallah Shabab (Hey, Young People). Al-Shugairi ended up as the host. Although he never had formal religious training, al-Shugairi quickly became one of the most popular TV preachers, broadcast by satellite to an audience across the Middle East and watched on YouTube. ?The show explained that you could be a good Muslim and yet enjoy life,? says Kaswara al-Khatib, a former producer of Yallah Shabab. ?It used to be that you could be either devout or liberal, with no middle ground. The focus had been only on God?s punishment. We focused on God?s mercy.? In 2005, al-Shugairi began a TV series called Thoughts during the holy month of Ramadan, focusing on the practical problems of contemporary Muslim life, from cleanliness to charity. Sometimes clad in jeans and at other times a white Saudi robe and headdress, he often speaks informally from a couch. ?I?m not reinventing the wheel or the faith,? al-Shugairi explains in Jidda?s Andalus Caf?, which he opened for the young. ?But there is a need for someone to talk common sense.? (See pictures of Ramadan.) Al-Shugairi?s own life mirrors the experimentation and evolution of many young Muslims. In the 1990s, he says, he bounced from ?extreme pleasure? as a college student in California to ?extreme belief.? The shock of Sept. 11, an attack whose perpetrators were mostly Saudi, steered him to the middle. Traditional clerics deride al-Shugairi, 35, and other televangelists for preaching ?easy Islam,? ?yuppie Islam,? even ?Western Islam.? But his message actually reflects a deepening conservatism in the Islamic world, even as activists use contemporary examples and modern technology to make their case. One of al-Shugairi?s programs on happiness focused on Elvis Presley, a man with fame, talent and fortune but who died young. Life without deep spirituality, al-Shugairi preaches, is empty. The soft revolution?s voices are widening the Islamic political spectrum. Mostafa Nagar, 28, an Egyptian dentist, runs a blog called Waves in the Sea of Change, which is part of an Internet-based call for a renaissance in Islamic thinking. Yet Nagar belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Islamist movement in the Middle East. His blog launched a wave of challenges from within the Brotherhood to its proposed manifesto, which limits the political rights of women and Christians. Nagar called for dividing the religious and political wings of the movement, a nod to the separation of mosque and state, and pressed the party to run technocrats rather than clerics for positions of party leadership and public office. When Nagar and his colleagues were urged to leave the Brotherhood, they decided to stay. ?As a public party,? he says, ?its decisions are relevant to the destiny of all Egyptians, so their thoughts should be open to all people.? And indeed, his blog?and other criticism from the movement?s youth wing?has caused the manifesto to be put on ice. The flap underscores an emerging political trend. Since 9/11, polls have consistently shown that most Muslims do not want either an Iranian-style theocracy or a Western-style democracy. They want a blend, with clerics playing an advisory role in societies, not ruling them. As a consequence, Islamist parties are now under intense scrutiny. ?Islamists, far from winning sweeping victories, are struggling to maintain even the modest gains they made earlier,? says a recent survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In Iraq?s recent elections, for example, secular parties solidly trumped the religious parties that had fared well four years ago. Rethinking Tradition Politics is not the only focus of the soft revolution. Its most fundamental impact, indeed, may be on the faith itself. In the shadows of Kocatepe Mosque in Ankara, Turkey, a team of 80 Turkish scholars has been meeting for the past three years to ponder Muslim traditions dating back 14 centuries. Known as the hadith, the traditions are based on the actions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and dictate behavior on everything from the conduct of war to personal hygiene. (See pictures of Iranians.) Later this year, the Turkish scholars are expected to publish six volumes that reject thousands of Islam?s most controversial practices, from stoning adulterers to honor killings. Some hadith, the scholars contend, are unsubstantiated; others were just invented to manipulate society. ?There is one tradition which says ladies are religiously and rationally not complete and of lesser mind,? says Ismail Hakki Unal of Ankara University?s divinity school, a member of the commission. ?We think this does not conform with the soul of the Koran. And when we look at the Prophet?s behavior toward ladies, we don?t think those insulting messages belong to him.? Another hadith insists that women be obedient to their husbands if they are to enter paradise. ?Again, this is incompatible with the Prophet,? Unal says. ?We think these are sentences put forth by men who were trying to impose their power over the ladies.? The Hadith Project is only one of many such investigations into Islam?s role in the 21st century. This is perhaps the most intellectually active period for the faith since the height of Islamic scholarship in the Middle Ages. ?There is more self-confidence in the Islamic world about dealing with reason, constitutionalism, science and other big issues that define modern society,? says Ibrahim Kalin of the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research in Ankara. ?The West is no longer the only worldview to look up to. There are other ways of sharing the world and negotiating your place in it.? Crucially, this latest wave of Islamic thought is not led only by men. Eman el-Marsafy is challenging one of the strictest male domains in the Muslim world?the mosque. For 14 centuries, women have largely been relegated to small side rooms for prayer and excluded from leadership. But el-Marsafy is one of hundreds of professional women who are memorizing the Koran and is even teaching at Cairo?s al-Sadiq Mosque. ?We?re taking Islam to the new world,? el-Marsafy says. ?We can do everything everyone else does. We want to move forward too.? The young are in the vanguard. A graduate in business administration and a former banker, el-Marsafy donned the hijab when she was 26, despite fierce objections from her parents. (Her father was an Egyptian diplomat, her mother a society figure.) But last year, el-Marsafy?s mother, now in her 60s, began wearing the veil too. That is a common story. Forty years ago, Islamic dress was rare in Egypt.. Today, more than 80% of women are estimated to wear the hijab, and many put it on only after their daughters did. Piety alone is not the explanation for the change in dress. ?The veil is the mask of Egyptian woman in a power struggle against the dictatorship of men,? says Nabil Abdel Fattah of Cairo?s al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies and author of The Politics of Religion. ?The veil gives women more power in a man?s world.? Ziada, the human-rights activist, says the hijab?her headscarves are in pinks, pastels, floral prints and plaids, not drab black?provides protective cover and legitimacy for her campaigns. Waiting for Obama The ferment in the Muslim world has a range of implications for President Barack Obama?s outreach to Islam. Gallup polls in Islamic societies show that large majorities both reject militants and have serious reservations about the West. ?They?re saying, ?There?s a plague on both your houses,?? says Richard Burkholder Jr., director of Gallup?s international polls. Many young Muslims are angry at the outside world?s support of corrupt and autocratic regimes despite pledges to push for democracy after 9/11. ?Most of the young feel the West betrayed its promises,? says Dhillon, of the Brookings Institution. Muslims fume that a few perpetrators of violence have led the outside world to suspect a whole generation of supporting terrorism. ?The only source of identity they have is being attacked,? Dhillon says. The post-9/11 generation has been further shaped by wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, all of which Washington played a direct or indirect role in. Although he is the first U.S. President to have lived in the Muslim world and to have Muslim relatives and a Muslim middle name, Obama is likely to face skepticism even among those who welcomed his election. In an open letter on the day of his Inauguration, the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference appealed for a ?new partnership? with the Obama Administration. ?Throughout the globe, Muslims hunger for a new era of peace, concordance and tranquility,? wrote Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the conference. He then pointedly added, ?We firmly believe that America, with your guidance, can help foster that peace, though real peace can only be shared?never imposed.? (See pictures of Muslims in America.) That is the key. Gallup polls show that by huge margins, Muslims reject the notion that the U.S. genuinely wants to help them. The new Administration, with a fresh eye on the world, wants to bolster the position of the U.S. But ?Obama will have a narrow window to act,? says Burkholder, ?because the U.S. has failed so often in the past.? Ask Naif al-Mutawa, a clinical psychologist from Kuwait. Al-Mutawa is the publisher of The 99, glossy comic books popular from Morocco to Indonesia, with 99 male and female superheroes, each imbued with godly qualities such as mercy, wisdom and tolerance. In a recent article for the Chicago Tribune, Obama?s hometown paper, al-Mutawa recounted a conversation with his father about his newborn son. Al-Mutawa?s grandfather had recently died, and he expected his father to ask him to keep the name in the family. Instead, his father suggested the child be named after Obama. ?I was stunned,? al-Mutawa wrote. ?Instead of asking me to hold on to the past, my conservative Arab Muslim father was asking me to make a bet on the future.? But al-Mutawa opted against it. ?I want to see results, not just hope, before naming my children after a leader,? he wrote. Such pragmatism is typical of the Muslim world?s soft revolutionaries. They believe that their own governments, the Islamist extremists and the outside world alike have all failed to provide a satisfying narrative that synthesizes Islam and modernity. So they are taking on the task themselves. The soft revolution?s combination of conservative symbols, like Islamic dress, with contemporary practices, like blogging, may confuse outsiders. But there are few social movements in the world today that are more important to understand. Wright?s most recent book is Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East Posted by Isha Khan, who can be reached at bdmailer@gmail.com From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Apr 1 23:58:44 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 1 23:59:08 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Opposing Obama Message-ID: <014c01c9b360$76f77150$46ad57ca@jfos> Excerpt: "This weekend's pitifully small peace demonstration in the nation's capitol reveals a near-totally demobilized U.S. Left mired in such timidity and delusion, activists fear to mention Barack Obama's name when denouncing the wars he so aggressively prosecutes. "The new president, who makes no secret of his intention to continue the previous administration's war of terror, escaped serious scrutiny and the condemnation he deserves." Forgetting that power concedes nothing without a demand, the Left shrinks from making real demands of the actual president in power.(snip) This administration must be taken to task over numerous issues. Obama has already said that he will consider taxing health benefits and make unspecified changes to the entitlement system, our only safety net. Americans should take to the streets because of the prison industrial complex, they should take to the streets to demand single payer health care and they should take to the streets about a military budget that is larger than that of every other nation on earth combined. If they did, they would save themselves as individuals and save their nation too. The stakes are that high. Being patient, giving the brother a chance, or being seen as racist are poor excuses for silence. Timidity will mean the death of what little good is left in this country." full article at http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-opposing-obama ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Fri Apr 3 15:05:56 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Fri Apr 3 19:29:45 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Preparing for Civil Unrest in America Message-ID: <004601c9b4cd$24ca68b0$72ad57ca@jfos> Preparing for Civil Unrest in America - Legislation to Establish Internment Camps on US Military Bases by Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, March 18, 2009 The Economic and Social Crisis The financial meltdown has unleashed a latent and emergent social crisis across the United States. What is at stake is the fraudulent confiscation of lifelong savings and pension funds, the appropriation of tax revenues to finance the trillion dollar "bank bailouts", which ultimately serve to line the pockets of the richest people in America. This economic crisis is in large part the result of financial manipulation and outright fraud to the detriment of entire populations, leading to a renewed wave of corporate bankruptcies, mass unemployment and poverty. The criminalization of the global financial system, characterized by a "Shadow Banking" network has resulted in the centralization of bank power and an unprecedented concentration of private wealth. Obama's "economic stimulus" package and budget proposals contribute to a further process of concentration and centralization of bank power, the cumulative effects of which will eventually resul in large scale corporate, bankruptcies, a new wave of foreclosures not to mention fiscal collapse and the downfall of State social programs. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, America's Fiscal Collapse, Global Research, March 2, 2009). The cumulative decline of real economic activity backlashes on employment and wages, which in turn leads to a collapse in purchaisng power. The proposed "solution" under the Obama administration contributes to exacerbating rather than alleviating social inequalities and the process of wealth concentration. The Protest Movement When people across America, whose lives have been shattered and destroyed, come to realize the true face of the global "free market" system, the legitimacy of Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the US administration will be challenged. A latent protest movement directed against the seat of economic and political power is unfolding. How this process will occur is hard to predict. All sectors of American society are potentially affected: wage earners, small, medium and even large businesses, farmers, professionals, federal, State and municipal employees, students, teachers, health workers, and unemployed. Protests will initially emerge from these various sectors. There is, however, at this stage, no organized national resistance movement directed against the administration's economic and financial agenda. Obama's populist rhetoric conceals the true nature of macro-economic policy. Acting on behalf of Wall Street, the administration's economic package, which includes close to a trillion dollar "aid" package for the financial services industry, coupled with massive austerity measures, contributes to precipitating America into a bottomless crisis. "Orwellian Solution" to the Great Depression: Curbing Civil Unrest At this particular juncture, there is no economic recovery program in sight. The Washington-Wall Street consensus prevails. There are no policies, no alternatives formulated from within the political and economic system. . What is the way out? How will the US government face an impending social catastrophe? The solution is to curb social unrest. The chosen avenue, inherited from the outgoing Bush administration is the reinforcement of the Homeland Security apparatus and the militarization of civilian State institutions. The outgoing administration has laid the groundwork. Various pieces of "anti-terrorist" legislation (including the Patriot Acts) and presidential directives have been put in place since 2001, largely using the pretext of the "Global War on Terrorism." Homeland Security's Internment Camps Directly related to the issue of curbing social unrest, cohesive system of detention camps is also envisaged, under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. A bill entitled the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act (HR 645) was introduced in the US Congress in January. It calls for the establishment of six national emergency centers in major regions in the US to be located on existing military installations. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-645 The stated purpose of the "national emergency centers" is to provide "temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster." In actuality, what we are dealing with are FEMA internment camps. HR 645 states that the camps can be used to "meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security." There has been virtually no press coverage of HR 645. These "civilian facilities" on US military bases are to be established in cooperation with the US Military. Modeled on Guantanamo, what we are dealing with is the militarization of FEMA internment facilities. Once a person is arrested and interned in a FEMA camp located on a military base, that person would in all likelihood, under a national emergency, fall under the de facto jurisdiction of the Military: civilian justice and law enforcement including habeas corpus would no longer apply. HR 645 bears a direct relationship to the economic crisis and the likelihood of mass protests across America. It constitutes a further move to militarize civilian law enforcement, repealing the Posse Comitatus Act. In the words of Rep. Ron Paul: "...the fusion centers, militarized police, surveillance cameras and a domestic military command is not enough... Even though we know that detention facilities are already in place, they now want to legalize the construction of FEMA camps on military installations using the ever popular excuse that the facilities are for the purposes of a national emergency. With the phony debt-based economy getting worse and worse by the day, the possibility of civil unrest is becoming a greater threat to the establishment. One need only look at Iceland, Greece and other nations for what might happen in the United States next." (Daily Paul, September 2008, emphasis added) The proposed internment camps should be seen in relation to the broader process of militarization of civilian institutions. The construction of internment camps predates the introduction of HR 645 (Establishment of Emergency Centers) in January 2009. There are, according to various (unconfirmed) reports, some 800 FEMA prison camps in different regions of the U.S. Moreover, since the 1980s, the US military has developed "tactics, techniques and procedures" to suppress civilian dissent, to be used in the eventuality of mass protests (United States Army Field Manual 19-15 under Operation Garden Plot, entitled "Civil Disturbances" was issued in 1985) In early 2006, tax revenues were allocated to building modern internment camp facilities. In January 2006, Kellogg Brown and Root, which at the time was a subsidiary of Halliburton, received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): "The contract, which is effective immediately [January 2006], provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs... The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. (KBR, 24 January 2006, emphasis added) The stated objectives of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are to: "protect national security and uphold public safety by targeting criminal networks and terrorist organizations that seek to exploit vulnerabilities in our immigration system, in our financial networks, along our border, at federal facilities and elsewhere in order to do harm to the United States. The end result is a safer, more secure America" (ICE homepage) The US media is mum on the issue of the internment camps on US soil. While casually acknowledging the multimillion dollar contract granted to Halliburton's subsidiary, the news reports largely focused their attention on possible "cost overruns" (similar to those which occurred with KBR in Iraq). What is the political intent and purpose of these camps? The potential use of these internment facilities to detain American citizens under a martial law situation are not an object of media debate or discussion. Combat Units Assigned to the Homeland In the last months of the Bush administration, prior to the November 2008 presidential elections, the Department of Defense ordered the recall of the 3rd Infantry's 1st Brigade Combat Team from Iraq. The relocation of a combat unit from the war theater to domestic front is an integral part of the Homeland Security agenda. The BCT was assigned to assist in law enforcement activities within the US. The BCT combat unit was attached to US Army North, the Army's component of US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). The 1st BCT and other combat units would be called upon to perform specific military functions in the case of civil unrest: 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.( (See Gina Cavallaro, Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1, Army Times, September 8, 2008). Under the proposed withdrawal of US forces from Iraq under the Obama administration, one expects that other combat units will be brought home from the war theater and reassigned in the United States. The evolving national security scenario is characterized by a mesh of civilian and military institutions: -Army combat units working with civilian law enforcement, with the stated mission to curb "social unrest". - the establishment of new internment camps under civilian jurisdiction located on US military facilities. The FEMA internment camps are part of the Continuity of Government (COG), which would be put in place in the case of martial law. The internment camps are intended to "protect the government" against its citizens, by locking up protesters as well as political activists who might challenge the legitimacy of the Administration's national security, economic or military agenda. Spying on Americans: The Big Brother Data Bank Related to the issue of internment and mass protests, how will data on American citizens be collected? How will individuals across America be categorized? What are the criteria of the Department of Homeland Security? In a 2004 report of the Homeland Security Council entitled Planning Scenarios, pertaining to the defense of the Homeland, the following categories of potential "conspirators" were identified: "foreign [Islamic] terrorists" , "domestic radical groups", [antiwar and civil rights groups] "state sponsored adversaries" ["rogue states", "unstable nations"] "disgruntled employees" [labor and union activists]. In June of last year, the Bush administration issued a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD 59- HSPD 24) entitled Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security (For Further details see Michel Chossudovsky, "Big Brother" Presidential Directive: "Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security", Global Research, June 2008) Adopted without public debate or Congressional approval, its relevant procedures are far-reaching. They are related to the issue of civil unrest. They are also part of the logic behind the establishment of FEMA internment camps under HR 645. . NSPD 59 (Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security) goes far beyond the narrow issue of biometric identification, it recommends the collection and storage of "associated biographic" information, meaning information on the private lives of US citizens, in minute detail, all of which will be "accomplished within the law": "The contextual data that accompanies biometric data includes information on date and place of birth, citizenship, current address and address history, current employment and employment history, current phone numbers and phone number history, use of government services and tax filings. Other contextual data may include bank account and credit card histories, plus criminal database records on a local, state and federal level. The database also could include legal judgments or other public records documenting involvement in legal disputes, child custody records and marriage or divorce records."(See Jerome Corsi, June 2008) The directive uses 9/11 and the "Global War on Terrorism" as an all encompassing justification to wage a witch hunt against dissenting citizens, establishing at the same time an atmosphere of fear and intimidation across the land. It also calls for the integration of various data banks as well as inter-agency cooperation in the sharing of information, with a view to eventually centralizing the information on American citizens. In a carefully worded text, NSPD 59 "establishes a framework" to enable the Federal government and its various police and intelligence agencies to: "use mutually compatible methods and procedures in the collection, storage, use, analysis, and sharing of biometric and associated biographic and contextual information of individuals in a lawful and appropriate manner, while respecting their information privacy and other legal rights under United States law." The NSPD 59 Directive recommends: "actions and associated timelines for enhancing the existing terrorist-oriented identification and screening processes by expanding the use of biometrics". The procedures under NSPD 59 are consistent with an earlier June 2005 decision which consisted in creating a "domestic spy service", under the auspices of the FBI. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Bush Administration creates "Secret State Police", June 30, 2005) Working hand in glove with Homeland Security (DHS), the proposed "domestic intelligence department" would combine FBI counterterrorism, intelligence and espionage operations into a single service. The new department operating under the auspices of the FBI would have the authority to "seize the property of people deemed to be helping the spread of WMD": They would be able to "spy on people in America suspected of terrorism or having critical intelligence information, even if they are not suspected of committing a crime." (NBC Tonight, 29 June 2005). -------------------------------------------------- ANNEX Text of H.R. 645: National Emergency Centers Establishment Act This is the original text of the bill as it was written by its sponsor and submitted to the House for consideration. This is the latest version of the bill available on this website. SOURCE: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-645] HR 645 IH 111th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 645 To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES January 22, 2009 Mr. HASTINGS of Florida introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and in addition to the Committee on Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A BILL To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the 'National Emergency Centers Establishment Act'. SEC. 2. ESTABLISHMENT OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS. (a) In General- In accordance with the requirements of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations. (b) Purpose of National Emergency Centers- The purpose of a national emergency center shall be to use existing infrastructure-- (1) to provide temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster; (2) to provide centralized locations for the purposes of training and ensuring the coordination of Federal, State, and local first responders; (3) to provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations; and (4) to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security. SEC. 3. DESIGNATION OF MILITARY INSTALLATIONS AS NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS. (a) In General- Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall designate not fewer than 6 military installations as sites for the establishment of national emergency centers. (b) Minimum Requirements- A site designated as a national emergency center shall be-- (1) capable of meeting for an extended period of time the housing, health, transportation, education, public works, humanitarian and other transition needs of a large number of individuals affected by an emergency or major disaster; (2) environmentally safe and shall not pose a health risk to individuals who may use the center; (3) capable of being scaled up or down to accommodate major disaster preparedness and response drills, operations, and procedures; (4) capable of housing existing permanent structures necessary to meet training and first responders coordination requirements during nondisaster periods; (5) capable of hosting the infrastructure necessary to rapidly adjust to temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance needs; (6) required to consist of a complete operations command center, including 2 state-of-the art command and control centers that will comprise a 24/7 operations watch center as follows: (A) one of the command and control centers shall be in full ready mode; and (B) the other shall be used daily for training; and (7) easily accessible at all times and be able to facilitate handicapped and medical facilities, including during an emergency or major disaster. (c) Location of National Emergency Centers- There shall be established not fewer than one national emergency center in each of the following areas: (1) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions I, II, and III. (2) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IV. (3) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions V and VII. (4) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region VI. (5) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions VIII and X. (6) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IX. (d) Preference for Designation of Closed Military Installations- Wherever possible, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall designate a closed military installation as a site for a national emergency center. If the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense jointly determine that there is not a sufficient number of closed military installations that meet the requirements of subsections (b) and (c), the Secretaries shall jointly designate portions of existing military installations other than closed military installations as national emergency centers. (e) Transfer of Control of Closed Military Installations- If a closed military installation is designated as a national emergency center, not later than 180 days after the date of designation, the Secretary of Defense shall transfer to the Secretary of Homeland Security administrative jurisdiction over such closed military installation. (f) Cooperative Agreement for Joint Use of Existing Military Installations- If an existing military installation other than a closed military installation is designated as a national emergency center, not later than 180 days after the date of designation, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Defense shall enter into a cooperative agreement to provide for the establishment of the national emergency center. (g) Reports- (1) PRELIMINARY REPORT- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site-- (A) an outline of the reasons why the site was selected; (B) an outline of the need to construct, repair, or update any existing infrastructure at the site; (C) an outline of the need to conduct any necessary environmental clean-up at the site; (D) an outline of preliminary plans for the transfer of control of the site from the Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of Homeland Security, if necessary under subsection (e); and (E) an outline of preliminary plans for entering into a cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f). (2) UPDATE REPORT- Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site-- (A) an update on the information contained in the report as required by paragraph (1); (B) an outline of the progress made toward the transfer of control of the site, if necessary under subsection (e); (C) an outline of the progress made toward entering a cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f); and (D) recommendations regarding any authorizations and appropriations that may be necessary to provide for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site. (3) FINAL REPORT- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site-- (A) finalized information detailing the transfer of control of the site, if necessary under subsection (e); (B) the finalized cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f); and (C) any additional information pertinent to the establishment of a national emergency center at the site. (4) ADDITIONAL REPORTS- The Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, may submit to Congress additional reports as necessary to provide updates on steps being taken to meet the requirements of this Act. SEC. 4. LIMITATIONS ON STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION. This Act does not affect-- (1) the authority of the Federal Government to provide emergency or major disaster assistance or to implement any disaster mitigation and response program, including any program authorized by the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq.); or (2) the authority of a State or local government to respond to an emergency. SEC. 5. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS. There is authorized to be appropriated $180,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2009 and 2010 to carry out this Act. Such funds shall remain available until expended. SEC. 6. DEFINITIONS. In this Act, the following definitions apply: (1) CLOSED MILITARY INSTALLATION- The term 'closed military installation' means a military installation, or portion thereof, approved for closure or realignment under the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (part A of title XXIX of Public Law 101-510; 10 U.S.C. 2687 note) that meet all, or 2 out of the 3 following requirements: (A) Is located in close proximity to a transportation corridor. (B) Is located in a State with a high level or threat of disaster related activities. (C) Is located near a major metropolitan center. (2) EMERGENCY- The term 'emergency' has the meaning given such term in section 102 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5122). (3) MAJOR DISASTER- The term 'major disaster' has the meaning given such term in section 102 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5122). (4) MILITARY INSTALLATION- The term 'military installation' has the meaning given such term in section 2910 of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (part A of title XXIX of Public Law 101-510; 10 U.S.C. 2687 note). -------------------------------------------------- Archives Global Research RSS Feed America's "War on Terrorism" by Michel Chossudovsky also available in pdf format -------------------------------------------------------- Seeds of Destruction by F.William Engdahl -------------------------------------------------------- The Globalization of Poverty by Michel Chossudovsky now available in pdf format -------------------------------------------------------- Celsius 911 World Takeover & the War of Terror Produced by Jeremy Wright April 3, 2009 The Real AIG Conspiracy AMERICA'S "WAR ON TERRORISM" by Michel Chossudovsky America's "War on Terrorism" In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky's 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by "Islamic terrorists". Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration. The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy. According to Chossudovsky, the "war on terrorism" is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The "war on terrorism" is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the "New World Order", dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex. September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington's agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State. Chossudovsky peels back layers of rhetoric to reveal a complex web of deceit aimed at luring the American people and the rest of the world into accepting a military solution which threatens the future of humanity. The last chapter includes an analysis of the London 7/7 Bomb Attacks. -------------------------------------------------- Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. Your endorsement is greatly appreciated Subscribe to the Global Research E-Newsletter Spread the word! Forward to a friend! -------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article. To become a Member of Global Research The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner. For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com ? Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2009 The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12793 ------------------------------------------------------- Privacy Policy ? Copyright 2005-2009 GlobalResearch.ca Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia ? Copyright 2005-2009 This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Fri Apr 3 20:00:41 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Fri Apr 3 20:01:16 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire Message-ID: <00d301c9b4d1$8e408f50$72ad57ca@jfos> Wed 01 Apr 2009 Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire Written by Chris Floyd a.. Share this a.. Digg b.. Reddit c.. Furl d.. Yahoo e.. Technorati f.. Newsvine g.. Googlize this h.. Facebook b.. Export PDF c.. Print d.. E-mail e.. Tags a.. tool b.. empire c.. terror d.. renewed e.. darkness Here's a purely hypothetical scenario. Let's say you were a dedicated imperial militarist who believed that your country's security, prestige and financial interests could best be served by war and the ever-present threat of war. Let's say you had some really hot and juicy operations going on, endless deadly conflicts that were pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into your war machine and entrenching national policy even more deeply in the militarist philosophy - the machtpolitik - that you believe in. But there's a problem. The general public - the cow-like herd out there that doesn't understand grand strategy the way you and your fellow elites do - is growing weary, and wary, of your Long War. The national treasury is bankrupt, the national infrastructure is rotting, the nation's communities are dying; millions of people are out of work, losing their homes, losing their dreams, spiraling down into want, privation and despair. Yet you have big plans to escalate the war, expand your war machine, and maintain the global dominance that you believe is the right and natural role for your special nation - and its elites. What to do? How to galvanize the truculent, self-absorbed herd into enthusiastically supporting your vital agenda once more? Well, here's one purely hypothetical approach you might try. You goad and provoke violent extremist groups into retaliating against your attacks, your civilian-slaughtering invasions and incursions into their territory. Being unable to confront directly your war machine - the largest, most advanced military force in the history of the world, sustained by a tsunami of public money that each year surpasses the military spending of the rest of the world - they naturally respond with "asymmetrical" operations. At first, these are directed at nearby targets: your supply lines, the forces of your local proxies and allies, and other chaos-inducing depredations in the groups' own regions, designed to foul the lines of your control and drive you out. Just as naturally, you use these attacks to justify an even greater military presence in their regions. The cycle inevitably, inexorably ratchets upwards and outwards, until at last the extremists strike at your homeland - either with your connivance, or your covert acquiescence, or, in any event, with your foreknowledge that such an attack was sure to come. This is the moment you have waited for; this is exactly what you wanted. Now you can whip the herd back into a martial frenzy, keep the Long War going, and push aside the rabble's petty, small-minded desires for a peaceful, prosperous life at home, minding their own business. One never knows exactly what goes on behind the imperial drapery in the Potomac palaces, of course; ordinary American citizens were long ago turned into Kremlinologists of their own government, trying to discern -- through ceremonial signs, backstairs gossip, and slight deviations in ritualized rhetoric -- just what their masters are really up to. But some cynics darkly suspect that scenarios something like the one sketched out above have already been enacted; for instance, in the "new Pearl Harbor" that struck America on September 11, 2001 - one year after a group channeling the views of future Bush Administration bigwigs (including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby and many others) had openly pined for a "new Pear Harbor" to "catalyze" the American people into supporting their militarist agenda, which included an invasion of Iraq - whether Saddam Hussein was in power or not. But leaving aside for now the ever-thorny matter of divining the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, foreknowledge, exploitation, incompetence and fate involved in 9/11, we can say this as an established fact: It is the policy of the United States government to provoke violent extremist groups into action. Once they are in play, their responses can then be used in whatever way the government that provoked them sees fit. And we also know that these provocations are being used, as a matter of deliberate policy, to rouse violent groups on the "Af-Pak" front to launch terrorist attacks. In other words, just as I first wrote in the Moscow Times more than six years ago (and followed up three years later), the United States is deliberately fomenting terrorist attacks in order to pursue its political and military agendas. [For more on how these policies and similar uses of terrorism and death squads have been realized in Iraq and elsewhere, see "A Furnace Seal'd: The Wondrous Death Squads of the American Elite," "Ulster on the Euphrates: The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq," and "Willing Executioners: America's Bipartisan Atrocity Deepens in Somalia."] Eagle-eyed Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com draws the connection between this policy and the most recent "asymmetrical" strike by a "tickled" terrorist group in Pakistan: the deadly attack on a police center in Lahore by the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The group, led by Baitullah Mehsud, said the attack was in retaliation for the American campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan's frontier regions - strikes which have killed many civilians along with usually unidentified "militants." As Ditz notes, one goal of the campaign - which has been intensified by Barack Obama - is precisely the aforementioned fomenting of terrorist activity: The Obama Administration has launched an ever growing number of attacks in the FATA, generally aimed at Mehsud's training facilities in North and South Waziristan. In September, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden said the attacks were an attempt to "provoke a reaction" from the militant groups led by Mehsud. It appears that now, six months later, they have finally done so. [Hayden described this bloodsoaked strategy as "tickling" terrorists into a response.] What's more, Mehsud has now vowed to carry the fight back to American soil. As The Times notes (via Antiwar.com): "Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," [Mehsud declared.] "The maximum they can do is martyr me. But we will exact our revenge on them from inside America." Whether or not the rag-tag TTP could actually carry out such a threat is another matter, as Juan Cole notes. But that is not really the point. The point is that once again, a violent group has been knowingly prodded into murderous action. Even better, it has now set itself up as a "deadly terrorist threat" to the sacred Homeland itself: yet another made-to-order supervillain from central casting. And remarkably, this new, open threat to bring terror to the American heartland comes just days after Barack Obama announced his vaunted surge in the Af-Pak War, citing - what else? - the need to protect the United States from terrorists based in Afghanistan and Pakistan as his chief reason for escalating and expanding the conflict. Yet another astonishing coincidence to justify the militarist agenda, which needs a constant supply of PR-plausible villains and hyped-up, nation-rattling threats like a junkie needs smack. And once again, we are left to puzzle out the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, exploitation, luck, etc., involved in this serendipitous pairing of declarations from Obama and Mehsud. II. It is worth looking again at the implications of this policy of terrorist-tickling. As we noted recently, such things are not just counters on the Great Gameboard: they are deadly realities that kill, maim and despoil multitudes of innocent people around the world. So let's go back to the first glimmers of this strategy in its Terror War context. This is from the Moscow Times article in November 2001: In [a Los Angeles Times] article by military analyst William Arkin... [comes] the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception." According to a classified document prepared for [Donald] Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization - the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" - will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces. In other words - and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan - the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people - your family, your friends, your lovers, you - in order to further their geopolitical ambitions. For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice - a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy... No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action - by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves? - they can then take measures against the "states/sub-state actors accountable" for "harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk." The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire. When the Obama Administration speaks of "continuity" in American foreign policy, this is an integral part of what they are talking about. So look to see much more on TTP and the demon de jure, Baitullah Mehsud, as the bipartisan Long War grinds on and on, with its ever-present need for "catalyzing" - and terrorizing - the American people into support for the militarist project. http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1733-darkness-renewed-terror-as-a-tool-of-empire.htm ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 202 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090404/eec61e17/attachment-0012.gif From gdy52150 at spiritone.com Sun Apr 5 01:17:34 2009 From: gdy52150 at spiritone.com (glen) Date: Sun Apr 5 00:20:26 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Scientists find active 'super-thermite' in WTC dust Message-ID: <49D8691E.6070004@spiritone.com> http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Scientists_find_active_superthermite_in_WTC_0404.html now there is your smoking gun----now get the god damn rope there's a job to do as long as there is a texas blow monkey alive. so much for the shit the building collapsed in a neat pile because it was designed that way--- From ptuffley at xtra.co.nz Sun Apr 5 05:51:34 2009 From: ptuffley at xtra.co.nz (Peter Tuffley) Date: Sun Apr 5 05:52:33 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Scientists find active 'super-thermite' in WTC dust In-Reply-To: <49D8691E.6070004@spiritone.com> References: <49D8691E.6070004@spiritone.com> Message-ID: <430B5106-8E06-4D29-AD1A-896E24886F0A@xtra.co.nz> On 5/04/2009, at 8:17 PM, glen wrote: > http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Scientists_find_active_superthermite_in_WTC_0404.html > > now there is your smoking gun----now get the god damn rope there's a > job to do as long as there is a texas blow monkey alive. > > > so much for the shit the building collapsed in a neat pile because > it was designed that way--- Here's a link to the first of a series of youtube clips of a presentation by a US architect covering these and other technical issues related to WTC911 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b74naeawdCs FWIW Peter From papadop at peak.org Sun Apr 5 09:22:48 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sun Apr 5 09:24:16 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Creativity in the movie world Message-ID: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/apr/04/costa-gavras/print A life in cinema French resistance: Costa Gavras 'My mother used to say stay away from politics, because my father went to prison. But we can't not be involved. By not taking a position, you take a position' Interview by Maya Jaggi The Guardian,(London) Saturday 4 April 2009 Costa Gavras in Greece in April 2009 for a special screening of Z 'All cinema is political' ... Costa Gavras in Greece in April 2009 for a special screening of Z. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images Costa Gavras recalls his shock at arriving at the Gare de Lyon from Greece in 1954, at the "gloomy weather and black fades, and the look people give you if you don't speak the language. My first impulse was to get back on the train and go home." Now 76, he is one of French cinema's most internationally feted writer-directors, having made some 20 films over 45 years. A student at the Sorbonne in the 50s, he still lives in Paris's Latin Quarter, in a pink house off a courtyard hidden behind the Boulevard Saint-Michel, where his grandchildren play around him. He is a naturalised citizen, has a French knighthood and in 2007 became president of the Cinmatheque Francaise, one of the world's largest film archives, lavishly rehoused in a Frank Gehry building across the Seine. This year marks the 40th anniversary of his landmark feature Z (1969), about an incorruptible judge investigating the killing at a peace demo of a reformist politician, played by Yves Montand. With democracy disappearing in a fog of dirty tricks, conspiracy and cover-up, Z was an indictment of the US-backed coup in Greece, and was banned there under the military junta of 1967-74. With dark humour, a faux-documentary style and a soundtrack by Mikos Theodorakis - then under house arrest - it made Gavras's name as master of a genre that married the pace and suspense of the action thriller with political critique, and it won an Oscar for best foreign-language film. Z has recently begun an anniversary tour with a screening in New York in a new 35mm print. Lured to Hollywood in the 80s, Gavras has also made movies in English. Missing (1982), which won an Oscar for best screenplay adaptation, probed another US-backed coup, this time in Chile in 1973. As a conservative American (played by Jack Lemmon) searches for his disappeared son, the journalist Charles Horman, he is confronted by the depth of his country's collusion in Pinochet's coup. (Gavras and Universal Studios successfully fought a libel suit filed by a former US ambassador to Chile during the coup.) Amen (2003) proved equally controversial, investigating as it did the silence or complicity of the Catholic church and the allied powers in the Holocaust. Yet Gavras doesn't march behind the banner of political cinema. All cinema is political, he says, even action movies showing "heroes saving the Earth only with a gun". Nor is he bound by the thriller. "Every story has its own style, which I try to find." His films are often based on fact ("Any similarity to persons or events is deliberate", Z announced). His interest is in the "pyramid of power", and in relationships destroyed by global politics, ideologies and beliefs. Yet alongside silent abuses of authority are those who resist - stubborn witnesses, upright judges, dissenting consciences. He films lone figures dwarfed by opulent buildings, or pacing the indifferent corridors of bureaucracy. For Gavras, "resistance is the most important thing". Philippe Claudel, the French novelist and film-maker whose I've Loved You So Long won this year's Bafta for best foreign-language film, sees Gavras as a "tragic poet" whose elegant, humanist films pose profound questions. "He writes stories with his movie camera that show fights between history and individual choices, or the ironically small place of man in an inhuman society." Gavras's latest feature, Eden Is West, draws on his early experience of exile. The bitter-sweet fable cum road movie about an illegal migrant in Europe, whose dream is to reach Paris, opened London's Human Rights Watch film festival last month. It begins, like a modern Odyssey, in the Aegean, as a boatload of migrants cast their identity documents overboard, leaving their pasts in their wake to join the ranks of the sans-papiers. Elias is the present-day Ulysses, a picaresque ingenu played almost wordlessly by the Italian actor Riccardo Scamarcio, who evades police and swims ashore. The film-maker sees himself in Elias. "He's discovering everything," Gavras says. "He can't speak the language to ask questions. It's like a silent movie." He likens the film's gentle irony to that of Jacques Tati - though with an undercurrent of fear. "Elias is used - as most illegals are. He's handsome, so he's used sexually. Underneath, it's a serious drama." Yet there is optimism. "Even Elias resists fate - the fate of where he was born." On the movie's release, the French immigration minister Eric Besson asked the director for a chat. "He's a new minister, and he said some good words, but we need to see how those words become acts," Gavras says. "On the one hand, we throw out immigrants. On the other, we talk about Europe needing them. It's a big contradiction that we live." The film was produced by his wife of more than 40 years, Michle Ray-Gavras, a journalist-turned-producer from Nice. "She knows what's important for a director - the peace to keep out of the small tragedies behind the camera every day." Filmed partly in Crete, it is the first of his films to be shot in Greece. "I felt accepted by everyone, from the top authorities to common people," he says. He was born Konstantinos Gavras in 1933, in a village in the Peloponnese (in professional life he retains the hyphenated "Costa-Gavras" accidentally used in his first film's credits). During the Nazi occupation his father, an anti-royalist, fought in the leftwing resistance movement. After postwar Greece ended up in the western sphere of influence, and the civil war ended in communist defeat in 1949, his father lost his job as a tax official in Athens and was jailed. "Everyone in the leftwing resistance was considered a communist. We became very poor." His mother cleaned houses, while he did odd jobs. His father's political blacklisting not only barred him from Greek university, but, in the McCarthyite 50s, denied Gavras a visa for US film school. "I was a victim of the cold war," he says. "It was the worst period of Greek history, after the Turkish occupation. But it was fortunate I could come to France and study. Were it not for my father's problems, I'd have stayed in Greece." Working in Athens to save money, "I discovered a part of society I wouldn't otherwise have known". He also danced with a Greek ballet company, and has since directed opera and ballet. In France he "discovered what it is to be free - to read and discuss, which was impossible" under Greek censorship. After Hollywood action movies in Athens, the Cinmathque Franise, around the corner from the Sorbonne, was a revelation. Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1924) struck him with the force of "ancient Greek tragedy. I discovered cinema was able to do masterpieces - it's not just the good guy winning." In 1956 he enrolled at the national film school in Paris. "It was so exciting to see and analyse movies." He became a trainee director in 1958, as new-wave artists, including Franis Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, were challenging cinema's old guard. He worked with old masters Ren Clair and Ren Clment, as well as new auteurs such as Jacques Demy. Though he borrowed techniques of the nouvelle vague, "coming from a different culture, it was impossible for me to make movies like the French directors - interiorised and intimate." His friends Simone Signoret and Yves Montand starred in his first feature, the detective thriller The Sleeping Car Murders (1965). Shock Troops (1967), on the French Maquis, was less successful ("too much action"). But it crystallised his view of political commitment. "My mother used to say 'stay away from politics', because my father went to prison. But if you reject politics, you reject a lot of relationships. The worst thing in society is individualism." The film was about "someone who refuses to take part - either by going to the Germans, or helping the French resistance. But we can't not be involved; we're not an island. By not taking a position, you take a position." He was reading Vassilis Vassilikos's novel Z, about the 1963 killing of Greek MP Gregoris Lambrakis, when the colonels seized power. He wrote a screenplay with the Spanish writer Jorge Semprn, and Z was shot in Algeria, standing in for Thessaloniki. It ended with a list of things banned by the colonels, from beatniks to Beckett. The May events in Paris fuelled its success: "1968 was very present in our minds - in the use of police and justice in French society too. The movie came out at the right moment." Yet he was sceptical about the student protests. "Sometimes I regretted not having that enthusiasm, because the spirit of '68 was a strong motor even for personal change. But because I was from a country where people tried to change something when I was an adolescent, I was able to see the way the ideals of revolution ended." After Soviet tanks crushed the Prague spring in 1968, Gavras made The Confession (1970) about Artur London, a Czech communist minister forced into a false confession of espionage amid Stalinist purges and show trials in the 50s. Some who had thought Gavras a communist were thrown. Yet he has always mistrusted utopianism: "My generation in Greece in the late 40s probably thought communism was a solution. But, at least in eastern Europe, it was a dictatorial system with no respect for human beings except the party leaders. Societies are in a permanent fight to change things. I don't believe society can be paradise." State of Siege (1972), about the kidnap and murder of a US aid agency official by Tupamaros guerrillas in Uruguay, concluded a political trilogy. It was filmed in Salvador Allende's Chile, before the elected Marxist president died in the Pinochet coup. Gavras recalls Allende as a "naive but deeply honest politician. I knew he couldn't succeed. When you saw people occupying factories and estates, I thought, if they don't stop this, it will be a tragedy. I was hoping it wouldn't happen." Two months after Pinochet seized power on 11 September 1973, the Greek junta stormed Athens polytechnic, occupied by student protesters. In Missing, the shots of marauding tanks, corpses and torture in the stadium resonate across continents. "Seven years of the colonels was a tragedy for Greece," Gavras says, "the same crazy ideology and stupid ideas of control by a small group in the military. It all came from the civil war." Working in Hollywood, he kept control over script and cast, using his French crew, and editing in Paris. "They said: 'Why Jack Lemmon? He's a comedian.' But I wouldn't compromise." Lemmon won best actor at Cannes for his role. His films have sometimes been criticised on the left for explaining political realities in personal and psychological terms. In response to the question, has he ever softened his films to get people to watch unpalatable truths, he says: "The problem of audience is complex. You can't forget them, but you don't know who they are or what they like. I try to be the first audience, to keep my virginity as a spectator." Amen, based on Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 play The Deputy: A Christian Tragedy, portrayed two whistleblowers ignored by the Pope. Even the poster, by the Benetton ad designer Oliviero Toscani, sparked outrage, with its cross morphing into a swastika, though French Christian groups failed to get it banned. "If the Church has lasted 2,000 years, it's because they're nice to the strongest," Gavras says. His focus was on the perpetrators and their consciences, with close-ups of German officers peering through spyholes in the gas chambers. "In old movies we saw these guys as crazy. Little by little, we understood they were like us. They weren't only Germans. The French did the same." Special Section (1975), on the Vichy collaborators, drew flak from self-styled French patriots. In Music Box (1989) a lawyer defends her Hungarian father, a US citizen accused of being a Nazi war criminal. The lure of evil ideas for seemingly wholesome people is starkly shown in Betrayed (1988), in which an undercover FBI agent investigating the murder of a Jewish shock-jock in the midwest learns that her family-man lover is a vicious white supremacist. Two of his most recent films show individuals snapping under the pressure of lay-offs. In Mad City (1997) John Travolta's kindly but jobless security guard takes children hostage at gunpoint, only to by manipulated by Dustin Hoffman's TV newshound. The Ax, released in 2005, speaks to the current economic crisis. A box-office hit in France, it features an executive, jobless after a takeover, who decides to bump off potential competitors. "Killing for a job is a metaphor," Gavras says. "But when we lose our job, we lose everything. It's the tragedy of the last few months. They used to say we need a big middle class for a peaceful society. But the system is even going against that." Though he says Greece has made strides since the colonels and with EU membership, he sees last December's riots, sparked by the police killing of a teenager, as proof that "the economic, social and educational system hasn't changed enough. Young people don't accept that governments - rightwing or socialist - make promises they don't keep. They don't accept giving billions to banks and not for education." His children have been drawn to film-making, which makes him anxious. "An immigrant likes his kids to have real jobs - doctor, lawyer," he shrugs. "It's an unsure profession. Doors can open because of the family, but they can also close aggressively. For the moment, they're doing OK." He has not worked in Hollywood for some years. "It's drastically different." Those overtly political features that get made are instigated by star actors, he believes, because "no major company refuses George Clooney or Brad Pitt. It's not coming from the companies or from directors." Critical of Hollywood's "sedative" effect, he says: "I never forget that we're making an entertainment." Echoing Ingmar Bergman, he continues: "Cinema is about seducing an audience to have them go away and think." In Greece "we have no word for it except for the ancient Greek expression 'to guide the soul'. I think the role of entertainment is to do that." Gavras on Gavras "The beach: It's a sunny morning. Little waves ripple over Elias's feet. He's been washed up among some rocks and bushes at the water's edge. He is woken up, or resuscitated, by voices and laughter that fill the air creating an impression of peace and serenity. Elias is trying to figure out where he is, when a ball lands on him. Through the bushes he sees a young, totally naked woman coming over. Elias looks at her, petrified. Behind her, in the sea, two naked young women are waiting for her. Elias throws her the ball without showing himself . . . Elias turns, looks away and discovers a crowd of men, women, children, young people and old people who are all sunbathing totally naked. They all behave as if it were perfectly natural. Elias huddles up more. Suddenly he starts undressing ... He slides into the water." From the screenplay of Eden is West, by Costa Gavras and Jean-Claude Grumberg Elias is supposed to have arrived in "paradise" by accident ... The main biblical feature of paradise that people remember is that everyone is naked, like Adam and Eve before the intrusion of the serpent. This scene is also inspired by the Odyssey, when Ulysses meets Nausicaa. Nudity is called for. Here's hoping that the often uncontrollable television companies will not apply fig leaves, like the Vatican. Do they have digital fig leaves? From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Apr 5 19:35:31 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sun Apr 5 19:36:00 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Mad dog now runs racist Isxrael Message-ID: <20090406023532.60613F3D1@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> http://www.countercurrents.org/avnery050409.htm It's A Lieberman Government By Uri Avnery 05 April, 2009 PalestineChronicle.com [Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.] On the first day of the new Israeli government, the fog cleared: it's a Lieberman government. The day started with a celebration at the President?s office. All the members of this bloated government ? 30 ministers and 8 deputy ministers ? were dressed up in their best finery and posed for a group photo. Binyamin Netanyahu read an uninspired speech, which included the worn-out clich?s that are necessary to set the world at ease: the government is committed to peace, it will negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, bla-bla-bla. Avigdor Lieberman hurried from there to the foreign Office, for the ceremonial change of ministers. He, too, made a speech ? but it was not a routine speech at all. ?Si vis pacem, para bellum ? if you want peace, prepare for war,? declared the new Foreign Minister. When a diplomat quotes this ancient Roman saying, the world pays no attention to the first part, but only to the second. Coming from the mouth of the already infamous Lieberman, it was a clear threat: the new government is entering upon a path of war, not of peace. With this sentence, Lieberman negated Netanyahu?s speech and made headlines around the world. He confirmed the worst apprehensions connected with the creation of this government. Not content with quoting the Romans, he explained specifically why he used this motto. Concessions, he said, do not bring peace, but quite the reverse. The world respected and admired Israel when it won the Six-day war. Two fallacies in one sentence. Returning occupied territory is not a ?concession?. When a thief is compelled to return stolen property, or when a squatter vacates an apartment that does not belong to him, that is not a ?concession?. And the admiration for Israel in 1967 came from a world that saw us as a little, valiant country that had stood up to mighty armies out to destroy us. But today?s Israel looks like a brutal Goliath, while the occupied Palestinians are now viewed as a David with his slingshot, fighting for his life. With this speech, Lieberman succeeded in stirring the world, but even more in humiliating Netanyahu. He exposed the peace declarations of the new Prime Minister as nothing but soap bubbles. However, the world (as I wrote last week) wants to be deceived. A White House spokesman announced that as far as the American administration is concerned, it is Netanyahu?s bla-bla-bla that counts, not Lieberman?s straight talking. And Hillary Clinton was not ashamed to call Lieberman and congratulate him on assuming office. That was the first test of strength inside the Netanyahu-Lieberman-Barak triangle. Lieberman has demonstrated his contempt for both Netanyahu and Barak. His political base is secure, because he is the only person who can topple the government at any moment. After the Knesset debate on the new government, only 69 members voted for it. If one adds the five Labor members who ?were present but did not participate in the vote? (a voting device that is less negative than abstaining), the government has 74 votes. Meaning: without Lieberman?s 15 members, the government does not command a majority. His speech was intended to underline this political reality. He as much as told Netanyahu: If you intend to shut me up, forget it. In fact, he held a pistol to Netanyahu?s head ? in this case, it could be a German Luger Parabellum, a pistol whose name derives from the Roman saying. The full extent of Lieberman?s Chutzpah came to the fore only an hour later. From the Foreign Office ceremony he hurried to another ritual ministerial handover, this time at the Ministry for Internal Security (formerly called the Ministry of Police). What business did he have there? None. It is highly unusual for a minister to attend such a ceremony in another ministry. True, the new Internal Security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, belongs to Lieberman?s party, but that is not relevant. After all, he did not attend the similar ceremony at the Immigration Absorption ministry, where another member of his party was installed. The riddle was solved the next day, when the freshly installed Foreign Minister spent seven hours in a police interrogation room, answering questions about suspected bribery, money laundering and such, in connection with huge sums that were transferred from abroad to a company that belongs to his 23 year old daughter. That explains his presence at the police ministry ceremony. He was photographed standing next to the chiefs of the criminal investigation department. It would be hard to see his appearance there as anything other than a crude and shameless threat against those who were to interrogate him on the morrow. His presence at the ceremony declared: I am the man who appointed the minister who is now in charge of each of your careers, for promotion or termination. And the same message went out to the judges: I have appointed the new Justice Minister, and I shall decide upon the promotion of all of you. It all reminds me of a diplomatic reception at the Egyptian embassy exactly 10 years ago. There I met most of the members of the new government which had just been formed by Ehud Barak. All of them were depressed. Barak had done something that bordered on sadism: he had appointed every minister to the post most unsuitable for them. The gentle and polite Professor Shlomo Ben-Ami was appointed Minister of Internal Security (where he failed miserably during the October 2000 disturbances, when he failed to prevent his police from killing a dozen Arab citizens.) Yossi Beilin, a diplomat with a very fertile mind, a natural candidate for the Foreign Office, was appointed Justice Minister. And so on. In private conversations, all of them vented their bitterness against Barak. Now Netanyahu has trumped Barak. The appointment of Lieberman as Foreign Minister borders on the insane. The appointment of Yuval Steinitz, a professor of philosophy and a personal friend of Netanyahu?s wife, Sarah, a man devoid of any economic experience whatsoever, as Minister of the Treasury, at the height of the world financial crises, crosses the border of the absurd. The appointment of the No. 2 Likud leader, Silvan Shalom, to two junior ministries has made him into a deadly enemy. The creation of a long list of new and hollow ministries, just to provide jobs to his cronies, has turned the government into a popular joke (?a Minister for Incoming Mail and a Minister for Outgoing Mail?). But a government is no joke. And Lieberman is no joke. Far from it. Already on his first day he made clear that he ? he and not Netanyahu or Barak ? will set the style of the new government, both because of his strong political position and his massive personal presence and provocative character. He will maintain this government as long as it suits him and overthrow it the moment he feels that new elections will give him supreme power. His rude and violent style is both natural and calculated. It is intended to threaten, to appeal to the most primitive types in society, to draw public attention and to assure media coverage. All these are reminiscent of other countries and other regimes. The first one to congratulate him was - not by chance ? the ex-fascist Foreign Minister of Italy. This week, earlier statements by Lieberman were quoted again and again. He once proposed bombing the huge Aswan dam, an act that would have caused a terrible Tsunami-like deluge and killed many millions of Egyptians. Another time he proposed delivering an ultimatum to the Palestinians: At 8 am we shall bomb your commercial centers, at noon your gas stations, at 2 pm your banks, and so on. He has proposed drowning thousands of Palestinian prisoners, offering to provide the necessary buses to take them to the coast. Another time he proposed deporting 90% of the 1.2 million Arab citizens of Israel. Recently he told the President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, one of the staunchest allies of the Israeli leadership, to ?go to hell?. In the recent election campaign his official program included the demand to annul the citizenship of any Arab who did not prove his loyalty to Israel. That was also his main slogan. This, too, is reminiscent of the programs of certain parties in history. This is coupled with an open hostility to the Israeli ?elites? and everything connected with the founders of the State of Israel. Some people believe that Lieberman is really not a new phenomenon at all and that he simply brings to the surface traits that were there all the time but were buried beneath a thick layer of sanctimonious hypocrisy. What is his solution to the historic Israeli-Arab conflict? In the past, he spoke about a regime of cantons for the Palestinians. They will live in several enclaves in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which will be disconnected from each other and dominated by Israel. No Palestinian State, of course, no Arab East Jerusalem. He even proposed adding to these cantons some areas of Israel inhabited by a dense Palestinian population, whose Israeli citizenship would be revoked. This is not so far from the ideas of Sharon, nor from those of Netanyahu, who declares that the Palestinians will ?govern themselves? ? of course without a state, without a currency, without control of the border crossings, without harbors and airports. At the Foreign Office ceremony, Lieberman declared that the Annapolis agreement, which was dictated by President Bush, is invalid, and that only the ?Road Map? counts. The Foreign Ministry spokesmen hurried to explain that the ?Road Map? also speaks about ?two states?. They forgot to remind the world that the Israeli government had ?accepted? the Road Map only with 14 provisos that rob it of any content. For example: that Palestinians must ?destroy the terrorist infrastructure? (What is that? Who decides?) before Israel shall make any move, including the freeze of the settlements. (That may remind one of the rich Jew in the Shtetl, who dictated his Last Will and Testament, dividing his wealth between his relatives and friends and adding: ?In case of my death, this Will shall be null and void.?) As far as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is concerned, the controversy between Olmert and Livni on the one side and Netanyahu and Lieberman on the other is about tactics rather than strategy. The strategy of all of them is to prevent the creation of a normal, free and viable Palestinian state. Tzipi Livni was for a tactic of endless negotiations, decorated with pronouncement about peace and ?two nation-states?. Not for nothing did Netanyahu mock her: You had several years to achieve agreement with the Palestinians. So why didn?t you? This debate is not about peace, but about a ?peace process?. But in the meantime Tzipi Livni settles into her new job as the Leader of the Opposition. Her first speeches were vigorous and hard-hitting. We shall soon know if she can fill this job with content. If having to speak about peace will convince her of its value and turn her into a real alternative to the government of Lieberman and Liebermania. From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Apr 6 03:03:04 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Mon Apr 6 03:03:43 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Scientists find active 'super-thermite' in WTC dust In-Reply-To: <430B5106-8E06-4D29-AD1A-896E24886F0A@xtra.co.nz> References: <49D8691E.6070004@spiritone.com> <430B5106-8E06-4D29-AD1A-896E24886F0A@xtra.co.nz> Message-ID: <20090406100310.4496E128D1@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090406/2b6202ad/attachment.html From creuss at bluewin.ch Mon Apr 6 03:41:07 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Mon Apr 6 03:44:05 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Scientists find active 'super-thermite' in WTC dust Message-ID: > I wonder if the actual manufacturer of the > Thermite can be traced from the chips - given that the few companies > licensed to make the stuff might all have unique blends and elemental > compositions for their product? Uh-oh: | Brigham Young University physicist Professor Steven Jones [...] stated | that thermite was a "clever" choice because its ingredients, aluminum | and iron oxide do not require identifying tags by law, meaning they | couldn't be traced back to their manufacturers. Source: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2006/240406thermiteidentified.htm (3 years old!) Anyway, since the thermite has been found, it is clear who the perps are: Those who had access to the innards of the 3 towers, i.e. the companies of Silverstein and Bush-the-other's "security". Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From gdy52150 at spiritone.com Mon Apr 6 21:10:22 2009 From: gdy52150 at spiritone.com (glen) Date: Mon Apr 6 09:13:19 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Scientists find active 'super-thermite' in WTC dust In-Reply-To: <20090406100310.4496E128D1@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> References: <49D8691E.6070004@spiritone.com> <430B5106-8E06-4D29-AD1A-896E24886F0A@xtra.co.nz> <20090406100310.4496E128D1@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> Message-ID: <49DAD22E.7050409@spiritone.com> I certainly think it could be limited to a couple manufacturers since this was very high grade thermite several steps up from the regular stuff.. Someone also juiced this stuff for an additional bang because it contained potassium, magnesium and charcoal---that most likely was done after purchase Dion Giles wrote: > I ran this past a friend who made a damn good suggestion -- wonder how > it could be followed up? Here is what he wrote: > > "I wonder if the actual manufacturer of the Thermite can be traced > from the chips - given that the few companies licensed to make the > stuff might all have unique blends and elemental compositions for > their product?" > > Dion Giles > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > From jomut at yahoo.com Mon Apr 6 10:26:10 2009 From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa) Date: Mon Apr 6 10:26:38 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Re: Scientists find active 'super-thermite' in WTC dust Message-ID: <22721.10671.qm@web31104.mail.mud.yahoo.com> ? Hi, Just?a few?questions!? Does this mean that all?the other scientists who were involved in investigating the 9/11 fawlty towers just ignored to make such experiments:?(1) through default -maybe because they discounted, perhaps unconsciously,?the "conspiracy" theory outright - or, (2) they were carefully following instructions not to conduct such tests, or,? (3) they were just unaware that they were being professionally incompetent? ? Funny thing though is that no one ever thought of conducting such experiments before, and, my person being charitable enough to grant them a measure of professional expertise plus elemental ethical sensibility,?I should think a combination of (1) and (3) would provide a somewhat gimpy explanation of their oversight. ? John ========== John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake) jomut@yahoo.com chakane@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/jomut --- On Sun, 4/5/09, glen wrote: From: glen Subject: [Mai-not] Scientists find active 'super-thermite' in WTC dust To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Date: Sunday, April 5, 2009, 8:17 AM http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Scientists_find_active_superthermite_in_WTC_0404.html now there is your smoking gun----now get the god damn rope there's a job to do as long as there is a texas blow monkey alive. so much for the shit the building collapsed in a neat pile because it was designed that way--- _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090406/a36dbf51/attachment.html From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Apr 6 17:46:43 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Mon Apr 6 18:07:22 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: economic crisis; G20; Nepal; World at a Crossroads; Sudan & ICC; apartheid Israel; El Salvador; photo essay; EU election Message-ID: <49DAA273.4020002@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: economic crisis; G20; Nepal; World at a Crossroads; Sudan & ICC; apartheid Israel; El Salvador; photo essay; EU election * * * 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/. You can now follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism * * * Atilio Bor?n: From infinite war to infinite crisis By Atilio Bor?n[*], translated by Machetera, Scott Campbell, Christine Lewis Carroll and Manuel Talens March 25, 2009 -- Some thoughts on the current capitalist crisis, its probable "solutions" and the role that a socialist option might play in the present juncture. * Read more Eric Toussaint on G20: `Putting a fresh coat of paint on a world that is collapsing'; police attack protesters By Eric Toussaint and Damien Millet, translated by Christine Pagnoulle in collaboration with Elisabeth Anne April 1, 2009 -- The G20 summit meeting in London from April 1 onward was loudly announced and publicised. Those 20 industrialised and emergent countries (G20) are meeting to find solutions to the economic crisis. But long before the end of the summit, it is clear that they will not rise to the challenge. * Read more Sydney, April 10-12, 2009: `World at a Crossroads' 21st century socialism conference day-by-day agenda World at a Crossroads: Fighting for socialism in the 21st Century Easter 2009, April 10-12, Sydney Venue: Sydney Girls High School World At A Crossroads is a conference that brings together hundreds of socialists, progressive activists and Marxist thinkers from around Australia, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and North America in dozens of panel presentations and workshops dealing with the urgent questions that confront us all: war, imperialism, food security, racism, workers' rights, sexism, the media and culture. * Get day-by-day agenda and more info here Nepal: `We call on progressive and leftist forces of the world to support us' Kathmandu -- On April 2, 2009, Ben Peterson -- a socialist activist visiting from Australia -- had the opportunity to interview Suresh Kumar Ale Magar, who is an elected member of Nepal's Constituent Assembly and a militant of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). * * * ``We see the policies and the struggle of the people in Venezuela, Bolivia and the Latin American countries against imperialism, particularly against US imperialism... I strongly believe that in the future that there could be an international anti-imperialist organisation, of which those countries would be a major part.'' * Read more Review: John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff's `The Great Financial Crisis' The Great Financial Crisis By John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff New York, Monthly Review Press, 2009 ISBN: 978-1-58367-184-9 paper Review by Patrick Bond * Read more Sudan: ICC indictment of Omar al-Bashir -- justice or a poisoned chalice? By Steven Fake and Kevin Funk March 21, 2009 -- After an hour and a half of walking under the intense Sudanese sun, armed with crude maps printed from the internet, we paused before a field of rubble in an industrial area of North Khartoum. Two teenagers sat on the porch in front of the still-partially standing building, conversing and watching the world go by in this gritty, dusty area of the Sudanese capital. "Al-Shifa?", we mustered as a question, the name of the massive pharmaceutical plant that stood on this site until just over a decade ago. They nodded. "Bill Clinton", we responded, pointing to the ruins of the facility that his administration bombed in 1998. The two boys chuckled. Just over a decade after the US bombing of al-Shifa, on March 4 of this year, a different leader -- Sudanese head of state Omar al-Bashir -- was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity. * Read more Nepal's Blue Diamond Society: Hopes high for LGBTI rights March 17, 2009 -- Kathmandu -- Ben Peterson interviewed Subash Pokharel, coordinator of Nepal's Blue Diamond Society. The Blue Diamond Society is the largest LGBTI (lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender and intergender people) rights organisation in Nepal. * Read more Salim Vally: The campaign to isolate apartheid Israel -- lessons from South Africa By Salim Vally [Salim Vally, a leading member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South Africa and a veteran anti-apartheid activist, will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets.] * Read more David Harvey: Their crisis, our challenge In a far reaching interview with Red Pepper, David Harvey argues that the current financial crisis and bank bail-outs could lead to a massive consolidation of the banking system and a return to capitalist ``business as usual'' -- unless there is sustained revolt and pressure for a dramatic redistribution and socialisation of wealth. David Harvey was interviewed by Marco Berlinguer and Hilary Wainwright. * Read more El Salvador's FMLN: The road to victory and beyond By the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador March 24, 2009 -- Starting at 7am on Sunday, March 15, Salvadorans headed en masse to the polls to cast their ballots for the future president; by 9:30pm Mauricio Funes, presidential candidate of the Farabundo Mart? National Liberation Front (FMLN), pronounced himself president-elect of El Salvador--the very first leftist head of state in the country's history. * Read more Photo essay: Fighting back against home foreclosure Photos by David Bacon Oakland, California, March 12, 2009 -- On the steps of the Alameda County courthouse, community activists in the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) protest against the auction of the foreclosed home of Armando Ramos and Fernanda Cardenas. Their home mortgage, held by the mortgage company OCWEN, had an adjustable rate. When it went up, Ramos and Cardenas could no longer make the payments. OCWEN then decided to auction off the home on the courthouse steps. * Read more Britain: New left alliance for EU elections March 24, 2009 -- Last week saw the launch of the ``No2EU -- Yes to Democracy'' electoral front, which is critical of the European Union and opposed to the Lisbon Treaty. The alliance is an initiative of Bob Crow, head of Britian's biggest transport union, the RMT. Below, Crow explains why activists have taken the decision to challenge British Labour Party complaceny on this viciously anti-working class treaty. * 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 -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090407/737a0ac4/attachment.html From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Apr 6 18:58:13 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Mon Apr 6 18:58:40 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Scientists find active 'super-thermite' in WTC In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090407015814.868B012A44@fep03.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090407/17510e2a/attachment.html From creuss at bluewin.ch Tue Apr 7 05:48:14 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Tue Apr 7 05:51:08 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Scientists find active 'super-thermite' in WTC Message-ID: Dion Giles wrote: > However, the sacrificing of four passenger airliners, the stand down of > America's defence at the critical moment, the hasty transport out of a > large number of Saudi Arabians, the strange Government secrecy, and the > Coverup Commission could not have been orchestrated by a squalid urban > profiteer.  The thing dwarfs any Mr Silverstein although it could be > that forensic science could point to him as the one who planted the > thermite as his part in the operation. Of course, zio-cons act in a well-organized gang, not just as individuals. On Silverstein, the German Manager Magazine reported already in 2001 that his carreer started in the 1960s with buying out dilapidated buildings. http://www.manager-magazin.de/koepfe/artikel/1,2828,162645,00.html He usually demolished them for gain (exactly what he did with the WTC), and from this he had close contacts to the best demolishing companies. And then there's his famous "let's pull it" TV admission... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2q2mD2HaKA When confronted about this, he copped the questions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtPC0W4HII8 Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Apr 7 07:16:46 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Tue Apr 7 07:17:14 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Scientists find active 'super-thermite' in WTC In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090407141646.BC181F8FD@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> If the spotlight started to shine too brightly on Silverstein, I wonder if his colleagues would shaft him as a scapegoat and run for cover? It would be the end for them if they did, and it would be the end for them if they didn't. I would expect the political explosion in the USA - and everywhere else for that matter - would be cataclysmic if the treachery behind the WTC murders was publicly exposed - especially at a time of unprecedented grand larceny through ever-expanding bailouts. I read a suggestion today that the reason that approved "left" publications like Alternet cling so tenaciously to defence of the decreasingly credible official story about the destruction of the WTC (and the hole in the Pentagon) is that they have been subjected to dire threats (Nice park you've got there. Pity if you committed suicide in it like David Kelly did at Harrowdown Hill.) At 20:48 07/04/2009, you wrote: >Dion Giles wrote: > > However, the sacrificing of four passenger airliners, the stand down of > > America's defence at the critical moment, the hasty transport out of a > > large number of Saudi Arabians, the strange Government secrecy, and the > > Coverup Commission could not have been orchestrated by a squalid urban > > profiteer.  The thing dwarfs any Mr Silverstein although it could be > > that forensic science could point to him as the one who planted the > > thermite as his part in the operation. > >Of course, zio-cons act in a well-organized gang, not just as individuals. >On Silverstein, the German Manager Magazine reported already in 2001 that >his carreer started in the 1960s with buying out dilapidated buildings. >http://www.manager-magazin.de/koepfe/artikel/1,2828,162645,00.html >He usually demolished them for gain (exactly what he did with the WTC), >and from this he had close contacts to the best demolishing companies. >And then there's his famous "let's pull it" TV admission... >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2q2mD2HaKA >When confronted about this, he copped the questions. >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtPC0W4HII8 > >Chris > > > > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword >"igve". > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From gdy52150 at spiritone.com Mon Apr 6 20:38:50 2009 From: gdy52150 at spiritone.com (glen) Date: Tue Apr 7 08:41:56 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Scientists find active 'super-thermite' in WTC In-Reply-To: <20090407141646.BC181F8FD@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> References: <20090407141646.BC181F8FD@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> Message-ID: <49DACACA.80607@spiritone.com> you don;t need to worry if it got too close to silverstein he would meet with an unfortunate accident ---killing the investigation--you would see the same pattern that you see in the JFK assassination---alot of accidents for people that get too close--but little nuggets of truth like the thermite chips will keep surfacing---my guess on the thermite is there are less than 20 companies worldwide that could produce this grade of thermite--it was extremely high end stuff that had been juiced up even more with extenders Dion Giles wrote: > If the spotlight started to shine too brightly on Silverstein, I > wonder if his colleagues would shaft him as a scapegoat and run for > cover? It would be the end for them if they did, and it would be the > end for them if they didn't. I would expect the political explosion > in the USA - and everywhere else for that matter - would be > cataclysmic if the treachery behind the WTC murders was publicly > exposed - especially at a time of unprecedented grand larceny through > ever-expanding bailouts. I read a suggestion today that the reason > that approved "left" publications like Alternet cling so tenaciously > to defence of the decreasingly credible official story about the > destruction of the WTC (and the hole in the Pentagon) is that they > have been subjected to dire threats (Nice park you've got there. Pity > if you committed suicide in it like David Kelly did at Harrowdown Hill.) > > > At 20:48 07/04/2009, you wrote: > >> Dion Giles wrote: >> > However, the sacrificing of four passenger airliners, the stand >> down of >> > America's defence at the critical moment, the hasty transport out of a >> > large number of Saudi Arabians, the strange Government secrecy, and >> the >> > Coverup Commission could not have been orchestrated by a squalid urban >> > profiteer.  The thing dwarfs any Mr Silverstein although it >> could be >> > that forensic science could point to him as the one who planted the >> > thermite as his part in the operation. >> >> Of course, zio-cons act in a well-organized gang, not just as >> individuals. >> On Silverstein, the German Manager Magazine reported already in 2001 >> that >> his carreer started in the 1960s with buying out dilapidated buildings. >> http://www.manager-magazin.de/koepfe/artikel/1,2828,162645,00.html >> He usually demolished them for gain (exactly what he did with the WTC), >> and from this he had close contacts to the best demolishing companies. >> And then there's his famous "let's pull it" TV admission... >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2q2mD2HaKA >> When confronted about this, he copped the questions. >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtPC0W4HII8 >> >> Chris >> >> >> >> >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> >> SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the >> keyword >> "igve". >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Mai-not mailing list >> Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >> http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > From papadop at peak.org Tue Apr 7 09:19:42 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Tue Apr 7 09:21:44 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] OSU library faculty open access mandate Message-ID: [Forwarding from the Oregon State University Libraries] CORVALLIS, Ore. Faculty at Oregon State University Libraries are granting open access to their scholarship and knowledge. On March 6, library faculty adopted a policy that requires deposit of final published versions of scholarly works in the libraries' institutional repository, ScholarsArchive@OSU <http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/dspace/index.jsp> . This is the first open access mandate adopted by a library faculty in the United States, according to Michael Boock, head of digital access services for OSU Libraries. Since 2004, OSU Libraries has worked to collect the university?s scholarship in digital form to ensure greater accessibility and long-term preservation of the scholarship. ScholarsArchive@OSU, which recently ranked fourth among U.S. digital repositories, contains dissertations, theses, a wide variety of university technical reports, working papers and series and increasingly, published articles, papers and presentations. The current contributions come from across campus, and are contributed on a voluntary basis. The new policy means that the 42 library faculty will automatically contribute all of their scholarship to the archive, which will not be the case for faculty in other departments, who can continue to contribute on a voluntary basis. No later than the date of publication or distribution, library faculty members will deposit an electronic copy of the final published version of their works in an appropriate format (such as PDF) to ScholarsArchive@OSU. The policy applies to articles, conference papers and proceedings, substantial presentations and internal reports of interest to a broader audience that are authored or co-authored by library faculty members. "As faculty members at Oregon's land grant university the library faculty believes they have a responsibility to share their expertise and research with the public," Boock said. "As librarians, they believe in the widest possible access to information and its long-term preservation. The policy they've adopted supports these goals." From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Apr 7 19:34:50 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Tue Apr 7 19:35:09 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] A Quiet Revolution Grows in the Muslim World ? In-Reply-To: <00ee01c9b35e$49ea2830$46ad57ca@jfos> References: <00ee01c9b35e$49ea2830$46ad57ca@jfos> Message-ID: <20090408023452.2B0E311993@fep02.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> Looks a bit like a rear-guard action in line with the Revolt Against Reason - a retreat to a stronger and better-prepared position against the values of the Enlightenment. At 14:43 02/04/2009, you wrote: >A Quiet Revolution Grows in the Muslim World >By Robin Wright > >http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1886539-4,00.html > >Three decades after Iran?s upheaval established Islamic clerical rule >for the first time in 14 centuries, a quieter and more profound >revolution is transforming the Muslim world. Dalia Ziada is a part of >it. > >When Ziada was 8, her mother told her to don a white party dress for a >surprise celebration. It turned out to be a painful circumcision. But >Ziada decided to fight back. The young Egyptian spent years arguing >with her father and uncles against the genital mutilation of her sister >and cousins, a campaign she eventually developed into a wider movement. >She now champions everything from freedom of speech to women?s rights >and political prisoners. To promote civil disobedience, Ziada last year >translated into Arabic a comic-book history about Martin Luther King >Jr. and distributed 2,000 copies from Morocco to Yemen. (See pictures >of Islam?s revolution.) > >Now 26, Ziada organized Cairo?s first human-rights film festival in >November. The censorship board did not approve the films, so Ziada >doorstopped its chairman at the elevator and rode up with him to plead >her case. When the theater was suspiciously closed at the last minute, >she rented a tourist boat on the Nile for opening night?waiting until >it was offshore and beyond the arm of the law to start the movie. > >Ziada shies away from little, including the grisly intimate details of >her life. But she also wears a veil, a sign that her religious faith >remains undimmed. ?My ultimate interest,? she wrote in her first blog >entry, ?is to please Allah with all I am doing in my own life.? > >That sentiment is echoed around the Muslim world. In many of the scores >of countries that are predominantly Muslim, the latest generation of >activists is redefining society in novel ways. This new soft revolution >is distinct from three earlier waves of change?the Islamic revival of >the 1970s, the rise of extremism in the 1980s and the growth of Muslim >political parties in the 1990s. > >Today?s revolution is more vibrantly Islamic than ever. Yet it is also >decidedly antijihadist and ambivalent about Islamist political parties. >Culturally, it is deeply conservative, but its goal is to adapt to the >21st century. Politically, it rejects secularism and Westernization but >craves changes compatible with modern global trends. The soft >revolution is more about groping for identity and direction than >expressing piety. The new revolutionaries are synthesizing Koranic >values with the ways of life spawned by the Internet, satellite >television and Facebook. For them, Islam, you might say, is the path to >change rather than the goal itself. ?It?s a nonviolent revolution >trying to mix modernity and religion,? Ziada says, honking as she makes >her way through Cairo?s horrendous traffic for a meeting of one of the >rights groups she works with. > >The new Muslim activists, who take on diverse causes from one country >to another, have emerged in reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks and all >that has happened since. Navtej Dhillon, director of the Brookings >Institution?s Middle East Youth Initiative, says, ?There?s a generation >between the ages of 15 and 35 driving this soft revolution?like the >baby boomers in the U.S.?who are defined by a common experience. It >should have been a generation outward looking in a positive way, with >more education, access to technology and aspirations for economic >mobility.? Instead, he says, ?it?s become hostage to post-9/11 >politics.? Disillusioned with extremists who can destroy but who fail >to construct alternatives that improve daily life, members of the >post-9/11 generation are increasingly relying on Islamic values rather >than on a religion-based ideology to advance their aims. And >importantly, the soft revolution has generated a new self-confidence >among Muslims and a sense that the answers to their problems lie within >their own faith and community rather than in the outside world. The >revolution is about reform in a conservative package.. > >Text-Messaging The Koran > >The soft revolution is made concrete in hundreds of new schools from >Turkey to Pakistan. Its themes echo in Palestinian hip-hop, Egyptian >Facebook pages and the flurry of Koranic verses text-messaged between >students. It is reflected in Bosnian streets honoring Muslim heroes and >central Asian girls named after the holy city of Medina. Its role >models are portrayed by action figures, each with one of the 99 >attributes of God, in Kuwaiti comic books. It has even changed slang. >Young Egyptians often now answer the telephone by saying ?Salaam >alaikum???Peace be upon you??instead of ?Hello.? Many add the tagline >?bi izn Allah???if God permits??when discussing everything from the >weather to politics. ?They think they?re getting a bonus with God,? >muses Ziada. > >Even in Saudi Arabia, the most rigid Muslim state, the soft revolution >is transforming public discourse. Consider Ahmad al-Shugairi, who >worked in his family business until a friend recruited him in 2002 for >a television program called Yallah Shabab (Hey, Young People). >Al-Shugairi ended up as the host. Although he never had formal >religious training, al-Shugairi quickly became one of the most popular >TV preachers, broadcast by satellite to an audience across the Middle >East and watched on YouTube. ?The show explained that you could be a >good Muslim and yet enjoy life,? says Kaswara al-Khatib, a former >producer of Yallah Shabab. ?It used to be that you could be either >devout or liberal, with no middle ground. The focus had been only on >God?s punishment. We focused on God?s mercy.? > >In 2005, al-Shugairi began a TV series called Thoughts during the holy >month of Ramadan, focusing on the practical problems of contemporary >Muslim life, from cleanliness to charity. Sometimes clad in jeans and >at other times a white Saudi robe and headdress, he often speaks >informally from a couch. ?I?m not reinventing the wheel or the faith,? >al-Shugairi explains in Jidda?s Andalus Caf?, which he opened for the >young. ?But there is a need for someone to talk common sense.? (See >pictures of Ramadan.) > >Al-Shugairi?s own life mirrors the experimentation and evolution of >many young Muslims. In the 1990s, he says, he bounced from ?extreme >pleasure? as a college student in California to ?extreme belief.? The >shock of Sept. 11, an attack whose perpetrators were mostly Saudi, >steered him to the middle. > >Traditional clerics deride al-Shugairi, 35, and other televangelists >for preaching ?easy Islam,? ?yuppie Islam,? even ?Western Islam.? But >his message actually reflects a deepening conservatism in the Islamic >world, even as activists use contemporary examples and modern >technology to make their case. One of al-Shugairi?s programs on >happiness focused on Elvis Presley, a man with fame, talent and fortune >but who died young. Life without deep spirituality, al-Shugairi >preaches, is empty. > >The soft revolution?s voices are widening the Islamic political >spectrum. Mostafa Nagar, 28, an Egyptian dentist, runs a blog called >Waves in the Sea of Change, which is part of an Internet-based call for >a renaissance in Islamic thinking. Yet Nagar belongs to the Muslim >Brotherhood, the largest Islamist movement in the Middle East. His blog >launched a wave of challenges from within the Brotherhood to its >proposed manifesto, which limits the political rights of women and >Christians. Nagar called for dividing the religious and political wings >of the movement, a nod to the separation of mosque and state, and >pressed the party to run technocrats rather than clerics for positions >of party leadership and public office. > >When Nagar and his colleagues were urged to leave the Brotherhood, they >decided to stay. ?As a public party,? he says, ?its decisions are >relevant to the destiny of all Egyptians, so their thoughts should be >open to all people.? And indeed, his blog?and other criticism from the >movement?s youth wing?has caused the manifesto to be put on ice. > >The flap underscores an emerging political trend. Since 9/11, polls >have consistently shown that most Muslims do not want either an >Iranian-style theocracy or a Western-style democracy. They want a >blend, with clerics playing an advisory role in societies, not ruling >them. As a consequence, Islamist parties are now under intense >scrutiny. ?Islamists, far from winning sweeping victories, are >struggling to maintain even the modest gains they made earlier,? says a >recent survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In >Iraq?s recent elections, for example, secular parties solidly trumped >the religious parties that had fared well four years ago. > >Rethinking Tradition > >Politics is not the only focus of the soft revolution. Its most >fundamental impact, indeed, may be on the faith itself. In the shadows >of Kocatepe Mosque in Ankara, Turkey, a team of 80 Turkish scholars has >been meeting for the past three years to ponder Muslim traditions >dating back 14 centuries. Known as the hadith, the traditions are based >on the actions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and dictate behavior >on everything from the conduct of war to personal hygiene. (See >pictures of Iranians.) > >Later this year, the Turkish scholars are expected to publish six >volumes that reject thousands of Islam?s most controversial practices, >from stoning adulterers to honor killings. Some hadith, the scholars >contend, are unsubstantiated; others were just invented to manipulate >society. ?There is one tradition which says ladies are religiously and >rationally not complete and of lesser mind,? says Ismail Hakki Unal of >Ankara University?s divinity school, a member of the commission. ?We >think this does not conform with the soul of the Koran. And when we >look at the Prophet?s behavior toward ladies, we don?t think those >insulting messages belong to him.? Another hadith insists that women be >obedient to their husbands if they are to enter paradise. ?Again, this >is incompatible with the Prophet,? Unal says. ?We think these are >sentences put forth by men who were trying to impose their power over >the ladies.? > >The Hadith Project is only one of many such investigations into Islam?s >role in the 21st century. This is perhaps the most intellectually >active period for the faith since the height of Islamic scholarship in >the Middle Ages. ?There is more self-confidence in the Islamic world >about dealing with reason, constitutionalism, science and other big >issues that define modern society,? says Ibrahim Kalin of the >Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research in Ankara. ?The >West is no longer the only worldview to look up to. There are other >ways of sharing the world and negotiating your place in it.? > >Crucially, this latest wave of Islamic thought is not led only by men. >Eman el-Marsafy is challenging one of the strictest male domains in the >Muslim world?the mosque. For 14 centuries, women have largely been >relegated to small side rooms for prayer and excluded from leadership. >But el-Marsafy is one of hundreds of professional women who are >memorizing the Koran and is even teaching at Cairo?s al-Sadiq Mosque. >?We?re taking Islam to the new world,? el-Marsafy says. ?We can do >everything everyone else does. We want to move forward too.? > >The young are in the vanguard. A graduate in business administration >and a former banker, el-Marsafy donned the hijab when she was 26, >despite fierce objections from her parents. (Her father was an Egyptian >diplomat, her mother a society figure.) But last year, el-Marsafy?s >mother, now in her 60s, began wearing the veil too. That is a common >story. Forty years ago, Islamic dress was rare in Egypt.. Today, more >than 80% of women are estimated to wear the hijab, and many put it on >only after their daughters did. > >Piety alone is not the explanation for the change in dress. ?The veil >is the mask of Egyptian woman in a power struggle against the >dictatorship of men,? says Nabil Abdel Fattah of Cairo?s al-Ahram >Center for Political and Strategic Studies and author of The Politics >of Religion. ?The veil gives women more power in a man?s world.? Ziada, >the human-rights activist, says the hijab?her headscarves are in pinks, >pastels, floral prints and plaids, not drab black?provides protective >cover and legitimacy for her campaigns. > >Waiting for Obama > >The ferment in the Muslim world has a range of implications for >President Barack Obama?s outreach to Islam. Gallup polls in Islamic >societies show that large majorities both reject militants and have >serious reservations about the West. ?They?re saying, ?There?s a plague >on both your houses,?? says Richard Burkholder Jr., director of >Gallup?s international polls. Many young Muslims are angry at the >outside world?s support of corrupt and autocratic regimes despite >pledges to push for democracy after 9/11. ?Most of the young feel the >West betrayed its promises,? says Dhillon, of the Brookings >Institution. Muslims fume that a few perpetrators of violence have led >the outside world to suspect a whole generation of supporting >terrorism. ?The only source of identity they have is being attacked,? >Dhillon says. The post-9/11 generation has been further shaped by wars >in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, all of which Washington played >a direct or indirect role in. > >Although he is the first U.S. President to have lived in the Muslim >world and to have Muslim relatives and a Muslim middle name, Obama is >likely to face skepticism even among those who welcomed his election. >In an open letter on the day of his Inauguration, the 57-nation >Organization of the Islamic Conference appealed for a ?new partnership? >with the Obama Administration. ?Throughout the globe, Muslims hunger >for a new era of peace, concordance and tranquility,? wrote Ekmeleddin >Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the conference. He then pointedly >added, ?We firmly believe that America, with your guidance, can help >foster that peace, though real peace can only be shared?never imposed.? >(See pictures of Muslims in America.) > >That is the key. Gallup polls show that by huge margins, Muslims reject >the notion that the U.S. genuinely wants to help them. The new >Administration, with a fresh eye on the world, wants to bolster the >position of the U.S. But ?Obama will have a narrow window to act,? says >Burkholder, ?because the U.S. has failed so often in the past.? > >Ask Naif al-Mutawa, a clinical psychologist from Kuwait. Al-Mutawa is >the publisher of The 99, glossy comic books popular from Morocco to >Indonesia, with 99 male and female superheroes, each imbued with godly >qualities such as mercy, wisdom and tolerance. In a recent article for >the Chicago Tribune, Obama?s hometown paper, al-Mutawa recounted a >conversation with his father about his newborn son. Al-Mutawa?s >grandfather had recently died, and he expected his father to ask him to >keep the name in the family. Instead, his father suggested the child be >named after Obama. ?I was stunned,? al-Mutawa wrote. ?Instead of asking >me to hold on to the past, my conservative Arab Muslim father was >asking me to make a bet on the future.? > >But al-Mutawa opted against it. ?I want to see results, not just hope, >before naming my children after a leader,? he wrote. Such pragmatism is >typical of the Muslim world?s soft revolutionaries. They believe that >their own governments, the Islamist extremists and the outside world >alike have all failed to provide a satisfying narrative that >synthesizes Islam and modernity. So they are taking on the task >themselves. The soft revolution?s combination of conservative symbols, >like Islamic dress, with contemporary practices, like blogging, may >confuse outsiders. But there are few social movements in the world >today that are more important to understand. > >Wright?s most recent book is Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the >Middle East > >Posted by Isha Khan, who can be reached at bdmailer@gmail.com > > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Apr 7 19:52:20 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Tue Apr 7 19:52:47 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire In-Reply-To: <00d301c9b4d1$8e408f50$72ad57ca@jfos> References: <00d301c9b4d1$8e408f50$72ad57ca@jfos> Message-ID: <20090408025222.401E8F6A7@fep01.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> With great respect to Christ Floyd who is one of the best and most perceptive of 21st century commentators I would have to disagree with him over this. Armed resistance to invaders has its dangers, but so must armed occupation or it is game, set and match to the war criminals. What must be greeted with real suspicion is attacks directed randomly at people with a real claim to innocence, or even guilty people like some of the planners in the WTC when the attack is careless of collateral killing. To be sure, the 9-11 attack and the London and Madrid bombings have all the hallmarks of psy-ops. But IEDs aimed at occupying troops, or in an earlier era the totally justified execution of Heydrich and the mongrels guarding him, lift impunity from the colonial forces including knowing backers. It is harder for occupiers to focus on their jobs if they can't feel safe. Especially if there is danger associated with backing them at home. From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Tue Apr 7 17:47:14 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 8 02:00:25 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Capitalism From the Standpoint of Its Victims Message-ID: <003a01c9b828$5fefe650$65ad57ca@jfos> http://www.counterpunch.org/shahid03232009.html March 23, 2009 The Fall of the Towers of Wall Street Capitalism From the Standpoint of Its Victims By M. SHAHID ALAM It has never been easy offering a critique of capitalism or markets to my undergraduate students. Most have never heard an unkind word about these bedrock institutions, which they know to be the foundations of American power and prosperity. These are hallowed institutions. The power of private capital to produce jobs, wealth and freedom is one of the central dogmas that many Americans absorb with their mother's milk. To hear this dogma challenged - in any context - is unsettling. I sometimes suspect that this bitter pill is harder to swallow because it emanates from someone who, so transparently, is not a native-born American. As the weeks pass, however, my students appear to settle down. In the past, they have been reassured to learn that markets have done a good job at delivering prosperity to a few centers of global capitalism. They do work for us, even if they have not worked for most Asians, Africans and Latin Americans. Nevertheless, the thesis that 'free' markets have rarely worked for economies lagging far behind the economic leaders, does not quite take root. The fault could not lie with markets. For too long, the West has believed that Asians, Africans and Latin Americans failed because they were lazy, spendthrift, venal and unimaginative. My students - like most Americans - have been conditioned to look at capitalism from the standpoint of the winners in global capitalism. Because of the accident of birth, they have been the beneficiaries of the wealth and power that global capitalism concentrates at the nodes of the system. They cannot conceive how a system that has worked so well for them could produce misery for others in Asia, Africa and Latin America. I have been away from my teaching duties as the United States has led the world into a deepening recession. Within a few months, the titans of Wall Street have been laid low, rescued from extinction by tax-financed bailouts. Teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, the auto giants have been placed on life-support also by taxpayers, their future still uncertain. In this maelstrom, there steps forward Bernard L. Madoff, the Einstein of Ponzi schemes, who operated his colossal con for twenty years without notice from regulators. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs; millions are threatened with loss of their homes; millions have seen their retirement funds melt before their eyes; millions are threatened with loss of health care. As Americans on Main Street were being devastated, executives of bailed out banks continued to receive millions in bonuses. That straw now threatens to break the back of the fabled American tolerance for the foibles of the capitalist system. Ordinarily, American democracy directs its venom against writers and activists on the left, foolish enough to want to defend the underprivileged. For a change, Americans are threatening captains of finance, venerable bankers, with dire consequences - even death threats. I was on sabbatical when Al-Qaida brought down the Twin Towers on September 11. Then, I was relieved to be away from my students, afraid that some of them might want to lump me with those who had perpetrated these attacks. I am on sabbatical, again, as the towers on Wall Street were being toppled by greed, recklessness and fraud; by a free-market ideology that has no regard for human life; by capitalist elites and their partners in the White House and Congress, who had turned the financial sector into a giant Ponzi scheme. Americans have been subjected to acts of 'terrorism' whose final human toll will make September 11 look like a tea party. The perpetrators of this terror are all homegrown; they were trained not in the mountains of Afghanistan but at Harvard, Yale and Stanford; the bankers, executives and legislators who preyed on Americans are the cr?me de la cr?me of American society. When I return to teach in Fall of this year, I expect to meet students chastened by their experience. Nothing undermines capitalist ideologies faster and more effectively than capitalist crises. No critique of capitalism can be more penetrating than the depredations of unemployment, immiseration, homelessness that it inflicts on its victims. So recently victimized - at the very center of global capitalism - perhaps, Americans might learn to empathize with victims elsewhere - in Africa, Asia and Latin America - who have been ravaged by this system for centuries. Capitalist ideologues will be working overtime to deflect American anger away from the system to a few villains, to a few rotten apples. Congressional hearings will identify scapegoats; they will hang a few 'witches.' A few capitalist barons will be sacrificed. As public anger subsides, attempts will be made to shift the blame to feckless homebuyers and compulsive consumers. At all costs, the system must be saved. The capitalist show must go on, with as little change as possible. Quite apart from this crisis, however, new technologies, in combination with the irreversible shift of sovereignty to some segments of the capitalist periphery, have been changing the dynamics of unequal development. The high-wage workers - the so-called middle classes in the developed countries - have been losing the protection they have long enjoyed against competition from low-wage workers in China and India. More and more global capitalism will enrich some workers in the 'periphery' at the cost of workers in the 'centers' of capitalism. In the years ahead, the great alliance that was forged between capitalists and workers in the centers of capitalism will come under greater strain. More and more, the interests of these two classes will diverge. Powerful corporations will still insist on openness, while growing ranks of workers will press for protectionism. This revival of class conflict in the old capitalist centers will strain existing political arrangements. After a co-optation that has lasted for more than a century, the demos will begin to threaten the corporate elites. New demands will be placed on intellectual mercenaries in the media and academia to use new, more effective tools to dumb down the demos. As growing segments of high-wage workers in the rich countries become the new victims of capitalism, will they slowly learn to see capitalism from the standpoint of its victims? In this new emerging reality, will orthodox economics migrate from its old centers in London, Cambridge and Chicago to new centers in Bangalore and Beijing? A curious world this will be when seen from the old centers. In truth, this will only be a long-delayed correction to two centuries of unequal development, dominated by Western centers. Sadly, the correction will not go far enough: it will leave much of the world mired in poverty and disease. M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University. This essay is excerpted from his forthcoming book, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism (Palgrave Macmillan: November 2009).He is author of Challenging the New Orientalism (2007). Send comments to alqalam02760@yahoo.com. Visit his website at: http://aslama.org. ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Tue Apr 7 17:57:22 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 8 02:01:59 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Financing the Empire: Does US Face G20 Mutiny? Message-ID: <005001c9b828$91dd6ca0$65ad57ca@jfos> March 30, 2009 Does US Face G20 Mutiny? Financing the Empire By MICHAEL HUDSON I am travelling in Europe for three weeks to discuss the global financial crisis with government officials, politicians and labor leaders. What is most remarkable is how differently the financial problem is perceived over here. It's like being in another economic universe, not just another continent. The U.S. media are silent about the most important topic policy makers are discussing here (and I suspect in Asia too): how to protect their countries from three inter-related dynamics: (1) the surplus dollars pouring into the rest of the world for yet further financial speculation and corporate takeovers; (2) the fact that central banks are obliged to recycle these dollar inflows to buy U.S. Treasury bonds to finance the federal U.S. budget deficit; and most important (but most suppressed in the U.S. media, (3) the military character of the U.S. payments deficit and the domestic federal budget deficit. Strange as it may seem - and irrational as it would be in a more logical system of world diplomacy - the "dollar glut" is what finances America's global military build-up. It forces foreign central banks to bear the costs of America's expanding military empire - effective "taxation without representation." Keeping international reserves in "dollars" means recycling their dollar inflows to buy U.S. Treasury bills - U.S. government debt issued largely to finance the military. To date, countries have been as powerless to defend themselves against the fact that this compulsory financing of U.S. military spending is built into the global financial system. Neoliberal economists applaud this as "equilibrium," as if it is part of economic nature and "free markets" rather than bare-knuckle diplomacy wielded with increasing aggressiveness by U.S. officials. The mass media chime in, pretending that recycling the dollar glut to finance U.S. military spending is "showing their faith in U.S. economic strength" by sending "their" dollars here to "invest." It is as if a choice is involved, not financial and diplomatic compulsion to choose merely between "Yes" (from China, reluctantly), "Yes, please" (from Japan and the European Union) and "Yes, thank you" (Britain, Georgia and Australia). It is not "foreign faith in the U.S. economy" that leads foreigners to "put their money here." That's a silly cartoon of a more sinister dynamic. The "foreigners" in question are not consumers buying U.S. exports, nor are they private-sector "investors" buying U.S. stocks and bonds. The largest and most important foreign entities putting "their money" here are central banks, and it is not "their money" at all. They are sending back the dollars that foreign exporters and other recipients turn over to their central banks for domestic currency. When the U.S. payments deficit pumps dollars into foreign economies, these banks are being given little option except to buy U.S. Treasury bills and bonds - which the Treasury spends on financing an enormous, hostile military build-up to encircle the major dollar-recyclers - China, Japan and Arab OPEC oil producers. Yet these governments are forced to recycle dollar inflows in a way that funds U.S. military policies in which they have no say in formulating, and which threaten them more and more belligerently. That is why China and Russia took the lead in forming the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) a few years ago. Here in Europe there is a clear awareness that the U.S. payments deficit is much larger than just the trade deficit. One need merely look at Table 5 of the U.S. balance-of-payments data compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and published by the Dept. of Commerce in its Survey of Current Business to see that the deficit does not stem merely from consumers buying more imports than the United States exports as the financial sector de-industrializes its economy. U.S. imports are now plunging as the economy shrinks and consumers are now finding themselves obliged to pay down the debts they have taken on. Congress has told foreign investors in the largest dollar holder, China, not to buy anything except perhaps used-car dealerships and maybe more packaged mortgages and Fannie Mae stock - the equivalent of Japanese investors being steered into spending $1 billion for Rockefeller Center, on which they subsequently took a 100 per cent loss, and Saudi investment in Citigroup. That's the kind of "international equilibrium" that U.S. officials love to see. "CNOOK go home" is the motto when it comes to serious attempts by foreign governments and their sovereign wealth funds (central bank departments trying to figure out what to do with their dollar glut) to make direct investments in American industry. So we are left with the extent to which the U.S. payments deficit stems from military spending. The problem is not only the war in Iraq, now being extended to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is the expensive build-up of U.S. military bases in Asian, European, post-Soviet and Third World countries. The Obama administration has promised to make the actual amount of this military spending more transparent. That presumably means publishing a revised set of balance of payments figures as well as domestic federal budget statistics. The military overhead is much like a debt overhead, extracting revenue from the economy. In this case it is to pay the military-industrial complex, not merely Wall Street banks and other financial institutions. The domestic federal budget deficit does not stem only from "priming the pump" to give away enormous sums to create a new financial oligarchy. It contains an enormous and rapidly growing military component. So Europeans and Asians see U.S. companies pumping more and more dollars into their economies. Not just to buy their exports in excess of providing them with goods and services in return; not just to buy their companies and "commanding heights" of privatized public enterprises without giving them reciprocal rights to buy important U.S. companies (remember the U.S. turn-down of China's attempt to buy into the U.S. oil distribution business); not just to buy foreign stocks, bonds and real estate. The U.S. media somehow neglect to mention that the U.S. government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars abroad - not only in the Near East for direct combat, but to build enormous military bases to encircle the rest of the world, to install radar systems, guided missile systems and other forms of military coercion, including the "color revolutions" that have been funded - and are still being funded - all around the former Soviet Union. Pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills adding up to tens of millions of the dollars at a time have become familiar "visuals" on some TV broadcasts, but the link is not made with U.S. military and diplomatic spending and foreign central-bank dollar holdings, which are reported simply as "wonderful faith in the U.S. economic recovery" and presumably the "monetary magic" being worked by Wall Street's Tim Geithner at Treasury and Helicopter Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve. Here's the problem: The Coca Cola company recently tried to buy China's largest fruit-juice producer and distributor. China already holds nearly $2 trillion in U.S. securities - way more than it needs or can use, inasmuch as the United States government refuses to let it buy meaningful U.S. companies. If the U.S. buyout would have been permitted to go through, this would have confronted China with a dilemma: Choice #1 would be to let the sale go through and accept payment in dollars, reinvesting them in what the U.S. Treasury tells it to do - U.S. Treasury bonds yielding about 1 per cent. China would take a capital loss on these when U.S. interest rates rise or when the dollar declines as the United States alone is pursuing expansionary Keynesian policies in an attempt to enable the U.S. economy to carry its debt overhead. Choice #2 is not to recycle the dollar inflows. This would lead the renminbi to rise against the dollar, thereby eroding China's export competitiveness in world markets. So China chose a third way, which brought U.S. protests. It turned the sale of its tangible company for merely "paper" U.S. dollars - which went with the "choice" to fund further U.S. military encirclement of the Shanghai Cooperative Agreement. The only people who seem not to be drawing this connection are the American mass media, and hence public. I can assure you from personal experience, it is being drawn here in Europe. (Here's a good diplomatic question to discuss: Which will be the first European country besides Russia to join the S.C.O.?) Academic textbooks have nothing to say about how "equilibrium" in foreign capital movements - speculative as well as for direct investment - is infinite as far as the U.S. economy is concerned. The U.S. economy can create dollars freely, now that they no longer are convertible into gold or even into purchases of U.S. companies, inasmuch as America remains the world's most protected economy. It alone is permitted to protect its agriculture by import quotas, having "grandfathered" these into world trade rules half a century ago. Congress refuses to let "sovereign wealth" funds invest in important U.S. sectors. So we are confronted with the fact that the U.S. Treasury prefers foreign central banks to keep on funding its domestic budget deficit, which means financing the cost of America's war in the Near East and encirclement of foreign countries with rings of military bases. The more "capital outflows" U.S. investors spend to buy up foreign economies -the most profitable sectors, where the new U.S. owners can extract the highest monopoly rents - the more funds end up in foreign central banks to support America's global military build-up. No textbook on political theory or international relations has suggested axioms to explain how nations act in a way so adverse to their own political, military and economic interests. Yet this is just what has been happening for the past generation. So the ultimate question turns out to be what countries can do to counter this financial attack. A Basque labor union asked me whether I thought that controlling speculative capital movements would ensure that the financial system would act in the public interest. Or is outright nationalization necessary to better develop the real economy? It is not simply a problem of "regulation" or "control of speculative capital movements." The question is how nations can act as real nations, in their own interest rather than being roped into serving whatever the American government decides is in America's interest. Any country trying to do what the United States has done for the past 150 years is accused of being "socialist" - and this from the most anti-socialist economy in the world, except when it calls bailouts for its banks "socialism for the rich," a.k.a. financial oligarchy. This rhetorical inflation almost leaves no alternative but outright nationalization of credit as a basic public utility. Of course, the word "nationalization" has become a synonym for bailing out the largest and most reckless banks from their bad loans, and bailing out hedge funds and non-bank counterparties for losses on "casino capitalism," gambling on derivatives that AIG and other insurers or players on the losing side of these gambles are unable to pay. Bailout in this form is not nationalization in the traditional sense of the term - bringing credit creation and other basic financial functions back into the public domain. It is the opposite. It prints new government bonds to turn over - along with self-regulatory power - to the financial sector, blocking the citizenry from taking back these functions. Framing the issue as a choice between democracy and oligarchy turns the question into one of who will control the government doing the regulation and "nationalizing." If it is done by a government whose central bank and major congressional committees dealing with finance are run by Wall Street, this will not help steer credit into productive uses. It will merely continue the Greenspan-Paulson-Geithner era of more and larger free lunches for their financial constituencies. The financial oligarchy's idea of "regulation" is to make sure that deregulators are installed in the key positions and given only a minimal skeleton staff and little funding. Despite Alan Greenspan's announcement that he has come to see the light and realizes that self-regulation doesn't work, the Treasury is still run by a Wall Street official and the Fed is run by a lobbyist for Wall Street. To lobbyists the real concern isn't ideology as such - it's naked self-interest for their clients. They may seek out well-meaning fools, especially prestigious figures from academia. But these are only front men, headed as they are by the followers of Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. Such individuals are put in place as "gate-keepers" of the major academic journals to keep out ideas that do not well serve the financial lobbyists. This pretence for excluding government from meaningful regulation is that finance is so technical that only someone from the financial "industry" is capable of regulating it. To add insult to injury, the additional counter-intuitive claim is made that a hallmark of democracy is to make the central bank "independent" of elected government. In reality, of course, that is just the opposite of democracy. Finance is the crux of the economic system. If it is not regulated democratically in the public interest, then it is "free" to be captured by special interests. So this becomes the oligarchic definition of "market freedom." The danger is that governments will let the financial sector determine how "regulation" will be applied. Special interests seek to make money from the economy, and the financial sector does this in an extractive way. That is its marketing plan. Finance today is acting in a way that de-industrializes economies, not builds them up. The "plan" is austerity for labor, industry and all sectors outside of finance, as in the IMF programs imposed on hapless Third World debtor countries. The experience of Iceland, Latvia and other "financialized" economies should be examined as object lessons, if only because they top the World Bank's ranking of countries in terms of the "ease of doing business." The only meaningful regulation can come from outside the financial sector. Otherwise, countries will suffer what the Japanese call "descent from heaven": regulators are selected from the ranks of bankers and their "useful idiots." Upon retiring from government they return to the financial sector to receive lucrative jobs, "speaking engagements" and kindred paybacks. Knowing this, they regulate in favor of financial special interests, not that of the public at large. The problem of speculative capital movements goes beyond drawing up a set of specific regulations. It concerns the scope of national government power. The International Monetary Fund's Articles of Agreement prevent countries from restoring the "dual exchange rate" systems that many retained down through the 1950s and even into the '60s. It was widespread practice for countries to have one exchange rate for goods and services (sometimes various exchange rates for different import and export categories) and another for "capital movements." Under American pressure, the IMF enforced the pretence that there is an "equilibrium" rate that just happens to be the same for goods and services as it is for capital movements. Governments that did not buy into this ideology were excluded from membership in the IMF and World Bank - or were overthrown. The implication today is that the only way a nation can block capital movements is to withdraw from the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). For the first time since the 1950s this looks like a real possibility, thanks to worldwide awareness of how the U.S. economy is glutting the global economy with surplus "paper" dollars - and U.S. intransigence at stopping its free ride. From the U.S. vantage point, this is nothing less than an attempt to curtail its international military program. Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist. A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be at: mh@michael-hudson.com ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Tue Apr 7 18:01:49 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 8 02:02:28 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Capitalism From the Standpoint of Its Victims Message-ID: <005701c9b828$a5d51e60$65ad57ca@jfos> http://www.counterpunch.org/shahid03232009.html March 23, 2009 The Fall of the Towers of Wall Street Capitalism From the Standpoint of Its Victims By M. SHAHID ALAM It has never been easy offering a critique of capitalism or markets to my undergraduate students. Most have never heard an unkind word about these bedrock institutions, which they know to be the foundations of American power and prosperity. These are hallowed institutions. The power of private capital to produce jobs, wealth and freedom is one of the central dogmas that many Americans absorb with their mother's milk. To hear this dogma challenged - in any context - is unsettling. I sometimes suspect that this bitter pill is harder to swallow because it emanates from someone who, so transparently, is not a native-born American. As the weeks pass, however, my students appear to settle down. In the past, they have been reassured to learn that markets have done a good job at delivering prosperity to a few centers of global capitalism. They do work for us, even if they have not worked for most Asians, Africans and Latin Americans. Nevertheless, the thesis that 'free' markets have rarely worked for economies lagging far behind the economic leaders, does not quite take root. The fault could not lie with markets. For too long, the West has believed that Asians, Africans and Latin Americans failed because they were lazy, spendthrift, venal and unimaginative. My students - like most Americans - have been conditioned to look at capitalism from the standpoint of the winners in global capitalism. Because of the accident of birth, they have been the beneficiaries of the wealth and power that global capitalism concentrates at the nodes of the system. They cannot conceive how a system that has worked so well for them could produce misery for others in Asia, Africa and Latin America. I have been away from my teaching duties as the United States has led the world into a deepening recession. Within a few months, the titans of Wall Street have been laid low, rescued from extinction by tax-financed bailouts. Teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, the auto giants have been placed on life-support also by taxpayers, their future still uncertain. In this maelstrom, there steps forward Bernard L. Madoff, the Einstein of Ponzi schemes, who operated his colossal con for twenty years without notice from regulators. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs; millions are threatened with loss of their homes; millions have seen their retirement funds melt before their eyes; millions are threatened with loss of health care. As Americans on Main Street were being devastated, executives of bailed out banks continued to receive millions in bonuses. That straw now threatens to break the back of the fabled American tolerance for the foibles of the capitalist system. Ordinarily, American democracy directs its venom against writers and activists on the left, foolish enough to want to defend the underprivileged. For a change, Americans are threatening captains of finance, venerable bankers, with dire consequences - even death threats. I was on sabbatical when Al-Qaida brought down the Twin Towers on September 11. Then, I was relieved to be away from my students, afraid that some of them might want to lump me with those who had perpetrated these attacks. I am on sabbatical, again, as the towers on Wall Street were being toppled by greed, recklessness and fraud; by a free-market ideology that has no regard for human life; by capitalist elites and their partners in the White House and Congress, who had turned the financial sector into a giant Ponzi scheme. Americans have been subjected to acts of 'terrorism' whose final human toll will make September 11 look like a tea party. The perpetrators of this terror are all homegrown; they were trained not in the mountains of Afghanistan but at Harvard, Yale and Stanford; the bankers, executives and legislators who preyed on Americans are the cr?me de la cr?me of American society. When I return to teach in Fall of this year, I expect to meet students chastened by their experience. Nothing undermines capitalist ideologies faster and more effectively than capitalist crises. No critique of capitalism can be more penetrating than the depredations of unemployment, immiseration, homelessness that it inflicts on its victims. So recently victimized - at the very center of global capitalism - perhaps, Americans might learn to empathize with victims elsewhere - in Africa, Asia and Latin America - who have been ravaged by this system for centuries. Capitalist ideologues will be working overtime to deflect American anger away from the system to a few villains, to a few rotten apples. Congressional hearings will identify scapegoats; they will hang a few 'witches.' A few capitalist barons will be sacrificed. As public anger subsides, attempts will be made to shift the blame to feckless homebuyers and compulsive consumers. At all costs, the system must be saved. The capitalist show must go on, with as little change as possible. Quite apart from this crisis, however, new technologies, in combination with the irreversible shift of sovereignty to some segments of the capitalist periphery, have been changing the dynamics of unequal development. The high-wage workers - the so-called middle classes in the developed countries - have been losing the protection they have long enjoyed against competition from low-wage workers in China and India. More and more global capitalism will enrich some workers in the 'periphery' at the cost of workers in the 'centers' of capitalism. In the years ahead, the great alliance that was forged between capitalists and workers in the centers of capitalism will come under greater strain. More and more, the interests of these two classes will diverge. Powerful corporations will still insist on openness, while growing ranks of workers will press for protectionism. This revival of class conflict in the old capitalist centers will strain existing political arrangements. After a co-optation that has lasted for more than a century, the demos will begin to threaten the corporate elites. New demands will be placed on intellectual mercenaries in the media and academia to use new, more effective tools to dumb down the demos. As growing segments of high-wage workers in the rich countries become the new victims of capitalism, will they slowly learn to see capitalism from the standpoint of its victims? In this new emerging reality, will orthodox economics migrate from its old centers in London, Cambridge and Chicago to new centers in Bangalore and Beijing? A curious world this will be when seen from the old centers. In truth, this will only be a long-delayed correction to two centuries of unequal development, dominated by Western centers. Sadly, the correction will not go far enough: it will leave much of the world mired in poverty and disease. M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University. This essay is excerpted from his forthcoming book, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism (Palgrave Macmillan: November 2009).He is author of Challenging the New Orientalism (2007). Send comments to alqalam02760@yahoo.com. Visit his website at: http://aslama.org. ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Tue Apr 7 18:05:08 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 8 02:02:43 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Ten Years On - NATO's 78-Day Bombing of Yugoslavia Message-ID: <005a01c9b828$ab753e40$65ad57ca@jfos> http://www.counterpunch.org/balkans03242009.html March 24, 2009 Ten Years On NATO's 78-Day Bombing of Yugoslavia By GLOBAL BALKANS On March 24, 1999, NATO began an aerial bombing campaign against what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. For 78 days, bombs rained down on military targets and civilian infrastructure under the guise of 'humanitarian intervention.' Operation Allied Force precipitated the displacement of over one million people and directly resulted in the deaths of over 2000 civilians of a range nationalities (a number that gets much larger if we include indirect deaths as a result of the intervention and post-intervention period, as well as those killed in the resulting escalation of the military conflict between the Yugoslav army and the KLA). Ten years later, Kosovo's 'independence' has resulted in a quasi-colonial entity of 'ethnic' enclaves and an all-pervasive security apparatus, a new client state for the Western powers that led the bombing campaign. Meanwhile, Serbia and Montenegro remain stalled on a 'transition' to neo-liberal democracy marked by a brutal mass privatization, increasing poverty, and the rapid dispossession and continued marginalization of workers, students, refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs), Roma communities, and others casualties of economic restructuring. Global Balkans is a small network of anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist activists of diverse backgrounds in the ex-Yugoslav diaspora and allies. Many of us have witnessed and experienced first-hand the devastation that continues to be felt as a result of the events and ripple effects emanating from the NATO intervention of 1999. We have talked to and continue to dialogue with people from many communities throughout the former Yugoslav Balkan region whose lives have been deeply and permanently turned upside down by the upheaval of the NATO bombing, the wars of the 1990s, and the neoliberal transition of Yugoslavia's various successor states. Whether they be... 1.. workers massively laid off from factories that were first bombed and then later sold off at fire sale prices or questionable privatization deals to local tycoons or foreign investors; 2.. refugees and displaced people caught between the prospect of no return and a lack of resources and political and social will for local integration; 3.. the families and loved ones of the missing, those who disappeared and were never accounted for during and after the violent chaos of 1999; 4.. minorities trapped in enclaves in Kosovo who go to sleep every night in fear of attack and who have not seen the main town or city 10 km away for over 10 years; 5.. internally displaced people living in the shipping containers, makeshift shelters, and run down collective housing provided to them by international aid agencies ten years ago as a "temporary solution", for whom aid was cut off in 2004 and who live in them year round whether it is -15 or + 40?C; 6.. those communities facing strange illnesses or high cancer rates who are unable to get proper medical care or answers as to their causes in a system that seems bent on hushing up any talk of depleted uranium or the health effects of the bombing that would displease NATO countries; 7.. displaced people who are among the more than 100,000 who have been or are under threat of deportation back to Serbia from EU countries, many of them, particularly Roma, born abroad and unable to speak the language of the country they are dumped back into; 8.. the erased of Slovenia, non-Slovenian minorities from the ex-Yugoslav region who woke up one day to find that their citizenship had been erased by the state, and who have been fighting for status under extremely precarious conditions ever since; 9.. women, Roma, ethnic and sexual minorities who have been disproportionately affected by mass layoffs, particularly in the former self-managing social property sector of the economy (where the majority were employed) that was the first to be privatized, and who face disproportionate violence in the toxic transitional climate of militarism and deprivation that produces social scape-goating; 10.. our own families, friends, and loved ones who bear many of the hidden and not so hidden marks and scars of those times; ...we have been inspired by their struggles and persistence against difficult odds in difficult conditions. They are the erased, the ignored, the missing and the forgotten of the NATO military campaign, the post-Yugoslav transition, and the intervention of the international community, and we name their situations and think of them today, and invite those who read this to join us in doing so. Ten years later, we remember those ordinary people of all nationalities who lost their lives in the wars of the '90s, the NATO bombing, and the neoliberal transition. We reject the nationalist lenses through which these conflicts have been portrayed in the Western media as well as in the region, ones that only recognize or canonize the victims of a preferred side and refuse to see those whose lives have been destroyed on the "other" enemy side. We also reject the cynical pro-imperialist lens that legitimizes military intervention by NATO as a "humanitarian" necessity borne of goodwill and the need for benevolent imperial oversight. As if the millions of dollars in bombs (79,000 tons), cruise missiles (10,000 launched), radiation, and cluster bombs (35,000 bomblets) costing $30 billion USD in damage to the local economy and raining down death and ecological devastation on hospitals, schools, factories, bridges, and refineries are the same as teddy bears, food supplies, or medical aid. We stand in solidarity with all the victims of the many layers of violence that have and continue to be enacted in the region, the kind that the mainstream media are unable and unwilling to depict or recognize. We ask our comrades and allies to aim for a more informed perspective on the legacy of those times than that which much of the Western left has seemingly adopted from the simplistic scenarios of the mainstream media. Ten years later, we are working to support and actively extend our solidarity to the former Yugoslav region's slowly (re)emerging social movements fighting struggles of survival, persistence, and liberation and to our activist comrades who are tirelessly fighting to make these fragile and beleaguered, yet resolute and courageous movements still stronger, more visible, and even more effective. They are an inspiration. We also encourage the North American/Western left and other progressives to overcome the common cycle of momentary and opportunistic interest based on partial understandings followed by long periods of indifference to the conditions, constraints, and complexities faced by ordinary people and social movements in the region. Ten years on, the NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has been eclipsed on the global stage by a series of intensifying imperialist military interventions, most notably in Afghanistan and Iraq. We see each of these military adventures and the mass devastation they have wrought as of a piece, as part of a troubling and dangerous progression, one that will not be resolved by a Democratic president or a kinder, gentler imperialism. We understand and underline the extent to which the NATO bombing in 1999 set many dangerous precedents for these later imperialist wars, and ask those in anti-war movements to remember, talk about, and make those often neglected links. We also see the 1999 NATO intervention as inscribed in a lineage of earlier destructive political measures taken by the "international community", starting with the economic 'shock therapy' program imposed on the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1990. It remains to be seen how much of the world and the media will remember or mark this 10th anniversary of the NATO intervention. We expect there to be little recognition of this date that does not recapitulate the standard nationalist, pro-neoliberal and pro-NATO perspectives we reject. We remember. We refuse to let it be ignored, glossed over or forgotten, and we stand strong with all those who are still daily living the effects and devastation of those 78 days in 1999 and their aftermath - living, struggling, persisting, fighting back and moving forward towards a different Balkans and a different world as well, one where none of this will be possible or even fathomable. Global Balkans is an activist research, media, and organizing network that works both locally and in solidarity with Balkan social movements to investigate, publicize and impact political, social and economic struggles in the former Yugoslav and wider Balkan region. We are working to build a transnational, anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-authoritarian network with a pan-Balkan and internationalist outlook (currently based in San Francisco, Toronto, and Montreal). They can be reached at globalbalkans@yahoo.ca and globalbalkans@gmail.com. ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From creuss at bluewin.ch Wed Apr 8 04:40:04 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Wed Apr 8 04:45:30 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Darkness Renewed: Terror as a Tool of Empire Message-ID: Dion Giles wrote: > Armed resistance to invaders has its dangers, but so > must armed occupation or it is game, set and match to the war > criminals. What must be greeted with real suspicion is attacks > directed randomly at people with a real claim to innocence, or even > guilty people like some of the planners in the WTC when the attack is > careless of collateral killing. What Floyd ignores is that the false-flag marketplace bombings and other civilian massacres not only serve as a pretext to continue the occupation and war machine, but have their own purpose of genociding as many Arabs as possible, even during "peace" time. The perspective of daily carnage also lowers the Arab birth rate -- a classic zionist goal. And if false-flag bombings incide revenge attacks among Arabs (e.g. Sunnis vs. Shiites: you bomb a Sunni mosque or market and blame it on Shiites so the Shiites will "strike back" at Sunnis), then all the better for the genociders. Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From thinker at thelakebc.ca Wed Apr 8 11:28:10 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Wed Apr 8 10:28:45 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Nestle Message-ID: <200904081728.n38HS9cL001647@karma.reboot.ca> Subject: Nestle To the best of my knowledge, Nestle is operating under 800 names, fixing prices paid to producers, while claiming to be "free enterprise". Of course, he's correct on biofuels, but how many family farms has he put out of business? Cheers, Ed. ========================================================================== Increased government spending through stimulus plans risks plunging the world into a new crisis and has already sparked a return of inflation, according to the chairman of Nestl?. Mr Brabeck also warned that food prices would continue to rise this year as global demand increased by 3-4 per cent. He said the food crisis was ?getting worse? and the poorest people ?have been hurt very, very strongly? by it. He blamed part of the problem on the use of food in biofuels: ?I think it is absolutely unacceptable that we are using food for biofuels. We need 9,100 litres of water to produce one litre of pure diesel. This is not sustainable.? http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c398c08e-1de8-11de-830b-00144feabdc0.html From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Wed Apr 8 14:18:24 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Wed Apr 8 14:20:11 2009 Subject: Dear Ed !! Re: [Mai-not] Nestle In-Reply-To: <200904081728.n38HS9cL001647@karma.reboot.ca> References: <200904081728.n38HS9cL001647@karma.reboot.ca> Message-ID: <49DCEA70.15012.952CE8F8@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> Dear Ed: I'm so glad you are back on mai-not and that you have come through your terrible trials and tribulations and are able to be writing again and back on line, - Sorry to have not written sooner and will have to wait awhile to write further as am in midst of planning and coordinating a major national conference on Say No to Nukes - The canadian connection about uranium nuclear system, and full sepcturm impacts on environment, health, economics and the linkages especially Canadian with nuclear weapons. This is part of a full national campaign for a nuclear free world. More later !! Up to my eyeballs right now !! all the best, janet ====================== On 8 Apr 2009 at 11:28, Ed Deak wrote: Date sent: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:28:10 -0700 To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net From: Ed Deak Subject: [Mai-not] Nestle Send reply to: A renewed Mai-Not Subject: Nestle To the best of my knowledge, Nestle is operating under 800 names, fixing prices paid to producers, while claiming to be "free enterprise". Of course, he's correct on biofuels, but how many family farms has he put out of business? Cheers, Ed. ====================================================================== ==== Increased government spending through stimulus plans risks plunging the world into a new crisis and has already sparked a return of inflation, according to the chairman of Nestl?. Mr Brabeck also warned that food prices would continue to rise this year as global demand increased by 3-4 per cent. He said the food crisis was "getting worse" and the poorest people "have been hurt very, very strongly" by it. He blamed part of the problem on the use of food in biofuels: "I think it is absolutely unacceptable that we are using food for biofuels. We need 9,100 litres of water to produce one litre of pure diesel. This is not sustainable." http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c398c08e-1de8-11de-830b- 00144feabdc0.html _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From thinker at thelakebc.ca Wed Apr 8 16:56:33 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Wed Apr 8 15:57:06 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] My column Message-ID: <200904082256.n38MuVRK023682@karma.reboot.ca> To: record@cablerocket.com Subject: Fiat lux #229 Fiat lux # 229 April 4, 2009. First of all, my heartfelt thanks for all the wonderful cards and messages I received during my recent illness and hospitalization. I was, and still am, deeply touched and grateful. Yes, I've spent five weeks in hospital, due to an operation that went wrong, necessitating another one, then hooked up to dozens of wires and tubes, without a bite of food for weeks. Hospitalization is never pleasant, but the few days we had to spend in hospitals in the past, for various reasons, have been tolerable experience. Here, in Williams Lake, the wards, usually containing four beds, have been bright and people could have some chat and contact with others in the room. One of the first actions of this present, morally corrupt government, has been the setting up of various Health Authorities, run by political appointees, to demolish the medicare system by making patients' lives as miserable as possible through the closing of hospitals and the cutting of services, wages and standards. All in the name of "cost cutting" and "fiscal responsibility", of course. The wards are now dark, curtained holes, with men and women jammed into the same rooms, totally devoid any privacy and human dignity. Hospital food always has always been the target of jokes, but at least it used to be cooked on the premises and served fresh, still containing some food values. Some of the food, we received in intensive care was good and still cooked locally, but for the wards, most of it is now cooked hundreds of kilometers from many hospitals, then trucked for hours, warmed up in microwaves that destroy all food values, with the vast majority of it uneaten and ending in the garbage. So much for "cost cuttings". We have a government allegedly bent on reducing emissions and carbon taxing fuels, while their trucks are wasting millions of kilometres and monies on wear and tear on our roads, while spewing thousands of tons of carbon, into the air, to fill local garbage dumps, without the slightest benefit to anyone. All in the name of "savings" and "fiscal responsibility", but in reality, for the sole purpose of depriving the former local kitchen personnel of decent wages and livelihoods. Then we came to the chronic and completely unnecessary and inexcusable shortages of nurses and other necessary medical staff. The care we received from the doctors, other medical personnel and nurses was outstanding and absolutely first class. But a large percentage of the nurses are middle aged, many definitely close to retirement, with a small percentage of young people and students. On account of the chronic shortages, the nurses are always on the run during their twelve hour shifts, doing the dirtiest jobs with kind words and smiles on their faces, trying to answer the bells ringing all over the place. I had a lot of time to ask questions and found out that, if anything, the presently, already chronic shortage is getting worse, with no improvement in sight. In spite of this already intolerable situation, the students have to pay somewhere between $5, and 6,000 per year for their schooling, with hardly any subsidies, or help. So, now we have a government that spends literally billions on fancy show projects, while selling the province and making sure that the buyers, our dear "wealth creating foreign investors", can take as much tax free monies out of the country as possible, while young people, who would be happy to train for lifesaving profession, are denied the chance, because they can't afford the tuition fees. The government could easily pick up the yearly fees of a thousand prospective nursing candidates for about $6. million, that could make a tremendous difference to the shortages, within a couple of years. Yes, $6, million is a lot of money for us ordinary people, but a drop in the bucket in comparison to the hundreds of millions this government wasted on the apparently dud German ferries and the fancy Convention Centre, that miraculously doubled its estimated construction costs, not to mention the huge covered up and secret amounts wasted on the two weeks of the Olympic showbiz racket, called sports while featuring highly paid, professional performers. Then there are the other badly neglected, but unseen, yet absolutely necessary medical services personnel in the labs . These, behind the scenes, shortages may even be worse than that of the nurses. We're talking about the Xray technicians, labs., pathology testing, ultrasounds, pharmacists, physiotherapists, medical records, etc. all suffering extreme shortages, with no newly trained people in sight and no government help. The Williams Lake ultrasound sonographer , who tried to retire a couple of times before, but stayed on because there was no replacement, finally retired and there's still nobody to take her place, while the government is trying to find somebody in other provinces and countries. The wages of all these people, as for the whole working force in the vast majority of professions and occupations, have fallen way behind the inflation rate. In the case of the technicians, the government negotiators simply walked away from the table, as they have done with the paramedics. Our foreign investors need the dough, and so to hell with the public. Some of us older people can still remember the days when governments and politicians went out of their ways to provide the best of services to the people under their jurisdictions. But that was before the present so called "conservatives", under other names and disguises, became the ruling ideology all over the world, stealing everything from people under their jurisdictions, so they can fill the bottomless pockets of some of the biggest gangsters in history, now called "multinational corporations". I was born and grew up under a similar ideology, where the ruling class and the priesthoods had all the dictatorial powers, and anybody who dared to question their actions was persecuted, so I can easily recognize the daily growing signs of what once was proudly called by its real name of fascism. I had to laugh when I saw Mr.Harper boasting at the G20 Summit, that Canada wasn't hit so hard by the financial collapse, because we have more bank regulations. If he had been in power at the time, our banks would be now the most deregulated and bankrupt on Earth. From gdy52150 at spiritone.com Wed Apr 8 20:55:30 2009 From: gdy52150 at spiritone.com (glen) Date: Wed Apr 8 20:58:26 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] more on the thermite Message-ID: <49DD71B2.9030509@spiritone.com> the article has already been rewritten to not be as explosive as first reported--anyone still have a copy of the original article? http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Scientists_find_active_superthermite_in_WTC_0404.html From papadop at peak.org Thu Apr 9 12:19:55 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Thu Apr 9 12:21:33 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] French assembly rejects Oppressive Internet Law! Message-ID: In Stunning Surprise, French Reject Oppressive Internet Law! http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000540.html Greetings. To the shock of the legislation's supporters and detractors alike, the horrendous and oppressive proposed "Three Strikes" Internet law that I discussed yesterday ( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000539.html ) has been soundly rejected by the French national assembly, by a vote of 15 - 21( http://www.laquadrature.net/en/hadopi-rejected-by-the-assembly). Since the vast majority of observers on both sides of this debate had expected the legislation to be approved, the result is nothing short of stunning, and calls into question the entire rationale of those who would use intellectual property concerns as an excuse to trample upon the basic liberties and rights of Internet users. Whether the legislators who voted down the proposal did so out of careful analysis, primal fear of political repercussions, or some other combination of factors is currently unclear -- nor can France or any other country assume that new attempts to trample basic concepts of fairness won't reemerge repeatedly related to the Internet (or in other aspects of our lives, for that matter). But today at least is a good day for the Internet and its users. Vive la France! Lauren Weinstein lauren@vortex.com http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Apr 9 17:52:58 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu Apr 9 17:53:37 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: The Flaw of Supply and Demand Message-ID: <00a101c9b976$b6961b60$0dad57ca@jfos> April 9, 2009 Iceland. Defeated by debt is as deadly as military warfare The Flaw of Supply and Demand by Prof. John Kozy Global Research, April 7, 2009 - 2009-04-06 As a boy, I developed an absorbing interest in how things work, and every time a household gadget failed to work properly, I dismantled it, noting where each part went and what function it played in the device. In pursuing this interest, I discovered that many devices were engineered in ways that made them not only fail prematurely but impossible to repair which led me to develop a robust skepticism of the honesty of American business. (See my piece, "America on the Dulling Edge.") Decades later, when I was a college student, I found that this method of learning how things work was also useful in acquiring an understanding of theories and commonly accepted doctrines. As a result, I found that many of these, upon analysis, had little if any significant content. The Law of Supply and Demand is one such doctrine. The Law of Supply and Demand is usually presented in textbooks in association with a graph made up of two intersecting lines, but the graphs displayed are not identical. Some show straight lines with opposite slopes; some show curved lines, one being is some sort of inverse relationship to the other. One line represents supply, the other, demand, and the point of intersection, price. Readers are told to imagine moving one of the lines to the right or left and observe how the point of intersection changes. If the supply line is moved to the left (decreasing supply), the point of intersection (price) rises; if the supply line is moved to the right, (increasing supply), the point of intersection falls. Similar but opposite results are generated if the line of demand is similarly moved. Students are induced to conclude that as supply falls or demand rises, prices increase, and as supply rises or demand falls, prices fall. Essentially, that's all there is to this doctrine. However, if one disassembles this doctrine, important things are revealed. The graphs sometimes show straight, sometimes curved lines. But any two intersecting lines produce the same result. The nature of the lines on the graphs is irrelevant. Since lines are made of sequences of data points, data is also irrelevant. Since the lines are arbitrary, no formula can be written that relates them to each other and, therefore, the doctrine doesn't allow anyone to make any calculations. That is, the price cannot be calculated by replacing the supply and demand variables with numbers. The supply cannot be calculated by replacing the price and demand variables with numbers, and the demand cannot be calculated by replacing the price and supply variables with numbers. Although the graph gives the impression that the relationship is mathematical, the doctrine has no mathematical applications. I am surprised that no economist has found this curious, especially since mathematical modeling is so pervasive in today's orthodox theory. For instance, Dani Rodrik [http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2009/03/the-sorry-state-of-macroeconomics.html] has written, "The economics profession doesn't take an argument seriously until the argument can be laid out with a well-specified model that respects accepted standards of modeling. . . ." But if a well-specified model that respects accepted standards of modeling is necessary for economics to take something seriously, the Law of Supply and Demand should have been jettisoned a long time ago. Someone may object that I have not stated the doctrine precisely, and that's true. So let's examine its terms. Supply seems to be the easiest to understand. Let's say it means the number of units of a product available for sale, although I'm not certain that this definition is accurate. But the concept of demand is another matter altogether. First of all, using the word demand in this context is a linguistic howler. When a robber walks into a bank, points a gun at a teller, and says, "Give me the money!", s/he is making a demand. Demands are expressed in imperatives. That's not what happens in the marketplace. So what can demand mean in this context? One possibility is the number of people who need a product, as for example, the number of people who need a specific drug to maintain their lives. Another is the number of people who want a product, as for instance, the number of children who want a specific toy for Christmas. Still another is the number of people who can afford to purchase the product. But none of these is part of the doctrine as precisely stated. The precise definition of demand is the number of people who are willing to purchase a product at a specific price. But this definition destroys the doctrine, because if price alone determines the demand, supply is no longer relevant even though the supply may influence the vendor's pricing. The doctrine becomes a mere empty tautology. Furthermore is willingness to buy synonymous with buys? Isn't it possible for a person to say, "I was willing to buy it, but I was too busy to get around to it"? But the real weasel word is price. The Law of Supply and Demand is perhaps the most frequently cited economic principle by the American press; it is cited every time an oil company raises gasoline prices. But the precise definition of price in the doctrine is "equilibrium price" which is a purely theoretical concept. What relation it has to the actual price is a mystery. When an oil company or an economist claims that the price of gasoline is rising because of increased demand, it/he/she is weaseling. The precise claim should be that the equilibrium price is rising because of increased demand, but that is never claimed, and even if it were, it would have no relevance unless the relationship between the equilibrium price and the actual price were specified. All equilibrium price means is the price at which the number of units for sale is equal to the number of units consumers buy. But equilibrium is a fantasy. If it is ever attained in reality, the attainment is purely accidental. So the Law of Supply and Demand plays no place in the marketplace. It is true, of course, that retailers sometimes lower prices during "sales" to rid themselves of excess products. But they do not raise prices when the number of items available decreases. The products are sold at the fixed price until they are gone or are restocked. Even oil companies function this way at the retail level. After a supply of gasoline is delivered to a filling station, the price is set and even if a long line of automobiles forms at the station, the proprietor does not dash out and increase the price to get some of the people lined up to drive away. The same is true of toy makers at Christmas. Often one new toy becomes very popular with children whose parents attempt to buy it. But toy stores do not increase the price when they notice the unexpected demand; they merely sell the toy first come, first acquired until the toy is sold out. So the Law of Supply and Demand is a principle without a practice. Pricing is not the only method of distributing products. In times of crisis, such as wartime, products are often merely rationed. Everyone who needs a product gets a share of those available. The manufacturer makes a profit and consumers get at least some of what they need. Another distribution method is the method described in the previous paragraph. Products are distributed to consumers first come. Again the manufacturers make a profit and those consumers who get to the retailer soon enough get what they want, those who do not get none. But what would happen if the Law of Supply and Demand were applied in the market place? The vendor would raise the price as the supply diminished, the consumers who managed to acquire the product would pay more for it than they would otherwise, and the other consumers would get none no matter how essential getting some was. This scenario is identical to the previous one except that the vendor makes a larger profit at the expense of the consumer. It is merely a method of transferring wealth from consumers to vendors without providing consumers with an additional benefit. In other words, it transfers wealth from the neediest to the neediless. This, of course, raises an important question: Why would economists advocate a method of distribution that enriches vendors at the expense of consumers? Why would they advocate an economic principle that reduces the wealth of consumers to advantage vendors? Exactly for whom does the economy exist? After all, increasing the wealth of the wealthy few at the expense of the many violates every ethical, moral, and humanistic principle ever proclaimed. Why would any decent human being advocate such a system? The Law of Supply and Demand is an empty, tautological doctrine that is not supported by observations of the marketplace and merely serves as an excuse used by some producers to increase prices to the detriment of consumers. It is not an economic law; it is an economic flaw. It is not even a legitimate idea; it is a mere notion. So are orthodox economists who advocate this "law" merely bad people? Perhaps not; perhaps another explanation exists. Consider this analogy. Recently I accompanied my wife to a Sunday school class. The text of the day was Acts 2 where the claim is made that Peter preached and three thousand were converted. While driving home, I said to my wife, "I wonder what kind of sound system Peter used." She quickly saw the passage's absurdity and replied by saying, "I never thought of looking at it that way." The point is that once a person adopts an ideology, questioning it rarely occurs to him/her. If such a person can be persuaded to question it, the foolishness quickly becomes evident. The fault, of course, lies in educating people in ways that do not encourage questioning orthodoxy. Yet knowledge only advances in a culture of iconoclasm. Hal R. Varian has written, "Indeed, when pressed, most economic theorists admit that they do economics because it is fun." [http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/theory.pdf] Games are played for fun; serious thinking is not, and game playing is not iconoclastic. No one who plays a game questions its rules. Questioning the rules never even occurs to game players, just as it rarely occurs to ideological true believers. The lack of an iconoclastic culture in classical economics is its Achilles heel. I have often thought that classical economics is some variation of the game named Monopoly. The data used, faulty as it often is, can be likened to the sum of the dots shown after the dice are thrown, and the fiat money they measure value by is exactly like Monopoly money since it has no intrinsic value. The wealth that economists claim is created often vanishes in an orgy of destruction. And while these economists are having fun, people suffer and often die. John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who blogs on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site's homepage. Global Research Articles by John Kozy -------------------------------------------------------------- Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. Your endorsement is greatly appreciated Subscribe to the Global Research E-Newsletter Spread the word! Forward to a friend! -------------------------------------------------------------- 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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Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1909 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090410/bfe1827d/attachment-0001.gif From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Apr 9 18:12:19 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu Apr 9 18:12:51 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: The Financial War Against Iceland Message-ID: <00f501c9b979$65a1e560$0dad57ca@jfos> April 9, 2009 Iceland. Defeated by debt is as deadly as military warfare The Financial War Against Iceland Being defeated by debt is as deadly as outright military warfare. by Prof Michael Hudson Global Research, April 5, 2009 Iceland is under attack - not militarily? but financially. It owes more than it can pay. This threatens debtors with forfeiture of what remains of their homes and other assets. The government is being told to sell off the nation's public domain, its natural resources and public enterprises to pay the financial gambling debts run up irresponsibly by a new banking class. This class is seeking to increase its wealth and power despite the fact that its debt-leveraging strategy already has plunged the economy into bankruptcy. On top of this, creditors are seeking to enact permanent taxes and sell off public assets to pay for bailouts to themselves. Being defeated by debt is as deadly as outright military warfare. Faced with loss of their property and means of self-support, many citizens will get sick, lead lives of increasing desperation and die early if they do not repudiate most of the fraudulently offered loans of the past five years. And defending its civil society will not be as easy as it is in a war where the citizenry stands together in coping with a visible aggressor. Iceland is confronted by more powerful nations, headed by the United States and Britain. They are unleashing their propagandists and mobilizing the IMF and World Bank to demand that Iceland not defend itself by wiping out its bad debts. Yet these creditor nations so far have taken no responsibility for the current credit mess. And indeed, the United States and Britain are net debtors on balance. But when it comes to their stance vis-?-vis Iceland, they are demanding that it impoverish its citizens by paying debts in ways that these nations themselves would never follow. They know that it lacks the money to pay, but they are quite willing to take payment in the form of foreclosure on the nation's natural resources, land and housing, and a mortgage on the next few centuries of its future. If this sounds like the spoils of war, it is - and always has been. Debt bondage is the name of this game. And the major weapon in this conflict of interest is how people perceive it. Debtors must be convinced to pay voluntarily, to put creditor interests above of the economy's prosperity as a whole, and even to put foreign demands above their own national interest. This is not a policy that my country, the United States, follows. But popular discussion in Iceland to date has been one-sided in defense of creditor interests, not that of its own domestic debtors. Ultimately, Iceland's adversary is not a nation or even a class, but impersonal financial dynamics working globally and domestically. To cope with its current debt pressure, Iceland must recognize how uniquely destructive an economic regime its bankers have created, through self-serving legislation and outright fraud. With eager foreign complicity, its banks have managed to create enough foreign debt to cause chronic currency depreciation and hence domestic price inflation for many decades to come. To put Iceland's financial dilemma in perspective, examine how other countries have dealt with huge debt obligations. Historically, the path of least resistance has been to "inflate their way out of debt." The idea is to pay debts with "cheap money" in terms of its reduced purchasing power. Governments do this by printing money and running budget deficits (spending more than they take in through taxes) large enough to raise prices as this new money chases the same volume of goods. That is how Rome depreciated its currency in antiquity, and how America managed to erode much of its own debt in the 1970s - and how the dollar's falling international value has wiped out much of the U.S. international debt in recent years. This price inflation reduces the debt burden - as long as wages and other income rise in tandem. Faced with an unprecedented explosion of debt obligations - many of them apparently fraudulent, and certainly in violation of traditional credit practice - Iceland has turned this inflationary solution inside out. Instead of permitting the classic credit cure of inflating the currency, it has created a dream economy for creditors, preventing the classical escape from debt. Iceland has found a way to inflate its way into debt, not out of it. By indexing debt to the rate of inflation, it has guaranteed a unique windfall for banks that vastly increases what they receive in a "down market," at the expense of wage earners and industrial profits. Linking mortgage loans to the consumer price index (CPI) in the face of a depreciating currency and heavy balance-of-payments drain to foreigners can have only one result: destruction of Iceland's society and its traditional way of life. Iceland needs to repudiate this debt bomb. Under present policy its debts will never lose value, because they are indexed to inflation. This in turn is being caused in large part by foreign debt service collapsing the currency, raising import prices and thus causing even larger debt payments in an endless treadmill. The economy shrinks, wages fall and assets lose value, yet debt obligations continue to grow and grow. The resulting evisceration of wages, living standards and consumer spending will further shrink the economy - a prescription for economic virus that threatens to plague Iceland for many decades if it is not reversed now. Capital formation will plunge as consumers lack money to spend. Many may not have enough to survive. The economy will be "crucified on a cross of gold," to use William Jennings Bryan's famous phrase in the 1896 American presidential election when he advocated an inflationary coinage of silver to alleviate debt pressure on U.S. farmers and labor. Another side to the discussion? Despite having spent the past half-century focusing on countries with balance-of-payments problems, even I find Iceland's uniquely self-destructive financial regime shocking. Before you dismiss my candor, I should offer a short personal r?sum? so that you understand that my conclusions are based mainly on having been an insider to the game of imperial-style plundering of nations for forty years. In the mid-1960s I was the balance-of-payments economist for the Chase Manhattan Bank and then for Arthur Anderson, and later for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). I have taught international economics at the graduate level since 1969, and now head an international group on economic and financial history based at Harvard. In 1990 at Scudder Stevens and Clark, I organized the world's first sovereign-debt fund. All these jobs involved analyzing the limited ability of debtor countries to pay - how much could be extracted from them through foreign-currency loans and how much public infrastructure was available to be sold off in a voluntary virtual foreclosure process by countries willing to submit to creditor-dictated rules. I first wrote about monetary imperialism in the 1970s in my book Super Imperialism. It should have been entitled "Monetary Imperialism" because it detailed how replacing gold with paper dollar IOUs for trade and balance-of-payments deficits in 1971 allowed the United States to exploit the rest of the world without limit. Phasing out gold payments among central banks in favor of fiat paper money allowed the United States to run up massive debts equal to its cumulative payments deficit, far beyond its ability to pay. It currently owes over $4 trillion, while running a chronic trade deficit with enormous overseas military spending, financed entirely by other countries through their central banks. This is euphemized as the "international monetary system." I also was an advisor to the Canadian government in the 1970s. My main work was to write a monograph explaining why countries should not borrow in foreign currencies, but should monetize their own credit for domestic spending and investment. In recent years I have taught in Latvia and given this same advice to its officials. I provide this background because it has obvious relevance to Iceland's financial situation today. It has broken the cardinal rule of international finance: Never borrow in a foreign currency for credit that you can create freely at home. Governments can inflate their way out of domestic debt - but not out of foreign debt. That is a large part of the problem that Iceland now faces. The main thrust of my comments therefore will focus on the international dimension of Iceland's debt problem, especially with regard to its relations with Europe. It therefore is relevant to look at what is happening in today's "expanded Europe." As the financial press has been reporting, post-Soviet economies have met with disastrous results after having moved to join the European Union during the past decade. The recent riots of debtors, farmers and labor union members from the Baltics to Hungary are symptomatic of the deep economic woes surging over these countries. Resentment is growing that instead of helping them industrialize and become more efficient, Europe and its Lisbon Treaty simply handed matters over to its bankers, who looked at these countries simply as credit customers to be loaded down with debt - not for loans to build up manufacturing and the infrastructure sorely needed by these countries, but loans mainly against existing real estate and infrastructure collateral already in place. That is the quickest way to make money, after all - and finance traditionally has lived in the short run. This problem was bound to arise, given Europe's postindustrial faith that whatever increases "wealth" - even by the trick of puffing up real estate and other asset prices - is as productive as building new industrial capacity and infrastructure. The result of this ideology was a set of bubble economies built on debt-financed real estate and stock market inflation. Such bubbles always burst at some point. Only belatedly are nations re-discovering the classical axiom that the only way to pay for imports on a sustainable basis is to produce exports. Unfortunately, neither foreign banks nor European advisors encouraged this. Their policy de-industrialized the post-Soviet countries, which financed deepening trade deficits by borrowing in foreign currency against their real estate. The Baltic States borrowed euros, sterling and Swiss francs, mainly from Swedish banks to finance a real estate bubble, while Hungary and its Central European neighbors borrowed heavily from Austrian banks. Their economies are shrinking now that their casino economies gambling on asset-price inflation have burst. Rental income and hence property prices are plunging, and exchange rates are following suit. This makes a foreign-currency mortgage cost more than local property is yielding. The result is widespread mortgage default, causing severe losses for Swedish and Austrian banks. Bad real estate debts also are pulling down banks in the two leading creditor nations, Britain and the United States. Real estate prices, stock market prices and employment are going down in a straight line unprecedented even in the Great Depression of the 1930s. This has turned the neoliberal financial dream of "creating wealth" by inflating asset prices, by creating credit without actually increasing tangible capital formation (wages and living standards) into a nightmare. Just as individuals can't live off a credit card forever, neither can nations. As any classical economist knows, societies that only manufacture debt are unsustainable. Casinos may be fun places to visit (customers pay by losing their money), but no place to live. The same is true of casino economies. No help from the EU or the current global economy The European Union is not in a position to offer much help in solving Iceland's financial problems. The continent's integration in the 1950s was pioneered by social democrats and pro-industrial idealistic capitalists such as Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle hoping to end the continent's internecine wars forever. They succeeded, by forming the seven-nation Common Market in 1957. But further European expansion occurred largely on the financial sector's terms. That is the source of problems fracturing "old" and "new" Europe today. It is the context in which Iceland's debt problem is now being played out. It seems natural enough for people to pay debts that have been taken on honestly. The normal expectation is that people will borrow - and banks will make loans - only for sound investments, ones that are able make a profit enabling the debtor to pay back the lender with interest. This is how banks have worked for many centuries - hence, the image of the prudent bankers who says "no" to any questionable deals brought before them. At least that was the old way of doing things. Almost nobody anticipated a world in which bankers would create credit irresponsibly, leading to the massive defaults we are seeing throughout the world today. In the United States, for example, no less than a third of home mortgages have fallen into a state of Negative Equity. That is to say, the mortgage exceeds the market price of the real estate pledged as collateral. The U.S. national debt has tripled during the past year, from $5 trillion to $15 trillion as a result of financial bailouts including the government taking on the $5.2 trillion mortgage-packaging giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A single insurance company, A.I.G., has been slated to receive a quarter-trillion dollars of bailout money, and a single bank, Citibank, has received over $70 billion and still counting. The stocks of these hitherto financial giants have fallen to just pennies, and Congress is now debating whether finally to nationalize them and wipe out their stockholders and even their bondholders. In Britain much the same has occurred. Sitting in the lounge of Heathrow airport last month, I watched the hearings on BBC where members of Parliament expressed amazement that the most seriously affected banks were not led by bankers but by marketing men. Their job was not to calculate prudent loans, but to sell as much debt as possible, without regard for the debtor's ability to pay. The result is that the Bank of England - like the U.S. Treasury - is printing new bonds whose interest charges will have to be paid by taxes on labor and industry. How can Iceland be expected to cope in this kind of financial environment? To get a perspective on what would be a dystopian future, one may look at the dress rehearsal for the so-called financial "reforms" played out in the 1990s in Russia and other post-Soviet countries. These are reforms that creditors - including the European banks, I'm sorry to say - now wish to impose on Iceland. In Russia, life expectancies sharply declined, while health, prosperity and hope withered as outside forces imposed austerity measures and high interest rates. Russians woke up to find that the devastation of the reforms foisted on them were as severe as the Second World War in reducing population, destroying industry, spreading disease and losing control of their economy. Living standards plunged, especially for retirees, while employment prospects closed for the young. Much the same occurred throughout the former Soviet Union. This policy remains the "fix" for debtor countries: Sell off assets for pennies on the dollar to kleptocrats across the globe, and gut the nation's social welfare programs just at a time they are needed most. By contrast, look at the nations calling most loudly for Iceland to pay the loans made by global speculators and arbitrageurs. They include the largest debtor nations, headed by the United States and Britain, led by politicians who never would dream of imposing such hardship on themselves. While cutting their own taxes and increasing their own government budget deficits, these nations are attempting to extricate financial tribute from smaller, weaker countries that they can bully, as they did to Third World debtors in the 1980s and '90s. Dismantling industrial capitalism This is a crisis that calls for blunt truths. What creditor nations and their international financial institutions are promoting is not capitalism as traditionally understood. Instead of helping industrialize the countries to which they extended credit so as to make them viable and self-reliant with new means of paying for their imports - and indeed, paying the debts taken on to rebuild their productive capacity - European planners oversaw the dismantling of manufacturing. Even worse, they did so in a way that empowered a neo-feudal set of financial oligarchs. Indebted economies have been turned into a gaggle of casinos, with special games (e.g., opaque financial instruments such as credit-default swaps) reserved exclusively for insiders. Even to get into this game, one must be at last a millionaire, signing legal releases that one can afford to lose the entire investment and still survive economically. The European Union thus adds insult to injury by presenting its financial agencies euphemistically as donors bringing aid. They turn out to be the same ideologues that have crippled industrial capitalism across the globe by proliferating debt-leveraged gambles that have redistributed wealth upwards wherever they have operated. This policy creates debt peonage for most citizens, above all in the newer countries seeking to join the European Union. Even in the richest nation on earth - the United States - nearly half of all citizens now have no net worth, and the gulf between the wealthiest 10 percent and the rest of society has widened geometrically since 1980. This is the unfair system that the world's top creditors would export to Iceland - if they can convince its voters to accept neoliberal debt pyramiding as a way to get rich. The recent riots throughout the post-Soviet states suggest that this plan is not working. Their populations are now feeling how deeply the so-called financial reforms (e.g., financial deregulation) promoted by European banks and the Lisbon Agreements have polarized their economies. Recognizing the enemy within The only defense against such disastrous policy is to recognize that there are better alternatives. It simply is not possible for today's astronomically indebted economies to "work their way out of debt" with the old trick of inflating the money supply. Trying to do so will collapse the currency's exchange rate and divert so much revenue to pay creditors - and transfer so much property out of local hands - that a new kind of post-capitalist, non-production/consumption economy will be created, one less and less able to be self-reliant and independent, to say nothing about being just and sustainable. Iceland's financial crisis today is less an issue of international law as of outright lawlessness perpetrated by the purveyors of so-called free market democracy. Nations pressing Iceland for payment impose one set of laws for others while following quite a different set for themselves. Preaching to Iceland about international law, the United States and Great Britain themselves have broken the clearest of international laws - those against waging aggressive war. Their propagandists are skillful at using the language of capitalism and morality, yet they are neither capitalist nor moral. Their financial strategy is to play an ages-old psychological game. Make countries like Iceland feel guilty about being debtors rather than recognizing they have been victims of an international Ponzi scheme. In a nutshell, the game is to lay down "laws" for debtors in the form of destructive austerity programs fashioned by irresponsible and indeed, parasitic creditors. This "aid advice" ends in outright asset stripping, both public and private. Asset stripping to pay debts has caused collapse time and again in history, but is strangely downplayed in today's academic curriculum as an "inconvenient truth" as far as vested financial interests are concerned. Income is siphoned off by a scheme that is elegant and simple. Hapless victims - and now entire economies, not just individuals - are maneuvered onto a debt treadmill from which there is no escape. Creditors pile on credit and let the debts grow at the "magic of compound interest," knowing that their loans cannot be repaid - except by asset sell-offs. No economy's productivity can keep pace with exponentially compounding debt. Whatever was owned (and indeed, financed originally by public debt but now paid off) is stripped away for interest payments that never end. The aim is for these payments to absorb as much of the surplus as possible, so that the national economy in effect works to pay tribute to the new global financial class - bankers and money managers of mutual funds, pension funds and hedge funds. The product they are selling is debt. They build up their own wealth by indebting others, and then forcing sell-offs to buyers who take on their own debt in the hope of making asset-price gains as property prices are impossibly inflated relative to the wages of living labor. This has become the new, euphemistically dubbed post-industrial form of wealth creation - a strategy that is now collapsing economies throughout the world. The role of the United States The United States has trapped other countries into a nightmarish system in which they have little practical choice but to recycle their excess balance-of-payments dollar inflows back to the United States, mainly in the form of loans to the U.S. Treasury. When foreign central banks receive dollars for their exports (or for the sale of their companies), they are limited in what they can do with these dollars. The U.S. Congress will not let them buy up important domestic companies or resources, and will not part with U.S. gold holdings. So foreign central banks are obliged to buy Treasury bonds - or, as the supply of these bonds has run out (being limited by the domestic budget deficit), mortgage-backed securities issued by the now-public Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac packagers of subprime mortgages. These two semi-official agencies were formally nationalized last year after a series of financial frauds and disastrous investments wiped out their capital, obliging the U.S. Government to step in and mollify governments from China to Israel whose central banks had been recycling their surplus dollar inflows into these securities. Icelanders should keep one basic principle uppermost in their minds. The United States is the world's largest debtor nation, and will never repay its own foreign debt. Over and above its presently outstanding four trillion dollars, its Treasury intends to keep on issuing new paper IOUs in exchange for the goods, services and real assets of China, Japan and other creditor nations - until governments stuck with these paper dollars turn their back on this Madoff-Ponzi scheme (note that these schemes always are named for American operators), recognizing what Adam Smith explained in The Wealth of Nations: No nation has ever repaid its debts. Small nations like Iceland, along with small taxpayers in wealthy countries, may be coerced with propaganda, mind games and outright threats into paying - until they have no assets left to hand over. But the big boys are above the law. They control the courts (which often rule without much regard for the actual law), just as they write history and newspaper coverage - and business school curricula - to serve their own interests. The second important principle is how radically today's post-capitalist order has inverted traditional ways of making money. Instead of making profits on new capital investment, the easiest path to quick riches in today's global financial system is to foreclose at pennies on the dollar, and make a "capital gain" by flipping property onto world financial markets that are being inflated by central banks. While financial spokespersons promise that "there is no such thing as a free lunch," today's hit-and-run financial bubble, fraud and insider privatizations culminating in public-sector bailouts ("socializing the risk" while privatizing the profits and capital gains) - has become all about obtaining a free lunch. Iceland's zero-sum financial gamble But it is a zero-sum gambling game, with losers on the other side of the table from the winners. One party's gain is another's loss - and indeed, this kind of game ends up shrinking the economy by diverting resources away from real investment in tangible capital formation. Unlike industrial capitalism, which employs labor and invests in capital equipment to turn raw materials into salable commodities, today's post-industrial financialized system only offers the virtual (and temporary) wealth of asset bubbles. Its financial managers claim to be acting in the tradition of classical economists and share their concept of free markets, but in actuality they have been part of an intellectual fraud that depicts their system as something other than the financialized wealth extraction on the real economy of production and consumption that it is. Financialized wealth is extractive, not productive. That is because loans, stocks and bond securities are claims on wealth, not real wealth itself. This is the context in which today's financial war against Iceland is being waged. Homeowners are paying tribute, not in the form of taxes to an invading occupying force, but in interest to local sponsors of the debt pyramiding that has got Iceland into such deep trouble, and to the international creditors and enablers of this over-financialization of the economy. The nation's public domain, its land and geothermal resources, its tourist industry and public assets are being eyed by foreign creditors as prey to be seized in the way that has occurred in many Third World countries. It is what ruined Turkey and Egypt in the late 19th century and brought down other kingdoms for centuries before that. Yet many Icelanders are heading into this future voluntarily, as if it somehow is fair rather than an exercise in predatory finance led by nations that have shown no willingness (or ability) to pay their own international debts. ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1450 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090410/95e07e96/attachment-0003.jpe From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Thu Apr 9 18:12:08 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Thu Apr 9 18:13:51 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Emerson calls on govt to be more US- Centric [calgaryherald.com] Message-ID: <49DE72B8.11450.9B2941DA@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> David Emerson, former Minister of Industry in the Paul Martin government, and the Minister of International Trade then Minister of Foreign Affairs under Stephen Harper, called on the government to aggressively seek stronger Canada-U.S. ties, up to and including a customs union. He said at minimum Canada should advocate a North American security perimeter arrangement, a labour mobility agreement that modernizes NAFTA provisions, and greater integration on regulatory matters." fyi-janet ========== http://www.calgaryherald.com/Canada+losing+ground+world+former+ministe r+says/1295392/story.html As you know, David Emerson was the Minister of Industry in the Paul Martin government, and the Minister of International Trade then Minister of Foreign Affairs under Stephen Harper, before leaving federal politics in September 2008. The Calgary Herald reports that, "David Emerson, in his first wide- ranging interview since retiring from politics, says.'There was a real kind of noticeable impression out there in the world community that Canada is not as visible as we used to be, and should be,' he told Canwest News Service in an interview. Emerson said Canada's visibility problems existed under previous Liberal governments and are possibly linked to the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, which he said made Canada 'U.S.-centric.'" That said, it would appear that Mr. Emerson wants Canada to be even more US-centric. The article also reports, "(Emerson says) Canada's NAFTA advantage is withering in the post-9/11 era because of U.S. border security measures and protectionism. He called on the government to aggressively seek stronger Canada-U.S. ties, up to and including a customs union. He said at minimum Canada should advocate a North American security perimeter arrangement, a labour mobility agreement that modernizes NAFTA provisions, and greater integration on regulatory matters." From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Apr 9 18:21:59 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu Apr 9 18:22:30 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 WorldTrade Center Catastrophe Message-ID: <017301c9b97a$bf9017d0$0dad57ca@jfos> To: 911Truth Australia Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2009 11:38 AM Subject: [S] Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 WorldTrade Center Catastrophe More and more evidence... Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe Submitted by Reprehensor on Fri, 04/03/2009 - 5:30pm http://911blogger.com/node/19761 Digg and reddit. >From Dr. Steven Jones; A back-scattered electron (BSE) image featured in the newly published paper. Formally published in a peer-reviewed Chemical Physics journal, today: ?Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe? by Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley and Bradley R. Larsen The paper ends with this sentence: ?Based on these observations, we conclude that the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered in the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material.? In short, the paper explodes the official story that ?no evidence? exists for explosive/pyrotechnic materials in the WTC buildings. What is high-tech explosive/pyrotechnic material in large quantities doing in the WTC dust? Who made tons of this stuff and why? Why have government investigators refused to look for explosive residues in the WTC aftermath? These are central questions raised by this scientific study. The peer-review on this paper was grueling, with pages of comments by referees. The tough questions the reviewers raised led to months of further experiments. These studies added much to the paper, including observation and photographs of iron-aluminum rich spheres produced as the material is ignited in a Differential Scanning Calorimeter (see Figures 20, 25 and 26). The nine authors undertook an in-depth study of unusual red-gray chips found in the dust generated during the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. The article states: ?The iron oxide and aluminum are intimately mixed in the red material. When ignited in a DSC device the chips exhibit large but narrow exotherms occurring at approximately 430 ?C, far below the normal ignition temperature for conventional thermite. Numerous iron-rich spheres are clearly observed in the residue following the ignition of these peculiar red/gray chips. The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic.? The images and data plots deserve careful attention. Some observations about the production of this paper: 1. First author is Professor Niels Harrit of Copenhagen University in Denmark, an Associate Professor of Chemistry. He is an expert in nano-chemistry; current research activities and his photo can be found here: http://cmm.nbi.ku.dk/ Molecular Structures on Short and Ultra Short Timescales A Centre under the Danish National Research Foundation The Centre for Molecular Movies was inaugurated 29th November 2005, at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. The Centre is made possible through a five year grant from the Danish National Research Foundation (see e.g. www.dg.dk). We aim to obtain real time ?pictures? of how atoms are moving while processes are taking place in molecules and solid materials, using ultrashort pulses of laser light and X-rays. The goal is to understand and in turn influence, at the atomic level, the structural transformations associated with such processes. The Centre combines expertise form Ris? National Laboratory, University of Copenhagen, and the Technical University of Denmark in structural investigation of matter by synchrotron X-ray based techniques, femtosecond laser spectroscopy, theoretical insight in femtosecond processes, and the ability to tailor materials, and design sample systems for optimal experimental conditions.? We understand that the Dean of Prof. Harrit?s college, Niels O Andersen, appears as the first name on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Bentham Science journal where the paper was published. 2. Second author is Dr. Jeffrey Farrer of BYU. http://www.physics.byu.edu/images/people/farrer.jpg 3. Dr. Farrer is featured in an article on page 11 of the BYU Frontiers magazine, Spring 2005: ?Dr. Jeffrey Farrer, lab director for TEM? (TEM stands for Transmission Electron Microscopy). The article notes: ?The electron microscopes in the TEM lab combine to give BYU capabilities that are virtually unique? rivaling anything built worldwide.? The article is entitled: ?Rare and Powerful Microscopes Unlock Nano Secrets,? which is certainly true as regards the discoveries of the present paper. 4. Kudos to BYU for permitting Drs. Farrer and Jones and physics student Daniel Farnsworth to do the research described in the paper and for conducting internal reviews of the paper. Dr. Farrer was formerly first author on this paper. But after internal review of the paper, BYU administrators evidently disallowed him from being first author on ANY paper related to 9/11 research (this appears to be their perogative, but perhaps they will explain). Nevertheless, the paper was approved for publication with Dr. Farrer?s name and affiliation listed and we congratulate BYU for this. We stand by Dr. Farrer and congratulate his careful scientific research represented in this paper. 5. Perhaps now there will finally be a review of the SCIENCE explored by Profs. Harrit and Jones and by Drs. Farrer and Legge and their colleagues, as repeatedly requested by these scientists. We challenge ANY university or established laboratory group to perform such a review. This paper will be a good place to start, along with two other peer-reviewed papers in established journals involving several of the same authors: Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction Authors: Steven E. Jones, Frank M. Legge, Kevin R. Ryan, Anthony F. Szamboti, James R. Gourley The Open Civil Engineering Journal, pp.35-40, Vol 2 http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCIEJ/2008/00000002/00000... Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials Authors: Kevin R. Ryan, James R. Gourley, and Steven E. Jones The Environmentalist, August, 2008 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10669-008-9182-4 6. James Hoffman has written three essays further explaining the implications and results of the paper. Thank you, Jim, for this work! http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/index.html 7. Important features of the research have been independently corroborated by Mark Basile in New Hampshire and by physicist Fr?d?ric Henry-Couannier in France., proceeding from earlier scientific reports on these discoveries (e.g., by Prof. Jones speaking at a Physics Dept. Colloquium at Utah Valley University last year.) We understand that details will soon be forthcoming from these independent researchers. Now read the paper for yourself, and let your voice regarding these discoveries be heard! http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm then click on ?Active Thermitic Materials Discovered?? Direct page link: (D/L PDF at source...) http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/000000... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090410/553e80b5/attachment.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Apr 9 18:36:46 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu Apr 9 18:37:12 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] Move Along, Nothing to See Here - Homeless in Tent City, USA Message-ID: <01c601c9b97c$cfe6ea30$0dad57ca@jfos> In ' The Land of the Free' ... Market! john foster Victoria, Australia Move Along, Nothing to See Here Homeless in Tent City, USA By KATHY SANBORN http://www.counterpunch.org/sanborn04032009.html Homeless encampments around the country are mushrooming, much to the embarrassment of government officials, may of whom prefer to hear no evil, see no evil. In Fresno, California, a shantytown called ?New Jack City? is host to newly poor, unemployed electricians and truck drivers, who share space with drug addicts and the mentally ill who have been homeless for years. And, thanks to Oprah, Sacramento is famous for its homeless tent city, featuring several hundred people residing in pitched tents bordering the American River. With refuse strewn everywhere, and no potable water or bathroom facilities, this celebrated shantytown is clearly a sanitation risk. Almost as soon as the media ran with the story, plans were made to shut down the Sacramento tent city in the foreseeable future. City officials will relocate the homeless to other, presumably more sanitary, areas (e.g., at the site of the state fairgrounds, Cal Expo). According to the Sacramento Bee, ?homeless campers? will be ousted in about four weeks, as the private property will be fenced off to ban the tent city population. California?s capital is not the only city to be brought to its knees by photos of disheveled citizens with nebulous futures. Reports of burgeoning tent cities in Nevada, Tennessee, and Washington State (just to name a few) have kept local governments hopping to fix the trouble before the media spotlight targets their own cities. Spotlight on Shantytown in Sacramento Initial reports of huge numbers of people living in the tent city in Sacramento probably were inflated, we know now. Estimates of 1200 tent dwellers were simply exaggerated by overzealous or slapdash journalists. Incorrect numbers aside, the problem remains: the new poor and the chronically homeless live side by side, with nothing but a cloth roof over their heads. I spoke with Sister Libby, executive director of the now-infamous Loaves and Fishes in Sacramento, which provides charitable assistance to the hungry and homeless. Sister Libby said, ?We have over two to three hundred folks here in the Sacramento tent city. At its height, about 2-3 new faces a day were showing up. Of the tent city population, 80-85% have been homeless for over a year. Only about 10-15% are the ?new poor? ? those with a recent job loss or home foreclosure. We have seen a lot of new faces ? mostly women with children ? coming in to find shelter. Last year, according to Sacramento government statistics, the countywide homeless total was around 1200 people. It?s probably more like 1400 now. Since they have decided to close the tent city in Sacramento and provide 150 extra shelter beds in other locations for these folks, I worry about the people who are mentally ill or have drug and alcohol issues ? which comprise about 50% of the tent city residents. They aren?t shelter-ready. What is the government going to do with them?? Mayor Kevin Johnson said the city?s shelter demand has increased ?four-fold.? The executive director of St. John?s Shelter in Sacramento said they turn away 230 women and children each day, as opposed to the twenty turned away daily in 2007. These numbers indicate a dramatic explosion of growth in the homeless population, but many are hesitant to attribute this sudden rise in homelessness to the current economic downturn. Modern Hoovervilles Abound City officials in Fresno report three major homeless encampments adjacent to the downtown area, and smaller sites near the highways. All told, Fresno?s homeless population is about two thousand people, living in shantytowns with grim names such as Taco Flats or the aforementioned New Jack City. Drugs, violence, and prostitution are common in the Fresno tent cities, as people react to the stress of living outdoors with no services ? and no money. Individuals in Seattle, Washington who have lost their jobs and homes reside in tents in the back of a church parking lot, derogatorily called Nickelsville. Named for Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, whom residents say doesn?t much care about their plight, the Nickelsville shantytown is home to about one hundred campers a day. Nashville, Tennessee has its own problems with tent cities. According to NewsChannel5.com, Nashville has one large tent city south of the downtown area, with at least thirty additional homeless camps scattered throughout the region. There is a concern about this ?huge surge in the number of encampments,? and the issue has reached ?urgent? proportions. Attributing the rise in homelessness to the faltering economy that brings with it increased foreclosures and job layoffs, city officials are seeking answers ? and fast ? to their local homeless crisis. In Reno, Nevada, officials closed a tent city in 2008 that housed about 160 residents. Now, the sidewalks of Reno serve as beds to some sixty homeless people with nowhere else to go. There are homeless camps on Record Street, and local merchants believe their business is down because of the sea of homeless vagabonds invading store sidewalks and blocking customer access to shops. Reno officials are attempting to prevent another tent city from emerging in the summer of 2009, but with less revenue available for alternative housing, this remains to be seen. What can we conclude from the rapid increase in homelessness across the nation? The facts are clear: there are more people, especially women and children, who are out on the streets, without a dime. At least 10-15% of homeless individuals are the ?new poor,? or those who have recently lost their jobs and homes. We can be certain that if the economy doesn?t improve soon, there will be more of the new poor pitching their tents in shantytowns across America ? maybe in your neighborhood. Kathy Sanborn is an author, journalist, and recording artist with a new CD, Peaceful Sounds, now a top seller on CDBaby. Listen to clips of her songs, including ?Forever War,? and buy the album now at http://cdbaby.com/cd/kathysanborn. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.285 / Virus Database: 270.11.47/2047 - Release Date: 04/08/09 05:53:00 From thinker at thelakebc.ca Fri Apr 10 19:17:43 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Fri Apr 10 19:17:38 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] FW: Granny and the air bag Message-ID: <200904110217.n3B2H0TE024424@karma.reboot.ca> > >> >>Subject: FW: Granny and the air bag >> >> >> >>---Granny and the air bag >> >>----A lady was video taping her son riding a skateboard when her >>attention switched to an old woman trying to cross the street. >>You might need to watch it twice to get the full effect on the driver. >>You can hear the photographer giggling as she records the event. >> Go granny go! >> >> >> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: GrannyAirBag.wmv Type: video/x-ms-wmv Size: 985146 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090410/c4c2b905/GrannyAirBag-0001.bin From thinker at thelakebc.ca Fri Apr 10 19:27:41 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Fri Apr 10 19:26:33 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Agribiz at work Message-ID: <200904110226.n3B2Q0TE024780@karma.reboot.ca> New from GRAIN April 2009 http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=636 http://www.grain.org/seedling/?type=76 SEEDLING APRIL 2009 IN THIS ISSUE... Despite growing evidence that industrial farming is destroying our planet, the giant agricultural corporations are continuing to tighten their grip over world farming. Paradoxically, it is the European Union's half-hearted and misguided move to combat climate change by insisting that motor vehicles use more agrofuels that is encouraging one of the most dramatic manifestations of this trend -- the rapid expansion of sugar cane cultivation in Brazil. The country's ethanol boom, vociferously encouraged by President Lula, is not only pushing the agricultural frontier ever deeper into the Amazon basin but is also -- and this has gone largely unnoticed -- greatly strengthening the penetration of multinational corporations. As we show in some detail in our first article, the latest arrival is Monsanto, which, by unexpectedly snapping up two local companies at the end of last year, has overnight turned itself into the world's largest sugar cane breeding company. The big attraction for Monsanto is the prospect of introducing genetically modified sugar cane into the world's largest market. Given the increasing dominance of these companies, it is perhaps scarcely surprising that, while the interlinked food, financial and economic crises are wreaking havoc on the lives of millions of ordinary people throughout the world, the agribusiness giants are just getting richer and richer. A year ago we published an article which revealed that, while people in many parts of the world had been protesting against record food prices, the agribusiness giants had raked in shamelessly high profits. Now, in a brief update, we show that the situation has got even worse. To mention just two of the companies: Cargill's profit rose by a further 69 per cent in 2008 and Monsanto's by an extraordinary 120 per cent. Another frightening -- and also under-reported -- phenomenon has been the way dominant powers, particularly the United States, have taken advantage of programmes of agricultural reconstruction after wars and natural disasters. Our analysis makes it clear that "military" aid and "agricultural" aid have become so deeply intermeshed that it has become all but impossible to distinguish one from the other. What we may be seeing is the construction of a new template for US aid abroad. Corporations are often found to be promoting their own interests in the most unlikely and opportunistic fashion. A case in point concerns the endeavours to develop a vaccine for bird flu. Edward Hammond, an expert on infectious diseases, provides a detailed account of how the world's largest vaccine companies have been using the World Health Organisation to obtain samples of bird flu viruses for free from developing countries, but have then been refusing to make available to those very countries the vaccines that they develop. This story is still unfolding: Indonesia, outraged by what has been happening, is trying to get the WHO to change its rules. While agribusiness is on the offensive, the voices of opposition have also grown louder. One of the people who has been putting forward a powerful alternative vision for many years is Dr Melaku Worede, the Ethiopian plant geneticist. For many decades he has been saying that the best way to enhance farmers' incomes and to protect the planet's biodiversity is by encouraging diversity on the farm and by making sure farmers control the seed breeding and selection process. Several decades ago Dr Worede developed a breeding programme with farmers that increased the yields of their own land race varieties to such an extent that they became competitive with commercial varieties. In 1989 Dr Worede was awarded the Right Livelihood Award -- the alternative Nobel Prize -- for his work with Ethiopia's plant genetic diversity and food security. In his interview with us, Dr Worede admits that the outlook for Africa is scary, largely because of the speed with which the climate is changing. But he sees a way forward through the urgent creation of extensive interlinked seed exchange networks that permit a flow of seeds between farmers in different regions and in different countries. These community seed banks, he says, allow farmers to cross-fertilise in terms of seeds and knowledge and thus to adapt to climate change. "We also need to look to wild varieties, as they are hardier than those that are cultivated", he says. Diversity, he stresses, is the key to the future. And, acting in tandem with this, farmers' knowledge. "Without that, you can forget it", he warns. The editor CONTENTS DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE ISSUE FROM HERE: http://www.grain.org/seedling/?type=76 Low resolution PDF: http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=588&pdf High resolution PDF: http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=588&pdf2 CORPORATE CANDYLAND by GRAIN http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=589 One of the most destructive developments in agriculture over the past two decades has been the boom in soya production in the southern cone of Latin America. The corporations that led that boom are now moving aggressively into sugar cane, focusing on large tracts of land in southern countries where sugar can be produced cheaply. If these developments are not resisted, the impacts are likely to be severe: local food production will be overrun, workers and communities will face displacement and exposure to increased levels of pesticides, and foreign agribusiness will tighten its grip on sugar production. We look at the intersection between the development of genetically modified sugar cane and transformations in the global sugar industry. THE SOILS OF WAR (SEEDLING ARTICLE VERSION) by GRAIN http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=590 In recent decades humanitarian aid has regularly been made conditional on the adoption of neoliberal economic policies. Recently, however, there has been a troubling tendency in war-ridden countries to interweave this aid, classified as "reconstruction", closely with the military machinery of the invading powers. Afghanistan and Iraq have been the testing grounds for this militarised aid. In both countries the distinction between the US's civilian and military activities has been completely, and deliberately, blurred. (For a fuller version of this article, see GRAIN Briefing, "The soils of war -- The real agenda behind agricultural reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq", March 2009, http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=217) INTERVIEW WITH MELAKU WOREDE http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=591 Dr Melaku Worede is an Ethiopian plant geneticist who has been a pioneer in shifting perceptions and attitudes globally towards recognising the vital importance of on-farm diversity as a strategy to increase and conserve biodiversity. He has always been one of that rare breed: a scientist who puts the farmer first. He is admired by friend and foe alike for his integrity, his deep knowledge, his vision and his humility. CORPORATIONS ARE STILL MAKING A KILLING FROM HUNGER by GRAIN http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=592 In April 2008 GRAIN published a short report on the huge profits that agribusiness was making from the food crisis. Another year has passed. More financial results are in. So has anything changed? INDONESIA FIGHTS TO CHANGE WHO RULES ON FLU VACCINES by Edward Hammond http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=593 The WHO's global surveillance system acts as a free virus collection and R&D department for the world's largest vaccine companies, yet gives very little benefit back to the developing countries in terms of available vaccines. Angered by the inequity, Indonesia decided in 2007 to suspend its sharing of viruses with the WHO. This action sent shock waves around the world. It alerted many developing nations to the need for reform, while provoking companies and the developed nations to fight to maintain the status quo. The outcome is still to be determined, while the world awaits the next pandemic. SEEDS OF INFORMATION compiled by GRAIN http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=594 This section of Seedling is devoted to short topical items. We welcome contributions from readers. Please send them to seedling@grain.org From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sat Apr 11 20:13:20 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sat Apr 11 20:13:53 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Climate - back to the science Message-ID: <20090412031325.5D2EC13723@fep03.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090412/0c2f9291/attachment.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sat Apr 11 20:56:49 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sat Apr 11 21:00:49 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: The Great Contraction will last a while longer Message-ID: <007c01c9bb23$31fe03f0$16ad57ca@jfos> Forwarded 11-4-09 "Looks like inflation via the pumping of so much freshly printed currency int to the financial system and/or default on sovereign debt may be on the horizon in the next few years. In order to cope with the situation of nations not having the assets to cover their debts e.g. bonds, look for big cuts in public spending as tax revenues fall because of the inability of capitalists to be able to sell commodities which workers are capable of producing onto a market which is dominated by people who have no jobs, thus no way of paying for said commodities. The class struggle continues... " The green shoots are weeds growing through the rubble in the ruins of the global economy - Willem Buiter Maverecon blog Financial Times April 8, 2009 The Great Contraction will last a while longer This financial crisis will end. The Great Contraction of the Noughties also will come to an end. But neither the financial crisis nor the contraction of the global real economy are over yet. As regards the financial sector, we are not too far - probably less than a year - from the beginning of the end. The impact of the collapse of real economic activity and of the associated dramatic increase in defaults and insolvencies by non-financial enterprises and households on the loan book of what is left of the banking sector will begin to show up in the banks' financial reports at the end of the summer and in the autumn. By the end of the year - early 2010 at the latest - we will know which banks will survive and which ones are headed for the scrap heap. With the resolution of the current pervasive uncertainty about the true state of the banks' balance sheets and about their off-balance-sheet exposures, normal financial intermediation will be able to resume later in 2010. Governments everywhere are doing the best they can to delay or prevent the lifting of the veil of uncertainty and disinformation that most banks have cast over their battered balance sheets. The banking establishment and the financial establishment representing the beneficial owners of the institutions exposed to the banks as unsecured creditors - pension funds, insurance companies, other banks, foreign investors including sovereign wealth funds - have captured the key governments, their central banks, their regulators, supervisors and accounting standard setters to a degree never seen before. I used to believe this state capture took the form of cognitive capture, rather than financial capture. I still believe this to be the case for many, perhaps even most of the policy makers and officials involved, but it is becoming increasingly hard to deny the possibility that the extraordinary reluctance of our governments to force the unsecured creditors (and any remaining non-government shareholders) of the zombie banks to absorb the losses made by these banks, may be due to rather more primal forms of state capture. History teaches us that systemic financial crises are protracted affairs. A most interesting paper by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, "The Aftermath of Financial Crises", using data on 10 systemic banking crises (the "big five" developed economy crises (Spain 1977, Norway 1987, Finland, 1991, Sweden, 1991, and Japan, 1992), three famous emerging market crises (the 1997-1998 Asian crisis (Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand); Colombia, 1998; and Argentina 2001)), and two earlier crises (Norway 1899 and the United States 1929) reaches the following conclusions (the next paragraph paraphrases Reinhart and Rogoff). First, asset market collapses are deep and prolonged. Real housing price declines average 35 percent over six years; real equity price declines average 55 percent over a downturn of about 3.5 years. Second, the aftermath of banking crises is associated with large declines in output and employment. The unemployment rate rises an average of 7 percentage points over the down phase of the cycle which lasts on average over four years. Output falls (from peak to trough) an average of over 9 percent, but the duration of the downturn averages around 2 years. Nothing more can be expected as regards a global fiscal stimulus. Indeed, the G20 delivered nothing in this regard. It would have been preferable to maintain the overall size of the planned (or rather, expected) global fiscal stimulus but to redistribute the aggregate (about $5 trillion over 2 years, as measured by the aggregated changes in the national fiscal deficits) in accordance with national fiscal spare capacity (I believe the World Bank calls this 'fiscal space'). This would mean a smaller fiscal stimulus for countries with weak fiscal fundamentals, including the US, Japan and the UK, and a larger fiscal stimulus for countries with strong fiscal fundamentals, including China, Germany, Brazil and, to a lesser degree, France. The effect of the Great Contraction on potential output growth Furthermore, a likely consequence of the fiscal stimuli we have already seen or are about to experience is a negative impact on the medium- and long-term growth potential of the global economy. The reason is that, if fiscal solvency is to be maintained, there will have to be some combination of an increase in the tax burden and a reduction in non-interest public spending in most countries when this contraction is over. The inevitable effect of the crisis and the contraction is a higher public debt burden and therefore a larger future required primary government surplus (as a share of GDP). Almost any increase in the tax burden will hurt potential output - just the level of the path of potential output if you are a classical growth groupie, both the level and the growth rate of the path of potential output if you are an adept of the endogenous growth school. In the study of Reinhart and Rogoff cited earlier, the authors conclude that the real value of government debt tends to explode following a systemic financial crisis, rising an average of 86 percent in major post-World War II episodes. The principal cause of these public debt explosions is not the costs of "bailing out" and recapitalizing banking system. The big drivers of these public debt burden increases are rather the collapse in tax revenues that comes with deep and prolonged output contractions (the operation of the automatic stabilisers) and discretionary counter-cyclical fiscal policies. For political expediency reasons, cuts in public spending are likely to fall first on maintenance, public sector capital formation and other forms of productive public expenditure, including spending on education, health and research. Welfare spending in cash or in kind is likely to be the last to be cut. The result is again likely to be a lower level (or level and growth rate) of the path of potential output. The risk of 'sudden stops' in the overdeveloped world In a number of systemically important countries, notably the US and the UK, there is a material risk of a 'sudden stop' - an emerging-market style interruption of capital inflows to both the public and private sectors - prompted by financial market concerns about the sustainability of the fiscal-financial-monetary programmes proposed and implemented by the fiscal and monetary authorities in these countries. For both countries there is a material risk that the mind-boggling general government deficits (14% of GDP or over for the US and 12 % of GDP or over for the UK for the coming year) will either have to be monetised permanently, implying high inflation as soon as the real economy recovers, the output gap closes and the extraordinary fear-induced liquidity preference of the past year subsides, or lead to sovereign default. Pointing to a non-negligible risk of sovereign default in the US and the UK does not, I fear, qualify me as a madman. The last time things got serious, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, both the US and the UK defaulted de facto, and possibly even de jure, on their sovereign debt. In the case of the US, the sovereign default took the form of the abrogation of the gold clause when the US went off the gold standard (except for foreign exchange) in 1933. In 1933, Congress passed a joint resolution canceling all gold clauses in public and private contracts (including existing contracts). The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 abrogated the gold clause in government and private contracts and changed the value of the dollar in gold from $20.67 to $35 per ounce. These actions were upheld (by a 5 to 4 majority) by the Supreme Court in 1935. In the case of the UK, the de facto sovereign default took the form of the conversion in 1932 of Britain's 5% War Loan Bonds (callable 1929-1947) into new 3? % bonds (callable from 1952) on terms that were unambiguously unfavourable to the bond holders. Out of a total of ?2,086,000,000 outstanding, ?1,500,000,000, or something over 70%, was converted voluntarily by the end of 1932, thanks both to the government's ability to appeal to patriotism and joint burden sharing in the face of economic adversity and to ferocious arm-twisting and 'moral suasion'. I believe both defaults were eminently justified. There is no case for letting the interests of the holders of sovereign debt override the interests of the rest of the community, regardless of the financial, economic, social and political costs involved. But to say that these were justifiable sovereign defaults does not mean that they were not sovereign defaults. Similar circumstances could arise again. While I consider an inflationary solution to the public debt overhang problem (and indeed to the private debt overhang problem) to be more likely in the US and even in the UK than a sovereign default (or 'restructuring', 'conversion' or 'consolidation', as it would undoubtedly be referred to by the defaulting government), neither can be dismissed as out of the question, or even as extremely unlikely. *********************************************************************** An individual has no security except through working class solidarity. http://www.iww.org.au/ ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sun Apr 12 15:19:54 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sun Apr 12 15:20:48 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Terminator Planet - Filling the Skies with Assassins Message-ID: <008901c9bbbc$d42fd4c0$04ad57ca@jfos> http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175056/filling_the_skies_with_assassins posted April 07, 2009 3:31 pm Tomgram: Filling the Skies with Assassins ShareThis (Click to E-mail this Tomgram, or post to Facebook, Digg, Reddit and many others) [Note for Readers: To catch an audio interview in which Tom Engelhardt discusses assassination from the air, click here] Terminator Planet Launching the Drone Wars By Tom Engelhardt In 1984, Skynet, the supercomputer that rules a future Earth, sent a cyborg assassin, a "terminator," back to our time. His job was to liquidate the woman who would give birth to John Connor, the leader of the underground human resistance of Skynet's time. You with me so far? That, of course, was the plot of the first Terminator movie and for the multi-millions who saw it, the images of future machine war -- of hunter-killer drones flying above a wasted landscape -- are unforgettable. Since then, as Hollywood's special effects took off, there were two sequels during which the original terminator somehow morphed into a friendlier figure on screen, and even more miraculously, off-screen, into the humanoid governor of California. Now, the fourth film in the series, Terminator Salvation, is about to descend on us. It will hit our multiplexes this May. Oh, sorry, I don't mean hit hit. I mean, arrive in. Meanwhile, hunter-killer drones haven't waited for Hollywood. As you sit in that movie theater in May, actual unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), pilotless surveillance and assassination drones armed with Hellfire missiles, will be patrolling our expanding global battlefields, hunting down human beings. And in the Pentagon and the labs of defense contractors, UAV supporters are already talking about and working on next-generation machines. Post-2020, according to these dreamers, drones will be able to fly and fight, discern enemies and incinerate them without human decision-making. They're even wondering about just how to program human ethics, maybe even American ethics, into them. Okay, it may never happen, but it should still make you blink that out there in America are people eager to bring the fifth iteration of Terminator not to local multiplexes, but to the skies of our perfectly real world -- and that the Pentagon is already funding them to do so. An Arms Race of One Now, keep our present drones, those MQ-1 Predators and more advanced MQ-9 Reapers, in mind for a moment. Remember that, as you read, they're cruising Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani skies looking for potential "targets," and in Pakistan's tribal borderlands, are employing what Centcom commander General David Petraeus calls "the right of last resort" to take out "threats" (as well as tribespeople who just happen to be in the vicinity). And bear with me while I offer you a little potted history of the modern arms race. Think of it as starting in the early years of the twentieth century when Imperial Britain, industrial juggernaut and colonial upstart Germany, and Imperial Japan all began to plan and build new generations of massive battleships or dreadnoughts (followed by "super-dreadnoughts") and so joined in a fierce naval arms race. That race took a leap onto land and into the skies in World War I when scientists and war planners began churning out techno-marvels of death and destruction meant to break the stalemate of trench warfare on the Western front. Each year, starting in 1915, new or improved weaponry -- poison gas, upgrades of the airplane, the tank and then the improved tank -- appeared on or above the battlefield. Even as those marvels arrived, the next generation of weapons was already on the drawing boards. (In a sense, American auto makers took up the same battle plan in peacetime, unveiling new, ramped up car models each year.) As a result, when World War I ended in 1918, the war machinery of 1919 and 1920 was already being mapped out and developed. The next war, that is, and the weapons that would go with it were already in the mind's eye of war planners. >From the first years of the twentieth century on, an obvious prerequisite for what would prove a never-ending arms race was two to four great powers in potential collision, each of which had the ability to mobilize scientists, engineers, universities, and manufacturing power on a massive scale. World War II was, in these terms, a bonanza for invention as well as destruction. It ended, of course, with the Manhattan Project, that ne plus ultra of industrial-sized invention for destruction, which produced the first atomic bomb, and so the Cold War nuclear arms race that followed. In that 45-year-long brush with extinction, the United States and the Soviet Union each mobilized a military-industrial complex to build ever newer generations of ever more devastating nuclear weaponry and delivery systems for a MAD (mutually assured destruction) world. At the peak of that two-superpower arms race, the resulting arsenals had the mad capacity to destroy eight or ten planets our size. In 1991, after 73 years, the Soviet Union, that Evil Empire, simply evaporated, leaving but a single superpower without rivals astride planet Earth. And then came the unexpected thing: the arms race, which had been almost a century in the making, did not end. Instead, the unimaginable occurred and it simply morphed into a "race" of one with a finish line so distant -- the bomber of 2018, Earth-spanning weapons systems, a vast anti-ballistic missile system, and weaponry for the heavens of perhaps 2050 -- as to imply eternity. The Pentagon and the military-industrial complex surrounding it -- including mega-arms manufacturers, advanced weapons labs, university science centers, and the official or semi-official think tanks that churned out strategies for future military domination -- went right on. After a brief, post-Cold War blip of time in which "peace dividends" were discussed but not implemented, the "race" actually began to amp up again, and after September 11, 2001, went into overdrive against "Islamo-fascism" (aka the Global War on Terror, or the Long War). In those years, our Evil Empire of the moment, except in the minds of a clutch of influential neocons, was a ragtag terrorist outfit made up of perhaps a few thousand adherents and scattered global wannabes, capable of mounting spectacular-looking but infrequent and surprisingly low-tech attacks on symbolic American (and other) targets. Against this enemy, the Pentagon budget became, for a while, an excuse for anything. This brings us to our present unbalanced world of military might in which the U.S. accounts for nearly half of all global military spending and the total Pentagon budget is almost six times that of the next contender, China. Recently, the Chinese have announced relatively modest plans to build up their military and create a genuinely offshore navy. Similarly, the Russians have moved to downsize and refinance their tattered armed forces and the industrial complex that goes with them, while upgrading their weapons systems. This could potentially make the country more competitive when it comes to global arms dealing, a market more than half of which has been cornered by the U.S. They are also threatening to upgrade their "strategic nuclear forces," even as Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama have agreed to push forward a new round of negotiations for nuclear reductions. Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has just announced cutbacks in some of the more outr? and futuristic military R&D programs inherited from the Cold War era. The Navy's staggering 11 aircraft-carrier battle groups will over time also be reduced by one. Minor as that may seem, it does signal an imperial downsizing, given that the Navy refers to each of those carriers, essentially floating military bases, as "four and a half acres of sovereign U.S. territory." Nonetheless, the Pentagon budget will grow modestly and the U.S. will remain in a futuristic arms race of one, a significant part of which involves reserving the skies as well as the heavens for American power. Assassination by Air Speaking of controlling those skies, let's get back to UAVs. As futuristic weapons planning went, they started out pretty low-tech in the 1990s. Even today, the most commonplace of the two American armed drones, the Predator, costs only $4.5 million a pop, while the most advanced model, that Reaper -- both are produced by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems of San Diego -- comes in at $15 million. (Compare that to $350 million for a single F-22 Raptor, which has proved essentially useless in America's most recent counterinsurgency wars.) It's lucky UAVs are cheap, since they are also prone to crashing. Think of them as snowmobiles with wings that have received ever more sophisticated optics and powerful weaponry. They came to life as surveillance tools during the wars over the former Yugoslavia, were armed by February 2001, were hastily pressed into operation in Afghanistan after 9/11, and like many weapons systems, began to evolve generationally. As they did, they developed from surveillance eyes in the sky into something far more sinister and previously restricted to terra firma: assassins. One of the earliest armed acts of a CIA-piloted Predator, back in November 2002, was an assassination mission over Yemen in which a jeep, reputedly transporting six suspected al-Qaeda operatives, was incinerated. Today, the most advanced UAV, the Reaper, housing up to four Hellfire missiles and two 500-pound bombs, packs the sort of punch once reserved for a jet fighter. Dispatched to the skies over the farthest reaches of the American empire, powered by a 1,000-horsepower turbo prop engine at its rear, the Reaper can fly at up to 21,000 feet for up to 22 hours (until fuel runs short), streaming back live footage from three cameras (or sending it to troops on the ground) --- 16,000 hours of video a month. No need to worry about a pilot dozing off during those 22 hours. The human crews "piloting" the drones, often from thousands of miles away, just change shifts when tired. So the planes are left to endlessly cruise Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani skies relentlessly seeking out, like so many terminators, specific enemies whose identities can, under certain circumstances -- or so the claims go -- be determined even through the walls of houses. When a "target" is found and agreed upon -- in Pakistan, the permission of Pakistani officials to fire is no longer considered necessary -- and a missile or bomb is unleashed, the cameras are so powerful that "pilots" can watch the facial expressions of those being liquidated on their computer monitors "as the bomb hits." Approximately 5,500 UAVs, mostly unarmed -- less than 250 of them are Predators and Reapers -- now operate over Iraq and the Af-Pak (as in the Afghanistan-Pakistan) theater of operations. Part of the more-than-century-long development of war in the air, drones have become favorites of American military planners. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in particular has demanded increases in their production (and in the training of their "pilots") and urged that they be rushed in quantity into America's battle zones even before being fully perfected. And yet, keep in mind that the UAV still remains in its (frightening) infancy. Such machines are not, of course, advanced cyborgs. They are in some ways not even all that advanced. Because someone now wants publicity for the drone-war program, reporters from the U.S. and elsewhere have recently been given "rare behind-the-scenes" looks at how it works. As a result, and also because the "covert war" in the skies over Pakistan makes Washington's secret warriors proud enough to regularly leak news of its "successes," we know something more about how our drone wars work. We know, for instance, that at least part of the Air Force's Afghan UAV program runs out of Kandahar Air Base in southern Afghanistan. It turns out that, pilotless as the planes may be, a pilot does have to be nearby to guide them into the air and handle landings. As soon as the drone is up, a two-man team, a pilot and a "sensor monitor," backed by intelligence experts and meteorologists, takes over the controls either at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, or at Creech Air Force Base northwest of Las Vegas, some 7,000-odd miles away. (Other U.S. bases may be involved as well.) According to Christopher Drew of the New York Times, who visited Davis-Monthan where Air National Guard members handle the controls, the pilots sit unglamorously "at 1990s-style computer banks filled with screens, inside dimly lit trailers." Depending on the needs of the moment, they can find themselves "over" either Afghanistan or Iraq, or even both on the same work shift. All of this is remarkably mundane -- pilot complaints generally run to problems "transitioning" back to wife and children after a day at the joystick over battle zones -- and at the same time, right out of Ali Baba's One Thousand and One Nights. In those dimly lit trailers, the UAV teams have taken on an almost godlike power. Their job is to survey a place thousands of miles distant (and completely alien to their lives and experiences), assess what they see, and spot "targets" to eliminate -- even if on their somewhat antiquated computer systems it "takes up to 17 steps -- including entering data into pull-down windows -- to fire a missile" and incinerate those below. They only face danger, other than carpal tunnel syndrome, when they leave the job. A sign at Creech warns a pilot to "drive carefully"; "this, it says, is 'the most dangerous part of your day.'" Those involved claim that the fear and thrill of battle do not completely escape them, but the descriptions we now have of their world sound discomfortingly like a cross between the far frontiers of sci-fi and a call center in India. The most intense of our various drone wars, the one on the other side of the Afghan border in Pakistan, is also the most mysterious. We know that some or all of the drones engaged in it take off from Pakistani airfields; that this "covert war" (which regularly makes front-page news) is run by the CIA out of its headquarters in Langley, Virginia; that its pilots are also located somewhere in the U.S.; and that at least some of them are hired private contractors. William Saletan of Slate has described our drones as engaged in "a bloodless, all-seeing airborne hunting party." Of course, what was once an elite activity performed in person has been transformed into a 24/7 industrial activity fit for human drones. Our drone wars also represent a new chapter in the history of assassination. Once upon a time, to be an assassin for a government was a furtive, shameful thing. In those days, of course, an assassin, if successful, took down a single person, not the targeted individual and anyone in the vicinity (or simply, if targeting intelligence proves wrong, anyone in the vicinity). No more poison-dart-tipped umbrellas, as in past KGB operations, or toxic cigars as in CIA ones -- not now that assassination has taken to the skies as an every day, all-year-round activity. Today, we increasingly display our assassination wares with pride. To us, at least, it seems perfectly normal for assassination aerial operations to be a part of an open discussion in Washington and in the media. Consider this a new definition of "progress" in our world. Proliferation and Sovereignty This brings us back to arms races. They may be things of the past, but don't for a minute imagine that those hunter-killer skies won't someday fill with the drones of other nations. After all, one of the truths of our time is that no weapons system, no matter where first created, can be kept for long as private property. Today, we talk not of arms races, but of "proliferation," which is what you have once a global arms race of one takes hold. In drone-world, the Chinese, the Russians, the Israelis, the Pakistanis, the Georgians, and the Iranians, among others, already have drones. In the Lebanon War of 2006, Hezbollah flew drones over Israel. In fact, if you have the skills, you can create your own drone, more or less in your living room (as your basic DIY drone website indicates). Undoubtedly, the future holds unnerving possibilities for small groups intent on assassination from the air. Already the skies are growing more crowded. Three weeks ago, President Obama issued what Reuters termed "an unprecedented videotaped appeal to Iran... offering a 'new beginning' of diplomatic engagement to turn the page on decades of U.S. policy toward America's longtime foe." It was in the form of a Persian New Year's greeting. As the New York Times also reported, the U.S. military beat the president to the punch. They sent their own "greetings" to the Iranians a couple of days earlier. After considering what Times reporters Rod Nordland and Alissa J. Rubin term "the delicacy of the incident at a time when the United States is seeking a thaw in its relations with Iran," the U.S. military sent out Col. James Hutton to meet the press and "confirm" that "allied aircraft" had shot down an "Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle" over Iraq on February 25th, more than three weeks earlier. Between that day and mid-March, the relevant Iraqi military and civilian officials were, the Times tells us, not informed. The reason? That drone was intruding on our (borrowed) airspace, not theirs. You probably didn't know it, but according to an Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman, "protection of Iraqi airspace remains an American responsibility for the next three years." And naturally enough, we don't want other countries' drones in "our" airspace, though that's hardly likely to stop them. The Iranians, for instance, have already announced the development of "a new generation of 'spy drones' that provide real-time surveillance over enemy terrain." Of course, when you openly control squads of assassination drones patrolling airspace over other countries, you've already made a mockery of whatever national sovereignty might once have meant. It's a precedent that may someday even make us distinctly uncomfortable. But not right now. If you doubt this, check out the stream of self-congratulatory comments being leaked by Washington officials about our drone assassins. These often lead off news pieces about America's "covert war" over Pakistan ("An intense, six-month campaign of Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say..."); but be sure to read to the end of such pieces. Somewhere in them, after the successes have been touted and toted up, you get the bad news: "In fact, the stepped-up strikes have coincided with a deterioration in the security situation in Pakistan." In Pakistan, a war of machine assassins is visibly provoking terror (and terrorism), as well as anger and hatred among people who are by no means fundamentalists. It is part of a larger destabilization of the country. To those who know their air power history, that shouldn't be so surprising. Air power has had a remarkably stellar record when it comes to causing death and destruction, but a remarkably poor one when it comes to breaking the will of nations, peoples, or even modest-sized organizations. Our drone wars are destructive, but they are unlikely to achieve Washington's goals. The Future Awaits Us If you want to read the single most chilling line yet uttered about drone warfare American-style, it comes at the end of Christopher Drew's piece. He quotes Brookings Institution analyst Peter Singer saying of our Predators and Reapers: "[T]hese systems today are very much Model T Fords. These things will only get more advanced." In other words, our drone wars are being fought with the airborne equivalent of cars with cranks, but the "race" to the horizon is already underway. By next year, some Reapers will have a far more sophisticated sensor system with 12 cameras capable of filming a two-and-a-half mile round area from 12 different angles. That program has been dubbed "Gorgon Stare", but it doesn't compare to the future 92-camera Argus program whose initial development is being funded by the Pentagon's blue-skies outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Soon enough, a single pilot may be capable of handling not one but perhaps three drones, and drone armaments will undoubtedly grow progressively more powerful and "precise." In the meantime, BAE Systems already has a drone four years into development, the Taranis, that should someday be "completely autonomous"; that is, it theoretically will do without human pilots. Initial trials of a prototype are scheduled for 2010. By 2020, so claim UAV enthusiasts, drones could be engaging in aerial battle and choosing their victims themselves. As Robert S. Boyd of McClatchy reported recently, "The Defense Department is financing studies of autonomous, or self-governing, armed robots that could find and destroy targets on their own. On-board computer programs, not flesh-and-blood people, would decide whether to fire their weapons." It's a particular sadness of our world that, in Washington, only the military can dream about the future in this way, and then fund the "arms race" of 2018 or 2035. Rest assured that no one with a governmental red cent is researching the health care system of 2018 or 2035, or the public education system of those years. In the meantime, the skies of our world are filling with round-the-clock assassins. They will only evolve and proliferate. Of course, when we check ourselves out in the movies, we like to identify with John Connor, the human resister, the good guy of this planet, against the evil machines. Elsewhere, however, as we fight our drone wars ever more openly, as we field mechanical techno-terminators with all-seeing eyes and loose our missiles from thousands of miles away ("Hasta la Vista, Baby!"), we undoubtedly look like something other than a nation of John Connors to those living under the Predators. It may not matter if the joysticks and consoles on those advanced machines are somewhat antiquated; to others, we are now the terminators of the planet, implacable machine assassins. True, we can't send our drones into the past to wipe out the young Ayman al-Zawahiri in Cairo or the teenage Osama bin Laden speeding down some Saudi road in his gray Mercedes sedan. True, the UAV enthusiasts, who are already imagining all-drone wars run by "ethical" machines, may never see anything like their fantasies come to pass. Still, the fact that without the help of a single advanced cyborg we are already in the process of creating a Terminator planet should give us pause for thought... or not. Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years. To catch an audio interview in which he discusses our airborne assassins, click here. [Note for TomDispatch readers: I particularly recommend the Christopher Drew New York Times piece cited above, "Drones Are Weapons of Choice in Fighting Qaeda," which gives a vivid picture of our drone wars at home. In addition, let me offer a small bow to Nick Turse, who, back in 2004, began writing at this site about the way our government has restricted blue-skies dreaming to the military. To keep up on drones and drone warfare, there is no better place to start than Noah Shachtman's Danger Room blog at Wired.com. It's a must. To keep track of drone strikes as they occur in our world, keep an eye on Antiwar.com. And a final note of thanks to Christopher Holmes, whose keen copyediting eye makes this process so much less embarrassing than it might otherwise be.] Copyright 2009 Tom Engelhardt ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 21342 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090413/33091e0d/attachment.gif From duanebehrens at cox.net Mon Apr 13 20:44:03 2009 From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens) Date: Mon Apr 13 20:44:53 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link Message-ID: <20090413234403.HGT7Z.861745.imail@fed1rmwml45> A good friend responds to Dion's post on global warming: ============= Duane: A few comments.? "If CO2 increases lag behind temperature increases, it does not make sense that O2 can be the cause of temperature increases."? The above?statement by itself is enough to discredit the entire article.?? There is no doubt that increases in CO2, without any other differences, will cause temperatures to rise.? This is fundamental physics.?? The fact that CO2 lagged behind temperature in the geological past means that this?may be?a positive feedback system.? 500,000 years ago, what would have caused CO2 to LEAD temperature?? Back then, we didn't have 6 billion humans burning fossil fuels and dumping huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. "This is very significant because if CO2 was the prime cause for recent warming, and CO2 consumption has not gone down, yet, the Earth?s climate has engaged on a cooling trend, this appears to pose a problem for the CO2 hypothesis." Climate scientists'?understanding of the climate is not that CO2 is the sole determinant of global temperatures.? Yes, there are other factors, the most important of which is solar output.?? Another factor is volcanic eruptions.??So, it is?not expected that global temperatures will monotonically?increase (without any drawbacks) as the CO2 concentration?increases.? This statement, by itself, is also enough to discredit the entire article as being unscientific. "Much of the people in the world have been riled up with predictions of a catastrophic end to mankind and the world unless we don?t do something about so-called man-made? climate change." I don't remember reading anywhere in the IPCC reports any predictions of a catastrophic end to mankind.? This is a strawman argument. "Ironically enough, our refusal to adapt to a changing world, and instead a determination to fight it with our efforts to ?go green? and ?carbon neutral? may, in fact, cause the catastrophic end of our civilization."? How is going green going to cause the catastrophic end of our civilization? This article is unscientific.? It is uses the same bad reasoning that most anti-global warming articles use: 1.? It tries to exploit the fact that CO2 is not the only cause of temperature change. 2. It argues that if CO2 lagged temperature in the geological past, then it couldn't possibly cause temperature change. 3. The article makes every effort to associate Al Gore with the global warming ramp -- his name is mentioned 6 times in the article.? This is a psychological technique to make the global warming argument appear to be political instead of scientific. I agree that the global warming debate is not decided.? Even the IPCC report does not claim 100% confidence in the final outcome.? There are still large uncertainties how the global climate will react.? The largest uncertainty, as I understand it,?is in cloud cover.?? More clouds means more light is reflected, and this could be enough to offset warming caused by CO2.? But I think the probabilities are against it. Mark -----Original Message----- rom: Duane Behrens o: MTBusch@aol.com ent: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 3:56 pm ubject: Climate Link For some reason, the text and link from Dion's message didn't make it with his rwarded message. Here it is: ------------------------------------------------------ ery interesting though somewhat repetitively written review article by Andrew G rshall at ttp://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9763 ighlights an underlying debate between science and social engineering within lls to restructure society as a result of changes in climate. ion Giles - ttp://perzuki.smugmug.com/ ============= From thinker at thelakebc.ca Tue Apr 14 09:45:30 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Tue Apr 14 09:44:18 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Germany bans GM corn Message-ID: <200904141644.n3EGhnr7024511@karma.reboot.ca> Subject: Germany bans genetically modified corn Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said U.S. seed maker Monsanto's MON810 genetically engineered corn product "presents a danger for the environment." http://www.pennlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/business-1/1239712573289240.xml&storylist=business From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Tue Apr 14 18:23:49 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Tue Apr 14 18:45:08 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Thailand, factory occupations, Cuba's energy revolution, Capitalism and climate change, Luis Bilbao, Pakistan, Bolivia Message-ID: <49E53725.6070806@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: Thailand, factory occupations, Cuba's energy revolution, Capitalism and climate change, Luis Bilbao, Pakistan, Bolivia * * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism 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/. * * * Thailand: Red Shirt democratic movement faces armed might of the ruling elites By Giles Ji Ungpakorn, Turn Left Thailand April 13, 2009 -- For the fourth time in forty years, troops have opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators in Bangkok. Each time, the aim has been the same: to protect the interests of the conservative elites who have run Thailand for the past 70 years. For those watching, it may be tempting just to assume that the present chaos is merely about different coloured T-shirts and supporters of different political parties, as though they were mirror images of each other. This is not the case. * Read more (Updated April 14) Ireland & Britain: Car workers occupy plants over jobs -- Support Visteon workers! April 9, 2009 -- Visteon workers in Enfield, having been threatened with mass arrest by a court order, agree to leave peacefully under the recommendation of the union on April 9, 2009. Some workers feel that ending the occupation is a mistake, despite an agreement by the Visteon management to enter into negotiations. * Watch and read more La revolucion energetica: Cuba's energy revolution By Laurie Guevara-Stone, photos by Mario Alberto Arrastia Avila April 2, 2009 -- A new revolution is sweeping the island of Cuba, which is making massive progress on energy efficiency and renewable generation. Indeed, such is the success of the two-year old program on this small island of 11 million people, that many other countries could learn from its efforts to be energy independent and curb climate change. * Read more Audio: Capitalism and Climate Change -- Ian Angus Ian Angus is the editor of climateandcapitalism.com and a founder of the Eco-socialist International Network. He is also associate editor of Canada's Socialist Voice and the director of the Socialist History Project. Ian toured Australia (Perth poster, left) in the run up to the World at a Crossroads conference held in Sydney on April 10-12, 2009, which was organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective . * Listen Luis Bilbao: The grand duel -- At the Fifth Summit of the Americas, a crucial battle is to be waged By Luis Bilbao, translated by Gonzalo Villanueva for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. It was first published in America XXI. April 9, 2009 -- The time has arrived: to align with the North to engage in the futile business of saving capitalism, or define positions and accelerate towards South American unity, the complementary solidarity of the region's economies and authentic sovereignty towards the good life for all. That is the option for which there is no possible postponement. * Read more Fourth International: Draft report on climate change By Daniel Tanuro Below is a reworked version of the report on climate change and climate campaigns, drafted by Daniel Tanuro and presented at February 2009 meeting of the International Committee (IC) of the Fourth International. This report has been adopted as the basis of a resolution to be written for the coming Fourth International world congress. * Read more Beards, Cuban and Pakistani By Farooq Sulehria March 30, 2009 -- Fidel Castro finds beards a practical advantage: "You don't have to shave every day. If you multiply the fifteen minutes you spend shaving every day by the number of days in a year, you'll see that you devote almost 5500 minutes to shaving. An eight-hour workday consists of 480 minutes, so if you don't shave you gain about ten days a year that you can devote to work, to reading, to sports or to whatever you like." * Read more Bolivia's 'communitarian socialism' By Federico Fuentes April 1, 2009 -- The historic enactment of Bolivia's new constitution that grants unprecedented rights to the country's indigenous majority, approved by over 61% of the vote on January 25, represented the beginning of "communitarian socialism", according to President Evo Morales. * 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 Follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism _______________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090415/75c42cb6/attachment.html From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Wed Apr 15 03:03:18 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Wed Apr 15 03:03:51 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Galloway speaks truth to British rulers Message-ID: <20090415100320.E71B113694@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090415/999243a6/attachment.html From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Fri Apr 17 23:50:46 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Sat Apr 18 00:19:35 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Left activists discuss solutions at World at a Crossroads international socialism conference | Links Message-ID: <49E97846.8020800@greenleft.org.au> By *Simon Butler* Sydney -- April 18, 2009 -- Several participants at the World at a Crossroads conference, held in Sydney on April 10-12, remarked that the conference could not have been better named. As the world economy lurches into a deep recession, and the looming climate emergency reaches a crisis point, the world truly is at a crossroads. The future will be decided in the conflict between the greedy capitalist elites and those around the world fighting for a far better world ? a world free of racism, war and environmental plunder. From six continents, 440 socialists, progressive activists and Marxist thinkers gathered to discuss, debate and learn from various struggles for human freedom, dignity and justice. More than 70 activists addressed 42 workshops during the conference. The conference was about creating real solutions to the urgent problems of climate change, economic meltdown and imperialist war. Mere reform of the existing capitalist system will not reverse grinding poverty or halt unpredictable climate change. The path to human liberation requires a radical democracy based on people?s needs instead of corporate profit. The goal must be to fight for a socialism of the 21st century, in Australia and around the world. Full article and slideshow at http://links.org.au/node/999 Subscribe free to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sat Apr 18 02:24:26 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sat Apr 18 02:24:59 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Britons bow to police state surge Message-ID: <20090418092427.C3E5019115@fep05.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090418/35981d45/attachment.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sun Apr 19 21:30:52 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sun Apr 19 21:31:34 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: The battle for Iraq's oil Message-ID: <00ad01c9c170$ca7ff090$0ead57ca@jfos> The battle for Iraq's oil Major oil companies and their state-owned counterparts are all jostling for a slice of the world's third-largest reserves. Sarah Arnott reports Wednesday, 15 April 2009 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/the-battle-for-iraqs-oil-1668882.html Royal Dutch Shell is talking to two of China's biggest state-owned oil companies with a view to pursuing a joint venture in Iraq. Although Shell would not confirm details of the talks, a possible tie-up with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec) is reported to focus on a bid to develop the Kirkuk field in the north of the country. "Discussions with potential partners are at a very early stage," a spokesman for Shell said yesterday. The putative deal is just the latest move as both international oil companies and their state-owned counterparts jostle for position in the vast and underdeveloped Iraqi oil market. The prize is huge. The country has proven reserves of 115 billion barrels, the third largest in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran. "Iraq is a jewel for the international oil companies and always has been," said Manouchehr Takin, a senior petroleum analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies. "Not only does it have large proven reserves but there are also big estimates for undiscovered resources. People agree or disagree on the detail, but many think there may be even more yet to be found." But the country's oil sector is inefficient and under-resourced after years of war, upheaval and sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime. Of the 80 known oilfields, only 15 are developed - between them producing about 2.4 million barrels per day. China's motivation in the area is not purely financial. The past few months has seen the country's state-owned commodities giants embark on a shopping spree among recession-hit Western rivals, including Rio Tinto, Oz Minerals and Fortescue. Trying to secure access to much-needed raw materials, the most significant deals have been for oil. China Development Bank is lending $35bn (?23bn) to tottering state oil companies in return for 400,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) for decades to come. A toehold in Iraq would provide yet more security. For Iraq itself, oil exports make up 95 per cent of government revenue and are the only way to fund the rebuilding of the shattered country. With the price of crude back down to $50 per barrel from last July's unprecedented $149, making the most of the nation's vast resources is an even more pressing priority. Oil companies large and small have been lining up for a piece of the action since Saddam was deposed in 2003 and there have been some isolated deals, often not involving putting people on the ground. From 2004, BP, for example, was involved in the Rumeila field in the south, analysing geophysical data and providing guidance on ways to boost recovery rates. But the unclear legal position of the new government, and the dangerous security situation, counselled against more serious involvement. The first attempt to bring in foreign expertise, in the form of two-year service contracts, collapsed last year and was superseded by the current plan for a series of 20-year service and investment deals. Thirty-two companies are bidding for the first round of contracts, which will cover six oilfields and two gas fields. According to the timetable, the first deals could be signed by the end of the year, although insiders are sceptical. A second round, launched in December, is looking for developers for another 11 fields and has attracted a further nine bidders in addition to the original 32. But the contracts are not of the production-sharing type common elsewhere in the world. The winning bidder will not take over the operations entirely. Instead, it will establish a joint venture with whichever Iraqi state company is responsible for the field, working with them to expand and develop it. The proposal may not be the free-for-all the internationals dream of, but it is still a significant chunk of business. An estimated $50bn in investment is needed to meet Baghdad's target to raise output to six million bpd by 2014, and the collapsing price of oil has already changed the dynamic between the government and its potential partners. Under the proposed arrangements, a proportion of the investment will come from the oil major and a proportion from the Iraqi state company. Assuming success, and production improved in line with targets agreed at the outset, the international company will recover its costs and receive a fee. In February, the contractor's stake was raised from 49 per cent to 75 per cent, and the production targets demanded by Iraq have also been lowered. But even with softened terms, the attraction of the deals is more the foot in the door than the contracts themselves. "These are quite sophisticated arrangements, but they are very, very different from the contracts you might have elsewhere in the world, where the reserves can be booked in your accounts," a source at one major oil company said last night. There are two problems that need to be overcome before any greater involvement. One is that deals with foreign oil companies are a thorny issue. Saddam's nationalisation of the industry in 1972 is one of very few aspects of his rule that is not criticised within Iraq, and any sense that the country's resources are being sold out to the West would be viewed as a gross betrayal. The other is Iraq's internal politics. Since 2003, about 30 smaller oil companies have signed traditional production-sharing agreements with the government of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in the north, which has fewer than 10 per cent of the country's total oil reserves. But major companies including BP and Shell pulled out after Baghdad branded the deals illegal and threatened to ban any company pursuing such arrangements from bidding for work elsewhere in the country. The row, which centres on whether the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has the right to make deals in its own right or must get them signed off by Baghdad, shows little sign of resolution. As well as holding up investment in the region itself, the stand-off is also scuppering the progress of the post-Saddam government's planned hydrocarbon law, which would provide a framework for rights and revenues, not to mention the involvement of foreign oil companies, for the country as a whole. Despite years of discussion, and numerous different drafts, the law is still not on the statute books and attempts to revise it may require a revision of the Iraqi constitution governing the relationship between Baghdad and the KRG. "There is a huge internal debate in Iraq about whether the government should make these types of deal," Mr Takin said. Against such a background, the oil ministry is trying to get on with increasing production - and raising revenues for the state - within its existing remit. As well as the long-term services contracts, it has also put together a number of isolated deals, awarded without a competitive tendering process. Last autumn, Shell joined a $4bn joint venture to collect and market the 700 million cubic feet of gas flared from 19,000 square kilometres of oil field in the Basra region. In August, CNPC - now in talks with Shell over Kirkuk - signed a $3bn deal to develop the Ahdab field in central Iraq, thus agreeing the first oil deal since the fall of Saddam. But as Baghdad and the KRG do not even agree whether Kirkuk is in Kurdistan or not, even the smallest steps are worth taking. ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sun Apr 19 23:17:00 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sun Apr 19 23:17:20 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] Hope Princess Mary watched it too... Message-ID: <012d01c9c17f$9e162ab0$0ead57ca@jfos> 9/11 Media Breakthrough in Denmark Submitted by 911truth.dk on Sat, 04/11/2009 - 8:27am http://www.911blogger.com/node/19805 The excellent work by Niels Harrit, Farrer, Jones and Ryan et. al in the recent journal article (Thermitic Material Discovered in WTC Dust) has paved the way for some very good media coverage in Denmark. At around 10:30 pm on Monday April 6, Harrit was interviewed for 10 minutes during the late news program on one of the two most respected Danish television channels (TV2). On Wednesday April 8, Harrit was interviewed for 6 minutes at 8:45 am during a live news and entertainment program on the same channel. In both cases, Harrit, and the claims of the article, were treated with refreshing seriousness and respect. The first interview has been subtitled in English and loaded onto youtube (direct link), and should appear (embedded) below: (video to watch) The clip is also available on our server (http://agenda911.dk/article.php?story=nanothermite_tv2news) with links to various alternative (higher quality) formats and the full text of the English subtitles. Some readers may want to download a high quality version and mirror it on other servers (put the URL in a comment to this blog entry), in case our server struggles with demand and/or youtube lets us down. We are working on subtitles for the second 6 min. interview (covers similar material) and will post this later. The journal article has also received reasonably fair coverage in a number of mainstream Danish newspapers (these articles are in Danish, the headlines are translated below): JyllandsPosten: Researchers: Explosives in dust from WTC Videnskab.dk: Danish researcher: Explosive nano-material found in dust from WTC Videnskab.dk: Niels Harrit: Scientific evidence for old knowledge about 9/11 Politiken: 9/11 conspiracy theories revitalised EkstraBladet: WTC mystery: Nano-thermite in the towers Ingeni?ren: Research team claims to have found nano-explosive in the World Trade Center Kristeligt Dagblad: Dane resurrects September 11 conspiracy theory We hope this precedent may serve to encourage journalists in other countries to take the article's findings seriously, and start looking more critically at 9/11. Do what you can to make them aware of this coveraage in your country. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090420/fc8220be/attachment.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sun Apr 19 23:24:09 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sun Apr 19 23:24:33 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] Visteon (Ford) workers demand green jobs Message-ID: <016401c9c180$9e2e7830$0ead57ca@jfos> Britain: Visteon workers demand green jobs 18 April 2009 http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/791/40736 After a British court threatened mass arrests, 200 sacked Ford Visteon workers ended their nine day occupation of the Enfield car plant in London on April 9. The workers are now running a 24-hour picket outside the factory gates. Below is an abridged version of a statement issued by some Ford Visteon workers and their supporters. The statement raises the call for the government to step in to keep the factory running by making ?green products?. Send messages of support to the Ford Visteon workers to visteonoccupation@googlemail.com. *** We, the Ford Visteon workers, occupied our factory on Wednesday April 1. The previous day in a meeting lasting just 6 minutes we were told that the European company, with plants in Belfast, Basildon and Ponders End, Enfield, was going into administration and that we were to leave without our wages being paid. Personal possessions could be collected the next day, but at 10am the factory was locked closed. Workers had already occupied the Belfast factory, and are still inside. The 200 workers, who are part of the Ford subsidiary, want the same conditions they have always had via ?mirror contracts? with the parent company. Up to now, they don't know when they will get wages due, and their pensions are to be controlled by the government Pensions Protection Fund. This means a maximum ?9000 payout, and much reduced conditions! Some of the women and men have 40 years service! But unexpectedly Unite union members have taken determined action that bosses thought they had eliminated years ago. The workers want their existing terms respected. Ford Visteon can't be allowed to avoid their responsibility. As a result of the occupation, Visteon agreed to negotiate with us ? our convenor flew over to the US this week to meet US company reps. More discussions are due this coming week. As well as proper redundancy payments, some are suggesting that our skills ? we can make anything in plastic ? should be used to make increasingly needed parts for green products: bike and trailer parts, solar panels, turbines, recycling bins etc. Government investment in this, rather than throwing money at bankers, could be profitable and save jobs in the long term. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Ireland: Ford?s lies exposed as community stands with workers Emma Clancy, Belfast 18 April 2009 http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/37978 Hundreds joined a march in Belfast on April 8 in support of the 210 Visteon workers sacked on March 31, who have been occupying their plant since. The staff, who had been employed by US motoring giant Ford until it set up the spin-off company Visteon UK in 2000, are occupying the west Belfast car parts factory site in protest at the companies' breach of redundancy terms. Speaking to An Phoblacht, Sinn Fein west Belfast MLA Jennifer McCann, who addressed the community rally, said: ?The workers have said they are very much heartened by the outpouring of solidarity from the west Belfast community and beyond since they began their fight to defend their basic rights and legal entitlements.? When Ford spun the parts manufacturing operation off into Visteon, the workers were guaranteed ?lifetime protection?. Their pay and conditions would ?mirror? those they worked under at Ford. But instead of getting the agreed 90 days? notice for the redundancies, the workers got five minutes. While they are entitled to a minimum of 12 to 18 months wages as a redundancy payment, plus pension in the event of a plant?s closure, the workers have now been told they can only claim statutory redundancy of about ?9000. Visteon also claims its pension fund is ?150 million in deficit. On the same day that Visteon sacked its Belfast workforce, it also fired hundreds of workers at two of its plants in England. After seeing the Belfast sit-in on the news, the workers in Enfield, north London and Basildon, Essex, organised occupations and protests at their factory sites. Workers from Waterford Crystal in Ireland?s south, who began a seven-week occupation of their factory to save jobs in January, donated 5000 euros to the west Belfast workers. Local representatives, trade unionists and the broader community have supported the west Belfast workers by bringing food and supplies and joining hundreds of people in a family fun day in solidarity on April 5. Speaking at the fun day, Sinn Fein MLA and MP for west Belfast Gerry Adams said: ?Ford cannot be allowed to renege on its responsibilities to the Visteon workers. Workers? rights must be protected. ?We will stand shoulder to shoulder with the Visteon workers until they are treated properly.? Administrators KMPG said it had been ?assured? by Ford that the auto giant had ?no liability? to the Visteon UK staff and that Ford and Visteon are two separate legal entities. Yet a legal document signed by Ford and Visteon management and union representatives in January 2000, supplied to An Phoblacht by Visteon staff, stated: ?Accrued seniority and all existing terms and conditions, in particular pension entitlements, will be transferred to the new employment contracts. ?For the duration of their employment, terms and conditions of existing Ford employees, who transfer ... will mirror Ford conditions (lifetime protection).? A questions and answers document circulated to staff in 2000 said: ?For the duration of your employment with Visteon UK, your terms and conditions ... will mirror Ford conditions.? A confidential internal Visteon document called ?Project Protea? from May, 2007 ,outlines the plan to shut down the Belfast plant. ?Belfast?s financial performance is impaired by uncompetitive labour costs?, the document says. Visteon?s strategy was to: ?Develop duplicate sources for all the Belfast product lines by the end of 2007 ... Minimise information leaks by creating isolated project teams ... and engage Ford for assistance in transferring products to new locations.? Many workers believe that after setting up Visteon UK as a ?separate? company ? which only made parts for Ford ? the plants have been run into the ground, allowing Ford to set up shop or expand in states with lower wages, while reneging on its obligations to its workforce. In 2007, another company was set up, Visteon Engineering Services, which 400 mainly engineering and Visteon UK administrative staff were transferred to. Conveniently, most of the management of Visteon UK transferred their pensions into this new company, which has not been affected by the demise of Visteon UK and continues to trade. Meanwhile, Visteon Corporation chief executive Donald Stebbins took home US$1.48 million in cash and bonuses last year. The relationship between the web of companies around Ford and records of their financial dealings with each other are not available publicly. The joint general secretary of Unite, the union representing the workers, Derek Simpson, said: ?Visteon have a contractual obligation, as well as a moral obligation to these workers.? Belfast Visteon workers rejected an offer by the company to immediately pay 16 weeks of redundancy to most workers, Newsletter.co.ok reported on April 16. Unite described the offer as adding ?insult to injury?. [Abridged from An Phoblacht, the newspaper produced by republican party Sinn Fein.] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Visteon (FORD) Workers reject Insulting Offer http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8002239.stm Sacked workers of car parts firm Visteon taking part in pickets and occupations against job cuts have rejected an "insulting" cash offer from bosses. The workers have vowed to fight on until they get their contractual entitlements. Supporters are urged to donate to help the ex-employees continue their struggle, visit the occupied Belfast plant and assist with picketing the Enfield plant, which had its blockades strengthened following the announcement. The London daily News reported that the industrial action stated in Belfast but spread to London after workers were given five minutes notice and told they would receive 'basic' redundancy packages. Union officials spent the week thrashing out an agreement - but Ulster representatives said they were not being brought in for the discussions. Visteon Corporation has said most employees would receive a cash payment equivalent to 16 weeks pay. A Unite union spokesman called the offer "derisory" and that it added "insult to injury." 580 jobs gone 150 were dug in at Visteon plants in Basildon and West London, refusing to budge until management enhance redundencency deals. 580 jobs are set to go at the three factories. "Won't leave until adequate deal" The workers said they were given guarantees on pay and conditions when the company was split off from Ford nine years ago and will only leave when they are offered an adequate deal. Visteon UK employed 173 staff at the Basildon plant, 227 in Enfield and 210 in Belfast. The wider group has a 33,500-strong workforce and operations in 27 countries. 'Failed to honour contracts' The union claims the company's former owner and main customer, Ford, had promised contracts which they now want to see honoured. Union representatives originally asked workers to hold off on a threat to picket Ford showrooms but several were 'secondary picketed' over the Easter holidays and since the homes of managers have been targeted. Ford say: "Since 2000, Visteon has been an independent company supplying parts to Ford. Ford has no contractual or other responsibility towards the Visteon UK workforce. APRIL 25 SOLIDARITY Sat 25 April National Day of Action to support the Ford-Visteon workers. Supporters Gathering/Rally at 11am at the Enfield plant (Gate 5) before moving off for actions. At 5pm there will be a showing of the Visteon documentary at Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Rd, London N1 http://libcom.org/news/visteon-workers-reject-insulting-offer-17042009 NOTE: Hundreds marched to a rally at Belfast City Hall in solidarity with the workers occupying the Visteon factory in west Belfast. On Friday April 17th, members of Organise!, the WSM, trade unions and several hundred others marched from Transport House in central Belfast, to City Hall to attend a rally in support of the sacked Visteon workers at their Finaghy plant in west Belfast. The march stopped traffic in the city, and over 30 bus drivers parked their buses in the middle of city centre lunchtime business to join the rally in support. http://libcom.org/news/hundreds-rally-support-belfast-visteon-workers -19042009 EVICTION VIDEO http://libcom.org/news/video-visteon-workers-eviction-enfield-14042009 OZ POST "It's getting to crunch time," said the CEPUnion's NSW secretary, Jim Metcher, who said the $1 million cash bonus paid to Australia Post's managing director Graeme John last year was particularly galling for his members. Mr John's overall package for the year was $2.9 million, up 9 per cent on the previous 12 months. The top seven executives at Australia Post received $2.6 million in cash bonuses last financial year. The CEPU, which is in enterprise bargaining talks with Australia Post, has also raised objections over the company's shift towards hiring part-time or casual staff. "I'm actually advocating that we take unprotected industrial action to reach agreement over these two issues (worker's compensation claims and full-time staff)," Mr Metcher said. http://business.theage.com.au/business/posties-seeing-red-over-forced- leave-20090419-abg0.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Mon Apr 20 00:06:27 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Mon Apr 20 00:18:42 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Terminator Seeds & Codex Alimentarius Message-ID: <022501c9c188$208d6460$0ead57ca@jfos> http://members.iimetro.com.au/~hubbca/codex.htm What is CODEX The Nation Vol5, Ed.10 The official newspaper of One Nation What is CODEX? (34), in short it is an annual World Health Organisation (WHO) sponsored gathering of delegates in Europe, many of them CFR Transnationals pharmaceutical corporations who are primarily focused on increasing their market share, by pushing their desired and arbitrary regulatory "standards" into a global standard and forcing it into the smaller local supplement industry, all in the name of "international regulatory excellence". The Codex Committee is also bound by the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) treaties. The WTO is a global commercial police that ensures countries are required to purchase from transnational corporations in favour of their own locally produced goods, in the name of "lowering trade barriers". This WHO/WTO joint effort called CODEX is in the process of wiping out local supplement companies and natural health care practices, to bring in more drug based medicines, in what is euphemistically known as "creating a level playing field", while primarily giving the public a misleading impression that someone in the World Health Organisation (WTO) is looking after its health and safety. CODEX recommendations are then adopted by regulators such as the Australian TGA or the US FDA by various direct or indirect means that end up as Acts and amendments that are passed into law by Parliaments or Congress, usually without public debate. This is another example of globalisation and unconstitutional UN treaties. Vitamins, herbs abut to be declared illegal By medical author Jonathan V. Wright, MD The Nation magazine Vol4, edition 11 The official newspaper of One Nation The Food and Drug Administration's wildest dream (and our worst nightmare) in the area of natural therapies is about to come true. There is a conspiracy among multinational drug companies and their paid puppets in government, to make natural therapies unobtainable by regulating them out of the market. Compliance will be possible, but the cost will be so prohibitive that only the multinational drug companies will be able to afford it. What it means for you, the consumer, is that the global pharmaceutical industry is about to make it impossible for you to buy anything other than their products. Two years ago, I told you about the passage of the European Union Directive on Dietary Supplements. This directive, which is part of a larger form of legislation called Codex Alimentarius, severely restricts access to natural health products in Europe. At the same time, it probably seemed a long way off. After all, the law was not to go into effect for several years following the initial passage. Unfortunately, that several years is up and the EU directive is on track to take full effect in August next year. By 2007, the scene described above will certainly be a reality for many, many people. Obviously, this is devastating news for Europe, but thanks to some pre-existing international agreements made by the United States and Australia, the EU directive will be just as devastating for the natural health community in the United States and Australia. The main difference is that while the directive has been big news in Europe for some time, it has been virtually ignored by the United States and Australian media, which means that the severe restrictions it calls for will sneak up on most people and rob us all of our freedom to choose natural alternatives before we even know what is happening. That is why I and many of my colleagues in the health publishing world have done our best to keep you informed of the directive's developments (and their consequences for the United States and Australia) over the years. Put simply, we are down to the wire and, if we do not act immediately, we will be facing the same fate as Europeans. There are steps you can take to get the word out and hopefully, to diffuse this ticking time bomb. First, let us take a few minutes and recount some of the specifics included in the directive so that you know exactly what it is we are fight against. About 5,000 natural health products are about to disappear from the shelves. The EU Directive classifies vitamins and minerals in Europe as "medical drugs" rather than dietary supplements, which means that they are subject to government regulation in terms of dosage and availability. It gets worse. There are many nutrients known to be vital to optimal health that are not on the government's RDA nutrient list. These include chromium picolinate, lysine and selenium. Under the directive, these types of supplements will be banned from over-the-counter sale. It will be illegal to buy them without a prescription. The supplements that will be available till be restricted to multi-vitamins that will contain no more than 100 per cent of the established RDA amounts, which are usually useless trivial quantities and they will be far more expensive than what we have now. This directive will make it illegal for people to keep themselves healthy by supplementing their diet with essential nutrients. Plus, the directive allows supplements to be made from a list of only 15 minerals and 13 vitamins. That leaves out at least 40 minerals important to the human metabolism and forbids the use of the most bio-available forms of vitamin complexes. In essence, it means that all nutritional supplements will be virtually the same and next to useless. The specific combinations might vary, but the types and amounts of nutrients will be identical, no matter what product they are formulated into. So, for instance, a middle-aged woman in Liverpool, England, who has a dangerously elevated homocysteine level will no longer have the option of reducing her risk of heart disease with a vitamin B dosage of her own choosing. If she is currently taking 5mg of folic acid daily, under the new directive, she will be restricted by law to a prescription of 1mg per day. If she is taking a 100mg dose of B6, she will be restricted to 10mg and her pantothenic acid (B5) intake of 500mg will drop to 200mg. These maximum dosage levels have been chosen to "protect" her (so we are told) when in fact, the protection she needs the most will be unavailable. In addition to these essential B vitamins, low maximum dosage levels have also been set for vitamin C, niacin and vitamin E, but at least they made it on to the list of allowed nutrients. Approximately 350 supplement ingredients are missing from the list. If they are not added to the list by June 2005 they will be deemed illegal throughout the European Union. Supplement manufacturers may submit "technical dossiers" to support applications for the inclusion of individual elements or formulations on the so-called "positive list", but the EU has made this process so expensive and time consuming that many manufactures will not be able to afford the costs involved. Understanding "Codex"... Opinion by Consumer Advocate Tim Bolen Sunday, February 20th, 2005 http://www.quackpotwatch.org/opinionpieces/Codex.htm I get a lot of e-mails, phone calls, and personal requests to "get involved" in the "Codex" problem. Until today, you haven't heard anything from me on the subject. Why? Because, simply, I haven't yet figured out exactly what's happening with the whole thing. I, myself, have been asking questions of my contacts all over the world. I have a lot of contacts. >From my research, and it has only begun, and the research and observations of others whose opinions I respect, I've reached some tentative conclusions and, using the scientific method, have come up with a working hypothesis, and some possibilities for solution. I'm going to share my thinking, and observations, with you. (1) The "Codex" issue is NOT about stopping supplements worldwide. It is about Big Pharma TAKING OVER, and completely controlling the supplement industry. (2) The "Codex" issue is NOT a "by itself" issue. It is simply a symptom, and a manifestation, of a much larger problem. What's happening on Planet Earth is that multinational corporations, now, are so large that they, in their daily business dealings, are much larger, and certainly more powerful than MOST of Earth's nations. Those multinational corporations have set up the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the new world government, completely under their control. (3) The multinational corporations, through the WTO, have set up the situation where THEY are challenging both the idea of DEMOCRACY (people governing themselves) and the power of governments to control world policy. (4) The multinational corporations, through the WTO, have set up the situation where THEY are intentionally attempting to destroy the North American economy - and that of ALL of the United States' historical allies. (5) Big Pharma, knowing it is "going down," because of its murderous avariciousness, is attempting to move its PEOPLE into new positions. One of those places is "the supplement industry.." (6) Big Pharma, knowing it is "going down," is funding its next attempt at world domination (yes, that's what this is about) in the United States - with its DRUG PRICING SCHEMES, and its control, through huge advertising budgets, of the US media. US citizens pay five times what everyone else pays for drugs - for no good reason. Big Pharma is doing this, I believe, to destroy American Industry's ability to compete in a world market. What Makes Me Think This Way? I don't believe in coincidence. I met with the Alliance for Natural Health's (ANH) Executive Director Robert Verkerk a few months ago. ANH, as you probably already know, is leading the legal battle, in Europe, over the Codex issues. They are doing a very good job. I am, in my business life, a war oriented Crisis Management Consultant. So, one of the first questions I ask of my clients, or prospective clients, is "who is behind this attack on you?" I want very specific answers - for if I take on a project - "the opposition's" Command Post is going to get (figuratively speaking) bombed into dust particles IMMEDIATELY - just to level the playing field. So I asked Robert VerKerk about Codex. I asked my usual question "who is behind this attack on you?" Simply, I want to know, who exactly is "the opposition." Who, exactly, is setting up, and running, the attack on supplements worldwide? Robert's answer was one word... "Merck." "Merck?" As in the same "Merck" that heinously murdered 55,000+ Americans with its deadly Vioxx? As in the same "Merck" that heinously spent 500 million dollars with American network television, funneled through its New York ad agency (quackbusters?), AFTER it knew how deadly its product was? Yes. The very same "Merck." "Merck," according to VerKerk, controls the manufacturing and distribution of the base ingredients OF THE ONLY SUPPLEMENTS THAT WILL BE AVAILABLE in Europe - and possibly North America. See why "I don't believe in coincidence?" So - What Do We Do About This? (1) Understanding a problem is halfway to solution... (2) We support the Alliance for Natural Health's (ANH)'s legal campaign. (3) We target Big Pharma's money stream right here in the US (we are already doing this) (4) We need to STOP ALL advertising of drugs - period. We need to control our own media - not allow Big Pharma to call the shots. (5) We must arrest Merck executives in the US, seize their personal property, and stick them in Guantanamo Bay until we're ready to put them on trial... Think "Merck"... But "Merck" is not alone. Think "Big Pharma." This is battle for World Domination - period. Either "we the people" run our governments, AND DECIDE WORLD POLICY, or big multinational corporations will - through the WTO. Choose. Tim Bolen - Consumer Advocate Australia trying to control or "harmonise" NZ supplements to restrictive TGA standards NZ Health Trust http://www.nzhealthtrust.co.nz/ The NZ Government is trying to change the way in which all Natural Health Products (NHPs) are regulated. They plan to treat Natural Health Products as medicines and give the power to control them to the controversial Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). http://www.nzhealthtrust.co.nz/faq.html The Labour Government is trying to change the way in which all Natural Health Products (NHPs) are regulated. They plan to treat NHPs as medicines and give the power to control them to the controversial Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA): We know from the Australian experience that this would mean; Fewer Natural health products available - consumer choice reduced Increased cost to consumers Natural health products treated as drugs Many NZ businesses forced to close - jobs lost There will be little NZ can do to protect itself - Australia would make decisions for NZ The Australian TGA (which would take over NZ's natural health industry) is known to use an extremely heavy-handed approach to supplements. Remember the Pan debacle? The TGA recalled 1200 natural products off the market on the strength of one manufacturer's lax handling of quality control standards. "The truth is that of more than 1200 products recalled, NOT ONE of the natural health products was found to be at fault. It was only one pharmaceutical drug which was a problem". Despite strong opposition from industry and a Parliamentary Select Committee report against the proposal, Annette King signed the Treaty with Australia on 10 December last year. But the battle is far from over . The Government still needs to have the treaty passed into law and for that it needs the support of the opposition parties. We can stop the Government's TGA proposal especially if we are strong and united. The opposition party MP's need to know the strength of public opposition. There are 2 easy and extremely effective ways you can let MP's know what you think - visit the NZHT website www.nzht.co.nz and; 1.. " Postcards to MP's " - order Freepost preprinted postcards to send to MP's 2.. " Contact your MP " - use the mass mailer to email MP's (only takes a minute!) Warning! In response, the Labour MP's will send you a standard reply trying to convince you that their proposal is a good idea. BUT DON'T BE FOOLED . Labour is desperate to get this proposal through and will say anything to succeed. http://www.nzhealthtrust.co.nz/news.html 19 February 2005 Last week it was announced that the proposed agency is now not likely to start until July 2006 but maybe sooner. This means that the Government has been forced to delay this project by up to 12 months from original start date which was to have been July this year. This delay has come about due to the intense opposition to the proposal and should be seen by us all as a sign of the impact we have had. http://www.nzhealthtrust.co.nz/mba.html The 10 Day MBA. Using stringent legislation to put competitors as a disadvantage. Only big companies have the money to comply. 10 Points For Supplements New Zealand Fitness Magazine http://www.xtramsn.com/health/0,,8230-2577501,00.html You've seen the newspaper headlines, the television stories, heard the information repeated ad nausem over the radio on the Pan Pharmaceuticals health scare and the recall of hundreds of supplements from pharmacies and health food shops. This has left some people confused about supplementation: Do we need it? Is it necessary? What is safe? How much to take? And what is the real safety issue behind this health scare? Kimberley Paterson investigates. 1 In January 2003 Australia's Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA) recalled Travaclam, an over-the-counter travel sickness product. This product was a pharmaceutical and not a vitamin, mineral or natural health supplement - yet despite this the media quickly began running huge scare stories about the quality of vitamins, minerals and herbal products available on the Australasian market. 2 A witch hunt against the booming natural health industry quickly unfolded with shock headlines including - The bitterest pill; Kava may be a killer; Take with a pinch of salt; Babies in danger; Bad medicine - all decrying natural supplements. Many doctors, scientists and nutritionists opposed to the use of supplementation took the opportunity to cast doubt on the use of natural supplements. Quickly the idea spread that taking natural medicines could mean grave danger. "A number of doctors also made the old scathing comment about the only thing that vitamins and supplementation give you is expensive urine," says Gary Mabey, a holistic health advocate and owner of Auckland company Health and Herbs. "I have yet to see any research that validates this claim." 3 Iatrogenic (medical and drug induced) illness is the third biggest killer of people in New Zealand, mirroring statistics elsewhere the Western World. Some 3000 New Zealanders are thought to die each year as a direct result of medically prescribed drugs or orthodox medicine interventions, according to government and associated organisations' reports and databases. Auckland anaesthetist and hospital safety campaigner Dr Robin Youngson said a total of 66,000 New Zealanders could suffer adverse effects to drugs and medicine each year, that 3250 of these people would die and another 9000 would be disabled. To give you a sense of the problem, that means for every bed taken up by a traffic injury patient, another five are taken up with medical injury related patients. Hospitals like Auckland are spending an estimate of $5 million a year on treatment and longer stays for those suffering such medical failures. Another study, by Professor Peter Davies of the Christchurch School of Medicine, found New Zealand rates of adverse reactions was higher than in Britain and the US. Adverse events were also higher and more serious in those over 65 and resulted in a doubling of the time they spent in hospital. In Australia as many as 14,000 people die each year through preventable mistakes. Another approximate 30,000 are left with some degree of serious or permanent disability as a result of such mistakes, according to an Australian Hospital Care Study, which examined the medical records of 14,179 patients who attended 28 public and private hospitals. In the US, medical mistakes kill around 88,000 Americans each year. The report, by the Institute of Medicine, says problems include mistakes in dosage and drugs given and failure to keep up with rapidly growing medical and technological knowledge. It is thought another million or more people are injured as a result of iatrogenic disease yearly in the US. 4 Despite the ongoing scare stories that might try to have you believe otherwise it is almost totally unknown for anyone to have died anywhere in the world from taking reasonable quantities of natural vitamins or mineral supplementation. (Apart from the recent incident of a small child choking to death on a tablet.) 5 Medical systems can't currently cope with demand. Despite rapidly spiralling multi-billion health budgets, the health care systems in both Australia and New Zealand are clearly in crisis. Recent moves in New Zealand have seen thousands of people simply removed from hospital waiting lists. Across the Tasman, the highest number of people ever are waiting to have surgery in New South Wales hospitals. Medicine in the community is similarly stretched. GPs have recently warned government they will only be able to see patients for six minutes each under new primary health care strategies. Meanwhile, drug company pressure and a changing research climate has led to more Australians being recruited as guinea pigs in potentially risky early stage trials of new drugs. In New Zealand, government initiatives include spending $200 million to subsidise research and pharmaceutical interests in developing a vaccine with only a 50 per cent chance of success to reduce 15 deaths a year from meningococcal disease. In England, Professor John Harris says bodies should become public property to help make up a growing shortage of transplant organs. The doctor from Manchester University says the British government should introduce laws that allow hospital doctors to retrieve organs from the dead without having to establish their willingness to be donors. A story that ran in the New Zealand Herald last year showed a US-based company's intent to import heart pacemakers to New Zealand that had been cut out of corpses for resale. In the UK 10 per cent of heart surgeons have been investigated for incompetence. In Canada, hundreds of Canadians have been infected with hepatitis C from blood collected in US prisons. In Australia, doctors are selling Amway rather than practising medicine because they see so little incentives for GPs, according to the Australian Medical Association. In New Zealand, electro convulsive therapy is seen as a "safe and important treatment option for severely depressed people". A recent international survey published in the British Medical Journal found of 1540 medical professionals surveyed, half were unhappy or very unhappy. They said they were overworked, underpaid, inadequately supported and had lost control of their work. 6 Modern medicine is a lucrative business. The US federal budget is $847 billion for 282 million people every year. Each US family also pays on average another $1695 annually for medical insurance. In Australia, the annual health budget for 19 million people is $7.8 billion, with each individual paying another approximate $2954 for Medicare. A similarly spectacular budget is spent in New Zealand. For medicine to continue being lucrative, it needs a steady supply of sick people. 7 Given the pretty grim indications arising from the orthodox medical world, a huge majority of Australians and New Zealanders are deciding to take control over their health and wellbeing by addressing lifestyle factors; finding more balance in their life, eating a healthy diet, cutting down on alcohol, stopping smoking and reducing stress. A critical part of this wellness regime by many is to include supplements with vitamins, minerals and herbs - a practice that a growing body of scientific research supports. For instance, a landmark study last year found that co-enzyme Q10 reduced by 44 per cent the loss of function caused by Parkinson disease. Co-enzyme Q10 is a naturally occurring substance made in the human body. Or take the work of Dr Matthias Rath, a world-renowned scientist and physician who for years has been fighting to free access to vitamin therapy and other natural treatments. Recent breakthrough work by his organisation has proved the critical role of amino acids in the natural control of cancer. A wide raft of similar scientific research has been bringing forth compelling evidence of the role a high quality diet and natural supplements can play in aiding physical and mental ailments. The work of Dr Abram Hoffer, repeatedly reviewed in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, shows the dramatic role that vitamins and minerals can play in turning around a host of supposedly chronic and untreatable mental illnesses. Studies have shown 75 per cent of New Zealand householders now commonly use vitamin or mineral supplements in their attempts to increase wellbeing. 8 At the very juncture our modern world is learning about the critical role that natural supplements can play in human health and wellbeing, we are seeing repeated attempts by global governments to have such supplementation removed from our control. Across Europe, the US, the UK and Australasia successive governments under the officialdom of Codex Alimentarius Commission have been trying to see natural supplements slowly withdrawn from the public domain. Codex, formed in 1963, operates under World Trade Organisation (WTO) legislation, which overrules national and local decisions. Member counties that refuse to "harmonise" with WTO directives may be subject to restrictive trade sanctions, used to help persuade agreements using severe economic pressure. New Zealand is one of the 165 member countries of Codex whose delegates have overwhelmingly been represented by large multinational pharmaceutical companies and government regulating authorities. Codex guidelines intend to prevent the sale of supplementations by making only lower dose vitamins and minerals available with higher doses only available by doctor's prescription. Codex also wants to regulate natural supplements to be manufactured solely by drug companies. Repeated widespread public opposition to this move continues across the world from people who realise where the situation might lead. 9 Australia's TGA is seen as one of the most restrictive and repressive regimes globally when it comes to availability of natural supplements. Since its introduction, Australians have lost their ability to source nearly 200 supplements - things like kava kava, prune extract, comfrey, green tea extract, vitamin A and selenium - which has been particularly concerning given the extremely positive studies showing the link between adequate selenium intake and a decreased risk of cancer. This legislation is what is currently being foisted on the New Zealand public under the "trans-Tasman harmonisation" move being pushed by government despite widespread public opposition. Already New Zealanders have lost access to natural sleep, stress and jet-lag remedy Melatonin; tumour-reducing herb Chaparral; natural anti-stress anti-anxiety hormone Progesterone, which thousands of New Zealand women find highly effective against PMS and menopause systems. Once freely available, natural progesterone is now only available on doctor's prescription. Despite this heavy handed regulatory approach, the TGA has shown to be highly ineffective when it came to dealing with the Pan Pharmaceuticals Travacalm issue. 10 The critical issue that consumers need to be asking themselves right now is not if taking natural remedies is safe - it has clearly shown not only to be safe but highly beneficial for human health - but rather, who does it serve that people should be scared off taking such supplements? Who does it serve if human health suffers? The risk associated with adverse pharmaceutical drug reactions is almost 100,000 greater than natural supplements and the risk associated with injury caused by medical treatment is over 250,000 times greater than the risk associated with natural supplements. Why the killer vitamin headlines? Many believe it's more to do with protectionism of a trillion dollar global market for pharmaceuticals than any concern for human health. >From NZ Fitness Magazine August/September 2003 issue. Codex Alimentarius Commission: A threat to mankind by Dr. Matthias Rath, M.D. http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/ health_movement_against_codex/index.htm There is an entire industry with an innate economic interest to obstruct, suppress and discredit any information about the eradication of diseases. The pharmaceutical industry makes over one trillion dollars from selling drugs for ongoing diseases. These drugs may relieve symptoms, but they do not cure. We have to realize that the mission of this industry is to make money from ongoing diseases. The cure or eradication of a disease leads to the collapse of a multi-billion dollar market of pharmaceuticals. The natural purpose and driving force of the pharmaceutical industry is to increase sales of pharmaceutical drugs for ongoing diseases and to find new diseases to market existing drugs. By this very nature, the pharmaceutical industry has no interest in curing diseases. The eradication of any disease inevitably destroys a multi-billion dollar market of prescription drugs as a source of revenues. Therefore, pharmaceutical drugs are primarily developed to relieve symptoms, but not to cure. If eradication therapies for diseases are discovered and developed, the pharmaceutical industry has an inherent interest to suppress, discredit and obstruct these medical breakthroughs in order to make sure that diseases continue as the very basis for a lucrative prescription drug market. The economic interest of the pharmaceutical industry itself is the main reason why no medical breakthrough has been made for the control of the most common diseases such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, heart failure, Diabetes, cancer, and osteoporosis, and why these diseases continue like epidemics on a worldwide scale. For the same economic reasons, the pharmaceutical industry has now formed an international cartel by the code name "Codex Alimentarius" with the aim to outlaw any health information in connection with vitamins and to limit free access to natural therapies on a worldwide scale. At the same time, the pharmaceutical companies withhold public information about the effects and risks of prescription drugs and life-threatening side effects are omitted or openly denied. In order to assure the status quo of this deceptive scheme, a legion of pharmaceutical lobbyists is employed to influence legislation, control regulatory agencies (e.g. FDA), and manipulate medical research and education. Expensive advertising campaigns and PR agencies are used to deceive the public. Millions of people and patients around the world are defrauded twice: A major portion of their income is used up to finance the exploding profits of the pharmaceutical industry. In return, they are offered a medicine that does not even cure. Make health a human right. To learn more about Codex Alimentarius and the conspiracy to destroy our health freedom, visit Dr. Rath's Website: http://www.rath.nl/ http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/ health_movement_against_codex/index.htm Hoechst and the United Nations Jon Rappaport http://www.thegreatboycott.net/nazi.html In October of 1996, the United Nations/World Health Organization Codex Alimentarius Commission met in Bonn, Germany to make changes in the rules governing dietary supplements for member nations. Codex is empowered by governments to set standards of operation for the health industry. Over 90% of the international organization are allowed to send delegates to the meetings to represent large multinational pharmaceutical corporations. A proposal made by the German delegation and sponsored by Hoechst, Bayer and BASF the three corporations that were formerly IG Farben before they were ordered to disband after the Nuremberg Trials. (Click here, Pg. 1) The drug company backed proposals call for the following: 1) No vitamin, mineral, herb, etc., can be sold for prophylactic (preventive) or therapeutic reasons. 2) Natural remedies can be sold as food but they must not exceed the potency levels set by the commission. This means that consumer access to dietary supplements will be limited to the RDA dosage as a maximum limit for vitamins. Supplements without a RDA would be illegal to sell because they would become drugs. 3) Codex regulations for dietary supplements would become binding, eliminating the escape clause within the General Agreement of Tariff and Trade (GATT) that allows a nation to set its own standards will be heavily fined by the World Trade Organization (WTO) creating the potential of crippling the entire sectors of that nation's economy. 4) All new supplements would be banned unless they go through the Codex approval process. This policy is has been enacted in Norway and Germany. This policy if approved would cause pharmacy regulation of many supplements and vitamins causing a significant price increase. Any country not following the policy would be subject to fines from the World Trade Organization. The Codex process is now at "Step Five"- formalization and debate concerning the specific features of the policy. In two years, Codex could jump from step 5 to step 8 to finalize the restrictions "Big Pharma" Stabs Planet Earth... Opinion by Consumer Advocate Tim Bolen Friday, July 8th, 2005 http://www.bolenreport.net/archives/big%20pharma%20stabs%20earth.htm My last two broadcasts "Vitamins to be Banned Worldwide...", and ""Big Pharma" Controls US "TV News"... have generated a major response. They seem to have been forwarded everywhere, and I can't keep up with the volume of email questions I'm getting - so I'll answer the questions here... Yes, it's true that the "Codex Alimentarius" commission in Rome, July 4th,2005, passed restriction of supplement guidelines that would, in effect, destroy the supplement industry in it's entirety - except for that controlled outright by "Big Pharma." Yes, it's true that the "CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement)" legislation currently being rushed through the US Congress contains, within its language, the mechanism to force "harmonization" of US laws to "Codex" requirements destroying the protection afforded under the1994 DSHEA (Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act) law. Yes, it's true that "Big Pharma" is behind this move - they have that much power and money. Yes, it's true that we MIGHT be able to stop CAFTA - but it's unlikely - this time. There is too much at stake - and too little time for us to react - and too much money being spent to buy Congressional votes, by the opposition. We must try, but if we don't succeed at first, we'll have to go at it again, until we get what we need. We've been "Pearl Harbored..." The dismantling of the "health" industry, and the surrounding "health freedom" movement, worldwide, by force, has begun. The "German Model" of health care will now be the law of the land - in every land. We've lost this battle - period. Be prepared for even more attacks. It is going to get worse. "Big Pharma" is tired of having its will thwarted, and is calling in its markers. The US FDA, over the last few months, has LITERALLY, with automatic weapons in hand, and body armor in place, massively attacked at least two US practitioners who espouse alternatives to "drugs, drugs, and more drugs," seizing everything in their offices, their bank accounts, the titles to their homes, cars, and personal property - and screaming at them, on the way out "Hire an attorney, asshole, because we're going to put you in jail forever..." How do you hire an attorney when the FDA has just seized everything you have, shut down your business, and scared the crap out of your patients with their fingers on the triggers of laser-sighted machine guns? The US television news media, in one of the most obviously bigoted assaults, perhaps in American history, has attacked America's leaders in the fight for changes in health care. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. felt the wrath of "Big Pharma" recently, when he came in out in Rolling Stone magazine exposing the "thimerasol (mercury) in vaccines" issue, and the cover-up. Actor Tom Cruise, after pointing out "Big Pharma's - drugs, drugs, and more drugs" approach to health care - was openly attacked on TV network news. And, more... even scarier: I make no secret of the fact that I'm an Orange County California Conservative Republican. Frequently, I get asked "How can you be a health activist and support George Bush, seeing how much money he took from "Big Pharma" during his election campaign?" Well, I'll tell you why - and the answer will frighten you more than anything else I've said, or will say, on this newsletter, today. Both presidential candidates, and both major political parties took ungodly sums from "Big Pharma" during the election. If either candidate, Republican or Democrat, had come out against "Big Pharma" during the election, that same "Big Pharma," with their money and power, would have elected our President. For "Big Pharma" controls our TV media. Think about that. So, now what? Can we recover from this loss? Yes, but we have to change our thinking. We have to work together, and "no more mister nice guy." Two things: (1) We have to understand why we lost this battle - and do something about those reasons. (2) we have to put an action plan in lace - and execute that plan. Now. Why did we lose this battle? (1) "Big Pharma" is well organized, ruthless, cares not at all for human life, has lots of money to hire people to get things done, and has been working on their plan for a while (since World War Two, I think). (2) The worldwide health freedom movement was lulled into comfort - thinking that everything was just fine. (3) The worldwide health freedom movement has divided itself into factions, run on egos, that can't agree on tactics, information, and strategies. (4) The worldwide health freedom movement was infiltrated by "fifth columners" who have been using their positions to say "everything is OK - don't worry." So, what's the action plan? Keep in mind, when I explain this segment, that, professionally, I'm a Crisis Management Consultant - so I tend to think organizationally. I'm a Dwight David Eisenhower type - who plans warfare - just like Eisenhower, and his team, planned the assault in Europe to grind down the Nazi war machine. So. I'm going to explain what needs to be done in terms of solving the REAL problems. First. I'm going to give you a list of each thing that needs to be done. Then I'll explain why we need to accomplish each step. Privately, within the "Health Freedom Movement" we need to identify friend and foe. The Council For Responsible Nutrition (CRN) is NOT a friend of health freedom - it is an enemy. Its membership is Phizer, Bayer, Monsanto, etc. - manufacturers of some supplement INGREDIENTS, not supplements. Ignore what they say completely. The National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA), although having a significant membership, is living in lah-lah land. I believe they are getting their legal advice on "Codex" from the attorney firm that ran the Aspartame approval through the FDA. Think about that. So, for now, my recommendation is to ignore what they have to say. Publicly, primarily to Congress, we need to do several things. (1) We need to stop CAFTA, and any other attempts to cancel the US Constitution in favor of a big business controlled world government. If we can't stop it in this first go-around, then we'll have to do it the second time, or the third time. (2) We have to remove "Big Pharma's" right to advertise directly to consumers. (3) We must criminally prosecute industry executives for the deaths, and damages, of, and to, Americans. Merck, and Vioxx, knowingly killed 55,000 Americans, in the name of profit. Thimerasol in even more insidious. Mercury fillings in teeth have been accepted far too long. (4) We need to push to get the Bush administration's new "Health Insurance Guidelines" for America into effect. The Bush Administration, recognizing the overburdening of health care costs to American industry and its employees (the cost for health insurance for an American family of four is now $14,700 per year), wants to change the requirements for "Health Insurance Coverage" from "Full Coverage" to allowing Industry to offer "Catastrophic Coverage Plans" - with employees putting tax-free money into "Choice" plans, where they can spend their health dollars wherever they want... (5) We must ask Congress to pass a bill creating a "Health Czar," for a five year period to investigate, and straighten out, the US Hospital system - the number one annual killer of Americans. This agency must be given the power to criminally prosecute Hospital Administrators, and doctors, responsible for this calamity. (6) We must ask Congress to put laws in place stopping the revolving door between "Big Pharma" and the US FDA. We need the FDA to do what "we the people" intended it to do - not what "Big Pharma" wants it to do. (7) We must ask Congress, and the Bush Administration, to investigate, and vigorously prosecute, the "Quackbuster" conspiracy to suppress innovation in health care. So, why do we need to do ALL of these things? In essence, we need a Health Care "Nuremberg..." We cannot, as a society, permit what's happened to our health care system to continue, or to be able to resurface any time soon. (1) So, why not accept CAFTA? Easy answer. Why should we? Why would Americans want to turn over their carefully created set of freedoms to some set of snivelling "New World Order" bureaucrats? As IAHF president John Hammell says "The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) Treaty will require the U.S., a member of the World Trade Organization, to revise our food laws and regulations based on Codex decisions. CAFTA would force harmonization of our dietary supplements and regulations to international standards, overriding the DSHEA Act of 1994. The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and the even-broader Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) are both modelled after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). These agreements are typical bureaucratic monstrosities of "managed" trade that masquerade as free trade and would expand NAFTA to include first Central America and then the rest of the Americas in an economic "union." True free trade would take a few pages of written text to enact ("eliminate these barriers to trade and these tariffs," etc.); all three of these agreements encompass thousands of pages of bureaucratic textual garbage sprinkled liberally with rules, regulations, and special-interest benefits. Buried in the language of CAFTA is Section 6 that would require of all its members that they form a Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) committee for the purpose of insuring ongoing harmonization under the terms of the SPS Agreement in the World Trade Organization (WTO). You can find that text at the following website: http://www.ustr.gov/Trade_Agreements/Bilateral/CAFTA/CAFTA-DR_Final_Texts/Section_Index.html. If you then look at Article 3 of the WTO's SPS Agreement, you will read the following words: "To harmonize sanitary and phytosanitary measures on as wide a basis as possible, Members shall base their food safety measures on international standards, guidelines or recommendations." (emphasis added) And as you all know by now, Codex sets the international standards for food safety including vitamins & minerals. So, CAFTA, which is set for a vote in the House of Representatives any time after they reconvene July 11th, 2005, is another critical link by which health-freedom haters hope to bypass the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 and obligate the United States and Canada by treaty to harmonize to the harshly restrictive Codex vitamin-and-mineral standards. They cannot be allowed to succeed, and we at the NHF completely oppose these two treaties that would put a knife in the back of our health freedoms." But that's not all. Rima Laibow MD was at the Rome event and had this to say: It's Official: The Vitamin War Was Declared at CODEX Today! Today was a bad day here in Rome. The US supported the Vitamin and Mineral Guidelines and betrayed US law and you. But that's not all that happened here in the CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Commission meeting today. No, that's not bad enough. There's a whole lot more. Here is what the United States participated in and helped to happen in just one day (don't let the helpful sounding names fool you): The dangerously elevated pesticide levels for a variety of poisonous chemicals were ratified. A win for Big Chema! Hygienic Practices for Meat were ratified (don't let the name fool you). A win for Big Agra. Code of Practice to Minimize and Contain Antimicrobial Resistance was approved (don't let the name fool you). Another win for Big Agra and one for Big Pharma, too! Veterinary Drug Maximum Residue Limits Draft approved. Wins for Big Pharma, Big Agra, Big Chema! Maximum Levels for Cadmium in Wheat Grain; Potato; Stem and Root Vegetables; Leafy Vegetables; and, Other Vegetables was approved. Code of Practice for the Prevention and Reduction of Aflatoxin in Tree Nuts was adopted (don't let the name fool you). I could go on, and on, and on. And today was only the first day. But instead of listing all of the really awful standards which were approved or advanced to higher steps in the 8 step ratification process, let me turn your attention to betrayal. America has, once again, been betrayed by the people who should have been protecting her most precious resource: her people. The US CODEX Office's US CODEX Policy look to me like they have been sold to the highest bidders: Big Pharma, Big Chema, Big Agra, Big Biotechna and Big Medica. These high minded-wounding standards and codes are nothing short of the triumph of corporate greed at your expense and mine. Let me ask you to think about America on this sad and sorry End-of-Independence Day. Our CODEX Policy is in the process of taking America apart, illness by illness, and selling its sovereignty to the highest bidder." (2) We have to remove "Big Pharma's" right to advertise directly to consumers. Why? Three reasons: (1) "Big Pharma" is controlling US TV news media. A New York Ad agency tells the TV news media what is acceptable and what isn't. Half of TV news media advertising is from "Big Pharma." (2) In 1999 when "Big Pharma" went to the FDA to get permission to advertise directly to the consumer, the average monthly prescription cost was $30. Now the average price, for the exact same prescription, is $140. (3) "Big Pharma" is using the money from the increased cost to fund their nefarious projects while damaging the American fabric, and economy. (3) We must criminally prosecute industry executives for the deaths, and damages, etc... This is simple logic. I'm appalled that our TV media spends all day, and night, covering the subway bombings in London, and the deaths of 50 people, and outright ignores the 55,000 deaths caused by Merck's Vioxx, the thimerasol issue, or the mercury amalgam tooth filling issue. We have health atrocities going on, worldwide, that have perpetrators that need punishment. So, lets get to it. (4) We need to push to get the Bush administration's new "Health Insurance Guidelines" for America into effect. This also is an easy explanation - people who are given CHOICES make them... (5) We must ask Congress to pass a bill creating a "Health Czar..." Why? Because the broken American Medical System does not, and will not, police itself. (6) We must ask Congress to put laws in place stopping the revolving door between "Big Pharma" and the US FDA. We need the FDA to do what "we the people" intended it to do - not what "Big Pharma" wants it to do. No explanation needed. (7) We must ask Congress, and the Bush Administration, to investigate, and vigorously prosecute, the "Quackbuster" conspiracy to suppress innovation in health care. No explanation needed. Opposition is already gearing up for beginning of the battle. If you are interested in getting in on the first round, the stopping of CAFTA - (click here). If you're writing to Congress give them all seven things. listed above, to think about. This is a battle between "We the People," and the free world's biggest, and worst, enemy - ever - "Big Pharma," and we're just getting started with the counter-attack. Stay tuned... Tim Bolen - Consumer Advocate Codex Links Alliance for Natural Health Newsletters giving updates on Codex http://www.alliance-natural-health.org/ American Holistic Health Association http://ahha.org/codex.htm Incorporating http://www.codexinfo.org/ Up to date information on developments Global trade watch http://www.citizen.org/trade/harmonization/index.cfm History of CODEX http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/PHARMACEUTICAL_BUSINESS/ health_movement_against_codex/health_movement08.htm http://www.laleva.cc/ Friends of Freedom http://www.friendsoffreedom.org Codex Overview http://www.thenhf.com/codex05.html International Advocates for Health Freedom - John Hammell http://www.iahf.com The New Media Explorer http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/ Exploring the issues in today's changing health environment The Health Crusader http://www.thehealthcrusader.com/pgs/article-0104-ban.shtml If you're sick and tired of being fed propaganda from the minute you wake up until the time you go to bed then you've come to the right place for help. Crusador is your number one source for health information that will help remove the veil of lies so prevalent in our world today. Codex Alimentarius (Food Code) http://www.codexinfo.org/ Understanding CODEX http://jimball.com.au/Features/Codex.htm Additional Sources: http://ahha.org/codexbuchanan.htm http://www.dr-rath-foundation.org/vitaminbattle/stopcodex.htm http:// www.mercola.com ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090420/498e84d4/attachment-0002.gif -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 97 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090420/498e84d4/attachment-0003.gif From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Tue Apr 21 04:51:12 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Tue Apr 21 04:52:09 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Environmental, Health & Nuclear Weapons Impacts of the Uranium Nuclear System [VOW April 24-25th ] Message-ID: <49ED8900.10173.26A09115@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> A conference I've helped to organize. fyi - janet ================================== You are invited to attend a most historic conference in downtown Toronto, Canada on April 24-26th, 2009 bringing together experts to map out the entire Uranium Nuclear System and its impacts on the Environment, Health and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation including Canada's role in nuclear weapons production, from uranium mining, to nuclear power, and reprocessing of nuclear waste. Presented by the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace [VOW] "NO TO NUCLEAR WEAPONS: THE CANADIAN CONNECTION" Friday April 24th @ 6:30pm - 9:00pm Evening Reception featuring VOW Co-founder Peggy Hope-Simpson reflecting on the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace's half century work towards the abolition of nuclear weapons and the importance of civil society involvement, the biggest super power on earth. Watch video on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppAPwe5RZWE We are most honoured to also present Hiroshima Survivor, Member of the Order of Canada and Canadian Voice of Women for Peace Member, Setsuko Thurlow with a most excitingreport back from her recent 20+ city global peacebuilding trip aboard the Peace Boat. Evening includes performance by the Toronto Echo Choir, finger food and refreshments. Saturday April 25th @ 10:00am - 5:00pm All day panels and workships with the experts. Lunch & snacks included. Keynotes include Susanne Lauten (Cottagers Against Uranium Mining), Dr. Barbara Birkett (Physicians for Global Survival, PGS), Dr. Mary Lou Harley (Chemist, Uranium Nuclear Systems researcher), Angela Bischoff (Ontario Clean Air Alliance), Dorothy Goldin Rosenberg (Women's Healthy Environmental Network), Phyllis Creighton (Hiroshima Day Coalition / Science for Peace), Joan Russow (international legal expert), Dr. Janet M Eaton (VOW Co-Chair, Biologist), Lois Wilson (retired Canadian Federal Senator), and many more... with lunchtime performance by the Raging Grannies. Saturday April 25th @ 7:30pm - 9:30pm: Saturday Film Night with NFB award winning director Yuki Nakamura featuring her film, "No More Hiroshima, No More Nagasaki" with expert panel including Eryl Court(VOW Nuclear Weapons expert), Audrey Tobias (Veterans Against Nuclear Arms), and Martha Goodings (former VOW Chair / Seriously Time to Stop Campaign). Location: 60 Lowther Avenue, Toronto (Bloor St. W. 1-block north at Bedford Rd, St. George subway station) Plus, join us for the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace AGM: Sunday April 26th @ 10:00am-4:00pm. UofT Women's Club, 162 St. George Rd, at Bloor St. W. just south of Bata Shoe Museum. Lunch & snacks included as we begin preparations for our upcoming 50th Anniversary in 2010. Tickets are going fast. To register for this exciting weekend, please RSVP, Helen Chilas, National Coordinator, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. Call: 416-473-8238, Email: h-chilas@rogers.com For further details and weekend agenda, please visit online: www.vowpeace.org/events.html Conference Endorsed by the Nobel Peace Laureate International Peace Bureau (IPB), the Sierra Club of Canada (SCC) , Science for Peace, Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), Hiroshima Day Coalition (HDC), Canadian Department of Peace Initiative (CDPI), Women?s Healthy Environmental Network (WHEN), International Institute of Concern for Public Health (IICPH), Seriously Time To Stop, Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA), Cottagers Against Uranium Mining, Older Women's Network Ontario, Inc. (OWN), Veterans Against Nuclear Arms (VANA). Co- Sponsored by the International Institute for Community Based Peacebuilding (InterChange). Please email if your organization would also like to endorse our conference: h-chilas@rogers.com Founded in 1960, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace is a non-partisan NGO accredited to the United Nations, Economic & Social Counsel (ECOSOC) and UN Department of Public Information.Visit online: www.vowpeace.org -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WPM$7E54.PM$ Type: application/octet-stream Size: 4288 bytes Desc: Mail message body Url : http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090421/2255b372/WPM7E54.obj From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Tue Apr 21 16:23:57 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Tue Apr 21 16:24:25 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Senior Bush figures could be prosecuted for torture, says Obama [Guardian April 21] Message-ID: <49EE2B5D.16141.291ACAA7@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> ... Senior members of the Bush administration who approved the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation measures could face prosecution, President Obama disclosed today . He said the use of torture reflected America "losing our moral bearings".... "What makes the United States special and what makes you special is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it's hard, not just when it's easy, even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when its expedient to do so. "So yes, you've got a harder job and so do I, and that's OK. And over the long term, that is why I believe we will defeat our enemies, because we're on the better side of history." fyi-janet =================== http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/21/cheney-obama-cia-torture- memos Senior Bush figures could be prosecuted for torture, says ObamaPresident says use of waterboarding showed US had 'lost moral bearings' as Dick Cheney says CIA memos showed torture delivered 'good' intelligence Ewen MacAskill and Robert Booth guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 April 2009 11.30 BST Article history Former US vice-president Dick Cheney has asked the CIA to declassify memos detailing 'success' of torture. Photograph: Kevin Wolf/AP Senior members of the Bush administration who approved the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation measures could face prosecution, President Obama disclosed today . He said the use of torture reflected America "losing our moral bearings". He said his attorney general, Eric Holder, was conducting an investigation and the decision rested with him. Obama last week ruled out prosecution of CIA agents who carried out the interrogation of suspected al-Qaida members at Guant?namo and secret prisons around the world. But for the first time today he opened up the possibility that those in the administration who gave the go-ahead for the use of waterboarding could be prosecuted. The revelation will enrage senior Bush administration figures such as the former vice-president Dick Cheney. The Obama administration views the use of waterboarding as torture, while Cheney claims it is not. Obama, taking questions from the press during a visit by King Abdullah of Jordan, reiterated he did not believe in prosecution of those CIA agents who carried out the interrogations within the guidelines set down for them. But "with respect to those who formulated'' the policies, "that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws". He added: "I don't want to prejudge that." Ewen MacAskill on Obama's reluctance to prosecute torturers Link to this audio He also opened the way for a Congressional inquiry into the issue. Meanwhile the former US vice-president Dick Cheney has called for the disclosure of CIA memos which reveal the "success" of torture techniques, including waterboarding, used on al-Qaida suspects under the Bush administration. Cheney said that, according to secret documents he has seen, the interrogation techniques, which the Obama administration now accepts amounted to torture, delivered "good" intelligence. He hinted that it had significant consequences for US security. Cheney was speaking out in response to the release by Barack Obama of four Bush administration memos detailing the agency's interrogation methods used against al-Qaida suspects. "One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort," Cheney said in an appearance on Fox News. "I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country. "I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was." Obama yesterday visited CIA headquarters to defend the publication of the internal documents. The row gathered further momentum yesterday when it emerged that one detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had been subjected to waterboarding 183 times and another, Abu Zubaydah, 83 times. Obama is keen to try to put the row behind him, reluctant to see prosecutions that could be politically divisive and distract attention from his heavy domestic and foreign agenda. In a speech to about 1,000 staff aimed at restoring CIA morale, Obama, who promised last week that CIA operatives would not be prosecuted, reiterated that he would stand by them. "Don't be discouraged by what's happened in the last few weeks," Obama said. "Don't be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we've made some mistakes. That's how we learn." At a private meeting with 50 rank-and-file CIA members at their headquarters in Langley, Virginia, before his speech, Obama heard "understandable anxiety and concern" from agents fearful of prosecution. The CIA's director during the Bush administration, Michael Hayden, who criticised the release of the memos, warned on Sunday that agents could be vulnerable because of the memos, facing civil lawsuits or congressional inquiries. Sensitive details were blacked out in the memos seen by most of the media on Thursday but over the weekend Marcy Wheeler, of the Emptywheel blog, found a copy in which crucial details were not masked. That copy showed that Mohammed had been subjected to waterboarding - which simulates drowning - 183 times in March 2003. He had been arrested in Pakistan at the start of that month. Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi captured in Pakistan in March 2002, was subjected to waterboarding 83 times in August 2002. Mohammed had admitted to involvement in terrorist actions before his capture but, after being interrogated, confessed to a list of incidents and plots that included the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, as well as a plot to attack Heathrow, Big Ben and Canary Wharf, the beheading of the US journalist Daniel Pearl, and the Bali bombing. Abu Zubaydah denied involvement with al-Qaida. Obama, defending himself against those in the CIA who argued that he should not have released the memos, said legally he had no grounds for blocking a freedom of information request from the US human rights group, the American Civil Liberties Union. "I acted primarily because of the exceptional circumstances that surrounded these memos, particularly the fact that so much of the information was public," Obama said. Standing in front of a wall with 89 stars, each depicting an officer killed in action, Obama praised the CIA as the "tip of the spear" in protecting the US from its enemies. Obama said he understood that intelligence officials must sometimes feel that they are working with one hand tied behind their backs. But, rebutting Hayden, he said: "What makes the United States special and what makes you special is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it's hard, not just when it's easy, even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when its expedient to do so. "So yes, you've got a harder job and so do I, and that's OK. And over the long term, that is why I believe we will defeat our enemies, because we're on the better side of history." Hayden had argued that the harsher interrogation techniques had provided valuable information and said that the techniques did not amount to torture. Human rights lawyers question the credibility of the confessions because they were obtained under duress. The White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, when asked yesterday why Bush administration lawyers could not be prosecuted, said: "The president is focusing on looking forward." -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: - Type: application/octet-stream Size: 8327 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090421/1b200706/-.obj -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: - Type: application/octet-stream Size: 161 bytes Desc: "AVG certification" Url : http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090421/1b200706/--0001.obj From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Apr 21 17:58:20 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Tue Apr 21 17:58:48 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Senior Bush figures could be prosecuted for torture, says Obama [Guardian April 21] In-Reply-To: <49EE2B5D.16141.291ACAA7@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> References: <49EE2B5D.16141.291ACAA7@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> Message-ID: <20090422005821.5F553129EE@fep08.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> The new President pledging impunity for the torturers and their civilian backers doesn't do a whole lot for America regaining its long-lost moral bearings, either. Crime and impunity are symbiotic. Support for impunity at any level - even local - and in any form is support for crime. Dion Giles At 07:23 22/04/2009, Janet wrote: >... Senior members of the Bush administration who approved the use of >waterboarding and other harsh interrogation measures could face >prosecution, President Obama disclosed today . > >He said the use of torture reflected America "losing our moral >bearings".... > >"What makes the United States special and what makes you special is >precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our >ideals even when it's hard, not just when it's easy, even when we are >afraid and under threat, not just when its expedient to do so. > >"So yes, you've got a harder job and so do I, and that's OK. And over >the long term, that is why I believe we will defeat our enemies, >because we're on the better side of history." > >fyi-janet > >=================== > > >http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/21/cheney-obama-cia-torture- >memos > >Senior Bush figures could be prosecuted for torture, says >ObamaPresident says use of waterboarding showed US had 'lost moral >bearings' as Dick Cheney says CIA memos showed torture delivered >'good' intelligence > >Ewen MacAskill and Robert Booth guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 April 2009 > >11.30 BST Article history > >Former US vice-president Dick Cheney has asked the CIA to declassify >memos detailing 'success' of torture. Photograph: Kevin Wolf/AP > >Senior members of the Bush administration who approved the use of >waterboarding and other harsh interrogation measures could face >prosecution, President Obama disclosed today . > >He said the use of torture reflected America "losing our moral >bearings". > >He said his attorney general, Eric Holder, was conducting an >investigation and the decision rested with him. Obama last week ruled > >out prosecution of CIA agents who carried out the interrogation of >suspected al-Qaida members at Guant?namo and secret prisons around >the world. > >But for the first time today he opened up the possibility that those >in the administration who gave the go-ahead for the use of >waterboarding could be prosecuted. > >The revelation will enrage senior Bush administration figures such as > >the former vice-president Dick Cheney. > >The Obama administration views the use of waterboarding as torture, >while Cheney claims it is not. > >Obama, taking questions from the press during a visit by King >Abdullah of Jordan, reiterated he did not believe in prosecution of >those CIA agents who carried out the interrogations within the >guidelines set down for them. But "with respect to those who >formulated'' the policies, "that is going to be more of a decision >for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws". He >added: "I don't want to prejudge that." > > >Ewen MacAskill on Obama's reluctance to prosecute torturers Link to >this audio He also opened the way for a Congressional inquiry into >the issue. > >Meanwhile the former US vice-president Dick Cheney has called for the > >disclosure of CIA memos which reveal the "success" of torture >techniques, including waterboarding, used on al-Qaida suspects under >the Bush administration. > >Cheney said that, according to secret documents he has seen, the >interrogation techniques, which the Obama administration now accepts >amounted to torture, delivered "good" intelligence. He hinted that it > >had significant consequences for US security. > >Cheney was speaking out in response to the release by Barack Obama of > >four Bush administration memos detailing the agency's interrogation >methods used against al-Qaida suspects. > >"One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this >recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the > >CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the > >memos that showed the success of the effort," Cheney said in an >appearance on Fox News. > >"I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I > >read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the >interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country. > >"I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those >memos so the American people have a chance to see what we obtained >and what we learned and how good the intelligence was." > >Obama yesterday visited CIA headquarters to defend the publication of > >the internal documents. The row gathered further momentum yesterday >when it emerged that one detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had been >subjected to waterboarding 183 times and another, Abu Zubaydah, 83 >times. > >Obama is keen to try to put the row behind him, reluctant to see >prosecutions that could be politically divisive and distract >attention from his heavy domestic and foreign agenda. > >In a speech to about 1,000 staff aimed at restoring CIA morale, >Obama, who promised last week that CIA operatives would not be >prosecuted, reiterated that he would stand by them. > >"Don't be discouraged by what's happened in the last few weeks," >Obama said. "Don't be discouraged that we have to acknowledge >potentially we've made some mistakes. That's how we learn." > >At a private meeting with 50 rank-and-file CIA members at their >headquarters in Langley, Virginia, before his speech, Obama heard >"understandable anxiety and concern" from agents fearful of >prosecution. > >The CIA's director during the Bush administration, Michael Hayden, >who criticised the release of the memos, warned on Sunday that agents > >could be vulnerable because of the memos, facing civil lawsuits or >congressional inquiries. > >Sensitive details were blacked out in the memos seen by most of the >media on Thursday but over the weekend Marcy Wheeler, of the >Emptywheel blog, found a copy in which crucial details were not >masked. > >That copy showed that Mohammed had been subjected to waterboarding - >which simulates drowning - 183 times in March 2003. He had been >arrested in Pakistan at the start of that month. Abu Zubaydah, a >Saudi captured in Pakistan in March 2002, was subjected to >waterboarding 83 times in August 2002. > >Mohammed had admitted to involvement in terrorist actions before his >capture but, after being interrogated, confessed to a list of >incidents and plots that included the 1993 attack on the World Trade >Centre in New York, as well as a plot to attack Heathrow, Big Ben and > >Canary Wharf, the beheading of the US journalist Daniel Pearl, and >the Bali bombing. > >Abu Zubaydah denied involvement with al-Qaida. > >Obama, defending himself against those in the CIA who argued that he >should not have released the memos, said legally he had no grounds >for blocking a freedom of information request from the US human >rights group, the American Civil Liberties Union. > >"I acted primarily because of the exceptional circumstances that >surrounded these memos, particularly the fact that so much of the >information was public," Obama said. > >Standing in front of a wall with 89 stars, each depicting an officer >killed in action, Obama praised the CIA as the "tip of the spear" in >protecting the US from its enemies. > >Obama said he understood that intelligence officials must sometimes >feel that they are working with one hand tied behind their backs. >But, rebutting Hayden, he said: "What makes the United States special > >and what makes you special is precisely the fact that we are willing >to uphold our values and our ideals even when it's hard, not just >when it's easy, even when we are afraid and under threat, not just >when its expedient to do so. > >"So yes, you've got a harder job and so do I, and that's OK. And over > >the long term, that is why I believe we will defeat our enemies, >because we're on the better side of history." > >Hayden had argued that the harsher interrogation techniques had >provided valuable information and said that the techniques did not >amount to torture. > >Human rights lawyers question the credibility of the confessions >because they were obtained under duress. > >The White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, when asked yesterday >why Bush administration lawyers could not be prosecuted, said: "The >president is focusing on looking forward." > > > >Content-type: Application/Octet-stream; name="-"; type=Plain text >Content-disposition: attachment; filename="-" > >Content-type: Application/Octet-stream; name="-"; type=Plain text >Content-description: "AVG certification" >Content-disposition: attachment; filename="-" > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From creuss at bluewin.ch Wed Apr 22 14:55:42 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Wed Apr 22 14:58:52 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Senior Bush figures could be prosecuted for torture, says Obama [Guardian April 21] Message-ID: First, Obama announced he might prosecute the Bushies, but later he (or rather his boss, Rahm Emanuel) retracted. Change we can believe in! Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Apr 22 15:17:02 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 22 15:17:37 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titanic Message-ID: <005101c9c398$1049ff20$83ad57ca@jfos> April 16, 2009 "The Foundations of Our Economy are Strong" A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titanic By MIKE WHITNEY "We are starting to see glimmers of hope across the economy." President Barack Obama, April press conference. Excerpt: "The rally in the stock market will not fix the banking system, slow the crash in housing, patch-together tattered household balance sheets, repair failing industries or reverse the precipitous decline in consumer confidence. The rising stock market merely indicates that speculators are back in business taking advantage of the Fed's lavish capital injections which are propelling equities into the stratosphere. Meanwhile, the unemployment lines continue to swell, the food banks to run dry and the homeless shelters to burst at the seams. So far, $12 trillion has been pumped into the financial system while less than $450 billion fiscal stimulus has gone to the "real" economy where workers are struggling just to keep food on the table. The Fed's priorities are directed at the investor class not the average working Joe. Bernanke is trying to keep Wall Street happy by goosing asset values with cheap capital, but the increases to the money supply are putting more downward pressure on the dollar. The Fed chief has also begun purchasing US Treasuries, which is the equivalent of writing a check to oneself to cover an overdraft in one's own account. This is the kind of gibberish that passes as sound economic policy. The Fed is incapable if fixing the problem because the Fed is the problem.(snip) Obama's $787 billion stimulus is too small to take up the slack in a $14 trillion per year economy where manufacturing and industrial capacity have slipped to record lows and unemployment is rising at 650,000 per month. High unemployment is lethal to an economy where consumer spending is 72 percent of GDP. Without debt relief and mortgage cram-downs, consumption will sputter and corporate profits will continue to shrink. S&P 500 companies have already seen a 37 percent drop in corporate profits. Unless the underlying issues of debt relief and wages are dealt with, the present trends will persist. Growth is impossible when workers are broke and can't afford to buy the things they make.(snip) Bernanke's financial rescue plan is a disaster. He should have spent a little less time with Milton Friedman and a little more with Karl Marx. It was Marx who uncovered the root of all financial crises. He summed it up like this: "The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit." (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3, New York International publishers, 1967.) Bingo. Message to Bernanke: Workers need debt-relief and a raise in pay not bigger bailouts for chiseling fatcat banksters." Full articla @ http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney04162009.html ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Apr 22 17:15:25 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 22 17:15:56 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Process Philosophy: Immorality and Imbecility in the Torture Memo Mess Message-ID: <008b01c9c3a8$99f370c0$83ad57ca@jfos> Process Philosophy: Immorality and Imbecility in the Torture Memo Mess by Chris Floyd Mon 20 Apr 2009 Excerpt: "Let's do something we rarely do around these parts. Let's do a "process story," looking at an issue from the standpoint of how it plays out in the political game. As a rule, we prefer to focus much less on political kibitzing in the imperial courts, and more on the actual products of imperial policy: i.e., corpses, chaos and corruption. But just for a moment, let's "processize" Barack Obama's bold, progressive, morality-restoring decision not to prosecute anyone at all for the filthy, KGB-derived torture system installed by the very highest officials of the Bush Administration, even as he releases memos showing clearly that practices which are high crimes under U.S. law were explicitly authorized by the White House. (And make no mistake; Obama has not only decided to let the actual, ground-level waterboarders, wall-slammers and child torturers get off scot-free; he is also going to let the gilded creators and framers of the system live on untroubled in peace, prosperity and privilege. Obama's chief gatekeeper and hatchet man, Rahm Emanuel, made this clear over the weekend, telling Beltway waterboy George Stephanopoulos: "But those who devised the [torture] policies - [Obama] believes that they were - should not be prosecuted either.") Leaving aside the moral perversion of this action, consider what a boneheaded move it is politically. By releasing the memos, Obama has guaranteed the enmity of many powerful factions in the security organs -- the secretive, lawless, military-covert complex that holds such vast and deadly sway over imperial affairs. Yet by promising not to prosecute any of them for their glaring misdeeds, he has merely angered and embarrassed them to no good purpose. He has allowed them to roam free around the political landscape, denouncing and deriding him at every turn in the corporate media that is only too happy to treat torturers and mass-murdering war criminals as respectable, "serious" figures in affairs of state. They won't thank him for absolving them of their capital crimes -- any more than they will thank him and laud him for his "continuity" of their imperial aggression in the never-ending Terror War. As we have often noted here, all of the major factions in America's imperial system share the same basic values and goals: the domination of national and world affairs by a wise elite -- who are of course entitled to a lion's share of power and privilege in return for bearing the terrible burden of leadership for the ignorant herd. (For a quintessential expression of the elite's underlying philosophy, see Dostoevsky's chapter on "The Grand Inquisitor" in The Brothers Karamazov.) However, the broad agreement on general themes means that much smaller differences over details will be fought all that much more fiercely, as factions jockey for position. Hairsplitting factional differences within a general movement often produce savage energies far out of proportion to the difference itself (much like the splitting of the atom): a dynamic that Lenin, for example, utilized to such great and vicious effect throughout his career. But you can see it anywhere and everywhere -- in the office, in a family, in a church. In the case of American politics, the imperial factions viciously exploit their minute differences in order to retain -- or regain -- the top rungs of power. The fact that they all share a general belief in the system doesn't matter in the primitive, gang-style mentality that rules our politics.(snip) Full article at http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1744 ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Apr 22 17:20:31 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Apr 22 17:21:02 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] A G8 on agriculture without farmers = more hunger and poverty Message-ID: <00ce01c9c3a9$505755c0$83ad57ca@jfos> Press release - Via Campesina A G8 on agriculture without farmers = more hunger and poverty Videos of interviews are available at: www.wsftv.net (Treviso, 21 April 2009) The first G8 on Agriculture which ended yesterday in Cison di Valmarino produced a final declaration which not only admits its own failures in the past, but previews a future full of contradictions. The G8 will never be able to alleviate hunger in the world by making its decisions behind closed doors, in the absence of the main actors in the global debate on agriculture ? the millions of peasants and family farmers, women and men, who feed the world. The G8's assertion that ?farmers must be the main protagonists? rings particularly hollow when the meeting this weekend was explicitly designed to limit the access of farmers organisations and reduce their visibility. The G8 held their meeting in an isolated castle in the mountains, and the Italian Agricultural minister refused to meet representatives of Italian and International farmers organisations who wished to express their opinions. The text finally produced by the G8 is extremely contradictory. While it recognises the role of food producers and the crisis effecting rural areas, it fails to define a real strategy which could alleviate this crisis. The declaration on one hand talks of placing ?agriculture and rural development...at the centre of sustainable economic growth by strengthening the role of agricultural households and smallholder farms and their access to land? and on the other of ?reaching a balanced, comprehensive and ambitious conclusion of the Doha Round?, two policies which are incompatible - the WTO has repeatedly been shown to have catastrophic effects on smallholder agriculture as it liberalises agricultural markets and privatizes natural resources. The declaration also supports the proposed creation of the Global Partnership on Food and agriculture while at the same time recognising the centrality of the role of the FAO ? two positions which cannot be reconciled. The existing institutions of the UN must be at the centre of the solution to the current crisis ? not the World Bank and IMF represented by the Global Partnership. Apart from the contradictory nature of their declaration, the G8 at least included one admission which has been blatantly obvious to the rest of the world for many years ? that the world has utterly failed in its attempts to halve the proportion of the world's hungry by 2015 in line with the Millennium development goals. It is precisely the policies of the G8, imposed on countries of the south for many years, which are responsible. Any real policy for putting farmers and sustainable smallholder agriculture at centre stage would reject the free-trade agenda and the global partnership and allow states to protect the rights of their people to work and eat. Farmers, who represent about half of the world workforce, are the first one to be affected by hunger and malnutrition. Representatives of the international peasant's movement Via Campesina were assembled in Treviso this weekend to make their alternatives heard. Their demands are simple ? allow peoples and countries to define and protect their own agricultural systems, without negatively affecting others. Transform the agro-export model in both the north and south to one based on local, sustainable agricultural production, based on sustainable family farming. Speaking at a seminar organised by the Italian Platform for Food Sovereignty, Ibrahim Coulibaly, president CNOP in Mali said it quite clearly - ?Africa can feed itself - it does not need global agricultural policies imposed on it by an illegitimate group of rich countries...it is not the role of the G8 to decide international agricultural policy!? More on www.viacampesina.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090423/3428d6f5/attachment.html From thinker at thelakebc.ca Wed Apr 22 20:26:34 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Wed Apr 22 20:25:10 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] My column Message-ID: <200904230324.n3N3OehG024534@karma.reboot.ca> To: record@cablerocket.com Subject: Fiat lux 230 Fiat lux 230 April 17, 2009. The biggest and most dangerous enemy of democracy is democracy itself. The subject of fascism and of all forms of dictatorships is very dear to my heart, as I now the deadly smell of them very well. I was born and educated in a fascist country, in an ultra conservative, religious family who firmly believed that the aristocracy and the priesthood were godsent, their powers were the Will of God and any questioning of their actions were sinful. Of course, like most people born into serfdom, slavery and dictatorships we grew up to believe that we were free and our soldiers were fighting and dying in Russia to bring freedom for its people. Just as our soldiers are now dying in Afghanistan for the same lie and the billions of people on all continents still believe that they're free, while their governments, paid off by special interests are enslaving them in the service of yet another aristocracy, now called "investors". I don't think there's an other more misused word, in any language, anywhere on earth, than the word "freedom". As there's no free lunch, whenever I hear, or read the words "free", or "freedom", like in these fraudulent free trade agreements, sold by our politicians, big business and their propaganda machines, my suspicions start rising and not without reason. In my life I have been "freed and liberated" by fascists, nazis, communists and capitalists, while the ropes, held by the hands of the same predators under different flags and different ideologies, were tightening around my and the necks of billions. Of course, it didn't help that I was born a rebel and the more of a rebel I have become as I grew older and saw more of the crimes committed by these gangs of ideological fanatics and lie peddlers. My career as a rebel really started when I was 15, agonizing in the equivalent of grade 10 our highschool classes. Our literature teacher, Dr. Bela Hencze, was a dry, sickly looking person, who never smiled, or expressed any emotion, but a brilliant mind and excellent teacher of Hungarian and French. What we didn't realize at the time and never occurred to me until many years later, he was also a democrat, a dirty word in our fascist society, after his years of studying in France. One day Dr.Hencze gave us an assignment for an essay, discussing the merits and lessons of a long poetic novel by one of the best 19th century Hungarian poets, John Arany, about a knight who comes home after fighting in the Crusades, and finds his family and all the people in their castle murdered by the family of a neighbouring castle, who are also the parents of his fiancee. He goes to the king and obtains royal assent to call out the murderers and then slays the lot of them, one by one. His fiancee sees what happened, runs screaming out into the night and disappears in a swamp, never to be seen again. Of course, there was an official version of the lessons in the story we were supposed to accept and write about, but I was always a lousy student and had little to lose, so for the first time in my life I summoned enough courage to cut the official version to pieces and turn it inside out, proving it nonsense. When Dr.Hencze came into the class with our home assignment books, he started discussing each, and handed them out in alphabetical order. When he came to mine , he put it aside with the remark that it will be discussed later. That has never happened before and my class of about 25 boys were giggling under their breath and pointing fingers at me, indicating that I was going to get it. Dr.Hencze took my book and started heaping praise on my essay, saying that he never before came across such depth of logic, etc. of any student of my age and then called me to the front to read it out to the class, which was, again, unheard of until then. Well, it gave me a boost and from then on I did my best to become controversial and was reading my essays to the class by popular demand. Then by the next year Dr.Hencze was transferred and another teacher by the name of Hevessy took his place. The first assignment he gave us was about war orphans and I went out of my way to cut their neglect and treatment by the government to pieces. Hevessy was no democrat, as later he also fitted very well into the communist system. He was screaming at me giving me hell, threatening to kick me out of the school if I'd ever dare to write such revolutionary ideas again. I shut up alright, but the seed was planted and blossomed with a blast during my years at Cambridge. It was the summer of 1948 when I first saw the soapbox speakers at Hyde Park corner. I spoke and understood no English, and when their words were translated for me, I was surprised that a couple of Bobbies were just standing there, listening, but didn't arrest anybody for preaching such treasonous words. But that was also the first time when I started to understand what free speech and democracy were about, and suddenly realized that I found what I was looking for and never stopped since. So, what does this childhood story have to do with the coming elections and our future, even if there isn't much of it left for me at 82? Everything! Democracy is dying, taken over by a criminal element, in the name of "freedom", fraudulent "wealth creation" and "jobs, jobs, jobs", with their hands deep in our pockets and their noose tightening around our necks, while their pimping political stooges are filling our heads with well planned lies , diverting our attention from the coming and inevitable crash and destitution they already have caused, persuading us that they are the salvation and future No doubt, many will fall for their lies, and they may even get away with it, but I'm still hoping for a world of universal awakening, were nobody will never again have a chance to enslave anybody. From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Wed Apr 22 23:28:33 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Wed Apr 22 23:50:02 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Summit of Americas; Thailand; Evo Morales; World at a Crossroads; Tamils; S. Africa; Michael Lebowitz; Climate & Capitalism Message-ID: <49F00A91.5020503@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: Summit of Americas; Thailand; Evo Morales; World at a Crossroads; Tamils; S. Africa; Michael Lebowitz; Climate & Capitalism * * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 You can also follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism 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/. * * * `Capitalism is putting an end to humanity and the planet' -- ALBA on the 5th Summit of the Americas Translated by Federico Fuentes Cuman?, April 17, 2009 -- The heads of state and governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela -- member countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) -- consider that the proposed Declaration of the 5th Summit of the Americas is insufficient and unacceptable for the following reasons: * Read more Thailand: Red Shirt democratic movement faces armed might of the ruling elites By Giles Ji Ungpakorn, Turn Left Thailand April 13, 2009 -- For the fourth time in forty years, troops have opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators in Bangkok. Each time, the aim has been the same: to protect the interests of the conservative elites who have run Thailand for the past 70 years. For those watching the cold-blooded murder by soldiers on the streets of Bangkok, it may be tempting just to assume that the present chaos is merely about different coloured T-shirts and supporters of different political parties, as though they were mirror images of each other. This is not the case. * Read more Left activists discuss solutions at World at a Crossroads international socialism conference By Simon Butler Sydney -- April 18, 2009 -- Several participants at the World at a Crossroads conference, held in Sydney on April 10-12, remarked that the conference could not have been better named. As the world economy lurches into a deep recession, and the looming climate emergency reaches a crisis point, the world truly is at a crossroads. The future will be decided in the conflict between the greedy capitalist elites and those around the world fighting for a far better world -- a world free of racism, war and environmental plunder. * Read more Malaysian socialists: `Unite to turn workers' frustration into a political struggle for socialism' By M. Saraswathy [M. Saraswathy is deputy chairperson of the Socialist Party of Malaysia. She was a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Resistance, and held in Sydney, Australia, April 10-12, 2009. Below is M. Saraswathy's speech to the final session of the conference: ``World at a Crossroads -- Fighting for our future''.] Cuba si! Yankee no! Uh! Ah! Chavez no se va! Red salute from Malaysia to all friends and comrades! The Socialist Party of Malaysia thanks the Democratic Socialist Persective, Socialist Alliance and Resistance for inviting us to this valuable World at a Crossroads conference. * Read more The Tamils need support The following editorial appeared in Green Left Weekly issue #791, April 22, 2009. April 18, 2009 -- One of the great crimes of modern times is occurring on the island of Sri Lanka without a word of protest from governments the world over. The Tamil people are facing genocide. Already this year, the death toll of Tamil civilians exceeds 4000. Often dozens, and in some cases hundreds, are slaughtered in a single day in Sri Lankan Army bombings of the so-called safe zone, into which as many as 300,000 people are crowded. Those Tamils who flee this zone are being placed into concentration camps by the Sri Lankan Army. This brutal reality is almost entirely unreported, and not simply because the Sri Lankan government refuses to allow journalists access to the scene of its crime. Instead, the mainstream media is once again siding with the powerful. * Read more South African election: Zuma elite will maintain ANC's pro-capitalist course By John Appolis and Dale McKinley, for the Anti-Privatisation ForumApril 16, 2009 -- We are now in a world radically different from what it was a mere four months ago. The world economy is collapsing, torn apart by an economic recession. Thousands of workers are being thrown out of work; millions find themselves hungry in the midst of plenty of food; millions are homeless in the midst of houses being repossessed and standing empty. Factories that once produced bricks and cement are standing idle when millions require shelter. Neoliberal capitalism has over the past 30 years inflicted untold misery onto the world's poor whilst simultaneously making a very small minority filthy rich. * Read more Video: Michael Lebowitz: Venezuela's socialism of the 21st century April 16, 2009 -- Michael Lebowitz has recently been in Australia as a featured guest of the World at a Crossroads conference, held in Sydney April 10-12, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Green Left Weekly. Lebowitz is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He is a program coordinator with the Centro International. * Watch Canadian socialists: `The goals that unite us are vastly more important than our differences' By Ian Angus [Ian Angus is an associate editor of Socialist Voice (Canada). He was a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Resistance, and held in Sydney, Australia, April 10-12, 2009. Below is Ian Angus' speech to the final session of the conference: ``World at a Crossroads -- Fighting for our future''.] * Read more Evo Morales: `I declare myself Marxist ... now let the OAS expel Bolivia' April 16, 2009 - During his intervention at the seventh ALBA Summit, Bolivia's president Evo Morales recalled the 1962 documents of the Organisation of American States (OAS) that resulted in Cuba being expelled from the organisation, and outlined the importance of reflecting on the motives of that expulsion. The resolution indicates that the adherence of any member country to Marxism-Leninism, and the association of any member government of the organisation with the communist bloc, broke the unity and solidarity of the hemisphere. Therefore, given that the government of Cuba identified itself as Marxist-Leninist, it was incompatible with the purpose of the OAS and was therefore excluded from participating. * Read more Michael Lebowitz: What would Marx say today? Is it time to dust off a copy of Das Kapital and revisit Marx's analysis of capitalism's ills? Michael Lebowitz has recently been in Australia as a featured guest of the World at a Crossroads conference, held in Sydney April 10-12, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Green Left Weekly. He was interviewed by the ABC Radio's Late Night Live on April 14, 2009. * Listen Audio: Capitalism and Climate Change -- Ian Angus Ian Angus is the editor of climateandcapitalism.com and a founder of the Eco-socialist International Network. He is also associate editor of Canada's Socialist Voice and the director of the Socialist History Project. Ian toured Australia (Perth poster, left) in the run up to the World at a Crossroads conference held in Sydney on April 10-12, 2009, which was organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective. * Listen * * * 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 Follow Links on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LinksSocialism -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090423/6571daae/attachment.html From creuss at bluewin.ch Thu Apr 23 04:09:51 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Thu Apr 23 04:13:13 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] My column Message-ID: Dear Ed, I don't understand how the title... > The biggest and most dangerous enemy of democracy is democracy itself. ...is supported by the article. If the suggestion is that Hitler came to power by election, one has to clarify that this was not by democracy but by tricky perversions (lack) of democracy -- basically (among others) the same undemocratic deep pockets that are behind today's perversions of democracy. To claim that democracy itself --instead of these deep pockets who hate and destroy democracy-- was the biggest enemy of democracy, distracts from the real perps and helps them getting away, shifting the blame on us the people (? la "the people are so dumb they WANT fascism, war etc.!"). That's surely not what you want. Cheers, Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Apr 23 15:38:39 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu Apr 23 15:39:29 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Obama's Real Plan in Latin America Message-ID: <009701c9c464$41c45790$5bad57ca@jfos> April 23, 2009 Latest News on the Economic Crisis Obama's Real Plan in Latin America by Shamus Cooke Global Research, April 20, 2009 At first glance Obama seems to have softened U.S. policy toward Latin America, especially when compared to his predecessor. There has been no shortage of editorials praising Obama's conciliatory approach while comparing it to FDR's "Good Neighbor" Latin American policy. It's important to remember, however, that FDR's vision of being neighborly meant that the U.S. would merely stop direct military interventions in Latin America, while reserving the right to create and prop up dictators, arm and train unpopular regional militaries, promote economic dominance through free trade and bank loans, conspire with right-wing groups, etc. And although Obama's policy towards Latin America has a similar subversive feeling to it, many of FDR's methods of dominance are closed to him. Decades of U.S. "good neighbor" policy in Latin America resulted in a continuous string of U.S. backed military coups, broken-debtor economies, and consequently, a hemisphere-wide revolt. Many of the heads of states that Obama mingled with at the Summit of the Americas came to power because of social movements born out of opposition to U.S. foreign policy. The utter hatred of U.S. dominance in the region is so intense that any attempt by Obama to reassert U.S. authority would result in a backlash, and Obama knows it. Bush had to learn this the hard way, when his pathetic attempt to tame the region led to a humiliation at the 2005 Summit, where for the first time Latin American countries defeated yet another U.S. attempt to use the Organization of American States (O.A.S.), as a tool for U.S. foreign policy. But while Obama humbly discussed hemispheric issues on an "equal footing" with his Latin American counterparts at the recent Summit of Americas, he has subtly signaled that U.S. foreign policy will be business as usual. The least subtle sign that Obama is toeing the line of previous U.S. governments - both Republican and Democrat - is his stance on Cuba. Obama has postured as being a progressive when it comes to Cuba by relaxing some travel and financial restrictions, while leaving the much more important issue, the economic embargo, firmly in place. When it comes to the embargo, the U.S. is completely unpopular and isolated in the hemisphere. The U.S. two-party system, however, just can't let the matter go. The purpose of the embargo is not to pressure Cuba into being more democratic: this lie can be easily refuted by the numerous dictators the U.S. has supported in the hemisphere, not to mention dictators the U.S. is currently propping up all over the Middle East and elsewhere. The real purpose behind the embargo is what Cuba represents. To the entire hemisphere, Cuba remains a solid source of pride. Defeating the U.S. Bay of Pigs invasion while remaining fiercely independent in a region dominated by U.S. corporations and past government interventions has made Cuba an inspiration to millions of Latin Americans. This profound break from U.S. dominance - in its "own backyard" no less - is not so easily forgiven. There is also a deeper reason for not removing the embargo. The foundation of the Cuban economy is arranged in such a way that it threatens the most basic philosophic principle shared by the two-party system: the market economy (capitalism). And although the "fight against communism" may seem like a dusty relic from the cold war era, the current crisis of world capitalism is again posing the question: is there another way to organize society? Even with Cuba's immense lack of resources and technology (further aggravated by the U.S. embargo), the achievements made in healthcare, education, and other fields are enough to convince many in the region that there are aspects of the Cuban economy - most notably the concept of producing to meet the needs of all Cubans and NOT for private profit - worth repeating. Hugo Chavez has been the Latin American leader most inspired by the Cuban economy. Chavez has made important steps toward breaking from the capitalist economic model and has insisted that socialism is "the way forward" - and much of the hemisphere agrees. This is the sole reason that Obama continues the Bush-era hostility towards Chavez. Obama, it is true, has been less blunt about his feelings towards Chavez, though he has publicly stated that Chavez "exports terrorism" and is an "obstacle to progress." Both accusations are, at best, petty lies. Chavez drew the correct conclusion of the comments by saying: "He [Obama] said I'm an obstacle for progress in Latin America; therefore, it must be removed, this obstacle, right?" It's important to point out that, while Obama was "listening and learning" at the Summit of Americas, the man he appointed to coordinate the summit, Jeffrey Davidow, was busily spewing anti-Venezuelan venom in the media. This disinformation is necessary because of the "threat" that Chavez represents. The threat here is against U.S. corporations in Venezuela, who feel, correctly, that they are in danger of being taken over by the Venezuelan government, to be used for social needs in the country instead of private profit. Obama, like his predecessor, believes that such an act would be against "U.S. strategic interests," thus linking the private profit of mega-corporations acting in a foreign country to the general interests of the United States. In fact, this belief that the U.S. government must protect and promote U.S. corporations acting abroad is the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy, not only in Latin America, but the world. Prior to the revolutionary upsurges that shook off U.S. puppet governments in the region, Latin America was used exclusively by U.S. corporations to extract raw materials at rock bottom prices, using cheap labor to reap super profits, while the entire region was dominated by U.S. banks. Things have since changed dramatically. Latin American countries have taken over industries that were privatized by U.S. corporations, while both Chinese and European companies have been given the green light to invest to an extent that U.S. corporations are being pushed aside. To Obama and the rest of the two-party system, this is unacceptable. The need to reassert U.S. corporate control in the hemisphere is high on the list of Obama's priorities, but he's going about it in a strategic way, following the path paved by Bush. After realizing that the U.S. was unable to control the region by more forceful methods (especially because of two losing wars in the Middle East), Bush wisely chose to fall back a distance and fortify his position. The lone footholds available to Bush in Latin America were, unsurprisingly, the only two far-right governments in the region: Colombia and Mexico. Bush sought to strengthen U.S. influence in both governments by implementing Plan Colombia first, and the Meridia Initiative second (also known as Plan Mexico). Both programs allow for huge sums of U.S. taxpayer dollars to be funneled to these unpopular governments for the purpose of bolstering their military and police, organizations that in both countries have atrocious human rights records. In effect, the diplomatic relationship with these strong U.S. "allies" - coupled with the financial and military aide, acts to prop up both governments, which possibly would have fallen otherwise (Bush was quick to recognize Mexico's new President, Calderon, despite evidence of large-scale voter fraud). Both relationships were legitimized by the typical rhetoric: the U.S. was helping Colombia and Mexico fight against "narco-terrorists." The full implication of these relationships was revealed when, on March 1st 2008, the Colombian military bombed a FARC base in Ecuador without warning (the U.S. and Colombia view the FARC as a terrorist organization). The Latin American countries organized in the "Rio Group" denounced the raid, and the region became instantly destabilized (both Bush and Obama supported the bombing). The conclusion that many in the region have drawn - most notably Chavez - is that the U.S. is using Colombia and Mexico as a counterbalance to the loss of influence in the region. By building powerful armies in both countries, the potential to intervene in the affairs of other countries in the region is greatly enhanced. Obama has been quick to put his political weight firmly behind Colombia and Mexico. While singing the praises of Plan Colombia, Obama made a special trip to Mexico before the Summit of the Americas to strengthen his alliance with Felipe Calderon, promising more U.S. assistance in Mexico's "drug war." What these actions make clear is that Obama is continuing the age old game of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, though less directly than previous administrations. Obama's attempt at "good neighbor" politics in the region will inevitably be restricted by the nagging demands of "U.S. strategic interests," i.e., the demands of U.S. corporations to dominate the markets, cheap labor, and raw materials of Latin America. And while it is one thing to smile for the camera and shake the hands of Latin American leaders at the Summit of the Americas, U.S. corporations will demand that Obama be pro-active in helping them reassert themselves in the region, requiring all the intrigue and maneuvering of the past. Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com Shamus Cooke is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Shamus Cooke -------------------------------------------------------------- Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. Your endorsement is greatly appreciated Subscribe to the Global Research E-Newsletter Spread the word! Forward to a friend! ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 610 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090424/22a74ffe/attachment.jpe -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1909 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090424/22a74ffe/attachment-0001.gif From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Apr 23 15:48:06 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu Apr 23 15:48:37 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] Modern Day Loan Sharks Message-ID: <013e01c9c465$920a2850$5bad57ca@jfos> DEMAND THE GOVERNMENT REFORM THE PAYDAY LOAN INDUSTRY Dear CREW supporter, The payday loan industry is running scared. And it should be. Consumer outrage continues to grow over the industry's shady practices, which often lock borrowers in a spiraling cycle of high interest rates and increased debt. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT), chair of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), chair of the House Financial Services Committee, need to know that Americans deserve to be treated fairly by payday lenders. Sign CREW's petition demanding real legislation to rein in the abuses of the payday loan industry and protect consumers from out-of-control interest rates. http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/550/t/2389/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1919 Today, CREW has revealed in its new report -- Payday Lenders Pay Up -- that the payday loan industry is looking to buy its way out of federal regulation with massive increases in spending on lobbying, PR efforts, and campaign contributions. The payday loan industry more than doubled its lobbying expenditures from $2,045,000 in the 109th Congress to $4,182,550 in the 110th Congress. It has also dramatically increased its campaign contributions. During the past three campaign cycles, the industry has more than doubled its donations to key members of Congress with jurisdiction over the industry. Corporate heads shouldn't be able to buy favorable legislation that would allow them to lines their pockets at the expense of people without other borrowing options. Sign the CREW petition urging Sen. Dodd and Rep. Frank to enact legislation that truly reforms the payday loan industry. http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/550/t/2389/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1919 Thanks for all you do, The CREW team Click here to sign CREW's petition Thank you for all of your continued support from all of us at CREW -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- (c) 2009 Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, all rights reserved. If you wish to cancel your subscription to CREW emails, please click here -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090424/fd04d6ad/attachment.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Apr 23 16:42:55 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu Apr 23 16:43:38 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] =?windows-1252?q?Fw=3A_=5BS=5D_A_Worker=92s_Forum_of_t?= =?windows-1252?q?he_Americas_Fifth_Summit_?= Message-ID: <01f601c9c46d$3a282a80$5bad57ca@jfos> Excerpt: "For the trade union movement in the Americas the greatest responsibility for this crisis rests with the governments of the world powers. They are the ones who shaped the world (that fell apart) by means of their political and economic power. These governments used or neutralized international institutions in the interests of multinational companies, leading to high levels of corruption and impunity. To lay the blame solely on irresponsible bankers is to deny the responsibility of those who were supposed to regulate financial markets." A Worker?s Forum of the Americas - Fifth Summit of the Americas Port of Spain, 15-16 April 2009 DECLARATION We, trade unionists of the Americas, representing over fifty million workers across the entire continent, have met in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago on 15 and 16 of April 2009, on the occasion of the Fifth Summit of Heads of State of the Americas, and following the G-20 Summit held recently in London, and hereby declare: The current crisis deepens the crisis of distributive justice In recent months, our region has sunk into a new recession worse than the great depression of the 1930?s, but it is one that is different in depth and magnitude. Because it coincides with the food, energy, social and environmental crises, this indicates a systemic crisis of global proportions. As usual, those first and most seriously affected are women, youth, informal sector and migrant workers. Another effect has been the deepening of a social crisis which is affecting primarily women, making access to employment difficult, widening the gaps in wages and reducing investments in health, education and universal public policies, replacing formal employment with sub-contracting and labour flexibility, provoking a crisis on social security systems and social protection in general. In their analysis which predicted this crisis, international trade unions had already highlighted the ?crisis of distributive justice? (or crisis of inequality), in other words, a disconnect between wage increases and increased productivity, which seriously affects fundamental human rights such as the right to live in a healthy environment, with access to education, health care, social protection and food security. Finally, the crisis is now causing a reversal in the flow of migration from destination countries in the North to countries of origin in the South, as well as a significant reduction of remittances, affecting millions of working people and their families. The environmental, energy and food crises We share the view of the International Trade Union Confederation which affirms that countries of the South cannot be denied the right to development, and that at the same time, the planet?s natural resources do not allow us to spread the consumption patterns of industrialized countries to the entire world population. Added to this, are the effects of climate change, and the fact that social inequalities remain exposed to the negative impacts of climate change because, clearly, it is the poor who suffer the most. This is why we believe that especially in the rich North, the failure of the neo liberal model calls for a change in the production/consumption pattern which will permit sustainable development respecting the values of social justice and pluralism. This also involves reformulating the energy matrix towards clean and renewable sources of energy. The current drop in the oil price (clear evidence that there was high speculation on this price before the crisis) should not be a reason to stop looking for alternative sources. Although the drop in agricultural commodity prices tends to regulate the food crisis, there are three negative aspects which continue to have an effect on it ? excessive food consumption in the North, financing of the global food market, and the unacceptable genetic control and manipulation of seeds by transnational companies. These elements, together with the concentrated agribusiness export model, in opposition to agrarian reform policies, threaten the survival of the peasant populations and improved living standards through food consumption in poor countries. For the trade union movement in the Americas the greatest responsibility for this crisis rests with the governments of the world powers. They are the ones who shaped the world (that fell apart) by means of their political and economic power. These governments used or neutralized international institutions in the interests of multinational companies, leading to high levels of corruption and impunity. To lay the blame solely on irresponsible bankers is to deny the responsibility of those who were supposed to regulate financial markets. To blame only the industrialists and consumers for the overflow of the planet?s capacity is to deny the responsibility of those who should have curbed this type of production and consumption a long time ago, and should have moved to another development model. The ?London Consensus? of the G-20 is not up to the circumstances Years ago, the international trade union movement sounded the alert with regard to the crisis of the capitalism of financial hegemony which neglects to give credit to productive activities and engages in unproductive speculation. Recently, the trade union world came to agreement responding to the declarations at the G-20 Summits in Washington and London. They also said ?No to the casino economy? at the World Social Forum in Belem, a coherent proposal in relation to the crisis. In spite of our expectations of the possibility of a new multilateralism emerging in response to the crisis, we see that the two G-20 Summits have fallen short in many ways. The financial regulation for which the world is clamoring did not reach the levels that even governments feel necessary, and there was agreement only for a Financial Stabilization Council, with a mainly supervisory role. Except for measures dealing with high risk funds, tax havens, risk assessment companies and the banks themselves, the other measures are specific and limited. One example is the set of resolutions adopted concerning executive bonuses, since there are no limits set on this type of remuneration. We have been deeply disappointed with the efforts to bail out financial institutions which are the paradigm of the neo liberal model. This is why it is a mistake to place the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a coordinating, financial and supervisory role as a way of ensuring the salvation of the system, without setting new criteria for changing its conditionalities, or with no serious criticism of its responsibility through the implementation of policies which dismantled States and governments, thus eroding their ability to exercise economic control and allowing markets to destroy their sovereign ability to set economic and fiscal policies. We believe that it is important to defend the countries of the South in terms of the importance of expansion programs, and the emphasis given to the regulation of the financial system. But, it is a bitter surprise to us that the resources promised are especially aimed at countries of the North, with very little allocated to countries of the South (about 10%). Similarly, we have to wait and see if the promise of a change in the voting system within the IMF and the World Bank will be fulfilled. With regards to trade, the call by the G-20 to complete the Doha Round based on the agreements reached last year, is of great concern, since it provides a new opportunity for the block of countries which proposed an unbalanced and unsatisfactory focus for the countries of the South and emerging states. Finally, we call attention to the place assigned to labor in the London Declaration, recognizing the need to create jobs and to have the International Labor Organization (ILO) assume the role of evaluating labor related issues in the policies of the G-20. The Fifth Summit of the Americas must approve changes This Fifth Summit has created high expectations in public opinion in general and for the trade movement of the region in particular, not only because of the maturity of a number of progressive Latin American governments and the assumption of a new US leadership, but because it provides an opportunity for dealing with the crisis at a hemispheric level. From a trade union perspective, it is also important, as it is the first Summit since the defeat of the FTAA at the Mar del Plata Summit in 2005. However, the draft of the declaration does not reflect the political sensitivity of this situation. It is just ?one more document?, with only a brief generic paragraph in which the governments state that they are determined to strengthen cooperation, work together to restore growth in the world and adopt the necessary reforms to the world financial systems. There are no concrete policy proposals for regional coordination or actions for the effective improvement of the quality of life and employment of people. The document should start from the decisions of the G-20 and advance much further, namely to completely turn around economic, political and social orientations in the region. Furthermore, it seems to ignore the fact that many countries are still encouraging and negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs). As we have seen in the experiences of some countries such as Mexico or Chile, these do not lead to the development of the weakest economies nor to the improvement of the quality of life of workers in the strongest economies. These attempts to maintain the system are made primarily at the expense of women?s lives, through massive dismissal of workers, cuts in public spending in social areas and by reaffirming the model of production and development that directly impacts these areas, in that it increases reproductive work and sustainability increases. FTAs arise as a constant threat and undermine the integrity and progress of regional integration processes, which undoubtedly, since they are more equitable, could lead to alternative solutions to the crisis. We are absolutely certain that one of the ways to move towards this model of development in the Americas is through the strengthening and deepening of the processes of regional integration in a coordinated, complementary way and in solidarity, so that member states can each strengthen their economies and ensure the well-being of their societies. We have no doubt that integration must go beyond trade issues. This is why trade unionism in the Americas has opposed free-trade agreement negotiations and investments for more than 15 years and demands a review of current agreements, which, as we have warned, have brought great sorrow to our peoples. We, the workers of the Americas, have proposals Almost four years ago, the trade union movement, together with other social movements, mobilized for the Fourth Summit of the Americas (Mar del Plata, November 2005) against the FTAA and in defense of the Labor Platform for the Americas (LPA), presenting a broad agenda on public policy to promote ?sustainable development with decent work?. The LPA proposal is highly relevant today and shows the urgency of establishing a model of sustainable development that integrates social, economic, environmental, political and cultural dimensions in a framework of intra- and inter-generational justice. This is the only suitable response to the multiple crises in the world today: in other words, development with social justice, distribution of wealth, preservation of the environment, gender equity, protection of health, participatory democracy, respect for diversity, and equity among nations and generations. At present, and in response to the crisis, it is essential to keep in mind the following issues: Multilateralism and the new global institutionality The defense of multilateralism is key. Fair standards for international trade must be established and mechanisms for enforcing labor rights must be strengthened in order to contribute to the development of nations and to reduce inequalities etween nations. The new multilateralism must give priority to labour issues. The United Nations is the natural venue for debating this crisis, and as such, it should be strengthened. We believe that the proposal to create a Global Economic Council, at the same level as the Security Council, is important to define concrete guidelines for resolving the crisis. It is time to take up again the debate on the ?Tobin tax? and mechanisms for controlling monetary and financial flows worldwide, to restrain and avoid speculation and put an end to tax heavens. The establishment of new financial services for the solidarity economy must be given priority. It is important to correct the fatal deficiency caused by the dislocation of the public services that has lost their capacity to exercise the regulatory and control functions that prevent the financial crisis and carry out duties in accordance with the rule of law, in a fair and professional manner. It is therefore important that Governments invest in public services so that to deliver quality public services, fully equipped with the key and critical resources. Social protection, decent jobs and sustainability of the planet In the social arena, it is necessary to have a social bailout, based on public policies and the strengthening of the State?s role in the economy. We must ensure that the new global architecture for development fully integrates gender equality and women?s human rights on the basis of international commitments and treaties. According to paragraph 20 of the United Nations Millennium Declaration, ?The States commit to promoting equality between the sexes and the economic autonomy of women as effective means for fighting poverty, hunger and illnesses, and for stimulating truly sustainable growth?. The way this objective has been formulated implies an acknowledgement of the fact that once the different needs and realities of men and women are contemplated, only then will it be possible to improve the situation of alarming inequalities that are present in the Continent, strengthen democracy and social peace. The ITUC proposes a plan for recovery and sustainable growth, based on a public investment policy geared towards social development and job creation. As such, the building of productive and social infrastructure, which includes improving public services for everyone, must be prioritized. It is crucial that the income of the low and middle classes be increased and to have policies focused on the groups that are most affected: youth, women, migrants, the elderly, individuals with special needs, indigenous groups, and temporary, underemployed and part-time workers. Finally, it is necessary to insist on the right of workers to form free trade unions, elect delegates and to negotiate collectively, putting special emphasis on the redistribution of benefits. We support the initiative of the ILO to, through the Global Employment Pact, debate the creation of a Global Employment Fund that takes into account existing asymmetries between developed and developing countries in terms of their fiscal capacities. More than ever, it is necessary to insist that the Fundamental Labor Regulations remain in force, especially those ensuring trade union freedom and collective bargaining and to accompany the ILO in its potential actions on the crisis, including the creation of the Forum and its participation in the G-20. We reaffirm the importance of the ratification and implementation of the ?Ibero-American Multilateral Social Security Agreement?, on disability, old age and survival. There is already a similar agreement in effect (since 2005) within Mercosur, which can serve as a reference in order to move forward with its enforcement in the continent. We also value the agreement of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as we consider that the environmental crisis must take into account the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. The international trade union movement calls for the fulfillment of what was agreed upon at the X Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, held in Quito in 2007. We will not accept that the crisis lead to setbacks in advances made toward achieving gender equality in relation to the participation of women in the labour market. We call the international worker?s movement to apply the concept established by the UN of co-responsibility in the family and labour life, that applies equally to men and women, as well as the recognition of non paid work and its importance to the welfare of families and countries. We strongly oppose and condemn all forms of violence against women. We also denounce and condemn all forms of discrimination and violence based on racial prejudice. We demand, especially in this moment of crisis, the urgent cancellation of illegitimate external debt for developing countries. Finally, we acknowledge the political changes that have taken place in many of our countries, through the election of progressive administrations of different levels and expressions, but, at the same time we reaffirm that governments must restart the Social Dialogue processes, making them more transparent and democratic and guarantee social and civil participation in the debates on solutions to the crisis. A call to action The trade union movement demands concrete policies from the governments of the region that make the proposals being debated a reality. We demand spaces for participation at the national and international level in order to present our proposals. In this sense, it is essential that more and better consultative mechanisms be established between governments and social movements. We have expectations with regards to the political process of the United States, where the new President has made a commitment to consider trade unionism, not as a problem, but as part of the solution to the crisis. We forcefully support the adoption of the Employees Free Choice Act (EFCA), which defends the right of workers in the United States to organize freely and to negotiate collectively, and prevents employers from interfering in the organization of workers. In addition to contributing to the strengthening of the North American economy, this will have positive impacts on the international scene and in the Americas. We support the recent decision of the Obama administration to allow people from the United States to travel and send money to Cuba, to establish fiber optic and satellite connections with the island, and to broaden the list of humanitarian products that may be exported to the island. The recent mission of US Congressmen to Cuba is also encouraging. These positive steps should result in a definitive end to the blockade against Cuba. Trade unionism in the Americas has demanded an end to the blockade against this country for decades. As part of the international trade union movement, we demand that in the next G-20 Summit, actions and effective changes in the regulation of the world economy be approved. On the financial level, the creation of regional institutions for regulating and monitoring financial activities should be supported and we must move ahead with the process of strengthening the Bank of the South, the Central American Economic Integration Bank, and others. We hope and we demand that the priorities of the decisions of the G-20 and other multilateral organizations will be to make changes to the policies that gave rise to the crisis, combat its effects and the consolidation of multilateralism focused on social equity, decent work with decent pay and sustainable development. We call upon all the workers of the Americas to mobilize: on May 1st, International Day of Workers and of Mobilization to face the Crisis; and on October 7th, World Day for Decent Work in face of the Crisis, and November 25th, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. FOR THE VALIDITY OF TRADE UNION FREEDOM AND COLLECTIVE BARGAINING! FOR SOCIAL PROTECTION! FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE LABOR PLATFORM OF THE AMERICAS! Port of Spain, April 16th, 2009 Americas Info is the newsletter from TUCA - Trade Union Condederation of the Americas ? the ITUC regional organization for the Americas. TUCA CSA Rua Formosa, 367 - 4?andar - Centro CEP 01049-000 S?o Paulo / SP - Brasil Phone: (55) (11) 2104 0750 To unsubscribe : Please email unsubscribe@sindicatomercosul.com.br -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090424/fd4907a2/attachment-0001.html From thinker at thelakebc.ca Fri Apr 24 08:00:28 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Fri Apr 24 07:59:07 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] The coming water wars Message-ID: <200904241458.n3OEwZim015286@karma.reboot.ca> Subject: Water wars break out when wells run dry Few notice the paradigm-shift... The United States and Europe often spend tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars to send troops or bombers to quell uprisings or target "failed states," but do not send one-tenth or even one-hundredth of that amount to address the underlying crises of water scarcity and under-development. But future water stresses will be widespread, including both rich and poor countries. The US, for example, encouraged a population boom in its arid southwestern states in recent decades, despite water scarcity that climate change is likely to intensify. Australia is grappling with serious droughts in the agricultural heartland of the Murray-Darling River basin. The Mediterranean Basin, including Southern Europe and North Africa is also likely to experience serious drying as a result of climate change. http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2009/200904/20090423/article_398528.htm From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Fri Apr 24 21:03:22 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Fri Apr 24 21:03:57 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] 9/11: NYC CAN - VOTE FOR ANSWERS! Message-ID: <00f201c9c55a$c7684e00$0fad57ca@jfos> http://nyccan.org/mission.php Background In the months after September 11, a handful of the victims$B!G(B families joined together to demand an independent investigation into the government$B!G(Bs failure to defend its citizens on that tragic morning. Their ceaseless efforts led to the formation of the 9/11 Commission, signed into existence on November 27, 2002. Having thoroughly researched every aspect of the attacks, the Family Steering Committee provided the Commission with 400 questions that would need to be answered for the Commission to fulfill its mandate. After 18 months of proceedings and the release of the Commission$B!G(Bs Final Report on July 22, 2004, the Family Steering Committee determined that only 130 of its questions had been answered, leaving 270 questions still unanswered. The validity of the Commission$B!G(Bs findings was further undermined by several factors, including contradictory accounts from the Federal Aviation Administration and the military, stonewalling from the Bush Administration, conflicts of interest among key personnel in the Commission, and the Commission$B!G(Bs failure to hold a single individual accountable for the numerous failures leading up to, on and after September 11. Moving Forward Today, the feeling persists among many of the families and many New Yorkers that the full truth has not been uncovered and justice has not been served. The growing number of ill and dying First Responders without access to adequate healthcare and financial support adds the necessity of an investigation into the false assurances that the air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe, and immediate remedies for the healthcare crisis afflicting First Responders and nearby residents. With the federal government failing to deliver an impartial investigation, the 9/11 Families, First Responders and residents of New York City are moving ahead with the conviction that NYC CAN. New York City voters have the power to legally mandate the formation of a new investigation with subpoena power by petitioning to place a referendum on the ballot in the November 2009 General Election. In September 2008, the petition reached a milestone of 30,000 signatures, the minimum number required to submit the petition to New York City Council for its approval. By June 2009, NYCCAN will eclipse the 45,000 signatures required to bypass City Council, ensuring its placement on the ballot. With the passage of this referendum New York City will take the first giant step towards truth and justice. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090425/9826e281/attachment.html From netcfs at shaw.ca Sat Apr 25 10:48:07 2009 From: netcfs at shaw.ca (Yves Bajard) Date: Sat Apr 25 10:48:40 2009 Subject: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy In-Reply-To: <01ec01c9af65$7fdbaab0$08ad57ca@jfos> References: <011201c9ac49$136fe4a0$56ad57ca@jfos> <1237881624.4540.76.camel@localhost> <004f01c9acf8$3118b720$41ad57ca@jfos> <1238005136.15482.48.camel@localhost> <01ec01c9af65$7fdbaab0$08ad57ca@jfos> Message-ID: <1240681687.4996.124.camel@localhost> Nearly a month has gone since I received John Foster's March 28 reply to my former message of March 26. My apologies, but that was not negligence. I had many things to do in very little time on several topics. Before the issue becomes stale, let me answer John, briefly and seriously. You, John (summarizing your points) are not a 'Marxist', but you considers irrefutable that : 1. Marx's explications are valid about the socio-economic context of capitalism's mode of social production, distribution and exchange . 2. His observation is also valid that History until now is the history of class struggle 3. All ancient/preceding civilisations and modes of production was characterised by structural inequality, with political and economic domination of the mass by a non-working, minority who ruled over them, exploited their labour through (primarily) ideological means and, when nothing else was possible through the use of brute physical force. 4. Now, regardless of the words/concepts used to describe the world, the 'rich countries' AND the 'poor countries' are characterized by gross structural inequalities and a raft of similar politico-economic and social 'crises'. 5. These result from the contradictions endemic to 'Free Market' or Neo-liberal Capitalism. 6. Our current global malaise began with the 'halcyon' few decades that followed WWII (appalling waste and destruction) 7. Greatly enhanced technological advances everywhere produced a mind-boggling array of labour-saving devices and luxury goods. 8. New markets had to be created or 'opened up' quickly and the finance sector had to be freed up to provide worldwide access to easy credit with which people could these consumer goods and services. 9. Here was the beginning of an acceleration of the process of globalisation. 10. In the 'rich countries' organised labour fought to obtain a greater share of this 'bonanza'. 11. The giant trans-national corporations reacted to these demands by exporting their manufacturing (and service) activities to 'cheap labour' countries. 12. Many of these countries were run by corrupt individuals and families (e.g., The Phillipines, Indonesia and Chile) who ruthlessly exploited their country's huge human and natural resources to enrich themselves (with the blessign and support of the giant trans-national corporations, and of the governments of rich countries) . 13. Meanwhile, the peoples of Algeria, India, Malaya, North Korea, North Viet Nam, and various African nations waged long and bitter struggles to free themselves of exploitation and expropriation of their country's wealth by their former imperial-colonial masters, 14. To my remark that your use of words such as "maelstrom", "revolution", " prolonged and bitter struggle" suggested that you saw the whole thing as a fight you replied that Historic records are proof that the rich have never given up their wealth and power voluntarily. The 'alternative' critical history documents are replete with explications of prolonged and bitter struggles, uprisings, revolutions and political-social maelstroms, as millions of 'ordinary ('working class') folk fought for a better life. Also, with 'The Market' flooded with small arms, struggles continue now, worldwide. 15. Moreover, the 'ordinary' peoples appreciate that one 'option' of the rich to preserve Capital Accumulation, is to trigger military conflict and mass destruction on a global scale. This option has been used in the past and there is no reason why the dominant and 'emerging' superpower states and their 'competitive' trans-national corporations and financiers should ne use it while they fight one another to control dwindling supplies of fossil based fuels, etc. I agree fully with you, John, up to point 12. re the following points, here are my comments 1. .Your point 13 is slightly idealistic, in my opinion, the wars of liberation were fought by ordinary people to give power to another type of minority, whose members enjoyed power under several types of labels, including socialism, democracy and the like. Humbug.. 2. I agree with points 14 and 15, in that History shows that no social progress was ever achieved without violence. Yet, I would argue that in ALL circumstances, History also shows that the progress achieved were slowly or violently eroded and finally annihilated by the very forces that conceded them or by other groups of people who took thesame route to power over the masses, again under different labels. China now is a striking example. Now, what I do not agree with is your reference to History as an unavoidable obstacle to change. It is certain that if we abide by this condition, you are right 100%. But what you seem not to recognize is that if we keep on accepting it, we,as a species and as a civilization, and probably many other forms of life are about to commit a mass suicide-cum-murder. All History events of the past are based on the (false) assumption that the world (and indeed the Universe) is an empty space replete with natural resources and energy, and that we, humans owned the whole and could appropriate it for own ends. The fight between the rich and the poor has always been to change the distribution in the appropriation. However, now, we are faced with the unavoidable fact that the planet is overloaded by a combination fo our numbers, our demands on the resources, the waste and destruction that goes with the overload in a capitalist (or classically socialistic) socio-economic arrangement of society. We have gleefully turned this overload into overshoot, which combines overload wit (1) a non-recognition of the overload by the powerful, their active-opponents and the passive masses (Only a few, powerless chaps try to alert those they can reach, until now with microscopic, ultra slow results.) and (2) a very determined action by those in power to prevent and abort efforts toward this recognition of facts contrary to their ideology and ways of life. There remains that facts are facts and can be controlled independently by whomever cares to look ag the (lame, but still abundant) source of information about the topic (UN, UNDP, WHO, FAO, IMF, IBRD, national and regional statistics in various, nations, CIA data bases, etc.., not to speak of a few more or less reliable non-government sources (e.g. Shell world data on energy).) The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History different from what it has been. This is part of the challenge. And I am certain that it is technically possible. What is missing is the awareness, determination and self-forgetfulness among initial small groups of catalysts, who like yeast, would inject new visions and trigger a change of pace and of direction, including the powerful and their opponents, now deadlocked in their everlasting (and unequal) fight for a different sharing of the plunder.. Triggering this or rather these small groups of catalysts is the real challenge. And to my sorrow, I do not see Mai-Not as a useful part of taking up the challenge. Your game, now. I hope I did not distort your mening,m John, when summarizing it Yves =================== Here is fort hose who might want to refer to them, the string of preceding messages============================= Greetings Yves! My apologies for delay in responding immediately to your post of March 26. I am not a 'Marxist' (whatever that means these days) however despite the many limitations and weaknesses in his seminal historical analysis and predictions regarding the most likely outcome for Capitalism, I nevertheless consider his explication of the politico-economic class relations and social divide under that particular mode of social production, distribution and exchange as irrefutable. Also irrefutable is his observation that (to paraphrase him) 'The history of all civilisations hitherto is the history of class struggle.' That is to say, every one of the ancient/preceding civilisations and modes of production he had studied (and he studied most if not all of them) was characterised by structural inequality in the form of political and economic domination of the great bulk of their citizens by an elite, non-working, minority who ruled over them, exploiting their labour through (primarily) ideological means and, whenever this momentarily failed, through the use of brute physical force. Now irrespective of which particular words or concepts each of us select to describe our contemporary world, there can be little doubt or refutation of the fact that all of the so-called advanced 'rich countries' AND the so-called under-developed or developing 'poor countries' are also characterized by gross structural inequalities and a raft of similar politico-economic and social 'crises'. These result from the contradictions endemic to the 'most advanced' - and for some 'victorious' - mode of social production, distribution and exchange, viz, 'Free Market' or Neo-liberal Capitalism. The beginning of our current global malaise can be traced back to the 'halcyon' few decades immediately following the appalling waste and destruction of the SECOND World War. With greatly enhanced technological advances in all economic spheres, the world was soon awash with a mind-boggling array of labour-saving devices and luxury goods. Indeed new markets had to be quickly created or 'opened up' and the finance sector freed up to enable millions worldwide to gain access to easy credit with which to enjoy this bonanza of material consumer goods and services. Here was the beginning of an acceleration of the process of globalisation. In the 'rich countries' of the West, all this resulted in the push by organised labour to obtain a greater share of this 'bonanza' and how the giant trans-national corporations met the demands for better wages and conditions by exporting their manufacturing activities to so-called Third World, 'cheap labour' countries. Many of these countries were run by corrupt and amoral individuals and families (in The Phillipines, Indonesia and Chile for example) who demonstrated no qualms in ruthlessly exploiting their country's huge human and natural resources in order to enrich themselves. Moreover, emboldened by a new post-war spirit of freedom and democracy, long and bitter struggles were waged by the peoples of Algeria, India, Malaya, North Korea, North Viet Nam, and various African nations to free themselves of exploitation and expropriation of their country's wealth by their former imperial-colonial masters, Some, such as the people of the South-Western Pacific island of Bougainville, drove off their British-Australian exploiters with little more than bows and arrows, in the face of Australian Government supplied, U$ manufactured, helicopter gunships. "John's use of words such as "maelstrom", "revolution", " prolonged and bitter struggle" suggests that he sees that the transition can only be brought about by fighting." History also records, Yves, that another irrefutable reality is that those with great wealth and privilege have never given up their ill-gotten treasures and luxuries voluntarily. Indeed the 'alternative', critical history books and research papers are replete with explications of prolonged and bitter struggles, uprisings, revolutions and political-social maelstroms, as millions of 'ordinary ('working class') folk have continued to fight for a better life for themselves and their families. And with 'The Market' flooded with a surfeit of small arms, such struggles continue to this very day ... around the globe. Moreover, despite their generally restricted opportunities for formal high-level education, the 'ordinary' peoples of the world appreciate the high probability that one of the 'options' those with enormous wealth and power have exercised on previous occasions, in order to protect and preserve THEIR system of Capital Accumulation, is to trigger military conflict and mass destruction on a global scale. Such a repeat scenario grows more and more plausible as the dominant and 'emerging' superpower states and their 'competitive' trans-national corporations and financiers struggle among themselves to secure both access and price control over the dwindling supplies of hydro-carbon based fuels, reliance upon which to maintain their modern mode of production and armed forces is increasingly critical. John > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: Yves Bajard > To: A renewed Mai-Not > Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 5:18 AM > Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new > sustainable economy > > > Re John Foster's reply to my recent message, on Wednesday > March 25, 2009 at 14:17 +1100 for which I thank him. > I leave it below, for easier reference. > > There are quite a few of his points with which I cannot agree. > Not knowing him at all does not help me responding, but I'll > try. > > I had made a few comments and raised a few questions about the > Robert Costanza's article he proposed to us all: > > And in reply, John proposes answers to the questions I had > raised: > > 1. My question: Who can do that? - > > John's answer: Those whose livelihoods and families are in > immanent jeopardy/danger/peril from the pernicious system and > its beneficiaries > > My comment: Ok, Then, it should be all of us, Mai-Notters and > others, some 6.8 Billion of us, minus a few irreductible > stalwarts But my question is: who among all of these will > actually trigger the change of rate in the engines of Society > and direction at the helm(there are actually several "helms") > around the world that will place us all on a sound path where > everyone can live adequately without destroying more among our > fellow humans and in the ecological context than has already > been destroyed? Please thing about it, and try to be specific > in you answer (to yourself or to the list as you like). > > > 2 My question: How, where and when? - > > John's answer: Only by taking organised, collective, direct > action to remove from office those who continue to benefit or > profit most from the dominant mode of production and > distribution extant. > > My comment: Who then are those who will replace those that > have collectively been removed from their office? And is the > problem limited to a new more just "mode of production and > distribution" ? And how is the "collective, direct action" > going to be organized. launched and managed? By whom, and on > the basis of what criteria will this happen? When can it > begin? Who will trigger this proces? and how can it be carried > out without increasing the damage already made to the > ecosystems (and to the parts of society which will be engaged > in or submitted to the "direct action"?? By the way, what will > this "direct action" consist of? > > 3. My question: Where? - > > John's answer: Wherever adequate numbers of those who are > adversely impacted by the latest 'crisis' in the global(ised) > Capitalist system reach the conclusion that they must 'act > now' to protect their livelihoods ('jobs', careers etc.), > their homes, their public schools, public hospitals, public > transport networks and communities from the predations of > those intent upon continuing their exploitation and ab-use of > the natural and social capital currently under their > ill-gotten ownership or control. > > My comment: In other words: anywhere and everywhere. In any > event, what does he mean by "adequate numbers"? and again, the > problem is not the crisis weare experiencing now, but the > causes of that crisis.. We need to dig deeper. His is a > typical old-marxist reply.. No account taken fo the overload > of the planet by our species. > > 4. My question: When? - > > John's answer: As soon as sufficient numbers of the working > class and so-called 'middle class' sheeple hurt badly enough > to trigger mass public rallies, demonstrations, withdrawl of > their labour and refusal to consume the governmental and > corporate ideologies, products, commodities and credit > facilities thrust upon them. > > My comment: same as for question 4 > > 5. John's final points: With Western politicians, corporate > types, religious 'leaders' and the great bulk of academics all > part of the problem, the dearth of socially progressive > leadership to date has enabled the exploiters/predators to > thrive ... thus far. However I am firmly of the belief that > from the increase in organised and spontaneous resistance or > dissent we are about to witness will emerge new leaders > capable of showing the way towards a more humane, just, > rational and sustainable future for humankind. > > Bear in mind, at all times, however, that such a 'utopian' > scenario cannot and will not be achieved without a prolonged > and bitter struggle. And should you happen to be lucky enough > to survive the maelstrom, remember that the revolution MUST be > made PERMANENT or ONGOING, if the mass of the > 'ordinary' (working class)people and our beautiful but > increasingly fragile planet, and the myriad other species it > contains, are to survive. > > My comment: It is too easy to focus on specific groups of > sinners, and to look at one self as pure and innocent. WE are > ALL part of the problem, because just because we live in this > society, we are a mix of predators and of predators. We all > "thrive" relatively to poorer people. And I don't know for > john, but however low my level of comfort may be, it is still > superior by far to a Kenyan sawmill worker, and street sweeper > in Bangladesh and the likes. > > John's use of words such as "maelstrom", "revolution", " > prolonged and bitter struggle" suggests that he sees that the > transition can only be brought about by fighting. Has he > thought or tried to assess the cost of such fights to (1) the > fighting parties, (b) the others, and (c) the ecological > context? With the fact that > * we live in a socio-economic- and cultural model that > was first conceived in rough form twelve thousand > years ago, when the world population was somewhere > between one and ten million, > * we are now 6.8 billion still growing > * and th model has been perfected though time to where > it stands now > > is there a chance in Hell for anybody to survive the conflict > which he advocates? > > For your reflection, all of you.. > Best regards, > > Yves Bajard > > > ======================== John's integral text of his reply to > my statements ============== > > > > There is no time to waste, the necessary > > technologies, management and communication methods > > exist, but > > they are under the control of persons or > > organizations that are > > apparently unable or unwilling to tackle the > > problems as they > > are within a human context of public anaesthesia, > > indifference > > and/or despair. These two aspects of the problem are > > the first > > and major obstacles that need to be overcome. Who > > can do that? > > How, where and when?" > > > > Who can do that? - Those whose livelihoods and families are > > in immanent jeopardy/danger/peril from the pernicious system > > and its beneficiaries. > > > > How, where and when? - Only by taking organised, collective, > > direct action to remove from office those who continue to > > benefit or profit most from the dominant mode of production > > and distribution extant. > > > > Where? - Wherever adequate numbers of those who are > > adversely impacted by the latest 'crisis' in the > > global(ised) Capitalist system reach the conclusion that > > they must 'act now' to protect their livelihoods ('jobs', > > careers etc.), their homes, their public schools, public > > hospitals, public transport networks and communities from > > the predations of those intent upon continuing their > > exploitation and ab-use of the natural and social capital > > currently under their ill-gotten ownership or control. > > > > When? - As soon as sufficient numbers of the working class > > and so-called 'middle class' sheeple hurt badly enough to > > trigger mass public rallies, demonstrations, withdrawl of > > their labour and refusal to consume the governmental and > > corporate ideologies, products, commodities and credit > > facilities thrust upon them. > > > > With Western politicians, corporate types, religious > > 'leaders' and the great bulk of academics all part of the > > problem, the dearth of socially progressive leadership to > > date has enabled the exploiters/predators to thrive ... thus > > far. However I am firmly of the belief that from the > > increase in organised and spontaneous resistance or dissent > > we are about to witness will emerge new leaders capable of > > showing the way towards a more humane, just, rational and > > sustainable future for humankind. > > > > Bear in mind, at all times, however, that such a 'utopian' > > scenario cannot and will not be achieved without a > > prolonged and bitter struggle. And should you happen to be > > lucky enough to survive the maelstrom, remember that the > > revolution MUST be made PERMANENT or ONGOING, if the mass of > > the 'ordinary' (working class)people and our beautiful but > > increasingly fragile planet, and the myriad other species it > > contains, are to survive. > > > > john foster > > Victoria, Australia. > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: Yves Bajard > > To: A renewed Mai-Not > > Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 7:00 PM > > Subject: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new > > sustainable economy > > > > > > Dear Mai-Notters: > > > > I take the following quotes from John Foster's > > message of March 24 at 17:21 +1100, > > > > 1. "The current financial meltdown is the result of > > under-regulated markets built on an ideology of free > > market capitalism and unlimited economic growth. The > > fundamental problem is that the underlying > > assumptions of this ideology are not consistent with > > what we now know about the real state of the world. > > > > 2. (a) new model of development would be based > > clearly on the goal of sustainable human well-being. > > It would use measures of progress that clearly > > acknowledge this goal. It would acknowledge the > > importance of ecological sustainability, social > > fairness, and real economic efficiency. Ecological > > sustainability implies recognizing that natural and > > social capital are not infinitely substitutable for > > built and human capital, and that real biophysical > > limits exist to the expansion of the market economy. > > > > 3. The long term solution to the financial crisis is > > therefore to move beyond the "growth at all costs" > > economic model to a model that recognizes the real > > costs and benefits of growth. > > > > 4. We can break our addiction to fossil fuels, > > over-consumption, and the current economic model and > > create a more sustainable and desirable future that > > focuses on quality of life rather than merely > > quantity of consumption. > > > > 5. It will not be easy; it will require a new > > vision, new measures, and new institutions. It will > > require a redesign of our entire society. > > > > 6. But it is not a sacrifice of quality of life to > > break this addiction. Quite the contrary, it is a > > sacrifice not to. > > > > My comments: > > > > 1. Quotes 3.,4., 5., and 6., are from Robert > > Costanza's conclusion. > > > > 2. The key questions and comments that come to my > > mind after reading the paper and extracting the > > quotes are: > > * re Quote 5: How is he proposing to do that? > > If you are in agreement with this > > requirement, how do you propose to do it? > > * In Quote 4 : why does Robert Costanza chose > > the verb "can" and not "must"? Because I > > know that if we don't do that our > > "civilization" has had it in the very short > > term, historically speaking. The sequence is > > rather than his "we can", "we must, but can > > we? There is no time to waste, the necessary > > technologies, management and communication > > methods exist, but they are under the > > control of persons or organizations that are > > apparently unable or unwilling to tackle the > > problems as they are within a human context > > of public anaesthesia, indifference and/or > > despair. These two aspects of the problem > > are the first and major obstacles that need > > to be overcome. Who can do that? How, where > > and when? > > * Quotes 3 and 6 are in my opinion motherhood > > and apple pie. > > * The question then is: does anyone among you > > have an idea about how to respond to the > > ways these two obstacles can effectively be > > overcome before it is too late? > > > > Good night, It is 1.00 AM in my part of the world > > > > Yves Bajard (as a person, not as a list owner or > > moderator or whatever you want to call me) > > > > > > ____________________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090425/2581b121/attachment-0001.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sat Apr 25 14:30:40 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sat Apr 25 15:43:14 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: New CEO Pay Numbers Message-ID: <01d701c9c5f7$275e1140$87ad57ca@jfos> Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2009 1:53:58 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central Subject: Wowza, New CEO Pay Numbers In 2008, CEOs and other executives responsible for our current financial crisis pocketed millions of dollars from bonuses and golden parachutes, while our government spent billions of our dollars bailing out their companies. Vikram S. Pandit, CEO of Citigroup Inc., received more than $38 million in total compensation in 2008, the same year his company took $50 billion in U.S. taxpayer money.To shed light on executive pay, the AFL-CIO released Executive PayWatch 2009 earlier today. In this report, we learn that CEO perks alone grew in 2008 to an average of $336,248?or nine times the median salary of a full-time worker. This comprehensive report includes much more information, including: ? Detailed CEO compensation data for some of the country's largest companies. ? Tools that allow you to compare your pay to the CEOs. ? Close-up case studies focusing on 10 executive compensation practices that define a broken system that leaves the American taxpayer holding the bag. ? The anatomy of a double standard: Executives enjoy job and retirement security while fighting the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow workers to form unions and bargain for basic security. ? Action for you to take to put balance back into our economy. ? Boot the CEO, a satisfying online game. Outrageous executive pay is a symptom of a disease that has infected our entire economic system. It is a disease of greed and corruption made worse by the Bush administration?s obsession with further deregulating Wall Street and ideological aversion to oversight and accountability in our financial system. Check out Executive PayWatch 2009 today and pass it around to your family and friends. It?s time to shed light on outrageous executive compensation, particularly while America?s working families are bearing the brunt of the worst economic crisis in our country since the Great Depression. http://aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090426/e0a6e79d/attachment.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sat Apr 25 14:36:51 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sat Apr 25 15:43:47 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: The Darfur crisis: blood, hunger and oil Message-ID: <01e101c9c5f7$340fbb50$87ad57ca@jfos> HTML Message The Darfur crisis: blood, hunger and oil Mohamed Hassan "Understanding the Muslim world" (2) Interview : Gr?goire Lalieu and Michel Collon Is the first genocide of the 21st century happening now in Darfur? This Sudanese province is the theater of a conflict on which the international opinion is rallying. As for any struggle on the African ground, we receive the same images of misery: men are tearing, children are crying and blood is flowing. Africa is however the richest continent in the world. In this new chapter of our series ? Understanding the Muslim world ?, Mohamed Hassan unveils the origins of the African paradox and remembers us that if Sudan shelters different ethnics and religions, it has above all an abundance of oil. What are the origins of the Darfur crisis? The American actor Georges Clooney is a member of the association "Save Darfur" and denounces the massacre of Africans by Arabic militias. On the other hand, the philosopher Bernard-Henry Levy also tries to mobilize the international opinion but pretends it is a conflict between radical and moderate Islam. Is the Darfur crisis ethnical or religious? People saying that the Darfur crisis comes from an ethnic or religious conflict do not have a really good knowledge of that area. In fact, this war is economical. The colonial powers of yesterday and the imperialist powers of today are responsible of the African misfortunes. That big area, going from Sudan to Senegal, had in the past the same cultural background and extremely good resources. It could have been united and developed if the colonialism in the 19th century didn't have put fake borders in this area. I say this borders are fake because they have been built according to the power struggle between the great powers and not according the reality on the ground or the wishes of the African people. In Sudan, the British colonialists, who applied the "divide-and-rule" policy, have thrown the basis of the conflicts that will tear the country. Read more : Darfur PREVIOUS ARTICLE "Understanding the Moslim world" : Mohamed Hassan - How can we explain the success of Hamas ? Hamas And also, answering your questions : Gaza NEXT ARTICLE : Afghanistan - Pakistan : black hole of the Empire ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090426/17256121/attachment.html From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sat Apr 25 22:44:24 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sat Apr 25 22:44:49 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link In-Reply-To: <20090413234403.HGT7Z.861745.imail@fed1rmwml45> References: <20090413234403.HGT7Z.861745.imail@fed1rmwml45> Message-ID: <20090426054424.D655C12960@fep04.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090426/03efa8bb/attachment.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sun Apr 26 00:49:10 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sun Apr 26 00:51:44 2009 Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy References: <011201c9ac49$136fe4a0$56ad57ca@jfos><1237881624.4540.76.camel@localhost><004f01c9acf8$3118b720$41ad57ca@jfos><1238005136.15482.48.camel@localhost><01ec01c9af65$7fdbaab0$08ad57ca@jfos> <1240681687.4996.124.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <035001c9c643$adf3bbf0$87ad57ca@jfos> On 26 April Yves wrote > re the following points, here are my comments ... * * * >Now, what I do not agree with is your reference to History as an >unavoidable obstacle to change. ######################## Au contraire Yves; my whole raison d'etre in drawing attention to the vital importance of studying historical events and outcomes (as people such as Marx AND OTHERS have urged us to do), is to encourage folk to make the effort to study and LEARN from history ... and thus AVOID making the same mistake(s), thereby obviating or at the very least minimising adverse outcomes arising from our contemporary politico-economic and social relations This is also why other dissidents - such as Trotsky, Mao and others advocated 'ongoing revolution', and that other great revolutionary/dissident Thomas Jefferson opined "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance"! Across the Atlantic, another dissident against English politico-economic oppression asserted that ... "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt." (John Philpot Curran in 1790 in defence of the right to elect the Lord Mayor of Dublin.) >The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History different >from what it has been. This is part of the challenge. And I am certain >that it is technically possible. What is missing is the awareness, >determination and self-forgetfulness among initial small groups of >catalysts, who like yeast, would inject new visions and trigger a change >of pace and of direction (snip) ... Triggering ..these small groups of >catalysts is the real challenge. As history reveals, there have always been individual and group resistance to injustice and oppression. Today is no exception. There are millions of individual acts of resistance and organised actions by groups of individuals to globalisation, privatisation, genetic modification of our foodstuffs and seed stocks, corporate and bureaucratic corruption and treachery, and imperial wars of agression by the anti-social, anti-democratic 'leaders' of resource-depleted 'rich countries' of the West in search of cheap and reliable supplies of natural resources essential to maintaining, enhancing ('growing') and preserving the anti-social, anti-democratic system from which they expropriate their ill-gotten weath and privilege and the political power over others that such enormous personal/family wealth commands. What you appear to ignore here, Yves, is that every attempt by the many 'small groups of catalysts' to ' ...trigger a change of pace and of direction' is immediately countered by those whose politico-economic 'interests' are threatened by such groups. Those with great wealth and privilege are not about to meekly roll over and share their portfolios, mansions and other 'private' property with The Underprivileged! Nor are the battalions of well-rewarded corporate executives and technocrats, high-ranking officers in the various armed forces, high-ranking members of the Judiciary, academe and so on who serve them. The following tends to support my thesis ... "...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing." -- Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837 "We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain basement prices, in return for the false promise of more security... The America being designed right now won't resemble the America we've been defending... The danger isn't that Big Brother may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't realize that he is already inside the castle walls." -- Wayne LaPierre "Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington -- regardless of who wins the Presidency." -- James Bovard in Voting is Overrated Regards, John ----- Original Message ----- From: Yves Bajard To: A renewed Mai-Not Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 3:48 AM Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy Nearly a month has gone since I received John Foster's March 28 reply to my former message of March 26. My apologies, but that was not negligence. I had many things to do in very little time on several topics. Before the issue becomes stale, let me answer John, briefly and seriously. You, John (summarizing your points) are not a 'Marxist', but you considers irrefutable that : 1.. Marx's explications are valid about the socio-economic context of capitalism's mode of social production, distribution and exchange . 2.. His observation is also valid that History until now is the history of class struggle 3.. All ancient/preceding civilisations and modes of production was characterised by structural inequality, with political and economic domination of the mass by a non-working, minority who ruled over them, exploited their labour through (primarily) ideological means and, when nothing else was possible through the use of brute physical force. 4.. Now, regardless of the words/concepts used to describe the world, the 'rich countries' AND the 'poor countries' are characterized by gross structural inequalities and a raft of similar politico-economic and social 'crises'. 5.. These result from the contradictions endemic to 'Free Market' or Neo-liberal Capitalism. 6.. Our current global malaise began with the 'halcyon' few decades that followed WWII (appalling waste and destruction) 7.. Greatly enhanced technological advances everywhere produced a mind-boggling array of labour-saving devices and luxury goods. 8.. New markets had to be created or 'opened up' quickly and the finance sector had to be freed up to provide worldwide access to easy credit with which people could these consumer goods and services. 9.. Here was the beginning of an acceleration of the process of globalisation. 10.. In the 'rich countries' organised labour fought to obtain a greater share of this 'bonanza'. 11.. The giant trans-national corporations reacted to these demands by exporting their manufacturing (and service) activities to 'cheap labour' countries. 12.. Many of these countries were run by corrupt individuals and families (e.g., The Phillipines, Indonesia and Chile) who ruthlessly exploited their country's huge human and natural resources to enrich themselves (with the blessign and support of the giant trans-national corporations, and of the governments of rich countries) . 13.. Meanwhile, the peoples of Algeria, India, Malaya, North Korea, North Viet Nam, and various African nations waged long and bitter struggles to free themselves of exploitation and expropriation of their country's wealth by their former imperial-colonial masters, 14.. To my remark that your use of words such as "maelstrom", "revolution", " prolonged and bitter struggle" suggested that you saw the whole thing as a fight you replied that Historic records are proof that the rich have never given up their wealth and power voluntarily. The 'alternative' critical history documents are replete with explications of prolonged and bitter struggles, uprisings, revolutions and political-social maelstroms, as millions of 'ordinary ('working class') folk fought for a better life. Also, with 'The Market' flooded with small arms, struggles continue now, worldwide. 15.. Moreover, the 'ordinary' peoples appreciate that one 'option' of the rich to preserve Capital Accumulation, is to trigger military conflict and mass destruction on a global scale. This option has been used in the past and there is no reason why the dominant and 'emerging' superpower states and their 'competitive' trans-national corporations and financiers should ne use it while they fight one another to control dwindling supplies of fossil based fuels, etc. I agree fully with you, John, up to point 12. re the following points, here are my comments .Your point 13 is slightly idealistic, in my opinion, the wars of liberation were fought by ordinary people to give power to another type of minority, whose members enjoyed power under several types of labels, including socialism, democracy and the like. Humbug.. 2.. I agree with points 14 and 15, in that History shows that no social progress was ever achieved without violence. Yet, I would argue that in ALL circumstances, History also shows that the progress achieved were slowly or violently eroded and finally annihilated by the very forces that conceded them or by other groups of people who took thesame route to power over the masses, again under different labels. China now is a striking example. Now, what I do not agree with is your reference to History as an unavoidable obstacle to change. (snip) The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History different from what it has been. This is part of the challenge. And I am certain that it is technically possible. What is missing is the awareness, determination and self-forgetfulness among initial small groups of catalysts, who like yeast, would inject new visions and trigger a change of pace and of direction, including the powerful and their opponents, now deadlocked in their everlasting (and unequal) fight for a different sharing of the plunder.. Triggering this or rather these small groups of catalysts is the real challenge. And to my sorrow, I do not see Mai-Not as a useful part of taking up the challenge. Your game, now. I hope I did not distort your mening,m John, when summarizing it Yves =================== Here is fort hose who might want to refer to them, the string of preceding messages============================= Greetings Yves! My apologies for delay in responding immediately to your post of March 26. I am not a 'Marxist' (whatever that means these days) however despite the many limitations and weaknesses in his seminal historical analysis and predictions regarding the most likely outcome for Capitalism, I nevertheless consider his explication of the politico-economic class relations and social divide under that particular mode of social production, distribution and exchange as irrefutable. Also irrefutable is his observation that (to paraphrase him) 'The history of all civilisations hitherto is the history of class struggle.' That is to say, every one of the ancient/preceding civilisations and modes of production he had studied (and he studied most if not all of them) was characterised by structural inequality in the form of political and economic domination of the great bulk of their citizens by an elite, non-working, minority who ruled over them, exploiting their labour through (primarily) ideological means and, whenever this momentarily failed, through the use of brute physical force. Now irrespective of which particular words or concepts each of us select to describe our contemporary world, there can be little doubt or refutation of the fact that all of the so-called advanced 'rich countries' AND the so-called under-developed or developing 'poor countries' are also characterized by gross structural inequalities and a raft of similar politico-economic and social 'crises'. These result from the contradictions endemic to the 'most advanced' - and for some 'victorious' - mode of social production, distribution and exchange, viz, 'Free Market' or Neo-liberal Capitalism. The beginning of our current global malaise can be traced back to the 'halcyon' few decades immediately following the appalling waste and destruction of the SECOND World War. With greatly enhanced technological advances in all economic spheres, the world was soon awash with a mind-boggling array of labour-saving devices and luxury goods. Indeed new markets had to be quickly created or 'opened up' and the finance sector freed up to enable millions worldwide to gain access to easy credit with which to enjoy this bonanza of material consumer goods and services. Here was the beginning of an acceleration of the process of globalisation. In the 'rich countries' of the West, all this resulted in the push by organised labour to obtain a greater share of this 'bonanza' and how the giant trans-national corporations met the demands for better wages and conditions by exporting their manufacturing activities to so-called Third World, 'cheap labour' countries. Many of these countries were run by corrupt and amoral individuals and families (in The Phillipines, Indonesia and Chile for example) who demonstrated no qualms in ruthlessly exploiting their country's huge human and natural resources in order to enrich themselves. Moreover, emboldened by a new post-war spirit of freedom and democracy, long and bitter struggles were waged by the peoples of Algeria, India, Malaya, North Korea, North Viet Nam, and various African nations to free themselves of exploitation and expropriation of their country's wealth by their former imperial-colonial masters, Some, such as the people of the South-Western Pacific island of Bougainville, drove off their British-Australian exploiters with little more than bows and arrows, in the face of Australian Government supplied, U$ manufactured, helicopter gunships. "John's use of words such as "maelstrom", "revolution", " prolonged and bitter struggle" suggests that he sees that the transition can only be brought about by fighting." History also records, Yves, that another irrefutable reality is that those with great wealth and privilege have never given up their ill-gotten treasures and luxuries voluntarily. Indeed the 'alternative', critical history books and research papers are replete with explications of prolonged and bitter struggles, uprisings, revolutions and political-social maelstroms, as millions of 'ordinary ('working class') folk have continued to fight for a better life for themselves and their families. And with 'The Market' flooded with a surfeit of small arms, such struggles continue to this very day ... around the globe. Moreover, despite their generally restricted opportunities for formal high-level education, the 'ordinary' peoples of the world appreciate the high probability that one of the 'options' those with enormous wealth and power have exercised on previous occasions, in order to protect and preserve THEIR system of Capital Accumulation, is to trigger military conflict and mass destruction on a global scale. Such a repeat scenario grows more and more plausible as the dominant and 'emerging' superpower states and their 'competitive' trans-national corporations and financiers struggle among themselves to secure both access and price control over the dwindling supplies of hydro-carbon based fuels, reliance upon which to maintain their modern mode of production and armed forces is increasingly critical. John ----- Original Message ----- From: Yves Bajard To: A renewed Mai-Not Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 5:18 AM Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy Re John Foster's reply to my recent message, on Wednesday March 25, 2009 at 14:17 +1100 for which I thank him. I leave it below, for easier reference. There are quite a few of his points with which I cannot agree. Not knowing him at all does not help me responding, but I'll try. I had made a few comments and raised a few questions about the Robert Costanza's article he proposed to us all: And in reply, John proposes answers to the questions I had raised: 1. My question: Who can do that? - John's answer: Those whose livelihoods and families are in immanent jeopardy/danger/peril from the pernicious system and its beneficiaries My comment: Ok, Then, it should be all of us, Mai-Notters and others, some 6.8 Billion of us, minus a few irreductible stalwarts But my question is: who among all of these will actually trigger the change of rate in the engines of Society and direction at the helm(there are actually several "helms") around the world that will place us all on a sound path where everyone can live adequately without destroying more among our fellow humans and in the ecological context than has already been destroyed? Please thing about it, and try to be specific in you answer (to yourself or to the list as you like). 2 My question: How, where and when? - John's answer: Only by taking organised, collective, direct action to remove from office those who continue to benefit or profit most from the dominant mode of production and distribution extant. My comment: Who then are those who will replace those that have collectively been removed from their office? And is the problem limited to a new more just "mode of production and distribution" ? And how is the "collective, direct action" going to be organized. launched and managed? By whom, and on the basis of what criteria will this happen? When can it begin? Who will trigger this proces? and how can it be carried out without increasing the damage already made to the ecosystems (and to the parts of society which will be engaged in or submitted to the "direct action"?? By the way, what will this "direct action" consist of? 3. My question: Where? - John's answer: Wherever adequate numbers of those who are adversely impacted by the latest 'crisis' in the global(ised) Capitalist system reach the conclusion that they must 'act now' to protect their livelihoods ('jobs', careers etc.), their homes, their public schools, public hospitals, public transport networks and communities from the predations of those intent upon continuing their exploitation and ab-use of the natural and social capital currently under their ill-gotten ownership or control. My comment: In other words: anywhere and everywhere. In any event, what does he mean by "adequate numbers"? and again, the problem is not the crisis weare experiencing now, but the causes of that crisis.. We need to dig deeper. His is a typical old-marxist reply.. No account taken fo the overload of the planet by our species. 4. My question: When? - John's answer: As soon as sufficient numbers of the working class and so-called 'middle class' sheeple hurt badly enough to trigger mass public rallies, demonstrations, withdrawl of their labour and refusal to consume the governmental and corporate ideologies, products, commodities and credit facilities thrust upon them. My comment: same as for question 4 5. John's final points: With Western politicians, corporate types, religious 'leaders' and the great bulk of academics all part of the problem, the dearth of socially progressive leadership to date has enabled the exploiters/predators to thrive ... thus far. However I am firmly of the belief that from the increase in organised and spontaneous resistance or dissent we are about to witness will emerge new leaders capable of showing the way towards a more humane, just, rational and sustainable future for humankind. Bear in mind, at all times, however, that such a 'utopian' scenario cannot and will not be achieved without a prolonged and bitter struggle. And should you happen to be lucky enough to survive the maelstrom, remember that the revolution MUST be made PERMANENT or ONGOING, if the mass of the 'ordinary' (working class)people and our beautiful but increasingly fragile planet, and the myriad other species it contains, are to survive. My comment: It is too easy to focus on specific groups of sinners, and to look at one self as pure and innocent. WE are ALL part of the problem, because just because we live in this society, we are a mix of predators and of predators. We all "thrive" relatively to poorer people. And I don't know for john, but however low my level of comfort may be, it is still superior by far to a Kenyan sawmill worker, and street sweeper in Bangladesh and the likes. John's use of words such as "maelstrom", "revolution", " prolonged and bitter struggle" suggests that he sees that the transition can only be brought about by fighting. Has he thought or tried to assess the cost of such fights to (1) the fighting parties, (b) the others, and (c) the ecological context? With the fact that a.. we live in a socio-economic- and cultural model that was first conceived in rough form twelve thousand years ago, when the world population was somewhere between one and ten million, b.. we are now 6.8 billion still growing c.. and th model has been perfected though time to where it stands now is there a chance in Hell for anybody to survive the conflict which he advocates? For your reflection, all of you.. Best regards, Yves Bajard ======================== John's integral text of his reply to my statements ============== There is no time to waste, the necessary technologies, management and communication methods exist, but they are under the control of persons or organizations that are apparently unable or unwilling to tackle the problems as they are within a human context of public anaesthesia, indifference and/or despair. These two aspects of the problem are the first and major obstacles that need to be overcome. Who can do that? How, where and when?" Who can do that? - Those whose livelihoods and families are in immanent jeopardy/danger/peril from the pernicious system and its beneficiaries. How, where and when? - Only by taking organised, collective, direct action to remove from office those who continue to benefit or profit most from the dominant mode of production and distribution extant. Where? - Wherever adequate numbers of those who are adversely impacted by the latest 'crisis' in the global(ised) Capitalist system reach the conclusion that they must 'act now' to protect their livelihoods ('jobs', careers etc.), their homes, their public schools, public hospitals, public transport networks and communities from the predations of those intent upon continuing their exploitation and ab-use of the natural and social capital currently under their ill-gotten ownership or control. When? - As soon as sufficient numbers of the working class and so-called 'middle class' sheeple hurt badly enough to trigger mass public rallies, demonstrations, withdrawl of their labour and refusal to consume the governmental and corporate ideologies, products, commodities and credit facilities thrust upon them. With Western politicians, corporate types, religious 'leaders' and the great bulk of academics all part of the problem, the dearth of socially progressive leadership to date has enabled the exploiters/predators to thrive ... thus far. However I am firmly of the belief that from the increase in organised and spontaneous resistance or dissent we are about to witness will emerge new leaders capable of showing the way towards a more humane, just, rational and sustainable future for humankind. Bear in mind, at all times, however, that such a 'utopian' scenario cannot and will not be achieved without a prolonged and bitter struggle. And should you happen to be lucky enough to survive the maelstrom, remember that the revolution MUST be made PERMANENT or ONGOING, if the mass of the 'ordinary' (working class)people and our beautiful but increasingly fragile planet, and the myriad other species it contains, are to survive. john foster Victoria, Australia. ----- Original Message ----- From: Yves Bajard To: A renewed Mai-Not Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 7:00 PM Subject: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy Dear Mai-Notters: I take the following quotes from John Foster's message of March 24 at 17:21 +1100, 1. "The current financial meltdown is the result of under-regulated markets built on an ideology of free market capitalism and unlimited economic growth. The fundamental problem is that the underlying assumptions of this ideology are not consistent with what we now know about the real state of the world. 2. (a) new model of development would be based clearly on the goal of sustainable human well-being. It would use measures of progress that clearly acknowledge this goal. It would acknowledge the importance of ecological sustainability, social fairness, and real economic efficiency. Ecological sustainability implies recognizing that natural and social capital are not infinitely substitutable for built and human capital, and that real biophysical limits exist to the expansion of the market economy. 3. The long term solution to the financial crisis is therefore to move beyond the "growth at all costs" economic model to a model that recognizes the real costs and benefits of growth. 4. We can break our addiction to fossil fuels, over-consumption, and the current economic model and create a more sustainable and desirable future that focuses on quality of life rather than merely quantity of consumption. 5. It will not be easy; it will require a new vision, new measures, and new institutions. It will require a redesign of our entire society. 6. But it is not a sacrifice of quality of life to break this addiction. Quite the contrary, it is a sacrifice not to. My comments: 1. Quotes 3.,4., 5., and 6., are from Robert Costanza's conclusion. 2. The key questions and comments that come to my mind after reading the paper and extracting the quotes are: a.. re Quote 5: How is he proposing to do that? If you are in agreement with this requirement, how do you propose to do it? b.. In Quote 4 : why does Robert Costanza chose the verb "can" and not "must"? Because I know that if we don't do that our "civilization" has had it in the very short term, historically speaking. The sequence is rather than his "we can", "we must, but can we? There is no time to waste, the necessary technologies, management and communication methods exist, but they are under the control of persons or organizations that are apparently unable or unwilling to tackle the problems as they are within a human context of public anaesthesia, indifference and/or despair. These two aspects of the problem are the first and major obstacles that need to be overcome. Who can do that? How, where and when? c.. Quotes 3 and 6 are in my opinion motherhood and apple pie. d.. The question then is: does anyone among you have an idea about how to respond to the ways these two obstacles can effectively be overcome before it is too late? Good night, It is 1.00 AM in my part of the world Yves Bajard (as a person, not as a list owner or moderator or whatever you want to call me) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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 - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.287 / Virus Database: 270.12.4/2080 - Release Date: 04/25/09 08:29:00 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090426/132b2322/attachment-0001.html From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Apr 26 06:24:49 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sun Apr 26 06:25:19 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem In-Reply-To: <20090426054424.D655C12960@fep04.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> References: <20090413234403.HGT7Z.861745.imail@fed1rmwml45> <20090426054424.D655C12960@fep04.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> Message-ID: <20090426132450.3907C10FA7@fep01.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090426/6e0c74ff/attachment.html From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Apr 26 06:46:46 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sun Apr 26 06:47:20 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Toward a new sustainable economy In-Reply-To: <035001c9c643$adf3bbf0$87ad57ca@jfos> References: <011201c9ac49$136fe4a0$56ad57ca@jfos> <1237881624.4540.76.camel@localhost> <004f01c9acf8$3118b720$41ad57ca@jfos> <1238005136.15482.48.camel@localhost> <01ec01c9af65$7fdbaab0$08ad57ca@jfos> <1240681687.4996.124.camel@localhost> <035001c9c643$adf3bbf0$87ad57ca@jfos> Message-ID: <20090426134646.DC7E1F700@fep03.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> John Foster and Yves Bajard are addressing different issues. John has set out (in an excellent summary) the history of the struggle of the plebs against the sirs for the power to make decisions on national policies. Yves has bypassed that and focused on what decisions he considers need to be made, even deploring that the little group that swap information and views on Mai-not are doing nothing to adopt and enforce these momentous national decisions. I favour John's approach - see what we can contribute to the struggle for power to make the decisions so that the sirs can't wreck the world to protect their own narrow interests. Not a struggle to transfer power to other sirs, but to devolve more and more power to the people leaving the sirs with less and less. Dion Giles From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Apr 26 06:58:01 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Sun Apr 26 06:58:53 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] My column In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090426135821.4A0B812011@fep02.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> I think Chris and Ed are writing of different things. Democracy isn't just majorities (and by the way the Germans did not vote Hitler in - the Nazis acquired power by gaining a foothold in parliament and then maneuvering among the pollies - backed up by organised street trash - much as we've just seen in Thailand). Democracy requires an open society, and the temptation is to protect democracy by suppressing its opponents. The crunch comes when a newly open society releases the power of an ill-informed populace as has happened in recent years in Rumsfeld's "new Europe", with the consequence of closing the open society. This dilemma was neatly described by Allan Bloom as "openness to closedness". As for democracy, the Weimar Republic was no more democratic than Australia, being based on representative government in which a vote for party A is almost always merely a vote against party B which is seen as even worse. Dion Giles From creuss at bluewin.ch Sun Apr 26 11:22:34 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Sun Apr 26 11:25:42 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] India: Hitler as a Business/Management Role Model Message-ID: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/5182107/Indian-business-students-snap-up-copies-of-Mein-Kampf.html Indian business students snap up copies of Mein Kampf Sales of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler's autobiography and apologia for his anti-semitism, are soaring in India where business students regard the dictator as a management guru. By Monty Munford in New Delhi Last Updated: 11:27AM BST 20 Apr 2009 Booksellers told The Daily Telegraph that while it is regarded in most countries as a 'Nazi Bible', in India it is considered a management guide in the mould of Spencer Johnson's "Who Moved My Cheese". Sales of the book over the last six months topped 10,000 in New Delhi alone, according to leading stores, who said it appeared to be becoming more popular with every year. Several said the surge in sales was due to demand from students who see it as a self-improvement and management strategy guide for aspiring business leaders, and who were happy to cite it as an inspiration. "Students are increasingly coming in asking for it and we're happy to sell it to them," said Sohin Lakhani, owner of Mumbai-based Embassy books who reprints Mein Kampf every quarter and shrugs off any moral issues in publishing the book. "They see it as a kind of success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it". Jaico Publishing House, one of the publishers in India, said it reprints a new edition of the book at least twice a year to meet growing demand. "We were the first company to publish the book in India and there are now six other Indian publishers of the book, although we were first to take a chance on it," said Jaico's chief editor, R H Sharma, who dismissed any moral issues in publishing Mein Kampf. "The initial print run of 2,000 copies in 2003 sold out immediately and we knew we had a best-seller on our hands. Since then the numbers have increased every year to around 15,000 copies until last year when we sold 10,000 copies over a six-month period in our Delhi shops," he added. Senior academics cite the mutual influence of India and Hitler's Nazis on one another. Mahatma Gandhi corresponded with the Fuhrer, pro-Independence leader Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army allied with Hitler's Germany and Japan during the Second World War, and the Nazis drew on Hindu symbolism for their Swastika motif and ideas of Aryan supremacy. Dr J Kuruvachira, Professor of Philosophy of Salesian College in Nagaland and who has cited Mein Kampf as a source of inspiration to the Hindu nationalist BJP, said he believed the book's popularity was due to political reasons. "While it could be the case that management students are buying the book, my feeling is that it has more likely influenced some of the fascist organisations operating in India and nearby," he said. India is not the only country where Mein Kampf is popular. It has been a best-seller in Croatia since it was first published in while in turkey it sold 100,000 in just two months in 2005. In Russia it has been reprinted three times since the de facto ban on the book was overturned in 1992. In Germany the book's copyright is held by the state of Bavaria where its publication is banned until 2015, 70 years after Hitler's death. In India, any book more than 25 years old is free of copyright, which has paved the way for six separate publishers to print the book. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From creuss at bluewin.ch Sun Apr 26 11:57:31 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Sun Apr 26 12:00:40 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem Message-ID: The most important effect of atmospheric CO2 surplus is being left out by BOTH polluter propagandists like Andrew G Marshall and statistical illiterates like lawyer Al Gore: Increased instability and larger & more frequent extremes in temperature, moisture, wind speeds etc. On a smaller scale, this effect can be observed in the seasonal cycle, where the most unstable weather occurs in the month of highest seasonal CO2: the famous "April weather". This seasonal cycle can be seen on the graph http://heartspring.net/images/atmospheric_carbon_dioxide.gif As you can see on the same graph, the man-made CO2 increase over decades is of much larger extent, so the weather becomes ever more unstable on a large scale. This translates to storms, droughts, floods, heat waves, extreme snow (over 8 meters here in the Alps) etc. bigger than ever. On that background, bickering about an increase in AVERAGE temperature of 0.1 or 0.5 ?C is simply idiotic, because a curve with extreme amplitudes and high dynamics (frequencies) can have the SAME AVERAGE as a regular sinus curve with low frequency, for example. If you want to HIDE the big increase in extremes and frequencies, then just talk about a tiny increase in average! And that's what Al Gore is doing, after U$ CO2 emissions have increased during his 8-year reign as U$ VP more than ever in history. Needless to mention that the dinosaurs could have cared less about weather extremes, compared to today's densely populated complex infrastructures. Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From creuss at bluewin.ch Sun Apr 26 12:13:01 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Sun Apr 26 12:16:06 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] My column Message-ID: Dion Giles wrote: > I think Chris and Ed are writing of different things. Democracy > isn't just majorities (and by the way the Germans did not vote Hitler > in - the Nazis acquired power by gaining a foothold in parliament and > then maneuvering among the pollies - backed up by organised street > trash - much as we've just seen in Thailand). Formally, Hitler's party got a relative majority (albeit never an absolute majority), and that's why enemies of democracy like to point out that "democracy enabled Hitler", although it was subversions of democracy. Btw, in post-war Germany this has even been used to justify the absence of federal referenda, so Germans never got to vote on issues like EU or NATO accession, Euro currency, EU constitution, EU enlargements, etc. > Democracy requires an open society, and the temptation is to protect > democracy by suppressing its opponents. The crunch comes when a > newly open society releases the power of an ill-informed populace as > has happened in recent years in Rumsfeld's "new Europe", with the > consequence of closing the open society. This dilemma was neatly > described by Allan Bloom as "openness to closedness". As far as the EU is concerned, the Brussels snouts installed their regime already when the EU only consisted of Western countries (before the Iron curtain even came down), and the Eastern countries are rather opposed to EU centralism, knowing best what a (E)USSR means for the citizens. > As for democracy, the Weimar Republic was no more democratic than > Australia, being based on representative government in which a vote > for party A is almost always merely a vote against party B which is > seen as even worse. I still don't see how the initial claim "The biggest and most dangerous enemy of democracy is democracy itself." is supposed to be valid under scrutiny, if democracy is taken at face value (instead of being confused with its mockery). Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From netcfs at shaw.ca Sun Apr 26 14:38:30 2009 From: netcfs at shaw.ca (Yves Bajard) Date: Sun Apr 26 14:39:01 2009 Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy In-Reply-To: <035001c9c643$adf3bbf0$87ad57ca@jfos> References: <011201c9ac49$136fe4a0$56ad57ca@jfos> <1237881624.4540.76.camel@localhost> <004f01c9acf8$3118b720$41ad57ca@jfos> <1238005136.15482.48.camel@localhost> <01ec01c9af65$7fdbaab0$08ad57ca@jfos> <1240681687.4996.124.camel@localhost> <035001c9c643$adf3bbf0$87ad57ca@jfos> Message-ID: <1240781910.4843.569.camel@localhost> Re John Foster's Sun, 2009-04-26 at 17:49 +1000 reply to my comments of April 26, and to Dion Giles complementary comments of Sun, 2009-04-26 at 21:46 +0800,, let4 me say briefly that 1. I am not bypassing History at all. I am going very far down into pre-history, and see that our civilization stems from a cultural bifurcation that took place some 12 millenniums ago along a few big rivers, when irrigated agriculture transformed the ways of life of a few people.who until then had been hunters, gatherers, pastors and itinerant agriculturalists. This was absolutely not a genetic transformation, only cultural, but very powerful. So powerful that it took until very recently for those who lived that bifurcation to realize how powerful it is. Those who started it did not have an inkling of the power they released then. The change was from somewhat linear or relatively very slow exponential growth to an accelerating exponential one (if I may say, because exponential is already self-accelerating) . 2. I recognize that, as human society has and always had been governed by multi-thread torsades of thinking, that there was at all times people like Confucius, Lao Tse, Christ, Buddha, Danton, Robespierre, Jefferson, Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Mao and their followers, who questioned the direction taken by the powerful, and developed more or less long lasting (and self-distorting) lines of thought. 3. In that, I also adhere to John Foster's approach of learning from History to try and avoid the errors of the past. 4. The difference I perceive between him and me, and also between Dion and me is that my training as an engineer and eventually as a geologist, my experience in many countries, built upon a non-christian, but very humanistic family tradition, led me to absorb the fact that now, the planet is overloaded by humans and their activities on Earth, and that the governing system is overshooting (as if nothing was the matter at all). And we are at an unprecedented stage where a movement of unknown type but of any size, at an unknown and undefinable location and time may precipitate a full collapse of the whole, including the "powerful". For all I know, it may already be occurring at speeds not usually measured in society, because the unit of time at which it is measurable is much longer than the stock-exchange-based time unit. If you look at the decade or the lustre, you may feel the accelerating slide into chaos. 5. I do not expect and never did expect the powerful to join meekly into a movement toward a sustainable human society. However, there are not many options open: * either we try to overpower them, by attacking them with hopefully a growing number of partisans joining the revolt. * or we submit to them and try from the inside to alter the course they have taken * or again, we use Mao Dze Dong's strategy of infiltration and after exploring the levels of weakness in a few of their chains of top-down command and down-up information systems or chains, try to influence a s many as we can among the middle level execs in the system, and to gradually mobilize them into infiltration up, down and on the sides of their position (conscious or not on their part, it does not matter) The first option has been tried repeatedly through history and always failed. The leaders of the revoltees were either eliminated or absorbed, with minimum concessions. I could not find any exception. It is easy for the powerful to infiltrate any opponent group and then turn it inside out, with for example financing, direct or indirect. I can mention several current examples of movements m,ost probably in this situation (evidence is very difficult to obtain) The second one is self-defeating. Not one chance in a billion. I have chosen the third option. We need the energy available among the powerful to effect the necessary transition. Conflict with them is a lost cause and it will cause damages (casualties and social and ecological destruction mainly, of such a magnitude that we (our species and civilization) probably will not have a chance to recover if we win, which is very unlikely., And as long as we have life and are relatively free, there is no point in giving up. It would be the worst possible choice. Bet regards Yves Bajard. ==========================+John Foster's message below ============================================ > , what I do not agree with is your reference to History as an > >unavoidable obstacle to change. > > ######################## > > Au contraire Yves; my whole raison d'etre in drawing attention to the > vital importance of studying historical events and outcomes (as people > such as Marx AND OTHERS have urged us to do), is to encourage folk to > make the effort to study and LEARN from history ... and thus AVOID > making the same mistake(s), thereby obviating or at the very least > minimising adverse outcomes arising from our contemporary > politico-economic and social relations > > This is also why other dissidents - such as Trotsky, Mao and others > advocated 'ongoing revolution', and that other great > revolutionary/dissident Thomas Jefferson opined "The price of freedom > is eternal vigilance"! Across the Atlantic, another dissident > against English politico-economic oppression asserted that ... > > "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal > vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the > consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt." (John > Philpot Curran in 1790 in defence of the right to elect the Lord Mayor > of Dublin.) > > >The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History > different > >from what it has been. This is part of the challenge. And I am > certain > >that it is technically possible. What is missing is the awareness, > >determination and self-forgetfulness among initial small groups of > >catalysts, who like yeast, would inject new visions and trigger a > change > >of pace and of direction (snip) ... Triggering ..these small groups > of > >catalysts is the real challenge. > > As history reveals, there have always been individual and group > resistance to injustice and oppression. Today is no exception. There > are millions of individual acts of resistance and organised actions by > groups of individuals to globalisation, privatisation, genetic > modification of our foodstuffs and seed stocks, corporate and > bureaucratic corruption and treachery, and imperial wars of agression > by the anti-social, anti-democratic 'leaders' of resource-depleted > 'rich countries' of the West in search of cheap and reliable supplies > of natural resources essential to maintaining, > enhancing ('growing') and preserving the anti-social, anti-democratic > system from which they expropriate their ill-gotten weath and > privilege and the political power over others that such enormous > personal/family wealth commands. > > What you appear to ignore here, Yves, is that every attempt by the > many 'small groups of catalysts' to ' ...trigger a change of pace and > of direction' is immediately countered by those whose > politico-economic 'interests' are threatened by such groups. Those > with great wealth and privilege are not about to meekly roll over and > share their portfolios, mansions and other 'private' property with The > Underprivileged! Nor are the battalions of well-rewarded corporate > executives and technocrats, high-ranking officers in the various armed > forces, high-ranking members of the Judiciary, academe and so on who > serve them. > > The following tends to support my thesis ... > > "...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our > overthrow. ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from > another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns > of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must > confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place > too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly > to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the > dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own > undoing." -- Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837 > > "We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain basement > prices, in return for the false promise of more security... The > America being designed right now won't resemble the America we've been > defending... The danger isn't that Big Brother may storm the castle > gates. The danger is that Americans don't realize that he is already > inside the castle walls." -- Wayne LaPierre > > "Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend > of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to > survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from > Washington -- regardless of who wins the Presidency." -- James Bovard > in Voting is Overrated > > Regards, > > John > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Yves Bajard > To: A renewed Mai-Not > Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 3:48 AM > Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new > sustainable economy > > > > Nearly a month has gone since I received John Foster's March > 28 reply to my former message of March 26. My apologies, but > that was not negligence. I had many things to do in very > little time on several topics. > > Before the issue becomes stale, let me answer John, briefly > and seriously. > > You, John (summarizing your points) are not a 'Marxist', but > you considers irrefutable that : > 1. Marx's explications are valid about the socio-economic > context of capitalism's mode of social production, > distribution and exchange . > 2. His observation is also valid that History until now > is the history of class struggle > 3. All ancient/preceding civilisations and modes of > production was characterised by structural inequality, > with political and economic domination of the mass by > a non-working, minority who ruled over them, exploited > their labour through (primarily) ideological means > and, when nothing else was possible through the use of > brute physical force. > 4. Now, regardless of the words/concepts used to > describe the world, the 'rich countries' AND the > 'poor countries' are characterized by gross structural > inequalities and a raft of similar politico-economic > and social 'crises'. > 5. These result from the contradictions endemic to 'Free > Market' or Neo-liberal Capitalism. > 6. Our current global malaise began with the 'halcyon' > few decades that followed WWII (appalling waste and > destruction) > 7. Greatly enhanced technological advances everywhere > produced a mind-boggling array of labour-saving > devices and luxury goods. > 8. New markets had to be created or 'opened up' quickly > and the finance sector had to be freed up to provide > worldwide access to easy credit with which people > could these consumer goods and services. > 9. Here was the beginning of an acceleration of the > process of globalisation. > 10. In the 'rich countries' organised labour fought to > obtain a greater share of this 'bonanza'. > 11. The giant trans-national corporations reacted to these > demands by exporting their manufacturing (and service) > activities to 'cheap labour' countries. > 12. Many of these countries were run by corrupt > individuals and families (e.g., The Phillipines, > Indonesia and Chile) who ruthlessly exploited their > country's huge human and natural resources to enrich > themselves (with the blessign and support of the giant > trans-national corporations, and of the governments of > rich countries) . > 13. Meanwhile, the peoples of Algeria, India, Malaya, > North Korea, North Viet Nam, and various African > nations waged long and bitter struggles to free > themselves of exploitation and expropriation of their > country's wealth by their former imperial-colonial > masters, > 14. To my remark that your use of words such as > "maelstrom", "revolution", " prolonged and bitter > struggle" suggested that you saw the whole thing as > a fight you replied that Historic records are proof > that the rich have never given up their wealth and > power voluntarily. The 'alternative' critical history > documents are replete with explications of prolonged > and bitter struggles, uprisings, revolutions and > political-social maelstroms, as millions of 'ordinary > ('working class') folk fought for a better life. Also, > with 'The Market' flooded with small arms, struggles > continue now, worldwide. > 15. Moreover, the 'ordinary' peoples appreciate that one > 'option' of the rich to preserve Capital > Accumulation, is to trigger military conflict and mass > destruction on a global scale. This option has been > used in the past and there is no reason why the > dominant and 'emerging' superpower states and their > 'competitive' trans-national corporations and > financiers should ne use it while they fight one > another to control dwindling supplies of fossil based > fuels, etc. > > I agree fully with you, John, up to point 12. re the > following points, here are my comments > > .Your point 13 is slightly idealistic, in my opinion, the wars > of liberation were fought by ordinary people to give power to > another type of minority, whose members enjoyed power under > several types of labels, including socialism, democracy and > the like. Humbug.. > > 2. I agree with points 14 and 15, in that History shows > that no social progress was ever achieved without > violence. Yet, I would argue that in ALL > circumstances, History also shows that the progress > achieved were slowly or violently eroded and finally > annihilated by the very forces that conceded them or > by other groups of people who took thesame route to > power over the masses, again under different labels. > China now is a striking example. > > > Now, what I do not agree with is your reference to History as > an unavoidable obstacle to change. (snip) > > > The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History > different from what it has been. This is part of the > challenge. And I am certain that it is technically possible. > What is missing is the awareness, determination and > self-forgetfulness among initial small groups of catalysts, > who like yeast, would inject new visions and trigger a change > of pace and of direction, including the powerful and their > opponents, now deadlocked in their everlasting (and unequal) > fight for a different sharing of the plunder.. Triggering this > or rather these small groups of catalysts is the real > challenge. > > And to my sorrow, I do not see Mai-Not as a useful part of > taking up the challenge. > > Your game, now. I hope I did not distort your mening,m John, > when summarizing it > > Yves ================================ Dion Giles' message below =================================== John Foster and Yves Bajard are addressing different issues. John has set out (in an excellent summary) the history of the struggle of the plebs against the sirs for the power to make decisions on national policies. Yves has bypassed that and focused on what decisions he considers need to be made, even deploring that the little group that swap information and views on Mai-not are doing nothing to adopt and enforce these momentous national decisions. I favour John's approach - see what we can contribute to the struggle for power to make the decisions so that the sirs can't wreck the world to protect their own narrow interests. Not a struggle to transfer power to other sirs, but to devolve more and more power to the people leaving the sirs with less and less. Dion Giles > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090426/2dd4cab9/attachment.html From thinker at thelakebc.ca Sun Apr 26 19:59:40 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Sun Apr 26 19:58:06 2009 Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy In-Reply-To: <1240781910.4843.569.camel@localhost> References: <011201c9ac49$136fe4a0$56ad57ca@jfos> <1237881624.4540.76.camel@localhost> <004f01c9acf8$3118b720$41ad57ca@jfos> <1238005136.15482.48.camel@localhost> <01ec01c9af65$7fdbaab0$08ad57ca@jfos> <1240681687.4996.124.camel@localhost> <035001c9c643$adf3bbf0$87ad57ca@jfos> <1240781910.4843.569.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <200904270257.n3R2vdtR014420@karma.reboot.ca> Yves, Your examples are exactly why I've stated 20 years ago that unless humanity turns to physical laws based economic theory and systems, it has no future and will self destruct as so many empires and systems have self destructed before in history. Where are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon now ? Religions, ideologies and all faith based systems have caused incredible damage throughout history, yet humanity still hasn't learned. If you want to change the system, you'll have to go after the crap that's being taught in the universities as "sciences".. I've long advocated that the so called "economics" departments and faculties should be transferred to the "divinities" . WW 1 and 2, plus the death camps of Stalin, Hitler, Mao have killed approx 130 million people in about 60-70 years. The neoclassical market economic theory is killing the same number in about 4-5 years. This means it is the biggest crime wave in human history, yet it is still being taught in our universities as a "science". No good going after the politicians and the ruling sectors without questioning and cutting to pieces the scriptures they're using to justify and legalize the worst crimes and mass murder. Yet, everybody is talking and complaining about politicians and VIPs, while the braindead professors are brainwashing students, making them mental cripples, or criminals for life. Where is the sense and justification of this? We've been working toward a sustainable system and self sufficiency for ourselves for most of our lives, after the starvation and privations we've experienced during and the postwar years, and have achieved it to a great degree, so we do talk from experience and not from theories. Cheers, Ed. At 02:38 PM 26/04/2009, you wrote: >Re John Foster's Sun, 2009-04-26 at 17:49 +1000 reply to my comments >of April 26, and to Dion Giles complementary comments of Sun, >2009-04-26 at 21:46 +0800,, let4 me say briefly that >1. I am not bypassing History at all. I am going very far down into >pre-history, and see that our civilization stems from a cultural >bifurcation that took place some 12 millenniums ago along a few big >rivers, when irrigated agriculture transformed the ways of life of a >few people.who until then had been hunters, gatherers, pastors and >itinerant agriculturalists. >This was absolutely not a genetic transformation, only cultural, but >very powerful. So powerful that it took until very recently for >those who lived that bifurcation to realize how powerful it is. >Those who started it did not have an inkling of the power they >released then. The change was from somewhat linear or relatively >very slow exponential growth to an accelerating exponential one (if >I may say, because exponential is already self-accelerating) . > >2. I recognize that, as human society has and always had been >governed by multi-thread torsades of thinking, that there was at all >times people like Confucius, Lao Tse, Christ, Buddha, Danton, >Robespierre, Jefferson, Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Mao and their >followers, who questioned the direction taken by the powerful, and >developed more or less long lasting (and self-distorting) lines of thought. > >3. In that, I also adhere to John Foster's approach of learning from >History to try and avoid the errors of the past. > >4. The difference I perceive between him and me, and also between >Dion and me is that my training as an engineer and eventually as a >geologist, my experience in many countries, built upon >a non-christian, but very humanistic family tradition, led me to >absorb the fact that now, the planet is overloaded by humans and >their activities on Earth, and that the governing system is >overshooting (as if nothing was the matter at all). > >And we are at an unprecedented stage where a movement of unknown >type but of any size, at an unknown and undefinable location and >time may precipitate a full collapse of the whole, including the >"powerful". For all I know, it may already be occurring at speeds >not usually measured in society, because the unit of time at which >it is measurable is much longer than the stock-exchange-based time >unit. If you look at the decade or the lustre, you may feel the >accelerating slide into chaos. > >5. I do not expect and never did expect the powerful to join meekly >into a movement toward a sustainable human society. However, there >are not many options open: > * either we try to overpower them, by attacking them with > hopefully a growing number of partisans joining the revolt. > * or we submit to them and try from the inside to alter the > course they have taken > * or again, we use Mao Dze Dong's strategy of infiltration and > after exploring the levels of weakness in a few of their chains of > top-down command and down-up information systems or chains, try to > influence a s many as we can among the middle level execs in the > system, and to gradually mobilize them into infiltration up, down > and on the sides of their position (conscious or not on their > part, it does not matter) >The first option has been tried repeatedly through history and >always failed. The leaders of the revoltees were either eliminated >or absorbed, with minimum concessions. I could not find any >exception. It is easy for the powerful to infiltrate any opponent >group and then turn it inside out, with for example financing, >direct or indirect. I can mention several current examples of >movements m,ost probably in this situation (evidence is very >difficult to obtain) > >The second one is self-defeating. Not one chance in a billion. > >I have chosen the third option. We need the energy available among >the powerful to effect the necessary transition. Conflict with them >is a lost cause and it will cause damages (casualties and social and >ecological destruction mainly, of such a magnitude that we (our >species and civilization) probably will not have a chance to >recover if we win, which is very unlikely., > >And as long as we have life and are relatively free, there is no >point in giving up. It would be the worst possible choice. > >Bet regards > >Yves Bajard. > > > >==========================+John Foster's message below >============================================ >>, what I do not agree with is your reference to History as an >> >unavoidable obstacle to change. >> >> ######################## >> >>Au contraire Yves; my whole raison d'etre in drawing attention to >>the vital importance of studying historical events and outcomes (as >>people such as Marx AND OTHERS have urged us to do), is to >>encourage folk to make the effort to study and LEARN from history >>... and thus AVOID making the same mistake(s), thereby obviating or >>at the very least minimising adverse outcomes arising from our >>contemporary politico-economic and social relations >> >>This is also why other dissidents - such as Trotsky, Mao and others >>advocated 'ongoing revolution', and that other great >>revolutionary/dissident Thomas Jefferson opined "The price of >>freedom is eternal vigilance"! Across the Atlantic, another >>dissident against English politico-economic oppression asserted that ... >> >>"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal >>vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the >>consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his >>guilt." (John Philpot Curran in 1790 in defence of the right to >>elect the Lord Mayor of Dublin.) >> >> >The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History different >> >from what it has been. This is part of the challenge. And I am certain >> >that it is technically possible. What is missing is the awareness, >> >determination and self-forgetfulness among initial small groups of >> >catalysts, who like yeast, would inject new visions and trigger a change >> >of pace and of direction (snip) ... Triggering ..these small groups of >> >catalysts is the real challenge. >> >>As history reveals, there have always been individual and group >>resistance to injustice and oppression. Today is no exception. >>There are millions of individual acts of resistance and organised >>actions by groups of individuals to globalisation, privatisation, >>genetic modification of our foodstuffs and seed stocks, corporate >>and bureaucratic corruption and treachery, and imperial wars of >>agression by the anti-social, anti-democratic 'leaders' of >>resource-depleted 'rich countries' of the West in search of cheap >>and reliable supplies of natural resources essential to >>maintaining, enhancing ('growing') and preserving the anti-social, >>anti-democratic system from which they expropriate their ill-gotten >>weath and privilege and the political power over others that such >>enormous personal/family wealth commands. >> >>What you appear to ignore here, Yves, is that every attempt by the >>many 'small groups of catalysts' to ' ...trigger a change of pace >>and of direction' is immediately countered by those whose >>politico-economic 'interests' are threatened by such groups. Those >>with great wealth and privilege are not about to meekly roll over >>and share their portfolios, mansions and other 'private' property >>with The Underprivileged! Nor are the battalions of well-rewarded >>corporate executives and technocrats, high-ranking officers in the >>various armed forces, high-ranking members of the Judiciary, >>academe and so on who serve them. >> >>The following tends to support my thesis ... >> >>"...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our >>overthrow. ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be >>from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the >>concerns of their government, from their carelessness and >>negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear >>that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public >>servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in >>this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become >>the instruments of their own undoing." -- Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837 >> >>"We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain >>basement prices, in return for the false promise of more >>security... The America being designed right now won't resemble the >>America we've been defending... The danger isn't that Big Brother >>may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't >>realize that he is already inside the castle walls." -- Wayne LaPierre >> >>"Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every >>friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our >>freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of >>the dangers from Washington -- regardless of who wins the >>Presidency." -- James Bovard in Voting is Overrated >> >> Regards, >>John >> >> >> >> >> >>----- Original Message ----- >> >>From: Yves Bajard >> >>To: A renewed Mai-Not >> >>Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 3:48 AM >> >>Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy >> >> >> >>Nearly a month has gone since I received John Foster's March 28 >>reply to my former message of March 26. My apologies, but that was >>not negligence. I had many things to do in very little time on several topics. >> >>Before the issue becomes stale, let me answer John, briefly and seriously. >> >>You, John (summarizing your points) are not a 'Marxist', but you >>considers irrefutable that : >>Marx's explications are valid about the socio-economic context of >>capitalism's mode of social production, distribution and exchange . >>His observation is also valid that History until now is the history >>of class struggle >>All ancient/preceding civilisations and modes of production was >>characterised by structural inequality, with political and economic >>domination of the mass by a non-working, minority who ruled over >>them, exploited their labour through (primarily) ideological means >>and, when nothing else was possible through the use of brute physical force. >>Now, regardless of the words/concepts used to describe the world, >>the 'rich countries' AND the 'poor countries' are characterized by >>gross structural inequalities and a raft of similar >>politico-economic and social 'crises'. >>These result from the contradictions endemic to 'Free Market' or >>Neo-liberal Capitalism. >>Our current global malaise began with the 'halcyon' few decades >>that followed WWII (appalling waste and destruction) >>Greatly enhanced technological advances everywhere produced a >>mind-boggling array of labour-saving devices and luxury goods. >>New markets had to be created or 'opened up' quickly and the >>finance sector had to be freed up to provide worldwide access to >>easy credit with which people could these consumer goods and services. >>Here was the beginning of an acceleration of the process of globalisation. >>In the 'rich countries' organised labour fought to obtain a >>greater share of this 'bonanza'. >>The giant trans-national corporations reacted to these demands by >>exporting their manufacturing (and service) activities to 'cheap >>labour' countries. >>Many of these countries were run by corrupt individuals and >>families (e.g., The Phillipines, Indonesia and Chile) who >>ruthlessly exploited their country's huge human and natural >>resources to enrich themselves (with the blessign and support of >>the giant trans-national corporations, and of the governments of >>rich countries) . >>Meanwhile, the peoples of Algeria, India, Malaya, North Korea, >>North Viet Nam, and various African nations waged long and bitter >>struggles to free themselves of exploitation and expropriation of >>their country's wealth by their former imperial-colonial masters, >>To my remark that your use of words such as "maelstrom", >>"revolution", " prolonged and bitter struggle" suggested that you >>saw the whole thing as a fight you replied that Historic records >>are proof that the rich have never given up their wealth and power >>voluntarily. The 'alternative' critical history documents are >>replete with explications of prolonged and bitter struggles, >>uprisings, revolutions and political-social maelstroms, as millions >>of 'ordinary ('working class') folk fought for a better life. Also, >>with 'The Market' flooded with small arms, struggles continue now, worldwide. >>Moreover, the 'ordinary' peoples appreciate that one 'option' of >>the rich to preserve Capital Accumulation, is to trigger military >>conflict and mass destruction on a global scale. This option has >>been used in the past and there is no reason why the dominant and >>'emerging' superpower states and their 'competitive' >>trans-national corporations and financiers should ne use it while >>they fight one another to control dwindling supplies of fossil >>based fuels, etc. >>I agree fully with you, John, up to point 12. re the following >>points, here are my comments >> >> >> >>.Your point 13 is slightly idealistic, in my opinion, the wars of >>liberation were fought by ordinary people to give power to another >>type of minority, whose members enjoyed power under several types >>of labels, including socialism, democracy and the like. Humbug.. >> >>I agree with points 14 and 15, in that History shows that >>no social progress was ever achieved without violence. Yet, I >>would argue that in ALL circumstances, History also shows that the >>progress achieved were slowly or violently eroded and finally >>annihilated by the very forces that conceded them or by other >>groups of people who took thesame route to power over the masses, >>again under different labels. China now is a striking example. >> >>Now, what I do not agree with is your reference to History as an >>unavoidable obstacle to change. (snip) >> >> >> >>The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History >>different from what it has been. This is part of the >>challenge. And I am certain that it is technically possible. What >>is missing is the awareness, determination and self-forgetfulness >>among initial small groups of catalysts, who like yeast, would >>inject new visions and trigger a change of pace and of direction, >>including the powerful and their opponents, now deadlocked in their >>everlasting (and unequal) fight for a different sharing of the >>plunder.. Triggering this or rather these small groups of catalysts >>is the real challenge. >> >>And to my sorrow, I do not see Mai-Not as a useful part of taking >>up the challenge. >> >>Your game, now. I hope I did not distort your mening,m John, when >>summarizing it >> >>Yves >================================ Dion Giles' message below >=================================== >John Foster and Yves Bajard are addressing different issues. John >has set out (in an excellent summary) the history of the struggle of >the plebs against the sirs for the power to make decisions on >national policies. Yves has bypassed that and focused on what >decisions he considers need to be made, even deploring that the >little group that swap information and views on Mai-not are doing >nothing to adopt and enforce these momentous national decisions. I >favour John's approach - see what we can contribute to the struggle >for power to make the decisions so that the sirs can't wreck the >world to protect their own narrow interests. Not a struggle to >transfer power to other sirs, but to devolve more and more power to >the people leaving the sirs with less and less. > >Dion Giles > >> >> >> >_______________________________________________ >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 - www.avg.com >Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.4/2081 - Release Date: >04/26/09 09:44:00 From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Apr 27 01:00:28 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Mon Apr 27 01:01:36 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090427080029.35A7AF2A7@fep05.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090427/2c85dfa2/attachment.html From creuss at bluewin.ch Mon Apr 27 06:20:59 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Mon Apr 27 06:24:06 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem Message-ID: Dion Giles wrote: > Have extreme events become more frequent? The 10 hottest years since the 19th century were within the last 12 years. Is that extreme enough? > Has carbon dioxide caused the change in frequency?  Correlation > isn't enough - need a mechanism The mechanism is vertical movements because CO2 heats up the polluted air near the ground (CO2 sources), causing it to rise. This can be observed already on small local scale. > and need to eliminate the possibility > that one cause has led to both (e.g. global warming from some other cause > - as on Mars - leading to both This can be eliminated by observing the locations of highest instability coinciding with the locations of highest CO2 emissions. > Is the CO2 from industry or is it from oceans warmed in another way? Again, just look at the (landlocked!) sources, btw that includes traffic remote from industry... > Without robust answers to questions like these, it is not possible > to attribute weather insatiability to industry. It can be observed/tested pretty easily... > An interesting sidebar, if anyone has access to humidity data, can the > number of Gt of water vapour in the atmosphere be plotted against time > (year by tear, decade by decade etc)? Who is supposed to measure the total sum of water vapor around the planet? Pretty much impossible for a given point in time, much more on a continuum over decades. > Incidentally I had thought Gore did relate tornadoes etc to industrial > emissions. Gore attributed stronger tornadoes to increased water vapor from "warming" (average temperature!), not to increased atmospherical instability in wind speeds and temperature differences in time and space. Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Apr 27 06:50:13 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Mon Apr 27 06:50:46 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090427135014.419781281A@fep03.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> Of all the emissions that come from industry and concentrations of vehicles, there are two of interest. One is CO2 The other is heat. Dion Giles At 21:20 27/04/2009, you wrote: >Dion Giles wrote: > > Have extreme events become more frequent? > >The 10 hottest years since the 19th century were within the last 12 years. >Is that extreme enough? > > > Has carbon dioxide caused the change in frequency?  Correlation > > isn't enough - need a mechanism > >The mechanism is vertical movements because CO2 heats up the polluted air >near the ground (CO2 sources), causing it to rise. This can be observed >already on small local scale. > > > and need to eliminate the possibility > > that one cause has led to both (e.g. global warming from some other cause > > - as on Mars - leading to both > >This can be eliminated by observing the locations of highest instability >coinciding with the locations of highest CO2 emissions. > > > Is the CO2 from industry or is it from oceans warmed in another way? > >Again, just look at the (landlocked!) sources, btw that includes traffic >remote from industry... > > > Without robust answers to questions like these, it is not possible > > to attribute weather insatiability to industry. > >It can be observed/tested pretty easily... > > > An interesting sidebar, if anyone has access to humidity data, can the > > number of Gt of water vapour in the atmosphere be plotted against time > > (year by tear, decade by decade etc)? > >Who is supposed to measure the total sum of water vapor around the planet? >Pretty much impossible for a given point in time, much more on a continuum >over decades. > > > Incidentally I had thought Gore did relate tornadoes etc to industrial > > emissions. > >Gore attributed stronger tornadoes to increased water vapor from "warming" >(average temperature!), not to increased atmospherical instability in >wind speeds and temperature differences in time and space. > >Chris > > > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword >"igve". > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From creuss at bluewin.ch Mon Apr 27 07:09:14 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Mon Apr 27 07:12:28 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem Message-ID: > Of all the emissions that come from industry and concentrations of > vehicles, there are two of interest. > > One is CO2 > > The other is heat. Ha, ha. Of course it's not that simple. This emitted heat itself would be quickly diffused and radiated to outer space. And btw this heat is very little compared to the "hot plate" effect of large paved/built areas. But the heating derived from CO2 remains and is always reproduced by the greenhouse effect, causing instability wherever the CO2 is. Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Apr 27 07:31:30 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Mon Apr 27 07:32:13 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090427143131.5581C12B3D@fep04.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> At 22:09 27/04/2009, you wrote: > > Of all the emissions that come from industry and concentrations of > > vehicles, there are two of interest. > > > > One is CO2 > > > > The other is heat. > >Ha, ha. Of course it's not that simple. This emitted heat itself would be >quickly diffused and radiated to outer space. And btw this heat is very >little compared to the "hot plate" effect of large paved/built areas. > >But the heating derived from CO2 remains and is always reproduced by the >greenhouse effect, causing instability wherever the CO2 is. ======== ?? Different types of heat depending on their source? One type diffuses away and shuffles off into space, the other type hangs around to cause the well known "heat island" effect, and makes cities even more unbearable in summer than open country. Which type of heat is it that comes from greenhouse trapping in pockets of higher CO2 concentration near industry or near lots of cars? Which type of heat causes heat waves? Tornadoes? As cyclones appear to be generated mainly at sea, how can they correlate with the location of CO2-emitting industry? The more one looks at this the more like the 9/11 scenario it seems to get - incomprehensible without a lot more data. Dion Giles >Chris > > > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword >"igve". > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From duanebehrens at cox.net Mon Apr 27 12:36:00 2009 From: duanebehrens at cox.net (duanebehrens@cox.net) Date: Mon Apr 27 12:36:06 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem In-Reply-To: <20090427143131.5581C12B3D@fep04.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> References: <20090427143131.5581C12B3D@fep04.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> Message-ID: <2798366-1240860936-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-948723957-@bxe1028.bisx.prod.on.blackberry> Would someone please send info on how to join this forum? Friend Mark may be interested . . . he certainly will provide some thoughtful input. Thanks. Sent on the Now Network™ from my Sprint® BlackBerry -----Original Message----- From: Dion Giles Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:31:30 To: A renewed Mai-Not Subject: Re: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem At 22:09 27/04/2009, you wrote: > > Of all the emissions that come from industry and concentrations of > > vehicles, there are two of interest. > > > > One is CO2 > > > > The other is heat. > >Ha, ha. Of course it's not that simple. This emitted heat itself would be >quickly diffused and radiated to outer space. And btw this heat is very >little compared to the "hot plate" effect of large paved/built areas. > >But the heating derived from CO2 remains and is always reproduced by the >greenhouse effect, causing instability wherever the CO2 is. ======== ?? Different types of heat depending on their source? One type diffuses away and shuffles off into space, the other type hangs around to cause the well known "heat island" effect, and makes cities even more unbearable in summer than open country. Which type of heat is it that comes from greenhouse trapping in pockets of higher CO2 concentration near industry or near lots of cars? Which type of heat causes heat waves? Tornadoes? As cyclones appear to be generated mainly at sea, how can they correlate with the location of CO2-emitting industry? The more one looks at this the more like the 9/11 scenario it seems to get - incomprehensible without a lot more data. Dion Giles >Chris > > > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword >"igve". > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Mon Apr 27 15:22:23 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Mon Apr 27 15:28:57 2009 Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy References: <011201c9ac49$136fe4a0$56ad57ca@jfos><1237881624.4540.76.camel@localhost><004f01c9acf8$3118b720$41ad57ca@jfos><1238005136.15482.48.camel@localhost><01ec01c9af65$7fdbaab0$08ad57ca@jfos><1240681687.4996.124.camel@localhost><035001c9c643$adf3bbf0$87ad57ca@jfos><1240781910.4843.569.camel@localhost> <200904270257.n3R2vdtR014420@karma.reboot.ca> Message-ID: <003001c9c787$77cdacd0$46ad57ca@jfos> " everybody is talking and complaining about politicians and VIPs, while the braindead professors are brainwashing students, making them mental cripples, or criminals for life. Where is the sense and justification of this?" In the well-rewarded sinicures and affluent lifestyles of said 'professors'. Thousands of French economics students at the Sorbonne and across France have been waging a well-orchestrated campaign to have serious changes made to the curriculae, rejucting the dominant neo-liberal theory as 'autistic'. How would you propose removing the braindead professors from office Ed, given their political connections with the global banking fraternity, the WTO, IMF, World BankOECD and the like! John foster Victoria, Australia ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Deak" To: "A renewed Mai-Not" Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 12:59 PM Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy > Yves, > > Your examples are exactly why I've stated 20 years ago that unless > humanity turns to physical laws based economic theory and > systems, it has no future and will self destruct as so many empires > and systems have self destructed before in history. Where are the > Hanging Gardens of Babylon now ? > > Religions, ideologies and all faith based systems have caused > incredible damage throughout history, yet humanity still hasn't learned. > > If you want to change the system, you'll have to go after the crap > that's being taught in the universities as "sciences".. I've long > advocated that the so called "economics" departments and faculties > should be transferred to the "divinities" . > > WW 1 and 2, plus the death camps of Stalin, Hitler, Mao have killed > approx 130 million people in about 60-70 years. > > The neoclassical market economic theory is killing the same number in > about 4-5 years. This means it is the biggest crime wave in human > history, yet it is still being taught in our universities as a "science". > > No good going after the politicians and the ruling sectors without > questioning and cutting to pieces the scriptures they're using to > justify and legalize the worst crimes and mass murder. Yet, everybody > is talking and complaining about politicians and VIPs, while the > braindead professors are brainwashing students, making them mental > cripples, or criminals for life. > > Where is the sense and justification of this? > > We've been working toward a sustainable system and self sufficiency > for ourselves for most of our lives, after the starvation and > privations we've experienced during and the postwar years, and have > achieved it to a great degree, so we do talk from experience and not > from theories. > > Cheers, Ed. > > > > > At 02:38 PM 26/04/2009, you wrote: >>Re John Foster's Sun, 2009-04-26 at 17:49 +1000 reply to my comments >>of April 26, and to Dion Giles complementary comments of Sun, >>2009-04-26 at 21:46 +0800,, let4 me say briefly that >>1. I am not bypassing History at all. I am going very far down into >>pre-history, and see that our civilization stems from a cultural >>bifurcation that took place some 12 millenniums ago along a few big >>rivers, when irrigated agriculture transformed the ways of life of a >>few people.who until then had been hunters, gatherers, pastors and >>itinerant agriculturalists. >>This was absolutely not a genetic transformation, only cultural, but >>very powerful. So powerful that it took until very recently for >>those who lived that bifurcation to realize how powerful it is. >>Those who started it did not have an inkling of the power they >>released then. The change was from somewhat linear or relatively >>very slow exponential growth to an accelerating exponential one (if >>I may say, because exponential is already self-accelerating) . >> >>2. I recognize that, as human society has and always had been >>governed by multi-thread torsades of thinking, that there was at all >>times people like Confucius, Lao Tse, Christ, Buddha, Danton, >>Robespierre, Jefferson, Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Mao and their >>followers, who questioned the direction taken by the powerful, and >>developed more or less long lasting (and self-distorting) lines of >>thought. >> >>3. In that, I also adhere to John Foster's approach of learning from >>History to try and avoid the errors of the past. >> >>4. The difference I perceive between him and me, and also between >>Dion and me is that my training as an engineer and eventually as a >>geologist, my experience in many countries, built upon >>a non-christian, but very humanistic family tradition, led me to >>absorb the fact that now, the planet is overloaded by humans and >>their activities on Earth, and that the governing system is >>overshooting (as if nothing was the matter at all). >> >>And we are at an unprecedented stage where a movement of unknown >>type but of any size, at an unknown and undefinable location and >>time may precipitate a full collapse of the whole, including the >>"powerful". For all I know, it may already be occurring at speeds >>not usually measured in society, because the unit of time at which >>it is measurable is much longer than the stock-exchange-based time >>unit. If you look at the decade or the lustre, you may feel the >>accelerating slide into chaos. >> >>5. I do not expect and never did expect the powerful to join meekly >>into a movement toward a sustainable human society. However, there >>are not many options open: >> * either we try to overpower them, by attacking them with >> hopefully a growing number of partisans joining the revolt. >> * or we submit to them and try from the inside to alter the >> course they have taken >> * or again, we use Mao Dze Dong's strategy of infiltration and >> after exploring the levels of weakness in a few of their chains of >> top-down command and down-up information systems or chains, try to >> influence a s many as we can among the middle level execs in the >> system, and to gradually mobilize them into infiltration up, down >> and on the sides of their position (conscious or not on their >> part, it does not matter) >>The first option has been tried repeatedly through history and >>always failed. The leaders of the revoltees were either eliminated >>or absorbed, with minimum concessions. I could not find any >>exception. It is easy for the powerful to infiltrate any opponent >>group and then turn it inside out, with for example financing, >>direct or indirect. I can mention several current examples of >>movements m,ost probably in this situation (evidence is very >>difficult to obtain) >> >>The second one is self-defeating. Not one chance in a billion. >> >>I have chosen the third option. We need the energy available among >>the powerful to effect the necessary transition. Conflict with them >>is a lost cause and it will cause damages (casualties and social and >>ecological destruction mainly, of such a magnitude that we (our >>species and civilization) probably will not have a chance to >>recover if we win, which is very unlikely., >> >>And as long as we have life and are relatively free, there is no >>point in giving up. It would be the worst possible choice. >> >>Bet regards >> >>Yves Bajard. >> >> >> >>==========================+John Foster's message below >>============================================ >>>, what I do not agree with is your reference to History as an >>> >unavoidable obstacle to change. >>> >>> ######################## >>> >>>Au contraire Yves; my whole raison d'etre in drawing attention to >>>the vital importance of studying historical events and outcomes (as >>>people such as Marx AND OTHERS have urged us to do), is to >>>encourage folk to make the effort to study and LEARN from history >>>... and thus AVOID making the same mistake(s), thereby obviating or >>>at the very least minimising adverse outcomes arising from our >>>contemporary politico-economic and social relations >>> >>>This is also why other dissidents - such as Trotsky, Mao and others >>>advocated 'ongoing revolution', and that other great >>>revolutionary/dissident Thomas Jefferson opined "The price of >>>freedom is eternal vigilance"! Across the Atlantic, another >>>dissident against English politico-economic oppression asserted that ... >>> >>>"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal >>>vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the >>>consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his >>>guilt." (John Philpot Curran in 1790 in defence of the right to >>>elect the Lord Mayor of Dublin.) >>> >>> >The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History different >>> >from what it has been. This is part of the challenge. And I am certain >>> >that it is technically possible. What is missing is the awareness, >>> >determination and self-forgetfulness among initial small groups of >>> >catalysts, who like yeast, would inject new visions and trigger a >>> >change >>> >of pace and of direction (snip) ... Triggering ..these small groups >>> >of >>> >catalysts is the real challenge. >>> >>>As history reveals, there have always been individual and group >>>resistance to injustice and oppression. Today is no exception. >>>There are millions of individual acts of resistance and organised >>>actions by groups of individuals to globalisation, privatisation, >>>genetic modification of our foodstuffs and seed stocks, corporate >>>and bureaucratic corruption and treachery, and imperial wars of >>>agression by the anti-social, anti-democratic 'leaders' of >>>resource-depleted 'rich countries' of the West in search of cheap >>>and reliable supplies of natural resources essential to >>>maintaining, enhancing ('growing') and preserving the anti-social, >>>anti-democratic system from which they expropriate their ill-gotten >>>weath and privilege and the political power over others that such >>>enormous personal/family wealth commands. >>> >>>What you appear to ignore here, Yves, is that every attempt by the >>>many 'small groups of catalysts' to ' ...trigger a change of pace >>>and of direction' is immediately countered by those whose >>>politico-economic 'interests' are threatened by such groups. Those >>>with great wealth and privilege are not about to meekly roll over >>>and share their portfolios, mansions and other 'private' property >>>with The Underprivileged! Nor are the battalions of well-rewarded >>>corporate executives and technocrats, high-ranking officers in the >>>various armed forces, high-ranking members of the Judiciary, >>>academe and so on who serve them. >>> >>>The following tends to support my thesis ... >>> >>>"...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our >>>overthrow. ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be >>>from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the >>>concerns of their government, from their carelessness and >>>negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear >>>that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public >>>servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in >>>this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become >>>the instruments of their own undoing." -- Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837 >>> >>>"We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain >>>basement prices, in return for the false promise of more >>>security... The America being designed right now won't resemble the >>>America we've been defending... The danger isn't that Big Brother >>>may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't >>>realize that he is already inside the castle walls." -- Wayne LaPierre >>> >>>"Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every >>>friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our >>>freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of >>>the dangers from Washington -- regardless of who wins the >>>Presidency." -- James Bovard in Voting is Overrated >>> >>> Regards, >>>John >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>----- Original Message ----- >>> >>>From: Yves Bajard >>> >>>To: A renewed Mai-Not >>> >>>Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 3:48 AM >>> >>>Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy >>> >>> >>> >>>Nearly a month has gone since I received John Foster's March 28 >>>reply to my former message of March 26. My apologies, but that was >>>not negligence. I had many things to do in very little time on several >>>topics. >>> >>>Before the issue becomes stale, let me answer John, briefly and >>>seriously. >>> >>>You, John (summarizing your points) are not a 'Marxist', but you >>>considers irrefutable that : >>>Marx's explications are valid about the socio-economic context of >>>capitalism's mode of social production, distribution and exchange . >>>His observation is also valid that History until now is the history >>>of class struggle >>>All ancient/preceding civilisations and modes of production was >>>characterised by structural inequality, with political and economic >>>domination of the mass by a non-working, minority who ruled over >>>them, exploited their labour through (primarily) ideological means >>>and, when nothing else was possible through the use of brute physical >>>force. >>>Now, regardless of the words/concepts used to describe the world, >>>the 'rich countries' AND the 'poor countries' are characterized by >>>gross structural inequalities and a raft of similar >>>politico-economic and social 'crises'. >>>These result from the contradictions endemic to 'Free Market' or >>>Neo-liberal Capitalism. >>>Our current global malaise began with the 'halcyon' few decades >>>that followed WWII (appalling waste and destruction) >>>Greatly enhanced technological advances everywhere produced a >>>mind-boggling array of labour-saving devices and luxury goods. >>>New markets had to be created or 'opened up' quickly and the >>>finance sector had to be freed up to provide worldwide access to >>>easy credit with which people could these consumer goods and services. >>>Here was the beginning of an acceleration of the process of >>>globalisation. >>>In the 'rich countries' organised labour fought to obtain a >>>greater share of this 'bonanza'. >>>The giant trans-national corporations reacted to these demands by >>>exporting their manufacturing (and service) activities to 'cheap >>>labour' countries. >>>Many of these countries were run by corrupt individuals and >>>families (e.g., The Phillipines, Indonesia and Chile) who >>>ruthlessly exploited their country's huge human and natural >>>resources to enrich themselves (with the blessign and support of >>>the giant trans-national corporations, and of the governments of >>>rich countries) . >>>Meanwhile, the peoples of Algeria, India, Malaya, North Korea, >>>North Viet Nam, and various African nations waged long and bitter >>>struggles to free themselves of exploitation and expropriation of >>>their country's wealth by their former imperial-colonial masters, >>>To my remark that your use of words such as "maelstrom", >>>"revolution", " prolonged and bitter struggle" suggested that you >>>saw the whole thing as a fight you replied that Historic records >>>are proof that the rich have never given up their wealth and power >>>voluntarily. The 'alternative' critical history documents are >>>replete with explications of prolonged and bitter struggles, >>>uprisings, revolutions and political-social maelstroms, as millions >>>of 'ordinary ('working class') folk fought for a better life. Also, >>>with 'The Market' flooded with small arms, struggles continue now, >>>worldwide. >>>Moreover, the 'ordinary' peoples appreciate that one 'option' of >>>the rich to preserve Capital Accumulation, is to trigger military >>>conflict and mass destruction on a global scale. This option has >>>been used in the past and there is no reason why the dominant and >>>'emerging' superpower states and their 'competitive' >>>trans-national corporations and financiers should ne use it while >>>they fight one another to control dwindling supplies of fossil >>>based fuels, etc. >>>I agree fully with you, John, up to point 12. re the following >>>points, here are my comments >>> >>> >>> >>>.Your point 13 is slightly idealistic, in my opinion, the wars of >>>liberation were fought by ordinary people to give power to another >>>type of minority, whose members enjoyed power under several types >>>of labels, including socialism, democracy and the like. Humbug.. >>> >>>I agree with points 14 and 15, in that History shows that >>>no social progress was ever achieved without violence. Yet, I >>>would argue that in ALL circumstances, History also shows that the >>>progress achieved were slowly or violently eroded and finally >>>annihilated by the very forces that conceded them or by other >>>groups of people who took thesame route to power over the masses, >>>again under different labels. China now is a striking example. >>> >>>Now, what I do not agree with is your reference to History as an >>>unavoidable obstacle to change. (snip) >>> >>> >>> >>>The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History >>>different from what it has been. This is part of the >>>challenge. And I am certain that it is technically possible. What >>>is missing is the awareness, determination and self-forgetfulness >>>among initial small groups of catalysts, who like yeast, would >>>inject new visions and trigger a change of pace and of direction, >>>including the powerful and their opponents, now deadlocked in their >>>everlasting (and unequal) fight for a different sharing of the >>>plunder.. Triggering this or rather these small groups of catalysts >>>is the real challenge. >>> >>>And to my sorrow, I do not see Mai-Not as a useful part of taking >>>up the challenge. >>> >>>Your game, now. I hope I did not distort your mening,m John, when >>>summarizing it >>> >>>Yves >>================================ Dion Giles' message below >>=================================== >>John Foster and Yves Bajard are addressing different issues. John >>has set out (in an excellent summary) the history of the struggle of >>the plebs against the sirs for the power to make decisions on >>national policies. Yves has bypassed that and focused on what >>decisions he considers need to be made, even deploring that the >>little group that swap information and views on Mai-not are doing >>nothing to adopt and enforce these momentous national decisions. I >>favour John's approach - see what we can contribute to the struggle >>for power to make the decisions so that the sirs can't wreck the >>world to protect their own narrow interests. Not a struggle to >>transfer power to other sirs, but to devolve more and more power to >>the people leaving the sirs with less and less. >> >>Dion Giles >> >>> >>> >>> >>_______________________________________________ >>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 - www.avg.com >>Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.4/2081 - Release Date: >>04/26/09 09:44:00 > > _______________________________________________ > 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 - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.287 / Virus Database: 270.12.4/2081 - Release Date: 04/26/09 09:44:00 From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Apr 27 21:07:55 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Mon Apr 27 22:09:19 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem In-Reply-To: <2798366-1240860936-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.ne t-948723957-@bxe1028.bisx.prod.on.blackberry> References: <20090427143131.5581C12B3D@fep04.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> <2798366-1240860936-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-948723957-@bxe1028.bisx.prod.on.blackberry> Message-ID: <20090428040758.1887D12C0E@fep04.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> Perhaps a blank email to mai-not-request@globalproblematique.net?subject=subscribe Might do the trick. Whatever it is, we are very short of subscribers and there should be a recruiting drive. If that were to happen, people approached would need a clear and simple way of subscribing - like the above if it works. I suggest working on a spiel to back suggestions to individuals that joining Mai-not would lead to a very worthwhile experience. We need to be very clear about what Mai-not is and what it isn't. It has some of the characteristics of blogs and web bulletins like Truthout and AlterNet but with the very great difference that no division is made between provision of articles and reader discussion. Thus there is no editorial board of sirs to decide what items qualify to provide information and initiate debate. Mai-not is truly interactive. The benefit to the subscriber is continually updated information and continual discussion - supplied by well-read and perceptive people - relevant to the empowerment of the citizens over the sirs. This keeps us off the ice floe on which we will belong when we have acquired no new knowledge or perspectives all day. Dion Giles At 03:36 28/04/2009, Duane wrote: >Would someone please send info on how to join >this forum? Friend Mark may be interested . . . >he certainly will provide some thoughtful input. Thanks. >Sent on the Now Network? from my Sprint? BlackBerry. From creuss at bluewin.ch Tue Apr 28 02:31:01 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Tue Apr 28 02:34:15 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] U.N.: No Pig Ever Had "Swine Flu"! Message-ID: This genetically engineered virus came right out of a lab into humans, without ever seeing a pig farm. Rumsfeld needs more Tamiflu income... <> http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20090427/thl-virus-has-bird-pig-human-components -5effa79.html Virus has bird, pig, human components: watchdog AFP Yesterday, 06:30 pm The top agency for health in farm animals on Monday said Mexico's outbreak of deadly influenza was unleashed by a pathogen mixed from bird, human and hog viruses and branded the term "swine flu" as wrong and harmful to pig farmers. The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said the pathogen was "not a classic human virus... but a virus which includes [in] its characteristics swine, avian and human virus components." "The virus has not been isolated in animals to date. Therefore, it is not justified to name this disease swine influenza," the Paris-based OIE said in a statement. It said that science would show whether the virus was circulating among farm animals and the outcome should determine whether countries were justified in banning pig imports. "Currently, only findings related to the circulation of this virus in pigs in zones of countries having human cases would justify trade measures on the importation of pigs from these countries," it said. In an interview with AFP, OIE Director General Bernard Vallat described the virus as a "cocktail" of four different strains. "The background of these strains has been reconstituted," he said. "The avian strain is of American origin, and of the two swine strains, one is American origin and the other appears to be Asian. The human strain is American." He added: "There is no proof that this virus, currently circulating among humans, really is of animal origin. There is no element to support this." Vallat argued that "it would be really unfair to penalise pig farmers, who depend on their output for their livelihood, by talking about a risk which is not at all proven." The OIE noted that past epidemics of human influenza epidemics with animal origin had been named after their geographical origin, such as Spanish flu or Asian flu. "It would be logical to call this disease 'North American influenza'," it suggested. Vallat said that "no-one, so far" had been able to show how or where the novel strain of virus had brewed. Pigs are well-known crucibles for mixing viruses, able to harbour strains of flu that normally are specific to pigs, birds and humans. When present in the same animal, these viruses are able to swap genes as they replicate, which can result in a new strain and leap the species barrier to humans. However, the strain may further mutate as it is transmitted among humans, and, in addition, humans may infect pigs rather than the other way round. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From creuss at bluewin.ch Tue Apr 28 03:15:39 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Tue Apr 28 03:18:52 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem Message-ID: Dion Giles asked: > ?? Different types of heat depending on their source? One type > diffuses away and shuffles off into space, the other type hangs > around to cause the well known "heat island" effect, and makes cities > even more unbearable in summer than open country. Which type of heat > is it that comes from greenhouse trapping in pockets of higher CO2 > concentration near industry or near lots of cars? The heat that directly comes out of the exhaust pipes is relatively little and diffuses quickly. Whereas the CO2 creates a remaining greenhouse effect wherever it is. THIS effect is heating up the planet -- not the direct heat. Regular surplus heat gets emitted into outer space (or else the planet would have overheated long ago), but the CO2-increased greenhouse effect keeps back more of it and the CO2 creates surplus heat that remains in the atmosphere (by definition of the greenhouse). > Tornadoes? As cyclones appear to be generated > mainly at sea, how can they correlate with the location of > CO2-emitting industry? I didn't say that cyclones correlate with the location of industry, but that CO2 causes instability where it is. Cyclones are generated mainly over the sea because there's much more water vapor there, and due to higher land emissions & diffusion, also more CO2. And a greenhouse-warmed sea releases more CO2. But due to high CO2 emissions, tornadoes also appear over land (now even in Europe where they never appeared before), and cyclones coming from the sea get stronger over land than in the old days. > The more one looks at this the more like the > 9/11 scenario it seems to get - incomprehensible without a lot more data. Just because Al Gore talks BS doesn't mean that man-made climate change is BS. It doesn't take rocket science either to see that -- just ask old people to compare the old days with today. Thinks like sudden temperature changes (like 14?C within 1 hour, as happened here recently) didn't happen back then. And yes, it can be explained with CO2. Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Apr 28 03:57:46 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Tue Apr 28 05:09:13 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090428105747.0A976F79A@fep08.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> See http://www.urbanclimateresearch.org/pdfDocuments/The%20role%20of%20Heat%20Pollution%20in%20Urban%20Climate%20&%20Global%20Warming.pdf Dion Giles At 18:15 28/04/2009, Chris Reuss wrote: >Dion Giles asked: > > ?? Different types of heat depending on their source? One type > > diffuses away and shuffles off into space, the other type hangs > > around to cause the well known "heat island" effect, and makes cities > > even more unbearable in summer than open country. Which type of heat > > is it that comes from greenhouse trapping in pockets of higher CO2 > > concentration near industry or near lots of cars? > >The heat that directly comes out of the exhaust pipes is relatively little >and diffuses quickly. Whereas the CO2 creates a remaining greenhouse effect >wherever it is. THIS effect is heating up the planet -- not the direct heat. >Regular surplus heat gets emitted into outer space (or else the planet would >have overheated long ago), but the CO2-increased greenhouse effect keeps >back more of it and the CO2 creates surplus heat that remains in the >atmosphere (by definition of the greenhouse). > > > > Tornadoes? As cyclones appear to be generated > > mainly at sea, how can they correlate with the location of > > CO2-emitting industry? > >I didn't say that cyclones correlate with the location of industry, >but that CO2 causes instability where it is. > >Cyclones are generated mainly over the sea because there's much more >water vapor there, and due to higher land emissions & diffusion, also >more CO2. And a greenhouse-warmed sea releases more CO2. > >But due to high CO2 emissions, tornadoes also appear over land (now even >in Europe where they never appeared before), and cyclones coming from the >sea get stronger over land than in the old days. > > > > The more one looks at this the more like the > > 9/11 scenario it seems to get - incomprehensible without a lot more data. > >Just because Al Gore talks BS doesn't mean that man-made climate change is >BS. It doesn't take rocket science either to see that -- just ask old people >to compare the old days with today. Thinks like sudden temperature changes >(like 14?C within 1 hour, as happened here recently) didn't happen back then. >And yes, it can be explained with CO2. > >Chris > > > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword >"igve". > > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From creuss at bluewin.ch Tue Apr 28 06:41:17 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Tue Apr 28 06:44:27 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] re: Climate Link - the real problem Message-ID: > See > http://www.urbanclimateresearch.org/pdfDocuments/The%20role%20of%20Heat%20Pollution%20in%20Urban%20Climate%20&%20Global%20Warming.pdf The guy is wrong, for a simple reason: The solar energy that reaches a fifth of the Sahara desert alone would be enough to cover ALL GLOBAL human energy demand. >From this follows that the global man-made heat (from fossil fuels) is only a TINY (<1%) fraction of the solar heat reaching the Earth's surface -- and increasingly trapped by the greenhouse effect. In other words, man-made heat is insignificant to "global warming". Only GHGs matter. Btw, it is easy to see that the mountain rock sides beside my town make a stronger "hot plate" than my whole town. Especially since the rock is grey instead of white (snowy) due to CO2... And there's more area on this planet covered with rock than with towns... It's tragic that a supposed expert on energy-saving building doesn't know that solar energy is so powerful. Because this is the key to "zero-energy" housing... Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From netcfs at shaw.ca Tue Apr 28 09:28:05 2009 From: netcfs at shaw.ca (Yves Bajard) Date: Tue Apr 28 09:28:44 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request Message-ID: <1240936085.4843.628.camel@localhost> Dear Mai-notters: Mark Busch has requested joining Mai-Not. Anyone among you knows him and could vouch for him? Thanks Yves Bajard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090428/272ced4f/attachment.html From duanebehrens at cox.net Tue Apr 28 09:34:02 2009 From: duanebehrens at cox.net (duanebehrens@cox.net) Date: Tue Apr 28 09:34:04 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request In-Reply-To: <1240936085.4843.628.camel@localhost> References: <1240936085.4843.628.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <2045744753-1240936416-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-1412529831-@bxe1028.bisx.prod.on.blackberry> Yes, he's a friend. Sent on the Now Network™ from my Sprint® BlackBerry -----Original Message----- From: Yves Bajard Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:28:05 To: A renewed Mai-Not Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From thinker at thelakebc.ca Tue Apr 28 09:41:53 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Tue Apr 28 09:40:23 2009 Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy In-Reply-To: <003001c9c787$77cdacd0$46ad57ca@jfos> References: <011201c9ac49$136fe4a0$56ad57ca@jfos> <1237881624.4540.76.camel@localhost> <004f01c9acf8$3118b720$41ad57ca@jfos> <1238005136.15482.48.camel@localhost> <01ec01c9af65$7fdbaab0$08ad57ca@jfos> <1240681687.4996.124.camel@localhost> <035001c9c643$adf3bbf0$87ad57ca@jfos> <1240781910.4843.569.camel@localhost> <200904270257.n3R2vdtR014420@karma.reboot.ca> <003001c9c787$77cdacd0$46ad57ca@jfos> Message-ID: <200904281640.n3SGdtSR031445@karma.reboot.ca> John, I'm well aware of the French and Belgian students' revolt against autistic economics being rammed down their throats. Their revolt also went over to England at the time, and received support, but no signatures from the students. I remember one doctoral student saying at Cambridge : "I support it, but can't afford to sign my name, etc." Although I never took any economics, or had any interest in the crap until I was in my 50s, remembering the heady atmosphere of the postwar years at Cambridge, I'm certain, that any professor who may have tried to lecture the presently unquestioned theory of neoclassical economics at the time would have been laughed out of the classroom. So, what happened ? Why not now, when the incredible damage becoming more and more obvious every day? When I was on the ecol-econ list over 10 years ago, I received a number of offlist postings from students and even from some lecturers, saying that they knew that the theory was false and criminal, but had no choice if they wanted to pass, or keep their jobs. One lecturer at the U. of Waterloo in Ont. wrote that there students were tested for their willingness and capability to accept the theory, before they were even accepted . Some years ago, there was a witch hunt in US universities, weeding out and firing teaching staff who were unwilling to teach the garbage. Later a friend sent me a petition, signed by some 1,500 professors protesting against the corporate takeover of whole university departments, even in the sciences. Why is it that governments, politicians, big businesses and their executives can be and are being attacked and called all kinds of names openly, but nobody dares to question, or attack the origins of this crime wave, the universities ? There are hundreds, or even thousands of universities around the world and each of them has dozens of professors who could take and tear apart the pseudo religious priesthood of neoclassical economists in a few hours. Can anybody, please, explain to me why they don't and why is this crime wave coming out of our universities sacrosanct and untouchable ? I've been attacking this garbage theory on a number of worldwide economics forums, including several by the World Bank and have received nothing but support from all continents. Even an unsigned congratulatory one from the "Office of the Chief Economist", who then still was Stiglitz. My Efficiency Principle,that kills the theory on one page, has never been broken and used in doctoral dissertations, yet the world just keeps going downhill at an accelerated pace, without anybody doing anything about it. When we were being taken to nazi Germany for military training in Dec. 1944, when we arrived at their huge training facility of Neuhammer in Silezia, now in Poland, we were examined by SS doctors for our Aryan classification. One of the tests was the examination of the hairs on the top of our hands, which was supposed to show whether we had any Jewish blood. The "science" of the neoclassical theory, the GDP etc. reminds me strongly of those doctors and their science. Cheers, Ed sanity, humanity and science post-autistic economics newsletter No. 1, September 2000 To subscribe, send a blank email to pae_news@btinternet.com FRANCE The French economics mainstream is in a state of shock and apprehension following dramatic and unexpected events late in June. On the 21st the influential Paris daily, Le Monde, featured a long article under the headline "Economics Students Denounce the Lack of Pluralism in the Teaching Offered". Economics students at the ?cole Normale Sup?rieure, France's premier institution of higher learning, were circulating with great success a petition protesting against an excessive mathematical formalisation. The petition notes "a real schizophrenia" created by making modelling "an end in itself" and thereby cutting economics off from reality and forcing it into a state of "autism". The students, said a sympathetic Le Monde, call for an end to the hegemony of neoclassical theory and approaches derived from it, in favour of a pluralism that will include other approaches, especially those which permit the consideration of "concrete realities". Le Monde found French economists of renown, including Michel Verni?res, Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Daniel Cohen, willing to speak out in support of the students. Fitoussi, current head of the jury of the economics' agr?gation, said that "the students are right to denounce the way economics is generally taught" and that the over-use of mathematics "leads to a disembodiment of economic discourse". Daniel Cohen, economics professor at the ?cole Normale Sup?rieure, spoke of "the pathological role" played by mathematics in economics. Meanwhile, The Minister of Education, Jack Lang, assured Le Monde that he would study closely the appeal from the students. French radio and television also reported the students complaints and confirmed their legitimacy. On the 21st, BFM said that it was now recognized that "the teaching of economics no longer had any relation with the real world" and that "this discipline is going through an undeniable crisis". Also on the 21st, L'Humanit? quoted extensively from the students' open letter, while noting that in recent years several renown economists had expressed similar views. On the 23rd, Les Echos reported that a government report on university economics teaching had reached conclusions similar to those of the students. In their lengthy article, Les Echos noted that it is increasingly recognized that economics' "malaise is general and of longstanding" and that "under the guise of being scientific" it has cultivated an anti-scientific environment "which leaves no room for reflection and debate". On the 26th, the weekly, Marianne, carried an article about the student petition against "dogmatism" in the teaching of economics and for its replacement by "a pluralism of explanations". Marianne said that the petition, which was now on the Web, had 500 signatures, as well as growing support from economics teachers and interest from the highest levels of the French government. On June 30th, Le Nouvel Economiste, referring to the students' petition and "mobilisation", declared that economics had succumbed to a "pathological taste for a-priori ideologies and mathematical formalisation disconnected from reality." Economics, it continued, should give up its false emulation of physics and "should instead look to the human sciences". In July, French media interest continued to fuel the mobilisation. On the 3rd, La Tribune featured a long article titled "Why a Reform of the Teaching of Economics". It began by saying that all concerned parties agree that economics is in crisis and that "a debate should be opened on this subject" and that the students' initiative aimed to bring this about. Economics, said La Tribune, had become lost in "mondes imaginaires" and "l'?conomie de Robinson Cruso?" and intellectually enfeebled by "the dogmatism that reigns in the teaching of the discipline." Alternatives Economiques carried an article titled "The Revolt of the Students" which noted that French Nobel Prize winner, Maurice Allais had, despite his mathematical approach, come to conclusions similar to those of the students. L'Express, France's equivalent to Time, carried an article "L'?conomie, science autiste?", which aired the students' analysis and complaints. It also reported that the students' petition now had more than 600 signatures, and that their teachers were now starting a petition of their own in support. On the 22nd of July, Politis reported on the students' cause and on the --"autism" into which economics had fallen in consequence of its "obsession to produce a social physics". Politis noted that student support for the petition was widespread, including not only students from the most prestigious universities, but also from the less celebrated, both in Paris and in the provinces. "Pluralism should be part of the cultural base of economists." Instead, "neoclassical theory dominates because it rests on a simple set of axioms, easily mathematized." The coming academic year, concluded Politis, "promises to be agitated." We have learned that the economics students' petition now has 800 signatures and the economists' petition 147. The latter includes some of the most illustrious names in French economics, e.g., Robert Boyer, Andr? Orl?an, Michel Aglietta, Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Daniel Cohen. It concludes by calling for "a national conference that will open a public debate for all." UNITED STATES At last month's 10th World Congress of Social Economics at the University of Cambridge, American participants reported that in the USA the purge of non-neoclassical and non-mathematically oriented economists from university faculties continues. Conferees spoke of the increasing "stalinization" of the profession. Unlike in France where the fight-back has begun, in the States there are not yet signs of the formation of the critical mass needed to turn economics away from 19th century dogmas. It is agreed , however, that the number of academic economists in American who are out of sympathy with the orthodoxy comprise a sizeable minority. But they are fragmented, often intimidated and lack the means of joining together to exert their collective weight and moral authority. Meanwhile, it was agreed, the American economics' clock runs backwards. American economists at the World Congress traded horror stories about the new wave of neo-classical "stalinization". History of economic thought courses are now being targeted as sources of ideas whereby students might question or place in perspective orthodoxy. The goal is to create "history-free environments" in which students can be indoctrinated "more efficiently" into the neo-classical/mainstream belief system. For example, it was reported that from this fall the University of North Carolina is discontinuing all history of thought courses. American participants also bemoaned plunging standards of literacy among economics graduate students and colleagues as a consequence of the mathematics fetish. The illiteracy problem is said to be particularly acute among new economics PhDs, many of whom are incapable of reading with comprehension a page of complex prose, such as one from The General Theory. UNITED KINGDOM The ideas expressed by the French students will have a familiar ring to readers of Tony Lawson's Economics and Reality (1997). But in Lawson's UK it is reported that economics students, although restless, are not yet rebellious. Meanwhile it is rumoured that a French translation of Economics and Reality is imminent. BELGIUM Interest in the reform campaign launched in France spread quickly to Belgium. On June 24th under the heading "Economie autiste", the daily, Le Soir, both reported on the events in France and offered its own analysis of neoclassical economics as a quaint political ideology masquerading as science. A week later Le Soir featured a lengthy article on the crisis in economics. It draws on a recent report by Michel Verni?res, commissioned by the French government to investigate the teaching of economics. Verni?res emphasises that economic theories are devices for conceptualizing reality. "Pedagogically, it is therefore essential to articulate conceptual reflection and empirical investigation. . . . [and] to underline the plurality of approaches and the overall coherence of these approaches." Bernard Paulr?, referring especially to neoclassical theory, said that mathematics is often used to hide "the emptiness of the propositions and the absence of any concern for operational relevance." He said that in addition to a-priori axioms, it is necessary for economics "to take account of institutions, of history, of the strategies of actors and of groups, of sociological dimensions, etc.." This newsletter aims to link people wishing to bring sanity, humanity and science back to economics. To this end, YOU may help significantly by forwarding this issue to 10 sympathetic colleagues and/or students. YOU may also help by emailing relevant news items, thoughts and suggestions to: pae_news@btinternet.com To subscribe to the post-autistic economics newsletter, send a blank email to: pae_news@hotmail.com At 03:22 PM 27/04/2009, you wrote: >" everybody is talking and complaining about politicians and VIPs, >while the braindead professors are brainwashing students, making >them mental cripples, or criminals for life. > >Where is the sense and justification of this?" > >In the well-rewarded sinicures and affluent lifestyles of said 'professors'. >Thousands of French economics students at the Sorbonne and across >France have been waging a well-orchestrated campaign to have serious >changes made to the curriculae, rejucting the dominant neo-liberal >theory as 'autistic'. > >How would you propose removing the braindead professors from >office Ed, given their political connections with the global banking >fraternity, the WTO, IMF, World BankOECD and the like! > >John foster >Victoria, Australia > > > >----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Deak" >To: "A renewed Mai-Not" >Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 12:59 PM >Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: >Toward a new sustainable economy > > >>Yves, >> >>Your examples are exactly why I've stated 20 years ago that unless >>humanity turns to physical laws based economic theory and >>systems, it has no future and will self destruct as so many empires >>and systems have self destructed before in history. Where are the >>Hanging Gardens of Babylon now ? >> >>Religions, ideologies and all faith based systems have caused >>incredible damage throughout history, yet humanity still hasn't learned. >> >>If you want to change the system, you'll have to go after the crap >>that's being taught in the universities as "sciences".. I've long >>advocated that the so called "economics" departments and faculties >>should be transferred to the "divinities" . >> >>WW 1 and 2, plus the death camps of Stalin, Hitler, Mao have killed >>approx 130 million people in about 60-70 years. >> >>The neoclassical market economic theory is killing the same number in >>about 4-5 years. This means it is the biggest crime wave in human >>history, yet it is still being taught in our universities as a "science". >> >>No good going after the politicians and the ruling sectors without >>questioning and cutting to pieces the scriptures they're using to >>justify and legalize the worst crimes and mass murder. Yet, everybody >>is talking and complaining about politicians and VIPs, while the >>braindead professors are brainwashing students, making them mental >>cripples, or criminals for life. >> >>Where is the sense and justification of this? >> >>We've been working toward a sustainable system and self sufficiency >>for ourselves for most of our lives, after the starvation and >>privations we've experienced during and the postwar years, and have >>achieved it to a great degree, so we do talk from experience and not >>from theories. >> >>Cheers, Ed. >> >> >> >> >>At 02:38 PM 26/04/2009, you wrote: >>>Re John Foster's Sun, 2009-04-26 at 17:49 +1000 reply to my comments >>>of April 26, and to Dion Giles complementary comments of Sun, >>>2009-04-26 at 21:46 +0800,, let4 me say briefly that >>>1. I am not bypassing History at all. I am going very far down into >>>pre-history, and see that our civilization stems from a cultural >>>bifurcation that took place some 12 millenniums ago along a few big >>>rivers, when irrigated agriculture transformed the ways of life of a >>>few people.who until then had been hunters, gatherers, pastors and >>>itinerant agriculturalists. >>>This was absolutely not a genetic transformation, only cultural, but >>>very powerful. So powerful that it took until very recently for >>>those who lived that bifurcation to realize how powerful it is. >>>Those who started it did not have an inkling of the power they >>>released then. The change was from somewhat linear or relatively >>>very slow exponential growth to an accelerating exponential one (if >>>I may say, because exponential is already self-accelerating) . >>> >>>2. I recognize that, as human society has and always had been >>>governed by multi-thread torsades of thinking, that there was at all >>>times people like Confucius, Lao Tse, Christ, Buddha, Danton, >>>Robespierre, Jefferson, Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Mao and their >>>followers, who questioned the direction taken by the powerful, and >>>developed more or less long lasting (and self-distorting) lines of thought. >>> >>>3. In that, I also adhere to John Foster's approach of learning from >>>History to try and avoid the errors of the past. >>> >>>4. The difference I perceive between him and me, and also between >>>Dion and me is that my training as an engineer and eventually as a >>>geologist, my experience in many countries, built upon >>>a non-christian, but very humanistic family tradition, led me to >>>absorb the fact that now, the planet is overloaded by humans and >>>their activities on Earth, and that the governing system is >>>overshooting (as if nothing was the matter at all). >>> >>>And we are at an unprecedented stage where a movement of unknown >>>type but of any size, at an unknown and undefinable location and >>>time may precipitate a full collapse of the whole, including the >>>"powerful". For all I know, it may already be occurring at speeds >>>not usually measured in society, because the unit of time at which >>>it is measurable is much longer than the stock-exchange-based time >>>unit. If you look at the decade or the lustre, you may feel the >>>accelerating slide into chaos. >>> >>>5. I do not expect and never did expect the powerful to join meekly >>>into a movement toward a sustainable human society. However, there >>>are not many options open: >>> * either we try to overpower them, by attacking them with >>>hopefully a growing number of partisans joining the revolt. >>> * or we submit to them and try from the inside to alter the >>>course they have taken >>> * or again, we use Mao Dze Dong's strategy of infiltration and >>>after exploring the levels of weakness in a few of their chains of >>>top-down command and down-up information systems or chains, try to >>>influence a s many as we can among the middle level execs in the >>>system, and to gradually mobilize them into infiltration up, down >>>and on the sides of their position (conscious or not on their >>>part, it does not matter) >>>The first option has been tried repeatedly through history and >>>always failed. The leaders of the revoltees were either eliminated >>>or absorbed, with minimum concessions. I could not find any >>>exception. It is easy for the powerful to infiltrate any opponent >>>group and then turn it inside out, with for example financing, >>>direct or indirect. I can mention several current examples of >>>movements m,ost probably in this situation (evidence is very >>>difficult to obtain) >>> >>>The second one is self-defeating. Not one chance in a billion. >>> >>>I have chosen the third option. We need the energy available among >>>the powerful to effect the necessary transition. Conflict with them >>>is a lost cause and it will cause damages (casualties and social and >>>ecological destruction mainly, of such a magnitude that we (our >>>species and civilization) probably will not have a chance to >>>recover if we win, which is very unlikely., >>> >>>And as long as we have life and are relatively free, there is no >>>point in giving up. It would be the worst possible choice. >>> >>>Bet regards >>> >>>Yves Bajard. >>> >>> >>> >>>==========================+John Foster's message below >>>============================================ >>>>, what I do not agree with is your reference to History as an >>>> >unavoidable obstacle to change. >>>> >>>> ######################## >>>> >>>>Au contraire Yves; my whole raison d'etre in drawing attention to >>>>the vital importance of studying historical events and outcomes (as >>>>people such as Marx AND OTHERS have urged us to do), is to >>>>encourage folk to make the effort to study and LEARN from history >>>>... and thus AVOID making the same mistake(s), thereby obviating or >>>>at the very least minimising adverse outcomes arising from our >>>>contemporary politico-economic and social relations >>>> >>>>This is also why other dissidents - such as Trotsky, Mao and others >>>>advocated 'ongoing revolution', and that other great >>>>revolutionary/dissident Thomas Jefferson opined "The price of >>>>freedom is eternal vigilance"! Across the Atlantic, another >>>>dissident against English politico-economic oppression asserted that ... >>>> >>>>"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal >>>>vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the >>>>consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his >>>>guilt." (John Philpot Curran in 1790 in defence of the right to >>>>elect the Lord Mayor of Dublin.) >>>> >>>> >The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History different >>>> >from what it has been. This is part of the challenge. And I am certain >>>> >that it is technically possible. What is missing is the awareness, >>>> >determination and self-forgetfulness among initial small groups of >>>> >catalysts, who like yeast, would inject new visions and trigger a >change >>>> >of pace and of direction (snip) ... Triggering ..these small groups >of >>>> >catalysts is the real challenge. >>>> >>>>As history reveals, there have always been individual and group >>>>resistance to injustice and oppression. Today is no exception. >>>>There are millions of individual acts of resistance and organised >>>>actions by groups of individuals to globalisation, privatisation, >>>>genetic modification of our foodstuffs and seed stocks, corporate >>>>and bureaucratic corruption and treachery, and imperial wars of >>>>agression by the anti-social, anti-democratic 'leaders' of >>>>resource-depleted 'rich countries' of the West in search of cheap >>>>and reliable supplies of natural resources essential to >>>>maintaining, enhancing ('growing') and preserving the anti-social, >>>>anti-democratic system from which they expropriate their ill-gotten >>>>weath and privilege and the political power over others that such >>>>enormous personal/family wealth commands. >>>> >>>>What you appear to ignore here, Yves, is that every attempt by the >>>>many 'small groups of catalysts' to ' ...trigger a change of pace >>>>and of direction' is immediately countered by those whose >>>>politico-economic 'interests' are threatened by such groups. Those >>>>with great wealth and privilege are not about to meekly roll over >>>>and share their portfolios, mansions and other 'private' property >>>>with The Underprivileged! Nor are the battalions of well-rewarded >>>>corporate executives and technocrats, high-ranking officers in the >>>>various armed forces, high-ranking members of the Judiciary, >>>>academe and so on who serve them. >>>> >>>>The following tends to support my thesis ... >>>> >>>>"...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our >>>>overthrow. ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be >>>>from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the >>>>concerns of their government, from their carelessness and >>>>negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear >>>>that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public >>>>servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in >>>>this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become >>>>the instruments of their own undoing." -- Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837 >>>> >>>>"We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain >>>>basement prices, in return for the false promise of more >>>>security... The America being designed right now won't resemble the >>>>America we've been defending... The danger isn't that Big Brother >>>>may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't >>>>realize that he is already inside the castle walls." -- Wayne LaPierre >>>> >>>>"Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every >>>>friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our >>>>freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of >>>>the dangers from Washington -- regardless of who wins the >>>>Presidency." -- James Bovard in Voting is Overrated >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>>John >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>----- Original Message ----- >>>> >>>>From: Yves Bajard >>>> >>>>To: A renewed Mai-Not >>>> >>>>Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 3:48 AM >>>> >>>>Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>Nearly a month has gone since I received John Foster's March 28 >>>>reply to my former message of March 26. My apologies, but that was >>>>not negligence. I had many things to do in >>>>very little time on several topics. >>>> >>>>Before the issue becomes stale, let me answer John, briefly and seriously. >>>> >>>>You, John (summarizing your points) are not a 'Marxist', but you >>>>considers irrefutable that : >>>>Marx's explications are valid about the socio-economic context of >>>>capitalism's mode of social production, distribution and exchange . >>>>His observation is also valid that History until now is the history >>>>of class struggle >>>>All ancient/preceding civilisations and modes of production was >>>>characterised by structural inequality, with political and economic >>>>domination of the mass by a non-working, minority who ruled over >>>>them, exploited their labour through (primarily) ideological means >>>>and, when nothing else was possible through >>>>the use of brute physical force. >>>>Now, regardless of the words/concepts used to describe the world, >>>>the 'rich countries' AND the 'poor countries' are characterized by >>>>gross structural inequalities and a raft of similar >>>>politico-economic and social 'crises'. >>>>These result from the contradictions endemic to 'Free Market' or >>>>Neo-liberal Capitalism. >>>>Our current global malaise began with the 'halcyon' few decades >>>>that followed WWII (appalling waste and destruction) >>>>Greatly enhanced technological advances everywhere produced a >>>>mind-boggling array of labour-saving devices and luxury goods. >>>>New markets had to be created or 'opened up' quickly and the >>>>finance sector had to be freed up to provide worldwide access to >>>>easy credit with which people could these consumer goods and services. >>>>Here was the beginning of an acceleration of the process of globalisation. >>>>In the 'rich countries' organised labour fought to obtain a >>>>greater share of this 'bonanza'. >>>>The giant trans-national corporations reacted to these demands by >>>>exporting their manufacturing (and service) activities to 'cheap >>>>labour' countries. >>>>Many of these countries were run by corrupt individuals and >>>>families (e.g., The Phillipines, Indonesia and Chile) who >>>>ruthlessly exploited their country's huge human and natural >>>>resources to enrich themselves (with the blessign and support of >>>>the giant trans-national corporations, and of the governments of >>>>rich countries) . >>>>Meanwhile, the peoples of Algeria, India, Malaya, North Korea, >>>>North Viet Nam, and various African nations waged long and bitter >>>>struggles to free themselves of exploitation and expropriation of >>>>their country's wealth by their former imperial-colonial masters, >>>>To my remark that your use of words such as "maelstrom", >>>>"revolution", " prolonged and bitter struggle" suggested that you >>>>saw the whole thing as a fight you replied that Historic records >>>>are proof that the rich have never given up their wealth and power >>>>voluntarily. The 'alternative' critical history documents are >>>>replete with explications of prolonged and bitter struggles, >>>>uprisings, revolutions and political-social maelstroms, as millions >>>>of 'ordinary ('working class') folk fought for a better life. Also, >>>>with 'The Market' flooded with small arms, >>>>struggles continue now, worldwide. >>>>Moreover, the 'ordinary' peoples appreciate that one 'option' of >>>>the rich to preserve Capital Accumulation, is to trigger military >>>>conflict and mass destruction on a global scale. This option has >>>>been used in the past and there is no reason why the dominant and >>>>'emerging' superpower states and their 'competitive' >>>>trans-national corporations and financiers should ne use it while >>>>they fight one another to control dwindling supplies of fossil >>>>based fuels, etc. >>>>I agree fully with you, John, up to point 12. re the following >>>>points, here are my comments >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>.Your point 13 is slightly idealistic, in my opinion, the wars of >>>>liberation were fought by ordinary people to give power to another >>>>type of minority, whose members enjoyed power under several types >>>>of labels, including socialism, democracy and the like. Humbug.. >>>> >>>>I agree with points 14 and 15, in that History shows that >>>>no social progress was ever achieved without violence. Yet, I >>>>would argue that in ALL circumstances, History also shows that the >>>>progress achieved were slowly or violently eroded and finally >>>>annihilated by the very forces that conceded them or by other >>>>groups of people who took thesame route to power over the masses, >>>>again under different labels. China now is a striking example. >>>> >>>>Now, what I do not agree with is your reference to History as an >>>>unavoidable obstacle to change. (snip) >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History >>>>different from what it has been. This is part of the >>>>challenge. And I am certain that it is technically possible. What >>>>is missing is the awareness, determination and self-forgetfulness >>>>among initial small groups of catalysts, who like yeast, would >>>>inject new visions and trigger a change of pace and of direction, >>>>including the powerful and their opponents, now deadlocked in their >>>>everlasting (and unequal) fight for a different sharing of the >>>>plunder.. Triggering this or rather these small groups of catalysts >>>>is the real challenge. >>>> >>>>And to my sorrow, I do not see Mai-Not as a useful part of taking >>>>up the challenge. >>>> >>>>Your game, now. I hope I did not distort your mening,m John, when >>>>summarizing it >>>> >>>>Yves >>>================================ Dion Giles' message below >>>=================================== >>>John Foster and Yves Bajard are addressing different issues. John >>>has set out (in an excellent summary) the history of the struggle of >>>the plebs against the sirs for the power to make decisions on >>>national policies. Yves has bypassed that and focused on what >>>decisions he considers need to be made, even deploring that the >>>little group that swap information and views on Mai-not are doing >>>nothing to adopt and enforce these momentous national decisions. I >>>favour John's approach - see what we can contribute to the struggle >>>for power to make the decisions so that the sirs can't wreck the >>>world to protect their own narrow interests. Not a struggle to >>>transfer power to other sirs, but to devolve more and more power to >>>the people leaving the sirs with less and less. >>> >>>Dion Giles >>> >>>> >>>> >>>_______________________________________________ >>>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 - www.avg.com >>>Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.4/2081 - Release Date: >>>04/26/09 09:44:00 >> >>_______________________________________________ >>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 - www.avg.com >Version: 8.5.287 / Virus Database: 270.12.4/2081 >- Release Date: 04/26/09 09:44:00 > >_______________________________________________ >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 - www.avg.com >Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.5/2083 >- Release Date: 04/27/09 18:00:00 From thinker at thelakebc.ca Tue Apr 28 09:49:18 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Tue Apr 28 09:47:46 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Elizabeth May in Globe and Mail Message-ID: <200904281647.n3SGlJSR032128@karma.reboot.ca> * From Tuesday's Globe and Mail April 28, 2009 at 12:00 AM EDT In Elizabeth May's just-published book, /Losing Confidence/, she talks about how we suffer from collective amnesia. Quoting Jane Jacobs, the Green Party Leader says we seem to readjust rapidly without noticing all that has been lost. Such is the case, says Ms. May, in respect to the pillars of our parliamentary democracy. They continue to rot, but we're sort of used to it by now. The media report the latest degradation and move on. A new year comes. Last season's abuses are behind us, allowed to stand. Ms. May isn't about to let us forget. In her well-written book, she witheringly takes stock. She charts the total stranglehold the prime minister has on power - worse, she says, than ever before. She charts how freedom of the press has become the right of a few all-powerful owners - worse than ever before. She charts how our state police have become politicized and untrustworthy - worse than ever before. "If Canadians," she writes, "heard about a country where a handful of people controlled all the news media, where the state police could deliberately interfere in an election ... where the prime minister enjoyed excessive power, we would justly picture a Third World nation that languishes behind modern democracies." Related Articles Recent * Janet Napolitano needs to check her facts From the archives * Alberta leader fatigue is the federal Tories' next big test * A big anniversary bash for Mulroney? Why not? * Halting nuclear madness: Where's Canada? * With capitalism on its derriere, the left still gets no respect The Globe and Mail Ms. May describes last December's prorogation of Parliament as "breathtakingly anti-democratic." Never had a PM sought to end a session of Parliament within days of its opening. "Never in the history of modern parliamentary democracy anywhere in the world had a prime minister sought to shut down the government to avoid losing a confidence vote." By way of a big-stretch comparison, she goes all the way back to England's Charles I. He, too, shut down Parliament when he found its restrictions unpleasing. In his case, it resulted in civil war and his execution. In Canada, the drama was over in a couple of weeks. We've moved on, Ms. May says, the result being yet another precedent in place for the malfunctioning of democracy. What the PM got away with boggles her mind. How could he say St?phane Dion did not have the right to take office without an election when it would have been perfectly legal and perfectly constitutional in a minority Parliament? How about his near apoplexy over a coalition government? Here she cites Stephen Harper's own letter of 2004 to the Governor-General saying she should know that he and the opposition parties, separatists included, were prepared to work together as an alternative should the Liberal Parliament be dissolved. But, despite this, Mr. Harper was able to turn, "with his usual accomplices in the media," the idea of a coalition government supported by democratically elected Bloc Qu?b?cois members into some sort of monstrous power grab that outraged the Canadian public. To hear Ms. May tell it, Canadians were hornswoggled. The advent of imperial prime ministerial rule began, she notes, under Pierre Trudeau and, under Mr. Harper, has reached its nadir. It's not just this anti-democratic trend that has the Green Lady stirred. She weighs in on several others, not the least of which is the concentration of media power. Very few are prepared to talk about this issue. Certainly the media aren't. But Ms. May lets loose. She revisits previous commissions on mass media that decried the trend toward too much power in the hands of too few media owners. The 1981 Kent commission said the situation had become deplorable. But if it were deplorable then, Ms. May makes the case that it's even worse now, with media monopolies crowding out independent voices. The public again is badly served. Governments won't move on the problem because the corporate media owners "tend to be the friends and power base of the parties most often in power." Ms. May, who stays away from her environmental causes in this book, trashes NDP Leader Jack Layton for selling his soul to political expediency while he unjustifiably gave a free ride to the Liberals. But the important thing is what she has to say about the system. Ms. May doesn't break new ground in this book. But she has pulled together the many distressing strands, enabling readers not just to see the trees but the whole ugly forest that is our modern-day excuse for a democracy. From creuss at bluewin.ch Tue Apr 28 11:28:02 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Tue Apr 28 11:31:07 2009 Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy Message-ID: Ed asked: > Why is it that governments, politicians, big > businesses and their executives can be and are > being attacked and called all kinds of names > openly, but nobody dares to question, or attack > the origins of this crime wave, the universities ? > > There are hundreds, or even thousands of > universities around the world and each of them > has dozens of professors who could take and tear > apart the pseudo religious priesthood of > neoclassical economists in a few hours. > > Can anybody, please, explain to me why they don't > and why is this crime wave coming out of our > universities sacrosanct and untouchable ? The system is corrupt to the top, and with the deepest pockets calling the shots, who of the underlings do you think wants to ruin his career? It's like with the 9/11 OCT: Obviously nuts but nobody dares to say the emperor has no clothes. The corporate media are accomplices, and even the so-called "civil society" (NGOs) are in the pocket of Soros... The EU is a "good" illustration of how the total sell-out and neo-feudal dictatorship is being developed. Cheers, Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From kenandcarol at telus.net Tue Apr 28 12:04:31 2009 From: kenandcarol at telus.net (Ken) Date: Tue Apr 28 12:05:03 2009 Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a newsustainable economy In-Reply-To: <200904281640.n3SGdtSR031445@karma.reboot.ca> Message-ID: "Can anybody, please, explain to me why they don't and why is this crime wave coming out of our universities sacrosanct and untouchable ?" I?m going to go out on a limb here. Because my on-line time is limited I don ?t usually respond to commentary but I sense, and feel, the frustration expressed by Ed. So I will throw this out for examination. What follows may seem off the wall but I believe we have to look beyond differences in political ideology and societal structure if we want to understand why the crime waves continue. Changes in legislation may be part of the healing process but I think most will agree that too much legislation has serious down sides. The following probably needs to be fleshed out but I think it may help understand why our present attempts at dealing with accelerating resource scarcity (such as we are witnessing with global oil supplies) can only serve to further entrench societal illusions and accelerate the process of manufacturing compliance. The points listed below contain some basic ?givens?. It?s a list, that if clearly understood (it?s linkages and synergies), can lead to a process of exposing manufactured compliance in belief systems (illusions) that are leading individuals/societies away from cooperative, egalitarian life styles toward ever-increasing hostility and conflict. I believe the points listed below apply universally; and that they exist irrespective of literacy levels, economic status (impoverished or well-off), political and religious beliefs, and ethnicity. I also believe they provide a framework for understanding why no individual, society, country, state or regime (past, present and future) is immune to the social, economic, political and environmental ?problems? we have witnessed and are presently witnessing. They form the basis for why we are where we are today, and why, unless we revisit child rearing and the importance of loving child-parent relationships in minimizing pain as a training tool, we will continue to move further away from understanding societal illusions. 1. Anger is an emotion and is part of a pain-driven natural survival response (NSR). 2. The alternative to the NSR is extinction. 3. The NRS is as follows: Pain leads to fear (emotion), leads to anger (emotion), leads to resentment (emotion) which leads to a need to react or retaliate (emotion) which leads to hostility, a behavioural response (acting out self-protective destructiveness), which ultimately leads to change. 4. Classical conditioning takes place when pain is linked with a secondary cue (judgment), and eventually the cue alone reactivates and reinforces painful memories that produce anger (much like Pavlov?s dogs were tricked into drooling). Anger is a natural, helpful response. 5. When anger is the response to the secondary cue (bad, dirty, etc.), you are being tricked or fooled into responding to a judgment. 6. As a child you have no choice in the conditioning process, which links secondary cues (bad, wrong, dirty, etc. etc) with pain. 7. People aren?t born with an innate knowledge and understanding of secondary cues: judgments like right, wrong, good, bad or any other human constructs. The similarities in genetically determined wiring and all-encompassing experience base of children presents a universally witnessed NRS. Input from culture and family will overlay these building blocks. 8. The belief in, and conditioning to these constructs is a product of (predominantly parental childhood) training (nurture). The ?nature? part of childhood training simply relates to the capacity to respond to training. Trying to separate these into two distinct components (nature and nurture) is counterproductive. 9. Unless someone is biting, kicking or punching you, or posses a direct/immediate/realistic threat to your welfare, the pain you are experiencing is a result of the way you are thinking. If the way you are thinking is a response to a cue, or the memories the cue elicits, it can be referred to as distortional thinking. 10. Cues (which link to memories that stir body feedback pain as well as judgments) can stir memories that express themselves through the limbic system (the autonomic nervous system). This is the crucial point where the scope of NSR thinking diverges from classical conditioning. The NSR incorporates the fact that the response is not simply ?drooling?. The response involves all of the body feedback generated by the limbic system (that goes unnoticed) when the memory was first stored as well as the message from the immediate cue. (The response to a brick held over the foot is much more than a simple neuromuscular flinch of the leg. Just as the body feedback one experiences when one is criticized/labeled is not just the result of the judgmental label used at that time; it?s the sum total of feedback from all previous experiences with criticism.) Once conditioned we continue the reinforcement process every time we use judgmental labels. We unknowingly subject ourselves to another level of conditioning. 11. As a result (because the limbic system is involved) there are two outcomes: a. As you think and stir memories, so you will feel, and b. As you feel and stir memories, so you will tend to think. 12. Because pain underlies our NSR, everyone succumbs to the influence of distortional thinking. Understanding these points and their linkages is a prerequisite to exposing many societal illusions that persist despite the existence of facts (scientific method) and the principles of logic. Since pain (that is the result of being tricked or fooled through distortional thinking) can be the result of stirring pain related memories, the only hope humanity has for a less painful, continued existence on this planet (in the face of dwindling resources) is to begin to understand the difference, in causation, between real pain (from biting, hitting, kicking, etc.) and pain linked through conditioning. As we grow, from child to adult, we tell ourselves, and are told, stories about how life is to be lived. These stories become our reality. According to Guy Claxton (The Wayward Mind) there are two types of stories people tell: implicit (common sense) and explicit (explanations). The implicit or common sense stories determine everyday habits and values, and our choice of judgmental labels. They tell us what is ?normal?, ?obvious?, ?intelligent?, ?good? or ?true? and conversely, what is to be treated as ?stupid?, ?naughty?, ?ugly? or ?wicked?. Each member of a given society shares a common history of common sense stories. The explicit mind tries to explain the unexplainable. And the stories we tell are constantly evolving. To cope with this change we invent explanations. In the creation of explanations, the judgmental labels we rely on in common sense thinking become accepted as reality. Members of any group or society share common histories and beliefs. In order to continue to be accepted by the group, individuals must comply with those beliefs. Deviance has a cost. And, as a result, the teachings of neo classical economists will persist. cheers, Ken From creuss at bluewin.ch Tue Apr 28 13:40:04 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Tue Apr 28 13:43:14 2009 Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a newsustainable economy Message-ID: Ken wrote: > 12. Because pain underlies our NSR, everyone succumbs to the > influence of distortional thinking. ^^^^^^^^ Everyone on Mai-Not too? Or are we aliens from Mars? > Members of any group or society share common histories and beliefs. In order > to continue to be accepted by the group, individuals must comply with those > beliefs. Deviance has a cost. And, as a result, the teachings of neo > classical economists will persist. Sounds like history was absolutely static... Cheers, Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From d_a_d at telusplanet.net Tue Apr 28 14:55:30 2009 From: d_a_d at telusplanet.net (David A Davidson) Date: Tue Apr 28 14:55:54 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] FW: Ponderisms Message-ID: <1D408E5E616745A38F97115F924CADCB@davidson> _____ PONDERISMS * I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes. * There are two kinds of pedestrians: the quick and the dead. * Life is sexually transmitted. * Healthy is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die. * The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth. * Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. * Have you noticed since everyone has a camcorder these days no one talks about seeing UFOs like they used to? * Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again. * All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism. * In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.. * How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire? * Who was the first person to look at a cow and say, 'I think I'll squeeze these dangly things and drink whatever comes out?' * If Jimmy cracks corn and no one cares, why is there a song about him? * Why does your OB-GYN leave the room when you get undressed if they are going to look up there anyway? * If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests? * If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, then what is baby oil made from? * Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet Soup? * Does pushing the elevator button more than once make it arrive faster? * Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle? * Do you ever wonder why you gave me your email address? _____ Create a cool, new character for your Windows LiveT Messenger. Check it out _____ Internet Explorer 8 makes surfing easier. Get it now! _____ Tell the whole story with photos, right from your Messenger window. Learn how! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090428/4a3d63f9/attachment.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Tue Apr 28 14:59:37 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Tue Apr 28 15:00:11 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request References: <1240936085.4843.628.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <007101c9c84c$a0003e50$36ad57ca@jfos> I have not heard of this person Yves. A kangaroo rat is a small Australian marsupial. john foster Victoria, Australia ----- Original Message ----- From: Yves Bajard To: A renewed Mai-Not Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 2:28 AM Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request Dear Mai-notters: Mark Busch has requested joining Mai-Not. Anyone among you knows him and could vouch for him? Thanks Yves Bajard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.287 / Virus Database: 270.12.7/2085 - Release Date: 04/28/09 18:02:00 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090429/b35104ad/attachment.html From duanebehrens at cox.net Tue Apr 28 15:27:19 2009 From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens) Date: Tue Apr 28 15:27:47 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request In-Reply-To: <007101c9c84c$a0003e50$36ad57ca@jfos> Message-ID: <20090428182719.2NFZT.6992.imail@fed1rmwml43> John, as noted previously Mark Busch (who uses the e-mail addy "kangaroorat") is a friend of mine. He also happens to share your (and my) views of 9/11, most significantly that circumstantial evidence points to perpetrators far removed from Saudi Arabia. And he writes gooder than I do. Any vetting process among existing members for prospective new members seems cumbersome. As Dion points out, we could use a few new ones. Thinkers and writers like Mark Busch should place high on our recruitment list. So why not just welcome all new members - and their input - unless and until they prove to have an agenda other than the sharing of intelligent discourse? In Mark's case at least, I'm confident you'll find his contributions to be calm, prescient and occasionally profound. Take care. Duane ---- john foster wrote: ============= I have not heard of this person Yves. A kangaroo rat is a small Australian marsupial. john foster Victoria, Australia ----- Original Message ----- From: Yves Bajard To: A renewed Mai-Not Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 2:28 AM Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request Dear Mai-notters: Mark Busch has requested joining Mai-Not. Anyone among you knows him and could vouch for him? Thanks Yves Bajard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ 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 - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.287 / Virus Database: 270.12.7/2085 - Release Date: 04/28/09 18:02:00 -- http://perzuki.smugmug.com/ From thinker at thelakebc.ca Tue Apr 28 16:12:19 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Tue Apr 28 16:10:49 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request In-Reply-To: <20090428182719.2NFZT.6992.imail@fed1rmwml43> References: <007101c9c84c$a0003e50$36ad57ca@jfos> <20090428182719.2NFZT.6992.imail@fed1rmwml43> Message-ID: <200904282310.n3SNAI70028310@karma.reboot.ca> There was a time when this list had 700 members. The more the better. Cheers, Ed. At 03:27 PM 28/04/2009, you wrote: >John, as noted previously Mark Busch (who uses the e-mail addy >"kangaroorat") is a friend of mine. He also happens to share your >(and my) views of 9/11, most significantly that circumstantial >evidence points to perpetrators far removed from Saudi Arabia. > >And he writes gooder than I do. > >Any vetting process among existing members for prospective new >members seems cumbersome. As Dion points out, we could use a few >new ones. Thinkers and writers like Mark Busch should place high on >our recruitment list. > >So why not just welcome all new members - and their input - unless >and until they prove to have an agenda other than the sharing of >intelligent discourse? In Mark's case at least, I'm confident >you'll find his contributions to be calm, prescient and occasionally >profound. > >Take care. Duane > >---- john foster wrote: > >============= >I have not heard of this person Yves. >A kangaroo rat is a small Australian marsupial. > >john foster >Victoria, Australia > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Yves Bajard > To: A renewed Mai-Not > Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 2:28 AM > Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request > > > Dear Mai-notters: > > Mark Busch has requested joining Mai-Not. > Anyone among you knows him and could vouch for him? > > Thanks > > Yves Bajard > > > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 - www.avg.com > Version: 8.5.287 / Virus Database: 270.12.7/2085 - Release Date: > 04/28/09 18:02:00 > >-- >http://perzuki.smugmug.com/ > >_______________________________________________ >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 - www.avg.com >Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.7/2085 - Release Date: >04/28/09 18:02:00 From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Tue Apr 28 16:14:30 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Tue Apr 28 16:15:15 2009 Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a newsustainable economy References: <011201c9ac49$136fe4a0$56ad57ca@jfos><1237881624.4540.76.camel@localhost><004f01c9acf8$3118b720$41ad57ca@jfos><1238005136.15482.48.camel@localhost><01ec01c9af65$7fdbaab0$08ad57ca@jfos><1240681687.4996.124.camel@localhost><035001c9c643$adf3bbf0$87ad57ca@jfos><1240781910.4843.569.camel@localhost><200904270257.n3R2vdtR014420@karma.reboot.ca><003001c9c787$77cdacd0$46ad57ca@jfos> <200904281640.n3SGdtSR031445@karma.reboot.ca> Message-ID: <00ae01c9c857$1617fab0$36ad57ca@jfos> >"Some years ago, there was a witch hunt in US >universities, weeding out and firing teaching >staff who were unwilling to teach the garbage." A similar process occurred at the University of Sydney during the 1970s, when a group of 'radical' faculty tried to introduce Political Economy and provide balance to the dominant Economics curriculum. The result was a running battle that lasted for nearly a decade, with some faculty members dismissed and graduate and undergrad students failed, for submitting material 'outside' the approved curriculum. Details of this lengthy struggle were documented in the Journal of Australian Political Economy. >"There are hundreds, or even thousands of >universities around the world and each of them >has dozens of professors who could take and tear >apart the pseudo religious priesthood of >neoclassical economists in a few hours. >Can anybody, please, explain to me why they don't >and why is this crime wave coming out of our >universities sacrosanct and untouchable ?" For what it's worth, I believe that the 'Big 4' international Financial Accounting and Management Consulting firms have played and continue to play a major role in all this - as well as the spread of the 'privatisation' and globalisation mantras and agendas. International firms such as Pricewaterhouse, KPMG etc today dominate not only the audit functions of most in not all of the world's TNCs but have captured between them most if not all State and Federal government recruitment and staff assessment roles in this country and many 'Third World' states, as well as dominant 'players' such as the WTO, IMF, OECD and the like. With their Audit function now a minor part of their income stream, they win regular, financially lucrative, govt contracts to conduct surveys and present reports to Ministers and parliaments into everything ranging from public transport to mental health. These huge international 'players' are known to influence the setting of academic curriculae thru the appointment of their man (sic) to the right committee in return for 'generous' donations to the School, Faculty or University. john ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Deak" To: "A renewed Mai-Not" Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 2:41 AM Subject: Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a newsustainable economy > John, > > I'm well aware of the French and Belgian > students' revolt against autistic economics being > rammed down their throats. Their revolt also > went over to England at the time, and received > support, but no signatures from the students. I > remember one doctoral student saying at Cambridge > : "I support it, but can't afford to sign my name, etc." > > Although I never took any economics, or had any > interest in the crap until I was in my 50s, > remembering the heady atmosphere of the postwar > years at Cambridge, I'm certain, that any > professor who may have tried to lecture the > presently unquestioned theory of neoclassical > economics at the time would have been laughed > out of the classroom. So, what happened ? Why > not now, when the incredible damage becoming more and more obvious every > day? > > When I was on the ecol-econ list over 10 years > ago, I received a number of offlist postings > from students and even from some lecturers, > saying that they knew that the theory was false > and criminal, but had no choice if they wanted to > pass, or keep their jobs. One lecturer at the U. > of Waterloo in Ont. wrote that there students > were tested for their willingness and capability > to accept the theory, before they were even accepted . > > Some years ago, there was a witch hunt in US > universities, weeding out and firing teaching > staff who were unwilling to teach the garbage. > Later a friend sent me a petition, signed by > some 1,500 professors protesting against the > corporate takeover of whole university departments, even in the sciences. > > Why is it that governments, politicians, big > businesses and their executives can be and are > being attacked and called all kinds of names > openly, but nobody dares to question, or attack > the origins of this crime wave, the universities ? > > There are hundreds, or even thousands of > universities around the world and each of them > has dozens of professors who could take and tear > apart the pseudo religious priesthood of > neoclassical economists in a few hours. > > Can anybody, please, explain to me why they don't > and why is this crime wave coming out of our > universities sacrosanct and untouchable ? > > I've been attacking this garbage theory on a > number of worldwide economics forums, including > several by the World Bank and have received > nothing but support from all continents. Even an > unsigned congratulatory one from the "Office of > the Chief Economist", who then still was > Stiglitz. My Efficiency Principle,that kills the > theory on one page, has never been broken > and used in doctoral dissertations, yet the > world just keeps going downhill at an accelerated > pace, without anybody doing anything about it. > > When we were being taken to nazi Germany for > military training in Dec. 1944, when we arrived > at their huge training facility of Neuhammer in > Silezia, now in Poland, we were examined by SS > doctors for our Aryan classification. One of the > tests was the examination of the hairs on the top > of our hands, which was supposed to show whether we had any Jewish blood. > > The "science" of the neoclassical theory, the GDP > etc. reminds me strongly of those doctors and their science. > > Cheers, Ed > > > > sanity, humanity and science > post-autistic economics newsletter > > No. 1, September 2000 > > To subscribe, send a blank email to > pae_news@btinternet.com > > FRANCE > > The French economics mainstream is in a state of > shock and apprehension following dramatic and > unexpected events late in June. > > On the 21st the influential Paris daily, Le > Monde, featured a long article under the headline > "Economics Students Denounce the Lack of > Pluralism in the Teaching Offered". Economics > students at the ?cole Normale Sup?rieure, > France's premier institution of higher learning, > were circulating with great success a petition > protesting against an excessive mathematical formalisation. > > The petition notes "a real schizophrenia" created > by making modelling "an end in itself" and > thereby cutting economics off from reality and > forcing it into a state of "autism". The > students, said a sympathetic Le Monde, call for > an end to the hegemony of neoclassical theory and > approaches derived from it, in favour of a > pluralism that will include other approaches, > especially those which permit the consideration > of "concrete realities". Le Monde found French > economists of renown, including Michel Verni?res, > Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Daniel Cohen, willing to > speak out in support of the students. Fitoussi, > current head of the jury of the economics' > agr?gation, said that "the students are right to > denounce the way economics is generally taught" > and that the over-use of mathematics "leads to a > disembodiment of economic discourse". Daniel > Cohen, economics professor at the ?cole Normale > Sup?rieure, spoke of "the pathological role" > played by mathematics in economics. Meanwhile, > The Minister of Education, Jack Lang, assured Le > Monde that he would study closely the appeal from the students. > > French radio and television also reported the > students complaints and confirmed their > legitimacy. On the 21st, BFM said that it was now > recognized that "the teaching of economics no > longer had any relation with the real world" and > that "this discipline is going through an > undeniable crisis". Also on the > 21st, L'Humanit? quoted extensively from the > students' open letter, while noting that in > recent years several renown economists had expressed similar views. > > On the 23rd, Les Echos reported that a government > report on university economics teaching had > reached conclusions similar to those of the > students. In their lengthy article, Les Echos > noted that it is increasingly recognized that > economics' "malaise is general and of > longstanding" and that "under the guise of being > scientific" it has cultivated an anti-scientific > environment "which leaves no room for reflection and debate". > On the 26th, the weekly, Marianne, carried an > article about the student petition against > "dogmatism" in the teaching of economics and for > its replacement by "a pluralism of > explanations". Marianne said that the petition, > which was now on the Web, had 500 signatures, as > well as growing support from economics teachers > and interest from the highest levels of the French government. > > On June 30th, Le Nouvel Economiste, referring to > the students' petition and "mobilisation", > declared that economics had succumbed to a > "pathological taste for a-priori ideologies and > mathematical formalisation disconnected from > reality." Economics, it continued, should give > up its false emulation of physics and "should > instead look to the human sciences". > > In July, French media interest continued to fuel > the mobilisation. On the 3rd, La Tribune featured > a long article titled "Why a Reform of the > Teaching of Economics". It began by saying that > all concerned parties agree that economics is in > crisis and that "a debate should be opened on > this subject" and that the students' initiative > aimed to bring this about. Economics, said La > Tribune, had become lost in "mondes imaginaires" > and "l'?conomie de Robinson Cruso?" and > intellectually enfeebled by "the dogmatism that > reigns in the teaching of the > discipline." Alternatives Economiques carried an > article titled "The Revolt of the Students" which > noted that French Nobel Prize winner, Maurice > Allais had, despite his mathematical approach, > come to conclusions similar to those of the students. > > L'Express, France's equivalent to Time, carried > an article "L'?conomie, science autiste?", which > aired the students' analysis and complaints. It > also reported that the students' petition now had > more than 600 signatures, and that their teachers > were now starting a petition of their own in support. > > On the 22nd of July, Politis reported on the > students' cause and on the --"autism" into which > economics had fallen in consequence of its > "obsession to produce a social physics". Politis > noted that student support for the petition was > widespread, including not only students from the > most prestigious universities, but also from the > less celebrated, both in Paris and in the > provinces. "Pluralism should be part of the > cultural base of economists." Instead, > "neoclassical theory dominates because it rests > on a simple set of axioms, easily > mathematized." The coming academic year, > concluded Politis, "promises to be agitated." > > We have learned that the economics students' > petition now has 800 signatures and the > economists' petition 147. The latter includes > some of the most illustrious names in French > economics, e.g., Robert Boyer, Andr? Orl?an, > Michel Aglietta, Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Daniel > Cohen. It concludes by calling for "a national > conference that will open a public debate for all." > > > UNITED STATES > > At last month's 10th World Congress of Social > Economics at the University of Cambridge, > American participants reported that in the USA > the purge of non-neoclassical and > non-mathematically oriented economists from university faculties > continues. > > Conferees spoke of the increasing "stalinization" > of the profession. Unlike in France where the > fight-back has begun, in the States there are not > yet signs of the formation of the critical mass > needed to turn economics away from 19th century > dogmas. It is agreed , however, that the number > of academic economists in American who are out of > sympathy with the orthodoxy comprise a sizeable > minority. But they are fragmented, often > intimidated and lack the means of joining > together to exert their collective weight and > moral authority. Meanwhile, it was agreed, the > American economics' clock runs backwards. > > American economists at the World Congress traded > horror stories about the new wave of > neo-classical "stalinization". History of > economic thought courses are now being targeted > as sources of ideas whereby students might > question or place in perspective orthodoxy. The > goal is to create "history-free environments" in > which students can be indoctrinated "more > efficiently" into the neo-classical/mainstream > belief system. For example, it was reported that > from this fall the University of North Carolina > is discontinuing all history of thought courses. > > American participants also bemoaned plunging > standards of literacy among economics graduate > students and colleagues as a consequence of the > mathematics fetish. The illiteracy problem is > said to be particularly acute among new economics > PhDs, many of whom are incapable of reading with > comprehension a page of complex prose, such as > one from The General Theory. > > > UNITED KINGDOM > > The ideas expressed by the French students will > have a familiar ring to readers of Tony Lawson's > Economics and Reality (1997). But in Lawson's UK > it is reported that economics students, although > restless, are not yet rebellious. Meanwhile it > is rumoured that a French translation of Economics and Reality is > imminent. > > > BELGIUM > > Interest in the reform campaign launched in > France spread quickly to Belgium. On June 24th > under the heading "Economie autiste", the daily, > Le Soir, both reported on the events in France > and offered its own analysis of neoclassical > economics as a quaint political ideology masquerading as science. > > A week later Le Soir featured a lengthy article > on the crisis in economics. It draws on a recent > report by Michel Verni?res, commissioned by the > French government to investigate the teaching of > economics. Verni?res emphasises that economic > theories are devices for conceptualizing > reality. "Pedagogically, it is therefore > essential to articulate conceptual reflection and > empirical investigation. . . . [and] to underline > the plurality of approaches and the overall coherence of these > approaches." > > Bernard Paulr?, referring especially to > neoclassical theory, said that mathematics is > often used to hide "the emptiness of the > propositions and the absence of any concern for > operational relevance." He said that in addition > to a-priori axioms, it is necessary for economics > "to take account of institutions, of history, of > the strategies of actors and of groups, of sociological dimensions, etc.." > > This newsletter aims to link people wishing to > bring sanity, humanity and science back to > economics. To this end, YOU may help > significantly by forwarding this issue to 10 > sympathetic colleagues and/or students. > > YOU may also help by emailing relevant news > items, thoughts and suggestions to: > pae_news@btinternet.com > > To subscribe to the post-autistic economics > newsletter, send a blank email to: > pae_news@hotmail.com > > > > > > > > > At 03:22 PM 27/04/2009, you wrote: >>" everybody is talking and complaining about politicians and VIPs, >>while the braindead professors are brainwashing students, making >>them mental cripples, or criminals for life. >> >>Where is the sense and justification of this?" >> >>In the well-rewarded sinicures and affluent lifestyles of said >>'professors'. >>Thousands of French economics students at the Sorbonne and across >>France have been waging a well-orchestrated campaign to have serious >>changes made to the curriculae, rejucting the dominant neo-liberal >>theory as 'autistic'. >> >>How would you propose removing the braindead professors from >>office Ed, given their political connections with the global banking >>fraternity, the WTO, IMF, World BankOECD and the like! >> >>John foster >>Victoria, Australia >> >> >> >>----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Deak" >>To: "A renewed Mai-Not" >>Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 12:59 PM >>Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: >>Toward a new sustainable economy >> >> >>>Yves, >>> >>>Your examples are exactly why I've stated 20 years ago that unless >>>humanity turns to physical laws based economic theory and >>>systems, it has no future and will self destruct as so many empires >>>and systems have self destructed before in history. Where are the >>>Hanging Gardens of Babylon now ? >>> >>>Religions, ideologies and all faith based systems have caused >>>incredible damage throughout history, yet humanity still hasn't learned. >>> >>>If you want to change the system, you'll have to go after the crap >>>that's being taught in the universities as "sciences".. I've long >>>advocated that the so called "economics" departments and faculties >>>should be transferred to the "divinities" . >>> >>>WW 1 and 2, plus the death camps of Stalin, Hitler, Mao have killed >>>approx 130 million people in about 60-70 years. >>> >>>The neoclassical market economic theory is killing the same number in >>>about 4-5 years. This means it is the biggest crime wave in human >>>history, yet it is still being taught in our universities as a "science". >>> >>>No good going after the politicians and the ruling sectors without >>>questioning and cutting to pieces the scriptures they're using to >>>justify and legalize the worst crimes and mass murder. Yet, everybody >>>is talking and complaining about politicians and VIPs, while the >>>braindead professors are brainwashing students, making them mental >>>cripples, or criminals for life. >>> >>>Where is the sense and justification of this? >>> >>>We've been working toward a sustainable system and self sufficiency >>>for ourselves for most of our lives, after the starvation and >>>privations we've experienced during and the postwar years, and have >>>achieved it to a great degree, so we do talk from experience and not >>>from theories. >>> >>>Cheers, Ed. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>At 02:38 PM 26/04/2009, you wrote: >>>>Re John Foster's Sun, 2009-04-26 at 17:49 +1000 reply to my comments >>>>of April 26, and to Dion Giles complementary comments of Sun, >>>>2009-04-26 at 21:46 +0800,, let4 me say briefly that >>>>1. I am not bypassing History at all. I am going very far down into >>>>pre-history, and see that our civilization stems from a cultural >>>>bifurcation that took place some 12 millenniums ago along a few big >>>>rivers, when irrigated agriculture transformed the ways of life of a >>>>few people.who until then had been hunters, gatherers, pastors and >>>>itinerant agriculturalists. >>>>This was absolutely not a genetic transformation, only cultural, but >>>>very powerful. So powerful that it took until very recently for >>>>those who lived that bifurcation to realize how powerful it is. >>>>Those who started it did not have an inkling of the power they >>>>released then. The change was from somewhat linear or relatively >>>>very slow exponential growth to an accelerating exponential one (if >>>>I may say, because exponential is already self-accelerating) . >>>> >>>>2. I recognize that, as human society has and always had been >>>>governed by multi-thread torsades of thinking, that there was at all >>>>times people like Confucius, Lao Tse, Christ, Buddha, Danton, >>>>Robespierre, Jefferson, Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Mao and their >>>>followers, who questioned the direction taken by the powerful, and >>>>developed more or less long lasting (and self-distorting) lines of >>>>thought. >>>> >>>>3. In that, I also adhere to John Foster's approach of learning from >>>>History to try and avoid the errors of the past. >>>> >>>>4. The difference I perceive between him and me, and also between >>>>Dion and me is that my training as an engineer and eventually as a >>>>geologist, my experience in many countries, built upon >>>>a non-christian, but very humanistic family tradition, led me to >>>>absorb the fact that now, the planet is overloaded by humans and >>>>their activities on Earth, and that the governing system is >>>>overshooting (as if nothing was the matter at all). >>>> >>>>And we are at an unprecedented stage where a movement of unknown >>>>type but of any size, at an unknown and undefinable location and >>>>time may precipitate a full collapse of the whole, including the >>>>"powerful". For all I know, it may already be occurring at speeds >>>>not usually measured in society, because the unit of time at which >>>>it is measurable is much longer than the stock-exchange-based time >>>>unit. If you look at the decade or the lustre, you may feel the >>>>accelerating slide into chaos. >>>> >>>>5. I do not expect and never did expect the powerful to join meekly >>>>into a movement toward a sustainable human society. However, there >>>>are not many options open: >>>> * either we try to overpower them, by attacking them with >>>>hopefully a growing number of partisans joining the revolt. >>>> * or we submit to them and try from the inside to alter the >>>>course they have taken >>>> * or again, we use Mao Dze Dong's strategy of infiltration and >>>>after exploring the levels of weakness in a few of their chains of >>>>top-down command and down-up information systems or chains, try to >>>>influence a s many as we can among the middle level execs in the >>>>system, and to gradually mobilize them into infiltration up, down >>>>and on the sides of their position (conscious or not on their >>>>part, it does not matter) >>>>The first option has been tried repeatedly through history and >>>>always failed. The leaders of the revoltees were either eliminated >>>>or absorbed, with minimum concessions. I could not find any >>>>exception. It is easy for the powerful to infiltrate any opponent >>>>group and then turn it inside out, with for example financing, >>>>direct or indirect. I can mention several current examples of >>>>movements m,ost probably in this situation (evidence is very >>>>difficult to obtain) >>>> >>>>The second one is self-defeating. Not one chance in a billion. >>>> >>>>I have chosen the third option. We need the energy available among >>>>the powerful to effect the necessary transition. Conflict with them >>>>is a lost cause and it will cause damages (casualties and social and >>>>ecological destruction mainly, of such a magnitude that we (our >>>>species and civilization) probably will not have a chance to >>>>recover if we win, which is very unlikely., >>>> >>>>And as long as we have life and are relatively free, there is no >>>>point in giving up. It would be the worst possible choice. >>>> >>>>Bet regards >>>> >>>>Yves Bajard. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>==========================+John Foster's message below >>>>============================================ >>>>>, what I do not agree with is your reference to History as an >>>>> >unavoidable obstacle to change. >>>>> >>>>> ######################## >>>>> >>>>>Au contraire Yves; my whole raison d'etre in drawing attention to >>>>>the vital importance of studying historical events and outcomes (as >>>>>people such as Marx AND OTHERS have urged us to do), is to >>>>>encourage folk to make the effort to study and LEARN from history >>>>>... and thus AVOID making the same mistake(s), thereby obviating or >>>>>at the very least minimising adverse outcomes arising from our >>>>>contemporary politico-economic and social relations >>>>> >>>>>This is also why other dissidents - such as Trotsky, Mao and others >>>>>advocated 'ongoing revolution', and that other great >>>>>revolutionary/dissident Thomas Jefferson opined "The price of >>>>>freedom is eternal vigilance"! Across the Atlantic, another >>>>>dissident against English politico-economic oppression asserted that >>>>>... >>>>> >>>>>"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal >>>>>vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the >>>>>consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his >>>>>guilt." (John Philpot Curran in 1790 in defence of the right to >>>>>elect the Lord Mayor of Dublin.) >>>>> >>>>> >The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History >>>>> >different >>>>> >from what it has been. This is part of the challenge. And I am >>>>> >certain >>>>> >that it is technically possible. What is missing is the awareness, >>>>> >determination and self-forgetfulness among initial small groups of >>>>> >catalysts, who like yeast, would inject new visions and trigger a >>>>> > >change >>>>> >of pace and of direction (snip) ... Triggering ..these small groups >>>>> > >of >>>>> >catalysts is the real challenge. >>>>> >>>>>As history reveals, there have always been individual and group >>>>>resistance to injustice and oppression. Today is no exception. >>>>>There are millions of individual acts of resistance and organised >>>>>actions by groups of individuals to globalisation, privatisation, >>>>>genetic modification of our foodstuffs and seed stocks, corporate >>>>>and bureaucratic corruption and treachery, and imperial wars of >>>>>agression by the anti-social, anti-democratic 'leaders' of >>>>>resource-depleted 'rich countries' of the West in search of cheap >>>>>and reliable supplies of natural resources essential to >>>>>maintaining, enhancing ('growing') and preserving the anti-social, >>>>>anti-democratic system from which they expropriate their ill-gotten >>>>>weath and privilege and the political power over others that such >>>>>enormous personal/family wealth commands. >>>>> >>>>>What you appear to ignore here, Yves, is that every attempt by the >>>>>many 'small groups of catalysts' to ' ...trigger a change of pace >>>>>and of direction' is immediately countered by those whose >>>>>politico-economic 'interests' are threatened by such groups. Those >>>>>with great wealth and privilege are not about to meekly roll over >>>>>and share their portfolios, mansions and other 'private' property >>>>>with The Underprivileged! Nor are the battalions of well-rewarded >>>>>corporate executives and technocrats, high-ranking officers in the >>>>>various armed forces, high-ranking members of the Judiciary, >>>>>academe and so on who serve them. >>>>> >>>>>The following tends to support my thesis ... >>>>> >>>>>"...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our >>>>>overthrow. ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be >>>>>from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the >>>>>concerns of their government, from their carelessness and >>>>>negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear >>>>>that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public >>>>>servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in >>>>>this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become >>>>>the instruments of their own undoing." -- Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837 >>>>> >>>>>"We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain >>>>>basement prices, in return for the false promise of more >>>>>security... The America being designed right now won't resemble the >>>>>America we've been defending... The danger isn't that Big Brother >>>>>may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't >>>>>realize that he is already inside the castle walls." -- Wayne LaPierre >>>>> >>>>>"Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every >>>>>friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our >>>>>freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of >>>>>the dangers from Washington -- regardless of who wins the >>>>>Presidency." -- James Bovard in Voting is Overrated >>>>> >>>>> Regards, >>>>>John >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>----- Original Message ----- >>>>> >>>>>From: Yves Bajard >>>>> >>>>>To: A renewed Mai-Not >>>>> >>>>>Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 3:48 AM >>>>> >>>>>Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable >>>>>economy >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>Nearly a month has gone since I received John Foster's March 28 >>>>>reply to my former message of March 26. My apologies, but that was >>>>>not negligence. I had many things to do in >>>>>very little time on several topics. >>>>> >>>>>Before the issue becomes stale, let me answer John, briefly and >>>>>seriously. >>>>> >>>>>You, John (summarizing your points) are not a 'Marxist', but you >>>>>considers irrefutable that : >>>>>Marx's explications are valid about the socio-economic context of >>>>>capitalism's mode of social production, distribution and exchange . >>>>>His observation is also valid that History until now is the history >>>>>of class struggle >>>>>All ancient/preceding civilisations and modes of production was >>>>>characterised by structural inequality, with political and economic >>>>>domination of the mass by a non-working, minority who ruled over >>>>>them, exploited their labour through (primarily) ideological means >>>>>and, when nothing else was possible through >>>>>the use of brute physical force. >>>>>Now, regardless of the words/concepts used to describe the world, >>>>>the 'rich countries' AND the 'poor countries' are characterized by >>>>>gross structural inequalities and a raft of similar >>>>>politico-economic and social 'crises'. >>>>>These result from the contradictions endemic to 'Free Market' or >>>>>Neo-liberal Capitalism. >>>>>Our current global malaise began with the 'halcyon' few decades >>>>>that followed WWII (appalling waste and destruction) >>>>>Greatly enhanced technological advances everywhere produced a >>>>>mind-boggling array of labour-saving devices and luxury goods. >>>>>New markets had to be created or 'opened up' quickly and the >>>>>finance sector had to be freed up to provide worldwide access to >>>>>easy credit with which people could these consumer goods and >>>>>services. >>>>>Here was the beginning of an acceleration of the process of >>>>>globalisation. >>>>>In the 'rich countries' organised labour fought to obtain a >>>>>greater share of this 'bonanza'. >>>>>The giant trans-national corporations reacted to these demands by >>>>>exporting their manufacturing (and service) activities to 'cheap >>>>>labour' countries. >>>>>Many of these countries were run by corrupt individuals and >>>>>families (e.g., The Phillipines, Indonesia and Chile) who >>>>>ruthlessly exploited their country's huge human and natural >>>>>resources to enrich themselves (with the blessign and support of >>>>>the giant trans-national corporations, and of the governments of >>>>>rich countries) . >>>>>Meanwhile, the peoples of Algeria, India, Malaya, North Korea, >>>>>North Viet Nam, and various African nations waged long and bitter >>>>>struggles to free themselves of exploitation and expropriation of >>>>>their country's wealth by their former imperial-colonial masters, >>>>>To my remark that your use of words such as "maelstrom", >>>>>"revolution", " prolonged and bitter struggle" suggested that you >>>>>saw the whole thing as a fight you replied that Historic records >>>>>are proof that the rich have never given up their wealth and power >>>>>voluntarily. The 'alternative' critical history documents are >>>>>replete with explications of prolonged and bitter struggles, >>>>>uprisings, revolutions and political-social maelstroms, as millions >>>>>of 'ordinary ('working class') folk fought for a better life. Also, >>>>>with 'The Market' flooded with small arms, >>>>>struggles continue now, worldwide. >>>>>Moreover, the 'ordinary' peoples appreciate that one 'option' of >>>>>the rich to preserve Capital Accumulation, is to trigger military >>>>>conflict and mass destruction on a global scale. This option has >>>>>been used in the past and there is no reason why the dominant and >>>>>'emerging' superpower states and their 'competitive' >>>>>trans-national corporations and financiers should ne use it while >>>>>they fight one another to control dwindling supplies of fossil >>>>>based fuels, etc. >>>>>I agree fully with you, John, up to point 12. re the following >>>>>points, here are my comments >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>.Your point 13 is slightly idealistic, in my opinion, the wars of >>>>>liberation were fought by ordinary people to give power to another >>>>>type of minority, whose members enjoyed power under several types >>>>>of labels, including socialism, democracy and the like. Humbug.. >>>>> >>>>>I agree with points 14 and 15, in that History shows that >>>>>no social progress was ever achieved without violence. Yet, I >>>>>would argue that in ALL circumstances, History also shows that the >>>>>progress achieved were slowly or violently eroded and finally >>>>>annihilated by the very forces that conceded them or by other >>>>>groups of people who took thesame route to power over the masses, >>>>>again under different labels. China now is a striking example. >>>>> >>>>>Now, what I do not agree with is your reference to History as an >>>>>unavoidable obstacle to change. (snip) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>The only way out of the mess would be to try and make History >>>>>different from what it has been. This is part of the >>>>>challenge. And I am certain that it is technically possible. What >>>>>is missing is the awareness, determination and self-forgetfulness >>>>>among initial small groups of catalysts, who like yeast, would >>>>>inject new visions and trigger a change of pace and of direction, >>>>>including the powerful and their opponents, now deadlocked in their >>>>>everlasting (and unequal) fight for a different sharing of the >>>>>plunder.. Triggering this or rather these small groups of catalysts >>>>>is the real challenge. >>>>> >>>>>And to my sorrow, I do not see Mai-Not as a useful part of taking >>>>>up the challenge. >>>>> >>>>>Your game, now. I hope I did not distort your mening,m John, when >>>>>summarizing it >>>>> >>>>>Yves >>>>================================ Dion Giles' message below >>>>=================================== >>>>John Foster and Yves Bajard are addressing different issues. John >>>>has set out (in an excellent summary) the history of the struggle of >>>>the plebs against the sirs for the power to make decisions on >>>>national policies. Yves has bypassed that and focused on what >>>>decisions he considers need to be made, even deploring that the >>>>little group that swap information and views on Mai-not are doing >>>>nothing to adopt and enforce these momentous national decisions. I >>>>favour John's approach - see what we can contribute to the struggle >>>>for power to make the decisions so that the sirs can't wreck the >>>>world to protect their own narrow interests. Not a struggle to >>>>transfer power to other sirs, but to devolve more and more power to >>>>the people leaving the sirs with less and less. >>>> >>>>Dion Giles >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>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 - www.avg.com >>>>Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.4/2081 - Release Date: >>>>04/26/09 09:44:00 >>> >>>_______________________________________________ >>>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 - www.avg.com >>Version: 8.5.287 / Virus Database: 270.12.4/2081 >>- Release Date: 04/26/09 09:44:00 >> >>_______________________________________________ >>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 - www.avg.com >>Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.5/2083 >>- Release Date: 04/27/09 18:00:00 > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.287 / Virus Database: 270.12.7/2085 - Release Date: 04/28/09 18:02:00 From kenandcarol at telus.net Tue Apr 28 16:39:18 2009 From: kenandcarol at telus.net (Ken) Date: Tue Apr 28 16:39:43 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a newsustainable In-Reply-To: Message-ID: "Sounds like history was absolutely static..." Cheers, Chris It may sound that way, however, if we accept the proposition put forward by Lloyd deMause (The Emotional Life of Nations) it would appear that (historical) highlights in social and cultural evolution are marked by major changes in child rearing. I won?t spend time rewriting something covered at length at http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln07_evolution.html but will add that although deMause tries to shed new light on the mechanics of cultural change, he seems to be avoiding the most important part: explaining why we think the way we do. cheers, Ken ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". _______________________________________________ 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 - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.287 / Virus Database: 270.12.6/2084 - Release Date: 04/28/09 06:15:00 From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Apr 28 19:58:07 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Tue Apr 28 19:58:32 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] FW: Ponderisms In-Reply-To: <1D408E5E616745A38F97115F924CADCB@davidson> References: <1D408E5E616745A38F97115F924CADCB@davidson> Message-ID: <20090429025808.790C8F657@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090429/7e6a506a/attachment.html From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Apr 28 20:15:49 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Tue Apr 28 20:16:17 2009 Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a new sustainable economy In-Reply-To: <00ae01c9c857$1617fab0$36ad57ca@jfos> References: <011201c9ac49$136fe4a0$56ad57ca@jfos> <1237881624.4540.76.camel@localhost> <004f01c9acf8$3118b720$41ad57ca@jfos> <1238005136.15482.48.camel@localhost> <01ec01c9af65$7fdbaab0$08ad57ca@jfos> <1240681687.4996.124.camel@localhost> <035001c9c643$adf3bbf0$87ad57ca@jfos> <1240781910.4843.569.camel@localhost> <200904270257.n3R2vdtR014420@karma.reboot.ca> <003001c9c787$77cdacd0$46ad57ca@jfos> <200904281640.n3SGdtSR031445@karma.reboot.ca> <00ae01c9c857$1617fab0$36ad57ca@jfos> Message-ID: <20090429031553.BF70113209@fep05.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> At 07:14 29/04/2009, John wrote: >A similar process occurred at the University of Sydney during the 1970s, >when a group of 'radical' faculty tried to introduce Political Economy and >provide balance to the dominant Economics curriculum. The result was a running >battle that lasted for nearly a decade, with some faculty members >dismissed and >graduate and undergrad students failed, for submitting material 'outside' the >approved curriculum. Details of this lengthy struggle were documented in the >Journal of Australian Political Economy. And to think I was on the chemistry staff at that university from 1970-1973 and didn't hear a whisper. Wish I'd known, as I believed then, as now, that political ecopnomy was real and economics was codswaffle. Goes to show how isolated people can be even when important political action is going on within a stone's throw. The big ticket issue then was the rape of Vietnam, and other issues that were equally important but less immediate didn't surface. Always the way. Dion Giles From thinker at thelakebc.ca Tue Apr 28 20:36:36 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Tue Apr 28 20:35:19 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a newsustainable In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200904290335.n3T3YYsG011052@karma.reboot.ca> Ken, For the vast majority thinking doesn't exist and they live their lives based on childhood brainwash and trying to escape realities by "having fun" and "sports" (watching), kocking their brains out with something , etc. Right now, we have an provincial election campaign going on here in BC, with the reigning BCLIberals leading in the polls. I've been a BC voter since May 1956 and have never seen a worse, more corrupt and more disgusting government than what we have now, selling off the province to foreign investors. The Premier, Gordon Campbell was a few years ago arrested, jailed and mugshot in Hawaii for drunk driving, but reelected and has a good chance to be elected again, for a 4 year fixed term, on May 12. The Solicitor General just resigned after his drivers licence was suspended for 9 speeding tickets. We have an economy in shambles, 170 odd schools closed, seniors' homes and many government services privatized, contracts broken to cut peoples' wages, while the politicians and senior civil servants received huge increases, the land totally taken over and ruined by foreign investors, who control us, etc. etc. We have tens of thousands on $8/hr minimum wage part time jobs, lining up at soup kitchens and foodbanks. The list goes on and on , but they have a good chance for being reelected , because "Gordon knows how to keep BC strong....,." A recent poll suggested that many people don't even have a clue whether we're having provincial, or federal elections, etc. etc. We now have a provincial Conservative Party and many Libs are worried that people may vote for them, not being able to distinguish who is what. No that it makes any difference, the whole gang , like Harper, is the remnants of the Socred and Reform Parties under different names I have lived in 4 countries, under every known political ideology, sentenced to death by the nazi military and to the gulags by the communist satellite govt., neither carried out, so I have seen the same ignorance and amnesia under every ideology.. Have been searching for the "common denominator of history's tragedies" since 1945 and found it in 1985 in the age old fraudulent definition of economic efficiency, always licencing the crime waves of and by ruling sectors, as "the Will of God" and now "the Will of the Money God", with our economists having taken over the role of past priesthoods. Now, at 82, I'm still hoping that capitalism is at the beginning stage of disintegration, Soviet bolshevism was in the late 80s, when people lost faith. In spite of the overall ignorance, sooner or later people wake. This has happened many times in history and will happen again. The question is: When and what will take its place and will the Mayan calendar's prophecy come true, interpreted either as the end of the world , or universal awakening" ? I have no idea, but am certain that something very big is going to happen and perhaps even the majority, who are now hanging on the Stanley Cup and similar showbiz racket results as the end and be all of everything, may just wake up. I've been incredibly lucky, yes, there is such thing as luck and without it I wouldn't be here, in many fields and on many occasions, with the exception of wealth and money, and hope to see the big awakening happen yet. Cheers, Ed At 04:39 PM 28/04/2009, you wrote: >"Sounds like history was absolutely static..." > >Cheers, >Chris > >It may sound that way, however, if we accept the proposition put forward by >Lloyd deMause (The Emotional Life of Nations) it would appear that >(historical) highlights in social and cultural evolution are marked by major >changes in child rearing. > >I won't spend time rewriting something covered at length at >http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln07_evolution.html but will add that >although deMause tries to shed new light on the mechanics of cultural >change, he seems to be avoiding the most important part: explaining why we >think the way we do. > >cheers, Ken > > > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword >"igve". > > >_______________________________________________ >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 - www.avg.com >Version: 8.5.287 / Virus Database: 270.12.6/2084 - Release Date: 04/28/09 >06:15:00 > > >_______________________________________________ >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 - www.avg.com >Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.7/2085 - Release Date: >04/28/09 18:02:00 From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Apr 28 20:08:20 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Tue Apr 28 21:10:15 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request In-Reply-To: <20090428182719.2NFZT.6992.imail@fed1rmwml43> References: <007101c9c84c$a0003e50$36ad57ca@jfos> <20090428182719.2NFZT.6992.imail@fed1rmwml43> Message-ID: <20090429030822.5DF18110E3@fep07.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> At 06:27 29/04/2009, Duane wrote: >So why not just welcome all new members - and their input - unless >and until they prove to have an agenda other than the sharing of >intelligent discourse? ============= I agree with this. A quick posting to see if anyone knows any reason why not, then come in, you're welcome. Mark is a friend of Duane and we have already seen a post from him which is rational and educational (even though I don't agree with his line on that issue). Had never heard from Ken but his post today is fresh and interesting. If they engage with us we're richer and so are they. In general, security slows things down but may keep trolls out. Openness speeds things up but increases the risk of trolls. I much prefer openness as the way to go. Keeping trolls out isn't nearly as important as facilitating entry of good people. After all, Skoll didn't do any real damage before he flounced out. Dion Giles From kenandcarol at telus.net Tue Apr 28 23:07:57 2009 From: kenandcarol at telus.net (Ken) Date: Tue Apr 28 23:08:19 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a newsustainable In-Reply-To: <200904290335.n3T3YYsG011052@karma.reboot.ca> Message-ID: Ed, I think you've touched on a symptom of the malaise affecting much of society: escapism. A good number of young folks I talk to aren't the least bit interested in politics, not to mention differences in political ideologies. It's almost as if they're afraid to look too far down the road. For many the idea of working towards goals somewhere off in the future is a foreign concept. The desire for, and expectation of, instant gratification seems to be ubiquitous. And those that do look a little closer think trying to improve the "system" is pointless, and wasted effort. Could be part of the reason voter turn out is on the decrease. But, as you note, this is probably directly related to child rearing and childhood education. Which, some would say, probably starts in the womb. Given the present state of societal dysfunction I have my doubts about universal awakening, and hopefully the end isn't here just yet. If we manage to survive the ravages of disease, war and environmental collapse, that seem inevitable, perhaps the environment facing future generations will have selected for folks that understand the importance of cooperation, community, empathy and doing their best to help their offspring attain their goals. Ken -----Original Message----- From: mai-not-bounces@globalproblematique.net [mailto:mai-not-bounces@globalproblematique.net]On Behalf Of Ed Deak Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 8:37 PM To: A renewed Mai-Not Subject: Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a newsustainable Ken, For the vast majority thinking doesn't exist and they live their lives based on childhood brainwash and trying to escape realities by "having fun" and "sports" (watching), kocking their brains out with something , etc. Right now, we have an provincial election campaign going on here in BC, with the reigning BCLIberals leading in the polls. I've been a BC voter since May 1956 and have never seen a worse, more corrupt and more disgusting government than what we have now, selling off the province to foreign investors. The Premier, Gordon Campbell was a few years ago arrested, jailed and mugshot in Hawaii for drunk driving, but reelected and has a good chance to be elected again, for a 4 year fixed term, on May 12. The Solicitor General just resigned after his drivers licence was suspended for 9 speeding tickets. We have an economy in shambles, 170 odd schools closed, seniors' homes and many government services privatized, contracts broken to cut peoples' wages, while the politicians and senior civil servants received huge increases, the land totally taken over and ruined by foreign investors, who control us, etc. etc. We have tens of thousands on $8/hr minimum wage part time jobs, lining up at soup kitchens and foodbanks. The list goes on and on , but they have a good chance for being reelected , because "Gordon knows how to keep BC strong....,." A recent poll suggested that many people don't even have a clue whether we're having provincial, or federal elections, etc. etc. We now have a provincial Conservative Party and many Libs are worried that people may vote for them, not being able to distinguish who is what. No that it makes any difference, the whole gang , like Harper, is the remnants of the Socred and Reform Parties under different names I have lived in 4 countries, under every known political ideology, sentenced to death by the nazi military and to the gulags by the communist satellite govt., neither carried out, so I have seen the same ignorance and amnesia under every ideology.. Have been searching for the "common denominator of history's tragedies" since 1945 and found it in 1985 in the age old fraudulent definition of economic efficiency, always licencing the crime waves of and by ruling sectors, as "the Will of God" and now "the Will of the Money God", with our economists having taken over the role of past priesthoods. Now, at 82, I'm still hoping that capitalism is at the beginning stage of disintegration, Soviet bolshevism was in the late 80s, when people lost faith. In spite of the overall ignorance, sooner or later people wake. This has happened many times in history and will happen again. The question is: When and what will take its place and will the Mayan calendar's prophecy come true, interpreted either as the end of the world , or universal awakening" ? I have no idea, but am certain that something very big is going to happen and perhaps even the majority, who are now hanging on the Stanley Cup and similar showbiz racket results as the end and be all of everything, may just wake up. I've been incredibly lucky, yes, there is such thing as luck and without it I wouldn't be here, in many fields and on many occasions, with the exception of wealth and money, and hope to see the big awakening happen yet. Cheers, Ed From netcfs at shaw.ca Tue Apr 28 23:21:33 2009 From: netcfs at shaw.ca (Yves Bajard) Date: Tue Apr 28 23:21:55 2009 Subject: [S] Re: [S] Re: [S] Re: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a newsustainable In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1240986093.4843.639.camel@localhost> I see that the discussion is drifting away from the subject line. Also, there are a whole train of " Re:" in the subject line... Could you please discipline yourselves a bit? Thanks in advance. Yves On Tue, 2009-04-28 at 22:40 +0200, Christoph Reuss wrote: > Ken wrote: > > 12. Because pain underlies our NSR, everyone succumbs to the > > influence of distortional thinking. ^^^^^^^^ > > Everyone on Mai-Not too? Or are we aliens from Mars? > > > Members of any group or society share common histories and beliefs. In order > > to continue to be accepted by the group, individuals must comply with those > > beliefs. Deviance has a cost. And, as a result, the teachings of neo > > classical economists will persist. > > Sounds like history was absolutely static... > > Cheers, > Chris > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword > "igve". > > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090428/26f0212c/attachment.html From creuss at bluewin.ch Wed Apr 29 04:24:23 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Wed Apr 29 04:27:38 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request Message-ID: > After all, Skoll didn't do any real damage before he flounced out. I found Mark's message interesting and look forward to him joining Mai-Not, but just for the record I have to remind you that Skoll nearly wrecked Mai-Not (by blackmailing Russell McO) and would have succeeded if it wasn't for Yves taking over. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From creuss at bluewin.ch Wed Apr 29 05:06:30 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Wed Apr 29 05:09:39 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Toward a newsustainable Message-ID: > it would appear that > (historical) highlights in social and cultural evolution are marked by > major changes in child rearing. Well, there have been pretty major changes in child rearing during the last decades -- but nearly all for the worse! A dark outlook... Cheers, Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From creuss at bluewin.ch Wed Apr 29 05:07:55 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Wed Apr 29 05:11:15 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] British Royal's wish on deadly viruses Message-ID: "In the event I am reborn, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation." --Prince Philip, quoted in Deutsche Presse Agentur, August 1988 Thanks to genetic engineering, he didn't have to wait for his death... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From duanebehrens at cox.net Wed Apr 29 06:36:06 2009 From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens) Date: Wed Apr 29 06:36:57 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] 9/11 Becomes Japanese Election Issue Message-ID: <20090429093606.ZOK1P.60503.imail@fed1rmwml42> Chip. Chip. Chip. ----------------------------------------------- http://www.911video.de http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Major-9-11-Breakthrough-in-by-Heinrich-Buecker-090425-34.html Yukihisa Fujita, a member of the Upper House of the Japanese Parliament has recently published a book titled: "Questioning 9/11 in Japan's Parliament - Can Obama Change the USA?" Co-authors are David Ray Griffin, Yumi Kikuchi and Akira Dojimaru. Councilor Fujita is a current member and former director of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense. In this function he questioned 9/11 three times in parliament. Fujita claims that 9/11 as the main reason for the "War on Terror" needs to be newly investigated in order to find peaceful solutions. On April 8 there was a formal reception on the ocassion of the publishing Mr. Fujita's book at the Tokyo Dome Hotel. The event was organized and promoted by a large group of Mr. Fujita's supporters including the chief editor daily newspaper Japan Times, several leading representatives of the Democratic Party and several business excecutives. They hosted the event in honour of the Mr. Fujita. Yumi Kikuchi, a well known peace and 9/11 activists first presented a video lecture that had been prepared by co-author of the book, Akira Dojimaru, who lives in Spain and was not present at the event. The presentation explained in great detail the numerous main points that completely contradict the official 9/11 account of the US administration and the mainstream media. Its was made clear that 9/11 is used to constantly justify wars. Takao Iwami, a political commentator who writes a column in the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper then questioned Mr. Fujita about the book, the consequences of 9/11 and perspective of the world politics Speakers - Yasuo Onuki, former chief of the NHK office in Europe and the US. NHK, Japan Broadcasting Corporation, is Japan's national public broadcasting organization. Hiroshi Yamada, former chief editor of the US and Europe office of Japan?s daily newspaper ?Yomiuri? Kyoji Takei, representative of a major japanese printing labor union. All speakers fully supported Mr. Fujita's efforts emphasizing the importance of the 9/11 questions in the context of the need of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan and the protection of Japan non-military constitution. At end of the event a formal greeting adress by opposition and DPJ party leader Ichiro Ozawa was read to the audience in which Ozawa called for Mr Fujita to be persistent in his efforts. The widespread support for Mr. Fujitas struggle to expose zhe official 9/11 lies could very well make the 9/11 issue become an election issue for the first time..Japan must hold the election by October at the latest, but the ruling government has been hard pressed to find a favourable opportunity as the country battles its worst recession since World War Two. --------------------------------------------- Finally, 9/11 is an election issue. But why Japan? Why not Canada? Or the U.S.? Anyone know? Duane Behrens From creuss at bluewin.ch Wed Apr 29 06:51:00 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Wed Apr 29 06:54:11 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] 9/11 Becomes Japanese Election Issue Message-ID: > recently published a book titled: > "Questioning 9/11 in Japan's Parliament - Can Obama Change the USA?" The question is not whether Obama CAN change the U$A, but whether he WANTS to (or rather, whether Rahm Emanuel wants him to / allows him to) at all... > Finally, 9/11 is an election issue. But why Japan? Why not Canada? > Or the U.S.? Anyone know? Japan has very few zionists and many people who (or whose family) experienced the only TRUE Ground Zero! (made in U$A) Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From netcfs at shaw.ca Wed Apr 29 07:49:36 2009 From: netcfs at shaw.ca (Yves Bajard) Date: Wed Apr 29 07:50:13 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1241016576.6262.3.camel@localhost> You know, Mark is already on the list. I just asked you if you knew him. Duane Behrens did vouch for Mark ands Mark sent me a very solid introductory message. Please stop commenting him as if he was an alien. Ditto, for the new subscription, I thought it would be just normal to ask you if someone wanted to join the group. I did not expect the following exchange.. Thank you Welcome again, Mark. Yves Bajard On Wed, 2009-04-29 at 13:24 +0200, Christoph Reuss wrote: > > After all, Skoll didn't do any real damage before he flounced out. > > I found Mark's message interesting and look forward to him joining Mai-Not, > but just for the record I have to remind you that Skoll nearly wrecked Mai-Not > (by blackmailing Russell McO) and would have succeeded if it wasn't for Yves > taking over. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." > > Chris > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword > "igve". > > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090429/0ab337d3/attachment-0001.html From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Wed Apr 29 06:23:59 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Wed Apr 29 08:40:31 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20090429132400.530EE12A55@fep05.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> At 19:24 29/04/2009, you wrote: > > After all, Skoll didn't do any real damage before he flounced out. > >I found Mark's message interesting and look forward to him joining Mai-Not, >but just for the record I have to remind you that Skoll nearly wrecked Mai-Not >(by blackmailing Russell McO) and would have succeeded if it wasn't for Yves >taking over. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." ---------------- You're right. Had forgotten that. -- Dion >Chris > > > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword >"igve". > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From thinker at thelakebc.ca Wed Apr 29 09:10:14 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Wed Apr 29 09:08:48 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] 9/11 Becomes Japanese Election Issue In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200904291608.n3TG8EVe031446@karma.reboot.ca> I don't think the question is whether Obama WANTS to, but rather whether he DARES to question the story of 9/11, if he wants to stay alive. Cheers, Ed. At 06:51 AM 29/04/2009, you wrote: > > recently published a book titled: > > "Questioning 9/11 in Japan's Parliament - Can Obama Change the USA?" > >The question is not whether Obama CAN change the U$A, but whether he WANTS >to (or rather, whether Rahm Emanuel wants him to / allows him to) at all... > > > > Finally, 9/11 is an election issue. But why Japan? Why not Canada? > > Or the U.S.? Anyone know? > >Japan has very few zionists and many people who (or whose family) experienced >the only TRUE Ground Zero! (made in U$A) > >Chris > > > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword >"igve". > > >_______________________________________________ >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 - www.avg.com >Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.7/2085 - Release Date: >04/28/09 18:02:00 From kangarooratt at aol.com Wed Apr 29 08:14:11 2009 From: kangarooratt at aol.com (kangarooratt@aol.com) Date: Wed Apr 29 09:25:03 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] new subscription request In-Reply-To: <1241016576.6262.3.camel@localhost> References: <1241016576.6262.3.camel@localhost> Message-ID: <8CB96F44845BAC3-63C-2EBC@webmail-dd21.sysops.aol.com> Yves: Thanks for the welcome.? By the way, kangaroo rats live in the Southwestern U.S. deserts.? They have the amazing ability to convert the dry seeds they eat into water.? Thus, they need essentially no external water to survive. Mark -----Original Message----- From: Yves Bajard To: A renewed Mai-Not Sent: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 7:49 am Subject: Re: [Mai-not] new subscription request You know, Mark is already on? the list. I just asked you if you knew him. Duane? Behrens did vouch for Mark ands Mark sent me a very solid introductory message. Please stop commenting him as if he was an alien. Ditto, for the new subscription, I thought it would be just normal to ask you if someone wanted to join the group. I did not expect the following exchange.. Thank you Welcome again, Mark. Yves Bajard On Wed, 2009-04-29 at 13:24 +0200, Christoph Reuss wrote: > After all, Skoll didn't do any real damage before he flounced out. I found Mark's message interesting and look forward to him joining Mai-Not, but just for the record I have to remind you that Skoll nearly wrecked Mai-Not (by blackmailing Russell McO) and would have succeeded if it wasn't for Yves taking over. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". _______________________________________________ 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090429/bd31c2d3/attachment.html From jomut at yahoo.com Wed Apr 29 11:50:57 2009 From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa) Date: Wed Apr 29 11:51:26 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Re: 9/11 Becomes Japanese Election Issue Message-ID: <443476.51291.qm@web31105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake) jomut@yahoo.com chakane@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/jomut ? Hi Ed ? Kinda reminiscent of the prudently considered reluctance by aspiring economists to question the prevailing orthodoxy.? The parallels are disgustingly illuminating!! ? Ya got the house jumpin' again Ed! ? John ======================== ? PS? I have always been amazed by C Wright Mills' anticipation of these research problems in the Social Sciences in his seminal work on investigative forays into the area under the title, "The Sociological Imagination". ? John ========= --- On Wed, 4/29/09, Ed Deak wrote: From: Ed Deak Subject: Re: [Mai-not] 9/11 Becomes Japanese Election Issue To: "A renewed Mai-Not" Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 4:10 PM I don't think the question is whether Obama WANTS to, but rather whether he DARES to question the story of 9/11, if he wants to stay alive. Cheers, Ed. At 06:51 AM 29/04/2009, you wrote: > > recently published a book titled: > > "Questioning 9/11 in Japan's Parliament - Can Obama Change the USA?" > >The question is not whether Obama CAN change the U$A, but whether he WANTS >to (or rather, whether Rahm Emanuel wants him to / allows him to) at all... > > > > Finally, 9/11 is an election issue.? But why Japan?? Why not Canada? > > Or the U.S.?? ? Anyone know? > >Japan has very few zionists and many people who (or whose family) experienced >the only TRUE Ground Zero! (made in U$A) > >Chris > > > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword >"igve". > > >_______________________________________________ >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 - www.avg.com >Version: 8.0.238 / Virus Database: 270.12.7/2085 - Release Date: >04/28/09 18:02:00 _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090429/ae16e928/attachment.html From thinker at thelakebc.ca Wed Apr 29 11:56:26 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Wed Apr 29 11:54:53 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Swine flu Message-ID: <200904291854.n3TIsQGr013790@karma.reboot.ca> T >From: "Globalresearch.ca" >Date: April 29, 2009 7:18:48 AM PDT (CA) > >Subject: Flying Pigs, Tamiflu and Factory Farms. CRG E-Newsletter >Reply-To: crgeditor@yahoo.com > > >Flying Pigs, Tamiflu and Factory Farms > >By F. William Engdahl > >URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13408 > >Global Research, April 29, 2009 > >If we are to believe what our trusted international media report, >the world is on the brink of a global pandemic outbreak of a new >deadly strain of flu, H1N1 as it has been labelled, or more >popularly, Swine Flu. As the story goes, the outbreak of the deadly >flu was first discovered in Mexico. According to press reports, >after several days, headlines reported as many as perhaps 150 deaths >in Mexicowere believed caused by this virulent people-killing pig >virus that has spread to humans and now is allegedly being further >spread from human to human. Cases were being reported hourly from >Canadato Spain and beyond. The only thing wrong with this story is >that it is largely based on lies, hype and coverup of possible real >causes of Mexican deaths. > >One website, revealingly named Swine Flu Vaccine, reports the >alarming news, ?One out of every five residents of Mexico's most >populous city wore masks to protect themselves against the virus >asMexico City seems to be the epicenter of the outbreak. As many as >103 deaths have been attributed to the swine flu so far with many >more feared to be on the horizon. The health department of >Mexicosaid an additional 1,614 reported cases have been documented.' >We are told that the H1N1 ?shares genetic material from human, avian >and swine influenza viruses.'1 > >Airports around the world have installed passenger temperature scans >to identify anyone with above normal body temperature as possible >suspect for swine flu. Travel to Mexico has collapsed. Sales of flu >vaccines, above all Tamiflu from Roche Inc., have exploded in days. >People have stopped buying pork fearing certain death. The World >Health Organization has declared a ?a public health emergency of >international concern,' defined by them as ?an occurrence or >imminent threat of illness or health conditions caused by >bioterrorism, epidemic or pandemic disease, or highly fatal >infectious agents or toxins that pose serious risk to a significant >number of people.'2 > >What are the symptoms of this purported Swine Flu? That's not at all >clear according to virologists and public health experts. They say >Swine Flu symptoms are relatively general and nonspecific. ?So many >different things can cause these symptoms. it is a dilemma,' says >one doctor interviewed by CNN. ?There is not a perfect test right >now to let a doctor know that a person has the Swine Flu.' It has >been noted that most individuals with Swine Flu had an early on set >of fever. Also it was common to see dizziness, body aches and >vomiting in addition to the common sneezing, headache and other cold >symptoms. These are symptoms so general as to say nothing. > >The US Government's Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta >states on its official website, ?Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a >respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses that >causes regular outbreaks in pigs. People do not normally get swine >flu, but human infections can and do happen. Swine flu viruses have >been reported to spread from person-to-person, but in the past, this >transmission was limited and not sustained beyond three people.' >Nonetheless they add, ?CDC has determined that this swine influenza >A (H1N1) virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human. >However, at this time, it is not known how easily the virus spreads >between people.'3 > >How many media that have grabbed on the headline ?suspected case of >Swine Flu' in recent days bother to double check with the local >health authorities to ask some basic questions? For example, the >number of confirmed cases of H1N1 and their location? The number of >deaths confirmed to have resulted from H1N1? Dates of both? Number >of suspected cases and of suspected deaths related to the Swine Flu >disease? > >Some known facts > >According to Biosurveillance, itself part of Veratect, a US Pentagon >and Government-linked epidemic reporting center, on April 6, 2009 >local health officials declared a health alert due to a respiratory >disease outbreak in La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, >Mexico. > >They reported, ?Sources characterized the event as a ?strange' >outbreak of acute respiratory infection, which led to bronchial >pneumonia in some pediatric cases. According to a local resident, >symptoms included fever, severe cough, and large amounts of phlegm. >Health officials recorded 400 cases that sought medical treatment in >the last week in La Gloria, which has a population of 3,000; >officials indicated that 60% of the town's population (approximately >1,800 cases) has been affected. No precise timeframe was provided, >but sources reported that a local official had been seeking health >assistance for the town since February.' What they later say is >?strange' is not the form of the illness but the time of year as >most flu cases occur in Mexico in the period October to February. >The report went on to note, ?Residents claimed that three pediatric >cases, all under two years of age, died from the outbreak. However, >health officials stated that there was no direct link between the >pediatric deaths and the outbreak; they stated the three fatal cases >were "isolated" and "not related" to each other.' > >Then, most revealingly, the aspect of the story which has been >largely ignored by major media, they reported, ?Residents believed >the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding >farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by >Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, >which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, >the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed >the cases to "flu." However, a municipal health official stated that >preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a >type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was >linked to the pig farms.'4 > >Since the dawn of American ?agribusiness,' a project initiated with >funding by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950's to turn farming >into a pure profit maximization business, US pig or hog production >has been transformed into a highly efficient, mass production >industrialized enterprise from birth to slaughter. Pigs are caged in >what are called Factory Farms, industrial concentrations which are >run with the efficiency of a Dachau or Bergen-Belsen concentration >camp. They are all conceived by artificial insemination and once >born, are regularly injected with antibiotics, not because of >illnesses which abound in the hyper-crowded growing pens, but in >order to make them grow and add weight faster. Turn around time to >slaughter is a profit factor of highest priority. The entire >operation is vertically integrated from conception to slaughter to >transport distribution to supermarket. > >Granjas Carroll de Mexico (GCM) happens to be such a Factory Farm >concentration facility for hogs. In 2008 they produced almost one >million factory hogs, 950,000 according to their own statistics. GCM >is a joint venture operation owned 50% by the world's largest pig >producing industrial company, Smithfield Foods of Virginia.5 The >pigs are grown in a tiny rural area of Mexico, a member of the North >American Free Trade Agreement, and primarily trucked across the >border to supermarkets in the USA, under the Smithfields' family of >labels. Most American consumers have no idea where the meat was >raised. > >Now the story becomes interesting. > >Manure Lagoons and other playing fields > >The Times of London interviewed the mother of 4-year-old Edgar >Hernandez of La Gloria in Veracruz, the location of the giant >Smithfield Foods hog production facility. Their local reporter >notes, ?Edgar Hern?ndez plays among the dogs and goats that roam >through the streets, seemingly unaware that the swine flu he >contracted a few weeks ago ? the first known case ? has almost >brought his country to a standstill and put the rest of the world on >alert. ?I feel great,' the five-year-old boy said. ?But I had a >headache and a sore throat and a fever for a while. I had to lay >down in bed.'' > >The reporters add, ?It was confirmed on Monday (April 27 2009-w.e.) >that Edgar was the first known sufferer of swine flu, a revelation >that has put La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and >?manure lagoons' at the centre of a global race to find how this new >and deadly strain of swine flu emerged.' 6 > >That's quite interesting. They speak of ?La Gloria and its >surrounding factory pig farms and ?manure lagoons.'' Presumably the >manure lagoons around the LaGloria factory pig farm of Smithfield >Foods are the waste dumping place for the feces and urine waste from >at least 950,000 pigs a year that pass through the facility. The >Smithfield's Mexico joint venture, Norson, states that alone they >slaughter 2,300 pigs daily. That's a lot. It gives an idea of the >volumes of pig waste involved in the concentration facility at La >Gloria. > >Significantly, according to the Times reporters, ?residents of La >Gloria have been complaining since March that the odour from Granjas >Carroll's pig waste was causing severe respiratory infections. They >held a demonstration this month at which they carried signs of pigs >crossed with an X and marked with the word peligro (danger).'7 There >have been calls to exhume the bodies of the children who died of >pneumonia so that they could be tested. The state legislature of >Veracruz has demanded thatSmithfield's Granjas Carroll release >documents about its waste-handling practices. Smithfield Foods >reportedly declined to comment on the request, saying that it would >?not respond to rumours.'8 > >A research compilation by Ed Harris reported, ?According to >residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and >attributed the cases to ?flu.' However, a municipal health official >stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease >vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the >outbreak was linked to the pig farms.'9 That would imply that the >entire Swine Flu scare might have originated from the PR spin >doctors of the world's largest industrial pig factory farm >operation, Smithfield Foods. > >The Vera Cruz-based newspaper La Marcha blames Smithfield's Granjos >Carroll for the outbreak, highlighting inadequate treatment of >massive quantities of animal waste from hog production.10 > >Understandably the company is perhaps more than a bit uncomfortable >with the sudden attention. The company, which supplies the >McDonald's and Subway fast-food chains, was fined $12.3 million in >the United States 1997 for violating the Clean Water Act. Perhaps >they are in a remote tiny Mexican rural area enjoying a relatively >lax regulatory climate where they need not worry about being cited >for violations of any Clean Water Act. > > > > > > >Pig Factory Farm Industrial Production is a classic breeder of >disease and toxins but little attention is being paid to this source > >Factory Farms as toxic concentrations > >At the very least the driving force for giant industrial >agribusiness outsourcing of facilities to third world sites such as >Veracruz, Mexico has more to do with further cost reduction and lack >of health and safety scrutiny than it does with improving the health >and safety quality of the food end product. It has been widely >documented and subject of US Congressional reports that large-scale >indoor animal production facilities such as that of Granjos Carroll >are notorious breeding grounds for toxic pathogens. > >A recent report by the US Pew Foundation in cooperation with the >Johns Hopkins School of Public Health notes, ?the method of >producing food animals in the United States has changed from the >extensive system of small and medium-sized farms owned by a single >family to a system of large, intensive operations where the animals >are housed in large numbers in enclosed structures that resemble >industrial buildings more than they do a traditional barn. That >change has happened primarily out of view of consumers but has come >at a cost to the environment and a negative impact on public health, >rural communities, and the health and well-being of the animals >themselves. 11 > >The Pew study notes, ?The diversified, independent, family-owned >farms of 40 years ago that produced a variety of crops and a few >animals are disappearing as an economic entity, replaced by much >larger, and often highly leveraged, farm factories. The animals that >many of these farms produce are owned by the meat packing companies >from the time they are born >or hatched right through their arrival at the processing plant and >from there to market.' 12 > >The study emphasizes that application of ?untreated animal waste on >cropland can contribute to excessive nutrient loading, contaminate >surface waters, and stimulate bacteria and algal >growth and subsequent reductions in dissolved oxygen concentrations >in surface waters.'13 > >That is where the real investigation ought to begin, with the health >and sanitary dangers of the industrial factory pig farms like the >one at Perote in Veracruz. The media spread of panic-mongering >reports of every person in the world who happens to contract >?symptoms' which vaguely resemble flu or even Swine Flu and the >statements to date of authorities such as WHO or CDC are far from >conducive to a rational scientific investigation.. > >Tamiflu and Rummy > >In October 2005 the Pentagon ordered vaccination of all US military >personnel worldwide against what it called Avian Flu, H5N1. Scare >stories filled world media. Then, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld >announced he had budgeted more than $1 billion to stockpile the >vaccine, Oseltamivir sold under the name, Tamiflu. President Bush >called on Congress to appropriate another $2 billion for Tamiflu >stocks. > >What Rumsfeld neglected to report at the time was a colossal >conflict of interest. Prior to coming toWashington in January 2001, >Rumsfeld had been chairman of a California pharmaceutical company, >Gilead Sciences. Gilead Sciences held exclusive world patent rights >to Tamiflu, a drug it had developed and whose world marketing rights >were sold to the Swiss pharma giant, Roche. Rumsfeld was reportedly >the largest stock holder in Gilead which got 10% of every Tamiflu >dose Roche sold. 14When it leaked out, the Pentagon issued a curt >statement to the effect that Secretary Rumsfeld had decided not to >sell but to retain his stock in Gilead, claiming that to sell would >have indicated something to hide.' That agonizing decision won him >reported added millions as the Gilead share price soared more than >700% in weeks. > >Tamiflu is no mild candy to be taken lightly. It has heavy side >effects. It contains matter that could have potentially deadly >consequences for a person's breathing and often reportedly leads to >nausea, dizziness and other flu-like symptoms. > >Since the outbreak of Swine Flu Panic (not Swine Flu but Swine Flu >Panic) sales of Tamiflu as well as any and every possible drug >marketed as flu related have exploded. Wall Street firms have rushed >to issue ?buy' recommendations for the company. ?Gimme me a shot >Doc, I don't care what it is...I don' wanna die...' > >Panic and fear of death was used by the Bush Administration >skilfully to promote the Avian Flu fraud. With ominous echoes of the >current Swine Flu scare, Avian Flu was traced back to huge chicken >factory farms in Thailand and other parts of Asia whose products >were shipped across the world. Instead of a serious investigation >into the sanitary conditions of those chicken factory farms, the >Bush Administration and WHO blamed ?free-roaming chickens' on small >family farms, a move that had devastating economic consequences to >the farmers whose chickens were being raised in the most sanitary >natural conditions. Tyson Foods of Arkansas and CG Group of Thailand >reportedly smiled all the way to the bank. > >Now it remains to be seen if the Obama Administration will use the >scare around so-called Swine Flu to repeat the same scenario, this >time with ?flying pigs' instead of flying birds. Already Mexican >authorities have reported that the number of deaths confirmed from >so-called Swine Flu is 7 not the 150 or more bandied in the media >and that most other suspected cases were ordinary flu or influenza. > >(To be continued) > >F. William Engdahl is author of Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden >Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (Global Rersearch, 2007, see below) >and A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and theNew World >Order (Pluto Press). His new book, Full Spectrum Dominance: >Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order (Third Millennium >Press) is due out end of May. He may be contacted through his >website: www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. > >Notes > >1 Health Advisory, accessed in http://www.swine-flu-vaccine.info/. >2 Ibid. >3 Centers for Disease Control, Swine Influenza and You, accessed in >http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/swineflu_you.htm. >4 Biosurveillance, Swine Flu in Mexico- Timeline of Events, April >24, 2009, accessed in >http://biosurveillance.typepad.com/biosurveillance/2009/04/swine-flu-in-mexico-timeline-of-events.html >. >5 Smithfield Foods website, accessed in >http://www.smithfieldfoods.com/our_company/our_family/Norson.aspx. >6] Ruth Maclean in La Gloria and Chris Ayres in Mexico City, I had a >headache and fever' says boy who survived, London Times, April 28, >2009. >7] Ibid. >8 Ibid. >9 Ed Harris, Bloggers Examine Environmental Role in Mexico Swine Flu >Outbreak, April 27, 2009, accessed in > http://www.planetthoughts.org/?pg=pt/Whole&qid=2870. >10 Ibid. >11 The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, Putting >Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm >Animal Production in America, accessed in >http://www.ncifap.org/_images/PCIFAPFin.pdf . >12 Ibid. >13 Ibid. >14 F. William Engdahl, Is Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax?, >GlobalResearch, October 30, 2005. > > >Seeds of Destruction > >The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation > >by F. William Engdahl > >Global Research, 2007 ISBN 978-0-937147-2-2 > >To order click here > > > > >This skillfully researched book focuses on how a >small socio- political American elite seeks to >establish control over the very >basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. "Control >the food and you control the people." > >This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the >reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the >science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms. > >The author cogently reveals a diabolical World of profit-driven >political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where >genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to >gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads >as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what >it is. > >Engdahl's carefully argued critique goes far beyond the familiar >controversies surrounding the practice of genetic modification as a >scientific technique. The book is an eye-opener, a must-read for all >those committed to the causes of social justice and World peace. > > >What is so frightening about Engdahl's vision of the world is that >it is so real. Although our civilization has been built on >humanistic ideals, in this new age of "free markets", everything-- >science, commerce, agriculture and even seeds-- have become weapons >in the hands of a few global corporation barons and their political >fellow travelers. To achieve world domination, they no longer rely >on bayonet-wielding soldiers. All they need is to control food >production. (Dr. Arpad Pusztai, biochemist, formerly of the Rowett >Research Institute Institute, Scotland) > >If you want to learn about the socio-political agenda --why biotech >corporations insist on spreading GMO seeds around the World-- you >should read this carefully researched book. You will learn how these >corporations want to achieve control over all mankind, and why we >must resist... (Marijan Jost, Professor of Genetics, Krizevci, >Croatia) > >The book reads like a murder mystery of an incredible dimension, in >which four giant Anglo-American agribusiness conglomerates have no >hesitation to use GMO to gain control over our very means of >subsistence... (Anton Moser, Professor of Biotechnology, Graz, >Austria). > >To order Seeds of Destruction click here > > > >Please support Global Research >Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. > > >Your endorsement is greatly appreciated > >Subscribe to the Global Research e-newsletter >Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole >responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of >the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this >article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for >Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any >inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article. > >To become a Member of Global Research > >The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research >articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are >not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be >displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or >other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com > >www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which >has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. >We are making such material available to our readers under the >provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better >understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material >on this site is distributed without profit to those who have >expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and >educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for >purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the >copyright owner. > >For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com > >? Copyright F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 2009 > >The url address of this article is: >www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13408 > >? Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca >Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia ? Copyright 2005-2007 From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Thu Apr 30 23:40:21 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Thu Apr 30 23:40:48 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Anatomy of a caste-ridden police state Message-ID: <20090501064022.2731B13DBC@fep03.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/5251053/Police-accused-of-abusing-powers-as-anti-terrorism-stop-and-searches-treble.html Dion Giles