From thinker at xplornet.com Tue Dec 1 07:58:28 2009 From: thinker at xplornet.com (Ed Deak) Date: Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:58:28 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Real world economics review Message-ID: <20091201155842.A0C99117E862@smtprelay01.hostedemail.com> More and more people are now questioning the presently ruling economic theory, which is a very good sign and was almost unheard of years ago, when I got into this racket. Cheers, Ed. =========================================================================. sanity, humanity and science real-world economics review ISSN 1755-9472 Issue no. 51, 1 December 2009 back issues at www.paecon.net Subscribers: 11, 222 from over 150 countries You can download the whole issue as a pdf document by clicking here http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue51/whole51.pdf or download articles individually by clicking on their pdf link. In this issue: Inequality as policy: The United States Since 1979 2 John Schmitt download pdf Global commons and common sense 10 Jorge Buzaglo download pdf Managerialism and the demise of the Big Three 28 Robert R Locke download pdf The demise of neoliberalism? 48 Bill Lucarelli download pdf Money manager capitalism and the global financial crisis 55 L. Randall Wray download pdf IMF?s policies during the world recession 70 Mark Weisbrot download pdf A man for this season? Keynes 76 Walden Bello download pdf Economic theory and the crisis 80 Alan Kirman download pdf Past Contributors, etc. 84 _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Real-World Economics Review Blog http://rwer.wordpress.com/ You may post comments on papers in Issue no. 51 here: http://rwer.wordpress.com/comments-on-issue-no-51-2/ Recent Most Viewed Posts Censorship of Critique of Emissions Trading and Carbon-Offsets Schemes Banking on Heaven: economics as confessional The Job Loss from Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions and from Defense Spending Climate change ? why we can afford to stop it Reviews of Paul Davidson?s new book Political documents vs. scientific ones Stagnationist roots of the current crisis Student protests against the effects of the economic collapse are spreading real-world economics review on Twitter http://twitter.com/RealWorldEcon ---------- Click here to safely unsubscribe now from "real-world economics review" or change your subscription or subscribe ---------- Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498 From gdy52150 at spiritone.com Tue Dec 1 14:21:29 2009 From: gdy52150 at spiritone.com (gdy52150 at spiritone.com) Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 14:21:29 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Real world economics review Message-ID: <200912012221.nB1MLTPa031651@sapphire.spiritone.com> good--I would define anyone that lives off the labor of another as slavery I don;t give a damn if he owns the company or collects dividends its the same thing he is getting rich off someone else's work Ed Deak wrote: > > > More and more people are now questioning the > presently ruling economic theory, which is a > very good sign and was almost unheard of years > ago, when I got into this racket. > > Cheers, Ed. > =========================================================================. > > sanity, humanity and science > > real-world economics review > > ISSN > 1755-9472 > Issue no. 51, 1 December 2009 back > issues at > www.paecon.net > > Subscribers: 11, 222 from over 150 countries > > > > You can download the whole issue as a pdf document by clicking here > http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue51/whole51.pdf > or download articles individually by clicking on their pdf link. > > In this issue: > > > > Inequality as policy: The United States Since 1979 2 > > John > Schmitt > download > pdf > > > > > Global commons and common sense 10 > > Jorge > Buzaglo > download > pdf > > > > > Managerialism and the demise of the Big Three 28 > > Robert R > Locke > download > pdf > > > > The demise of neoliberalism? 48 > > Bill > Lucarelli > download > pdf > > > > > Money manager capitalism and the global financial crisis 55 > > L. Randall > Wray > download > pdf > > > > > IMF?s policies during the world recession 70 > > Mark > Weisbrot > download > pdf > > > > > A man for this season? Keynes 76 > > Walden > Bello > download > pdf > > > > > Economic theory and the crisis 80 > > Alan > Kirman > download > pdf > > > > > Past Contributors, etc. 84 > > _____________________________________________________________________________________________ > > > > > Real-World Economics Review Blog http://rwer.wordpress.com/ > > You may post comments on papers in Issue no. 51 here: > http://rwer.wordpress.com/comments-on-issue-no-51-2/ > > > > > Recent Most Viewed Posts > > Censorship > of Critique of Emissions Trading and Carbon-Offsets Schemes > > Banking > on Heaven: economics as confessional > > The > Job Loss from Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions > and from Defense Spending > > Climate > change ? why we can afford to stop it > > Reviews > of Paul Davidson?s new book > > Political > documents vs. scientific ones > > Stagnationist > roots of the current crisis > > Student > protests against the effects of the economic collapse are spreading > > real-world economics review on Twitter > http://twitter.com/RealWorldEcon > > > > > > > ---------- > Click > here to safely unsubscribe now from "real-world > economics review" or > change > your subscription or > subscribe > > > ---------- > Your requested content delivery powered by > FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 > Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498 > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not at globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Tue Dec 1 16:56:03 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2009 11:56:03 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: CARTOON OF THE CENTURY!! Message-ID: <011d01ca72ea$3ac456e0$17ad57ca@jfos> ----- Original Message ----- To: 911Truth Australia Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 1:11 AM Subject: CARTOON OF THE CENTURY!! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/octet-stream Size: 38161 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Dec 2 19:09:45 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 14:09:45 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: America's Dismal Future Message-ID: <008201ca73c6$146cbd70$42ad57ca@jfos> http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts11122009.html November 12, 2009 How the Lobby Made Mincemeat of the Obama Administration America's Dismal Future By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS It did not take the Israel Lobby long to make mincemeat out of the Obama administration's "no new settlements" position. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu is bragging about Israel's latest victory over the US government as Israel continues to build illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land. In May President Obama read the Israelis the riot act, telling the Israeli government that he was serious about ending the Israeli conflict with the Palestinians and that a lasting peace agreement required the Israeli government to abandon all construction of new settlements in the occupied West Bank. On November 10 Obama's White House chief of staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, surrendered for his boss at the annual conference of the United Jewish Communities. The ongoing Israeli settlements, he said, should not be a "distraction" to a peace agreement. Allegedly, the US is a superpower and Israel is a client state whose very existence depends entirely on US military and economic aid and diplomatic protection. Yet, in the real world it works the other way. Israel is the superpower and the US is its client state. This true fact is proved to us at least once every week and sometimes two or three times in one week. A few days ago the US House of Representatives voted 344 to 36 in favor of disavowing the UN report by the distinguished Jewish judge Richard Goldstone that found that Israel had committed war crimes in its attack on the civilian population in the Gaza Ghetto. The Israel Lobby demanded that the House repudiate the fact-filled report, and the servile House did as its master ordered. US Rep. Dennis Kucinich spoke to his colleagues for 2 minutes in an effort to make them see that their vote against the Goldstone report would be a great embarrassment to the US government and demean the House in the eyes of the world. But none of that matters when Israel gives its servants an order. The US House of Representatives preferred to demean itself and to embarrass the US Government rather than to cross the Israel Lobby. Retribution quickly fell upon Kucinich for his 2 minute speech. On November 9, Kucinich was forced to withdraw as the keynote speaker for the Palm Beach County (Florida) Democratic Party's annual fundraising dinner. The Israel Lobby gave the order--dump Kucinich or there's no money and no one is coming to the dinner. County Commissioner Burt Aaronson called Kucinich "an absolute horror." Kucinich is the rare Democrat who stands up for his party's principles, the working class, and tried to get health care for those Americans the corporations have thrown out on the street. But helping Americans doesn't count. Israel uber alles. Meanwhile, the US dollar continues to decline relative to other traded currencies. Since spring, anyone could have made a double-digit rate of return betting on most any currency against the US dollar. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently expressed concern that despite the dollar's continuing slide, it might still be over-valued. The Federal Reserve's low interest rate policy encourages speculators to use the dollar for the "carry trade." Speculators, whether individuals or financial institutions borrow dollars at rock bottom interest rates and use the almost free capital to purchase higher yielding instruments in other countries. The demand for dollars to finance the "carry trade" keeps the dollar higher than it would otherwise be. Last year it was the Japanese Yen that was used for the "carry trade" due to the practically zero Japanese interest rates. The next scare that unwinds the "carry trade" will cause another big drop in financial asset values. This means that the stock market is very volatile. It is based on speculation, not on fundamentals. When the "carry trade" next unwinds, the demand for US dollars to pay off the loans will temporarily boost the dollar. But don't be fooled. The large US trade and budget deficits are the dollar's death warrant. When the dollar finally goes, so will the government's ability to conduct wars of aggression, underwrite Israel, finance its red ink and pay for imports. That's when the printing press will really get going. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Dec 2 19:27:58 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 14:27:58 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: The High Cost of Cheap Message-ID: <00b701ca73c8$9c8a8e60$42ad57ca@jfos> http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs11062009.html Weekend Edition November 6-8, 2009 The High Cost of Cheap A New Map of Hell By RON JACOBS As I finished reading Gordon Laird's new book The Price of A Bargain: The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization news reports began to filter in on my computer's ticker about a new oil spill in the San Francisco Bay. Apparently the spill came from a tanker and had covered approximately three miles by the following day. Unfortunate in its timeliness as far as my reading of the book went, the spill illustrated rather succinctly one of the multiple dangers of a world built around the consumer's desire for inexpensive products. It's a world where the only ideology is profit and where those profits are made by driving down prices which entails driving down labor and other production costs. It functions best where there are governments willing to assist the megacorporation in doing exactly that. To start with the most obvious, under the tyranny of the neoliberal market, the US government reinvented itself to serve the needs of global capitalism while the communist-in-name-only regime in Beijing handed over its people and environment to that same marketplace. The result of these bargains made by the respective governments are the story Laird tells. Laird begins each section with an anecdotal tale about some aspect of capitalism's globalization process and those it effects. From the big box shoppers in North America and Europe to the manufacturing centers of China and from the massive ports of Los Angeles to the homeless individual displaced by the race to the bottom, the narrative describes the nature of these phenomena. The reader is introduced to the health problems suffered by those near the factories producing cheap goods and the increase in the incidence of asthma in the port cities of Los Angeles county. All of this is backed up with statistics and reportage that proves over and over again that the situation Laird describes is not isolated, but the norm. The economic fallout is presented as well. Laird is spot on in his description of the collusion between capitalist and government to lower wages, purchase materials on the cheap, create an economy based on debt and the transfer of debt and ignore the consequences. He describes how that collusion puts people out of work, moving the responsibility for their welfare onto the taxpayer while the government simultaneously undoes whatever safety nets designed precisely for the purpose of helping capitalism's castoffs. Although he never comes out and says it directly, Laird's book provides the reader with clear and familiar examples of the shortcomings of monopoly capitalism. He describes a paradox where most national economies depend on low-cost consumerism at the exact moment that such consumerism is stumbling. Why? Because it is dependent on unsustainable factors like cheap labor, cheap transport, trade imbalances, consumer debt and cheap oil. In addition, he describes how the very construction of the discount marketplace virtually ensures its own destruction. After all, he writes, prices can only go so low before there is no longer any profit in their selling. More importantly, as regards the current economic situation is the fact of energy resources and their consumption. In a chapter titled "All is Plastic" Laird breaks down the essential link between the price and availability of fossil fuels and the price and availability of bargain goods. From the plastic most of the goods are made from to the cheap fuel used to transport them around the globe, cheap and available hydrocarbons are essential. This means that eventually the consumer will have to accept higher prices to compensate for fuel costs or the corporation will have to decrease its rate of profit even further--something difficult to accomplish since lower rates of profits require more sales to compensate. Laird suggests that this explains why Wal-Mart and other major discounters are looking for new customers in Asia and looking to move some of their manufacturing operations closer to the source of fuel. When one considers this latter fact, the claims that the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are about oil and natural gas don't seem far fetched at all. After all, if those military exercises succeed in the way Washington wants them to, then the way will be open for anything Wall Street wants in that region. Laird's book is a fine piece of reportage on a world where the economy's collateral damage includes oil spills and the poisoning of China's (and other developing nations) working poor; the low wages and illegal labor practices of Wal-Mart leading to the ultimate collapse of a system based on minimizing costs, high volume sales and low profit margins; and a world where debt is the cornerstone of the economy. It is, to paraphrase Laird, a system that represents capitalism in its ultimate creative and destructive capacity. Most likely, it is also our future. Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625 at charter.net ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Dec 2 19:51:32 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 14:51:32 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Raul Prebisch, The Great Heretic - Implacable Foe for First World Power Message-ID: <00d001ca73cb$e752d080$42ad57ca@jfos> http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad11052009.html November 5, 2009 The Story of Raul Prebisch, Implacable Foe for First World Power The Great Heretic By VIJAY PRASHAD Raul Prebisch was not born in Buenos Aires. His father was a German immigrant who married into a declasse branch of a prominent Argentine family. Advantages did not come to him by the accident of birth. He had to make his own career, pushing against insuperable odds in a society given over to the bloodlines of the haute bourgeoisie. Coming to the capital from provincial Tucuman, Prebisch studied hard, avoiding all society for the library. He caught the eye of liberal intellectuals who hailed from among the privileged but were in search of talent among those who had few connections. They took him up and pushed him into their circles. Prebisch's own difficult ascent up the ladder of Argentine society taught this young man an important lesson: that his country's backwardness could be traced to the insularity of its elite. He had other ideas for his country, and himself. Influenced by the Italian intellectual Vilfredo Pareto, Prebisch withdrew from the partisan disputes that wracked inter-war Argentina and hoped instead for the emergence of a technocratic, modernizing elite to take charge of things. Prebisch was only 21 when he came to this view. It would not change for his entire career, taking him from being the pioneer banker of his native land to be the most revered United Nations' economist as the first head of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). As he put it to his godson in 1934, "I am not a politician, Marucho. I am a technocrat and believe in technocracy, and technicians are politically neutral." The remarkable thing is that Prebisch never had any advanced degrees. He liked to be called "Dr Prebisch", but his enemies taunted him with lesser titles ("Prebisch the public accountant"). He was not born into privilege, and without the traditional authority of descent or degrees he rose to Olympian heights. Finally, two decades after his death, Edgar Dosman has given us a biography worthy of this man, the "great heretic" of international political economy. Prebisch went to Buenos Aires in 1914. He burrowed in his lodgings, taking his books with him everywhere, reading everything he could lay his hands on. He enrolled in the Faculty of Economic Sciences, but nothing there impressed him. The scholarship was decidedly pro-British, which is to say it had taken the logic of David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage as dogma. Argentina, they felt, must remain a producer of agricultural goods and meat products because it is this that the country excels in producing. Sold to England, the unprocessed beef in particular brought Argentina its foreign exchange. England, in turn, sold Argentina manufactured goods. There was a deadened refusal to engage with reality and, so, to take things as they were. Prebisch found this incomprehensible. The Great War, which took England's market off-line, forced Argentina to develop some industry. One result of this industrialization was that meat began to be processed in Argentina, and this itself quickly made up 17 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Prebisch sat in the seminar run by Alejandro Bunge, who used these facts to lodge a sustained critique of Ricardo's theory. He gave Prebisch the tools to think about alternatives to laissez faire or at least to contemplate the conundrum of places like Argentina, stuck producing raw materials and buying finished products. Prebisch took Bunje's insights and his own thirst for reality to his new job at the Argentine Rural Society, a lobby of the largest cattle ranchers who were basically Argentina's oligarchy. The Argentine cattle barons wanted to know whether the British and United States meat-packers were manipulating them. This gave Prebisch the perfect opportunity to study the data on trade and to open him up to a lifelong fascination with good statistical data as the basis for analysis and policy. For the next several years, Prebisch would work on the problem of the beef trade, first for the cattle lobby and after they fired him, for the government. He displayed his independence when he refused to provide the ranchers the conclusion they wanted, but even they remained impressed with his research. It was this commitment to research and to the truth that kept Prebisch in the halls of power for a decade after he began to rub the oligarchy the wrong way. Taken into Argentina's main bank to run its research wing, Prebisch brought together the best talent around. They had to sort out Argentina's statistics, as well as produce the Revista Econ?mica (Economic Journal). Their active work coincided with the Great Depression so that Prebisch and his team had to conceptualize the problems of the Argentine economy at a time of great planetary financial turbulence. Prebisch wrote explanatory essays in the journal, providing his readers with a map to navigate the crisis. The government saw his skills and brought him into the Finance Ministry. Here Prebisch proposed orthodox means to shield Argentina from the worst of the problems, although when Britain abandoned the gold standard in 1931, Prebisch convinced his government to introduce exchange controls and insulate Argentina from the wave of competitive devaluations that struck many countries. None of his good work protected Prebisch. His fate rested with the oligarchy and the military, and when it suited them he went into the political wilderness. Luckily for Prebisch, one of his exiles was in Geneva, where he was sent to help prepare the League of Nations. The advantage of this visit was that Prebisch not only got to interact with other innovators but he also found common company among a group of Swedish economists (such as Charles Rist and Gustav Cassel) who had been worried about the "terms of trade". The prices of industrial and agricultural goods had widened over the years, they had found, with the "chief sufferers" being the agricultural-raw material producing countries. This insight would remain with Prebisch for his entire career, indeed becoming the foundation for the Prebisch-Singer thesis for which he is best known. It was also in Geneva that Prebisch came to understand, as Dosman puts it, that "the currency of international trade was power, and the 'market' concealed the power relationships that stratified the global system into a core of dominant subjects with a band of heterogeneous peripheral objects." >From 1921, Prebisch began to use the metaphor of core and periphery to describe the geography of international trade, with the core being Europe and the U.S. and the periphery being the rest of the planet (what Marx called the "peasant nations"). A brief stay in London, negotiating with the English over a new trade treaty, showed Prebisch real power: Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England, who answered neither to the political parties nor to the monarch. Prebisch wanted such a post in Argentina, one that would allow him to put his insights over monetary policy and international trade to work without the vacillation of electoral politics. He did get a sinecure at the Central Bank of Argentina after his plan (the Economy Recovery Plan of 1933) allowed his country to tread a middle ground between protectionism and "free trade". As Dosman puts it, "Prebisch certainly cared less about textbooks than evolving a new balance between industry and agriculture in the uncharted waters of the Great Depression." >From his perch as the Director of the Central Bank, Prebisch spent the next decade developing a monetary policy for the periphery, which was largely based on pragmatism rather than on any established theory. For this he earned few friends and many enemies, notably among the permanent bureaucracy in the U.S. Prebisch's ferocious nationalism prevented him from allowing Argentina's economy to bend its knee before either London or Washington, and this bothered the latter so greatly that Prebisch was barred from attending the Bretton Woods conference to set up the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. He soldiered on, with new thinking on the merits and demerits of hacia adentro, or inward-directed growth. Enforced import substitution during the war years had resulted in the growth of an industrial sector, but this was low in productivity. Heavy industry had not taken root and the problem lay in how to move surplus capital into such productive investment. Prebisch saw a role for the Central Bank, drawing here from his reading of John Maynard Keynes. However, unrest in the political sphere threw him off. Before he could set his experiments in motion, Prebisch found himself without a job. Fortunately for Prebisch, he had married a remarkable companion, Adelita Moll de Prebisch. She sorted out their finances at these times of distress and produced the social conditions necessary for Prebisch to go into a period of contemplation. Dosman lays out in great detail Adelita's domestic labour, the thankless task of refreshing Prebisch so that he could go on with his own intellectual and political work. In Adelita's arms, Prebisch began work on his major reconstruction of Keynes' work, to be called "Money and the Rhythms of Economic Activity". Prebisch's magnum opus would never be completed, but this work set the stage for him to think about the role of the business cycle in the periphery (which is different from the business cycle in the core) and to redouble his efforts on the matter of trade in international development. Prebisch had worked on the business cycle as early as 1921 (when he was only 20), coming to the conclusion 20 years later that "to resist subordination of the national economy to foreign movements and contingencies, we must strengthen our internal structure and achieve an autonomous functioning of our economy". To create "inward development" (desarrollo hacia adentro), the country had to cease being a producer of low-value commodities. This of course raised the question of the terms of trade, of import substitution industrialization and of the reconfiguration of the world trade rules. All this did not preclude the matter of growth, for "one must bear in mind that the common denominator of social policy is the increase in production. Without this a stable increase in the level of income for the masses cannot be sustained." Keynes, for Prebisch, was of great interest, but the Englishman did not break from the premises of neoclassical economics. This was why Keynes did not raise the question of why there was "always disequilibrium" in the periphery, why the business cycle worked in a lopsided way there. These brilliant insights appear in Prebisch's book proposal. The book itself was not written. To compensate for it, and to make some money, Prebisch travelled across Latin America, advising central bankers and meeting with economists. This was a tonic for him, but it also kept him away from his intellectual work. Or, indeed, his lack of formal training in economics stifled him, and he fled his writing desk for these consultations in Mexico City, Bogata, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and elsewhere. In 1949, the United Nations created a series of economic commissions, one for Europe (ECE), one for Asia (ECAFE) and one for Latin America (ECLA). The search for a leader of ECLA ended at Prebisch's door. His journeys around Latin America had alerted the leading economists both to his intellectual talent and to his nationalist instincts. He was their man. Washington was unhappy with this choice (it had earlier prevented Prebisch from getting an IMF job). It could not get its way. He prevailed. ECLA took lodgings in Santiago, Chile. Prebisch cleverly selected a staff of brilliant economists whose own political affiliations ran the gamut from Christian Conservatives to Marxists (such as the Brazilians Celso Furtado and Fernando Henrique Cardoso). To set ECLA's agenda, Prebisch decided to write a synthesis of the work he had already accomplished. In three days, he wrote The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems, a text later known as the ECLA Manifesto. This essay summarised his experiences in government and his critique of Keynes. Prebisch laid out the fundamental asymmetry of international development, with the industrial countries gaining as a result of the unequal terms of trade that benefited them as against the agricultural countries. To break this cycle Prebisch recommended industrialization, with caution by central banks to avoid inflation and any structural distortions in the economy. "One of the conspicuous deficiencies of general economic theory, from the point of view of the periphery," Prebisch wrote, "is its false sense of universality." When Prebisch delivered this address at ECLA's Havana conference it was a sensation. From then on, as the Brazilian newspaper O Estado do S?o Paulo put it, Prebisch was "a living symbol of Latin American industrialisation". The U.S. government tried its best to undermine ECLA, cutting its funding through pressure in the U.N. and by shifting its responsibilities to the U.S.-dominated Organisation of American States. But Prebisch was undaunted. He managed to hold onto his funds and set ECLA's course to produce a viable Economic Survey of Latin American countries (which meant to collect data on each) to train economists from across the region, and to push a set of coherent policies that he had laid out in his 1949 address. Those ideas were extended in two more central ECLA documents, Theoretical and Practical Problems of Economic Growth (1951), which traced the mechanism by which Latin America might produce its own planning model, and International Cooperation for a Latin American Development Strategy (1951), which Dosman says is the "operational counterpoint to the Havana Manifesto". In this latter document, Prebisch's team laid out a cocktail of means for Latin America's development, including "the creation of a regional development bank; the strengthening of economic planning to avoid turbulence; stability for commodity exports; technical cooperation and training; taxation and agrarian reform; financing for development with a minimum target of one billion dollars a year in development assistance to accelerate industrialization; and the holding of the long-promised Inter-American Economic Conference in 1956". Each individual element was not itself overly controversial, but the package was unthinkable to Washington. Thomas Mann, a senior U.S. official, put Washington's view of things plainly: "Latin Americans like a buck in their pocket and a kick in their ass. They don't like us. Their thought processes are different. You have to be firm with them." One can imagine the kind of disdain that greeted Prebisch's ECLA. Everything that could be done was done to thwart it. When John F. Kennedy came to the White House, he recognized that the U.S. government had made a hash of its Latin America policy. Vice-President Richard Nixon's trip to Latin America in 1958 had resulted in street riots. To revise the impression, Kennedy's liberals went South to search for reasonable allies. They found Prebisch. He was charmed by the Kennedy moment and came to Washington to advise them as they created the Alliance for Progress (Prebisch drafted a part of the document). But, without a blink of an eye, the U.S. set into motion the attack on Cuba (at the Bay of Pigs) and it began once more to favour military dictatorships. All this bode ill for ECLA and for Prebisch. He began to look for different work. In 1962, Prebisch went to Cairo as U.N. Secretary-General U Thant's representative at a Conference on the Problems of Economic Development. This conference was part of the Bandung and Non-Aligned Movement dynamic from which Prebisch had until now been absent. He was thrilled to be among the representatives from 36 non-aligned states, most of whom had ideas similar to those developed at ECLA. They saw things on the global scale, particularly the way in which the core countries had barricaded themselves into the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) since 1947, pretending that this body was international when it was in fact the representative of the core. When these countries pushed the U.N. to create the UNCTAD, Prebisch was their choice for Secretary-General. He accepted, with the mandate to make UNCTAD "a global version of ECLA in its diagnosis of structural inequality and global transformation, the need for planning and proposed remedies". Prebisch was helped along by some superb people, including Sidney Dell and R. Krishnamurti, whom Dosman rightly calls "infinitely discreet" and a "master of U.N. institutional intricacies". In 1963, as UNCTAD was being formed, Prebisch went on the assault against what he called "a conspiracy against the laws of the market" by the GATT countries. A "new order in the international economy" had to be created "so that the market functions properly not only for the big countries but the developing countries in their relations with the developed". No shortcuts, no gimmicks, but a genuine reconstruction of the global political economy. This was an enormous agenda. UNCTAD's role As UNCTAD laid out its agenda, it pressured the core to respond. GATT began to absorb many of UNCTAD's positions, including that of "special and differentiated responsibilities", a standard that enabled the periphery to demand partial treatment in negotiations (this is also the phrase that appears in the current climate change negotiations, as a way for the low carbon emitters to demand concessions for their own development agenda). Prebisch and U Thant wanted UNCTAD to operate as the principal arena for trade negotiations, but the core countries would not have that. They preferred GATT, which had already been set up to their advantage. "Nothing important can come from the South," said Henry Kissinger in 1964, and he meant it. UNCTAD's efforts led to the 1973 General Assembly call for the creation of a "new international economic order", or NIEO, a proposal that would be countered by the core with vehemence (in 1974, the core would create the Library Group, a meeting of its foreign ministers to coordinate policy against the South; this association became the Group of 7, the G-7). Dosman does not go into the very significant role that UNCTAD played in and just after Prebisch's tenure at its helm. For that, the interested reader might want to turn to the useful series, the United Nations Intellectual History Project, from which John and Richard Toye's The UN and Global Political Economy: Trade, Finance and Development is a good introduction (as well, there is Karen Smith and Ian Taylor's book on UNCTAD for the Routledge series on Global Institutions). UNCTAD was Prebisch's last hurrah. It is also the perch from which he began to reconsider his ECLA work. This part of Prebisch's life is least known. In 1957, Prebisch's colleague Celso Furtado looked at the Mexican economy and concluded that import substitution in a semi-feudal context had led to growing inequality in the country. Its proximity to the U.S., and close interrelation of the two economies, as well as its import substitution had provided Mexico with high growth rates. However, the upper classes enjoyed the fruits of the growth and Furtado recommended a government regulatory policy to prevent this distortion. Prebisch would not allow this report to be published because it displeased the Mexican government. The censorship did not mean that the idea had not become clear, that import substitution without a commitment to equality would not solve the developmental challenges. What was needed, Prebisch wrote in his own book on Latin America (Change and Development: Latin America's Great Task, 1971) was not simply a high growth rate, "but profound changes in the economic and social structure and in attitudes toward the development process". How these changes would be brought about, Prebisch had little idea. He advocated land reforms but hastened to distance himself from the very regimes that would conduct these policies (such as his friend Salvador Allende's short-lived government in Chile). In 1971, Prebisch told El Tiempo that he had no faith in the "masses" and indeed in politics because "the danger of social mobilisation in a capitalist society" is that "it destroys its leaders". As a technocrat, Prebisch wanted the people to simply accept his Solomonic pronouncements. This was not to be. By 1976, Prebisch became a sharp critic of debt-led growth. He found commonality with the fulminations of Cuba's Fidel Castro, who also spent these years trying to raise awareness about the toxicity of the oncoming debt crisis. But while Castro urged the countries of the periphery to go on a global debt strike, Prebisch wanted to prescribe his own kind of economic medicine. Here Prebisch's journey resembles that of other UNCTAD-ECLA stalwarts, such as Brazil's Fernando Henrique Cardoso and India's Manmohan Singh. Prebisch worried about the "elephantiasis of the state", the growth of public-sector spending to almost half of the GDP. "Thirty years of industrialization, accompanied by high rates of growth, have left 40 per cent of the population lagging behind. For them there has been no progress," Prebisch wrote. "Inadequacies of state enterprises have not only contributed to leaving the masses behind but are also affecting the middle sectors of the social structure." But he would not accept the sum total of the Washington Consensus. He did not have to govern a state. Prebisch had become a prophet. "Equitable distribution, vigorous economic growth and new institutional patterns in a genuinely participatory democracy: these are the major objectives." This mantra remained with him until he slipped into the night in 1986. Dosman has written a tour de force: its title correctly points out that Dosman will give us the story not only of this remarkable man but of the equally tumultuous times that produced him and that he helped shape. As well, one should consider the intellectual legacy that Prebisch left behind as one that could profit those who want to make sense of the current financial crisis. Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His new book is The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at: vijay.prashad at trincoll.edu ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Thu Dec 3 10:51:46 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:51:46 -0400 Subject: [Mai-not] Who will stop Stephen Harper? Murray Dobbin Dec 3rd Message-ID: <4B17D082.23846.1B460EDC@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> fyi-janet ------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:09:21 -0800 From: Murray Dobbin To: undisclosed-recipients:; Subject: Who will stop Stephen Harper? Who will stop Stephen Harper? By Murray Dobbin December 3, 2009 rabble.ca As I watch with alarm Stephen Harper's lead over the Liberals solidify, even as he displays contempt for climate change efforts, and disdain for parliament, I am reminded of Ronald Reagan. What I remember is this: on almost every major issue on which he took a strong public stand, he was opposed by a majority of Americans. But that did not stop them from supporting him, giving him high ratings as President -- and re-electing him. What explains the contradiction? Americans saw in Reagan a man who, specific policies aside, believed strongly in what he was doing. And conversely, they saw in the Democrats a party of shameless opportunists who would claim to believe in anything if it got them a few extra votes. They were tired of trying to decipher the complexities of the issues, tired of the spin, distrustful of government and the media. Their default position was to go with the guy who seemed to say what he meant and mean what he said. They were looking for someone with principles -- and apparently any principles would do. If Stephen Harper is Ronald Reagan then Michael Ignatieff seems destined to play the role of Hubert Humphrey or Bill Clinton or Al Gore -- Democrats with infinitely flexible principles and an ethical relativism that has degraded democratic politics in the U.S. The Liberal Party of Canada is the classic party of opportunism whose century of success as the natural governing party was predicated on running from the left with progressive policies, and then governing from the right, with policies designed to favour Bay Street. It worked so long as it was well-executed, and the party maintained internal unity and self discipline. But now the Liberals are neither united nor disciplined. Paul Martin's ruthless ten year assault on his own party in aid of becoming its leader is still itself playing out in new incarnations of backstabbing and public disputes. So divided by the trench warfare between the two camps that no one within the ranks of party could lead it without being immediately assassinated, they went to the U.S. recruit an outsider with no battle-baggage. But what they got was a postmodern academic with no convictions that couldn't be trumped by particular circumstance. A human rights advocate who okays torture; a leader whose philosophy dictates that he can't feel strongly about anything -- for whom right and wrong are so intertwined he just can't be sure which is which. Such a leader may well be incapable of fighting the pitbull ruthlessness of Stephen Harper whose passion for dismantling Canada knows no bounds. Ignatieff's persona is that of the effete snob personally offended by a man who refuses to play by the rules. But he can't adjust and recognize that it is Harper who is now making the rules and thus defining the landscape on which the battle takes place. To his credit, Ignatieff has had some promising moments in the past few months -- as when he mused aloud about the necessity of (ultimately) raising taxes to deal with the structural deficit. But he didn't have the courage to stick to it and the media and his own party smacked him so hard he almost forgot he'd ever said it. And his messaging on Harper was dead on. He attacked him on the tax issue: "We pay taxes, Mr. Harper, because we're all in this together. It costs us something, but it makes Canada the place it is: a place where we look out for each other." And he revealed the theme on which he should fight the next election: "Stephen Harper ...believes that the only good government is no government at all." He topped it off, at about the time he was going to force an election, with "We can do better" which sounds a bit like "A better world is possible," the theme of the World Social Forums. Combine these themes -- and all the sub-themes they harbour -- with a campaign using Liberal veterans to tag Harper with all the frightening, anti-Canada statements he has made in the past, and Ignatieff would begin to claw back the ground he has lost in the past two months. And most importantly, he could claw it back from the radical libertarians how running the show, and not the NDP. But these gems come in fits and starts and there is no momentum. As for the NDP, it, too, is operating well below its potential. The longer Jack Layton is in Ottawa the more trapped he seems to become in the daily obsession with tactics. The NDP will never form the government (Quebec ensures this) and its strength therefore is squandered in this endless search for the perfect tactical maneuver. That game makes sense for the two contending parties but the NDP's strength is its vision (it's got to be there, probably locked up in a back room so it won't provoke anyone). The NDP has no coherent vision that it is willing to boast about, just a series of disconnected policies, some of them admittedly very good but all of them harnessed to the singular strategy of replacing the Liberals. This is the critical weakness of the NDP -- it has decided that it will present itself as the real government in waiting with Jack Layton as prime minister. This strategy all but destroys any possibility of appealing to Canadians on the basis of a hopeful vision of what the country could be. Inadvertently, the NDP hobbles itself in the contest for hearts and minds. Instead of boldly contrasting itself with Harper's dystopic vision of the country and the ruination of Canada's international reputation, the NDP attacks the Liberals, acquiesces to policies such as Harper's draconian crime bills, and allows free votes on the long gun registry. Then there is Layton's personal musing about eliminating income taxes for small business (lost revenue: $5 billion a year). The NDP seems so caught in the minutiae of tactical maneuvering that it cannot see the forest for the trees. The constant opportunist calculations are reducing the NDP to the ethical equivalent of the U.S. Democratic Party (one party fundraiser even referred to the party as the Democratic Party even though the suggested name change was never debated at the party's convention). Their strategy of slowly replacing the Liberals is like slow suicide -- at the end of the process they will of necessity become the Liberals. Does being bold entail risks? Of course. Could the NDP lose seats in the next election? Yes, but they might anyway -- as they certainly would have done had there been a fall election. Wouldn't it be better to risks seats by being bold and visionary, inspiring Canadians to think big, rather than risk them racing to the bottom with the Liberals assuming Canadians are too dull and unimaginative to reclaim their country? If neither the Liberals nor the NDP find the courage to present a vision to the country and redefine the political discourse, it is virtually certain that Stephen Harper will be prime minister after the next election. But if even one of them manages, they could save the country. ------- End of forwarded message ------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: - Type: application/octet-stream Size: 7269 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: - Type: application/octet-stream Size: 8600 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: - Type: application/octet-stream Size: 162 bytes Desc: "AVG certification" URL: From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Thu Dec 3 16:14:46 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:14:46 +0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Who will stop Stephen Harper? Murray Dobbin Dec 3rd In-Reply-To: <4B17D082.23846.1B460EDC@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> References: <4B17D082.23846.1B460EDC@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> Message-ID: <20091204001447.6AC141100C@fep02.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> Inevitable with representative government. Canada is probably even less democratic than the USA where several States have a robust system of citizen-initiated referenda. Representative government always means government of the people by the politicians for their purchasers. Dion Giles At 02:51 04/12/2009, you wrote: >fyi-janet > > >------- Forwarded message follows ------- >Date sent: Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:09:21 -0800 >From: Murray Dobbin >To: undisclosed-recipients:; >Subject: Who will stop Stephen Harper? > > >Who will stop Stephen Harper? >By Murray Dobbin >December 3, 2009 >rabble.ca >As I watch with alarm Stephen Harper's lead over the Liberals >solidify, even as he displays contempt for climate change efforts, >and disdain for parliament, I am reminded of Ronald Reagan. What I >remember is this: on almost every major issue on which he took a >strong public stand, he was opposed by a majority of Americans. But >that did not stop them from supporting him, giving him high ratings >as President -- and re-electing him. >What explains the contradiction? Americans saw in Reagan a man who, >specific policies aside, believed strongly in what he was doing. And >conversely, they saw in the Democrats a party of shameless >opportunists who would claim to believe in anything if it got them a >few extra votes. They were tired of trying to decipher the >complexities of the issues, tired of the spin, distrustful of >government and the media. Their default position was to go with the >guy who seemed to say what he meant and mean what he said. They were >looking for someone with principles -- and apparently any principles >would do. >If Stephen Harper is Ronald Reagan then Michael Ignatieff seems >destined to play the role of Hubert Humphrey or Bill Clinton or Al >Gore -- Democrats with infinitely flexible principles and an ethical >relativism that has degraded democratic politics in the U.S. The >Liberal Party of Canada is the classic party of opportunism whose >century of success as the natural governing party was predicated on >running from the left with progressive policies, and then governing >from the right, with policies designed to favour Bay Street. It >worked so long as it was well-executed, and the party maintained >internal unity and self discipline. >But now the Liberals are neither united nor disciplined. Paul >Martin's ruthless ten year assault on his own party in aid of >becoming its leader is still itself playing out in new incarnations >of backstabbing and public disputes. So divided by the trench warfare >between the two camps that no one within the ranks of party could >lead it without being immediately assassinated, they went to the U.S. >recruit an outsider with no battle-baggage. >But what they got was a postmodern academic with no convictions that >couldn't be trumped by particular circumstance. A human rights >advocate who okays torture; a leader whose philosophy dictates that >he can't feel strongly about anything -- for whom right and wrong are >so intertwined he just can't be sure which is which. >Such a leader may well be incapable of fighting the pitbull >ruthlessness of Stephen Harper whose passion for dismantling Canada >knows no bounds. Ignatieff's persona is that of the effete snob >personally offended by a man who refuses to play by the rules. But he >can't adjust and recognize that it is Harper who is now making the >rules and thus defining the landscape on which the battle takes >place. >To his credit, Ignatieff has had some promising moments in the past >few months -- as when he mused aloud about the necessity of >(ultimately) raising taxes to deal with the structural deficit. But >he didn't have the courage to stick to it and the media and his own >party smacked him so hard he almost forgot he'd ever said it. And his >messaging on Harper was dead on. He attacked him on the tax issue: >"We pay taxes, Mr. Harper, because we're all in this together. It >costs us something, but it makes Canada the place it is: a place >where we look out for each other." And he revealed the theme on which >he should fight the next election: "Stephen Harper ...believes that >the only good government is no government at all." He topped it off, >at about the time he was going to force an election, with "We can do >better" which sounds a bit like "A better world is possible," the >theme of the World Social Forums. >Combine these themes -- and all the sub-themes they harbour -- with a >campaign using Liberal veterans to tag Harper with all the >frightening, anti-Canada statements he has made in the past, and >Ignatieff would begin to claw back the ground he has lost in the past >two months. And most importantly, he could claw it back from the >radical libertarians how running the show, and not the NDP. But these >gems come in fits and starts and there is no momentum. >As for the NDP, it, too, is operating well below its potential. The >longer Jack Layton is in Ottawa the more trapped he seems to become >in the daily obsession with tactics. The NDP will never form the >government (Quebec ensures this) and its strength therefore is >squandered in this endless search for the perfect tactical maneuver. >That game makes sense for the two contending parties but the NDP's >strength is its vision (it's got to be there, probably locked up in a >back room so it won't provoke anyone). >The NDP has no coherent vision that it is willing to boast about, >just a series of disconnected policies, some of them admittedly very >good but all of them harnessed to the singular strategy of replacing >the Liberals. This is the critical weakness of the NDP -- it has >decided that it will present itself as the real government in waiting >with Jack Layton as prime minister. This strategy all but destroys >any possibility of appealing to Canadians on the basis of a hopeful >vision of what the country could be. Inadvertently, the NDP hobbles >itself in the contest for hearts and minds. >Instead of boldly contrasting itself with Harper's dystopic vision of >the country and the ruination of Canada's international reputation, >the NDP attacks the Liberals, acquiesces to policies such as Harper's >draconian crime bills, and allows free votes on the long gun >registry. Then there is Layton's personal musing about eliminating >income taxes for small business (lost revenue: $5 billion a year). >The NDP seems so caught in the minutiae of tactical maneuvering that >it cannot see the forest for the trees. The constant opportunist >calculations are reducing the NDP to the ethical equivalent of the >U.S. Democratic Party (one party fundraiser even referred to the >party as the Democratic Party even though the suggested name change >was never debated at the party's convention). Their strategy of >slowly replacing the Liberals is like slow suicide -- at the end of >the process they will of necessity become the Liberals. >Does being bold entail risks? Of course. Could the NDP lose seats in >the next election? Yes, but they might anyway -- as they certainly >would have done had there been a fall election. Wouldn't it be better >to risks seats by being bold and visionary, inspiring Canadians to >think big, rather than risk them racing to the bottom with the >Liberals assuming Canadians are too dull and unimaginative to reclaim >their country? >If neither the Liberals nor the NDP find the courage to present a >vision to the country and redefine the political discourse, it is >virtually certain that Stephen Harper will be prime minister after >the next election. But if even one of them manages, they could save >the country. > >------- End of forwarded message ------- > > > >__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus >signature database 4659 (20091203) __________ > >The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. > >http://www.eset.com > > >Content-type: Application/Octet-stream; name="-"; type=Plain text >Content-disposition: attachment; filename="-" > >Content-type: Application/Octet-stream; name="-"; type=HTML 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 at globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > > > >__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus >signature database 4659 (20091203) __________ > >The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. > >http://www.eset.com From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Dec 3 20:52:06 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2009 15:52:06 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Why the Crisis Isn't Going Away Message-ID: <00ce01ca749f$05eb28c0$4aad57ca@jfos> http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney11032009.html Excerpt: "Fed chair Ben Bernanke has bent-over-backwards to preserve the system in its present form. That's why the lending facilities should be viewed with a degree of skepticism. They weren't set up merely to rescue the system from disaster, but to keep asset prices artificially high so institutions could continue to maximize profits via risky investments. And, it's worked, too. The S&P 500 is up over 60 percent since March 9. Still, even though Bernanke has succeeded in resuscitating the flagging financial sector, investors remain pessimistic.(snip) Few people seem to believe in the much-ballyhooed economic recovery. And even though the media triumphantly announced the "end of the recession" last week (when GDP came in at 3.5 percent) a closer look at the data leaves room for doubt.(snip) Positive growth is an illusion created by government spending. In fact, the economy is still flat on its back. Consumer spending and credit are in sharp decline. Unemployment is steadily rising (although at a slower pace) and wages are flatlining with a chance of falling for the first time in 30 years. Deflationary pressures are building. The talk of a "jobless recovery" is intentionally misleading. Jobs ARE recovery; therefore a jobless recovery merely points to asset-inflation brought on by erratic monetary policy. Surging stocks shouldn't be confused with a real recovery." November 3, 2009 What Minksy Saw Why the Crisis Isn't Going Away By MIKE WHITNEY Size matters. And it particularly matters when the size of the financial system grossly exceeds the productive capacity of the underlying economy. Then problems arise. Surplus capital flows into paper assets triggering a boom. Then speculators pile in, driving asset prices higher. Margins grow, debts balloon, and bubbles emerge. The frenzy finally ends when the debts can no longer be serviced and the bubble begins to crumple, sometimes violently. As gas escapes, credit tightens, businesses are forced to cut back, asset prices plunge and unemployment soars. Deflation spreads to every sector. Eventually, the government steps in to rescue the financial system while the broader economy slumps into a coma. The crisis that started two years ago, followed this same pattern. A meltdown in subprime mortgages sent the dominoes tumbling; the secondary market collapsed, and stock markets went into freefall. When Lehman Bros flopped, a sharp correction turned into a full-blown panic. Lehman tipped-off investors that that the entire multi-trillion dollar market for securitized loans was built on sand. Without price discovery, via conventional market transactions, no one knew what mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and other exotic debt-instruments were really worth. That sparked a global sell-off. Markets crashed. For a while, it looked like the whole system might collapse. The Fed's emergency intervention pulled the system back from the brink, but at great cost. Even now, the true value of the so-called toxic assets remains unknown. The Fed and Treasury have derailed attempts to create a public auction facility--like the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC)--where prices can be determined and assets can be sold. Billions in toxic waste now clog the Fed's balance sheet. Ultimately, the losses will be passed on to the taxpayer. Now that the economy is no longer on steroids, the financial system needs to be downsized. The housing/equities bubble was generated by over-consumption that required high levels of debt-spending. That model requires cheap money and easy access to credit, conditions no longer exist. The economy has reset at a lower level of economic activity, so changes need to be made. The financial system needs to shrink. The problem is, the Fed's "lending facilities" have removed any incentive for financial institutions to deleverage. Asset prices are propped up by low interest, rotating loans on dodgy collateral. While households have suffered huge losses (of nearly $14 trillion) in home equity and retirement savings; the financial behemoths have muddled through largely unscathed. The Fed handed Wall Street a golden parachute while ordinary working stiffs were kicked to the curb. That's why household spending has plunged while the big brokerage houses are gearing up. Here's an excerpt from an article by former Morgan Stanley analyst Andy Xie which explains what's really going on: First, let's look at the most basic objective of deleveraging the financial sector. Top executives on Wall Street talk about having cut leverage by half. That is actually due to an expanding equity capital base rather than shrinking assets. According to the Federal Reserve, total debt for the financial sector was US$ 16.5 trillion in the second quarter 2009 - about the same as the US$ 16.6 trillion reported one year earlier. After the Lehman collapse, financial sector leverage increased due to Fed support. It has come down as the Fed pulled back some support, creating the perception of deleveraging. The basic conclusion is that financial sector debt is the same as it was a year ago, and the reduction in leverage is due to equity base expansion, partly due to government funding. (Andy Xie, "Why One Good Bubble Deserves Another", Caijing.com) See? The financial Goliaths are still leveraged to their eyeballs. Fed chair Ben Bernanke has bent-over-backwards to preserve the system in its present form. That's why the lending facilities should be viewed with a degree of skepticism. They weren't set up merely to rescue the system from disaster, but to keep asset prices artificially high so institutions could continue to maximize profits via risky investments. And, it's worked, too. The S&P 500 is up over 60 percent since March 9. Still, even though Bernanke has succeeded in resuscitating the flagging financial sector, investors remain pessimistic. According to Bloomberg News: An eight-month, 68 percent rally in global stocks failed to convince investors and analysts that it's time to take on more risk or dispel their concerns about U.S. economic policies and its banking system. Only 31 percent of respondents to a poll of investors and analysts who are Bloomberg subscribers in the U.S., Europe and Asia see investment opportunities, down from 35 percent in the previous survey in July. Almost 40 percent in the latest quarterly survey, the Bloomberg Global Poll, say they are still hunkering down. U.S. investors are even more cautious, with more than 50 percent saying they are in a defensive crouch. The doubt and the pessimism just won't go away," says James Paulsen, who helps oversee $375 billion as chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis. (Bloomberg News) Few people seem to believe in the much-ballyhooed economic recovery. And even though the media triumphantly announced the "end of the recession" last week (when GDP came in at 3.5 percent) a closer look at the data leaves room for doubt. Goldman Sachs analysts put it like this: "How much of the rebound in real GDP was due to the fiscal stimulus, and where do we stand in terms of the effects of stimulus thus far? Although precise answers are impossible at this juncture, several aspects of the report are consistent with our estimates that the fiscal package enacted in mid-February as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) would have accounted for virtually all of the growth reported for the third quarter." Positive growth is an illusion created by government spending. In fact, the economy is still flat on its back. Consumer spending and credit are in sharp decline. Unemployment is steadily rising (although at a slower pace) and wages are flatlining with a chance of falling for the first time in 30 years. Deflationary pressures are building. The talk of a "jobless recovery" is intentionally misleading. Jobs ARE recovery; therefore a jobless recovery merely points to asset-inflation brought on by erratic monetary policy. Surging stocks shouldn't be confused with a real recovery. Bernanke is a scholar of the Great Depression. He is familiar with Hyman Minsky and Minsky's "Financial Instability Hypothesis", which states that, "A fundamental characteristic of our economy is that the financial system swings between robustness and fragility and these swings are an integral part of the process that generates business cycles." Boston Globe correspondent, Stephen Mihm, summarized Minsky's theory in his article "When Capitalism Fails": "In the wake of a depression," he noted, "financial institutions are extraordinarily conservative, as are businesses." With the borrowers and the lenders who fuel the economy all steering clear of high-risk deals, things go smoothly: loans are almost always paid on time, businesses generally succeed, and everyone does well. That success, however, inevitably encourages borrowers and lenders to take on more risk in the reasonable hope of making more money. As Minsky observed, "Success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure." As people forget that failure is a possibility, a "euphoric economy" eventually develops, fueled by the rise of far riskier borrowers - what he called speculative borrowers, those whose income would cover interest payments but not the principal; and those he called "Ponzi borrowers," those whose income could cover neither, and could only pay their bills by borrowing still further. As these latter categories grew, the overall economy would shift from a conservative but profitable environment to a much more freewheeling system dominated by players whose survival depended not on sound business plans, but on borrowed money and freely available credit. Once that kind of economy had developed, any panic could wreck the market. The failure of a single firm, for example, or the revelation of a staggering fraud could trigger fear and a sudden, economy-wide attempt to shed debt. This watershed moment - what was later dubbed the "Minsky moment" - would create an environment deeply inhospitable to all borrowers. The speculators and Ponzi borrowers would collapse first, as they lost access to the credit they needed to survive. Even the more stable players might find themselves unable to pay their debt without selling off assets; their forced sales would send asset prices spiraling downward, and inevitably, the entire rickety financial edifice would start to collapse. Businesses would falter, and the crisis would spill over to the "real" economy that depended on the now-collapsing financial system. Stability leads to instability. By zeroing in on capitalism's genetic flaws, Minsky countered the prevailing orthodoxy that markets are fundamentally efficient and rational. He not only showed that capitalism was inherently crisis-prone, but also, that it was most vulnerable during those periods which seemed to be most stable. (Like during Greenspan's "Great Moderation".) Stability invites speculation and risk-taking. Investors are buoyed by market euphoria and fat returns; borrowing to purchase dodgy equities turns into a mania which distorts prices and leads to massive credit bubbles. Eventually, the foundation cracks and debts cannot be rolled over. Then markets tumble. The point is, Bernanke knows that a bloated financial system poses unnecessary risks to the economy; just as he knows he should wind-down existing lending programs (which just encourage more speculation) and focus on rebuilding household balance sheets. The only way to put the economy back on a solid foundation is by helping struggling workers get back on their feet so they can create more demand. The objective should be full employment and broad, sustained wage growth, which is precisely what Minsky's recommended. Stephen Mihm again: The government - or what Minsky liked to call 'Big Government' - should become the 'employer of last resort,' he said, offering a job to anyone who wanted one at a set minimum wage. It would be paid to workers who would supply child care, clean streets, and provide services that would give taxpayers a visible return on their dollars. In being available to everyone, it would be even more ambitious than the New Deal, sharply reducing the welfare rolls by guaranteeing a job for anyone who was able to work. Such a program would not only help the poor and unskilled, he believed, but would put a floor beneath everyone else's wages too, preventing salaries of more skilled workers from falling too precipitously, and sending benefits up the socioeconomic ladder. ("Why Capitalism Fails, by Stephen Mihm, Boston Globe) Minsky's analysis not only sheds light on the causes of the current crisis, but also provides a practical way to fix the system. Too bad Bernanke's not paying attention. Mike Whitney lives in Washington state, He can be reached at fergiewhitney at msn.com ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Dec 3 21:26:12 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2009 16:26:12 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: Bringing home the bacon Message-ID: <013501ca74a2$4bc86a30$4aad57ca@jfos> Highlights the irrationality of generous subsidies paid by European Union bureau-rats to primary producers in all member countries for NOT producing a wide range of foods, wine etc john foster victoria, australia THIS WAS INDEED SENT to David Miliband from........... NIGEL JOHNSON-HILL, PARK FARM, MILLAND, LIPHOOK GU30 7JT Rt Hon David Miliband MP Secretary of State. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Nobel House 17 Smith Square London SW1P 3JR 16 July 2009 Dear Secretary of State, My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for ?3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs.. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business. In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy. I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these? As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this? My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was ?1,422 in 1968. That is - until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any. If I get ?3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get ?6,000 for not rearing 100? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about ?240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about ?2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases? Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear? I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)? In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits. I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election. Yours faithfully, Nigel Johnson-Hill -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Dec 3 21:53:00 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2009 16:53:00 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Sweating the Sweatshop Movement Message-ID: <01c501ca74a6$e03e68a0$4aad57ca@jfos> Sweating the Sweatshop Movement November-December 2009 by Staff, Utne Reader Image Gallery image by Reuters / Sukree Sukplang Not so long ago, the anti-sweatshop movement was a cause c?l?bre among activists across political lines and demographic categories. As the new administration embarks on a more inclusive foreign policy agenda, though, the issue has faded from the headlines. And unless some celebrity's clothing line is outed for relying on underpaid and mistreated minors (? la Kathie Lee Gifford's), it's hard to imagine that the mainstream media will get interested. Never mind the fact that after nearly two decades of protest, anti-sweatshop activists are still losing the global fight to curb unjust wage practices and corporate human rights abuses. RELATED CONTENT Corporations Behaving Badly: The 10 Worst Corporations of 2001 Corporations Behaving Badly: The 10 Worst Corporations of 2001 January 9, 2002 Kate Garsombke... Bangor Says No to Overseas Sweatshops The town's Clean Clothes Campaign takes aim at sweatshop labor....... Jordan's Sweatshops In the new global market system, whoever can do the best job for the least cost gets the account.... Humanizing Corporate Responsibility There's a dark side to the recent trend in corporate repsonsiblity: It is giving conscientious inve... Corporations Scam Educators How corporations are feeding youth their PR in classrooms... In an opinion piece for Dissent (Summer 2009), Jeff Ballinger, a longtime worker rights advocate, acknowledges that President Obama has plenty of pressing matters on his plate. But he believes that the administration could incorporate the issue seamlessly into its foreign agenda. "Tweaking our foreign assistance priorities, revising 'democracy promotion,' and undertaking diplomacy from a community organizer's perspective-these changes in U.S. policy would at least begin an assault on global sweatshop practices," he writes. "And they are especially important as an antidote to the solipsism of corporate social responsibility, wherein corporate 'self-regulation' teams are rebranded as 'activists' by lazy and compliant media. The new administration needs to connect with real labor activists, in Asia and Central America especially, and allow them to speak for themselves." Even in the movement, both misinformation and a lack of information are hindrances to progress. Without accurate documentation of sweatshop practices or a way to transfer that knowledge to the labor activists who need it most, it's hard to expect change. Ballinger offers two solutions: "First, look for 'empowering' projects to assist workers directly in local struggles and, second, use survey-research tools to build a database available to local legal aid groups and labor activists." Finally, Ballinger says, the United States should apply the same sort of stringent standards it applies to nations with nuclear capabilities to those that control major export-processing zones. This stance would not likely sit well with countries like China and Bangladesh, but Ballinger believes it's time to send a clear policy signal. ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 113477 bytes Desc: not available URL: From thinker at xplornet.com Sat Dec 5 07:51:42 2009 From: thinker at xplornet.com (Ed Deak) Date: Sat, 05 Dec 2009 07:51:42 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom Message-ID: <20091205155200.E8285A7A2F@smtprelay03.hostedemail.com> Just another historical example of "competitive wealth creation", now spreading to Canada in the form of foreign investment" and fraudulent free trade agreements overthrowing democracy. Cheers, Ed. Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom [] Main article: Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom On 14 January 1893, a group composed of Americans and Europeans formed a Committee of Safety seeking to overthrow the Hawaiian Kingdom, depose the Queen, and seek annexation to the United States. As the coup d'??tat was unfolding on 17 January the Committee of Safety expressed concern for the safety and property of American citizens. In response, United States Government Minister John L. Stevens summoned a company of U.S. Marines from the USS Boston and two companies of U.S. Navy sailors to take up positions at the U.S. Legation, Consulate, and Arion Hall. On the afternoon of 16 January 1893, 162 sailors and Marines aboard the USS Boston in Honolulu Harbor came ashore under orders of neutrality. Historian William Russ has noted that the presence of these troops, ostensibly to enforce neutrality and prevent violence, effectively made it impossible for the monarchy to protect itself.[7] The Queen was deposed on 17 January 1893 and temporarily relinquished her throne to "the superior military forces of the United States".[8] She had hoped the United States, like Great Britain earlier in Hawaiian history, would restore Hawaii's sovereignty to the rightful holder. Queen Liliuokalani issued the following statement yielding her authority to the United States Government rather than to the Provisional Government: I Liliuokalani, by the Grace of God and under the Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the Constitutional Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this Kingdom. "That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America whose Minister Plenipotentiary, His Excellency John L. Stevens, has caused United States troops to be landed a Honolulu and declared that he would support the Provisional Government." Now to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life, I do this under protest and impelled by said force yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representatives and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands. ? Queen Liliuokalani, Jan 17, 1893[9] A provisional government, composed of European and American businessmen, was then instituted until annexation with the United States could be achieved. On 1 February 1893, the US Minister (ambassador) to Hawaii proclaimed Hawaii a protectorate of the United States. Liliuokalani.jpeg [] The administration of Grover Cleveland commissioned the Blount Report, and based on its findings, concluded that the overthrow of Lili??uokalani was illegal, and that U.S. Minister Stevens and American military troops had acted inappropriately in support of those who carried out the overthrow. On 16 November 1893 Cleveland proposed to return the throne back to her if she granted amnesty to everyone responsible. She initially refused, and it was reported that she said she would have them beheaded ? she denied that specific accusation, but admitted that she intended them to suffer the punishment of banishment.[10] With this development, then-President Grover Cleveland sent the issue to the United States Congress. She later changed her position on the issue of punishment for the conspirators, and on 18 December 1893 U.S. Minister Willis demanded her reinstatement by the Provisional Government. The Provisional Government refused. Congress responded to Cleveland's referral with a U.S. Senate investigation that resulted in the Morgan Report on 26 February 1894. The Morgan Report found all parties (including Minister Stevens), with the exception of the queen, "not guilty" from any responsibility for the overthrow.[11] The accuracy and impartiality of both the Blount and Morgan reports has been questioned by partisans on both sides of the historical debate over the events of 1893.[12][13][14][15] On 4 July 1894, the Republic of Hawai??i was proclaimed and Sanford B. Dole, one of the first people who originally called on the institution of the monarchy to be abolished, became President. The Republic of Hawai??i was recognized by the United States government as a protectorate, although Walter Q. Gresham, Cleveland's Secretary of State, remained antagonistic towards the new government.[16] [edit] Abdication Lili??uokalani was arrested on 16 January 1895 (several days after a failed rebellion by Robert Wilcox) when firearms were found in the gardens of her home , of which she denied any knowledge. She was sentenced to five years of hard labor in prison by a military tribunal and fined $5,000, but the sentence was commuted to imprisonment in an upstairs bedroom of ??Iolani Palace, where she composed many famous songs including The Queen's Prayer (Ke Aloha o Ka Haku) and began work on her memoirs, Hawai??i's Story by Hawai??i's Queen. During her imprisonment, she abdicated her throne in return for the release (and commutation of the death sentences) of her jailed supporters, including Minister Joseph Nawahi, Prince Kawananakoa, Robert Wilcox, and Prince Jonah Kuhio.[citation needed] Before ascending the throne, for fourteen years, or since the date of my proclamation as heir apparent, my official title had been simply Liliuokalani. Thus I was proclaimed both Princess Royal and Queen. Thus it is recorded in the archives of the government to this day. The Provisional Government nor any other had enacted any change in my name. All my official acts, as well as my private letters, were issued over the signature of Liliuokalani. But when my jailers required me to sign ("Liliuokalani Dominis,") I did as they commanded. Their motive in this as in other actions was plainly to humiliate me before my people and before the world. I saw in a moment, what they did not, that, even were I not complying under the most severe and exacting duress, by this demand they had overreached themselves. There is not, and never was, within the range of my knowledge, any such a person as Liliuokalani Dominis. ?Queen Liliuokalani, "Hawaii's Story By Hawaii's Queen"[17] Following her release, she was placed under house arrest for a year and in 1896, the Republic of Hawai??i gave her a full pardon and restored her civil rights.[18] She then made several trips to the United States to protest against the annexation by the United States and attended the inauguration of US President McKinley with a Republic of Hawai??i passport personally issued to "Lili??uokalani of Hawai??i" by President Dole.[19] In 1898, Hawai??i became an incorporated territory of the United States during the Spanish American War and took control of the 1,200,000 acres (4,900 km2) of land that formerly was held in trust by the monarchy and known as "Crown Land". This later would become the source of the "Ceded Lands" issue in Hawai??i. In 1900, the US Congress passed the Hawai??i Organic Act. From 1905 to 1907, the Queen entered claims against the U.S. totaling $450,000 for property and other losses, claiming personal ownership of the crown lands, but was unsuccessful. The territorial legislature of Hawaii finally voted her an annual pension of $4,000 and permitted her to receive the income from a sugar plantation of 6,000 acres (24 km??), which was the private property of her late brother before his election as king. In 1910, Liliuokalani brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against the United States seeking compensation under the Fifth Amendment for the loss of the Hawaiian crown land. The Queen was also remembered for her support of Buddhist and Shinto priests in Hawai??i and became one of the first Native Hawaiians to attend a Vesak Day (Buddha's Birthday) celebration of 19 May 1901 at the Honwangji mission. Her attendance in the celebration had helped Buddhism and Shintoism gain acceptance into Hawai??i's society and prevented the possible banning of those two religions by the Territorial government. Her presence was also widely reported in Chinese and Japanese newspapers throughout the world and earned her the respect of many Japanese both in Hawai??i and in Japan itself.[20] She lived in Washington Place until her death in 1917 due to complications from a stroke. She was 79. Upon her death, Lili??uokalani dictated in her will that all of her possessions and properties be sold and the money raised would go to the Queen Lili??uokalani Children's Trust to help orphaned and indigent children. The Queen Lili??uokalani Trust Fund is still in existence today. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: magnify-clip.png Type: image/png Size: 204 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Liliuokalani.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 6740 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sat Dec 5 17:23:57 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2009 12:23:57 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Profits Message-ID: <016401ca7612$cf7b8cb0$5cad57ca@jfos> Excerpt: 'It's hard to find anyone outside the firm who doesn't see this as revisionist history. Combine that with further proof of Goldman's worldview-namely, the huge amount of money its people will earn this year ($16.7 billion has already been set aside for compensation, which could translate into an average of $700,000 per Goldman employee)-and you get rage. Widespread rage.(snip) Factor in Goldman's political connections-two of the firm's past four leaders have served as Treasury secretaries, while another source tells me about a G-7 meeting where he counted 24 to 28 out of 32 finance officials in attendance as ex-Goldman men-and you get conspiracy theories on steroids. "this firm is pure evil" is a typical comment whenever a story about Goldman is posted on the Internet, which is almost every day now." Profits Goldman Sachs C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein and C.O.O. Gary Cohn, in the boardroom of Goldman's headquarters, in New York City. Cohn "was always Lloyd's guy. I mean, always," says a former Goldman trader. Photograph by Annie Leibovitz. The Bank Job One of the biggest disconnects on Wall Street today is between the way Goldman Sachs sees itself (they're the smartest) and the way everyone else sees Goldman (they're the smartest, greediest, and most dangerous). Questioning C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein, C.O.O. Gary Cohn, and C.F.O. David Viniar, among others, the author explores how their firm navigated the collapse of September 2008, why it has already set aside $16.7 billion for compensation this year, and which lines it's accused of crossing. By Bethany McLean January 2010 Lloyd Blankfein-who was born poor in the South Bronx, put himself through Harvard, and became the C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs in 2006, after 24 years at the firm-is a history buff, a lawyer, a wordsmith, and something of an armchair philosopher. On a Thursday in October-the very day when the firm announced it had made $8.4 billion in profits so far this year-he speculates whether Goldman would have survived the financial conflagration in the fall of 2008 entirely on its own, without any kind of help, implicit or explicit, from the government. "I thought we would, but it was a hell of a higher risk than I was happy with," he says, sitting in his 30th-floor office in Goldman's old headquarters, at 85 Broad Street, in Lower Manhattan. "As a result of actions taken [by the government], we were better off than we otherwise would have been. Was it dispositive? I don't know. I don't think so . but I don't know." He adds, "If you ask, in my heart of hearts, do I think we would have failed . " He pauses, then pulls out his trump card: at the height of the crisis, Warren Buffett agreed to invest $5 billion in Goldman Sachs. Buffett, the venerated Nebraska investor, is famously reluctant to put money into Wall Street firms. But he has a long history with Goldman. As a 10-year-old he went to New York with his father, a broker in Omaha, and they stopped by Goldman Sachs to visit Sidney Weinberg. As Goldman's leader from 1930 to 1969, Weinberg helped build the firm into the powerhouse it became. "For 45 minutes, Weinberg talked to me as if I were a grown-up," Buffett likes to recall. "And on the way out he asked me, 'What stock do you like, Warren?'" In later years Buffett liked to cite Byron Trott, who until recently worked in Goldman's Chicago office, as one of the few investment bankers worth his salt. How did the economy get into this mess? Visit our archive "Charting the Road to Ruin." Photograph by Frances Roberts/The New York Times/Redux. And so, when Trott asked Buffett if he would be interested in investing in Goldman during the frenetic days after Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, Buffett thought about it, and on Tuesday, September 23, he and Trott hammered out a deal. In a very brief-and very Buffett-call that afternoon with Blankfein, Trott, and then co-president Jon Winkelried, Buffett said he would invest $5 billion in exchange for a hefty 10 percent dividend and rights to buy additional stock over the next five years at a price of $115 a share. "I'm taking my grandkids out to Dairy Queen," he told the Goldman men. "Call me and let me know what you want to do." Goldman accepted Buffett's tough terms, and thanks to the investment was able to raise another $5.75 billion, by selling stock to other investors. Blankfein says the firm could have raised multiples of that but didn't need more money. And Buffett has said that while no one could ever understand the balance sheet of any Wall Street firm, he has confidence that Blankfein is both very smart and very conservative. But there was another reason he invested: "If I didn't think the government was going to act, I would not be doing anything this week," he explained to CNBC's Becky Quick. "I might be trying to undo things this week." Blankfein refers to this period as "the fog of war," and yet at 85 Broad Street a clear story line has emerged from almost every level of the firm: it was Goldman's much-celebrated culture and its superior ability to manage risk, not the helping hand of the government, that got it through the events of fall 2008. When I ask Gary Cohn, Goldman's chief operating officer, and David Viniar, the firm's chief financial officer, if, barring a financial Armageddon, Goldman would have survived without all the various forms of government intervention, Viniar says, "Yes!" almost before I can finish the question. "I think we would not have failed," says Cohn. "We had cash." It's hard to find anyone outside the firm who doesn't see this as revisionist history. Combine that with further proof of Goldman's worldview-namely, the huge amount of money its people will earn this year ($16.7 billion has already been set aside for compensation, which could translate into an average of $700,000 per Goldman employee)-and you get rage. Widespread rage. "Complete crap," says a senior financier, about Goldman not needing the government's help. "It is a bunch of bullshit," says a former Goldman Sachs managing director. Even Neel Kashkari, a former Goldman banker, who became an assistant secretary of the Treasury last summer, told The New York Times that "every single Wall Street firm, despite their protest today, every single one benefited from our actions. And when they get up there and say, 'Well, we didn't need it,' that's bull." Factor in Goldman's political connections-two of the firm's past four leaders have served as Treasury secretaries, while another source tells me about a G-7 meeting where he counted 24 to 28 out of 32 finance officials in attendance as ex-Goldman men-and you get conspiracy theories on steroids. "this firm is pure evil" is a typical comment whenever a story about Goldman is posted on the Internet, which is almost every day now. Goldman gets that it has a problem; people there are deeply bothered by the outcry. "There is an embattled feeling around the place," says someone who knows the firm well. This is magnified, perhaps, because there has always been a whiff of sanctimony about the firm. It not only wants to make money; it wants to be seen as a force for good. Blankfein's now infamous comment to a reporter at the London Sunday Times that he was doing "God's work" was meant as a joke, but there was a ring of unintentional truth to it. Goldman executives believe they have a public-relations problem, not a substantive one. When the firm had tarp money, there was a ban on using the corporate box at Yankee Stadium, and last fall Blankfein went on a charm offensive that showcased his humble roots to the press. What Goldman doesn't get is that all the murk about the ways it has benefited from public money taps into a deep fear that has long existed among those who think they know Goldman all too well. It's a fear that, as one person puts it, Goldman's "skill set" is "walking between the raindrops over and over again and getting away with it." It is a fear that Goldman has the game rigged, even if no one can ever prove how, not just because of its political connections but also because of its immense size and power. And it is a belief that despite all the happy talk about clients and culture (and, boy, is there a lot of that) the Goldman of today cares about one thing and one thing only: making money for itself. Says one high-level Wall Street executive, "Why do you have a business? Because you have a customer. You have to make an appropriate profit. But is it possible that Goldman has changed from a firm that had customers to a company that is just smart as shit and makes a shitload of money?" A Storied Firm Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs, in the early days, was a scrappy, Jewish firm in a world of white-shoe investment banks (such as J. P. Morgan), which controlled all the valuable corporate clients. In 1929, Goldman was almost brought down by a charming manager-partner named Waddill Catchings, who created what was known as the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation-a story told in detail in The Partnership, by Charles Ellis. It was essentially a trust which used debt to buy other companies, which used more debt to buy still more companies-in other words, a ticking time bomb of debt, in much the same way that modern trusts designed to buy mortgages became ticking time bombs of debt. When the inevitable collapse came, the result tarnished Goldman for decades. The firm's recovery was in large part due to Sidney Weinberg, who famously joined Goldman as a janitor in 1907. While Weinberg built the firm's banking business, Gus Levy, a Tulane University dropout, developed a formidable sideline trading stocks and bonds. In 1969 he took over Weinberg's job at the head of Goldman. When he died, from a stroke in 1976, Weinberg's son John and John Whitehead, an Illinois-born, Harvard-educated World War II veteran, continued to transform Goldman into a major player in investment banking. For much of Goldman's history, the two worlds-the genteel, plush-carpeted one of banking and the rough-and-tumble one of trading-existed in a kind of balance. http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/01/goldman-sachs-200101 ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 43518 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 728 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 9034 bytes Desc: not available URL: From thinker at xplornet.com Sun Dec 6 09:55:29 2009 From: thinker at xplornet.com (Ed Deak) Date: Sun, 06 Dec 2009 09:55:29 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Off the usual topics !!!!!!!!!! Message-ID: <20091206175538.033D31194D89@smtprelay01.hostedemail.com> Things are slow on this list , so I might as well announce that we had our first GREAT grandchild, a little boy, born yesterday afternoon in Spokane, Wash. It was a midwife assisted, all the way natural, very easy birth, mother Sara and child are happy and doing very well. He'll get his Canadian citizenship as well, as soon as possible. Cheers, Ed. From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sun Dec 6 14:53:34 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 09:53:34 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Off the usual topics !!!!!!!!!! References: <20091206175538.033D31194D89@smtprelay01.hostedemail.com> Message-ID: <006201ca76c6$f114b9f0$1ead57ca@jfos> congratulations on your happy event Ed john foster Victoria, Australia ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Deak" To: Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009 4:55 AM Subject: [Mai-not] Off the usual topics !!!!!!!!!! > > > Things are slow on this list , so I might as well announce that we > had our first GREAT grandchild, a little boy, born yesterday > afternoon in Spokane, Wash. > > It was a midwife assisted, all the way natural, very easy > birth, mother Sara and child are happy and doing very well. > > He'll get his Canadian citizenship as well, as soon as possible. > > Cheers, Ed. > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not at globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Internal Virus Database is out of date. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.426 / Virus Database: 270.14.87/2535 - Release Date: 11/29/09 19:31:00 From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Dec 6 16:18:09 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:18:09 +0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Off the usual topics !!!!!!!!!! In-Reply-To: <20091206175538.033D31194D89@smtprelay01.hostedemail.com> References: <20091206175538.033D31194D89@smtprelay01.hostedemail.com> Message-ID: <20091207001811.10741F668@fep01.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> Congratulations on another person in our human family. And for the decision to see he has a Canadian passport. Dion Giles At 01:55 07/12/2009, Ed wrote: >Things are slow on this list , so I might as well announce that we >had our first GREAT grandchild, a little boy, born yesterday >afternoon in Spokane, Wash. > >It was a midwife assisted, all the way natural, very easy >birth, mother Sara and child are happy and doing very well. > >He'll get his Canadian citizenship as well, as soon as possible. > >Cheers, Ed. > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not at globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > >__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus >signature database 4665 (20091206) __________ > >The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. > >http://www.eset.com > > From ptuffley at xtra.co.nz Sun Dec 6 16:50:29 2009 From: ptuffley at xtra.co.nz (Peter Tuffley) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 13:50:29 +1300 Subject: [Mai-not] Off the usual topics !!!!!!!!!! In-Reply-To: <20091206175538.033D31194D89@smtprelay01.hostedemail.com> References: <20091206175538.033D31194D89@smtprelay01.hostedemail.com> Message-ID: Warm congratulations! Peter > > > Things are slow on this list , so I might as well announce that we > had our first GREAT grandchild, a little boy, born yesterday > afternoon in Spokane, Wash. > > It was a midwife assisted, all the way natural, very easy birth, > mother Sara and child are happy and doing very well. > > He'll get his Canadian citizenship as well, as soon as possible. > > Cheers, Ed. > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not at globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From jomut at yahoo.com Mon Dec 7 10:36:26 2009 From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 10:36:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] Off the usual topics !!!!!!!!!! In-Reply-To: <20091206175538.033D31194D89@smtprelay01.hostedemail.com> Message-ID: <257191.76759.qm@web31105.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Tons of congrats!! I dont think I'm gonna get used to calling you "gramps" though!! ? John ============================== ? John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake) jomut at yahoo.com chakane at hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/jomut --- On Sun, 12/6/09, Ed Deak wrote: From: Ed Deak Subject: [Mai-not] Off the usual topics !!!!!!!!!! To: mai-not at globalproblematique.net Date: Sunday, December 6, 2009, 5:55 PM Things are slow on this list , so I might as well announce that we had our first? GREAT grandchild, a little boy, born yesterday afternoon in Spokane, Wash. It was a midwife assisted, all the way natural, very easy birth,? mother Sara and child are happy and doing very well. He'll get his Canadian citizenship as well, as soon as possible. Cheers, Ed.??? _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not at globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Dec 7 19:58:30 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:58:30 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Copenhagen climate talks, support for 5th International, Arabic, left unity, Afghanistan & Pakistan, Honduras Message-ID: <4B1DCEE6.107@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: Copenhagen climate talks, support for 5th International, Arabic, left unity, Afghanistan & Pakistan, Honduras * * * 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 at dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links. * * * John Bellamy Foster: `We can't shop our way out of the ecological crisis' John Bellamy Foster Interviewed by Max van Lingen Max van Lingen: Consciousness about climate change has increased enormously; however, it also seems as if there is a lack of criticism of business and government actions. Instead it appears as if people are thinking: it doesn't really matter why people act, as long as they act. * Read more A lesson from Seattle for Copenhagen: Vigorous activism can defeat the denialists By Patrick Bond December 1, 2009 -- Preparations for the December 7-18 Copenhagen climate summit are going as expected, including a rare sighting of the African elites' stiffened spines. That's a great development (maybe decisive), more about that below. While activists help raise the temperature on the streets outside the Bella Centre on December 12, 13 and 16, inside we will see global North elites defensively armed with pathetic non-binding carbon emissions cuts (US President Barack Obama's promise is a mere 4% below 1990 levels) and carbon trading, but without offering the money to repay the North's ecological debt to the global South. * Read more Video: `The Story of Cap and Trade' (aka carbon trading), from the makers of `The Story of Stuff' December 1, 2009 -- The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at the climate talks in Copenhagen. Cap and trade is also variously described as ``carbon trading'' and ``emissions trading''. In Australia, the federal Labor government is trying to push a variation of this through the Senate called the ``Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme''. * Watch and read more The Flame, November-December 2009 -- Green Left Weekly's Arabic-language supplement With the help of Socialist Alliance members in the growing Sudanese community in Australia, Green Left Weekly -- Australia's leading socialist newspaper -- is publishing a regular Arabic language supplement. * Read more Recent experiences in left regroupment and reconstruction By Jim McIlroy November 23, 2009 -- How do you build socialism in the First World countries right now? Of course, we are part of a world movement for socialism, including the Third World. We can learn a lot from recent and current experiences in left regroupment and party building that are happening around the world at present -- with all proportions guarded, and realising that there is no direct transposition of one historical, national experience onto another. * Read more Australian and New Zealand socialists support Chavez's call for a new international organisation of the left December 3, 2009 -- On behalf of the Socialist Alliance of Australia, we would like to send warm, socialist greetings to the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), thanking you once again for the invitation to participate in the International Meeting of Left Parties held in Caracas, November 19-21, 2009. The outcomes of this event are already having an important impact on the world, particularly among left and progressive forces, and we are grateful that we could be part of it and contribute to its success in our own modest way. * Read more Obama delivers -- when it comes to war By Billy Wharton December 4, 2009 -- When US President Barack Obama announced his plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending 30,000 more troops to the war-torn country, he delivered on two campaign promises. The first was a campaign trail pledge to re-focus US military power on the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was mostly ignored by enthralled voters. The second was made more quietly to his many campaign donors in the defence industry. * Read more Labour Party Pakistan condemns Obama's Afghanistan policy By Farooq Tariq December 4, 2009 -- The Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) condemns US President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy and demands that all NATO forces immediately withdraw from Afghanistan and stop drone attacks on Pakistan. The Labour Party Pakistan has decided to protest against this new escalation of the war effort in the region. The first protest took place on December 4 in front of US consulate in Lahore. There will be more demonstrations in different parts of Pakistan. * Read more L'appel historique de Chavez pour une 5eme Internationale par Federico Fuentes 2 d?cembre 2009 -- S'adressant aux d?l?gu?s de la Rencontre Internationale des Partis de Gauche qui s'est tenue ? Caracas du 19 au 21 novembre (2009), le pr?sident v?n?zu?lien Hugo Chavez a d?clar? : ? il est temps de constituer la 5?me Internationale. ? Face ? la crise capitaliste et la menace d'une guerre qui repr?sente un danger pour l'avenir de l'humanit?, ? les peuples r?clament ? une unit? plus forte des partis de gauche et r?volutionnaires qui sont pr?ts ? lutter pour le socialisme, a-t-il dit. * Read more El llamado hist?rico de Hugo Ch?vez para conformar una V Internacional Socialista por Federico Fuentes 2 de diciembre de 2009 -- Hablando a los delegados del Encuentro International de Partidos de Izquierda realizado en Caracas, el presidente venezolano, Hugo Ch?vez se?alo "que lleg? la hora de que convoquemos a la Quinta Internacional. Frente la crisis capitalista y la amenaza de guerra que poner en peligro el futuro de la humanidad, la unidad de partidos de izquierda y revolucionario dispuesto a luchar para el socialismo "es un clamor del pueblo," dijo Ch?vez. * Read more Honduras: `The election was a farce, new regime will not be recognised' -- National Resistance Fron By the National Resistance Front against the Coup d'etat * 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: From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Mon Dec 7 20:52:37 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2009 15:52:37 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: A Fraudulent Jobs Summit - Obama's Meet-and-Greet for Elites Message-ID: <00a501ca77c4$2a1d5060$0100007f@jfos> Remember folks, whatever happens in the 'good ole U$ofA' invariably happens here. With the possible exception of China, unemployment and under-employment are on the rise globally. Whilst Western politicians hand out billions of $$$s in 'rescue packages' to failed banks and other financial institutions, working class families (which include, of course, the great bulk of the 'Middle Class') are under attack throughout the 'rich countries' of the world. Families caring for a relative suffering from dependent disabilities or acquired brain injury and those whose breadwinner is an innocent victim of asbestos disease for instance are far worse off. john Excerpt: "The current situation in the U.S. is one of complete social failure; there is immense work that needs to be done - in infrastructure especially - while there exists millions of workers available to do the job. But nothing happens. This points to an obvious failure in the market, and thus demands serious state intervention. But state intervention cannot be the type that Obama has promoted thus far, especially bank bailouts and corporate-style health care. Instead of aiding the super-wealthy, it should be demanded that Obama drastically switch gears to curing the unemployment pandemic. Unfortunately, the strong measures needed to address the unemployment issue are unlikely to come from the Obama administration." November 19, 2009 Obama's Meet-and-Greet for Elites A Fraudulent Jobs Summit By SHAMUS COOKE If the President had offered us a job summit a year ago, he might have been taken seriously. Now, however, after more than six million jobs have been lost - and with the bottom still falling - Obama's brain storming get-together can only be treated with contempt, if not outrage. What is needed is immediate action, not idle chatter. We already know what works: federal stimulus money channeled directly towards job creation, a public works campaign to help rebuild the U.S. crumbling infrastructure, full funding for education and social services, and more. Instead, Obama will invite the corporate elite to the White House to hear their advice on how to create jobs, as they continue slashing them by the thousands. The conservative Washington Post reports: "President Obama plans to bring together CEOs, small business owners and financial experts to sound out ideas for continuing to expand the economy and create jobs" (November 16, 2009). Labor leaders have also been invited to the meeting. Allow us to save the busy President some time - it is obvious what the summit participants will suggest and why. Corporations will propose that taxes remain low for themselves and their very wealthy shareholders, while keeping regulations equally low. Both of these measures would save money for corporations, while encouraging billionaires to play more on the stock market - their solution to creating jobs. Unions, on the other hand, will demand a new and improved stimulus package. This, of course, is the only answer for workers. The first stimulus bill was an abysmal failure because it was far too small, while much of the money was dedicated to tax breaks. Obama is correct that it saved jobs from being destroyed and that it gave desperate states some financial relief. But the aid was far too small to be truly effective, regardless of Obama's constant boasting about it. A new stimulus package must be much larger, and wholly dedicated to creating jobs, not merely "saving" them. The current situation in the U.S. is one of complete social failure; there is immense work that needs to be done - in infrastructure especially - while there exists millions of workers available to do the job. But nothing happens. This points to an obvious failure in the market, and thus demands serious state intervention. But state intervention cannot be the type that Obama has promoted thus far, especially bank bailouts and corporate-style health care. Instead of aiding the super-wealthy, it should be demanded that Obama drastically switch gears to curing the unemployment pandemic. Unfortunately, the strong measures needed to address the unemployment issue are unlikely to come from the Obama administration. The president has made clear his desire to focus on the federal deficit; he is under extreme pressure from foreign lenders - Russia, China, etc. - and U.S. bankers to make cuts in the budget, not expand it. And although no one from the U.S. corporate elite complained a bit about Obama's record breaking $660 billion military budget, they will scream bloody murder if a new stimulus is created to benefit workers. It is up to us, then, to scream louder. Obama will not create a much-needed stimulus unless he is fearful of the social consequences of doing nothing. If he feels that workers and the unemployed will suffer quietly as jobs continue to disappear, he will continue his "let-them-eat-cake" attitude. If, however, he sees large, angry demonstrations demanding jobs, he will be forced to think again. The time is now. The union movement can pass resolutions as the American Federation of Teachers Local 1021 of Los Angeles did just last week, which calls on the labor movement, as a whole, to organize their membership and working people in general to attend a Solidarity Day III march and rally in Washington, DC in the spring of 2010 to demand living wage jobs for all. If we stay quiet, Obama will implement the corporations' solution to the recession - a jobless recovery with a substantially lower standard of living for everyone but the rich. Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscook at yahoo.com http://www.counterpunch.org/cooke11192009.html ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Mon Dec 7 21:32:12 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2009 16:32:12 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: Fort Hood hoods in the 'hood - Whistleblower Psychiatrist Warns of 'Soldier on Soldier' Violence Message-ID: <011001ca77c7$cbeb4070$0100007f@jfos> Blue on blue, heartache on heartache Blue on blue now that we are through Blue on blue, heartache on heartache And I find I can't get over losing you - Burt Bacharach Friendly fire occurs when there was intent to do harm to the enemy which causes injury to one's own side. Examples listed see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_on_blue US: Whistleblower Psychiatrist Warns of Soldier on Soldier Violence - By Dahr Jamail MARFA, Texas, Dec 7 (IPS) - Kernan Manion, a psychiatrist who was hired last January to treat Marines returning from war who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other acute mental health problems borne from their deployments, fears more soldier-on-soldier violence without radical changes in the current soldier health care system. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49574 Suicide is Painless aka M*A*S*H theme song Cause suicide is painless, It brings on many changes, And I can take or leave it if I please - lyrics Mike Altman (aged 14) & Johnny Mandel Working for a personnel-recruiting company which was contracted by the Defence Department at Camp Lejeune, Manion became alarmed at the military?s inability to give sufficient treatment to returning soldiers. He was also concerned by their reports of outright abuse meted out by some commanders against lower-ranking soldiers who sought help. Manion told IPS that last April two Marines urgently sought his help soon after the clinic opened at 7am. They told him, "One of these guys is liable to come back [from Iraq or Afghanistan] with a loaded weapon and open fire." This episode is just one that is indicative of pervasive and worsening systemic problems afflicting a military mental health care system that is overburdened, overstressed, under-staffed, and ill equipped, but one that, according to Manion. Care is also administered by career military officers who are "ill- trained to provide the complex psychiatric expertise necessary to effectively treat psychologically impaired soldiers." Manion explained to IPS that upon returning home, troops suffering from myriad new-onset deployment related mental health problems were flooding the available resources. When they did come in, they had to bear the brunt of pervasive harassment, and oftentimes outright psychological abuse from Marine Corps superiors who refused to acknowledge the validity, much less the severity of their problems. "I saw previously strong Marines, people who were now very fragile - who were broken by two or more deployments - come back to be squashed by their commanders, who told them they were "goddamn losers"," Manion told IPS. Manion went on to warn his superiors of the widespread systemic problems - he informed them that he was alarmed at the possibility of these leading to violence on the base. Rather than being praised for his series of increasingly urgent memos on the impending disaster, Manion was fired by the contractor that hired him. While a spokeswoman for the firm says it released Manion at the behest of the Navy, the Navy preferred not to comment on this story. Since 2001, when the war in Afghanistan began, more than 2,100 members of the armed forces have committed suicide. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/increase_in_us_military_suicid.html Chuck Luther is a two-tour Iraq war veteran and a former sergeant who served 12 years in the military. He is also the founder and director of "The Soldier?s Advocacy Group of Disposable Warriors," and lives in Killeen, nearby Fort Hood, where he used to be based. Luther told IPS that he is working on 20 cases of soldiers suffering from PTSD who have been either maltreated by their commanders, have not been given proper treatment for their PTSD, or both. He hopes to avoid another disaster like that which occurred on Nov. 5, when Major Nidal Hassan - suffering from a combination of secondary trauma and dealing with major ongoing harassment for being a Muslim - went on a shooting spree that killed 13 soldiers, and wounded dozens more. "The ground has been laid for another crisis, another shooting? it?s volatile here, nothing has been resolved," Luther told IPS, "The average Joe on the street thinks things are resolved here, but they are anything but resolved. We are primed to have more soldier on soldier violence if something doesn?t change right away." Manion holds deep concern for the future of both those treating traumatised soldiers, and the soldiers themselves. "If not more Fort Hoods, Camp Liberties, soldier fratricide, spousal homicide, we?ll see it individually in suicides, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, family dysfunction, in formerly fine young men coming back and saying, as I?ve heard so many times, "I?m not cut out for society. I can?t stand people. I can?t tolerate commotion. I need to live in the woods." That?s what we?re going to have. Broken, not contributing, not functional, members of society," Manion explained. In 2008, according to the Marine Corps, at least 42 Marines committed suicide, and at least 146 others attempted to do so. Last year, the U.S. Army?s suicide rate was higher than that of the general population for the first time since the Vietnam war, a fact one of Canada?s leading experts in mental health finds ?disturbing.? The military suicide rate grew to 20.2 per 100,000 people from 12.7 per 100,000 in 2005. Another dramatic figure: the suicide rate among U.S. veterans aged 20 to 24 was four times higher than non-veterans of that age. http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/live/article/371165--military-suicide-rates-rising An example of what Manion and Luther are concerned about is U.S. Army Specialist Lateef Al-Saraji, a decorated combat veteran, who came back from the occupation of Iraq with severe PTSD. When Saraji returned to the U.S., it took him months to get an appointment with a counsellor on his base. He was then referred to an off-base psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with severe PTSD. In an email to Luther, Saraji wrote that he "felt that the Army did not care about me and my superiors did not seem to care. On Jul. 1 the psychologist, Mr. Leach, wrote a letter recommending I have 2 weeks off." Rather than his commander, Sergeant 1st Class Duncan, follow the recommendation of Leach, Saraji was accused of going absent without leave and told he would not be given the 2 weeks off, along with being written up. "I got too depressed," Saraji wrote of his experience, "I was going to kill myself. I was depressed and tired of the racism and prejudice that I was receiving. I was talking on the phone with the Chaplain and he heard me cock my gun." Luckily, very shortly thereafter three officers appeared at his door and took him to nearby Fort Hood, where he was admitted into a psychiatric unit for a week. From there he was transferred to a facility in Wichita Falls for three weeks, where he was jumped by five soldiers who harassed him and called him a "towel head" and "sand nigger." He was moved to a different floor of that hospital, but wrote, "I was afraid for my safety so I tried to run away from the hospital." Saraji returned to Fort Hood, only to find Duncan writing him up yet again. According to Saraji, when Duncan learned Saraji had nearly attempted suicide, he coolly told Saraji that he should go kill himself. "Either Duncan was about to end up injured, or Saraji was going to injure himself," Luther, who is appalled at Saraji?s treatment by his commander, told IPS, "These lower level commanders continue to intimidate and harass these soldiers, even soldiers who want to be deployed. Saraji had even offered to go back to Iraq. When you go find these guys getting kicked out for misconduct- you?ll find that prior to this you had commanders pushing them, punishing them, and harassing them, then they break." The warnings of Luther and Manion have already proven prophetic. On Nov. 22, Killeen police reported that Fort Hood soldier, Army Spc. David Middlebrooks, was stabbed to death. The next day, 22-year-old Joshua Wyatt, another Fort Hood soldier, was shot to death in his residence. The killers of both soldiers are alleged to be Fort Hood soldiers as well. Killings involving Fort Hood soldiers have been commonplace in recent years, even prior to the mass killing on Nov. 5. In the years leading up to that event, soldiers from Fort Hood were involved in the deaths of at least seven people in the previous five years alone, several of these incidents being soldier-on- soldier violence. Taking one of these as an example, in Sep. 2008, Spc. Jody Wirawan fatally shot 1st Lt. Robert Fletcher. When Killeen police arrived, Wirawan proceeded to commit suicide. In addition, Luther told IPS that at least two soldiers at Fort Hood have attempted suicide since Nov. 5. And the killings are not limited to Fort Hood. In upstate New York in the town of Leray, on the outskirts of Fort Drum, home of the 10th Mountain Division, between Nov. 29 and 30, soldiers Waide James and Diego Valbuena were murdered by Joshua Hunter, another Fort Drum soldier, according to Jefferson County Sheriff John Burns. Both victims died of multiple stab wounds. On Sep. 29, five weeks before the massacre at Fort Hood, Manion sent a letter to President Barack Obama. Manion?s letter stated, "Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I have never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness - literally, a relentless stream of courageous, well-trained and formerly strong Marines, deeply wounded psychologically by the immensity of their combat experiences." The letter went on to explain how he had, over the previous six months, raised serious concerns "about several very dangerous inadequacies of the clinics [at Camp Lejune] operations as well as recurring incidents of signi?cant psychological abuse of Marines who were seeking our care." The doctor warned President Obama that his experience at Camp Lejeune "represents a more pervasive problem at Camp Lejeune and perhaps even throughout the institutional culture of the military." Seeing the clear potential for the impending disaster of soldier-on-soldier violence as a result of untreated PTSD, Manion?s letter continued with a sense of urgency: "Mr. President, given what I?ve witnessed and personally experienced, I think that, beyond the immediate issue of my ?ring and my patients? care, it?s vital that these ?aws be named and examined." (END/2009) http://www.ivaw.org/ http://www.sirnosir.com/ see also FTA film. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HlkgPCgU7g "Your jails are filled with black men, and your courts are white with hate, And with every bid for freedom, someone whispers to us "wait"................., Move on over, or we will move on over you............ It is you who are subversive, you are the killers of the dream...... In a savage world of bandits, it is you who are extreme........" Len Chandler (My Ass is mine) Memorial Day II, Rita Martinson from the Vietnam Era FTA Tour http://left-wingwacko.blogspot.com/2009/05/memorial-day-ii-rita-martinson-from.html The Most Truth Packed into a few Seconds of a Fictional Hollywood Movie ?The richest one percent of this country owns half our country?s wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It?s bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own.??Gordon Gekko to Bud Fox (Wall Street, 1987, directed by Oliver Stone) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thinker at xplornet.com Tue Dec 8 07:47:13 2009 From: thinker at xplornet.com (Ed Deak) Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:47:13 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: Fort Hood hoods in the 'hood - Whistleblower Psychiatrist Warns of 'Soldier on Soldier' Violence In-Reply-To: <011001ca77c7$cbeb4070$0100007f@jfos> References: <011001ca77c7$cbeb4070$0100007f@jfos> Message-ID: <20091208154730.B0F621D1BB2C@smtprelay03.hostedemail.com> I'm the strongest anti war anti militarist, but................... I can not remember anything like this even on the losing side of WW2, even when I've spent 14 months in the most primitive hospital, starving and starting with 600 amputees, or in the refugee camps with veterans who have lost their families and everything as ethnic Germans in east European countries. What impressed me most at the time and even now when I think about it was the generally cheerful and positive atmosphere both in Europe, under the most vicious poverty of the post war years, and later when I lived in England. So, is this the sign of times, together with the other health problems and epidemics ? Cheers, Ed. At 09:32 PM 07/12/2009, you wrote: > > >Blue on blue, heartache on heartache >Blue on blue now that we are through >Blue on blue, heartache on heartache >And I find I can't get over losing you >- Burt Bacharach > > >Friendly fire occurs when there was >intent to do harm to the enemy which causes injury to one's own side. >Examples listed see >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_on_blue > > > >US: Whistleblower Psychiatrist Warns of Soldier >on Soldier Violence - By Dahr Jamail > >MARFA, Texas, Dec 7 (IPS) - Kernan Manion, a >psychiatrist who was hired last January to treat >Marines returning from war who suffer from >post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other >acute mental health problems borne from their >deployments, fears more soldier-on-soldier >violence without radical changes in the current soldier health care system. > >http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49574 > >Suicide is Painless aka M*A*S*H theme song >Cause suicide is painless, >It brings on many changes, >And I can take or leave it if I please >- lyrics >Mike Altman (aged 14) & Johnny Mandel > >Working for a personnel-recruiting company which >was contracted by the Defence Department at Camp >Lejeune, Manion became alarmed at the military?s >inability to give sufficient treatment to >returning soldiers. He was also concerned by >their reports of outright abuse meted out by >some commanders against lower-ranking soldiers who sought help. > >Manion told IPS that last April two Marines >urgently sought his help soon after the clinic >opened at 7am. They told him, "One of these guys >is liable to come back [from Iraq or >Afghanistan] with a loaded weapon and open fire." > >This episode is just one that is indicative of >pervasive and worsening systemic problems >afflicting a military mental health care system >that is overburdened, overstressed, >under-staffed, and ill equipped, but one that, >according to Manion. Care is also administered >by career military officers who are "ill- >trained to provide the complex psychiatric >expertise necessary to effectively treat psychologically impaired soldiers." > >Manion explained to IPS that upon returning >home, troops suffering from myriad new-onset >deployment related mental health problems were >flooding the available resources. When they did >come in, they had to bear the brunt of pervasive >harassment, and oftentimes outright >psychological abuse from Marine Corps superiors >who refused to acknowledge the validity, much >less the severity of their problems. > >"I saw previously strong Marines, people who >were now very fragile - who were broken by two >or more deployments - come back to be squashed >by their commanders, who told them they were >"goddamn losers"," Manion told IPS. > >Manion went on to warn his superiors of the >widespread systemic problems - he informed them >that he was alarmed at the possibility of these >leading to violence on the base. > >Rather than being praised for his series of >increasingly urgent memos on the impending >disaster, Manion was fired by the contractor >that hired him. While a spokeswoman for the firm >says it released Manion at the behest of the >Navy, the Navy preferred not to comment on this story. > >Since 2001, when >the war in Afghanistan began, more than 2,100 >members of the armed forces have committed suicide. >http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/increase_in_us_military_suicid.html > >Chuck Luther is a two-tour Iraq war veteran and >a former sergeant who served 12 years in the >military. He is also the founder and director of >"The Soldier?s Advocacy Group of Disposable >Warriors," and lives in Killeen, nearby Fort Hood, where he used to be based. > >Luther told IPS that he is working on 20 cases >of soldiers suffering from PTSD who have been >either maltreated by their commanders, have not >been given proper treatment for their PTSD, or both. > >He hopes to avoid another disaster like that >which occurred on Nov. 5, when Major Nidal >Hassan - suffering from a combination of >secondary trauma and dealing with major ongoing >harassment for being a Muslim - went on a >shooting spree that killed 13 soldiers, and wounded dozens more. > >"The ground has been laid for another crisis, >another shooting? it?s volatile here, nothing >has been resolved," Luther told IPS, "The >average Joe on the street thinks things are >resolved here, but they are anything but >resolved. We are primed to have more soldier on >soldier violence if something doesn?t change right away." > >Manion holds deep concern for the future of both >those treating traumatised soldiers, and the soldiers themselves. > >"If not more Fort Hoods, Camp Liberties, soldier >fratricide, spousal homicide, we?ll see it >individually in suicides, alcohol abuse, >domestic violence, family dysfunction, in >formerly fine young men coming back and saying, >as I?ve heard so many times, "I?m not cut out >for society. I can?t stand people. I can?t >tolerate commotion. I need to live in the >woods." That?s what we?re going to have. Broken, >not contributing, not functional, members of society," Manion explained. > >In 2008, according to the Marine Corps, at least >42 Marines committed suicide, and at least 146 others attempted to do so. > >Last year, the >U.S. Army?s suicide rate was higher than that of >the general population for the first time since >the Vietnam war, a fact one of Canada?s leading >experts in mental health finds ?disturbing.? The >military suicide rate grew to 20.2 per 100,000 >people from 12.7 per 100,000 in 2005. Another >dramatic figure: the suicide rate among U.S. >veterans aged 20 to 24 was four times higher than non-veterans of that age. >http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/live/article/371165--military-suicide-rates-rising > >An example of what Manion and Luther are >concerned about is U.S. Army Specialist Lateef >Al-Saraji, a decorated combat veteran, who came >back from the occupation of Iraq with severe PTSD. >When Saraji returned to the U.S., it took him >months to get an appointment with a counsellor >on his base. He was then referred to an off-base >psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with severe PTSD. >In an email to Luther, Saraji wrote that he >"felt that the Army did not care about me and my >superiors did not seem to care. On Jul. 1 the >psychologist, Mr. Leach, wrote a letter recommending I have 2 weeks off." > >Rather than his commander, Sergeant 1st Class >Duncan, follow the recommendation of Leach, >Saraji was accused of going absent without leave >and told he would not be given the 2 weeks off, along with being written up. >"I got too depressed," Saraji wrote of his >experience, "I was going to kill myself. I was >depressed and tired of the racism and prejudice >that I was receiving. I was talking on the phone >with the Chaplain and he heard me cock my gun." > >Luckily, very shortly thereafter three officers >appeared at his door and took him to nearby Fort >Hood, where he was admitted into a psychiatric >unit for a week. From there he was transferred >to a facility in Wichita Falls for three weeks, >where he was jumped by five soldiers who >harassed him and called him a "towel head" and >"sand nigger." He was moved to a different floor >of that hospital, but wrote, "I was afraid for >my safety so I tried to run away from the hospital." > >Saraji returned to Fort Hood, only to find >Duncan writing him up yet again. According to >Saraji, when Duncan learned Saraji had nearly >attempted suicide, he coolly told Saraji that he should go kill himself. >"Either Duncan was about to end up injured, or >Saraji was going to injure himself," Luther, who >is appalled at Saraji?s treatment by his >commander, told IPS, "These lower level >commanders continue to intimidate and harass >these soldiers, even soldiers who want to be >deployed. Saraji had even offered to go back to >Iraq. When you go find these guys getting kicked >out for misconduct- you?ll find that prior to >this you had commanders pushing them, punishing >them, and harassing them, then they break." >The warnings of Luther and Manion have already proven prophetic. > >On Nov. 22, Killeen police reported that Fort >Hood soldier, Army Spc. David Middlebrooks, was >stabbed to death. The next day, 22-year-old >Joshua Wyatt, another Fort Hood soldier, was >shot to death in his residence. The killers of >both soldiers are alleged to be Fort Hood soldiers as well. > >Killings involving Fort Hood soldiers have been >commonplace in recent years, even prior to the >mass killing on Nov. 5. In the years leading up >to that event, soldiers from Fort Hood were >involved in the deaths of at least seven people >in the previous five years alone, several of >these incidents being soldier-on- soldier violence. > >Taking one of these as an example, in Sep. 2008, >Spc. Jody Wirawan fatally shot 1st Lt. Robert >Fletcher. When Killeen police arrived, Wirawan proceeded to commit suicide. >In addition, Luther told IPS that at least two >soldiers at Fort Hood have attempted suicide since Nov. 5. >And the killings are not limited to Fort Hood. > >In upstate New York in the town of Leray, on the >outskirts of Fort Drum, home of the 10th >Mountain Division, between Nov. 29 and 30, >soldiers Waide James and Diego Valbuena were >murdered by Joshua Hunter, another Fort Drum >soldier, according to Jefferson County Sheriff John Burns. >Both victims died of multiple stab wounds. > >On Sep. 29, five weeks before the massacre at >Fort Hood, Manion sent a letter to President Barack Obama. >Manion?s letter stated, "Frankly, in my more >than 25 years of clinical practice, I have never >seen such immense emotional suffering and >psychological brokenness - literally, a >relentless stream of courageous, well-trained >and formerly strong Marines, deeply wounded >psychologically by the immensity of their combat experiences." >The letter went on to explain how he had, over >the previous six months, raised serious concerns >"about several very dangerous inadequacies of >the clinics [at Camp Lejune] operations as well >as recurring incidents of signi?cant >psychological abuse of Marines who were seeking our care." >The doctor warned President Obama that his >experience at Camp Lejeune "represents a more >pervasive problem at Camp Lejeune and perhaps >even throughout the institutional culture of the military." >Seeing the clear potential for the impending >disaster of soldier-on-soldier violence as a >result of untreated PTSD, Manion?s letter >continued with a sense of urgency: "Mr. >President, given what I?ve witnessed and >personally experienced, I think that, beyond the >immediate issue of my ?ring and my patients? >care, it?s vital that these ?aws be named and examined." > >(END/2009) > >http://www.ivaw.org/ > >http://www.sirnosir.com/ > >see also FTA film. >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HlkgPCgU7g > >"Your jails are filled with black men, and your courts are white with hate, >And with every bid for freedom, someone whispers >to us "wait"................., >Move on over, or we will move on over you............ >It is you who are subversive, you are the killers of the dream...... >In a savage world of bandits, it is you who are extreme........" >Len Chandler (My Ass is mine) > >Memorial Day II, Rita Martinson from the Vietnam Era FTA Tour >http://left-wingwacko.blogspot.com/2009/05/memorial-day-ii-rita-martinson-from.html > >The Most Truth >Packed into a few Seconds of a Fictional Hollywood Movie >?The richest one percent of this country owns >half our country?s wealth, five trillion >dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, >two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on >interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons >and what I do, stock and real estate >speculation. It?s bullshit. You got ninety >percent of the American public out there with >little or no net worth. I create nothing. I >own.??Gordon Gekko to Bud Fox (Wall Street, 1987, directed by Oliver Stone) > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not at globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > > >No virus found in this incoming message. >Checked by AVG - www.avg.com >Version: 9.0.709 / Virus Database: >270.14.98/2551 - Release Date: 12/07/09 11:34:00 From thinker at xplornet.com Tue Dec 8 07:51:41 2009 From: thinker at xplornet.com (Ed Deak) Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:51:41 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: A Fraudulent Jobs Summit - Obama's Meet-and-Greet for Elites In-Reply-To: <00a501ca77c4$2a1d5060$0100007f@jfos> References: <00a501ca77c4$2a1d5060$0100007f@jfos> Message-ID: <20091208155157.F0E2425A39FB@smtprelay02.hostedemail.com> The main cause for unemployment and under employment are the overcapitalized, incredibly inefficient, automated production methods , sucking all benefits from humans to satisfy the demands of the artificial entities of company shares and the servicing of imaginary capital created from the air for the purpose of licencing environmental and humanm destruction. Cheers, Ed. At 08:52 PM 07/12/2009, you wrote: >Remember folks, whatever happens in the 'good ole U$ofA' invariably >happens here. > >With the possible exception of China, unemployment and under-employment are >on the rise globally. Whilst Western politicians hand out billions >of $$$s in 'rescue >packages' to failed banks and other financial institutions, working >class families >(which include, of course, the great bulk of the 'Middle Class') are >under attack >throughout the 'rich countries' of the world. Families caring for a >relative suffering >from dependent disabilities or acquired brain injury and those whose >breadwinner >is an innocent victim of asbestos disease for instance are far worse off. > >john > > >Excerpt: >"The current situation in the U.S. is one of >complete social failure; there is immense work that needs to be done - in >infrastructure especially - while there exists millions of workers available >to do the job. But nothing happens. This points to an obvious failure in the >market, and thus demands serious state intervention. > >But state intervention cannot be the type that Obama has promoted thus far, >especially bank bailouts and corporate-style health care. Instead of aiding >the super-wealthy, it should be demanded that Obama drastically switch gears >to curing the unemployment pandemic. > >Unfortunately, the strong measures needed to address the unemployment issue >are unlikely to come from the Obama administration." > > >November 19, 2009 >Obama's Meet-and-Greet for Elites >A Fraudulent Jobs Summit >By SHAMUS COOKE > >If the President had offered us a job summit a year ago, he might have been >taken seriously. Now, however, after more than six million jobs have been >lost - and with the bottom still falling - Obama's brain storming >get-together can only be treated with contempt, if not outrage. > >What is needed is immediate action, not idle chatter. We already know what >works: federal stimulus money channeled directly towards job creation, a >public works campaign to help rebuild the U.S. crumbling infrastructure, >full funding for education and social services, and more. > >Instead, Obama will invite the corporate elite to the White House to hear >their advice on how to create jobs, as they continue slashing them by the >thousands. The conservative Washington Post reports: > >"President Obama plans to bring together CEOs, small business owners and >financial experts to sound out ideas for continuing to expand the economy >and create jobs" (November 16, 2009). > >Labor leaders have also been invited to the meeting. > >Allow us to save the busy President some time - it is obvious what the >summit participants will suggest and why. Corporations will propose that >taxes remain low for themselves and their very wealthy shareholders, while >keeping regulations equally low. Both of these measures would save money for >corporations, while encouraging billionaires to play more on the stock >market - their solution to creating jobs. Unions, on the other hand, will >demand a new and improved stimulus package. This, of course, is the only >answer for workers. > >The first stimulus bill was an abysmal failure because it was far too small, >while much of the money was dedicated to tax breaks. Obama is correct that >it saved jobs from being destroyed and that it gave desperate states some >financial relief. But the aid was far too small to be truly effective, >regardless of Obama's constant boasting about it. > >A new stimulus package must be much larger, and wholly dedicated to creating >jobs, not merely "saving" them. The current situation in the U.S. is one of >complete social failure; there is immense work that needs to be done - in >infrastructure especially - while there exists millions of workers available >to do the job. But nothing happens. This points to an obvious failure in the >market, and thus demands serious state intervention. > >But state intervention cannot be the type that Obama has promoted thus far, >especially bank bailouts and corporate-style health care. Instead of aiding >the super-wealthy, it should be demanded that Obama drastically switch gears >to curing the unemployment pandemic. > >Unfortunately, the strong measures needed to address the unemployment issue >are unlikely to come from the Obama administration. The president has made >clear his desire to focus on the federal deficit; he is under extreme >pressure from foreign lenders - Russia, China, etc. - and U.S. bankers to >make cuts in the budget, not expand it. And although no one from the U.S. >corporate elite complained a bit about Obama's record breaking $660 billion >military budget, they will scream bloody murder if a new stimulus is created >to benefit workers. > >It is up to us, then, to scream louder. Obama will not create a much-needed >stimulus unless he is fearful of the social consequences of doing nothing. >If he feels that workers and the unemployed will suffer quietly as jobs >continue to disappear, he will continue his "let-them-eat-cake" attitude. >If, however, he sees large, angry demonstrations demanding jobs, he will be >forced to think again. The time is now. The union movement can pass >resolutions as the American Federation of Teachers Local 1021 of Los Angeles >did just last week, which calls on the labor movement, as a whole, to >organize their membership and working people in general to attend a >Solidarity Day III march and rally in Washington, DC in the spring of 2010 >to demand living wage jobs for all. If we stay quiet, Obama will implement >the corporations' solution to the recession - a jobless recovery with a >substantially lower standard of living for everyone but the rich. > >Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for >Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at >shamuscook at yahoo.com > >http://www.counterpunch.org/cooke11192009.html > > > > > > > >------------------------------------------------------ >Provided by Australis >http://www.australis.com.au/ > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not at globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > > >No virus found in this incoming message. >Checked by AVG - www.avg.com >Version: 9.0.709 / Virus Database: 270.14.98/2551 - Release Date: >12/07/09 11:34:00 From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Wed Dec 9 12:31:14 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:31:14 -0400 Subject: [Mai-not] The Anti-Empire Report Dec 9, 2009 Message-ID: <4B1FD0D2.8176.3A8751BC@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> Anti-Empire Report, December 9, 2009 The Anti-Empire Report December 9th, 2009 by William Blum www.killinghope.org All the crying from the left about how Obama "the peace candidate" has now become "a war president" ... Whatever are they talking about? Here's what I wrote in this report in August 2008, during the election campaign: We find Obama threatening, several times, to attack Iran if they don't do what the United States wants them to do nuclear-wise; threatening more than once to attack Pakistan if their anti-terrorist policies are not tough enough or if there would be a regime change in the nuclear-armed country not to his liking; calling for a large increase in US troops and tougher policies for Afghanistan; wholly and unequivocally embracing Israel as if it were the 51st state. Why should anyone be surprised at Obama's foreign policy in the White House? He has not even banned torture, contrary to what his supporters would fervently have us believe. If further evidence were needed, we have the November 28 report in the Washington Post: "Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban." This is but the latest example of the continuance of torture under the new administration. But the shortcomings of Barack Obama and the naivet? of his fans is not the important issue. The important issue is the continuation and escalation of the American war in Afghanistan, based on the myth that the individuals we label "Taliban" are indistinguishable from those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, whom we usually label "al Qaeda". "I am convinced," the president said in his speech at the United States Military Academy (West Point) on December 1, "that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak." Obama used one form or another of the word "extremist" eleven times in his half-hour talk. Young, impressionable minds must be carefully taught; a future generation of military leaders who will command America's never-ending wars must have no doubts that the bad guys are "extremists", that "extremists" are by definition bad guys, that "extremists" are beyond the pale and do not act from human, rational motivation like we do, that we - quintessential non-extremists, peace- loving moderates - are the good guys, forced into one war after another against our will. Sending robotic death machines flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan to drop powerful bombs on the top of wedding parties, funerals, and homes is of course not extremist behavior for human beings. And the bad guys attacked the US "from here", Afghanistan. That's why the United States is "there", Afghanistan. But in fact the 9-11 attack was planned in Germany, Spain and the United States as much as in Afghanistan. It could have been planned in a single small room in Panama City, Taiwan, or Bucharest. What is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? And the attack was carried out entirely in the United States. But Barack Obama has to maintain the fiction that Afghanistan was, and is, vital and indispensable to any attack on the United States, past or future. That gives him the right to occupy the country and kill the citizens as he sees fit. Robert Baer, former CIA officer with long involvement in that part of the world has noted: "The people that want their country liberated from the West have nothing to do with Al Qaeda. They simply want us gone because we're foreigners, and they're rallying behind the Taliban because the Taliban are experienced, effective fighters." 1 The pretenses extend further. US leaders have fed the public a certain image of the insurgents (all labeled together under the name "Taliban") and of the conflict to cover the true imperialistic motivation behind the war. The predominant image at the headlines/TV news level and beyond is that of the Taliban as an implacable and monolithic "enemy" which must be militarily defeated at all costs for America's security, with a negotiated settlement or compromise not being an option. However, consider the following which have been reported at various times during the past two years about the actual behavior of the United States and its allies in Afghanistan vis-?-vis the Taliban, which can raise questions about Obama's latest escalation: 2 The US military in Afghanistan has long been considering paying Taliban fighters who renounce violence against the government in Kabul, as the United States has done with Iraqi insurgents. President Obama has floated the idea of negotiating with moderate elements of the Taliban. 3 US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, said last month that the United States would support any role Saudi Arabia chose to pursue in trying to engage Taliban officials. 4 Canadian troops are reaching out to the Taliban in various ways. A top European Union official and a United Nations staff member were ordered by the Kabul government to leave the country after allegations that they had met Taliban insurgents without the administration's knowledge. And two senior diplomats for the United Nations were expelled from the country, accused by the Afghan government of unauthorized dealings with insurgents. However, the Afghanistan government itself has had a series of secret talks with "moderate Taliban" since 2003 and President Hamid Karzai has called for peace talks with Taliban leader Mohammed Omar. Organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross as well as the United Nations have become increasingly open about their contacts with the Taliban leadership and other insurgent groups. Gestures of openness are common practice among some of Washington's allies in Afghanistan, notably the Dutch, who make negotiating with the Taliban an explicit part of their military policy. The German government is officially against negotiations, but some members of the governing coalition have suggested Berlin host talks with the Taliban. MI-6, Britain's external security service, has held secret talks with the Taliban up to half a dozen times. At the local level, the British cut a deal, appointing a former Taliban leader as a district chief in Helmand province in exchange for security guarantees. Senior British officers involved with the Afghan mission have confirmed that direct contact with the Taliban has led to insurgents changing sides as well as rivals in the Taliban movement providing intelligence which has led to leaders being killed or captured. British authorities hold that there are distinct differences between different "tiers" of the Taliban and that it is essential to try to separate the doctrinaire extremists from others who are fighting for money or because they resent the presence of foreign forces in their country. British contacts with the Taliban have occurred despite British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly ruling out such talks; on one occasion he told the House of Commons: "We will not enter into any negotiations with these people." For months there have been repeated reports of "good Taliban" forces being airlifted by Western helicopters from one part of Afghanistan to another to protect them from Afghan or Pakistani military forces. At an October 11 news conference in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai himself claimed that "some unidentified helicopters dropped armed men in the northern provinces at night." 5 On November 2, IslamOnline.net (Qatar) reported: "The emboldened Taliban movement in Afghanistan turned down an American offer of power-sharing in exchange for accepting the presence of foreign troops, Afghan government sources confirmed. 'US negotiators had offered the Taliban leadership through Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakkil (former Taliban foreign minister) that if they accept the presence of NATO troops in Afghanistan, they would be given the governorship of six provinces in the south and northeast ... America wants eight army and air force bases in different parts of Afghanistan in order to tackle the possible regrouping of [the] Al-Qaeda network,' a senior Afghan Foreign Ministry official told IslamOnline.net." 6 There has been no confirmation of this from American officials, but the New York Times on October 28 listed six provinces that were being considered to receive priority protection from the US military, five which are amongst the eight mentioned in the IslamOnline report as being planned for US military bases, although no mention is made in the Times of the above-mentioned offer. The next day, Asia Times reported: "The United States has withdrawn its troops from its four key bases in Nuristan [or Nooristan], on the border with Pakistan, leaving the northeastern province as a safe haven for the Taliban-led insurgency to orchestrate its regional battles." Nuristan, where earlier in the month eight US soldiers were killed and three Apache helicopters hit by hostile fire, is one of the six provinces offered to the Taliban as reported in the IslamOnline.net story. The part about al-Qaeda is ambiguous and questionable, not only because the term has long been loosely used as a catch-all for any group or individual in opposition to US foreign policy in this part of the world, but also because the president's own national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones, stated in early October: "I don't foresee the return of the Taliban. Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of falling. The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies." 7 Shortly after Jones's remarks, we could read in the Wall Street Journal: "Hunted by U.S. drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al- Qaida is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistan and U.S. officials. ... For Arab youths who are al-Qaida's primary recruits, 'it's not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding,' said a senior U.S. official in South Asia." 8 >From all of the above is it not reasonable to conclude that the United States is willing and able to live with the Taliban, as repulsive as their social philosophy is? Perhaps even a Taliban state which would go across the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which has been talked about in some quarters. What then is Washington fighting for? What moves the president of the United States to sacrifice so much American blood and treasure? In past years, US leaders have spoken of bringing democracy to Afghanistan, liberating Afghan women, or modernizing a backward country. President Obama made no mention of any of these previous supposed vital goals in his December 1 speech. He spoke only of the attacks of September 11, al Qaeda, the Taliban, terrorists, extremists, and such, symbols guaranteed to fire up an American audience. Yet, the president himself declared at one point: "Al Qaeda has not reemerged in Afghanistan in the same numbers as before 9/11, but they retain their safe havens along the border." Ah yes, the terrorist danger ... always, everywhere, forever, particularly when it seems the weakest. How many of the West Point cadets, how many Americans, give thought to the fact that Afghanistan is surrounded by the immense oil reserves of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea regions? Or that Afghanistan is ideally situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of Europe and south Asia, lines that can deliberately bypass non- allies of the empire, Iran and Russia? If only the Taliban will not attack the lines. "One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south ...", said Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs in 2007. 9 Afghanistan would also serve as the home of American military bases, the better to watch and pressure next-door Iran and the rest of Eurasia. And NATO ... struggling to find a raison d'?tre since the end of the Cold War. If the alliance is forced to pull out of Afghanistan without clear accomplishments after eight years will its future be even more in doubt? So, for the present at least, the American War on Terror in Afghanistan continues and regularly and routinely creates new anti- American terrorists, as it has done in Iraq. This is not in dispute even at the Pentagon or the CIA. God Bless America. Although the "surge" failed as policy, it succeeded as propaganda. They don't always use the word "surge", but that's what they mean. Our admirable leaders and our mainstream media that love to interview them would like us to believe that escalation of the war in Afghanistan is in effect a "surge", like the one in Iraq which, they believe, has proven so successful. But the reality of the surge in Iraq was nothing like its promotional campaign. To the extent that there has been a reduction in violence in Iraq (now down to a level that virtually any other society in the world would find horrible and intolerable, including Iraqi society before the US invasion and occupation), we must keep in mind the following summary of how and why it "succeeded": Thanks to America's lovely little war, there are many millions Iraqis either dead, wounded, crippled, homebound or otherwise physically limited, internally displaced, in foreign exile, or in bursting American and Iraqi prisons. Many others have been so traumatized that they are concerned simply for their own survival. Thus, a huge number of potential victims and killers has been markedly reduced. Extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place: Sunnis and Shiites are now living much more than before in their own special enclaves, with entire neighborhoods surrounded by high concrete walls and strict security checkpoints; violence of the sectarian type has accordingly gone down. In the face of numerous "improvised explosive devices" on the roads, US soldiers venture out a lot less, so the violence against them has been sharply down. It should be kept in mind that insurgent attacks on American forces following the invasion of 2003 is how the Iraqi violence all began in the first place. For a long period, the US military was paying insurgents (or "former insurgents") to not attack occupation forces. The powerful Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr declared a unilateral cease-fire for his militia, including attacks against US troops, that was in effect for an extended period; this was totally unconnected to the surge. We should never forget that Iraqi society has been destroyed. The people of that unhappy land have lost everything - their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their health care, their legal system, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their security, their friends, their families, their past, their present, their future, their lives. But they do have their surge. The War against Everything and Everyone, Endlessly Nidal Malik Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 and wounded some 30 at Fort Hood, Texas in November reportedly regards the US War on Terror as a war aimed at Muslims. He told colleagues that "the US was battling not against security threats in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Islam itself." 10 Hasan had long been in close contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric and al Qaeda sympathizer now living in Yemen, who also called the US War on Terror a "war against Muslims". Many, probably most, Muslims all over the world hold a similar view about American foreign policy. I believe they're mistaken. For many years, going back to at least the Korean war, it's been fairly common for accusations to be made by activists opposed to US policies, in the United States and abroad, as well as by Muslims, that the United States chooses as its bombing targets only people of color, those of the Third World, or Muslims. But it must be remembered that in 1999 one of the most sustained and ferocious American bombing campaigns ever - 78 days in a row - was carried out against the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia: white, European, Christians. Indeed, we were told that the bombing was to rescue the people of Kosovo, who are largely Muslim. Earlier, the United States had come to the aid of the Muslims of Bosnia in their struggle against the Serbs. The United States is in fact an equal- opportunity bomber. The only qualifications for a country to become an American bombing target appear to be: (a) It poses a sufficient obstacle - real, imagined, or, as with Serbia, ideological - to the desires of the empire; (b) It is virtually defenseless against aerial attack. Notes Video on Information Clearinghouse For the news items which follow if not otherwise sourced, see: The Independent (London), December 14, 2007 Daily Telegraph (UK) December 26, 2007 The Globe and Mail (Toronto) May 1, 2008 BBC News, October 28, 2009 New York Times, March 11, 2009 Kuwait News Agency, November 24, 2009 Pakistan Observer (Islamabad daily), October 19, 2009; The Jamestown Foundation (conservative Washington, DC think tank), "Karzai claims mystery helicopters ferrying Taliban to north Afghanistan", November 6, 2009; Institute for War and Peace Reporting (London), "Helicopter rumour refuses to die", October 26, 2009 IslamOnline, "US Offers Taliban 6 Provinces for 8 Bases", November 2, 2009 Washington Times, October 5, 2009, from a CNN interview Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2009 Talk at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC, September 20, 2007. Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 2009 - William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website. To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area. (Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.) Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned. Home From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Dec 9 14:54:02 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:54:02 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: The Subprime Student Loan Racket Message-ID: <014001ca7922$81f58280$5dad57ca@jfos> The Subprime Student Loan Racket 12/4/2009 1:38:32 PM by Jeff Severns Guntzel Tags: Politics, loans, subprime, education, college, social justice Thought you heard the last of the subprime mess? What do you know about the subprime student loan racket? Washington Monthly has a damning report on the for-profit college industry. Don't miss it: Each year, more than two million Americans enroll in for-profit colleges, also known as proprietary schools, and their popularity has only grown since the financial crisis. While traditional four-year colleges are struggling with dwindling student bodies and budget gaps, proprietary schools are reporting record enrollments as the newly unemployed try to retool their skills so they can wade back into the job market. Some of the largest for-profit chains say their numbers have doubled over the last year. The students who are flocking to these schools are mostly poor and working class, and they rely heavily on student loans to cover tuition. According to a College Board analysis of Department of Education data, 60 percent of bachelor's degree recipients at for-profit colleges graduate with $30,000 or more in student loans-one and a half times the percentage of those at traditional private colleges and three times more than those at four-year public colleges and universities. Similarly, those who earn two-year degrees from proprietary schools rack up nearly three times as much debt as those at community colleges, which serve a similar student population. Proprietary school students are also much more likely to take on private student loans, which, unlike their federal counterparts, are not guaranteed by the federal government, offer scant consumer protections, and tend to charge astronomical interest-in some cases as high as 20 percent. These figures are all the more troubling in light of these schools' spotty record of graduating students; the median graduation rate for proprietary schools is only 38 percent-by far the lowest rate in the higher education sector. Source: Washington Monthly http://www.utne.com/Politics/For-Profit-Colleges-and-Subprime-Student-Loans-5909.aspx ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From dnevrghm at powerup.com.au Wed Dec 9 17:06:21 2009 From: dnevrghm at powerup.com.au (Doug Everingham) Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:06:21 +1000 Subject: [Mai-not] Off the usual topics !!!!!!!!!! In-Reply-To: <20091206175538.033D31194D89@smtprelay01.hostedemail.com> References: <20091206175538.033D31194D89@smtprelay01.hostedemail.com> Message-ID: Ed, Congrats on great-grandparenting happily with a peaceful nationality and compassionate obstetric culture. . Cheers ? Doug Everingham. ==== On 07/12/2009, at 3:55 AM, Ed Deak wrote: > > > Things are slow on this list , so I might as well announce that we > had our first GREAT grandchild, a little boy, born yesterday > afternoon in Spokane, Wash. > > It was a midwife assisted, all the way natural, very easy birth, > mother Sara and child are happy and doing very well. > > He'll get his Canadian citizenship as well, as soon as possible. > > Cheers, Ed. > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not at globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Dec 9 18:48:13 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:48:13 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: why we left our farms to come to Copenhagen Message-ID: <026701ca7947$cacb9920$5dad57ca@jfos> Why we left our farms to come to copenhagen Speech of Henry Saragih, general coordinator of Via Campesina - Opening of Klimaforum - Copenhagen Dec 7 ? Tonight is a very special night for us to get together here for the opening of the assembly of the social movements and civil society at the Klimaforum. We, the international peasant movement La Via Campesina, are coming to Copenhagen from all five corners of the world, leaving our farmland, our animals, our forest, and also our families in the hamlets and villages to join you all. ? Why is it so important for us to come this far? There are a number of reasons for that. Firstly, we would like to tell you that climate change is already seriously impacting us. It brings floods, droughts and the outbreak of pests that are all causing harvest failures. I must point out that these harvest failures are something that the farmers did not create. Instead, it is the polluters who caused the emissions who destroy the natural cycles. So, we small scale farmers came here to say that we will not pay for their mistakes. And we are asking the emitters to face up to their responsibilities. ? Secondly, I would like to share with you some facts about who the emitters of green house gases in agriculture really are: new data that has come out clearly shows that industrial agriculture and the globalized food system are responsible of between 44 and 57% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. This figure can be broken down as follows (i) Agricultural activities are responsible for 11 to 15%, (ii) Land clearing and deforestation cause an additional 15 to 18%, (iii) Food processing, packing and transportation cause 15 to 20%, and (iv) Decomposition of organic waste causes another 3 to 4%. It means that our current food system is a major polluter. ? The question we have to answer now is: how do we solve the climate chaos, hunger and assure a better livelihood for farmers, when the agricultural sector itself is contributing more than half of the total emissions? We believe that it is the industrial and agribusiness model of agriculture that is at the root of the problem, because those percentages that I mentioned earlier come from the deforestation and the conversion of natural forests into monoculture plantations, all of which is being carried out by Agribusiness Corporations. Not by familly farmers. Such large emissions of methane by agriculture are also due to the use of urea as a petrochemical fertilizer through the green revolution, very much supported by the World Bank. At the same time, agricultural trade liberalization promoted by free trade agreements (FTA) and by the World Trade Organization (WTO) is contributing to the greenhouse gases emissions due to food processing and food transportation around the world. ? If we genuinely want to tackle the climate change crisis, the only way we have to go forward is to stop industrial agriculture. Agribusiness has not only highly contributed to the climate crisis, it has also massacred the small farmers of the world. Millions of farmers , men and women from around the world, have been kicked off their land. Millions of others suffer violence every year because of land conflicts in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Small farmers and landless farmers make up the majority of the more than 1 billion hungry people in the world. And because of free trade, many small farmers commit suicide in South Asia. So putting an end to industrial agriculture is the only way we can go. ? Will the current climate negotiations, that are relying on carbon trade mechanisms, bring solutions to climate change? To this we say that carbon trade mechanisms will only serve polluting countries and companies, and bring disaster to small farmers and indigenous peoples in developing countries. The REDD initiative (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) has already kicked off their land many indigenous peoples and small farmers in developing countries. And more and more agricultural land is being converted into tree plantations in order to attract carbon credits. ? At COP 13 in Bali 2007, La Via Campesina proposed the landless farmers' and small farmers' solution to climate change, which is: ?small scale sustainable farmers are cooling down the earth?. And here, at COP 15, again we bring that proposal, backing it with the figures that prove that it could reduce more than half of the global greenhouse gas emissions. This figure comes from: (I) Recuperating organic matter in the soil would reduce emissions by 20 to 35%. (ii) Reversing the concentration of meat production in factory farms and reintegrating joint animal and crop production would reduce them by 5 to 9% (iii) Putting local markets and fresh food back at the center of the food system would reduce a further 10 to 12%. (iv) Halting land clearing and deforestation would stop 15 to 18% of emissions. In short, by taking agriculture away from the big agribusiness corporations and putting it back into the hands of small farmers, we can reduce half of the global emissions of greenhouse gases. This is what we propose, and we call it Food Sovereignty. ? And to achieve that we need social movements to work together and struggle together to put an end to the current false solutions that are today on the table at the climate negotiations. This is a must, otherwise we will face an even bigger tragedy worldwide. We, as social movements, have to bring our own agenda onto the table, because we are the first climate victims and climate refugees and therefore climate justice is in our hands. ? At the FAO Food Summit in 1996, governments committed themselves to reduce hunger by half by 2015. The reality is that the number of hungry people has recently increased dramatically. We do not want the same thing to happen with the climate talks and see the emissions increase even further regardless of what the governments negotiate within the UNFCCC. We invite all the movements present in Copenhagen to join together to bring climate justice to the table. Climate justice will only be achieved through solidarity and social justice. Copenhagen, 7th December 2009 -- Isabelle Delforge ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Communication assistant La Via Campesina - International Secretariat: Jln. Mampang Prapatan XIV No. 5 Jakarta Selatan, Jakarta 12790 Indonesia Phone : +62-21-7991890, Fax : +62-21-7993426, mobile phone: +62 81513224565 E-mail: idelforge at viacampesina.org, Website: http://www.viacampesina.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Fri Dec 11 15:07:08 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:07:08 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: The Goodwill of Wal-Mart Women: A Review of To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise Message-ID: <009d01ca7ab6$ab3404b0$53ad57ca@jfos> To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise By Bethany Moreton Harvard University Press, 2009 http://www.indypendent.org/2009/11/19/the-goodwill/ While the story of Wal-Mart?s global domination ? complete with big-box stores, the destruction of local businesses and anti-union sentiments ? is fairly well known, the way in which this retail giant overcame local fears of big business and corporatism in the heart of the Ozarks, is not. In To Serve God and Wal-Mart, Beth Moreton, a history professor at the University of Georgia, examines how Wal-Mart, with its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., ?arose in the fiery heartland of anti-monopolism.? In the late 19th century anti-corporate sentiment ran high among rural Ozark settlers, or as Moreton termed them, ?the mythic original citizen, the yeoman.? They called for the government to repatriate Indian lands to whites, keep ?foreign monopolies? at bay and build railroads to allow for economic activity. These sentiments continued well into the 1930s, when Depression-era farmers pressured the federal government to regulate business and provide economic protection for the little guy. The farmers may have distrusted corporations, but they imitated their structures in order to get a piece of capitalism?s riches by embracing modern business techniques to market their goods and banding together to form cooperatives. These conflicting currents within economic populism had to be settled for Sam Walton to build his retail empire from its Ozark base. Walton, who opened his flagship store in 1962 in Rogers, Ark., sought to channel the farmer cooperative sensibility into his stores by hiring Ozark men ? many plucked off the farm or only a generation removed from agrarian life ? for middle-management positions. But the most important, and illuminating, point in To Serve God and Wal-Mart is how Walton tapped into the pool of cheap white female Ozark labor and appealed to their Christian values to create what the author calls ?servant leaders.? Walton knew his region and its people. Women?s housework consisted of shopping and house keeping, and was unpaid and generally undervalued by the region?s dominant white Christian society. The trick for Wal-Mart was to get these white women to view their service-sector jobs as part of Christian service ? helping other Christian women (who often were their neighbors) provide for their families through purchasing household items. While Walton was a mainline Protestant and not an evangelical, he appreciated how Christianity could be used as social control over his largely female employees. Women workers would see their Wal-Mart jobs as an extension of their Christian faith and thus be more willing to accept male managerial power and low wages because their work entailed other rewards. In exchange for white male privilege, Wal-Mart?s well-paid managers worked brutal hours under harsh scrutiny. In a 1993 anonymous memo signed by middle managers, sent to the top brass and forwarded to a union, they wrote that unions were wasting their time with the female service workers and should be focusing on managers instead. Moreton peppers her book with articles culled from decades? worth of Wal-Mart newsletters, which feature pieces written by female employees extolling the importance of Christian values in the workplace. The Christian values of service workers and consumers alike have also influenced the type of products the mega-chain sells, as it has become the largest seller of Christian books and other items. The book?s chapters on Wal-Mart?s role in creating neoliberal economic and Christian centric colleges to supply middle managers are less interesting, though notable. But as free-trade policies took hold in the 1990s, Wal-Mart outgrew the Ozarks and rapidly expanded throughout the globe, making inroads in Canada and Mexico. Walton?s ?servant leader? philosophy has been challenged during Wal-Mart?s push for world retail domination. The chain?s short-lived 1985 ?Made in America? campaign ran into the brick wall of cheaply made Chinese goods when Dateline NBC aired an expos? of the company?s sourcing practices in 1992. By 2001, more than 1.6 million current and former female Wal-Mart employees, subject to the good ol? boy network, brought what is now the largest class-action suit ? Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. ? against the retail giant, based on years of workplace and wage discrimination. Wal-Mart?s corporate strategy relies on low-wage women workers rightfully valuing their work, but how long can it continue to pay them so little? More: http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/rdbook/1564/ to_serve_god_and_wal-mart:_the_making_of_christian_free_enterprise/ http://walmartwatch.com/blog http://thewritingonthewal.net/ WALMART THE HIGH COST OF LOW PRICE http://www.walmartmovie.com/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Fri Dec 11 15:56:51 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:56:51 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Boiling Point: Hijacking the Planet for Power and Privilege Message-ID: <012a01ca7abd$9c9ad1c0$53ad57ca@jfos> Boiling Point: Hijacking the Planet for Power and Privilege Written by Chris Floyd Wednesday, 09 December 2009 The mind boggles. Who ever would have thought, even in their darkest, most paranoid dreams, that the Copenhagen climate change talks would be hijacked by a handful of rich nations seeking to give themselves more power and riches while imposing new burdens and new injustices on the rest of the world? And that amongst this avaricious, duplicitous elite one would find the government of a man who now bears the Nobel laurel for his unstinting dedication to the welfare of all humanity? Yet as unlikely as it may seem - the rich screwing the poor? What next? - that's exactly what has happened at the great international conference that opened this week in Denmark with the avowed intent of pulling the planet back from the brink of a potentially fatal disequilibrium. America, Britain, and, er, Denmark are among the handful of rich nations who have drawn up a secret draft agreement that they hope to impose on the conference in its closing days, when the elite's heavy hitters like Barack Obama and Gordon Brown swan in to take a bow. The plan would let rich nations emit twice as much per capita pollution as developing countries, while the latter will be subject to stiff new dictates from the rich in order to receive technical assistance for climate change programs. The elite plan also calls for completely bypassing the UN - the only international forum in which poor nations feel they stand on a slightly more equal footing with the elite - and turning over climate change funding and future negotiations to an "independent" board . most likely run by that reliable appendage of empire, the World Bank. As the Guardian reports: The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations. The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.... The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol - the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions. The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as "the circle of commitment" - but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark - has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week. ..."It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process," said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless. And as noted in a follow-up story by the Guardian: A spokesman for Cafod, a development charity with close links to some of the poorest countries in the world, said: "This draft document reveals the backstage machinations of a biased host who, instead of acting as nonpartisan broker, is taking sides with the developed countries. "The document should not even exist. There is a UN legal process which is the official negotiating text. The Danish text disrespects the solid, steady approach of the UN process." Another shock! Elites clubbing together in secret, seeking to circumvent legal processes for their own corrupt advantage? And, and, and....Americans being involved in such dirty business?! Say it ain't so, O! The Copenhagen talks have become captive of what we might call the "Reform Syndrome"; i.e., the absolute, urgent imperative to put together a crappy deal that gorges the rich and hobbles the poor in egregious ways -- but which can be palmed off on a compliant media and a diverted public as some kind of "reform." The important thing is that an illusion of positive action be created -- while the same-old same-old keeps grinding on behind the scenes. This scenario has been playing out in the most crude and brazen fashion during the "debate" over health care "reform" in the United States, which has seen a "progressive" administration literally sell its "reform" agenda to the very corporate interests that are the ostensible target of the reforms, allowing them, again literally, to write most of the "reform" legislation themselves. And this has been the modus operandi of most of the international climate change efforts, which have seen no appreciable reduction in the pollution that is driving the destabilization of the planet -- but has seen the creation of vast new "carbon trading" markets an other speculative ventures for the rich and powerful to feast upon. Genuine climate change experts like Sir David King of the UK have been saying that no deal would be far better than the kind of bad deals that are brewing in Copenhagen. And that was before the secret agenda of the "circle of commitment" was revealed. (The same dynamic applies to health care reform, of course: better no bill at all than the monstrosity now wending its way through Congressional intestines. Back off, buckle down, and start again.) The details of the elite's Copenhagen agenda will now doubtless now be modified -- or plastered over with a new coat of PR paint -- in the light of the firestorm the revelations have provoked. But the true intention of the rich nations in these negotiations -- as in all others -- is clearer than a shining stream pouring down from a melting ice cap: the weakest go to the wall. II. But as Arthur Silber pointed out last month in his articles on global warming, this is what our "complex, intricate... corporatist system," with its "dizzyingly numerous interconnections between "private" business and government," does. This is what it's for. And, as he notes, this is the system that we are trusting to resolve the globe-wrenching problems of climate change. Silber also makes the pertinent point that while this system goes on its merry way, profiting both from its unceasing pollution of the planet -- which may have already reached the point of no return -- and from the fitful and co-opted attempts to mitigate its effects, millions of people are absorbed by their anxiety over these potential dangers ... even as they ignore, or in some cases, celebrate, vast, man-made catastrophes that could be dealt with today, right now -- and with a bare minimum of cost. For example, Victoria Brittain details a vast, man-made environmental disaster that could be resolved this afternoon with a single phone call. >From the Guardian: Among all the complex and long-term solutions being sought in Copenhagen for averting environmental catastrophe across the world, there is one place where the catastrophe has already happened, but could be immediately ameliorated with one simple political act. In Gaza there is now no uncontaminated water; of the 40,000 or so newborn babies, at least half are at immediate risk of nitrate poisoning - incidence of "blue baby syndrome", methaemoglobinaemia, is exceptionally high; an unprecedented number of people have been exposed to nitrate poisoning over 10 years; in some places the nitrate content in water is 300 times World Health Organisation standards; the agricultural economy is dying from the contamination and salinated water; the underground aquifer is stressed to the point of collapse; and sewage and waste water flows into public spaces and the aquifer. The blockade of Gaza has gone on for nearly four years, and the vital water and sanitation infrastructure went past creaking to virtual collapse during the three-week assault on the territory almost a year ago. What would it take to start the two UN sewerage repair projects approved by Israel; a UN water and sanitation project, not yet approved; and two more UN internal sewage networks, not yet approved? Right now just one corner of the blockade could be lifted for these building materials and equipment to enter Gaza, to let water works begin and to give infant lives a chance. Just one telephone call from the Israeli defence ministry could do it - an early Christmas present to the UN staff on the ground who have been ready to act for months and have grown desperate on this front, as on so many others. As Brittain notes, the Israelis have already lifted another part of their strangulating blockade, after a bold intervention by U.S. Senator John Kerry, who in March of this year demanded that the Israelis lift their prohibitions on ... pasta. But apparently, no American politician can be bothered to pick up a phone to stem the poisoning of the Gaza Ghetto: Gaza's huge pale sandy beaches used to be society's playground and reassurance of happiness and normality, with families picnicking, horses exercising, fishermen mending their nets, children swimming and boys exercising in the early morning, but these days they are mainly empty, and not just because it is winter. Between 50m and 60m litres of untreated sewage have flowed into the Mediterranean every day this year since the end of the Israeli invasion in January, the sea smells bad and few fish are available in the three nautical mile area Palestinians are allowed in. This resource seems as ruined as the rubble of Gaza's parliament and ministries. ...."We have run out of words to describe how bad it is here," says John Ging, director of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza. Ging heads a team of 10,000 mainly Palestinian workers who run the aid supplies that are all that stand between the vast majority of Gazans and destitution. "We have 80% unemployment, an economy at subsistence level, infrastructure destroyed, etc, but even worse than the humanitarian plight is the destruction of civil society." Ging's great preoccupation is "the 750,000 children susceptible to an environment where things are moving rapidly in the wrong direction, where the injustice is bewildering, and every day worse": There is a big problem of insecurity and violence here, and it is getting worse. Most adults display stoic resilience, and cling to a belief in traditional values, but there is a compelling narrative by extremists which becomes ever more difficult to combat. Only lifting the siege would change the dynamic. III. Or what about the vast, spreading, man-made disaster that is Afghanistan? As Silber notes, many people who decry the potential disasters of climate change actively support the catastrophic intervention in Afghanistan -- which, as we pointed out here, produces the very ills that is ostensibly designed to reduce (just as Israel's choking of Gaza does). Yet here too, the vast suffering and degradation of millions of people could be addressed more effectively at a modicum of the cost it now takes to kill and plunder them. Jeffrey Sachs (via the Angry Arab) takes up this theme at the Huffington Post, while noting the aforementioned inherent disabilities of our present system to address the problems it ostensibly seeks to resolve: The framing of Afghanistan's governance problems with the simplistic gloss of "corruption" is yet another trivialization of reality, exceeded only by the idea that Afghan President Hamid Karzai can and will turn off corruption at will, and notably in response to US pressure. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was on the mark when he questioned the ability of Washington, itself in an era of rampant corruption, to clean up corruption elsewhere. A worthy role for Richard Holbrooke, now the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, would be to root out flagrant financial mismanagement at the staff of AIG, where Holbrooke had served on the Board during the buildup of the recent financial bubble. The war industry itself, replete with powerful corporations like Fluor and DynCorp that receive billions of dollars in no-bid Pentagon contracts, are also a likely part of the Washington political momentum. The fact of the matter is that Afghanistan is in urgent need of the basics for survival in one of the poorest countries on Earth -- seeds, fertilizer, roads, power, schools, and clinics -- much more than it is in the need of another 30,000 troops or added military contractors. Development aid directed to Afghanistan's communities, through the UN, could stabilize Afghanistan far more effectively at one-fifth to one-tenth the cost of the coming $100 billion or so per year that will be spent on this military debacle. Yet such support is not forthcoming. ... As Friedman reports, Obama has disdained "nation-building" as "mission creep," thereby disappointingly echoing the Bush administration. In fact, the US Government's long-standing disdain is for the Afghan people themselves, since there has been not the slightest effort for decades to think through their real needs and wants. As in Vietnam, this mission is all about us. And as in Vietnam, the US escalation has the possibility of causing much broader destabilization in Central and South Asia and the Middle East. Yes, who could possibly have foreseen that the avatars of such a system would seek to exploit the growing anxiety over climate change to augment their own dominance? Whatever happens to the planet -- or to the Iraqis, or to the Afghans, or to the millions of people going down in the flood of financial flim-flam and health care "reform" scams -- the elites will remain as they are now: well-wadded, well-protected, and well-connected in their fortified enclaves of privilege and power. To paraphrase John Ging: We are running out of words to describe how bad it is around here. http://www.chris-floyd.com/ ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 1288 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 1294 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 1281 bytes Desc: not available URL: From papadop at peak.org Sat Dec 12 17:16:44 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:16:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] Barack's Nobel words Message-ID: We have to keep on asking - which war left the world a better place? Was there ever a war which didn't create instabilities whose negative effects never vanished ? Michael ######### http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16503 The "Obama Doctrine": Eternal War For Imperfect Mankind "For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world." by Rick Rozoff Global Research, December 11, 2009 President and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States Barack Obama delivered his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance address in Oslo on December 10, which has immediately led to media discussion of an Obama Doctrine. With obligatory references to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi (the second referred to only by his surname) but to no other American presidents than Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy - fellow peace prize recipients Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter weren't mentioned - the U.S. head of state spoke with the self-assurance of the leader of the world's first uncontested superpower and at times with the self-righteousness of a would-be prophet and clairvoyant. And, in the words of German philosopher Friedrich von Schlegel, a prophet looking backward. Accompanied by visionary gaze and cadenced, oratorical solemnity, his comments included the assertion that "War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man." Unless this unsubstantiated claim was an allusion to the account in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible of Cain murdering his brother Abel, which would hardly constitute war in any intelligible meaning of the word (nor was Cain the first man according to that source), it is unclear where Obama acquired the conviction that war is coeval with and presumably an integral part of humanity. Paleontologists generally trace the arrival of modern man, homo sapiens, back 200,000 years, yet the first authenticated written histories are barely 2,400 years old. How Obama and his speechwriters filled in the 197,600-year gap to prove that the practice of war is as old as mankind and implicitly inseparable from the human condition is a question an enterprising reporter might venture to ask at the next presidential press conference. Perhaps delusions of omniscience is the answer. The Oslo speech is replete with references to and appropriations of the attributes of divinity. And to historical and anthropological fatalism; a deeply pessimistic concept of Providence. Obama affirmed that "no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint." Then shortly afterward stated "Let us reach for the world that ought to be - that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls." An adversary's invocation of the divine is false, heretical, sacrilegious; Washington's is true, unerring, sufficient to justify any action, however violent and deadly. As unadulterated an illustration of secular Manicheaism as can be found in the modern world. Toward the beginning of his speech the first standing American president in ninety years to receive the Peace Prize acknowledged that "perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars." Understandably he exerted no effort to justify one of the two wars in question, that in Iraq, but endorsed and pledged the continuation of the other, that in Afghanistan and increasingly Pakistan - while elsewhere speaking disparagingly of the European Crusades of the later Middle Ages. Neither the Nobel Committee nor its honoree seemed inordinately if at all concerned by the unprecedented awarding of the prestigious and generous ($1.4 million) Peace Prize to a commander-in-chief in charge of two simultaneous wars far from his nation's shores and in countries whose governments and peoples never threatened it in any manner. In language that never before was heard during a peace prize acceptance speech, Obama added "we are at war, and I'm responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed." With not a scintilla of national self-awareness, balance or irony, he also derided the fact that "modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale," as he orders unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) linked by space satellites to launch deadly missile attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The central themes of Obama's speech are reiterations of standing U.S. policy going back over a decade with the waging of war against Yugoslavia in early 1999 without United Nations authorization or even a nominal attempt to obtain one; that the U.S. and its Western military allies can decide individually and collectively when, to what degree, where and for what purpose to use military force anywhere in the world. And the prerogative to employ military force outside national borders is reserved exclusively for the United States, its fellow NATO members and select military clients outside the Euro-Atlantic zone such as Colombia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Israel and Saudi Arabia of late. What is arguably unique in Obama's address is the bluntness with which it reaffirmed this doctrine of international lawlessness. Excerpts along this line, shorn of ingenuous qualifications and decorative camouflage, include: "We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations - acting individually or in concert - will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified." He offered a summary of the just war argument that a White House researcher could have cribbed from Wikipedia. "[As a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their [Gandhi's and King's] examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world." "I - like any head of state - reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation." Evil, as a noun rather than an adjective, is used twice in the speech, emblematic of a quasi-theological tone alternating with coldly and even callously pragmatic pronouncements. Indicative of the second category are comments like these: "[T]he instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace." "A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism.... "I raise this point, I begin with this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter what the cause. And at times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower." Comparing a small handful of al-Qaeda personnel to Hitler's Wehrmacht is unconscionable. Whatever else the former are, they barely have arms to lay down. But Obama does, the world's largest and most deadly conventional and nuclear arsenal. His playing the trump card of Nazi Germany is not only an act of rhetorical recklessness, it is historically unjustified. There would have been no need to confront the Third Reich's legions if timely diplomatic actions had been taken when Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland in 1936; if Britain and France had not collaborated with Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy to enforce the naval blockade of Republican Spain while German aircraft devastated Guernica and other towns and German and Italian troops poured into the country by the tens of thousands in support of Generalissimo Franco's uprising. If, finally, Britain, France, Germany and Italy had not met in Munich in 1938 to sacrifice Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to Hitler to encourage his murderous drive to the east. The same four nations met 70 years later, last year, to reprise the Munich betrayal by engineering the secession of Kosovo from Serbia, to demonstrate how much had been learned in the interim. As to the accusation that many nations bear an alleged "deep ambivalence about military action" and even more so "a reflexive suspicion of America, the world's sole military superpower," it bespeaks alike arrogance, sanctimony, and an absolute imperviousness to the reality of American foreign policy now and in the recent and not so recent past. According to this imperial "sole military superpower" perspective, the White House and the Pentagon can never be wrong. Not even partially, unavoidably or unintentionally. If others find fault with anything the world's only military juggernaut does, it is a reflection of their own misguided pacifism and ingrained, pathological "anti-Americanism." Perhaps this constitutes the aforementioned "threats to the American people," as there aren't any others in Afghanistan or in the world as a whole that were convincingly identified in the speech. What may be the most noteworthy - and disturbing - line in the address is what Obama characterised as the "recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason." Lest this observation be construed as an example of personal or national humility, other - grandiose Americocentric - comments surrounding it leave no doubt that the inadequacies in question are only applied to others. One would search in vain for a comparable utterance by another American head of state. For a nation that prides itself on being the first one founded on the principles of the 18th century Enlightenment and the previous century's Age of Reason, that its leader would lay stress on inherent and ineradicable human frailty and at least by implication on some truth that is apart from and superior to reason is nothing less than alarming. The door is left open to irrationalism and its correlates, that the ultimate right can be might and that there are national imperatives beyond good and evil. And if people are by nature flawed and their reasoning correspondingly impaired, then for humanity, "Born but to die and reasoning but to err" (Alexander Pope), war may indeed be its birthright and violent conflicts will not be eradicated in its lifetime. War, which came into existence with mankind, will last as long as it does. They may both end, as Obama believes they originated, simultaneously. How the leader of the West, both the nation and the individual, has arrived at this bleak and deterministic impasse was also mentioned in Obama's speech in reference to pivotal post-Cold War events that have defined this new century. It is only a single step from: "I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That's why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace." to: "The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it. Peace requires responsibility. Peace entails sacrifice. That's why NATO continues to be indispensable." In proclaiming these and similar sentiments, Obama made reference to his host country in alluding to the war in Afghanistan: "[W]e are joined by 42 other countries - including Norway - in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks." Again, threats are magnified to inflated and even universal dimensions. All nations on the planet are threatened and some of them - 43 NATO states and partners - are fending off the barbarians at the gates. It is difficult to distinguish the new Obama Doctrine from the preceding Blair and Bush ones except in regard to its intended scope. It is a mission outside of time, space and constraints. "The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms....America's commitment to global security will never waver. But in a world in which threats are more diffuse, and missions more complex, America cannot act alone. America alone cannot secure the peace. This is true in Afghanistan. This is true in failed states like Somalia....And sadly, it will continue to be true in unstable regions for years to come. "The leaders and soldiers of NATO countries, and other friends and allies, demonstrate this truth through the capacity and courage they've shown in Afghanistan." The U.S. president adduced other nations - by name - that present threats to America and its values, its allies and the world as a whole in addition to Afghanistan and Somalia, which are Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan and Zimbabwe. All five were either on George W. Bush's post-September 11 list of state sponsors of terrorism or on Condoleezza Rice's later roster of "outposts of tyranny" or both. Hopes that the policies of Obama's predecessor were somehow outside of the historical continuum, solely related to the aftermath of September 11, 2001, have been dashed. The rapidly escalating war in South Asia is proof enough of that lamentable fact. War is not a Biblical suspension of ethics but the foundation of national policy. In his novel La Bete Humaine (The Human Beast) Emile Zola interwove images of a French crowd clamoring for a disastrous war with Prussia ("A Berlin!") and a locomotive heading at full steam down the track without an engineer. Obama's speech in Oslo indicates that America remains bent on rushing headlong to war even after a change of engineers. Veteran warhawks Robert Gates, James Jones, Richard Holbrooke, David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal have stoked the furnace for a long run. From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sun Dec 13 21:26:46 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:26:46 +0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Global Financial Heist: This analyst tells some of the story Message-ID: <20091214052647.94E80F6B1@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Dec 14 07:59:39 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:59:39 +0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Are Americans a Broken People? Message-ID: <20091214155939.BA2E2F748@fep08.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ptuffley at xtra.co.nz Mon Dec 14 09:57:25 2009 From: ptuffley at xtra.co.nz (Peter Tuffley) Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:57:25 +1300 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Look who's Jewish now ;-) References: <49de3335c30245ecd0fa291aa4279571dcf.20091214140239@email.borowitzreport.com> Message-ID: <4D7E6856-B664-4240-A5D7-FF1A37656947@xtra.co.nz> Begin forwarded message: > From: "borowitzreport.com" > Date: 15 December 2009 3:04:09 AM NZDT > Subject: Look who's Jewish now > > > > > DECEMBER 14, 2009 > Obama Gives Hanukkah Wishes in Hebrew; Birthers Now Claim He Was > Born in Israel > Birth Certificate Reads ?Baruch Shmobama' > > > > WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) - President Barack Obama's decision > to wish Jews around the world a happy Hanukkah in Hebrew has added > more fuel to the movement of the so-called Birthers, who now claim > that Mr. Obama was born in Israel. > > Orly Taitz, a leading Birther spokesperson, told CNN today that she > had in her possession a birth certificate for Mr. Obama that was > issued in Tel Aviv. > > "If you look at the birth certificate, you will see the name he was > born with, Baruch Shmobama," she said. > > In other news, the President announced that he would clinch a second > Nobel Peace Prize by invading Iran. > > Announcing the invasion in a televised address, the President told > the nation, "Now comes the hard part: writing my acceptance speech." > > Mr. Obama said that if his quest for a second Nobel is successful, > he would bomb North Korea. > > "I have just one word for you," he said. "Three-peat." > > Elsewhere, singing sensation Susan Boyle stunned the world by > revealing that she had a steamy affair with Tiger Woods. More here. > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From papadop at peak.org Mon Dec 14 10:48:41 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:48:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] SCOTUS to review conflict between EQUALITY and FREE ASSOCIATION Message-ID: http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/dorf/20091214.html The Supreme Court Reviews a Conflict Between Equality and Freedom of Association By MICHAEL C. DORF Monday, December 14, 2009 Last week, the Supreme Court granted review in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. It is the latest in a line of cases posing conflicts between anti-discrimination laws or policies and organizations that say that their mission requires them to disassociate themselves from uncloseted persons who belong to sexual minorities, on the ground that such persons openly advocate or engage in conduct that the organization condemns. So far, in such cases, the right of (dis)association has usually trumped the anti-discrimination rules. However, as I argue in this column, this case poses questions that are not fully answered by any of the prior decisions. THE CLASH BETWEEN THE HASTINGS POLICY AND THE CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY The University of California, Hastings College of the Law ("Hastings"), like other American law schools, has a non-discrimination policy that forbids discrimination on the basis of "race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, disability, age, sex, or sexual orientation." Hastings applies this policy to its own admissions decisions and programs, as well as to student groups. As a condition of receiving official recognition--a prerequisite for access to certain law school facilities, and for eligibility for funding--student organizations must themselves adhere to the Hastings non-discrimination policy. As the policy is implemented, that means that student groups must admit as a member any student who wishes to join. The anti-discrimination policy came into conflict with a policy of the Hastings branch of the Christian Legal Society ("CLS"), a student group that requires all of its members to pledge to uphold, among other things, "biblical principles of sexual morality." As interpreted by CLS, those principles forbid "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle." Although CLS contended in its successful petition for review to the Supreme Court that this policy forbids a variety of practices, including, for example, adultery, the controversy at Hastings, as at other law schools where the CLS has clashed with student-group recognition rules, concerns sexual orientation. After Hastings withdrew funding for CLS based on its failure to abide by the non-discrimination policy, CLS sued. The law school prevailed in both the district court and the appeals court. Who wins in the Supreme Court will likely depend on how the Justices read two lines of First Amendment cases. THE RIGHT TO EXPRESSIVE ASSOCIATION The First Amendment protects "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances," but the Bill of Rights does not expressly protect a freestanding, general-purpose right of association. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has long construed the First Amendment's protection for freedom of speech (which applies to both states and state entities like the University of California via the Fourteenth Amendment) as entailing a right of "expressive association." (The Constitution has also been interpreted to protect a right of intimate association--encompassing such matters as marriage and sex between consenting adults--but that right is not at issue in the CLS case.) The basis for the right of expressive association is both simple and sensible: Individuals seeking to express a viewpoint--and thus to exercise their First Amendment rights--will often have difficulty doing so effectively, unless they can band together with other like-minded individuals to generate and disseminate their message. Would-be censors know as much, as they often target dissenting groups, seeking to penalize individual members for having joined such groups. Meanwhile, the government has a powerful interest in breaking down discriminatory barriers to full participation in society. Laws such as Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act--which bars employment discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin"--have been powerful engines of equality. WHEN CAN AN ORGANIZATION CLAIM A RIGHT OF EXPRESSIVE NON-ASSOCIATION? What happens when anti-discrimination law comes into conflict with the right of expressive association? Where the association is a corporation devoted to making profits for shareholders, anti-discrimination law wins. Thus, a computer manufacturer could not refuse to hire women or religious Christians on the mere ground that the shareholders and employees do not want to associate with women or religious Christians. In the foregoing hypothetical example, of course, we are rightly dubious of any claim that the corporation is even engaged in any expressive association. Certainly, we cannot impute any expressive purpose to the diffuse shareholders of a publicly-traded corporation; it is a much safer assumption that they are simply seeking to maximize the return on their investment. Moreover, to the extent that a corporation's discriminatory hiring policy excludes highly-qualified prospective employees, it probably harms shareholders. The leading right-to-expressive-association cases in the Supreme Court have not involved profit-seeking corporations, but rather non-profit clubs and organizations. In two such cases from the 1980s, Roberts v. United States Jaycees and Bd. of Dirs. of Rotary Int'l v. Rotary Club, the Court upheld the application of state laws forbidding sex discrimination to the Jaycees and the Rotary. (Full disclosure: I greatly benefited from a Rotary Foundation Scholarship in 1986-87, although I have never been a Rotary member.) These civic and charitable organizations, the Court said, did not have any particular message to spread that would be threatened by admitting female members. By contrast, in two more recent cases, Hurley v. Irish-American Gay Group of Boston and Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, the Court invalidated efforts by Massachusetts and New Jersey, respectively, to bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation by parade organizers and the Boy Scouts, again respectively. What is the difference between, on the one hand, the Jaycees and Rotary cases, and, on the other hand, Hurley and Dale? Notably, the answer is not the difference between sex discrimination and sexual-orientation discrimination. Both Hurley and Dale accept that, in general, states may forbid sexual-orientation discrimination. THE KEY ISSUE: WILL THE ORGANIZATION'S MESSAGE BE UNDERMINED? Instead, the key to these rulings is that, in both Hurley and Dale, the Supreme Court thought that the private group's message would be undermined by the forced inclusion of persons whose very presence was inconsistent with that message. Significantly, Hurley was a unanimous decision:The liberals, no less than the conservatives, thought that the organizers of a private parade, who were engaging in an inherently expressive activity, should be able to decide whether the inclusion of openly gay marchers would undermine the message of the parade. Dale, to be sure, was not unanimous. But the key point of the dissent simply underscores the distinction at issue: The dissenters thought that the Boy Scouts of America did not have a clearly-articulated message that would be undermined by having an openly gay troop leader. Moreover, it appears from the logic of the dissent that even the dissenters might have barred New Jersey from applying its anti-discrimination law to a group that was more clearly committed to expressing a different message--the "Straight Scouts," say, or the "Heterosexual Boy Scouts." In other words, it seems that the Court, at the time of these decisions, generally agreed that if inclusion would directly undermine a clear, specific message sent by an expressive organization, then forcing inclusion would presumptively violate the First Amendment right of association. IS A GRANT OF OFFICIAL RECOGNITION AS A CLUB A "FORUM" FOR SPEECH? CLS argues that it is more like the Boy Scouts and the parade organizers in the Hurley case, than it is like the Jaycees or the Rotary. There is some question about this claim, however. Up until recently, some chapters of CLS admitted openly gay members, often without incident or controversy. Only after the national CLS formally affirmed its opposition to "a sexually immoral lifestyle" in 2004, did clashes of the sort now before the Court propagate. Thus, it could be argued that the acceptance of openly gay members would not undermine the CLS message in favor of lawyering from the perspective of conservative Christianity. After all, that message had been sent for years by CLS chapters that did have such members. However, Dale makes clear that, within reason, an organization gets to define its own message, and CLS has by now made clear that accepting openly "unrepentant" gay members would undermine its message. Certainly, the CLS has articulated its own message with respect to sexual morality at least as clearly as the Boy Scouts had articulated theirs when the Court decided Dale. Nonetheless, there is one very important difference between Dale and the CLS case: In Dale (and Jaycees, Rotary, and Hurley, for that matter), the state imposed a blanket rule: The Boy Scouts were told by the State of New Jersey that they simply had to admit gay members and troop leaders. By contrast, Hastings is not exercising that kind of regulatory authority over CLS. Hastings does nothing to stop individual law students enrolled at Hastings from getting together for meetings. All that Hastings does is deny official recognition to such groups of law students, if they are not open to all would-be members. Accordingly, Hastings argues that this case is nothing like Hurley and Dale. The law school is not telling private organizations to admit anyone; it is only telling private organizations that want official recognition--and the eligibility for funding that comes with it--that they need to accept all interested students as members. It is well-established constitutional law that the government cannot suppress the speech of groups devoted to non-violent advocacy of racism, sexism or homophobia. But, Hastings says, it does not have to subsidize the activities of organizations that, in their admissions policies, discriminate on the basis of race, sex, or sexual orientation. It will tolerate such discriminatory speech, Hastings says, but it is not obligated to pay the bill for it. In response, however, CLS can point to another line of cases involving so-called "public fora." These cases say that where the government opens up public property for speech, it cannot discriminate among speakers. The Supreme Court case most closely on point is the 1995 decision in Rosenberger v. University of Virginia. There, the Court struck down a University of Virginia ("UVA") policy under which the university funded most student publications but not those that were religious in nature. Having created a forum for speech (as the Court called it, "more in a metaphysical than a spatial or geographic sense"), UVA was not permitted to discriminate among the viewpoints of those entitled to speak in that forum. The Rosenberger opinion relied on a similar holding in the 1993 case of Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches School Dist. There, the Court had invalidated a public school policy that opened up school facilities for after-hours use by most groups, but not by religious groups. Without dissent, the Justices in Lamb's Chapel said that this was impermissible discrimination against a particular viewpoint. CLS argues that its case is just like Rosenberger, in that it is being denied access to the benefits of official recognition, including funding, based on the religious viewpoint it espouses. But there is at least one important distinction: Unlike the restrictions in Rosenberger and Lamb's Chapel, the trigger for the Hastings policy has nothing to do with the expression of a religious viewpoint, or with expression at all. Hastings would recognize CLS--even with a message that can reasonably be said to be homophobic--if only CLS would accept all students as members. A COMPROMISE SOLUTION: EQUAL ACCESS, BUT NO FUNDING, FOR CLS Who has the better of that argument? As I read the precedents, Hastings should prevail. However, there is enough wiggle room in the doctrine for the Justices to rule for CLS. For example, the Court could say that regulation of the membership of an expressive association is inherently a regulation of the association's expression, and that where the regulation takes the form of a requirement of inclusion, it is inherently hostile to a message that says certain forms of behavior are sufficiently immoral to warrant exclusion. One intriguing possibility would be a compromise. Official recognition as a student group at Hastings entitles an organization to a variety of benefits, some of which are more clearly expressive than others. For example, only officially-recognized groups have access to the school-wide email system. An attractive approach might be to say that Hastings must give all student groups--including those that violate the non-discrimination policy--access to such methods of communication, but that it can deny direct funding to any organization that refuses to abide by the non-discrimination policy. That solution would be attractive because, within the context of a university or law school community, the ability of students and student groups to communicate with one another could be fairly taken as a baseline, while subsidization could be treated as entailing a greater level of endorsement by the university or law school. Unfortunately, this sort of compromise appears to be foreclosed by the Rosenberger decision. There, UVA argued that there is an important distinction between, on one hand, permitting groups to use public property for their own expressive purposes and, on the other hand, the government's funding of private speech. The Rosenberger Court rejected this distinction. Thus, it appears that, on the Court's view, whatever the resource may be--whether classrooms for holding after-hours meetings as in Lamb's Chapel; money for printing as in Rosenberger; or, by extension, bandwidth for sending email as in CLS--the government cannot use the speaker's viewpoint as a basis for allocating it. Accordingly, CLS v. Martinez will likely be decided on an all-or-nothing basis. Either the Court will view the Hastings policy as neutral and thus permissible, or it will view it as inherently infringing the right to expressive association, and thus impermissible. Such all-or-nothing reasoning is understandable from a Court charged with fashioning legal doctrine that the rest of us must be able to apply with some predictability. But it is nonetheless unfortunate, because it obscures the fact that cases of this sort are genuinely difficult. CLS v. Martinez poses a conflict between two principles that we rightly value: expressive association and equality. No resolution can fully honor both. From papadop at peak.org Mon Dec 14 15:19:10 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:19:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] SURPRISE: 22 million "missing" Bush White House e-mails found Message-ID: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/12/14/national/w120825S68.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0ZhZgb2IH 22 million missing Bush White House e-mails found SF Chronicle -- Monday, December 14, 2009 Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush and the Obama administration is searching for dozens more days' worth of potentially lost e-mail from the Bush years, according to two groups that filed suit over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record keeping system. The two private groups "Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington" and the "National Security Archive" said Monday they were settling the lawsuits they filed against the Executive Office of the President in 2007. It will be years before the public sees any of the recovered e-mails because they will now go through the National Archives' process for releasing presidential and agency records. Presidential records of the Bush administration won't be available until 2014 at the earliest. The tally of missing e-mails, the additional searches and the settlement are the latest development in a political controversy that stemmed from the Bush White House's failure to install a properly working electronic record keeping system. Two federal laws require the White House to preserve its records. The two private organizations say there is not yet a final count on the extent of missing White House e-mail and there may never be a complete tally. Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, said "many poor choices were made during the Bush administration and there was little concern about the availability of e-mail records despite the fact that they were contending with regular subpoenas for records and had a legal obligation to preserve their records." "We may never discover the full story of what happened here," said Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director. "It seems like they just didn't want the e-mails preserved." Sloan said the latest count of misplaced e-mails "gives us confirmation that the Bush administration lied when they said no e-mails were missing." The two groups say the 22 million White House e-mails were previously mislabeled and effectively lost. The government now can find and search 22 million more e-mails than it could in late 2005 and the settlement means that the Obama administration will restore 94 calendar days of e-mail from backup tape, said Kristen Lejnieks, an attorney representing the National Security Archive. Sheila Shadmand, another lawyer representing the National Security Archive, said the Obama administration is making a strong effort to clean up "the electronic data mess left behind by the prior administration." Records released as a result of the lawsuits reveal that the Bush White House was aware during the president's first term in office that the e-mail system had serious archiving problems, which didn't become publicly known until 2006, when federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald disclosed them during his criminal investigation of the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. A Microsoft Corp. document on the Bush White House's e-mail problems states that Microsoft was called in to help find electronic messages in October 2003, more than two years before the problem surfaced publicly. October 2003 was the month that the Justice Department began gearing up its criminal investigation into who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of Plame, the wife of Bush administration war critic Joseph Wilson. From papadop at peak.org Mon Dec 14 15:53:20 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:53:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] Book Review: The Transition Document:Toward a Biologically Resilient Agriculture Message-ID: THE TRANSITION DOCUMENT:TOWARD A BIOLOGICALLY RESILIENT AGRICULTURE To look at the table of contents and/or to purchase go to www.sunbowfarm.org. This book is available as an encrypted pdf for $19.95 or hard copy for $29.95. Cheri Clark and Harry MacCormack Sunbow Farm- Certified Organic since 1984 Institute of BioWisdom-Workshops/Consulting 6910 SW Plymouth Dr Corvallis,Oregon 97333 541-929-5782 www.SunbowFarm.org www.Ionways.com/sunbow www.sunbowfarm.myshaklee.com ######################### Book review of Harry's latest book. Available at www.sunbowfarm.org. The Transition Document:Toward a Biologically Resilient Agriculture A Book Review by Dan Armstrong "One of these fine days the public is going to wakeup and will pay for eggs, meat, vegetables, etc., according to how they were produced." -J.I. Rodale., 1942. The recently published and expanded fourth edition of The Transition Document: Toward a Biologically Resilient Agriculture (200 pages) by Harry MacCormack is arguably his most important work in a long and winding career of poetry, politics, farming, writing, and spiritual discovery. Originally published in 1988, this edition of the book is the result of a major rewriting by MacCormack and includes a considerable amount of new material and insights gathered in the 15 years since the third edition. Along with fundamental discussions of soil biology, farming practices, nutrition, and much of what he teaches in his workshops at Sunbow Farm, MacCormack narrates The Transition Document like a progressive journal, commenting as he goes along about how various ideas expressed in earlier editions of the book have changed, developed, or proven out -- making this work absolutely critical to understanding the steady evolution of organic practices. Sixty-seven years after J.I. Rodale wrote the quote above, it is safe to say the awakening is upon us. Harry MacCormack came to Oregon in the late 1960's. In 1972, he bought Sunbow Farm outside Corvallis and entered into the adventure of raising a family on a homestead farm. As a back-to-the-land farmer and natural-born activist, he immediately focused his efforts on getting the chemicals out of farming, and in 1984 became a central player in the creation of Oregon Tilth, one of the nation's first organic farming advocacy organizations. MacCormack became Tilth's executive director in 1989 and later was the director of research during a time when the Willamette Valley was the proving ground for leading edge organic practices. And this, in a sense, is the tale within the tale that is new to the fourth edition of The Transition Document. While primarily a handbook on organic farming, MacCormack's narrative provides an intimate view of the organic movement at ground level -- in the soil labs, brewing compost tea, helping put together the guidelines for the Federal Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, and doing the fundamental work of transitioning farming practices from conventional to organic. This is where book's title The Transition Document comes from. As MacCormack writes in the introduction, "When we first conceived of transition the direction was clear. We were speaking of a move from conventional or chemically-based agriculture to organic or biologically-based agriculture. We were challenging the slogan that guided post WWII society throughout the 50s and 60s: Better living through chemistry. What was termed conventional agriculture was understood to be an aberration, a deviation from customary, prescribed, or natural condition.? This book is about the long and difficult process of reversing sixty years of chemical farming and transitioning not only tainted land, but also long imbued ideas and practices as basic to farming as the moldboard plow. The Transition Document begins by detailing the motivation for the transition. What does it really mean to have a chemically-based agricultural system? What is the long-term impact of two generations of Americans being raised on products tainted with DDT or chlordane? Chapter two describes the process of transitioning the land. This includes chemistry lessons and anecdotal stories about how long the chemical residues are in the soil and how they can be absorbed and concentrated into the things grown in it. Chapter three talks about the agricultural practices that can facilitate the transition. Chapter by chapter, piece by piece, MacCormack thoroughly discusses tilling techniques, crop rotations, green manures, weed management, and the soil itself? focusing on the biology of the soil, the "herd,? as he refers to it, of microscopic living things? microorganisms, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes?that form the soil foodweb and are so critical to mineral absorption by the plant, the health of the plant, and nutritional value of what it produces. This last piece is an important new theme in the book. Increased awareness for microbial populations and the soil foodweb represents a key advance in the philosophy of organic farming during the last fifteen years and is emphasized by MacCormack, not only throughout the book, but also by his change in the book's subtitle. In the three previous editions of The Transition Document, the subtitle was "toward an environmentally sound agriculture.? The new subtitle, "toward a biologically resilient agriculture,? reflects this elemental philosophy change, and as MacCormack puts it, encapsulates "where we were? twenty years ago, and "where we are? now. The book includes a chapter on genetics, genetic engineering, and what it means to be patenting living systems. There is a view of organic farming through the lens of modern physics, quantum mechanics, quantum waves, the biodynamic resonance of all living things, and the deeper meaning of life itself. No clump of clay is left unturned. This is as much a spiritual discourse as it is a handbook of practical applications. One chapter is devoted to the value of using compost and compost tea. Another delves our diet, the minerals and amino acids that are critical to optimizing nutrition and our health. The book's final chapter, "Toward a Local Agricultural at the End of the Petroleum Age,? appraises the impact of peaking oil production on agriculture and outlines a vision for our future?what will the rebuilt food system look like once the transition has been completed and how it will contribute to food security and healthier living in an age beyond cheap petroleum fuels and inputs. In many ways, the expanded fourth edition of The Transition Document is a compendium of modern organic practices. With an assortment of tables and charts, articles and drawings compiled over twenty years, MacCormack describes the work of soil scientists like Alan Kapuler, Elaine Ingam, Diana Tracy, Arden Anderson and many others who have influenced his ideas and fueled the evolution of organic agricultural science through the last twenty-one years. No matter what one's level of understanding, MacCormack's "The Transition Document" is a must read for anyone involved in or interested in organic farming or anyone who simply wants to know what they are eating. This is an important book by a long-time contributor to what might be the most crucial work of our time -- the transition from better living through chemistry to better living through natural processes. From papadop at peak.org Mon Dec 14 17:24:59 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:24:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] CATCHUP -- London inquiry into Iraq war Message-ID: .... otherwise the "Chilcot inquiry". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8412317.stm US WOULD NOT 'ADMIT' THE INSURGENCY IN POST-WAR IRAQ UK forces in southern Iraq shortly after the invasion -- The "basic wheels" of government had come off, Sir John said. A senior British military officer has told the Iraq inquiry the US would not accept that an organised insurgency was developing in the aftermath of the war. Sir John Kiszely, the UK's top military representative in Baghdad in 2004-5, said Washington felt a "bunch of no hopers" were behind mounting attacks. But another commander said the US had "no choice" but to disband the Iraqi army, a much-criticised decision. The Chilcot inquiry is looking into UK policy with Iraq between 2001 and 2009. BLAIR INTERVENTION In its first month, it has heard from a succession of senior civil servants, diplomats and military commanders about the build-up to the March 2003 invasion, Iraq's military threat and post-war planning. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is due to appear before the inquiry early in 2010, said on Saturday that he would have supported moves to remove Saddam Hussein by force even if he had known Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. AT THE INQUIRY Peter Biles BBC World Affairs correspondent Peter Biles The reluctance of Washington to admit it was facing a growing insurgency in Iraq in 2004 raises a fundamental question - what would have happened had the coalition tackled the problem differently? Only by April 2005 was there a US change of view, said Britain's Lt Gen Robin Brims. There was finally a realisation that it was an insurgency, and needed to be treated as such, "even if the word was frowned upon". By this stage, Fallujah had become "a safe haven" for the insurgents. With hindsight, there are regrets that this was allowed to happen. Another talking point today was the length of British military postings to Iraq. For the commanders struggling to find levers of influence in Iraqi society, a six month tour of duty was too short. Lt Gen Sir John Kiszely said that without care, you could be treated as "passing trade". His remarks have been criticised by former director of public prosecutions, Sir Ken MacDonald, who said it was proof of an "alarming subterfuge" by the UK government in its support for the war. Questioned about the situation in Iraq after the invasion, Lt General Sir John Kiszely told the inquiry the situation in Baghdad had deteriorated when he took up his post in October 2004. Attacks on coalition forces were rising sharply, he said, Iraqi police and army units were severely undermanned, the government machine was not functioning and "little" reconstruction had taken place. "The rule of law did not really exist in a number of provinces," he said. He described how US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld initially declined to accept growing signs of an organised uprising against coalition forces, a situation he put down to political pressures. "Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld had instructed that it was not to be called an insurgency. I think he called it a bunch of no-hopers carrying out some terrorist acts. But it was an incipient insurgency." 'ACCIDENTAL GUERRILLAS' This attitude inhibited attempts to deal with the growing violence in the country, he added. "If you recognise that something is an insurgency then you are using a different method to counter it than if you think it is merely terrorism. "If you think it is merely terrorism then you use merely counter-terrorist tactics and activities on the basis that if you kill or capture the terrorists then you have probably solved the problem. Which is not the case with an insurgency." At that time, organised groups were drawing support from people described as "accidental guerrillas" - individuals without a political agenda but resentful of foreigners "invading their space". INQUIRY TIMELINE November-December: Former top civil servants, spy chiefs, diplomats and military commanders to give evidence January-February 2010: Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and other politicians expected to appear before the panel March 2010: Inquiry expected to adjourn ahead of the general election campaign July-August 2010: Inquiry expected to resume Report set to be published in late 2010 or early 2011 Iraq inquiry: Day-by-day timeline Q&A: Iraq war inquiry Although US commanders listened to his concerns, Sir John said these did not initially "permeate" the culture of the US operation in Iraq. Sir John said it was not until March 2005 that top US commander General Casey issued "ten top tips" for dealing with a counter-insurgency, including treating Iraqi civilians with "respect and decency". Asked about the UK's own counter-insurgency strategy, a senior British commander said his troops had to "relearn" their tactics because they had been used to conventional warfare. "We had not, perhaps, expected to be faced with an insurgency," said Lt Gen Jonathon Riley, who commanded a multinational division in the south of the country between November 2004 and August 2005. "We did have to go through a process, at every level, of reawakening and relearning. And we did it on the job." New units arrived "much better prepared and with the right mindset" as the nature of the threat posed became clearer, he added. Lt Gen Riley also defended the decision to break up the Iraqi army after the invasion, which critics say contributed to the escalation in violence, saying the force had effectively "disbanded itself". "What was left of its infrastructure had been largely torn apart by the population which had lost all respect for its own army, a very bad situation to be in," he said. The inquiry is expected to publish its findings in late 2010 or early 2011. ####################### http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/01/chilcot-inquiry-iraq-edward-chaplin#skiplinks * guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 December 2009 19.28 GMT British attempts to persuade the US to plan for the consequences of an invasion of Iraq foundered on a "blind spot" in Washington where senior officials thought "everyone would be grateful and there would be dancing in the streets", the Chilcot inquiry into the war was told today. There was "a touching belief [in Washington] that we shouldn't worry so much about the aftermath because it was all going to be sweetness and light", added Edward Chaplin, head of the Middle East department of the Foreign Office at the time. It was assumed that all would be well, especially if power was handed to an exiled opposition spokesman such as Ahmed Chalabi. "We said [to the Americans] they had very little credibility in Iraq," Chaplin told the inquiry. It is known that Chalabi was feted by the neocons in Washington, including those in the Pentagon who took over the job of deciding how Iraq should be run after the invasion. Senior figures in Whitehall said the failure to draw up a proper plan to protect the civilian population after Iraq was occupied was a prima facie breach of the Geneva conventions. Today, Chaplin and Sir Peter Ricketts, then political director at the FCO, said they were dismayed by the way the Bush administration failed to take the issue seriously, despite personal appeals from Tony Blair to George Bush. Evidence at the inquiry continued to paint a picture of a British administration led by Blair desperately trying -- and initially persuading Bush -- to go down the UN route to achieve international consensus on Iraq. But if that were to fail, Blair would join the US-led invasion. "If the UK was to be part of a military operation, it was essential we exhausted every [diplomatic] option," said Ricketts. "The threat of force became more and more obvious," he added. In further evidence of the advice to Blair before his crucial meeting with Bush at the president's ranch at Crawford, Texas, in April 2002, 11 months before the invasion, Ricketts said there were "very serious doubts there was any legal basis for [military action] at that time". He referred to a leaked document in which Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, warned Blair: "The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few. "The risks are high, both for you and the government. I judge that there is at present no majority inside the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] for any military action against Iraq." One inquiry panel member, the historian Sir Martin Gilbert, referred to a Cabinet Office paper drawn up at the time. It warned: "A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers' advice, none currently exists. This makes moving quickly to invade legally very difficult. We should therefore consider a staged approach, establishing international support, building up pressure on Saddam, and developing military plans". The inquiry heard that shortly after the Crawford meeting, in late April 2002, Blair asked the MoD to start contingency planning for military action in secret. In the event of military action, Ricketts told the inquiry, Lord Boyce, then chief of the defence staff, needed the agreement of the government's law officers. That was an "absolute requirement", said Ricketts. On 7 March 2003, less than a fortnight before the invasion, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, advised that British commanders could be arraigned before the international criminal court if they joined the US-led invasion. Boyce, who is giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry later this week, subsequently demanded "unequivocal" advice that an invasion would be legal. He was later given that advice on a small piece of paper, after the attorney general's office contacted Downing Street, which said it was "unequivocally" Blair's view that Iraq had committed new breaches of UN resolutions.Today, Lord Steyn, a former law lord, said Blair led Britain into an "illegal" war to get rid of Saddam Hussein and expected the inquiry to say so. He said the invasion "encouraged disrespect for the law by authoritarian regimes who copied the words and examples of George W Bush and Tony Blair". ########### Chilcot inquiry: Tony Blair decided on Iraq war a year before invasion - envoy * guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 20.25 GMT Sir Christopher Meyer, testifying to the Chilcot inquiry into Britain's role in the war, made it clear that once the Bush administration decided to take military action, the Blair government never considered opting out or opposing it. He said that the timing of the invasion was dictated by the "unforgiving nature" of the military build-up rather than the outcome of diplomacy or UN weapons inspections, which had not been given sufficient time. British http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/26/iraq-war-chilcot-inquiry- tonyblair Chilcot inquiry: Tony Blair decided on Iraq war a year before invasion - envoy * Julian Borger, diplomatic editor * guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 20.25 GMT Chilcot inquiry: Tony Blair's government never considered opting out or opposing George Bush's plan to invade Iraq. Photograph: Luke Frazza/EPA Tony Blair's government decided up to a year before the Iraq invasion that it was "a complete waste of time" to resist the US drive to oust Saddam Hussein, opting instead to offer advice on how it should be done, the former British ambassador to Washington said today. Sir Christopher Meyer, testifying to the Chilcot inquiry into Britain's role in the war, made it clear that once the Bush administration decided to take military action, the Blair government never considered opting out or opposing it. He said that the timing of the invasion was dictated by the "unforgiving nature" of the military build-up rather than the outcome of diplomacy or UN weapons inspections, which had not been given sufficient time. British officials were left "scrabbling for the smoking gun" -- evidence for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction -- as preparations continued. Meyer, ambassador to Washington from 1997 to 2003, described a critical moment in March 2002, as Blair was preparing a visit to George Bush's Texas ranch. New instructions were brought to the embassy by the prime minister's foreign affairs adviser, Sir David Manning. The message from Downing Street was that the 11 September attacks and the subsequent US determination to oust Saddam were established facts, "and it was a complete waste of time -- if we were going to work with the Americans, to come to them and bang away about regime change and say: 'We can't support it'." He rejected the suggestion that British policy changed to stay in line with Washington. "I wouldn't say it was as extremely poodle-ish as that," Meyer said, arguing Blair had long been a "true believer about the wickedness of Saddam Hussein". He conceded that the conditions Blair put on supporting regime change -- action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and going through the UN on Iraq -- were a bit feeble". Meyer said there was a "sea change" in Washington's attitude to Iraq in the months after 11 September. In his briefing notes before the Texas summit, Meyer advised Blair to focus on how to garner international support for regime change, how to go about ousting Saddam, and what to do in the aftermath. At the meeting, he said Bush and Blair spent "a large chunk of time" together with no advisers present. "To this day I'm not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch," he said, adding that Blair provided a clue in a speech the next day in which he mentioned "regime change" in Iraq for the first time. "What he was trying to do was to draw the lessons of 9/11 and apply them to the situation in Iraq, which led ? I think not inadvertently but deliberately ? to a conflation of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein." Meyer said no one in the Bush administration appeared interested in talking about further containment of Saddam after the 2001 al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington. In a telephone conversation him on the day of the attacks, the then US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said: "We are just looking to see whether there could possibly be a connection with Saddam Hussein." Before the attacks, Meyer said the Bush administration was "losing steam" on a number of fronts and the Iraq issue was no more than "a grumbling appendix". In the immediate aftermath, Washington agreed with Blair's advice to maintain "a laser-like focus" on Afghanistan. However, in the months that followed ? spurred on by an anthrax attack that remains unsolved ? the ha wks advocating military action against Iraq grew stronger. The inquiry was attacked today for limiting itself to the testimony of senior mandarins and not asking the views of lower-ranking civil servants who had argued there were alternatives to war. Carne Ross, who was Britain's Iraq expert at the diplomatic mission to the UN and resigned over the decision to invade, said the committee was not being aggressive enough in questioning the decisions the Blair government took. "It's like a fireside chat at a Pall Mall club," he said. "They're not digging below the surface. Why did the government not consider the alternatives? Were there meetings to consider the alternatives, or were the Brits just swept along with the Americans." Ross took issue with Meyer's contention that the policy of containment and sanctions had "run its course" by 2002. "The mid-level people who spent all their time doing Iraq -- our view was that sanctions had been effective in stopping Saddam rearming, and several of us believed a lot more could have been done to stop Iraq's illegal oil sales." From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Dec 14 22:03:32 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:03:32 +0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Climate and economics Message-ID: <20091215060332.DF090F43B@fep06.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: David Noble.doc Type: application/msword Size: 53760 bytes Desc: not available URL: From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Tue Dec 15 01:21:19 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:21:19 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Copenhagen, Bolivia, Fifth International, Indonesia, Marta Harnecker, Diego Garcia, Quebec, Malaysia, Green New Deal? Message-ID: <4B27550F.9070307@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: Copenhagen, Bolivia, Fifth International, Indonesia, Marta Harnecker, Diego Garcia, Quebec, Malaysia, Green New Deal? * * * 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 at dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links. * * * Copenhagen: System change -- not climate change: the Klimaforum09 Declaration A people's declaration from Klimaforum09, Copenhagen, December 10, 2009 There are solutions to the climate crisis. What people and the planet need is a just and sustainable transition of our societies to a form that will ensure the rights of life and dignity of all peoples and deliver a more fertile planet and more fulfilling lives to future generations. * Read more `The main issue for us is Mother Earth' -- Bolivia's delegation to Copenhagen climate talks ANGELICA NAVARRO, chief climate negotiator for Bolivia: On the process, I have to say that we are quite surprised, because this is not what we were expecting. One hundred and ninety-two countries are united here to try to come to a deal. And there is this pallid process that basically seems to be untransparent, undemocratic, nonparticipatory, top down, that it seems to be imposing itself on what we are trying to achieve with 192 countries. We think that we have to come back to the real track, and that is a track with participation, inclusiveness and democracy. * Read more Bolivia: Why did Evo Morales win? By Atilio A. Boron, translated by Richard Fidler December 8, 2009 -- A week ago we were celebrating the triumph of Pepe Mujica in Uruguay. Today we have renewed, and more profound reasons, to celebrate the extraordinary electoral victory of Bolivia's President Evo Morales [on December 6]. * Read more Indonesia: Anti-corruption protests follow bank bailout December 9, 2009 -- The great photos above are of a mass demonstration in Jakarta on International Anti-corruption Day December 9, 2009, just one of many demonstrations against corruption have been sweeping Indonesia protesting allegations that a US$600 million government bailout was given to Century Bank on condition that some of the money be used to fund President Yudhoyono's re-election campaign. * Read more Australian Socialist Alliance's address to the International Encounter of Left Parties, Caracas, November 2009 One of the delegates of Australia's Socialist Alliance, Federico Fuentes, addresses the International Encounter of Left Parties held in Caracas, November 19-21, 2009. * Watch here Marta Harnecker on the Fifth International and the left movement in Latin America By Jes?s Manzan?rez December 10, 2009 -- Marta Harnecker remains ardent, audacious, reflective and perceptive. A collaborator of the Miranda International Centre [in Caracas], she will today [December 3] attend a reception in her honour in the Teresa Carre?o Theatre for her outstanding career, fundamentally in the study of the mechanisms to effective take power at the community level and her contributions to Marxist theory. * Read more Uni?n de Militantes por el Socialismo: Resoluci?n del Comit? Central sobre la V? Internacional/Resolution on the Fifth Int. [English translation below.] por Uni?n de Militantes por el Socialismo (Argentina) Al Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela Queridos compa?eros y compa?eras Reciban un saludo revolucionario y nuestroamericano, con los mejores deseos para la realizaci?n del 1er Congreso Extraordinario del Psuv y el m?s caluroso respaldo a la propuesta del comandante Ch?vez de comenzar a echar las bases de una V? Internacional. * Read more New phase in the struggle for Diego Garcia By Lalit (Mauritius) December 3, 2009 -- The Diego Garcia struggle is moving into what we call "phase 4". Each past phase has had its victories, victories within which there were defeats. And each victory won has been won because the three elements making up the struggle held together, were embraced as one "whole". Before looking at phase 4, let's look first at three intertwined past crimes. * Read more Quebec left debates independence strategy By Richard Fidler December 3, 2009 -- Qu?bec solidaire, the left-wing party founded almost four years ago, held its fifth convention in the Montr?al suburb of Laval on November 20-22, 2009. About 300 elected delegates debated and adopted resolutions on the Quebec national question, electoral reform, immigration policy and secularism. * Read more Between Caracas and Delhi -- two important conferences of the international left By Reuven Kaminer December 7, 2009 -- It seems more than a coincidence that two important conferences of the international left took place in November 2009. One, the 11th International Meeting of the Communist and Workers' Parties, was held in Delhi, India, on November 20-22 and issued the "Delhi Declaration" (DD) and the other, a World Meeting of Left Parties, met in Caracas, Venezuela, on November 19-21 and issued a document entitled the "Caracas Commitment" (CC). There were approximately 50 organisations at each conference. * Read more Socialist Party of Malaysia: 'Real power comes from the people' By Paul Benedek, Kuala Lumpur More than 200 activists, including a large proportion of youth and women, packed Kuala Lumpur's Chinese Assembly Hall for the first day of Socialism 2009, an annual conference organised by the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM). * Read more Debate: A Green New Deal -- dead end or pathway beyond capitalism? December 8, 2009 -- A Green New Deal is on everybody's lips at the moment. US President Barack Obama has endorsed a very general version of it, the United Nations are keen, as are numerous Green parties around the world. In the words of the Green New Deal Group, an influential grouping of heterodox economists, Greens and debt-relief campaigners, such a 'deal' promises to solve the 'triple crunch' of energy, climate and economic crises. * 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: From thinker at xplornet.com Tue Dec 15 16:44:01 2009 From: thinker at xplornet.com (Ed Deak) Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:44:01 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Fiat lux 246 Message-ID: <20091216004412.18381136ED39@smtprelay02.hostedemail.com> To: record at cablerocket.com Subject: Fiat lux 246 Fiat lux # 246 Dec. 11, 2009 The snow is big news these days and the funny thing is that even here in Canada, a lot of drivers still are having serious problems driving on snowy roads. Well, we now have lived here in the Cariboo, with five month winters, for over 30 years. I learned to drive in 1946, when I was working for the US Army in Austria. My wife and I were deep into motorcycling in England, we brought our bike over and crossed Canada, from Montreal to Vancouver in four weeks in May 1955, long before the Trans Canada Hwy was completed. Then came my many years in motorsports, especially in long distance car rallies, three years as a semi pro rally driver on a factory team, all of which gave me quite a lot of experience on driving on snow, under all conditions.. Living in the backwoods, we're on satellite hookups for both our TV and computer, which could give us an endless number of channels to watch, but we hate commercials and so our sole TV time consist of daily 40 minutes of the 6 o'clock news. Lately all we can see are cars off the roads, in the ditches and stuck all over, with the drivers spinning like wheels like crazy but going nowhere. Surprise ! The best way to get stuck in snow is by stepping on the gas and spinning your wheels. Spinning the driving wheels is the stupidest thing anybody can do, either on dry ground and especially on snow. What happens is that even a few turns of the wheels cause the snow to pack smooth and there'so way the wheel can climb out of it. Then, if the driver spins them longer, the rubber warms up that causes the snow to melt and freeze into sheet ice. I remember my Vancouver years and how many times I have seen cars stuck with the spinning wheels behind a cloud of steam , with the driver's foot on the gas, going nowhere. Therefore, the first lesson is, get off the gas the first second the driving wheels start spinning, start digging and rocking back and forth, trying to build up a momentum The second lesson is that when the front wheels are locked up by braking, the vehicle will keep on going in a straight line, because stopped wheels won't steer, but slide on a pool of molten rubber on dry roads and self created ice in the winter. I was driving home late one night on a deserted and snowy 45 Ave. in Vancouver, around 1972. When I crossed Nanaimo St. I saw a car coming from the opposit way, slightly downhill. As the driver jammed his foot on the brake he started sliding, slowly turning sideways, toward my van. I kept on saying "Take your foot off the brake! Take your foot off the brake!" and then drove up on the sidewalk to avoid him, but he just kept on sliding, then hit and smashed the left front of my van with the right front of his car. The driver was an older guy and when I asked him why he didn't take his foot off the brake, because locked wheels don't steer, he said he never heard of anything like that in 40 years of driving. It was before ICBC and his US based insurance company tried to cheat me out of what was then a good week's wages and I had to drive around with my left door jammed tight, and a smashed front for over three months, until the old guy paid me from his own pocket. The happy days of private insurance, may we never see them again !!!!!!!! Never to make any sudden moves with either the steering, gas, or brakes, and steer into a skid, because steering away may spin the vehicle around and into oncoming traffic Always have proper snow tires, instead of the useless "all weather " junk, and always with studs. When we were competing in rallies on icy winter roads, we used to have 400 studs in each of all our tires, that gave us driving potentials not much worse than wet roads. I always had studs in my winter tires even in Vancouver and never got stuck, even when other cars were spinning all over the roads. Expensive ? No way. The best investment where property and life are concerned. Studs are even more important in mild climates, in less snowy areas, as the roads can get icy very often and snowtires without studs are useless on ice. Yet, even with the best of precautions we all make mistakes and this leads us to the only serious accident I ever had. We were still moving our stuff up from Vancouver and I was pulling a two wheel trailer in the night of Dec.3 1979, a trip we have made dozens of times to different properties we had in the Cariboo. Our van had four studded tires, but the trailer's wheels had none. It was quite mild all the way, with only a skim of snow on the land and the road seemed to be just wet from rain, but things didn't seem right and I was only doing about 50 km/ hr going slightly downhill on a dead straight road, just South of 150 Mile House, when the car in front of us put its right signals on and I started pulling out to the left to get around it. Suddenly, I felt my trailer slipping off to the right, I corrected but in the next second the trailer violently swung over to the left and got hooked on the rear bumper, pulling the van around and off we went into the deep ditch on our right, turning upside down, with the engine still running. My wife managed to get out, but I was trapped by the collapsed roof until the guy in front ran back and pulled me out . Turned out that he was only pulling off the road, when he felt his car slipping on the ice. Here the lesson was: Never pull a two wheel trailer in the winter and have studded tires even on tandem wheels to keep them on the road. From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Tue Dec 15 17:16:54 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:16:54 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] British inquiry underscores Australian complicity in Iraqi war crimes Message-ID: <01fa01ca7ded$75b381a0$47ad57ca@jfos> Excerpt: "The outcome of the invasion of Iraq has been the devastation of the country and the estimated deaths of up to 1.2 million Iraqis. There were no WMDs or Iraqi links to the September 11 attacks. The purpose of the war was to establish a new US puppet state in the heart of the Middle East, thus allowing American imperialism to control the flow of oil out of Iraq and the entire Persian Gulf. As for the Howard government, it joined the invasion in order to enhance its economic relations with the United States and, above all, to preserve the US-Australian strategic alliance. For the Australian financial and corporate elite to continue to dominate the South Pacific region and exert its influence in South East Asia, it requires diplomatic and military support from Washington. China's growing assertiveness in the region has only served to heighten Canberra's dependence on the US. That criminal responsibility for the Australian government's role lies not simply with Howard but has been underscored by the actions of the Rudd Labor government since it came to office in November 2007. Under ... Rudd, it has seamlessly taken over Howard's foreign policy. Australian military forces continue to participate in the ongoing US occupation of Iraq, while the number of troops taking part in the Afghanistan war has increased ... Australian special forces operate as death squads in the province of Uruzgan, assassinating Afghans accused of resisting the US take-over of their country. Last week, Rudd agreed to send additional paramilitary units of the federal police as a sign of his Labor government's support for US president Barack Obama's military "surge" against the Afghan population:" -0o0o0o0o0- British inquiry underscores Australian complicity in Iraqi war crimes By James Cogan 14 December 2009 The current British inquiry into the Iraq war, headed by Sir John Chilcot, has heard evidence that provides the basis for war crimes indictments against leading members of the former Bush and Blair governments in the US and Britain. Under oath, former British government officials and military commanders have testified that from the day Bush took office, it was well known that the new administration was intent on war with Iraq. The September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington supplied the pretext. Within days, as the invasion of Afghanistan was being prepared, a campaign was launched to fabricate a case linking Iraq to the 9/11 atrocities. The Chilcot Inquiry has been told that in a meeting with Bush at the president's Crawford ranch in April 2002-11 months before the invasion of Iraq-Tony Blair agreed that Britain would take part. A review of the actions of the Australian Liberal-National Party government of the day, headed by Prime Minister John Howard, demonstrates that it was no less complicit in the plotting and preparation of the unprovoked war of aggression on Iraq. The Howard government's role in the so-called "coalition of the willing" paralleled that of the Blair government. On September 11, 2001, Howard was in Washington on a state visit. Immediately after the attacks, he declared support for "any action that might be taken" by the US in retaliation. Three days later, Howard's government, supported by the opposition Labor Party, passed a motion in the Australian parliament invoking the ANZUS military alliance with the US for the first time, on the grounds that the criminal actions of Al Qaeda, a terrorist organisation, were equivalent to a state "attack on the United States". Like Blair, Howard played an indispensable political role for the Bush administration over the following months. On two occasions, he travelled to the US to publicly declare his government's support for Bush's aggressive militarism, which was provoking escalating concern and opposition around the world. In February 2002, the Australian prime minister was present to endorse Bush's infamous State of the Union speech, in which the US president labelled Iran, North Korea and Iraq as an "axis of evil" on the grounds that the three countries possessed "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs). Most controversially, Bush declared that the US would act unilaterally against them. The Australian government was one of the few in the world not to express alarm at his bellicose rhetoric. In June 2002, Howard returned to the US to declare his support for the Bush doctrine of "pre-emptive strike", which repudiated the entire framework of post-World War II international relations and asserted that the US had the right to attack any country deemed a threat. The following month, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer stood alongside US Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington and condemned efforts to avert war through diplomatic negotiations. "Trying to appease Iraq," he stated, "will only allow Iraq to continue to build its weapons of mass destruction." The White House and US media publicised the Australian positions as part of an attempt to convince the American people that Bush's war plans had international support. In fact, several major powers, including France and Germany, were moving to block a unilateral US invasion by offering Iraq a new UN-supervised weapons' inspection regime. Inspectors had been ordered out of Iraq in 1998. By August 2002, the regime of Saddam Hussein had resumed negotiations over conditions for their return. In response, the Bush and Blair governments launched an offensive to pressure the Security Council into passing a resolution that explicitly sanctioned the use of military force if Iraq failed to prove that it did not harbour WMDs. On September 7, Bush and Blair met at the US president's ranch in Crawford and, at a subsequent press conference, claimed to have evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program that was underway in defiance of UN resolutions. Howard, who until that point had downplayed the need for UN endorsement of a war, had already shifted, following a phone call from Bush, behind the US and British demand. He told a Liberal Party meeting on September 7 that Australia and the US had a "shared concern" that the UN took action. Amid a flurry of false accusations against Iraq, many of them disseminated by the New York Times and its journalist Judith Miller, Bush delivered an ultimatum to the UN General Assembly on September 12, declaring that the body would be "irrelevant" if it did not endorse military force. The Howard government continued to play its role as a secondary, but significant cheerleader for war. One day later, on September 13, the Australian Office of National Assessments (ONA), following a request from Howard's office, prepared an intelligence report that declared it was "highly likely" Iraq was concealing chemical and biological weapons and that there was "no reason to believe" it was not seeking to "acquire nuclear weapons". Howard used the fabricated ONA report in the Australian parliament on September 17, 2002, to present the doomsday scenario that if Iraq were not "disarmed", its WMDs would pose a "direct, undeniable and lethal threat to Australia and its people". Two years later, in 2004, hearings before an Australian Senate committee revealed that previous ONA reports had made a completely opposed assessment, concluding that there was little or no evidence that Iraq possessed chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, nor was it attempting to manufacture them. In the face of Bush's ultimatum, the Security Council passed Resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002. The wording, however, did not explicitly sanction war. It only threatened Iraq with unspecified "serious consequences" if it did not submit to a new weapons inspection regime, to which the Iraqi government agreed within days. The US, Britain and Australia, intent on an invasion, agitated for a second resolution on the grounds that they had evidence that Iraq was concealing WMDs from the UN inspectors. On February 6, 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell made his infamous presentation to the Security Council, using dubious or transparently false images and audio to claim there were hidden weapons. Powell's speech only confirmed the lack of any credible case against Iraq and dramatically heightened international opposition to the pending invasion. Between February 15 and 17, the largest anti-war demonstrations in history took place around the world. In Australia, as many as one million people joined the protests in cities and towns across the country. Sir David Manning, British ambassador to the US at the time, has testified to the Chilcot Inquiry that, in the face of global opposition, the Bush administration concluded by early March that a second UN resolution was "not going to run". Blair then decided "the diplomatic track had been exhausted and he would accept the need to take military action". The Howard government made the same decision. Despite Howard's repeated statements that he had given no undertaking to participate in the war, FA-18 fighters, naval vessels and SAS special forces had already deployed in late 2002 and early 2003 to the Persian Gulf, alongside tens of thousands of American and British personnel. On February 26, 43 Australian international law experts publicly warned the Howard government that, under the existing UN charter, any participation in the war against Iraq would be a crime against humanity. They specifically noted that the Bush doctrine of "preemptive strike"-which Howard continued to endorse-"contradicts the cardinal principle of the modern international legal order". The Howard government defied legal opinion just as it defied the opposition of a majority of Australians. In open contempt for democratic procedure, the Australian parliament was adjourned on March 8 and did not reconvene until after Howard and his cabinet had voted in the early hours of March 20 that Australian troops would take part in the illegal invasion. Evidence later emerged that Australian SAS troops had crossed into Iraq as much as 30 hours before combat operations had even received cabinet approval. The outcome of the invasion of Iraq has been the devastation of the country and the estimated deaths of up to 1.2 million Iraqis. There were no WMDs or Iraqi links to the September 11 attacks. The purpose of the war was to establish a new US puppet state in the heart of the Middle East, thus allowing American imperialism to control the flow of oil out of Iraq and the entire Persian Gulf. As for the Howard government, it joined the invasion in order to enhance its economic relations with the United States and, above all, to preserve the US-Australian strategic alliance. For the Australian financial and corporate elite to continue to dominate the South Pacific region and exert its influence in South East Asia, it requires diplomatic and military support from Washington. China's growing assertiveness in the region has only served to heighten Canberra's dependence on the US. That criminal responsibility for the Australian government's role lies not simply with Howard but has been underscored by the actions of the Rudd Labor government since it came to office in November 2007. Under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, it has seamlessly taken over Howard's foreign policy. Australian military forces continue to participate in the ongoing US occupation of Iraq, while the number of troops taking part in the Afghanistan war has increased to over 1,550. Australian special forces operate as death squads in the province of Uruzgan, assassinating Afghans accused of resisting the US take-over of their country. Last week, Rudd agreed to send additional paramilitary units of the federal police as a sign of his Labor government's support for US president Barack Obama's military "surge" against the Afghan population. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/aust-d14.shtml ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Dec 15 18:31:14 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:31:14 +0800 Subject: [Mai-not] British inquiry underscores Australian complicity in Iraqi war crimes In-Reply-To: <01fa01ca7ded$75b381a0$47ad57ca@jfos> References: <01fa01ca7ded$75b381a0$47ad57ca@jfos> Message-ID: <20091216023114.D724A10D66@fep02.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thinker at xplornet.com Wed Dec 16 09:45:04 2009 From: thinker at xplornet.com (Ed Deak) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 09:45:04 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Geography of the recession in the US Message-ID: <20091216174509.C031C19C0512@smtprelay03.hostedemail.com> A very interesting map showing the worst hit unemployment areas in the USA. Cheers, Ed >http://cohort11.americanobserver.net/latoyaegwuekwe/multimediafinal.html > From thinker at xplornet.com Wed Dec 16 12:06:01 2009 From: thinker at xplornet.com (Ed Deak) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:06:01 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Harper is killing Copenhagen Message-ID: <20091216200613.3015023201E2@smtprelay01.hostedemail.com> I couldn't sign this petition, if it would do any good at all, but it could be the fault of my machine. Cheers, Ed. Dear friends, Canada is blocking crucial UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen and secretly rolling back our efforts to fight climate change. A massive national outcry has stopped Harper before, the planet needs us now: Enough is enough. As the world mounts a desperate effort to stop catastrophic global warming in Copenhagen, Canada should be leading the way. Instead, we're receiving global "fossil awards" for wrecking this crucial summit! And new leaked documents show that while the entire world is increasing cuts to carbon emissions, the government is secretly planning roll back ours. At the Bali climate summit in 07, a massive national outcry forced Harper to stop blocking the talks. But the oil companies that PM Harper works for know that Copenhagen is the make or break moment for climate. It will not be easy to win this time, but to save the planet and our country we have to. Let's mount a tidal wave of pressure on Harper with the largest petition in Canadian history - click below to sign, and forward this email to everyone: http://www.avaaz.org/en/harper_enough_is_enough The petition will be delivered directly to the Canadian delegation in Copenhagen as Harper arrives this week, and names of the signers will actually be read out in the summit hall. The Canadian delegation has become the object of international disbelief and ridicule in Copenhagen, but we can show the world that the Canadian people still hold our values of being good neighbours and global citizens. Harper is undermining our deepest values and proudest traditions. But this is about more than our reputation. Studies show that climate change is already taking up to 300,000 human lives a year through turning millions of farms to dust and flooding vast areas. We can no longer allow Harper to make us responsible for these deaths, or put Canada's economic future in jeopardy by sacrificing our green competitiveness for a brown economy based on the dirtiest (tar sands) oil in the world. Copenhagen is seeking the biggest mandate in history to stop the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. History will be made in the next few days, and our country is the problem, not the solution. How will our children remember this moment? Let's tell them we did all we could. With hope, Ricken, Laryn, Anne-Marie, Iain and the Avaaz Canada team More information at these sites: CBC -- "Tories pondered weaker emission targets for oil and gas": http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/12/14/greenhouse-gas-emissions.html Mail and Guardian -- "Canada's climate shame": http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-12-04-canadas-climate-shame Toronto Star -- "Who are the Yes Men and why did they punk Canada at Copenhagen": http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/738933--who-are-the-yes-men-and-why-did-they-punk-canada-at-copenhagen Macleans -- "Suddenly the world hates Canada": http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/12/15/suddenly-the-world-hates-canada/3/ Fossil of the Day Awards: http://www.fossiloftheday.com/ ------------------------------ Want to support Avaaz? We're entirely funded by donations and receive no money from governments or corporations. Our dedicated online team ensures even the smallest contributions go a long way -- donate here. ABOUT AVAAZ Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Buenos Aires, and Geneva. Click here to learn more about our largest campaigns. Don't forget to check out our Facebook and Myspace and Bebo pages! You can also follow Avaaz on Twitter! You are getting this message because you signed "Save Canada's Public Broadcasting" on 2009-03-27 using the email address thinker at thelakebc.ca. To ensure that Avaaz messages reach your inbox, please add avaaz at avaaz.org to your address book. 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Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.716 / Virus Database: 270.14.110/2568 - Release Date: 12/16/09 00:02:00 From papadop at peak.org Wed Dec 16 15:51:47 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:51:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] Chilcot inquiry -- A Winter's Tale Message-ID: A likely story !! http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/dec/14/chilcot-inquiry-vows-to-get-tough Guardian blog December 14 Chilcot inquiry vows to get tough once ministers appear Spokesman counters complaints that Sir John Chilcot's Iraq war inquiry has so far been unchallenging Many people who have written about the Iraq inquiry have complained about the soft nature of the questioning and today Ken Macdonald joined the chorus, describing the approach taken by Sir John Chilcot and his team as "unchallenging". But at Iraq inquiry HQ Chilcot and his team believe that these criticisms are unfair and that commentators do not appreciate that the questioning has been gentle up to now for a reason. In the opening statement he delivered when the inquiry started taking evidence, Chilcot said that the first round of hearings, involving evidence from officials, not politicians, would be all about establishing a picture of what happened. Today an inquiry spokesman told me that Chilcot plans to adopt a different approach once the ministers start giving evidence in January. The spokesman suggests that the questions are going to get tougher. The pre-Christmas part of the inquiry is all about setting out the narrative of Britain's involvement in Iraq. It's about putting it all in context. After that, once we get past Christmas, we're going to be in a different phase and that will probably call for a different approach ... I would expect to see a change of style once the politicians come in. That's not because of the criticisms. That's because of the way we have planned the inquiry. When you have to go into detail about the different elements of the British involvement in Iraq, then you do have to narrow things down quite sharply. Chilcot is unlikely to turn into Jeremy Paxman. But I'm told that, when the ministers appear, Chilcot and his team will want to test what they are saying against the documentary evidence available to the inquiry. This is something that has not been happening in the preliminary hearings. The first ministers, or ex-ministers, will probably give evidence in the first week of January. The inquiry is due to issue an operational note naming them early this week. From papadop at peak.org Wed Dec 16 16:22:32 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:22:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] LOMDON Warrant for ex-ISRAELI MINISTER Message-ID: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/57424, #The First Post - Latest The First Post - Current Affairs EMBARRASSMENT AT FO OVER TZIPI LIVNI ARREST WARRANT Tzipi Livni -- If Livni had come to London on Sunday, she could have been arrested over Gaza war crimes By Jack Bremer LAST UPDATED 7:11 AM, DECEMBER 15, 2009 One of Israel's most senior opposition politicians, Tzipi Livni, might have been arrested on a warrant for war crimes had she visited London last weekend as had been mooted. In the event, she did not come and the arrest warrant, issued by Westminster magistrates' court, was withdrawn. News of the warrant, issued because of Mrs Livni's involvement in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza nearly a year ago when she was foreign minister, has caused deep embarrassment at the British Foreign Office, which was forced to issue a statement denying that it had played any part in the affair. "The UK is determined to do all it can to promote peace in the Middle East and to be a strategic partner of Israel," said the FO statement. "To do this, Israel's leaders need to be able to come to the UK for talks with the British government. We are looking urgently at the implications of this case." Mrs Livni leads the centrist Kadima party and narrowly missed becoming the Israeli prime minister in March this year. According to a report in the Guardian, the warrant was issued at the request of lawyers representing Palestinian victims of the invasion of Gaza, in which more than 1,400 Palestinian died in the period December 2008 - January 2009. As Ehud Olmert's foreign minister, Livni (pictured above with Olmert) was a member of the Israel war cabinet that took the decision to invade Gaza in response to Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. There were complaints from human rights campaigners across the world at the time - and since - that the Israeli response was disproportionate and that the employment by the Israelis of various tactics and weapons - especially the alleged use of white phosphorous shells - went against the spirit of the Geneva Convention. The Westminster court appears to have issued the warrant based on information that Livni was in Britain to address the Jewish National Fund UK's annual conference on Sunday. When it transpired that she had not come, the warrant was withdrawn. According to the Jerusalem Post Livni declined the invitation to speak because she was unable to get a meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Instead she spoke to the conference via video link. The Post claimed there was no question of Livni cancelling her trip because she feared being arrested. The warrant - or aborted warrant - marks the first time that a serving Israeli minister or former minister has faced arrest in Britain. It illustrates an increasing effort among human rights lawyers to pursue alleged war criminals under "universal jurisidiction". It also comes at a time of growing anticipation that Tony Blair could be indicted for war crimes over the invasion of Iraq, in the light of evidence coming out of the Chilcot Inquiry, and after Blair's own admission in a BBC interview on Sunday that he would have gone to war to topple Saddam Hussein regardless of the WMDs issue. The Guardian quoted a pro-Palestinian group welcoming news of the abortive move against Livni as "long overdue". Despite the international condemnation, Livni has remained bullish ever since the Gaza ceasefire that Israel had the right to invade because of the Hamas rocket attacks. She even said in September that she was prepared to stand trial at the International Court of Justice in The Hague to defend the actions of the Israeli military. "There have already been petitions against me in various countries," Livni said. "I was a partner to the decisions in the operation in Gaza... I believe in the morality of the IDF soldiers, and if they try to indict me, I am prepared to come say such things if necessary." One mystery remains: why was it so important for Livni to get a meeting with Gordon Brown? Was it to justify her trip - or did she believe it might protect her in the event of an arrest? The Guardian reports that, according to Israeli sources, ministers who wish to visit the UK in a personal capacity have begun asking the Israeli embassy in London to arrange meetings with British officials. These offer legal protection against arrest. However, the understanding is that this immunity would only apply to a serving minister, not a former one. So Livni - and, for that matter, Ehud Olmert - would not be protected, even if they had an appointment in town with the Prime Minister. From papadop at peak.org Wed Dec 16 16:50:13 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:50:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] Contradict claim that UK had relable Iraq evidence Message-ID: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-scarlett-accused-of-misleading-inquiry-1841968.html The Independent (London) --Wednesday, 16 December 2009 Exclusive: Scarlett accused of misleading inquiry Former MoD expert contradicts claim that Iraq evidence was reliable Sir John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee at the time of the invasion, gives his evidence to the inquiry Britain's former spy chief has misled the Iraq inquiry by exaggerating the reliability of crucial claims about Saddam Hussein's ability to launch weapons of mass destruction, according to the leading Ministry of Defence expert who assessed the intelligence behind the decision to go to war. Sir John Scarlett, who was responsible for drafting the Government's controversial 2002 dossier outlining the case for invading Iraq, claimed last week that intelligence indicating Iraq possessed missiles that could be launched within 45 minutes was "reliable and authoritative". But Scarlett's evidence is contradicted by the most senior WMD analyst who saw the original intelligence. Brian Jones said that it was vague, inconclusive and unreliable. Dr Jones, who was head of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of the Defence Intelligence Staff in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, told The Independent that it was "absolutely clear" that the intelligence the Government relied upon was coming from untried sources. The 45-minute claim was one of the key assertions that convinced MPs to take Britain to war. "Having said there was the intelligence to show Iraq had WMD, there was no indication in what [Scarlett] said about what is now very well known, that those additional pieces of new intelligence were all caveated," said Dr Jones. "Information was coming from untried sources -- that is absolutely clear." He added that Scarlett crucially misled the inquiry about the source of the information. "The description Scarlett gave for the secondary source, who passed the information on, was 'reliable and authoritative'... If he is passing on information from someone who has never reported before then that is a nonsense." All witnesses to the Iraq inquiry, led by Sir John Chilcot, are made to sign a written transcript of their evidence, declaring that it is "truthful, fair and accurate". Scarlett will be interviewed again next year by the inquiry team, although the current plan is to question him in private. Scarlett was the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee when he oversaw the drafting of the September 2002 dossier. Despite the controversy, Scarlett was promoted by Tony Blair to become the head of MI6 in 2004. Although the subsequent Butler review of intelligence concluded that the dossier had been "flawed", Scarlett was awarded a knighthood by Mr Blair in 2007. He retired from MI6 earlier this year. Dr Jones's comments will add to the pressure on Mr Blair ahead of the former prime minister's own, expected appearance before the Chilcot inquiry panel in January. Dr Jones's intervention yesterday came as the transparency of the Chilcot inquiry was challenged, when its public proceedings were censored for the first time. GOVERNMENT'S 45-MINUTE CLAIM 'VERY SUSPICIOUS' Dr Jones, who retired in 2003, said that the intelligence received shortly before the Government's dossier was published in September 2002 was not clear about what the 45-minute claim referred to, or the types of weapons it was suggesting could be launched in that time. In an article published on IraqDossier.com, he states that both he and a colleague concluded that the source of the intelligence was unproven, while the information itself had to be treated as "second-hand". MI6 now concedes that some of the second-hand sources used in the dossier were unreliable. Casting further doubt on Scarlett's evidence, Dr Jones told The Independent that he was "very suspicious" about the confusing way in which the 45-minute claim was presented in the Government's dossier. Scarlett told the inquiry last week that "there was absolutely no conscious intention to manipulate the language or obfuscate or create a misunderstanding as to what they might refer to". But Dr Jones said the dossier's assertion that Saddam could "deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so" did not make clear that the claim was only meant to refer to battlefield weapons, rather than those that could be launched against other countries. And Dr Jones challenged the inquiry team to finally reveal the identity of the source that passed on the 45-minute claim to Britain's intelligence services. A senior Iraqi army officer, Lt-Col al-Dabbagh, claimed in 2003 that he was the source of the information. "If you look at what Dabbagh subsequently said, then he was talking about battlefield weapons without doubt," he said. "So then, if he was talking about battlefield weapons, did these guys deliberately avoid saying that they were? I am now very suspicious about those sorts of things." When asked by the Chilcot inquiry whether he had been aware of Dr Jones's concerns about the claims made in the dossier, Scarlett insisted he had not been informed about them. IRAQ 'COULD HAPPEN AGAIN' Dr Jones also launched a stinging attack on the Government's failure to make key reforms to the intelligence services in the wake of the Butler review, carried out in 2004 to examine the failures on Iraq. Its refusal to do so, he said, meant that the breakdown that led to the decision to invade Iraq could happen again. "As a result of previous inquiries, I don't think there's been the sort of fix that produces a permanent protection against what happened then not happening again," he said. In particular, Dr Jones criticised the Government's failure to implement the Butler review's recommendation that more expertise exist within the JIC. "The senior representatives on the JIC from the DIS, the chief and his deputy, were both intelligence novices really compared to others on the committee," he said. "Really, in terms of intelligence, I would describe those two guys as amateurs." However, the Butler review's recommendation that the deputy head of the DIS should have a background in intelligence analysis was not accepted by the Government. Dr Jones said that as long as institutions such as MI6, MI5, the Foreign Office and the MoD remained in charge of different areas of intelligence and the expertise in analysing it, they would continue to compete with each other for attention, rather than co-operate fully. He said only the creation of an independent body, overseeing the whole intelligence gathering and analysis process, would solve the problem. BRIAN JONES: AN EXPERT IGNORED Brian Jones, now retired, worked in the scientific and technical directorate of the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), a team of experts who analyse intelligence from MI6, MI5, GCHQ and foreign agencies for the Ministry of Defence. He was the most senior official responsible for analysing intelligence on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. During the Hutton inquiry into the death of the expert on Iraqi arms, Dr David Kelly, Dr Jones said he and a colleague wrote to the deputy chief of the DIS to outline their unhappiness at claims made in the Government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, published in September 2002. They were worried about the description of alleged stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons held by Iraq and the claimed 45-minute timeframe for launching them. He then suggested in The Independent that the whole of the DIS had concerns about the claims, but those concerns had been ignored. From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Wed Dec 16 17:01:32 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:01:32 +0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Chilcot inquiry -- A Winter's Tale In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20091217010133.13B75F61D@fep04.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> It's not just the tone of the questions, it's the focus. Imagine a criminal court judge today whispering (or even shouting if it's get tough mode): "How come your gun jammed? Don't you check your weapons before you rob a bank?" Any serious inquiry would demand each and every one of the criminals explain why they kept on lying right up to the aggressors' attack on Iraq? Why did they claim there were WMDs while acting in concert with the US war criminals to deny Blix the go-ahead to take up Saddam's final offer to search the place with no holds barred? A real inquiry would nail them for deliberately and knowingly lying their country into war. But the British know all about faking inquiries. They used the inquiry into the de Menezes execution to be about bungles when it was no bungle to hold an unarmed man down and shoot seven rounds into his head. Name, rank and serial number of each actual criminal at the murder scene was protected by secrecy, which is an additional layer of impunity. Impunity, wherever it occurs, is always part of the crime. The British Iraq inquiry - with focus shifted to the actual crime, needs counterparts in many other countries - American, Australian, European accomplices need to feel the heat as well (NOT instead!). Penalty? How about a people's court in Iraq for that, like Musso got in Italy? Dion Giles At 07:51 17/12/2009, you wrote: >A likely story !! >http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/dec/14/chilcot-inquiry-vows-to-get-tough > >Guardian blog December 14 > >Chilcot inquiry vows to get tough once ministers appear > >Spokesman counters complaints that Sir John Chilcot's Iraq war >inquiry has so far been unchallenging > >Many people who have written about the Iraq inquiry have complained >about the soft nature of the questioning and today Ken Macdonald >joined the chorus, describing the approach taken by Sir John Chilcot >and his team as "unchallenging". But at Iraq inquiry HQ Chilcot and >his team believe that these criticisms are unfair and that >commentators do not appreciate that the questioning has been gentle >up to now for a reason. > >In the opening statement he delivered when the inquiry started >taking evidence, Chilcot said that the first round of hearings, >involving evidence from officials, not politicians, would be all >about establishing a picture of what happened. Today an inquiry >spokesman told me that Chilcot plans to adopt a different approach >once the ministers start giving evidence in January. The spokesman >suggests that the questions are going to get tougher. > >The pre-Christmas part of the inquiry is all about setting out the >narrative of Britain's involvement in Iraq. It's about putting it >all in context. After that, once we get past Christmas, we're going >to be in a different phase and that will probably call for a >different approach ... I would expect to see a change of style once >the politicians come in. That's not because of the criticisms. >That's because of the way we have planned the inquiry. When you have >to go into detail about the different elements of the British >involvement in Iraq, then you do have to narrow things down quite sharply. > >Chilcot is unlikely to turn into Jeremy Paxman. But I'm told that, >when the ministers appear, Chilcot and his team will want to test >what they are saying against the documentary evidence available to >the inquiry. This is something that has not been happening in the >preliminary hearings. > >The first ministers, or ex-ministers, will probably give evidence in >the first week of January. The inquiry is due to issue an >operational note naming them early this week. > > > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not at globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > >__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus >signature database 4694 (20091216) __________ > >The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. > >http://www.eset.com > From papadop at peak.org Wed Dec 16 17:04:10 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:04:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] PLANK BY PLANK, BLAIR'S CASE COLLAPSES Message-ID: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/geoffrey-wheatcroft-plank-by-plank-blairs-case-collapses-1838789.html Geoffrey Wheatcroft: The most devastating evidence describes the former PM's sheer servility towards Bush The Independent - London --Saturday, 12 December 2009 A whitewash, a cover-up, "an establishment stitch-up", as David Cameron puts it: never has any investigation been so damned in advance as the Chilcot inquiry. And its composition did not suggest any lively zeal to expose the iniquity of the Iraq war, or the misdeeds of the last prime minister. Himself the mandarins' mandarin, Sir John Chilcot was the very model of a modern permanent under-secretary, and then "staff counsellor" to MI6. Two of his team, Sir Lawrence Freedman and Sir Martin Gilbert, have been denounced as "Zionists" by Richard Ingrams, which may be less to the point than the fact that Freedman wrote speeches for Tony Blair, or that Gilbert, Winston Churchill's official biographer, had earlier compared Blair with Churchill. And the questioning of Sir John Scarlett, the former intelligence chief deeply complicit in the false prospectus for the war, was absurdly tame. But you never can tell. Even before Blair appears in person, the inquiry has already been excruciating for him. Not only has such reputation for either honesty or judgement as he still possessed been shredded, while the ambassadors and generals settle the score. What has been less noticed is that, partly thanks to Chilcot and partly to other events, every single reason Blair ever entertained for the Iraq war has disintegrated. That means not only the arguments made to Parliament and people, but also his private convictions. By now we know not only that Saddam Hussein had no so-called weapons of mass destruction, but also that there was little real ground for saying that he did, something that witnesses at Chilcot have been rubbing in. Sir William Ehrman was director of intelligence at the Foreign Office in 2002-04, and says Downing Street was continually warned how limited "WMD" intelligence really was and that "Iraq might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal", the opposite of what Blair was then telling us. But what of Blair's larger motives? He had become a great proponent of the doctrine of liberal or humanitarian intervention. Ten years ago, after the Chicago speech which preached that doctrine and the Kosovo operation which practised it, he enjoyed a blissful heyday, hailed by American liberals as "the prime minister of the United States", or even, in Paul Berman's words, "the leader of the free world". That Chicago speech was a lucid exposition, no doubt because it was largely written by Freedman. "How do we decide when and whether to intervene?" Blair asked, and said that we must be "sure of our case ... have we exhausted all diplomatic options? ... are there military operations we can sensibly and prudently undertake? ... are we prepared for the long term? ... and finally, do we have national interests involved?" Since he asked, we can now ask in return: Were all those conditions fulfilled four years later in Iraq? Was any? And how does this look now? Those who follow the doings and sentiments of Labour agree that, little as that bedraggled and demoralised party is now sure what it stands for, everyone acknowledges that liberal interventionism is dead and buried. For a time Blair also persuaded his credulous followers that the invasion would revive the "peace process" and lead to a just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That has proved even more of a tragic illusion, which is one reason why watching Barack Obama in Oslo on Thursday was almost unbearable, quiet apart from the fact that a man who had just increased hostilities in a barely justifiable and very likely unwinnable war trying to explain why he should accept the Nobel Peace Prize. What was even more dispiriting was to compare his flowery words with what an unnamed western ambassador in Israel was quoted as saying on the BBC World Service the other day: President Obama and Hillary Clinton had between them "driven the peace process into a ditch". The bleak truth is that a settlement is much further off today than 10 years ago. Above all, Blair had one deep personal conviction, that it was his duty to support Washington. As he said just before the invasion, "It would be more damaging to long-term world peace and security if the Americans alone defeated Saddam Hussein." His mission was to embrace Bush so as to "keep the United States in the international system". And so the most devastating evidence of all heard by Chilcot has described Blair's sheer servility when dealing with George Bush ? and the way that he received nothing whatever in return. The British were deeply concerned about the legality of the war, and about post-war planning, or the lack of it. Washington paid no attention whatever. As Sir Christopher Meyer, the ambassador in Washington at the time, told Chilcot, Blair again and again failed to get any get quid pro quo from Bush. Blair didn't even use such influence as he had when as a sign of American gratitude for his support after 11 September Congress imposed tariffs likely to destroy what was left of the British steel industry. Worse still, any attempt by Blair's to revive the peace process "failed miserably", in Meyer's brutal words: "We could have achieved more by playing a tougher role." Blair could have told Bush he would not commit British troops "unless we have palpable progress on the peace process". And in the unkindest cut of all, Meyer added, "I think Margaret Thatcher would have ... insisted on a coherent political and diplomatic strategy." While Tony Blair sees his reputation being trashed daily, he may dimly perceive that the interventionist doctrine he once espoused is utterly discredited. As he sits in Jerusalem on his futile mission, he can see, if he bothers to look, that the peace process is dead. When he visits JP Morgan's Wall Street office to collect his sinecure, or when -- more bizarrely -- he lectures on ethics at Yale, he might recall what Gerhard Schroder said about "the 'special relationship' so special that only the English know it exists", a truth Blair has dramatically personified. A well-worn line says that all political careers end in failure. Has any ever ended in such failure as this?i From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Dec 16 19:33:25 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:33:25 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: God, the Free Market, and PTSD Message-ID: <025001ca7ec9$b9a90ab0$34ad57ca@jfos> God, the Free Market, and PTSD 12/15/2009 11:15:15 AM by Jeff Severns Guntzel Tags: Afghanistan, Iraq, PTSD, veterans, Boston Review Under the Bush administration, opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan tended to front-load their critique with a line about the administration's betrayal of returning veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That betrayal pre-dated George W. Bush by two decades. In a chilling new piece for Boston Review, Tara McKelvey reports that "The decline in resources for veterans' mental health services started in the 1980s, as part of a nationwide effort to move psychiatric patients into outpatient treatment. The number of inpatient psychiatric beds fell from 9,000 in the late '80s to 3,000 by 2008." By that time, according to a Rand Corporation report, close to 20 percent of service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan-300,000 in all-were reporting symptoms of PTSD or acute depression. The defunding of veterans' mental health services may have predated the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that is not to say the Bush administration didn't betray veterans. McKelvey explains: "The great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care-greater than before-was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking officials believed that 'Jesus fixes everything.'" The bit about Jesus fixing everything is a bit of an oversimplification. Political ideology was certainly as much of a factor and McKelvey acknowledges as much, if only in passing: "...high-level officials at the VA shared political convictions that, along with doubts about the science of PTSD, made them less likely to push for additional psychiatric services for veterans. They believed in streamlined government and free markets, and they supported a prominent role for faith-based organizations." For all the talk of religious obstacles to mental health treatment, the Boston Review piece is also a gift to anybody trying to understand the history PTSD diagnosis and treatment. That history, of course, is still being written. In the latest chapter, Barack Obama has proposed the largest infusion of funding for veterans in three decades. Mental health services are not ignored. "Unfortunately," writes McKelvey, " bureaucracies are slow to respond. After years of neglect during the Bush administration, veterans now have nearly one million claims pending, a record high for the agency." About the Author: Before turning to journalism, Utne Reader senior editor Jeff Severns Guntzel spent years doing humanitarian work in pre-war Iraq. Since that time, he has reported from the Middle East and points all over the United States as a staff writer for National Catholic Reporter and as a contributing editor at the now defunct (and greatly missed) Punk Planet magazine. Electronic Iraq, a website he co-founded in 2003 to document the Iraqi experience of war, is archived in the Library of Congress and the British Library. Jeff has appeared as a guest on a number of national news programs, including NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Democracy Now! ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/octet-stream Size: 13235 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Dec 16 19:43:39 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:43:39 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Where Are the Antiwar Voices in America's Leading Newspapers? Message-ID: <029b01ca7ecb$239e7ad0$34ad57ca@jfos> Where Are the Antiwar Voices in America's Leading Newspapers? 12/15/2009 2:34:56 PM by Jeff Severns Guntzel Tags: Afghanistan, media criticism, New York Times, Washington Post, Extra! Polls consistently show a public split on the war in Afghanistan. Is that divide represented on the op-ed pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post? Not at all. According to a study published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting in Extra!, "Both newspapers marginalized antiwar opinion to different degrees." Of the New York Times' 43 columns on the Afghanistan war, 36 supported the war and only seven opposed it-five times as many columns to war supporters as opponents. .In the Washington Post, pro-war columns outnumbered antiwar columns 10 to 1: of 67 Post columns on U.S. military policy in Afghanistan, 61 supported a continued war, while just six expressed antiwar views. Why the discrepancy? It's a losing battle-perhaps even a silly one-to try and shape op-ed pages to public opinion, but a little representation isn't too much to ask. "The American public's majority view is a decidedly minority view on the op-ed pages," writes Steve Randall in the Extra! report. "That's good and bad news for democracy: It's good news that the public is not entirely captive to the narrow, elite range of debate prescribed by newspapers. It's bad news because, however diminished their roles as opinion leaders may be, the New York Times and the Washington Post continue to wield an unmatched influence in the nation's capital and in newsrooms across the country." ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/octet-stream Size: 4683 bytes Desc: not available URL: From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Wed Dec 16 20:13:08 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:13:08 +0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Where Are the Antiwar Voices in America's Leading Newspapers? In-Reply-To: <029b01ca7ecb$239e7ad0$34ad57ca@jfos> References: <029b01ca7ecb$239e7ad0$34ad57ca@jfos> Message-ID: <20091217041309.C70C9F89F@fep08.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> There's a huge gulf between the New York Times (a serious even if propagandistic newspaper) and the Washington Post which is a comic strip that attracts the same kind of readership as the Daily Smelly in London. Dion Giles At 11:43 17/12/2009, you wrote: >Where Are the Antiwar Voices in America's Leading Newspapers? >12/15/2009 2:34:56 PM >by Jeff Severns Guntzel >Tags: Afghanistan, media criticism, New York Times, Washington Post, Extra! >Polls consistently show a public split on the war in Afghanistan. Is >that divide represented on the op-ed pages of the New York Times and >the Washington Post? Not at all. According to a study published by >Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting in Extra!, "Both newspapers >marginalized antiwar opinion to different degrees." > >Of the New York Times' 43 columns on the Afghanistan war, 36 >supported the war and only seven opposed it-five times as many >columns to war supporters as opponents. > > .In the Washington Post, pro-war columns outnumbered antiwar > columns 10 to 1: of 67 Post columns on U.S. military policy in > Afghanistan, 61 supported a continued war, while just six expressed > antiwar views. > >Why the discrepancy? It's a losing battle-perhaps even a silly >one-to try and shape op-ed pages to public opinion, but a little >representation isn't too much to ask. "The American public's >majority view is a decidedly minority view on the op-ed pages," >writes Steve Randall in the Extra! report. "That's good and bad news >for democracy: It's good news that the public is not entirely >captive to the narrow, elite range of debate prescribed by >newspapers. It's bad news because, however diminished their roles as >opinion leaders may be, the New York Times and the Washington Post >continue to wield an unmatched influence in the nation's capital and >in newsrooms across the country." > > > > > > > > >------------------------------------------------------ >Provided by Australis >http://www.australis.com.au/ > > > >__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus >signature database 4694 (20091216) __________ > >The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. > >http://www.eset.com > > > > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not at globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > > > >__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus >signature database 4694 (20091216) __________ > >The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. > >http://www.eset.com From McPogo at aol.com Fri Dec 18 13:03:22 2009 From: McPogo at aol.com (McPogo at aol.com) Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:03:22 EST Subject: [Mai-not] Canada, Climate Change Conference and the Fossil of the Year Award Message-ID: _http://news.aol.ca/article/canada-wins-fossil-of-the-year/757932/_ (http://news.aol.ca/article/canada-wins-fossil-of-the-year/757932/) Climate Action Network International should take their "fossil of the year" award and shove it where the sun don't shine! All of Canada produces only 2% of the world's carbon emissions, so no matter what it does it won't have any effect on the global outcome, period! Increases in carbon emissions in Indo/China alone to meet their growing consumer demands will smother anything Canada could accomplish, even if we went to 0% carbon emissions. Canadians also live in some of the harshest, hot/cold seasonal climates in the world. I refuse to listen to some climactic do-goodies living in temperate climates mouthing off about a country that can range from -80 degrees F up to 110 degrees F through-out the year. Our population is also small and spread across almost 5,000 miles, so our transportation costs and fossil fuel use will naturally have to be higher/per capita than those of other more densely populated SMALLER countries! Also, this "carbon tax" scheme they are trying to fly is just another boondoggle to let the smart crooks rip off taxpayers everywhere. It won't accomplish one thing it is supposed to do! Organized crime in North America has already managed to siphon off over $9 billion through fraudulent schemes, and the stupid thing isn't even fully up and running yet. I wish these politicians would get real for a change and listen to taxpayers instead of just "winging it!" for the news cameras. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yves at bajard.net Fri Dec 18 16:48:19 2009 From: yves at bajard.net (Yves Bajard) Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:48:19 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] End of year wishes and call for contributions Message-ID: <1261183699.5188.2664.camel@localhost> Dear Mai-Notters: I wish you a good end of the year 2009. Be as merry and happy as you can afford (morally and otherwise) and keep on. I would wish, however, that the list remain as non controversial as possible. Opinion statements and production of verifiable facts should be clearly marked as such, which is not always the case. Thank you in advance for a little more care in the matter. Also, I would ask you please to consider contributing some funds to the running of Mai-not. As in all previous years, by sending your contribution to NetCFS C/O Dee Shoolingin 692 Charlotte Street,Duncan, B.C. Canada V9L 2V6 Thank you again Yves Bajard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From papadop at peak.org Fri Dec 18 21:18:42 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:18:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] tangled deceit web becoming unwoven Message-ID: http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2009/12/19/joy-johnson-blair%E2%8o0%99s-tangled-web-over-iraq-conflict-is-becoming-unwoven/ Joy Johnson: Blair's tangled web over Iraq conflict is becoming unwoven Tribune (London) December 19, 2009 12:00 am web editor comment On a television programme about religion, Tony Blair made his confession: weapons of mass destruction, the stated aim for going to war with Iraq, were merely an excuse and not the reason. Asked by Fern Britton if he had known then what he knows now, would he still have gone to war, the former Prime Minister replied that he would have done because "it was the right thing to do". He added that he would have deployed (sic) different arguments. And that's a rather different argument from the now notorious and false claim that the Iraqi military were able to deploy chemical or biological weapons at British bases within 45 minutes of an order being given. That was an argument with a claim designed to deceive. While the members of the Chilcot Inquiry are not entirely forensic in their interrogations, the investigation has already served a useful purpose. First, it has forced Blair to pre-empt his evidence to it and shift his public position from the case for war being predicated on the threat of Saddam's WMDs to the argument that Saddam was a menace to the Middle East region. Second, Chilcot has been a master class in mandarin-speak, with a trail of former ambassadors, foreign policy advisors and military personnel distancing themselves from their former boss. They have seized the opportunity to try to set the record straight and salvage their own reputations from the consequence of the disastrous conflict. Sir John Scarlett, onetime chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, admitted that the 45 minutes claim "did not refer to ballistic missiles". It would have been better if that fact had not got "lost in translation". Yet those making the case for war were happy for a mistranslation at the time. And it worked, with the media serving up headlines that placed drama above accuracy: "45 minutes from attack" -- the London Evening Standard, " Saddam can strike in 45 minutes" -- the Daily Express and "He's got 'em -- let's get him". That last one was from The Sun -- then Labour's favourite newspaper. Blair derided his opponents who questioned the existences of WMDs. "We are now seriously asked to accept that in the last few years, contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence, he [Saddam] decided unilaterally to destroy the weapons. Such a claim is palpably absurd." Millions of deaths later, we know now just how far from absurd it was. Unfortunately, when it had an opportunity to strike a blow against the presidential style of Blair's Government by voting against war, the House of Commons failed to take it. MPs were duped. Worse, they were misled. They should have put their trust in the two million people who took to the streets of London to demonstrate against war. They should have followed the United Nations and they should have listened to Robin Cook, who was aware of the intelligence but, because he was not fixated on "regime change", drew other conclusions about it. After he had resigned from the Cabinet over the Iraq war, Cook made what is rightly regarded as one of the finest speeches ever heard in the Commons. He said: "Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term -- namely, a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target. It probably still has biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions, but it has had them since the 1980s when US companies sold Saddam anthrax agents and the then British Government approved chemical and munitions factories. Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create?" Cook then asked another question: "Why is it necessary to resort to war thi s week, while Saddam's ambition to complete his weapons programme is blocked by the presence of UN inspectors?" We now have Blair's answer. The weapons were a cynical ploy to try to get a UN resolution and the acquiescence of his Cabinet and parliamentary colleagues. We are told leadership is a lonely business and that Blair had to take a decision and get on with leading. But what followed was a war that divided the country, divided political parties and failed to win the support of the UN. It was not a decision for Blair alone to make. If Parliament hadn't been misled on WMD, it is unlikely MPs would have voted to invade Iraq and the war would not have gone ahead -- or would have gone ahead without this country's participation. Blair would have been forced to renege on whatever commitment he had given George W Bush at his Texas ranch. Bush and the Americans would have had to go it alone. Blair is due to give evidence to Chilcot early next year. We are assured that anything to do with "regime change" will be heard in public. If the inquiry is to have any credibility, there must be no backtracking on that commitment. Blair can still rest assured he is among friends. Chilcot is the political establishment writ large. Blair's calculation in speaking out during his interview with Fern Britton held risks, but he knows the establishment is unlikely to let him down. From papadop at peak.org Sat Dec 19 09:12:52 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2009 09:12:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] Openly working for the insurance vrtters Message-ID: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Insurance-Exec-Reid-Comes-by-Rob-Kall-091219-90.html opednews.com December 19 For OpEdNews: Rob Kall - Writer I've said it before and this seems to clinch it. Harry Reid will soon be Openly working for some major health insurance or pharmaceutical company. The key difference in what I've said before is the word OPENLY. He's been working for them, just like the sellouts from the small states. Now, Reid claims to have the magic sixty votes to pass health care legislation. That's been done by totally rejecting the Democratic base, with the permission of Obama key advisors and probably, almost certainly, Obama himself. It's been done by including anti-abortion legislation that betrays women like no other legislation in decades. It betrays us all by allowing interstate sales of Insurance, thus removing state protections, so insurers can re-establish their headquarters in states with the least and worst regulations-- probably states like Montana and Nebraska, where Baucus and Nelson come from. The bill pays blackmail to states where their DINO senators balked at working with the rest of the democrats. It is going to go down in history as some of the worst legislation, cast in desperation because of a failure of courage and character by congressional leaders-- particularly Reid and Pelosi. It is impossible to accept the possibility that any real democrat, with any allegiance to democratic values, would accept the legislation as written, with so many gifts to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and to the right wing. This is a massive sellout and the democratic party, if Democrats pass this, deserves to be voted into oblivion-- as well as the Republican party. I want to be clear I am calling for non-partisan oblivion for both parties, which really function as one. It is time for people to get out into the streets, into the offices of their members of congress-- house and senate. It is time to reject all the shills and sellouts and betrayers of constituents. Joe Lieberman is in some ways the most honest of them all-- he's a transparent shill, unlike Reid and Pelosi, who pretend they are doing good for the American people while they are doing a marketing job, trying to sell us not only damaged but toxic, dangerous goods as good for us. Put a pretty bow on this package, say we're doing two good things and then throw in 2000 pages of damage and destruction. The hell with that. It will be interesting to see how many professed liberals allow this garbage train of corporate welfare to pull out of Washington, doing damage to America. Harry Reid and many of his compadres in crime will surely leave the senate soon and take cushy jobs with the corporate swine that are taking the US down. It is time to rise up, time to take down, time to demand, time to reject, time to shout out our disgust and our refusal to accept what these traitors are doing to us, to our families to our jobs, to mainstreet, to the American people. They are nothing less than criminals. The right thing to do is to throw out this bill and to create two bills. I've written another short article about that. Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com From papadop at peak.org Sat Dec 19 11:22:09 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2009 11:22:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] Blair engaged in alarming subterfuge with Bush Message-ID: http://www.amsterdamnews.net/story/579267 Blair engaged in alarming subterfuge with Bush, British official claims Amsterdam News.Net Friday 18th December, 2009 Ken Macdonald described the invasion of Iraq as a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions. The British Director of Prosecutions from 2003 to 2008 has sharply criticised former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Writing for the London newspaper, The Times, Ken Macdonald (pictured) described the invasion of Iraq as a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions. He claims the British prime minister engaged in an alarming subterfuge with former U.S. President George W. Bush to mislead and cajole the British people into a war they did not want. Macdonald did not take up the position of Director of Prosecutions until December 2003, nine months after the Iraq invasion. Britain's Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, gave Mr Blair legal advice in March 2003 which justified the decision to go to war. That advice has been under scrutiny ever since, most recently during the Chilcot Inquiry. Even at the time of the final advice given on March 17 2003, the opinion was hotly disputed in legal circles. Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, resigned three days later saying she did not agree with the official opinion that the use of force in Iraq was legal. She also accused Lord Goldsmith of changing his view on the matter. In November 2008, the former Lord Chief Justice and Senior Law Lord Lord Bingham of Cornhill said Lord Goldsmith's advice contained "no hard evidence" that Iraq had defied UN resolutions "in a manner justifying resort to force" and that the invasion was "a serious violation of international law and of the rule of law." Macdonald is the latest to attack the decision, largely contributed to by his former boss Goldsmith, who stepped down as attorney general the same day as Tony Blair, and is now working for a U.S. law firm. The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions, Macdonald wrote in The Times. It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn t want, and on a basis that it s increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible, Macdonald said. "Who is any longer naive enough to accept that the then Prime Minister s mind remained innocently open after his visit to Crawford, Texas?" The former British Director of Prosecutions was critical of Blair in particular, saying he was driven by the glamour of it all, and his zealousness in wanting to please Washington. Hindsight is a great temptress. But we needn t trouble her on the way to a confident conclusion that Mr Blair s fundamental flaw was his sycophancy towards power. Perhaps this seems odd in a man who drank so much of that mind-altering brew at home, said Macdonald. But Washington turned his head and he couldn't resist the stage or the glamour that it gave him. In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he remains so. Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right. But this is a narcissist's defence and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death. Macdonald said the Chilcot Inquiry faced a major challenge. "If Chilcot fails to reveal the truth without fear in this Middle Eastern story of violence and destruction, the inquiry will be held in deserved and withering contempt. This would be a serious blow to the integrity of the State. It would not restore trust," he said. The former chief prosecutor also had a word for British and allied troops that have taken part in the Iraq war. "We have seen enormous acts of courage on the part of our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most heart-rending sacrifices have been made; many of them will become poetry and song in future years. But none of this sprinkles, as he might once have hoped it would, any starlight on Tony Blair. On the contrary, it is entirely the work of warriors thrust carelessly into death's way by a Prime Minister lost in self-aggrandisement and a governing class too closed to speak truth to power," he said. From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sat Dec 19 20:36:07 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:36:07 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] =?windows-1252?q?Fw=3A___Traders_failed_in_Copenhagen_T?= =?windows-1252?q?he_future_lies_in_people=92s_hands?= Message-ID: <033001ca8139$8ba202d0$4aad57ca@jfos> Press release - La Via Campesina Traders failed in Copenhagen The future lies in people?s hands (Copenhagen, 19 December 2009) The Copenhagen climate talks ended up in failure. Governments of the world showed themselves incapable or unwilling to make the changes necessary to find a just solution to the climate chaos. The talks have been driven by self interest and trade ?solutions? that have so far proven useless and even damaging. Josie Riffaud, a leader of the farmers movement Via Campesina said: ?Money and market solutions will not resolve the current crisis. We need instead a radical change in the way we produce and we consume, and this is what was not discussed in Copenhagen?. The governments of the industrialized and industrializing countries showed themselves to be unwilling to tackle the model of development which has created an economic and environmental disaster. They were incapable to consider real solutions and to see that carbon markets will not solve the climate crisis. The drastic emissions cuts (included in a biding deal), reorientation of agro-export economies, agrarian reform and other measures which could really contribute to slowing the heating of the earth were not discussed or considered. Once again governments acting in individual self interest have failed to consider the real alternatives offered by International social movements, environmental groups, indigenous peoples and others in creating a more just and fair society. Even though the ?Copenhagen deal? doesn?t mention agriculture explicitely, it seemed during the two weeks talk that the UNFCCC wanted to include soils in the carbon capture methods, and include agriculture in it's technology transfer ? opening up space for transnational companies to receive subsidies for introducing GMO seeds and industrial agricultural methods such as non-till agriculture. This is exactly the type of agricltural development that has led us to the current environmenent and social crisis in countryside. The real power in Copenhagen was expressed in the streets and in the halls of the Bella centre on the 16th of December, when activists, community groups, international and local social movements and NGOs from the North and south pushed to meet each other in a symbolic ?3rd? space outside the Bella center. The vicious repression of the police, including the preemptive arrest of many of the spokespeople of the movement ?Climate Justice Action? further showed the desperation of governments to prevent the voices of real solutions to be heard. We cannot look to governments to provide a magical solution to the Climate Crisis. Under the guidance of transnational corporations, they only prepare a further round of capital speculation, this time using Carbon, the building blocks of life itself as their stocks and shares. In front of the failure of the COP 15 ? international social movements are more ready than ever to tackle the problems of the world and will mobilise for the next climate conference in Mexico due at the end of 2010; their time has come and governments will have no choice but to listen. Informations and Interviews: Josie Riffaud: + 33556236509 More on www.viacampesina.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thinker at xplornet.com Sun Dec 20 09:44:19 2009 From: thinker at xplornet.com (Ed Deak) Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 09:44:19 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] =?iso-8859-1?q?Fw=3A___Traders_failed_in_Copenhagen_T_h?= =?iso-8859-1?q?e_future_lies_in_people=92s_hands?= In-Reply-To: <033001ca8139$8ba202d0$4aad57ca@jfos> References: <033001ca8139$8ba202d0$4aad57ca@jfos> Message-ID: <20091220174425.9755DB0064F@smtprelay03.hostedemail.com> Traders failed in Copenhagen Anybody who expected any good to come out of this Copenhagen meeting was dreaming. Here again is an excellent example how imaginary monetary values and the fraudulent definition of economic efficiency have been and are overruling physical realities wrecking the world and humanity. The worst example is the offer of $100. billion to some so called "poor nations", to cope with the consequences of their destruction, enslaved by the multinational corporate mafia, instead of giving them the potential to feed and clothe themselves. But that wouldn't be "business friendly" and the stockmarkets, in control of the world's economy and humanity, would never permit it. They'd rather force tens of millions to starve to death every year, while pumping the world full of destructive pollution in the sacred name of "wealth creation. Cheers, Ed. ========================================================================================= Press release - La Via Campesina Traders failed in Copenhagen The future lies in people?s hands (Copenhagen, 19 December 2009) The Copenhagen climate talks ended up in failure. Governments of the world showed themselves incapable or unwilling to make the changes necessary to find a just solution to the climate chaos. The talks have been driven by self interest and trade ?solutions? that have so far proven useless and even damaging. Josie Riffaud, a leader of the farmers movement Via Campesina said: ?Money and market solutions will not resolve the current crisis. We need instead a radical change in the way we produce and we consume, and this is what was not discussed in Copenhagen?. The governments of the industrialized and industrializing countries showed themselves to be unwilling to tackle the model of development which has created an economic and environmental disaster. They were incapable to consider real solutions and to see that carbon markets will not solve the climate crisis. The drastic emissions cuts (included in a biding deal), reorientation of agro-export economies, agrarian reform and other measures which could really contribute to slowing the heating of the earth were not discussed or considered. Once again governments acting in individual self interest have failed to consider the real alternatives offered by International social movements, environmental groups, indigenous peoples and others in creating a more just and fair society. Even though the ?Copenhagen deal? doesn?t mention agriculture explicitely, it seemed during the two weeks talk that the UNFCCC wanted to include soils in the carbon capture methods, and include agriculture in it's technology transfer ? opening up space for transnational companies to receive subsidies for introducing GMO seeds and industrial agricultural methods such as non-till agriculture. This is exactly the type of agricltural development that has led us to the current environmenent and social crisis in countryside. The real power in Copenhagen was expressed in the streets and in the halls of the Bella centre on the 16th of December, when activists, community groups, international and local social movements and NGOs from the North and south pushed to meet each other in a symbolic ?3rd? space outside the Bella center. The vicious repression of the police, including the preemptive arrest of many of the spokespeople of the movement ?Climate Justice Action? further showed the desperation of governments to prevent the voices of real solutions to be heard. We cannot look to governments to provide a magical solution to the Climate Crisis. Under the guidance of transnational corporations, they only prepare a further round of capital speculation, this time using Carbon, the building blocks of life itself as their stocks and shares. In front of the failure of the COP 15 ? international social movements are more ready than ever to tackle the problems of the world and will mobilise for the next climate conference in Mexico due at the end of 2010; their time has come and governments will have no choice but to listen. Informations and Interviews: Josie Riffaud: + 33556236509 More on www.viacampesina.org From thinker at xplornet.com Mon Dec 21 16:38:58 2009 From: thinker at xplornet.com (Ed Deak) Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:38:58 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Couple of recipes Message-ID: <20091222003901.B98751AF17B6@smtprelay01.hostedemail.com> Just to break the monotony of everlasting politics, here are a couple of recipes for the most important thing on Earth: Food. Compliments of Marta. Cheers, Ed. ============================================================================================================ Hungarian cabbage rolls, 2 lb. lean ground beef 2-3 tsp of red paprika 1/2 cup of brown rice, washed 1 large onion chopped fine, with 1 small clove of garlic. 1 large or 2 small green cabbage 1/2 tsp pepper and 1-3 tbsp salt, or to taste Have a large pot of boiling water going. Core the cabbage then dip it in the boiling water for 2-3 minutes until the leaves separate easily . Cool the leaves by lifting them out with 2 forks. Braise the onion and garlic in olive oil with the paprika on low heat for a few minutes, stirring it constantly until the onion looks glassy. Mix well the meat, rice, pepper , salt and onion mixture in a large bowl, by hand. Take a cabbage leaf in your hand with the thick part toward your wrist. Pick up about 2 rounded spoon full of the meat mixture shape it across the leaf. Flip the sides of the leaf to the centre and start rolling down toward your fingers. Place the rolls in a fair sized pot with the smooth side up, not more than two layers. If you like sauerkraut put some on the top of the layers. Put enough water to cover well above the rolls. Cook in on low heat for 2-3 hrs. You have to be the judge how long. About half way pour a can of tomato soup on top to add a good flavour. Serve it with mashed potatoes and sour cream. This recipe makes about 16 large rolls. ============================================================================ Hungarian gulyas 2 lbs of top quality stewing beef cut into cubes. 2 medium onions, chopped. 3 tsp. olive oil 1 1/2 tbsp. red paprika 1 chopped green pepper 1 small can of tomato paste Salt to taste, small amount of water. Braise the onions in the oil in a medium sized saucepan until they are glassy, then mix in the paprika. Add the meat and keep on stirring to prevent burning. When the meat begins to release its juice, cover and cook on medium heat until the juice is gone and only the oil is visible. Add a little water and cook further, adding the green pepper and the tomato paste. Repeat this several times , until the meat is tender. Add salt halfway through the cooking time. The gulyas' own gravy can be extended by stirring in a little flour and water. Serve with mashed potatoes and vegetables, or perogies. From papadop at peak.org Tue Dec 22 16:48:04 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:48:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] George Monbiot: Blame the US Senate's disinterest in campaign reform Message-ID: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/21/copenhagen-failure-us-senate-vested-interests If you want to know who's to blame for Copenhagen, look to the US Senate Obama's attempt to put China in the frame for failure had its origins in the absence of American campaign finance reform The Guardian (London) Monday 21 December 2009 20.00 GMT George Monbiot The last time global negotiations collapsed like this was in Doha, in 2001. After the trade talks fell apart, the World Trade Organisation assured delegates that there was nothing to fear: they would move to Mexico, where a deal would be done. The negotiations ran into the sand of the Mexican resort of Canc?n, never to re-emerge. After eight years of dithering, nothing has been agreed. When the climate talks in Copenhagen ended in failure last week, Yvo de Boer, the man in charge of the process, urged us not to worry: everything will be sorted out "in Mexico one year from now". Is Mexico the diplomatic equivalent of the Pacific garbage patch: the place where failed negotiations go to die? De Boer might pretend that this is just a temporary hitch, but he knows what happens when talks lose momentum. A year ago I asked him what he feared most. This is what he said. "The worst-case scenario for me is that climate becomes a second WTO ? Copenhagen, for me, is a very clear deadline that I think we need to meet, and I am afraid that if we don't then the process will begin to slip, and like in the trade negotiations, one deadline after the other will not be met, and we sort of become the little orchestra on the Titanic." We can live without a new trade agreement; we can't live without a new climate agreement. One of the failings of the people who have tried to mobilise support for a climate treaty is that we have made the issue too complicated. So here is the simplest summary I can produce of why this matters. Human beings can live in a wider range of conditions than almost any other species. But the climate of the past few thousand years has been amazingly kind to us. It has enabled us to spread into almost all regions of the world and to grow into the favourable ecological circumstances it has created. We enjoy the optimum conditions for supporting seven billion people. A shift in global temperature reduces the range of places which can sustain human life. During the last ice age, humans were confined to low latitudes. The difference in the average global temperature between now and then was 4C. Global warming will have the opposite effect, driving people into higher latitudes, principally as water supplies diminish. Food production at high latitudes must rise as quickly as it falls elsewhere, but this is unlikely to happen. According to the body that summarises the findings of climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the potential for global food production "is very likely to decrease above about 3C". The panel uses the phrase "very likely" to mean a probability of above 90%. Unless a strong climate deal is struck very soon, the probable outcome is a rise of 3C or more by the end of the century. Even in higher latitudes the habitable land area will decrease as the sea level rises. The likely rise this century ? probably less than a metre ? is threatening only to some populations, but the process does not stop in 2100. During the previous interglacial period, about 125,000 years ago, the average global temperature was about 1.3C higher than it is today, as a result of changes in the earth's orbit around the sun. A new paper in the scientific journal Nature shows that sea levels during that period were between 6.6 and 9.4 metres higher than today's. Once the temperature had risen, the expansion of sea water and the melting of ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica was unstoppable. I wonder whether the government of Denmark, whose atrocious management of the conference contributed to its failure, would have tried harder if its people knew that in a few hundred years they won't have a country any more. As people are displaced from their homes by drought and rising sea levels, and as food production declines, the planet will be unable to support the current population. The collapse in human numbers is unlikely to be either smooth or painless: while the average global temperature will rise gradually, the events associated with it will come in fits and starts ? in the form of sudden droughts and storm surges. This is why the least developed countries, which will be hit hardest, made the strongest demands in Copenhagen. One hundred and two poor nations called for the maximum global temperature rise to be limited not to 2C but to 1.5C. The chief negotiator for the G77 bloc complained that Africa was being asked "to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries". The immediate reason for the failure of the talks can be summarised in two words: Barack Obama. The man elected to put aside childish things proved to be as susceptible to immediate self-interest as any other politician. Just as George Bush did in the approach to the Iraq war, Obama went behind the backs of the UN and most of its member states and assembled a coalition of the willing to strike a deal that outraged the rest of the world. This was then presented to poorer nations without negotiation: either they signed it or they lost the adaptation funds required to help them survive the first few decades of climate breakdown. The British and US governments have blamed the Chinese government for the failure of the talks. It's true that the Chinese worked hard to mess them up, but Obama also put Beijing in an impossible position. He demanded concessions while offering nothing. He must have known the importance of not losing face in Chinese politics: his unilateral diplomacy amounted to a demand for self-abasement. My guess is that this was a calculated manoeuvre guaranteed to produce instransigence, whereupon China could be blamed for the outcome the US wanted. Why would he do this? You have only to see the relief in Democratic circles to get your answer. Pushing a strong climate programme through the Senate, many of whose members are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the energy industry, would have been the political battle of his life. Yet again, the absence of effective campaign finance reform in the US makes global progress almost impossible. So what happens now? That depends on the other non-player at Copenhagen: you. For the past few years good, liberal, compassionate people ? the kind who read the Guardian ? have shaken their heads and tutted and wondered why someone doesn't do something. Yet the number taking action has been pathetic. Demonstrations which should have brought millions on to the streets have struggled to mobilise a few thousand. As a result the political cost of the failure at Copenhagen is zero. Where are you. Is this music not to your taste, sir, or madam? Perhaps you would like our little orchestra to play something louder, to drown out that horrible grinding noise. From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Tue Dec 22 00:41:45 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:41:45 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth Message-ID: <013301ca836d$07399a90$35ad57ca@jfos> For those of you interested in religious faith, history, truth and social justice, the essay by Parenti provides a thought-provoking analysis of the historical relations between various social strata of the Tibetan people and the presence/intervention of outside forces such as China's supposedly 'Communist' Government and the American CIA. Fascinating and highly informative reading folks. john -0o0o0o0o0o0o0- Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth by Dr. Michael Parenti Global Research, November 18, 2007 Michael Parenti Political Archive - 2007-01-02 Excerpt: "For the rich lamas and secular lords, the Communist intervention was an unmitigated calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a living. Many, however, escaped that fate. Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama's organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama's annual payment from the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment.44 In 1996, the Dalai Lama issued a statement that must have had an unsettling effect on the exile community. It read in part: "Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability." Marxism fosters "the equitable utilization of the means of production" and cares about "the fate of the working classes" and "the victims of . . . exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and . . . I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.49 In November 2005 the Dalai Lama spoke at Stanford University on "The Heart of Nonviolence," but stopped short of a blanket condemnation of all violence. Violent actions that are committed in order to reduce future suffering are not to be condemned, he said, citing World War II as an example of a worthy effort to protect democracy. What of the four years of carnage and mass destruction in Iraq, a war condemned by most of the world-even by a conservative pope--as a blatant violation of international law and a crime against humanity? The Dalai Lama was undecided: "The Iraq war-it's too early to say, right or wrong."53 Earlier he had voiced support for the U.S. military intervention against Yugoslavia and, later on, the U.S. military intervention into Afghanistan.54 (snip) One is reminded of the idealized image of feudal Europe presented by latter-day conservative Catholics such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. For them, medieval Christendom was a world of contented peasants living in the secure embrace of their Church, under the more or less benign protection of their lords.55 Again we are invited to accept a particular culture in its idealized form divorced from its murky material history. This means accepting it as presented by its favored class, by those who profited most from it. The Shangri-La image of Tibet bears no more resemblance to historic actuality than does the pastoral image of medieval Europe. (snip) Whether Chinese rule has brought betterment or disaster is not the central issue here. The question is what kind of country was old Tibet. What I am disputing is the supposedly pristine spiritual nature of that pre-invasion culture. We can advocate religious freedom and independence for a new Tibet without having to embrace the mythology about old Tibet. Tibetan feudalism was cloaked in Buddhism, but the two are not to be equated. In reality, old Tibet was not a Paradise Lost. It was a retrograde repressive theocracy of extreme privilege and poverty, a long way from Shangri-La.(snip) Finally, let it be said that if Tibet's future is to be positioned somewhere within China's emerging free-market paradise, then this does not bode well for the Tibetans. " complete essay at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7355 ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Tue Dec 22 17:01:37 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:01:37 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: US Military Aggression against Venezuela escalating Message-ID: <013c01ca836d$16d0b150$35ad57ca@jfos> US Military Aggression against Venezuela escalating By Eva Golinger http://www.chavezcode.com/2009/12/us-military-aggression-against.html Caracas, 20 December - Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez revealed today on his Sunday television and radio program, Al? Presidente, that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have illegally entered Venezuela's airspace during the past several days. "A few days ago, one of these military planes penetrated Venezuela as far as Fort Mara," a Venezuelan military fort in the State of Zulia, bordering Colombia. The drone was seen by several Venezuelan soldiers who immediately reported the aerial violation to their superiors. President Ch?vez gave the order today to shoot down any drones detected in Venezuelan territory. Ch?vez also directly implicated Washington in this latest threat against regional stability by confirming that the drones were of US origin. On Thursday, President Ch?vez denounced military threats against Venezuela originating from the Dutch islands Aruba and Curazao, situated less than 50 miles off Venezuela's northwest coast. Both small islands host US air force bases as a result of a 1999 contract between Washington and Holland establishing US Forward Operating Locations (FOLs) in the Caribbean colonies. Originally, the contract stipulated US military presence in Aruba and Curazao solely for counternarcotics missions. However, since September 2001, Washington uses all its military installations to combat perceived terrorist threats around the world. The military bases in Aruba and Curazao have been used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaisance missions against Venezuela during the past several years. In 2006, Washington began conducting a series of high level military exercises using Curazao as the principal zone of operations. Hundreds of US aircraft carriers, warships, combat planes, Black Hawk helicopters, nuclear submarines and thousands of US military troops have been engaging in different military exercises and missions in the Caribbean region during the past three and a half years, causing substantial alarm and concern to nations in the region, particularly Venezuela, which has also been subject to hostile and aggressive diplomatic actions from Washington. In 2008, the Pentagon reactivated the Navy's Fourth Fleet, charged with defending US interests in the Latin American region. The Fourth Fleet was deactivated in 1950, after accomplishing its original defense mission during World War II. The fleet's reactivation nearly 60 years later was perceived by a majority of nations in Latin America as a direct threat to regional sovereignty and provoked South American countries to establish a Defense Council to deal with external threats. The Pentagon responded by proudly admitting the Fourth Fleet's reactivation was a "showing of US force and power in the region" and a demonstration that the US "will defend its regional allies". This was perceived as direct support to Colombia, and an attempt to intimidate Venezuela. On October 30, Colombia and the US signed a military cooperation agreement authorizing US occupation of seven military bases in Colombian territory and all other installations as required. The agreement is seen as the largest US military expansion in Latin American history. Although the two governments publicly justified the agreement as an increased effort to fight drug trafficking and terrorism, official US Air Force documents revealed that the US would conduct "full spectrum military operations" throughout South America from the Colombian bases. The Air Force documents also justified the disproportional military expansion as necessary to combat "the constant threat.from anti-US governments in the region". The documents further revealed that the US presence in Colombia will increase the success of "Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaisance" operations and will improve the Pentagon's capacity to conduct "expeditionary warfare" in Latin America. Since 2006, Washington has classified Venezuela as a nation "not fully collaborating with the war against terror". In 2005, Venezuela was labeled by the State Department as a nation "not cooperating with counter-narcotics operations". Despite no substantive evidence to prove such dangerous accusations, the US has utilized these classifications to justify an increase in aggression towards the Venezuelan government. In 2008, the Bush Administration attempted to place Venezuela on the list of State Sponsors of terrorism. The initiative was unsuccessful primarily because Venezuela is still a principal supplier of oil to the US. Should Washington consider Venezuela a terrorist state, all relations would be cut off, including oil supply. Nevertheless, Washington still views Venezuela as a major threat to US interests in the region. The US is particularly concerned about Latin American nations engaging in commercial relations with countries such as China, Russia and Iran, perceived as economic threats to US control and domination in the region. Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a warning to countries in Latin America that have recently forged relations with Iran, such as Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua and Venezuela. ".I think that if people want to flirt with Iran, they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them, and we hope that they will think twice.", Clinton stated during remarks made regarding the State Department's Latin American policy. The Colombian government announced yesterday that a new military base will be built right near the border with Venezuela, with funding and equipment from the United States. Colombia's Defense Minister Gabriel Silva also announced the activation of two air battalions at other border areas near Venezuela. The new military base, located in the Guajira peninsula, which borders the Venezuelan State of Zulia, would have up to 1,000 troops and would also allow the presence of US armed forces and private military contractors. This announcement clearly ups the ante against Venezuela. Today's statements made by President Ch?vez regarding the US military drones discovered violating Venezuelan territory just days ago further escalate the growing tensions between Venezuela and Colombia. The MQ-1 Predator UAV, a type of combat drone, has been used over the past year in Afghanistan and Pakistan to assassinate suspect terrorists. The drones are equipped with Hellfire missiles and are capable of hitting ground targets in sensitive areas. Venezuela is on high alert in the face of this dangerous threat. Ch?vez made the statements regarding the drone detection during the launching of the new National Police Force, a recently created communal police force directed at preventive security operations and community-based service. Eva Golinger, winner of the International Award for Journalism in Mexico (2009), named "La Novia de Venezuela" by President Hugo Ch?vez, is a Venezuelan-American attorney from New York, living in Caracas, Venezuela since 2005 and author of the best-selling books, "The Ch?vez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela" (2006 Olive Branch Press), "Bush vs. Ch?vez: Washington's War on Venezuela" (2007, Monthly Review Press), "The Empire's Web: Encyclopedia of Interventionism and Subversion", "La Mirada del Imperio sobre el 4F: Los Documentos Desclasificados de Washington sobre la rebeli?n militar del 4 de febrero de 1992" and "La Agresi?n Permanente: USAID, NED y CIA". Since 2003, Eva, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and CUNY Law School in New York, has been investigating, analyzing and writing about US intervention in Venezuela using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain information about the US Government's efforts to destabilize progressive movements in Latin America. Her first book, The Ch?vez Code, has been translated and published in six languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian & Russian) and is presently being made into a feature film. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From: AAWL Labour News Date: 22 December 2009 12:12:56 AM Asia Pacific Currents (APC) is the weekly radio program of AAWL. APC features updates, news, commentary as well as interviews about labour issues in the Asia Pacific Region. It is broadcast every Saturday morning at 9.00am on Melbourne 's 3CR Radio: www.3cr.org.au You can listen to podcasts of the program at www.3cr.org.au/aggregator/sources/683 Asia Pacific Currents 05/12/09 News from the Asia Pacific Region: three cases of union repression in Korea: laid-off Triumph garment workers occupy labour ministry building in Bangkok: unionists condemn massacre of journalists in the Philippines: Indian parliament considers a ban on asbestos: Iraqi union leader killed: and Turkish public sector workers stage general strike. Followed by an interview with Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Collective about Tamil refugees in Indonesia. Asia Pacific Currents 12/12/09 Labour news from the Asia Pacific Region. Followed by recorded talk of Maureen Penjueli, Co-ordinator of the Pacific Network on Globalisation on the impact of economic integration on workers in the Pacific. Asia Pacific Currents 19/12/09 Labour and solidarity news from the Asia Pacific Region. Interview with Lucia Jayaseelan, Executive Co-ordinator of Committee of Asian Women, on their recent summit on women workers in Asia. APC will take a summer break over late December and January. The first program of APC in 2010, will be on Saturday day the 6th of February. australia asia worker links - workers change the world PO Box 45 Carlton South Victoria 3053 Australia Tel: + 61 3 9663 7277 Email: aawl at aawl.org.au Web: aawl.org.au +++++++++ IRAN http://www.astreetjournalist.com/category/workers-rights/

------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Tue Dec 22 18:14:37 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:14:37 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Pentagon's Role in Global Catastrophe: Add Climate Havoc to War Crimes Message-ID: <02c901ca8376$7071db90$35ad57ca@jfos> Excerpt: "By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements. The Pentagon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; its secret operations in Pakistan; its equipment on more than 1,000 U.S. bases around the world; its 6,000 facilities in the U.S.; all NATO operations; its aircraft carriers, jet aircraft, weapons testing, training and sales will not be counted against U.S. greenhouse gas limits or included in any count. Just how did the Pentagon come to be exempt from climate agreements? At the time of the Kyoto Accords negotiations, the U.S. demanded as a provision of signing that all of its military operations worldwide and all operations it participates in with the U.N. and/or NATO be completely exempted from measurement or reductions.(snip) Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, who headed the U.S. delegation in Kyoto ... reported that "every requirement the Defense Department and uniformed military who were at Kyoto by my side said they wanted, they got. This is self-defense, peacekeeping, humanitarian relief." After securing this gigantic concession, the Bush administration then refused to sign the accords." -0o0o0o0o0o0o0- Pentagon's Role in Global Catastrophe: Add Climate Havoc to War Crimes by Sara Flounders Global Research, December 19, 2009 International Action Center - 2009-12-18 Email this article to a friend Print this article In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen -- with more than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets -- it is important to ask: How is it possible that the worst polluter of carbon dioxide and other toxic emissions on the planet is not a focus of any conference discussion or proposed restrictions? By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements. The Pentagon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; its secret operations in Pakistan; its equipment on more than 1,000 U.S. bases around the world; its 6,000 facilities in the U.S.; all NATO operations; its aircraft carriers, jet aircraft, weapons testing, training and sales will not be counted against U.S. greenhouse gas limits or included in any count. The Feb. 17, 2007, Energy Bulletin detailed the oil consumption just for the Pentagon's aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities that made it the single-largest oil consumer in the world. At the time, the U.S. Navy had 285 combat and support ships and around 4,000 operational aircraft. The U.S. Army had 28,000 armored vehicles, 140,000 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, more than 4,000 combat helicopters, several hundred fixed-wing aircraft and 187,493 fleet vehicles. Except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, which spread radioactive pollution, all their other vehicles run on oil. Even according to rankings in the 2006 CIA World Factbook, only 35 countries (out of 210 in the world) consume more oil per day than the Pentagon. The U.S. military officially uses 320,000 barrels of oil a day. However, this total does not include fuel consumed by contractors or fuel consumed in leased and privatized facilities. Nor does it include the enormous energy and resources used to produce and maintain their death-dealing equipment or the bombs, grenades or missiles they fire. Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, reports: "The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007. ... The war emits more than 60 percent of all countries. ... This information is not readily available ... because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under U.S. law and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change." (www.naomiklein.org, Dec. 10) Most scientists blame carbon dioxide emissions for greenhouse gases and climate change. Bryan Farrell in his new book, "The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism," says that "the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency ... the Armed Forces of the United States." Just how did the Pentagon come to be exempt from climate agreements? At the time of the Kyoto Accords negotiations, the U.S. demanded as a provision of signing that all of its military operations worldwide and all operations it participates in with the U.N. and/or NATO be completely exempted from measurement or reductions. After securing this gigantic concession, the Bush administration then refused to sign the accords. In a May 18, 1998, article entitled "National security and military policy issues involved in the Kyoto treaty," Dr. Jeffrey Salmon described the Pentagon's position. He quotes then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen's 1997 annual report to Congress: "DoD strongly recommends that the United States insist on a national security provision in the climate change Protocol now being negotiated." (www.marshall.org) According to Salmon, this national security provision was put forth in a draft calling for "complete military exemption from greenhouse gas emissions limits. The draft includes multilateral operations such as NATO- and U.N.-sanctioned activities, but it also includes actions related very broadly to national security, which would appear to comprehend all forms of unilateral military actions and training for such actions." Salmon also quoted Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, who headed the U.S. delegation in Kyoto . Eizenstat reported that "every requirement the Defense Department and uniformed military who were at Kyoto by my side said they wanted, they got. This is self-defense, peacekeeping, humanitarian relief." Although the U.S. had already received these assurances in the negotiations, the U.S. Congress passed an explicit provision guaranteeing U.S. military exemption. Inter Press Service reported on May 21, 1998: "U.S. law makers, in the latest blow to international efforts to halt global warming, today exempted U.S. military operations from the Kyoto agreement which lays out binding commitments to reduce 'greenhouse gas' emissions. The House of Representatives passed an amendment to next year's military authorization bill that 'prohibits the restriction of armed forces under the Kyoto Protocol.'" Today in Copenhagen the same agreements and guidelines on greenhouse gases still hold. Yet it is extremely difficult to find even a mention of this glaring omission. According to environmental journalist Johanna Peace, military activities will continue to be exempt from an executive order signed by President Barack Obama that calls for federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Peace states, "The military accounts for a full 80 percent of the federal government's energy demand." (solveclimate.com, Sept. 1) The blanket exclusion of the Pentagon's global operations makes U.S. carbon dioxide emissions appear far less than they in fact are. Yet even without counting the Pentagon, the U.S. still has the world's largest carbon dioxide emissions. More than Emissions Besides emitting carbon dioxide, U.S. military operations release other highly toxic and radioactive materials into the air, water and soil. U.S. weapons made with depleted uranium have spread tens of thousands of pounds of microparticles of radioactive and highly toxic waste throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and the Balkans. The U.S. sells land mines and cluster bombs that are a major cause of delayed explosives, maiming and disabling especially peasant farmers and rural peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America . For example, Israel dropped more than 1 million U.S.-provided cluster bombs on Lebanon during its 2006 invasion. The U.S. war in Vietnam left large areas so contaminated with the Agent Orange herbicide that today, more than 35 years later, dioxin contamination is 300 to 400 times higher than "safe" levels. Severe birth defects and high rates of cancer resulting from environmental contamination are continuing into a third generation. The 1991 U.S. war in Iraq , followed by 13 years of starvation sanctions, the 2003 U.S. invasion and continuing occupation, has transformed the region -- which has a 5,000-year history as a Middle East breadbasket -- into an environmental catastrophe. Iraq 's arable and fertile land has become a desert wasteland where the slightest wind whips up a dust storm. A former food exporter, Iraq now imports 80 percent of its food. The Iraqi Agriculture Ministry estimates that 90 percent of the land has severe desertification. Environmental War at Home Moreover, the Defense Department has routinely resisted orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up contaminated U.S. bases. ( Washington Post, June 30, 2008) Pentagon military bases top the Superfund list of the most polluted places, as contaminants seep into drinking water aquifers and soil. The Pentagon has also fought EPA efforts to set new pollution standards on two toxic chemicals widely found on military sites: perchlorate, found in propellant for rockets and missiles; and trichloroethylene, a degreaser for metal parts. Trichloroethylene is the most widespread water contaminant in the country, seeping into aquifers across California , New York , Texas , Florida and elsewhere. More than 1,000 military sites in the U.S. are contaminated with the chemical. The poorest communities, especially communities of color, are the most severely impacted by this poisoning. U.S. testing of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Southwest and on South Pacific islands has contaminated millions of areas of land and water with radiation. Mountains of radioactive and toxic uranium tailings have been left on Indigenous land in the Southwest. More than 1,000 uranium mines have been abandoned on Navajo reservations in Arizona and New Mexico . Around the world, on past and still operating bases in Puerto Rico, the Philippines , South Korea , Vietnam , Laos , Cambodia , Japan , Nicaragua , Panama and the former Yugoslavia , rusting barrels of chemicals and solvents and millions of rounds of ammunition are criminally abandoned by the Pentagon. The best way to dramatically clean up the environment is to shut down the Pentagon. What is needed to combat climate change is a thoroughgoing system change. Sara Flounders is Co-Director of the International Action Center Sara Flounders is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Sara Flounders -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Tue Dec 22 18:53:09 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:53:09 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Copenhagen special -- Chavez, Morales, Fidel, G77, Maldives, Tuvalu, protests; PLUS Cap and Trade; Leninism Message-ID: <4B318615.3090203@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: Copenhagen special -- Chavez, Morales, Fidel, G77, Maldives, Tuvalu, protests; PLUS Cap and Trade; Leninism * * * 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 at dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links. * * * Hugo Ch?vez writes on `The battle of Copenhagen' By Hugo Ch?vez Fr?as, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, translated by Kiraz Janicke for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal December 20, 2009 ``I will not tire of repeating to the four winds: the only possible and viable alternative is socialism. I said it in each of my speeches to all the world representatives gathered in Copenhagen, the world's most important event in the last two hundred years: there is no other way if we want to stop this heartless and debased competition that promises only total annihilation." - Hugo Ch?vez * Read more Copenhagen: `Imperial' climate deal rejected by poor-country delegates December 18, 2009 -- Speaking on behalf of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, President Hugo Ch?vez of Venezuela took the floor at the plenary of the COP15 climate talks in Copenhagen to denounce the final ``deal'' that was soon to emerge and be imposed on the majority poor-country delegates, and which would fall far short of their demands. Chavez accused US President Barack Obama of behaving like an emperor "who comes in during the middle of the night ... and cooks up a document that we will not accept, we will never accept". * Read more Copenhagen: Democracy Now! interview with Evo Morales -- `We cannot end global warming without ending capitalism' December 17, 2009 -- Bolivia's President Evo Morales joins us in Copenhagen to talk about the UN climate talks, capitalism, climate debt and much more. "Policies of unlimited industrialisation are what destroys the environment", Morales said. "And that irrational industrialisation is capitalism." * Read more Copenhagen: Full speech -- Chavez salutes protesters, calls for system change to save planet By Kiraz Janicke, Caracas December 16, 2009 - During his speech to the 15th United Nations Climate Change Summit (COP15) in Copenhagen, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez slammed the "lack of political will" of the most powerful nations to take serious action to avert climate change, and called for systemic change to save the planet. * Read more Copenhagen: People's summit develops a people-powered response to the climate crisis By Lauren Carroll Harris, Copenhagen December 15, 2009 -- Just over a week into the December 7-18 United Nations climate change negotiations in Copenhagen (COP15) , thousands of ordinary people from around the world have already participated in what is being billed as the "people's climate summit", Klimaforum09, also taking place in the Danish capital. The difference between the two forums could not be more stark. * Read more Fidel Castro: The truth about what happened at Copenhagen By Fidel Castro Ruz December 19, 2009 -- Until very recently, the discussion revolved around the kind of society we would have. Today, the discussion centres on whether human society will survive. These are not dramatic phrases. We must get used to the true facts. Hope is the last thing human beings can relinquish. With truthful arguments, men and women of all ages, especially young people, have waged an exemplary battle at the Copengahen COP15 summit and taught the world a great lesson. It is important now that Cuba and the world come to know as much as possible of what happened in Copenhagen. The truth can be stronger than the influenced and often misinformed minds of those holding in their hands the destiny of the world. * Read more Beyond Copenhagen: left alternatives to capitalism By Lauren Carroll Harris, Copenhagen "Can a finite Earth support an infinite project? The thesis of capitalism, infinite development, is a destructive pattern, let's face it. How long are we going to tolerate the current international economic order and prevailing market mechanisms? How long are we going to allow huge epidemics like HIV/AIDS to ravage entire populations? How long are we going to allow the hungry to not eat or to be able to feed their own children? How long are we going to allow millions of children to die from curable diseases? How long will we allow armed conflicts to massacre millions of innocent human beings in order for the powerful to seize the resources of other peoples?" -- Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, speaking at COP15, December 16, 2009 * Read more Countering the critics of Annie Leonard's `The Story of Cap and Trade' By Patrick Bond December 16, 2009 -- Eight million people viewed Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff video since December 2007 and her new nine-minute Story of Cap and Trade has received 400,000 hits in the two weeks since its December 1 launch. * Read more Lumumba Di-Aping: Third World hero of Copenhagen By Derek Barry December 16, 2009 -- Lumumba Di-Aping has made the brave call that no Australian politician has been game to make, callin Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a climate sceptic. The key negotiator at Copenhagen on behalf of the G77-China group told the ABC (also see below) that Rudd's message to his own people was a fabrication which "does not relate to the facts because his actions are climate change scepticism in action". Di-Aping was pointing the disparity between Rudd's sayings and actions on climate change. "It's puzzling in the sense that here is a Prime Minister who actually won the elections because of his commitment to climate change", Di-Aping said. "And within a very short period of time he changes his mind, changes his position, he start acting as if he has been converted into climate change scepticism." * Read more Evo Morales at Copenhagen: `Shameful' for West to spend trillions on war and just $10 billion for climate change December 16, 2009 -- In a press conference on December 16, Bolivia's President Evo Morales said, "The budget of the United States is US$687 billion for defence. And for climate change, to save life, to save humanity, they only put up $10 billion. This is shameful." * Read more Copenhagen: Maldives, Tuvalu, small island nations lead fight for real action on climate December 15, 2009 -- The president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, stressed the power of people to take action on climate change, when he spoke to a packed audience at Klimaforum09, the alternative climate summit in Copenhagen, on December 14. * Read more Leninism: It's not what you think By Paul Kellogg [This article first appeared in Socialist Studies: the Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies 5(2), Fall 2009. It has been posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author's permission.] * 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: From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Tue Dec 22 18:53:09 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:53:09 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Copenhagen special -- Chavez, Morales, Fidel, G77, Maldives, Tuvalu, protests; PLUS Cap and Trade; Leninism Message-ID: <4B318615.3090203@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: Copenhagen special -- Chavez, Morales, Fidel, G77, Maldives, Tuvalu, protests; PLUS Cap and Trade; Leninism * * * 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 at dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links. * * * Hugo Ch?vez writes on `The battle of Copenhagen' By Hugo Ch?vez Fr?as, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, translated by Kiraz Janicke for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal December 20, 2009 ``I will not tire of repeating to the four winds: the only possible and viable alternative is socialism. I said it in each of my speeches to all the world representatives gathered in Copenhagen, the world's most important event in the last two hundred years: there is no other way if we want to stop this heartless and debased competition that promises only total annihilation." - Hugo Ch?vez * Read more Copenhagen: `Imperial' climate deal rejected by poor-country delegates December 18, 2009 -- Speaking on behalf of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, President Hugo Ch?vez of Venezuela took the floor at the plenary of the COP15 climate talks in Copenhagen to denounce the final ``deal'' that was soon to emerge and be imposed on the majority poor-country delegates, and which would fall far short of their demands. Chavez accused US President Barack Obama of behaving like an emperor "who comes in during the middle of the night ... and cooks up a document that we will not accept, we will never accept". * Read more Copenhagen: Democracy Now! interview with Evo Morales -- `We cannot end global warming without ending capitalism' December 17, 2009 -- Bolivia's President Evo Morales joins us in Copenhagen to talk about the UN climate talks, capitalism, climate debt and much more. "Policies of unlimited industrialisation are what destroys the environment", Morales said. "And that irrational industrialisation is capitalism." * Read more Copenhagen: Full speech -- Chavez salutes protesters, calls for system change to save planet By Kiraz Janicke, Caracas December 16, 2009 - During his speech to the 15th United Nations Climate Change Summit (COP15) in Copenhagen, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez slammed the "lack of political will" of the most powerful nations to take serious action to avert climate change, and called for systemic change to save the planet. * Read more Copenhagen: People's summit develops a people-powered response to the climate crisis By Lauren Carroll Harris, Copenhagen December 15, 2009 -- Just over a week into the December 7-18 United Nations climate change negotiations in Copenhagen (COP15) , thousands of ordinary people from around the world have already participated in what is being billed as the "people's climate summit", Klimaforum09, also taking place in the Danish capital. The difference between the two forums could not be more stark. * Read more Fidel Castro: The truth about what happened at Copenhagen By Fidel Castro Ruz December 19, 2009 -- Until very recently, the discussion revolved around the kind of society we would have. Today, the discussion centres on whether human society will survive. These are not dramatic phrases. We must get used to the true facts. Hope is the last thing human beings can relinquish. With truthful arguments, men and women of all ages, especially young people, have waged an exemplary battle at the Copengahen COP15 summit and taught the world a great lesson. It is important now that Cuba and the world come to know as much as possible of what happened in Copenhagen. The truth can be stronger than the influenced and often misinformed minds of those holding in their hands the destiny of the world. * Read more Beyond Copenhagen: left alternatives to capitalism By Lauren Carroll Harris, Copenhagen "Can a finite Earth support an infinite project? The thesis of capitalism, infinite development, is a destructive pattern, let's face it. How long are we going to tolerate the current international economic order and prevailing market mechanisms? How long are we going to allow huge epidemics like HIV/AIDS to ravage entire populations? How long are we going to allow the hungry to not eat or to be able to feed their own children? How long are we going to allow millions of children to die from curable diseases? How long will we allow armed conflicts to massacre millions of innocent human beings in order for the powerful to seize the resources of other peoples?" -- Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, speaking at COP15, December 16, 2009 * Read more Countering the critics of Annie Leonard's `The Story of Cap and Trade' By Patrick Bond December 16, 2009 -- Eight million people viewed Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff video since December 2007 and her new nine-minute Story of Cap and Trade has received 400,000 hits in the two weeks since its December 1 launch. * Read more Lumumba Di-Aping: Third World hero of Copenhagen By Derek Barry December 16, 2009 -- Lumumba Di-Aping has made the brave call that no Australian politician has been game to make, callin Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a climate sceptic. The key negotiator at Copenhagen on behalf of the G77-China group told the ABC (also see below) that Rudd's message to his own people was a fabrication which "does not relate to the facts because his actions are climate change scepticism in action". Di-Aping was pointing the disparity between Rudd's sayings and actions on climate change. "It's puzzling in the sense that here is a Prime Minister who actually won the elections because of his commitment to climate change", Di-Aping said. "And within a very short period of time he changes his mind, changes his position, he start acting as if he has been converted into climate change scepticism." * Read more Evo Morales at Copenhagen: `Shameful' for West to spend trillions on war and just $10 billion for climate change December 16, 2009 -- In a press conference on December 16, Bolivia's President Evo Morales said, "The budget of the United States is US$687 billion for defence. And for climate change, to save life, to save humanity, they only put up $10 billion. This is shameful." * Read more Copenhagen: Maldives, Tuvalu, small island nations lead fight for real action on climate December 15, 2009 -- The president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, stressed the power of people to take action on climate change, when he spoke to a packed audience at Klimaforum09, the alternative climate summit in Copenhagen, on December 14. * Read more Leninism: It's not what you think By Paul Kellogg [This article first appeared in Socialist Studies: the Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies 5(2), Fall 2009. It has been posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author's permission.] * 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: From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Wed Dec 23 06:25:07 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 10:25:07 -0400 Subject: [Mai-not] Income and wealth inequality: An underlying cause of the crash by James Laxer Dec 22, 2009 Message-ID: <4B31F003.28493.17FB6751@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> The last thirty years have been the golden age of inequality. While that inequality was the incubator for multitudes of new billionaires, it was, as well, a principal cause of the Crash. In large part, the meltdown of the financial sector flowed from the labour market model that was the very heart of neo-liberalism i,e directly from the reckless decisions of financial managers to mine the economy for enhanced profits through the promotion of various kinds of debt and the promotion of variety of financial products whose common aim was to heighten the leverage of investors.In sharp contrast to the period from 1950 to 1970, when the real incomes of the families of wage and salary earning Canadians, adjusted for inflation, doubled during the last several decades, real incomes in North America have remained essentially flat for most wage and salary earners ...... The widening divide between a tiny minority at the top, especially in the Anglo-American world, and the rest of the population has limited the growth of the market for goods and services. When those at the top keep too much for themselves and hold wages and salaries down, they set themselves up for an economic crisis. The same was true in the 1920s on the eve of the Crash of 1929. This time, the financial capitalists who were at the centre of the meltdown spent the first decade of this new century trying to stave off the crisis -- in the aftermath of the bursting of the dot.com bubble -- with a whole series of new initiatives, in sub-prime mortgages, in the promotion of personal debt, and in the sale of a long list of financial products under the headings of securitization, credit default swaps and other derivatives. fyi-janet James Laxer is the author of a recent book -"Beyond the Bubble" and earlier books such as Decline of the Superpowers: Winners & Losers in Today's Global Economy1988; False God: How the Globalization Myth Has Impoverished Canada 1993; Neo-Conservative Assault 1996, The Undeclared War: Class Conflict in the Age of Cyber Capitalism 1998; Stalking the Elephant: My Discovery of America 2000; Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism 2004 James Laxer is a Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto. http://www.jameslaxer.com/about.htm His brother Gordon Laxer is a political economist and author of "Open for Business: The Roots of Foreign Ownership in Canada" (John Porter Award). He is the Director and founder of the progressive, non- corporate Parklands Institute and is principal investigator of the Globalism and its Challengers Project, both at the University of Alberta, Canada.http://ualberta.ca/~parkland/ http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9780230523715 ==================== http://rabble.ca/print/blogs/bloggers/james-laxer/2009/12/income-and- wealth-inequality-underlying-cause-crash Income and wealth inequality: An underlying cause of the crash By James Laxer Created Dec 22 2009 - 2:30pm James Laxer Story_publish_date: December 22, 2009 summary: I was asked to explain why I believe that one of the basic causes of the economic crash of 2008 was the widening income and wealth gap between the rich and the rest of the population. (In a question posted on my blog, Bill Bell asked me to explain why I believe that one of the basic causes of the economic crash of 2008 was the widening income and wealth gap between the rich and the rest of the population. Drawn from excerpts from my book Beyond the Bubble, here is my answer to that crucial question.) The last thirty years have been the golden age of inequality. While that inequality was the incubator for multitudes of new billionaires, it was, as well, a principal cause of the Crash. In large part, the meltdown of the financial sector flowed from the labour market model that was the very heart of neo-liberalism. The financial meltdown flowed directly from the reckless decisions of financial managers to mine the economy for enhanced profits through the promotion of various kinds of debt and the promotion of variety of financial products whose common aim was to heighten the leverage of investors. In sharp contrast to the period from 1950 to 1970, when the real incomes of the families of wage and salary earning Canadians, adjusted for inflation, doubled during the last several decades, real incomes in North America have remained essentially flat for most wage and salary earners. In the period 1980 to 2006, what happened to the incomes of younger U.S. full-time, full-year wage and salary earners aged twenty-five to thirty-four is telling. Here is what happened to the incomes of younger full-time, full year wage and salary earners in the United States, aged 25-34 over the period 1980 to 2006. This cohort is extraordinarily important because it is made up of people already solidly in the work force for whom the pattern has been set and whose life journeys will be crucial in coming decades. In constant 2006 dollars, the median annual income of this crucial cohort in 1980 was $36,700; in 2006, it was $35,000. For men in the cohort, here are the median wage and salary figures for 1980 and 2006: $43,700 and $37,000 respectively; for women: $29,400 and $31,800; for whites of both genders: $38,200 and $37,400; for blacks of both genders: $29,400 and $30,000; for Hispanics of both genders: $33,000 and $28,000. The median incomes for working-age U.S. households over the period from 2001 to 2007 -- the years in the lead-up to the crash -- are also revealing. Household incomes are crucially important to economic well-being, including as they do the incomes of single-income households and the larger number of households that have more than one earner. In constant 2007 dollars, the median income of working- age U.S. households was $58,721 in 2001; in 2007, it was $56,545. In Canada, the median wages and salaries of Canadian workers, adjusted for inflation have not grown for the past three decades. A study published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives resolves the different ways Statistics Canada has categorized the data to show that average real wages for Canadian workers, have not increased since the end of the 1970s. In constant 2005 dollars, the average weekly wage was just under $800 in the early 1980s, where it remained in 2005, with those working overtime earning more than those who did not. While there were minor fluctuations over the decades, what is remarkable is how little things changed. Rising levels of productivity in the economy were not passed on to the average worker in the form of higher wages. The study concluded: "Astoundingly...real wages have been stagnant for 30 years running." In recent years the relative income gap in the United States between the rich and the rest is wider than at any time since 1928 (the eve of the Great Depression.) In 2005, while the total reported income in the United States grew by nearly 9 per cent, the average incomes for those in the bottom 90 per cent of income earners actually declined slightly, by $172 or 0.6 per cent. The top 300,000 income earners took home a total remuneration that was nearly equivalent to the combined incomes of the bottom 150 million Americans. The privileged 300,000, per person, received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom 150 million -- the gap between the two cohorts having nearly doubled since 1980. In 2005, the top ten per cent of American income earners took home 48.5 per cent of all reported income, compared with roughly 33 per cent in the late 1970s. The all time peak for the top ten per cent was 49.3 per cent in 1928. The top one per cent took home 21.8 per cent of reported income, more than double their share of income in 1980. In 1928, the top one per cent peaked in its share of income at 23.9 per cent. In 2005, the top tenth of one per cent reported an average income of $5.6 million, and the top hundredth of one per cent an average income of $25.7 million. The word "reported" used in this paragraph is very important. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has reported that it is able to accurately tax 99 per cent of income from wages, but that it is only able to tax about 70 per cent of business and investment income, most of which goes to upper income earners. What this means is that the IRS doesn't really know how much business and investment income is being earned in the United States. The consequence is that the real income gap is greater than reported in the figures above. During an epoch when the top one per cent of income earners were squeezing ever more out of the economy for themselves, employers and governments, with the full support of neo-liberal economists and social scientists, were implementing a labour market model that marginalized an ever larger proportion of the work force. Particularly in the Anglo-American world and in countries that adopted the Anglo-American model, the dominant idea was to establish an ever more "flexible" labour market. The word "flexible", chosen to seem modern and progressive, meant that the labour force would be segmented so that while its inner core would be made up of wage and salary earners with full time employment, benefits, and a degree of job security, around this core there would be an ever greater secondary labour force, made up of part-time or contractual employees, whose rate of pay was lower, a work-force with few benefits, without pensions, and with little or no job security. Over the past quarter century the rise of this secondary or precarious labour force has transformed the economies of the advanced countries. For the most part, the precarious labour force has been made up of women, immigrants, people of colour, migrants to cities from rural areas and small towns, and those with limited education. The workers in the precarious labour force cost employers, whether they are in the private or public sectors, much less than do their employees in the inner or permanent labour force. Savings accrue in a number of ways. The hourly or weekly rates of pay of precarious workers are lower. Reduced benefits and the absence of pensions result in enormous savings. Of great importance, the members of the precarious work force can be hired or laid off at the pleasure of the employer, or to use the in-word, in the most flexible possible way. As the demand for goods and services rises in particular sectors, people can be hired, without long-term commitments being made to them, so that when demand declines, these people can be shown the door with little difficulty. The rise of the precarious or secondary labour force also puts immense pressure on the permanent labour force, by threatening it with a less costly alternative. The permanent labour force is highly expensive for employers. Wages and salaries are much higher than in the precarious zone, benefits are substantial and costly and so are pensions. In addition, depending on labour laws in particular jurisdictions, as well as union contracts, dismissing an employee can be an expensive affair, often involving costly severance payouts. Highly significant, the permanent labour force is much more often unionized than is the precarious force. Unions manage to increase the wage and salaries and the benefits as well as the job security of their members. All of these effects of trade unionism are thought to be undesirable by the proponents of a flexible labour market. Business school students are taught that trade unionism is old-fashioned. While it once played a useful role in winning higher wages and better working conditions for employees in the days of the rough and ready capitalism of the past, capitalism has been modernized and humanized and no longer needs unions, the story goes. Instead, students learn, unions are barriers that stand in the way of efficiency, increased productivity and the smooth evolution of the market economy toward ever more highly sought goods and services. Neo-liberal economists contend that too much job security holds an economy back. Job security can block a company's move into cutting- edge sectors of the future, tempting the enterprise to remain in mature sectors that may already be in decline. Over the long-term such a company is bound to lose out to more innovative companies that do not have to operate according these rules. In addition, job security, these analysts contend, forces enterprises to keep mediocre and aging employees on their payrolls, when they would do better if they could rid themselves of such workers and hire younger, better educated, more highly motivated people. There is no doubt, as well, that competition and negative feelings between those in the permanent labour force and those in the marginalized work force act to the benefit of both private and public sector employers. Part time workers who are not unionized and who have little job security are often resentful of workers with full- time jobs who have substantial job security and the protection of union contracts. In neo-liberal societies, the media regularly depicts the elected officials of trade unions as "union bosses", suggesting that their members work for the union rather than the reverse. In the public service, which is now relatively highly unionized, especially in Canada, employees are routinely described as lazy and inefficient, highly resistant to change and devoted to short- work weeks and long holidays. One consequence of neo-liberal assaults against unions is that many of those who work in the precarious sector resent full-time, unionized workers. When unionized workers go on strike, it is not difficult for the media to find lower paid part- time workers to complain that fat-cat union members should have to contend with the insecurities that are the lot in life of the majority. Employers have always benefited from resentments between different segments of the work force. Today's division of the work force into the inner segment and the precarious segment suits them to a tee. Important as well in dividing workers into competitive sub groups that bear resentments against one another, is the highly diverse character of today's labour force. Race, ethnicity and gender are crucial lines of demarcation in the contemporary labour force. Resentments among workers on the basis of race, ethnicity and religion is no new thing. The history of struggles within the working class is not pretty story to gladden the hearts of trade union militants. Resistance to immigrant workers who threaten to compete with and reduce the remuneration of the existing working force is a recurring part of the history of working people. Resentment among workers against the Chinese labourers who played a central role in constructing the railways in both Canada and the United States resulted in numerous brawls, beatings and lynchings and in popular support for laws restricting Chinese immigration to Canada and the United States. The impact of the neo-liberal social model is one of the chief causes of the crash of 2008. This is because the suppression of wage and salary increases -- the heart of the neo-liberal model -- both in the advanced countries and throughout the world, has had the inexorable effect of limiting the size of the market for goods and services and consequently for increased profits. This is the old capitalist conundrum. While individual capitalists benefit from keeping the wages and salaries they pay as low as possible, collectively they benefit from making wages and salaries as high as possible. Keeping its own wage bill low obviously directly enhances a company's profits. There is simply more left over for the shareholders or owners. Paradoxically, a company is aided if its competitors have high wage bills for the simple reason that this means there will be more money in the pockets of consumers to purchase the goods and services of firms in general, including those determined to keep their own wage bills as low as possible. This is an insoluble dilemma. Individual firms, concerned exclusively with their own results, are not prepared to raise wage and salaries as a way to serve the general interest, including the interest of other private firms. Indeed, they only raise the wages and salaries they pay in response to effective pressure from unions or from the existence of labour shortages to raise them. They also raise wages if forced to do so as a consequence of minimum wage legislation or as a consequence of full-employment state policies that succeed in keeping the pool of surplus labour as small as possible. During the Keynesian age of the post-war decades, wages and salaries did rise for a variety of reasons. Under pressure from electorates with keen memories of the privations of the Great Depression and the war, as well as of the effectiveness of wartime economic planning, governments made job creation and full employment top priorities. Under conditions in which the pool of surplus labour was minimal, unions undertook highly effective drives to organize the unorganized. During the post-war decades, the trade union movements reached the peak of their economic and societal influence in Western Europe, Canada and the United States. In a period often described as a golden age, wage and salary earners achieved greater influence than ever before in the history of capitalism. Real wages rose, social programs were expanded, educational opportunities were widened. For the first time in history, the majority of wage and salary earners in the advanced countries were no longer poor. During the period of the "great social compromise", while corporations remained at the helm in directing the economy and reaping the benefits, workers had to be taken in consideration as never before. Of critical importance to the stability of these arrangements, this was also an era of national capitalism within the framework of the American centred Bretton Woods economic system. In this period of fixed exchange rates, as opposed to the system of floating exchange rates, with which we live, the U.S. dollar was the reserve currency of the world, exchangeable for gold at a rate of $35 an ounce, and exchangeable as well for other currencies. Despite rising trade and investment abroad on the part of multinational corporations, this was also an age of national capitalism, with the state in each advanced country playing a seminal role in steering the system. It was the age of the so-called "mixed economy", a term that acknowledged the predominant role of the private sector but also the power of the state and its responsibility to steer the economy to achieve broad objectives, the most important being full employment. Following the intermediate decade of the 1970s, whose economic storms and shocks led to the collapse of the Keynesian consensus, rising government deficits and debts, slower economic growth, and the existence of high inflation alongside high unemployment, the transition was rapid to the new age of globalization, de-regulation and neo-liberalism. The leading political stars of this new age of the right were Margaret Thatcher, elected to lead a Conservative government in Britain in 1979, and Ronald Reagan, who was elected President of the United States the following year. Neo-liberalism dismantled the regulatory systems that had been in place during the post war decades. In the Anglo-American world, and in other nations as well, the doors were thrown open to the free movement of capital internationally. National governments lost their ability to control capital flows. Gigantic new corporate investments outside the developed countries tore away at the balance of power that existed between capital and labour. Able to access much cheaper labour on an enormous scale, corporations threw workers and their unions onto the defensive. >From the early 1980s to the present, corporations have been running away from labour in the advanced countries. .....In the United States and Canada, the income of the average worker, adjusted for inflation, has hardly grown over the past quarter century. In the United States, only 12 per cent employees were unionized in 2006; in Canada, the proportion is much higher at 31.4 per cent in 2007, but it too has been declining..... How then has the neo-liberal model played a key role in triggering the crash? The widening divide between a tiny minority at the top, especially in the Anglo-American world, and the rest of the population has limited the growth of the market for goods and services. When those at the top keep too much for themselves and hold wages and salaries down, they set themselves up for an economic crisis. The same was true in the 1920s on the eve of the Crash of 1929. This time, the financial capitalists who were at the centre of the meltdown spent the first decade of this new century trying to stave off the crisis -- in the aftermath of the bursting of the dot.com bubble -- with a whole series of new initiatives, in sub-prime mortgages, in the promotion of personal debt, and in the sale of a long list of financial products under the headings of securitization, credit default swaps and other derivatives. Comments Login [2] or register [3] to post comments -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WPM$5D36.PM$ Type: application/octet-stream Size: 21988 bytes Desc: Mail message body URL: From papadop at peak.org Wed Dec 23 07:51:12 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:51:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] George Monbiot: Blame the US Senate's disinterest in campaign reform Message-ID: Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:31:56 -0500 (EST) From: Vernon Huffman All the governments got together in Copenhagen to tackle the climate change problem and they failed to come up with a credible plan. Why am I not surprised? When is the last time you remember government solving a serious problem without creating an even bigger one? Solutions exist. Scientific American has a wonderful interactive display online at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=powering-a-green-planet that explains one straight-forward proposal for a clean, green solution. Although it is completely sensible, I'd say it has about as much chance of success as an airline based on flying pigs. The energy use patterns of the north are causing serious climate issues, which are felt most severely in the south, where poor people live. How likely are rich world leaders to come up with a solution? Don't hold your breath. But don't give up hope, either. The problem is caused by the lifestyles of people like you and me. If we don't like it, we can change. Here are some steps any American can take. * Get rid of your car and get around by walking, bicycling, and public transit. * Eat a locally grown, raw vegan diet. * Heat and cool your home with passive solar energy. * Use a solar clothes drier (aka clothesline). * Install a solar water heater. Each of these steps will save lives by reducing your carbon footprint dramatically. Not every one of them is easy, but each offers rewards on a personal scale beyond improved karma. Besides improving the global climate situation, these steps hold promise for eliminating oil wars, improving our health, and rectifying the economy. It might not seem easy, but you know it's the right thing to do. From papadop at peak.org Wed Dec 23 14:04:50 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:04:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] EU/IMF revolt ?? Message-ID: About the Greek financial crisis Papandreou sez: "Salaried workers will not pay for this situation: we will not proceed with wage freezes or cuts. We did not come to power to tear down the social state." http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16643 EU/IMF Revolt: Greece, Iceland, Latvia May Lead the Way by Ellen Brown ########### Ellen Brown is a California attorney and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free, available in English, Swedish and German. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Ellen Brown ########### Global Research, December 22, 2009 Web of Debt - 2009-12-17 Europe's small, debt-strapped countries could follow the lead of Argentina and simply walk away from their debts. That would shift the burden to the creditor countries, which could solve the problem merely by a change in accounting rules. Total financial collapse, once a problem only for developing countries, has now come to Europe. The International Monetary Fund is imposing its austerity measures on the outer circle of the European Union, with Greece, Iceland and Latvia the hardest hit. But these are not your ordinary third world debtor supplicants. Historically, the Vikings of Iceland successfully invaded Britain; Latvian tribes repulsed the Vikings; and the Greeks conquered the whole Persian empire. If anyone can stand up to the IMF, these stalwart European warriors can. Dozens of countries have defaulted on their debts in recent decades, the most recent being Dubai, which declared a debt moratorium on November 26, 2009. If the once lavishly-rich Arab emirate can default, more desperate countries can; and when the alternative is to destroy the local economy, it is hard to argue that they shouldnt. That is particularly true when the creditors are largely responsible for the debtors troubles, and there are good grounds for arguing the debts are not owed. Greeces troubles originated when low interest rates that were inappropriate for Greece were maintained to rescue Germany from an economic slump. And Iceland and Latvia have been saddled with responsibility for private obligations to which they were not parties. Economist Michael Hudson writes: The European Union and International Monetary Fund have told them to replace private debts with public obligations, and to pay by raising taxes, slashing public spending and obliging citizens to deplete their savings. Resentment is growing not only toward those who ran up these debts . . . but also toward the neoliberal foreign advisors and creditors who pressured these governments to sell off the banks and public infrastructure to insiders. THE DYSFUNCTIONAL EU: WHERE A COMMON CURRENCY FAILS Greece may be the first in the EU outer circle to revolt. According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Sundays Daily Telegraph, Greece has become the first country on the distressed fringes of Europe's monetary union to defy Brussels and reject the Dark Age leech-cure of wage deflation. Prime Minister George Papandreou said on Friday: "Salaried workers will not pay for this situation: we will not proceed with wage freezes or cuts. We did not come to power to tear down the social state." Notes Evans-Pritchard: Mr Papandreou has good reason to throw the gauntlet at Europe's feet. Greece is being told to adopt an IMF-style austerity package, without the devaluation so central to IMF plans. The prescription is ruinous and patently self-defeating. The currency cannot be devalued because the same Euro is used by all. That means that while the country's ability to repay is being crippled by austerity measures, there is no way to lower the cost of the debt. Evans-Pritchard concludes: The deeper truth that few in Euroland are willing to discuss is that EMU is inherently dysfunctional for Greece, for Germany, for everybody. Which is all the more reason that Iceland, which is not yet a member of the EU, might want to reconsider its position. As a condition of membership, Iceland is being required to endorse an agreement in which it would reimburse Dutch and British depositors who lost money in the collapse of IceSave, an offshore division of Icelands leading private bank. Eva Joly, a Norwegian-French magistrate hired to investigate the Icelandic bank collapse, calls it blackmail. She warns that succumbing to the EUs demands will drain Iceland of its resources and its people, who are being forced to emigrate to find work. Latvia is a member of the EU and is expected to adopt the Euro, but it has not yet reached that stage. Meanwhile, the EU and IMF have told the government to borrow foreign currency to stabilize the exchange rate of the local currency, in order to help borrowers pay mortgages taken out in foreign currencies from foreign banks. As a condition of IMF funding, the usual government cutbacks are also being required. Nils Muiznieks, head of the Advanced Social and Political Research Institute in Riga, Latvia, complained: The rest of the world is implementing stimulus packages ranging from anywhere between one percent and ten percent of GDP but at the same time, Latvia has been asked to make deep cuts in spending - a total of about 38 percent this year in the public sector - and raise taxes to meet budget shortfalls. In November, the Latvian government adopted its harshest budget of recent years, with cuts of nearly 11%. The government had already raised taxes, slashed public spending and government wages, and shut dozens of schools and hospitals. As a result, the national bank forecasts a 17.5% decline in the economy this year, just when it needs a productive economy to get back on its feet. In Iceland, the economy contracted by 7.2% during the third quarter, the biggest fall on record. As in other countries squeezed by neo-liberal tourniquets on productivity, employment and output are being crippled, bringing these economies to their knees. The cynical view is that that may have been the intent. Instead of helping post-Soviet nations develop self-reliant economies, writes Marshall Auerback, the West has viewed them as economic oysters to be broken up to indebt them in order to extract interest charges and capital gains, leaving them empty shells. But the people are not submitting quietly to all this. In Latvia last week, while the Parliament debated what to do about the nations debt, thousands of demonstrating students and teachers filled the streets, protesting the closing of a hundred schools and reductions in teacher salaries of up to 60%. Demonstrators held signs saying, "They have sold their souls to the devil" and "We are against poverty." In the Iceland Parliament, the IceSave debate had been going on for over 140 hours at last report, a new record; and a growing portion of the population opposes underwriting a debt they believe the government does not owe. In a December 3 article in The Daily Mail titled What Iceland Can Teach the Tories, Mary Ellen Synon wrote that ever since the Icelandic economy collapsed last year, the empire builders of Brussels have been confident that the bankrupt and frightened Icelanders must finally be ready to exchange their independence for the stability of EU membership. But last month, an opinion poll showed that 54 percent of all Icelanders oppose membership, with just 29 percent in favor. Synon wrote: The Icelanders may have been scared out of their wits last year, but they are now climbing out from under the ruins of their prosperity and have decided that the most valuable thing they have left is their independence. They are not willing to trade it, not even for the possibility of a bail-out by the European Central Bank. Iceland, Latvia and Greece are all in a position to call the bluff of the IMF and EU. In an October 1 article called Latvia the Insanity Continues, Marshall Auerback maintained that Latvias debt problem could be fixed over a weekend, by a list of measures including (1) not answering the phone when foreign creditors call the government; (2) declaring the banks insolvent, converting their external debt to equity, and having them reopen with full deposit insurance guaranteed in local currency; and (3) offering a local currency minimum wage job that includes healthcare to anyone willing and able to work as was done in Argentina after the Kirchner regime repudiated the IMFs toxic package of debt repayment. Evans-Pritchard suggested a similar remedy for Greece, which he said could break out of its death loop by following the lead of Argentina. It could restore its currency, devalue, pass a law switching internal euro debt into [the local currency], and restructure foreign contracts. THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED: SAYING NO TO THE IMF Standing up to the IMF is not a well-worn path, but Argentina forged the trail. In the face of dire predictions that the economy would collapse without foreign credit, in 2001 it defied its creditors and simply walked away from its debts. By the fall of 2004, three years after a record default on a debt of more than $100 billion, the country was well on the road to recovery; and it achieved this feat without foreign help. The economy grew by 8 percent for 2 consecutive years. Exports increased, the currency was stable, investors were returning, and unemployment had eased. This is a remarkable historical event, one that challenges 25 years of failed policies, said economist Mark Weisbrot in a 2004 interview quoted in The New York Times. While other countries are just limping along, Argentina is experiencing very healthy growth with no sign that it is unsustainable, and theyve done it without having to make any concessions to get foreign capital inflows. Weisbrot is co-director of a Washington-based think tank called the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which put out a study in October 2009 of 41 IMF debtor countries. The study found that the austere policies imposed by the IMF, including cutting spending and tightening monetary policy, were more likely to damage than help those economies. That was also the conclusion of a study released last February by Yonca Uzdemir from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, comparing IMF assistance in Argentina and Turkey. Both emerging markets faced severe economic crises in 2001, preceded by chronic fiscal deficits, insufficient export growth, high indebtedness, political instability, and wealth inequality. Where Argentina broke ranks with the IMF, however, Turkey followed its advice at every turn. The end result was that Argentina bounced back, while Turkey is still in financial crisis. Turkeys reliance on foreign investment has made it highly susceptible to the global economic downturn. Argentina chose instead to direct its investment inward, developing its domestic economy. To find the money for this development, Argentina did not need foreign investors. It issued its own money and credit through its own central bank. Earlier, when the national currency collapsed completely in 1995 and again after 2000, Argentine local governments issued local bonds that traded as currency. Provinces paid their employees with paper receipts called Debt-Cancelling Bonds that were in currency units equivalent to the Argentine Peso. The bonds canceled the provinces debts to their employees and could be spent in the community. The provinces had actually monetized their debts, turning their bonds into legal tender. Argentina is a large country with more resources than Iceland, Latvia or Greece, but new technologies are now available that could make even small countries self-sufficient. See David Blume, Alcohol Can Be a Gas. LOCAL CURRENCY FOR LOCAL DEVELOPMENT Issuing and lending currency is the sovereign right of governments, and it is a right that Iceland and Latvia will lose if they join the EU, which forbids member nations to borrow from their own central banks. Latvia and Iceland both have natural resources that could be developed if they had the credit to do it; and with sovereign control over their local currencies, they could get that credit simply by creating it on the books of their own publicly-owned banks. In fact, there is nothing extraordinary in that proposal. All private banks get the credit they lend simply by creating it on their books. Contrary to popular belief, banks do not lend their own money or their depositors money. As the U.S. Federal Reserve attests, banks lend new money, created by double-entry bookkeeping as a deposit of the borrower on one side of the banks books and as an asset of the bank on the other. Besides thawing frozen credit pipes, credit created by governments has the advantage that it can be issued interest-free. Eliminating the cost of interest can cut production costs dramatically. Government-issued money to fund public projects has a long and successful history, going back at least to the early eighteenth century, when the American colony of Pennsylvania issued money that was both lent and spent by the local government into the economy. The result was an unprecedented period of prosperity, achieved without producing price inflation and without taxing the people. The island state of Guernsey, located in the Channel Islands between England and France, has funded infrastructure with government-issued money for over 200 years, without price inflation and without government debt. During the First World War, when private banks were demanding 6 percent interest, Australias publicly-owned Commonwealth Bank financed the Australian governments war effort at an interest rate of a fraction of 1 percent, saving Australians some $12 million in bank charges. After the First World War, the banks governor used the banks credit power to save Australians from the depression conditions prevailing in other countries, by financing production and home-building and lending funds to local governments for the construction of roads, tramways, harbors, gasworks, and electric power plants. The banks profits were paid back to the national government. A successful infrastructure program funded with interest-free national credit was also instituted in New Zealand after it elected its first Labor government in the 1930s. Credit issued by its nationalized central bank allowed New Zealand to thrive at a time when the rest of the world was struggling with poverty and lack of productivity. The argument against governments issuing and lending money for infrastructure is that it would be inflationary, but this need not be the case. Price inflation results when "demand" (money) increases faster than "supply" (goods and services). When the national currency is expanded to fund productive projects, supply goes up along with demand, leaving consumer prices unaffected. In any case, as noted above, private banks themselves create the money they lend. The process by which banks create money is inherently inflationary, because they lend only the principal, not the interest necessary to pay their loans off. To come up with the interest, new loans must be taken out, continually inflating the money supply with new loan-money. And since the money is going to the creditors rather than into producing new goods and services, demand (money) increases without increasing supply, producing price inflation. If credit were extended for public infrastructure projects interest-free, inflation could actually be reduced, by reducing the need to continually take out new loans to find the elusive interest to service old loans. The key is to use the newly-created money or credit for productive projects that increase goods and services, rather than for speculation or to pay off national debt in foreign currencies (the trap that Zimbabwe fell into). The national currency can be protected from speculators by imposing exchange controls, as Malaysia did in 1998; imposing capital controls, as Brazil and Taiwan are doing now; banning derivatives; and imposing a Tobin tax, a small tax on trade in financial products. MAKING THE CREDITORS WHOLE If the creditors are really interested in having their debts repaid, they will see the wisdom of letting the debtor nation build up its producing economy to give it something to pay with. If the creditors are not really interested in repayment but are using the debt as a tool to exploit the debtor country and strip it of its assets, the creditors bluff needs to be called. When the debtor nation refuses to pay, the burden shifts to the creditors to make themselves whole. British economist Michael Rowbotham suggests that in the modern world of electronic money, this can be accomplished by creative banking regulators simply with a change in accounting rules. Debt today is created with accounting entries, and it can be reversed with accounting entries. Rowbotham outlines two ways the rules might be changed to liquidate impossible-to-repay debt: The first option is to remove the obligation on banks to maintain parity between assets and liabilities . . . . Thus, if a commercial bank held $10 billion worth of developing country debt bonds, after cancellation it would be permitted in perpetuity to have a $10 billion dollar deficit in its assets. This is a simple matter of record-keeping. The second option . . . is to cancel the debt bonds, yet permit banks to retain them for purposes of accountancy. The debts would be cancelled so far as the developing nations were concerned, but still valid for the purposes of a banks accounts. The bonds would then be held as permanent, non-negotiable assets, at face value. If the banks were allowed either to carry unrepayable loans on their books or to accept payment in local currency, their assets and their solvency would be preserved. Everyone could shake hands and get back to work. From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Dec 23 21:16:11 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 16:16:11 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Gar Lipow explains his critique of carbon offets Message-ID: <013201ca845b$57002c80$52ad57ca@jfos> the following might be useful in coming to grips with problems associated with 'living in harmony with the Earth' since COPnCARBON Gar W Lipow is an American, grassroots lefty. ************************************************************************ ** Gar W Lipow author of Cooling It! No Hair Shirt Solutions to Global Warming http://www.nohairshirts.com ...my arguments against offsets are not original with me. what follows is a thumbnail biography of how I came to the thinking I came to on these matters. I have had an interest in renewable energy and efficiency all my life. I grew up on Buckminster "synergetics" Fuller and Barry Commoner. One of Commoner's lasting legacies is his four laws of ecology, as written in The Closing Circle in 1971. The four laws are: 1. Everything is Connected to Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all. 2. Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no "waste" in nature and there is no "away" to which things can be thrown. 3. Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, "likely to be detrimental to that system." 4. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Everything comes from something. There's no such thing as spontaneous existence. I was always involved on a low level in left activity - attending demos and vigils and events. Never a leader, but a really long term grassroots activist - anti war, labor supporter, environmentalist, feminists, anti-racist - basically low level support in whatever was going on near me. And at the same time I was always fascinated by waste of potential in physical infrastructure. All the energy and resources thrown away through bad design. And then when the Iraq war was starting, and I was in a demonstration against it, I got in a civil discussion with an unusually polite counter demonstrator. And he admitted that the war was mainly about oil and said "but we really need the oil, oil is survival man". And I pointed that we had all these substitutes for oil and he just stared at me. He refused to believe me when I told him that cars and trains could run on electricity, and that wind and solar generators were running all over the U.S. and all over the world now. And I realized that the stuff I knew was not common knowledge, and that while there were short articles out there nobody had done a detailed compilation of technology that could replace fossil fuels. And so I did that mainly because I felt somebody had to get that out of the way so we could move the discussion on to the politics and economic where it belonged. While there has been a lot of work on the same lines since I think I really was one of the first to do a detail reference work on existing technology. I won't say the very first because you are kind of tapping into an existing stream when doing something of this sort and nobody is really original in putting these things together, you are reinventing rather than inventing. And there have been a lot of stuff on the same lines since including the article in the November 2009 issue of SciAm . http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable- energy-by-2030 And I'm always happy when someone says essentially the same thing first said back in 2004. Because if nobody independently came to the same conclusions I'd wonder if I got something wrong. But when intelligent technical people keeping looking at the same facts I looked at, and obtain the same results - well I find that reassuring. OK, so what were the economic and political conclusions I think the technical info should clear the way for? Well one thing I was saying was that while some of the solutions with existing technology were more expensive than fossil fuels, many of them are cheaper. You can weather seal and duct seal a building a great deal cheaper than you can heat or cool it. You can insulate it significantly cheaper. And there are similar conclusions that can be drawn with industry and many possible improvements in transport. So all this emphasis on putting a price on carbon was misplaced. Because a lot of things that should have been happening if price signals and market mechanisms were the way to drive change were not happening. And then I stepped back and looked at this from a bigger perspective and looked at that bigger perspective historically. And I realized that the need for infrastructure changes dwarfed the need for behavioral changes. That is that we were talking mainly an infrastructure problem. Transports: freight trains, passenger trains, bicycle paths, pedestrian paths, walkable neighborhoods -- all infrastructure. What about homes? Well insulation, weather sealing, better water heaters, better appliances - infrastructure on the individual level Factories - better pipes and pumps and motors, better boilers, better manufacturing techniques - infrastructure again. Renewable electricity - again infrastructure. And historically where does infrastructure come from. Sticking to the U.S. (because I'm most familiar with U.S. history) infrastructure transformations always come with huge public investment - sometime in money always in land or right of ways. Maybe the first great U.S. infrastructure project were the great canals including the Erie Canal - built by private companies on land stolen from the Native Americans. Ditto the rail roads. Ditto the farms on the great plains. And then there were the great seaports which were built not only on public lands (purchased or taken by force to become public land) but with public money. Of course there was the U.S. post office. and then there were street cars for local transport and streets and highways for the automobile, and water, and sewers and telegraphs and telephones, and electric lines cable for cable TV and wired broadband, and electronic spectrum for wireless radio, TV , internet and cell phones. Always huge public investment, often of money, always of public rights of way. And then another big part of infrastructure transformation was regulation. For example we have sewers, but we also have regulation that if you build a house you have to hook up to a sewer (or in rural areas build a septic system that meets certain standards). We have public fire rules, be also have rules that your home can't be a tinder box, to reduce the number of fires in the first place. And lastly I saw that we should use price for reinforcement, but in a rough and ready imprecise form like a carbon tax or auctioned permits. Because the most important thing about price as reinforcement was that it be done in a way not to interfere with more important policy components. On a deeper level I realized that a lot of the structural flaws that led to all this waste came from class conflict. That is lot of the reason for this waste, is that, the kind of structural changes that would have led to good decision making would have also required weakening the relative power of capital vs. labor. Maybe not so far as giving the workers ownership and control over the means of production (though that would certainly have been the best solution). But at least flattening access to capital, and more worker say in the workplace to spot opportunities that are easier to see from the bottom up than the top down. And public investment and regulation in even a capitalist democracy can be a democratization of the society relative to a more neoliberal system, even if it is still capitalist and not all that democratic. And I realized that "price" as a means to drive change was an attempt by more far-thinking elements of capitalism to get around the need for democratization and structural change in solving environmental problems. And that it came to something as fundamental as climate change that touched so many aspects of our system, that attempt might diffuse more radical reforms, but it would not actually solve the problem of climate change. For various reasons, putting a price on carbon, even by a carbon fee or an auctioned permit system would not get the infrastructure problem solved. And Mickey Mouse gimmicks like offsets and introducing trading would make that even worse. But I just thought of offsets and carbon tradings as a particularly ineffective and egregious form of carbon fee. And then Patrick Bond introduced me to the Durban Group. http://www.carbontradewatch.org/durban/links.html http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?10,24,8,55 Patrick thought at the time that my concentration on solutions might benefit the climate justice movement. At the same time I was introduced to the full horrors of how much worse offsets were and how much worse carbon trade was than an ordinary carbon tax. While a carbon tax (or some forms of carbon trading very close to a carbon tax) are inadequate by themselves, but useful if a reinforcement to other policy, actually existing forms of carbon trading actually undermine reductions - especially but not only offsets. Offsets in particular not only undermine reductions, but actually kill people on the micro level. And when I talk about offsets and carbon trading (as opposed to carbon prices in general) I'm talking about stuff I've mainly learned from long term climate justice activists like Patrick Bond. Also Larry Lohmann see Carbon Trading A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/summary.shtml?x=544225 and Daphne Wysham of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network http://www.ips-dc.org/SEEN also from intellectuals in the Global South like Walden Bello. Also I've read a lot of primary sources, including studies by Wara and so forth. And some of the original debates around Coases work. So when I talk about offsets and what I say sounds familiar, it may be that I'm channeling people you are familiar with. *********************************************************************** see also http://www.nohairshirts.com/links.php http://www.grist.org/article/the-moral-equivalent-of-slavery/

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 thinker at xplornet.com Sat Dec 26 09:44:56 2009 From: thinker at xplornet.com (Ed Deak) Date: Sat, 26 Dec 2009 09:44:56 -0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Sick look at Copenhagen Message-ID: <20091226174456.07C6E1FFB0C1@smtprelay03.hostedemail.com> Much of this is rubbish. When I hear somebody start talking about countries and peoples as "markets", I see somebody brainwashed with the ruling theory of neoclassical economics, where people are nothing more than "producers" and "consumers". It is quite obvious that the writer is enamoured by India's ":development", where tens of thousands of people are forced off their lands and into mega cities by their own government, that goes on all over the world, causing the majority of the problems. They're the "emerging markets", who demand to same right to pollute as the so called "developed nations", who are stealing the world blind and ruining humanity's chance for healthy life and even survival. . All in the name of "competition", the biggest crime wave in human history, and the cause of the vast majority of the world's problems and climate change. These clever people try to forget that China's and India's "development" is the result of the insatiable greed of Western capitalists, who have given them the potential to "grow", in other worlds to become ecological and human parasites enslaving their own peoples, destroying any hope for democracy with fraudulent "free trade" treaties, while ruining their own lands. Cheers, Ed. >"Each one of us acknowledges that those worst affected by climate >change are the least responsible for it. Whatever emerges from our >negotiations was addressed as glaring injustice to the countries of >Africa, injustice to the least developed countries, and injustice to >the small island states whose very survival as viable nations is in >jeopardy," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summed the >disappointment of the underdogs at Copenhagen. > >http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/978/in1.htm From d_a_d at telusplanet.net Sat Dec 26 10:03:39 2009 From: d_a_d at telusplanet.net (David Davidson) Date: Sat, 26 Dec 2009 11:03:39 -0700 Subject: [Mai-not] Sick look at Copenhagen In-Reply-To: <20091226174456.07C6E1FFB0C1@smtprelay03.hostedemail.com> References: <20091226174456.07C6E1FFB0C1@smtprelay03.hostedemail.com> Message-ID: <4B364FFB.8010908@telusplanet.net> Ed: you are so correct in your statements about this fiasco. Millions spent and for what, nothing is going to change as long as the greed persists among the so called "Developed Countries". It is too bad that the politicians of the world have been taken over by the business community. Canada's voice in Copenhagen was a laugh. Dave Davidson On 26/12/2009 10:44 AM, Ed Deak wrote: > > > > Much of this is rubbish. When I hear somebody start talking about > countries and peoples as "markets", I see somebody brainwashed with > the ruling theory of neoclassical economics, where people are nothing > more than "producers" and "consumers". > > It is quite obvious that the writer is enamoured by India's > ":development", where tens of thousands of people are forced off their > lands and into mega cities by their own government, that goes on all > over the world, causing the majority of the problems. They're the > "emerging markets", who demand to same right to pollute as the so > called "developed nations", who are stealing the world blind and > ruining humanity's chance for healthy life and even survival. . > > All in the name of "competition", the biggest crime wave in human > history, and the cause of the vast majority of the world's problems > and climate change. These clever people try to forget that China's > and India's "development" is the result of the insatiable greed of > Western capitalists, who have given them the potential to "grow", in > other worlds to become ecological and human parasites enslaving their > own peoples, destroying any hope for democracy with fraudulent "free > trade" treaties, while ruining their own lands. > > Cheers, Ed. > > > >> "Each one of us acknowledges that those worst affected by climate >> change are the least responsible for it. Whatever emerges from our >> negotiations was addressed as glaring injustice to the countries of >> Africa, injustice to the least developed countries, and injustice to >> the small island states whose very survival as viable nations is in >> jeopardy," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh summed the >> disappointment of the underdogs at Copenhagen. >> >> http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/978/in1.htm >> > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not at globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sat Dec 26 15:18:51 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2009 10:18:51 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Copenhagen Decoded - Mother Jones Message-ID: <009c01ca8682$e8e51c40$25ad57ca@jfos> http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/copenhagen-decoded Politics + Current Affairs Copenhagen Decoded What Obama's eleventh-hour climate accord really means. By Kate Sheppard Mon Dec. 21, 2009 Late on Friday at the climate summit in Denmark, President Barack Obama announced the Copenhagen Accord, an eleventh-hour deal with the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa that broke a seemingly intractable impasse in the negotiations. But after the president boarded Air Force One-hoping to reach Washington before an approaching snowstorm-negotiators for 193 countries fought bitterly about the agreement through the night. In the small hours, a handful of nations-including Venezuela, Bolivia, Sudan, and Nicaragua-refused to sign the pact. Exhausted negotiators, some looking ready to keel over at any minute, railed and pleaded to no avail; a Venezuelan delegate even cut her hand to emphasize her opposition to the deal. In the end, the holdouts could not be won over, and so the summit's final statement does not adopt the Copenhagen Accord, but merely "takes note" of it. What does this nebulous pact actually mean-and what happens next? The first big disappointment of the conference was that it failed to produce even a non-binding pact that everyone could live with-and this breakdown threatens the entire international climate process that was established with the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and which produced the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Obama's agreement was bartered after he burst in on a private meeting among leaders of China, India, South Africa and Brazil, without the participation of the remaining 188 members. There was no formal UN sign-on of his accord (the Danish host government has agreed to coordinate official approval in the coming weeks). But because the document was not adopted unanimously, it has no real legal or formal bearing-it may never play a role in future UN deliberations. "We need to be clear that it is a letter of intent and is not precise about what needs to be done in legal terms," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). "So the challenge is now to turn what we have agreed politically in Copenhagen into something real, measurable, and verifiable." But converting this accord into meaningful action will be torturous. For all the angst the document provoked, it is extremely vague and leaves many key details unresolved. The accord states that there should be a goal to keep the average rise in global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius. However, the text contains no targets for emissions cuts that would actually achieve that target. (Drafts circulated earlier on Friday had called for a 50 percent cut in global emissions by 2020, with 80 percent of those cuts to be made by developed nations, but those figures were stripped from the final text.) This makes the 2-degree temperature goal virtually meaningless. Even the portion of the document that is supposed to list existing domestic commitments was left blank-leaders were given until February 1, 2010 to include them in an appendix. And even if those modest commitments are formalized, they will put the world on the path to a 3-degree Celsius temperature rise, according to a UNFCCC analysis leaked to the press last week. A 3-degree rise would pose significant threats to African and small island nations, who contend that an agreement allowing a temperature increase of more than 1.5 degrees would amount to a suicide pact in light of the latest IPCC findings. After two weeks of grueling negotiations, the conference's only genuine advance was on the issue of financing to help developing countries cope with climate change. Industrialized nations indicated that they would raise $10 billion per year for three years in so-called fast-start funding and long-term funds of $100 billion per year by 2020. But again, major blanks were left to be filled in later. The document doesn't say where the annual sum of $100 billion will come from or how the money will be distributed. And on another key front-convincing China to sign on to independent monitoring of emissions cuts-there was no real progress at all. The language explaining how emissions reductions would be verified and reported is more of a linguistic contortion than a plan of action. Given the accord's many omissions, none of the participants were happy with the conference's outcome. Many key players supported the deal only grudgingly, hoping to prevent the summit from ending in complete failure. (It probably helped that access to the $10 billion annual fast-start financing hinged upon signing the deal.) Even Danish Prime Minister Lars L?kke Rasmussen, the summit's official cheerleader, offered a tepid assessment: "I am satisfied. We have achieved a result." "I will not hide my disappointment regarding the ambition in terms of the binding nature or non-binding nature of the future agreement," said Jos? Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission. "On this particular point, the text agreed today falls far short." EU officials had previously said they would be willing to cut their emissions by 30 percent cut below 1990 levels by 2020. But the lack of significant commitments by other nations led the EU to opt for a more modest 20 percent cut instead. And the circumvention of traditional UNFCCC protocol angered developing nations, who see the forum as one of the few places they can be heard. "They have excluded poor and vulnerable countries. Those countries were put under extraordinary pressure to sign a deal with Obama," said Kate Horner, a policy analyst at Friends of the Earth and an adviser to the Bolivian delegation. Some environmental groups are arguing that the one bright side of Copenhagen's ambiguous endgame is that it may lend a boost to the cap-and-trade bill in the Senate. The Obama administration was able to lock in one of the most important elements for the Senate: the cooperation of major emerging economies like China and India. At the same time, it did not prescribe specific actions for the US, leaving room for the Senate to develop their bill. "This puts it in the hands of the Senate to set the terms of engagement," said Fred Krupp, head of the Environmental Defense Fund. "That's what the Senate wants." Yet overall, many agreed that the prospects for tackling the problem of climate change via the United Nations process seem very grim. Although Obama said on Friday that he and other leaders remain committed to a new, legally binding treaty in the future, there is no road map or timeline in the accord to reach such a goal. The document also discarded the road map to a Kyoto successor that nations agreed to at the summit in Bali in 2007. Further work towards a deal within the UNFCCC will be put off until a two-week negotiating session slated to begin on May 31 in Bonn, Germany. The next high-level summit will be held in Mexico City in the end of November, 2010. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, told Mother Jones, "The relationship between the United States and the world is simply broken, and that being broken has consequences. A lot of Americans may have believed that Barack Obama is really different, and that wiped out eight years to the rest of the world. I think it's turned out it didn't." And Phil Bloomer, director of campaigns and policy at Oxfam, lamented in a Friday night press conference that many nations were still approaching the issue of climate change not as a dire challenge that will, sooner or later, affect every nation, but instead were seeking to address their own narrow domestic concerns. "It's clear that the current dynamics of the negotiations don't work," he said. Kate Sheppard covers energy and environmental politics from Washington, D.C. For more of her stories, click here. She Tweets here. ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sat Dec 26 16:20:56 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2009 11:20:56 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: The Most Trusted Name in News? Message-ID: <00ee01ca868a$7ed55740$25ad57ca@jfos> Excerpt: "Prior to 9/11, Al Jazeera was greeted by U.S. officials as good news for Arab democracy. All that changed in October 2001, when it aired the first videotaped message from Osama bin Laden after the attacks on New York and Washington, and then began reporting on civilian casualties during the American invasion of Afghanistan. That year, the United States bombed Al Jazeera's Kabul bureau, an event echoed two years later when it bombed the one in Baghdad, killing a correspondent.(snip) AJE was created in response to mounting international demand for an English version of Al Jazeera's contentious brand of reporting. The network formed an entirely new entity, which would share some footage with the Arabic channel yet have a separate staff, management, and editorial mandate. "We wanted it to be an authentic English channel that broadcasts from within the mainstream but carries the ideas Al Jazeera has established," Khanfar says. The ideas he's referring to are editorial independence, an emphasis on field reporting, and a diverse staff of employees who reside in the regions they cover, "so they understand and interpret and forecast much better than those who come overnight equipped with intensive reading from Wikipedia." -0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0- The Most Trusted Name in News? Al Jazeera English comes to North America with a reputation-for excellent journalism January-February 2010 by Deborah Campbell, from The Walrus Over the past decade, the tiny desert emirate of Qatar-a bump on the rib cage of Saudi Arabia, directly across the Persian Gulf from Iran-has asserted itself on the world stage in large measure by pouring money into, of all things, journalism. Since 1996 it has been funding Al Jazeera (Arabic for "the island"), the television network that revolutionized the Arab media and is poised to do the same for the English-speaking world with Al Jazeera English, the international news channel the network launched in November 2006. In less than four years, Al Jazeera English (AJE) has emerged as the dominant news channel covering the developing world. As the first worldwide news station to be based in the "global South," it has an audacious mandate: to reverse the information flow that has traditionally moved from the wealthy countries of the North to the poorer countries south of the equator, and to be the "voice of the voiceless," delivering in-depth journalism from underreported regions around the world. With nearly 70 bureaus run by staff drawn from some 50 nations, AJE on a typical news day might report on a nomadic camel-herding tribe whose members are key rebel leaders in Darfur, a lawsuit against Chiquita alleging financing of paramilitary death squads in Colombia, the effects of the global financial crisis on Pakistani carpet weavers, and the plight of political prisoners in China. AJE broadcasts to 150 million households in more than 100 countries-with the exception, until now, of North America. That's where Tony Burman, the managing director of this ambitious operation, comes in. The Canadian journalist, who has the sort of face that can appear to be scowling when in fact he is deep in thought, has a lifelong passion for foreign correspondence. Hired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in the early '70s, he eventually served as its European bureau chief, covering South America and Africa before moving into management. As head of television news, he was the kind of leader journalists were grateful to have on their side. Burman, though, became "less and less happy" with CBC's Americanized direction and resigned in 2007. "When Tony left, people thought, 'There goes the last great journalist in management,'" says Beth Haddon, an old friend and colleague of Burman's who worked with him at CBC in the '80s. "Tony really stood for something," she says. "For quality journalism-that's old-fashioned, of course-of fairness, balance, verification, public discourse." At CBC, Burman had a reputation for defending his journalists when their reporting raised hackles. And he didn't mind taking controversial positions if the facts backed them up. Those qualities stand him in good stead running not only AJE's global news coverage, but also its campaign to break into Canada and the United States, where cable and satellite carriers have been loath to associate themselves with a network that much of North America still considers Terror TV. The task of demolishing the misconceptions attached to the Al Jazeera brand is daunting. As Haddon warned Burman when he first floated the idea of leaving Toronto for Doha, the job sounded good, "but you'll never have lunch in this town again." Yet his move could hardly have been better timed, coming at a moment when the Western media are in a state of unparalleled crisis, undergoing the first seismic challenge to their dominance since the advent of television. Faced with the simultaneous defection of their ad revenue and their audiences to the Internet, even towering news titans such as the Boston Globe and the New York Times are struggling, while others are perishing outright. Foreign bureaus have been among the hardest hit by cost-cutting measures in print and television media alike. According to the Pew Research Center's annual "State of the News Media" report, coverage of international events by American media fell by about 40 percent in 2008. Thus has a bizarre situation arisen: At the most interconnected time in history, accurate and comprehensive news of the outside world is disappearing-and with it an informed public. "The mainstream American networks have cut their bureaus to the bone," Burman says at AJE's headquarters in Doha, Qatar's capital city. "They're basically only in London now. Even CNN has pulled back. I remember in the '80s when I covered events, there would be a truckload of American journalists and crews and editors, and now Al Jazeera outnumbers them all." Moving into the vacuum left by other channels, AJE plans to open 10 new bureaus in the coming year. Burman recently marked a victory: Al Jazeera English has finally broken into the United States. A nonprofit educational broadcaster has agreed to carry it in Washington, D.C., and 20 other American cities. The breakthrough is a watershed after years of confinement for AJE to two small areas in the United States (besides the State Department and the Pentagon), as well as online sources including AlJazeera.net/English, Livestation.com, and YouTube. Burman's main thrust, however, has been Canada, which he considers a critical beachhead. If AJE can get permission to broadcast there, he expects to have a far easier time with the commercial American cable carriers that have thus far shied away. "My hope is that once people see that the sun still shines, kids still go to school, people still laugh at good jokes, and the republic holds," he says, "they will give it a shot." Al Jazeera built its name on opposing the status quo. The first 24-hour news channel in the Arab world, it was launched by the emir of Qatar in 1996, a year after he overthrew his father while the old man was on holiday in Switzerland. The coup, which ushered in an era of liberalization in the emirate, was nothing compared with the revolution the channel would create. The birth of Al Jazeera marked the first time in modern history that a plurality of viewpoints were included in the Arab public discourse-and there was something to outrage just about everyone. With a mandate to broadcast "the opinion and the other opinion" through a mix of news and audience-participation talk shows, the channel gave Israeli and American commentators a voice, along with religious skeptics, Islamic fundamentalists, women's advocates, and political dissidents. The result was accusations from all quarters-that it was an instrument of the Mossad, the CIA, or, of course, al-Qaeda. As political science professor Marc Lynch, author of Voices of the New Arab Public, has said, the channel provided "a relentless criticism of the status quo, of political repression, of economic stagnation." It pried the stranglehold on information from the hands of state leaders and allowed formerly heretical views to enter the living rooms and coffee shops of the Arab public, forcing their politicians to, as Lynch puts it, "at least think about what will play well on Al Jazeera." By contrast with AJE's bright new premises, the Arabic channel's headquarters are spare-nothing more than a series of high-end trailers with stained industrial carpeting and the scent of coffee laced with cardamom floating through the hallways. On this particular afternoon, Wadah Khanfar, the 40-year-old director general of the network, has been contending with two new sources of outrage: Egypt, which is claiming that the "state of Al Jazeera" is plotting to overthrow its government, and Sudan, where an adviser to the president wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes has stated that Al Jazeera is too "stupid" to understand the concept of national interest. For Khanfar, an imposing figure who clearly relishes the role of the muckraker, it's just another ordinary day. Seated in his office next to the newsroom, where a beautiful woman with blown-out hair and TV makeup is preparing to anchor a segment, he complains about the authoritarianism of Arab states. "You know what is the national interest for every leader in the Arab world?" he asks. "To protect his seat." He pounds the leather armrest on his chair for effect. "Can you believe that most of them, when they die, their children take over?" Like in Qatar? "Everywhere. I don't think of Qatar as a haven for freedom and democracy, but it has done this: It allowed Al Jazeera to exist while every other Arab government either closed down bureaus or arrested journalists or put them in jail. And for this the Arab world, I must tell you, is experiencing something different." Having begun his career as an Africa correspondent, Khanfar went on to report for Al Jazeera from the Kurdish region of Iraq in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion. He presented, he says, the facts: that the Kurds hated Saddam Hussein and wanted him gone, for example. Khanfar's broadcasts so enraged Iraq's minister of information that he marched into Al Jazeera's Baghdad bureau with his Kalashnikov and a security detail and promised that Khanfar would be hanged in the city's main square. Within days, however, the government had fallen. Khanfar became Al Jazeera's Baghdad bureau chief and in October 2003 was named director general. If the channel has made enemies among Arab states-it's the subject of an Arab advertising boycott, is banned in Iraq, Tunisia, and Algeria, and was prohibited in Saudi Arabia until last summer-it has found a weightier opponent in a former friend, the United States. Prior to 9/11, Al Jazeera was greeted by U.S. officials as good news for Arab democracy. All that changed in October 2001, when it aired the first videotaped message from Osama bin Laden after the attacks on New York and Washington, and then began reporting on civilian casualties during the American invasion of Afghanistan. That year, the United States bombed Al Jazeera's Kabul bureau, an event echoed two years later when it bombed the one in Baghdad, killing a correspondent. On Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, meanwhile, Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for the station, was captured in what he believes was a case of mistaken identity; he spent six years in Guant?namo before being released in 2008. The 40-year-old Sudanese national, who now walks like an old man, told me he was interrogated more than 300 times-almost exclusively about Al Jazeera, on which he was asked to spy. America's obsession with Al Jazeera has inadvertently handed the network star power. Last year, surfer-haired Virgin CEO Richard Branson and Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez both dropped by to visit. Such establishment figures as Shimon Peres, Madeleine Albright, and General David Petraeus have also made the pilgrimage. Even Tony Blair, former British prime minister, came by for a private meeting. AJE was created in response to mounting international demand for an English version of Al Jazeera's contentious brand of reporting. The network formed an entirely new entity, which would share some footage with the Arabic channel yet have a separate staff, management, and editorial mandate. "We wanted it to be an authentic English channel that broadcasts from within the mainstream but carries the ideas Al Jazeera has established," Khanfar says. The ideas he's referring to are editorial independence, an emphasis on field reporting, and a diverse staff of employees who reside in the regions they cover, "so they understand and interpret and forecast much better than those who come overnight equipped with intensive reading from Wikipedia." He continues: "We are at the center of a lot of troubles-Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Palestine, Sudan-a curse for us as individuals but a blessing for us as journalists. The developing world is generating a huge number of stories, and a TV station headquartered in one of the most complicated and news-producing regions is a great opportunity for audiences all over the world to see a different angle." AJE is already the most watched international channel in sub-Saharan Africa, and Khanfar argues that the wealthy countries of the North, too, will benefit from an inside view of such developing-world issues as terrorism, immigration, oil, and energy: "If they are not explored properly from within the South, the North is going to suffer as well," he says. AJE has poured resources into Africa, Asia, and Latin America, building on the Arabic channel's access in the Middle East. This at a time when other networks, driven by commercial agendas, are scaling back, which Khanfar considers a "disaster" for the profession. "A journalist who used to go for a month to do something investigative will find it shortened to a few days, if it's commissioned at all," he says. Given that his network is funded by the emir of the richest nation in the Middle East and is therefore free from commercial pressures, he knows he has an advantage in steering AJE through the current financial crisis and declares that "we would like to appear, later on, as the player when it comes to English news internationally." The Gaza war of 2008-09 was to Al Jazeera English what the first Gulf War was to a little-known satellite network called CNN. As the only international broadcaster based inside Gaza during the three-week Israeli onslaught in which some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed, AJE had the story everyone wanted but couldn't get, since Israel had banned journalists from entering the war zone. AJE, unlike other international news agencies, had a permanent presence on both sides (Jerusalem is its largest foreign bureau), which meant it was already there when the war started. Then it made the prescient, groundbreaking decision to give away its content to other networks for free, under the most lenient of Creative Commons licenses. The station's coverage swept the globe, garnering accolades from international media, including the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, and even Israel's Haaretz newspaper. "Al Jazeera," investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said at the Arab Media Forum in Dubai in May, "has broken the West's monopoly on how the world views conflicts in the Middle East and beyond. Its coverage of Gaza was nothing short of remarkable. While most American people are still denied the right to view Al Jazeera, many networks were forced to carry its reports and images simply because they were so insightful." Gaza also provided an argument for AJE's campaign to enter North America. Views of video reports on the English website, launched in 2003, jumped 600 percent, with 60 percent of them coming from the United States. Monthly visits to the site, meanwhile, rose to 22 million. That's proof, Burman says, of the appetite for the channel's reportage. Burman's first year on the job has been a scramble to revive morale, which had stagnated under his predecessor, a former BBC executive who was part of a management team that staff privately dubbed the British Boys Network. A high-profile American hire, former ABC correspondent David Marash, had quit after being removed as the channel's Washington anchor, and publicly criticized its British executives for relying on lazy anti-American stereotypes in coverage of issues like poverty in the United States. "Al Jazeera English is an absolutely first-rate news channel, and if you're interested in the world south of the equator it is absolutely dominant," Marash told me. "What's so heartbreaking to me is that [coverage of] the United States would be its weakest link." Marash's analysis "has merit," Burman acknowledges. Better coverage of the United States is a priority as the channel begins airing there-a prelude to what he believes is a turning point in the channel's relations with the West. The limited entry of AJE into the United States, and Canada's likely approval of the station, coincide with a cultural shift symbolized by President Barack Obama's decision to give his first presidential interview to the Arab network Al Arabiya last January, followed by his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo in June. Since then, attitudes in Washington have changed so dramatically that government officials who used to regard being asked to appear on Al Jazeera English as comparable to an invitation to an al-Qaeda training seminar are suddenly courting the network. This shift, combined with the fact that Western media have essentially abandoned foreign correspondence, leaves AJE well situated to assume the sort of dominance it has already achieved in other parts of the world. It may be-with a planned Canadian bureau and expanded coverage of the United States, including a new U.S.-focused current affairs show hosted by Avi Lewis-that North Americans underserved by domestic journalism will start looking to Qatar not only for news of the outside world, but also to understand what is happening at home. It's World Press Freedom Day 2009, an annual event organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and held this year in Doha. In the crowded hallway outside the Intercontinental Hotel conference room, a hundred or so journalists and media freedom types mill about, exchanging business cards. Tolerance is the theme of this year's event-aptly illustrated by the bikini-clad women at the pool next to others in head scarves and full bodysuits. Even the surprise appearance of Flemming Rose, the editor who published the controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, yields only mild indignation. And while conference organizers have a great deal to say about the "information explosion," the rise of new media, and the need for everyone to just get along, the drastic decline in the amount of actual journalism being done is barely addressed. It's a subject of some obsession for one of the participants, Andrew Stroehlein, communications director of the International Crisis Group, a global nonprofit that advises governments and intergovernmental agencies such as the U.N., the European Union, and the World Bank on the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict. Stroehlein churns out op-eds from his office in Brussels in an attempt to draw attention to forgotten wars. He worries that the plummeting budgets for foreign coverage mean more and more conflicts will fall into that category. "People think there's an information explosion," he says while the rest of the participants feast on pastries during a break, "but what's not being replaced is newsgathering by professionals." And what of the assumption that everyone with access to the Internet or a camera phone will fill the gap? "Citizen journalism," he says, "is like citizen dentistry." Without trained journalists expending the time and resources to find out what is going on, the risk is not only of becoming cut off from reality and developing skewed perceptions. The greater concern is what an information vacuum permits. "You get away with things like [the war in] Iraq because people don't know what's going on. That's why these things happen." In an op-ed titled "Welcome to a World Without Foreign Correspondents," Stroehlein lamented the dearth of coverage of Somalia and Sri Lanka, adding, "Too bad Al Jazeera English is not available on most living-room screens in the United States, and people there have to choke down the endless rotting fish heads of celebrity news, or the same tiresome group of ignoramuses shouting at each other in a studio." A big fan of AJE, which is widely watched in Europe, Stroehlein says, "I think Al Jazeera English is the best international television news in the world, with the caveat that BBC World News is probably equally good. We as an organization take it very seriously." At a time when the media have come to be regarded as actors in international conflicts rather than impartial observers - embedded coverage of the Iraq war being a case in point - a Knight Foundation-funded study of Al Jazeera English found that the channel functions as a form of "conciliatory media." In other words, it works as a "clash of civilizations" in reverse, facilitating cross-cultural reconciliation rather than pitting us versus them. The longer viewers had been watching AJE, the study concluded, the less dogmatic was their thinking. Comparing it with the American television networks "is like comparing The Economist to Newsweek," Philip Seib, author of The Al Jazeera Effect, says. "It's so much more sophisticated and broad in terms of coverage." A professor at the University of Southern California at Annenberg who studies the links between media, war, and terrorism, Seib says AJE has "expanded the realm of discourse" and could be invaluable in breaking down American insularity. "I think you'll find those who criticize it have never seen it," he says. Stroehlein, meanwhile, thinks AJE has caused its only real competitor, BBC World, to up its game. "One reason I'm desperate to see Al Jazeera English enter the American news market is that it's going to challenge the other news providers," he says. Or maybe it won't. Solid international reporting is important, but it's hardly profitable; and serious reporting, Stroehlein acknowledges, is all about the dateline. That means foreign bureaus based in the countries they cover. It means long-term commitments to a region. In other words, it means something commercial broadcasters aren't willing to provide: money. Journalism has a responsibility to society, says Stroehlein, arguing that news reporting is not just another business: "How many businesses are there where if someone screws up just a little bit, you have mass violence?" The same potential exists when no one is there to bear witness at all-potential not only for mass violence but also for corruption, nepotism, and an uninformed public incapable of holding anyone to account. Which is why the current crisis in journalism is so dire, and why all efforts to reverse that trend should be welcomed, even if they come from the most hated name in news. Tony Burman-who can, it turns out, still have lunch in Toronto, despite occasional ribbing about "shilling for al--Qaeda," and who expects that you'll be watching Al Jazeera English soon-says that controversy is the price of admission for hard-hitting journalism. Al Jazeera, he believes, "will be controversial every day it exists. That's not only the nature of the organization; that's almost the purpose of the organization: to keep stirring the pot so that change happens." Excerpted from The Walrus (Oct. 2009), the Canadian magazine that carries the torch of quality journalism north of the U.S. border. www.walrusmagazine.com ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From papadop at peak.org Sat Dec 26 20:09:03 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat, 26 Dec 2009 20:09:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] Copenhagen - decoded Message-ID: http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/copenhagen-decoded Mother Jones Mon Dec. 21, 2009 10:07 AM PST Kate Shephard [Kate Sheppard covers energy and environmental politics from Washington, D.C.] Late on Friday at the climate summit in Denmark, President Barack Obama announced the Copenhagen Accord, an eleventh-hour deal with the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa that broke a seemingly intractable impasse in the negotiations. But after the president boarded Air Force One?hoping to reach Washington before an approaching snowstorm -- negotiators for 193 countries fought bitterly about the agreement through the night. In the small hours, a handful of nations-- including Venezuela, Bolivia, Sudan, and Nicaragua?refused to sign the pact. Exhausted negotiators, some looking ready to keel over at any minute, railed and pleaded to no avail; a Venezuelan delegate even cut her hand to emphasize her opposition to the deal. In the end, the holdouts could not be won over, and so the summit's final statement does not adopt the Copenhagen Accord, but merely "takes note" of it. What does this nebulous pact actually mean?and what happens next? The first big disappointment of the conference was that it failed to produce even a non-binding pact that everyone could live with -- this breakdown threatens the entire international climate process that was established with the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and which produced the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Obama's agreement was bartered after he burst in on a private meeting among leaders of China, India, South Africa and Brazil, without the participation of the remaining 188 members. There was no formal UN sign-on of his accord (the Danish host government has agreed to coordinate official approval in the coming weeks). But because the document was not adopted unanimously, it has no real legal or formal bearing -- it may never play a role in future UN deliberations. "We need to be clear that it is a letter of intent and is not precise about what needs to be done in legal terms," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). "So the challenge is now to turn what we have agreed politically in Copenhagen into something real, measurable, and verifiable." * Obama's Copenhagen Deal How it came about and why it may not be a real deal. * Can Obama Sign A Climate Treaty Without Congress? Some environmentalists think the president can sidestep the Senate. * Lessons in International Diplomacy Continued From Above But converting this accord into meaningful action will be torturous. For all the angst the document provoked, it is extremely vague and leaves many key details unresolved. The accord states that there should be a goal to keep the average rise in global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius. However, the text contains no targets for emissions cuts that would actually achieve that target. (Drafts circulated earlier on Friday had called for a 50 percent cut in global emissions by 2020, with 80 percent of those cuts to be made by developed nations, but those figures were stripped from the final text.) This makes the 2-degree temperature goal virtually meaningless. Even the portion of the document that is supposed to list existing domestic commitments was left blank?leaders were given until February 1, 2010 to include them in an appendix. And even if those modest commitments are formalized, they will put the world on the path to a 3-degree Celsius temperature rise, according to a UNFCCC analysis leaked to the press last week. A 3-degree rise would pose significant threats to African and small island nations, who contend that an agreement allowing a temperature increase of more than 1.5 degrees would amount to a suicide pact in light of the latest IPCC findings. After two weeks of grueling negotiations, the conference's only genuine advance was on the issue of financing to help developing countries cope with climate change. Industrialized nations indicated that they would raise $10 billion per year for three years in so-called fast-start funding and long-term funds of $100 billion per year by 2020. But again, major blanks were left to be filled in later. The document doesn't say where the annual sum of $100 billion will come from or how the money will be distributed. And on another key front -- convincing China to sign on to independent monitoring of emissions cuts -- there was no real progress at all. The language explaining how emissions reductions would be verified and reported is more of a linguistic contortion than a plan of action. Given the accord's many omissions, none of the participants were happy with the conference's outcome. Many key players supported the deal only grudgingly, hoping to prevent the summit from ending in complete failure. (It probably helped that access to the $10 billion annual fast-start financing hinged upon signing the deal.) Even Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen, the summit's official cheerleader, offered a tepid assessment: "I am satisfied. We have achieved a result." "I will not hide my disappointment regarding the ambition in terms of the binding nature or non-binding nature of the future agreement," said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission. "On this particular point, the text agreed today falls far short." EU officials had previously said they would be willing to cut their emissions by 30 percent cut below 1990 levels by 2020. But the lack of significant commitments by other nations led the EU to opt for a more modest 20 percent cut instead. And the circumvention of traditional UNFCCC protocol angered developing nations, who see the forum as one of the few places they can be heard. "They have excluded poor and vulnerable countries. Those countries were put under extraordinary pressure to sign a deal with Obama," said Kate Horner, a policy analyst at Friends of the Earth and an adviser to the Bolivian delegation. Some environmental groups are arguing that the one bright side of Copenhagen's ambiguous endgame is that it may lend a boost to the cap-and-trade bill in the Senate. The Obama administration was able to lock in one of the most important elements for the Senate: the cooperation of major emerging economies like China and India. At the same time, it did not prescribe specific actions for the US, leaving room for the Senate to develop their bill. "This puts it in the hands of the Senate to set the terms of engagement," said Fred Krupp, head of the Environmental Defense Fund. "That's what the Senate wants." Yet overall, many agreed that the prospects for tackling the problem of climate change via the United Nations process seem very grim. Although Obama said on Friday that he and other leaders remain committed to a new, legally binding treaty in the future, there is no road map or timeline in the accord to reach such a goal. The document also discarded the road map to a Kyoto successor that nations agreed to at the summit in Bali in 2007. Further work towards a deal within the UNFCCC will be put off until a two-week negotiating session slated to begin on May 31 in Bonn, Germany. The next high-level summit will be held in Mexico City in the end of November, 2010. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, told Mother Jones, "The relationship between the United States and the world is simply broken, and that being broken has consequences. A lot of Americans may have believed that Barack Obama is really different, and that wiped out eight years to the rest of the world. I think it's turned out it didn't." And Phil Bloomer, director of campaigns and policy at Oxfam, lamented in a Friday night press conference that many nations were still approaching the issue of climate change not as a dire challenge that will, sooner or later, affect every nation, but instead were seeking to address their own narrow domestic concerns. "It's clear that the current dynamics of the negotiations don't work," he said. From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sat Dec 26 22:38:56 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2009 17:38:56 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Gathering Support for Ending the Medieval Siege of Gaza Message-ID: <005301ca8747$3cafc360$1bad57ca@jfos> December 27 Rallies for Gaza-One Near You Excerpt: "What's it going to take to wake up the legions of blind U.S. Christian Zionists to their indifference to the misery of their sisters and brothers in Israel and Palestine? Their blind allegiance to the Israeli government has allowed our best friend in the world to become a big bully. What's it going to take to break through the ignorance that hard-earned U.S. tax dollars are being used to continue the occupation and apartheid wall?" 27 12 2009 [Rallies all over the country to commemorate the beginning of the medieval siege of Gaza and to gather support for ending the siege. Locations for rallies follow the main article below.] December 27, 2009, 2008 and what this little one knew in 2005 regarding Gaza [Orlando, Florida] Ever since my first of seven trips to Israel Palestine in 2005, I have searched for a central Florida church with an open mind and heart for the poor, oppressed and occupied in Gaza Palestine. Perseverance has finally paid off, for this Sunday, December 27, 2009 in downtown Orlando, St. George Orthodox Church has opened their sanctuary to people of all faiths-and those with none-to join their 10 AM Holy Liturgy service that will commemorate all the lives that were lost beginning December 27, 2008 and during the 23 days of war in the Gaza Strip. A massive mobilization also begins on December 27, 2009, with candlelight vigils, concerts, marches, demonstrations, and movie screenings all over the world, because world leaders have failed to end the siege on Gaza and act humanely. Although the Israeli tanks have left the Gaza Strip, the complete closure of land, air and sea borders has continued. However, there are no borders on the world wide web and a global week of actions will be witnessed in America, France, United Kingdom, Turkey, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Afghanistan, Australia, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Jordan, Canada, Israel/Palestine, Poland, Denmark, and Greece. On December 31, 2009, more than 1,400 internationals will converge in Cairo to join the NONVIOLENT Gaza Freedom March, organized by The International Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza with the objective to raise international attention of the ongoing siege and blockade of Gaza-which is illegal under international law. A year has passed since 1.5 million human beings in Gaza were terrorized, 1,400 civilians killed, thousands injured and hundreds of thousands became homeless and today, they still remain in tents or in the ruins of their homes, because Israel persists to deny the needed building materials into Gaza. Because leaders of the world have failed to act humanely, the hospitals in Gaza are also denied the medicine and supplies to provide even routine medical care. Israel's blockade of Gaza is a blatant violation of international law and the American Government and Egypt are most complicit. The Conscience of Humanity remains shocked and awed by the misery inflicted upon the 1.5 million human beings in Gaza, but even a little one, such as I could read the writing on that wall in 2005; when I wrote KEEP HOPE ALIVE, Chapter 14: 9/11/05 AND THE GULFPORT BLUES, from which I excerpt: Back at the A-frame, Terese sipped from her steaming mug of black brew and checked her email, to find report 57 from Jerry Levin, the reporter and full-time volunteer with Christian Peacemaker Teams who had shepherded her through Hebron. She sighed repeatedly as she read about the start of a new school year in Hebron, for it wasn't good. She had spent a few hours in Hebron in June 2005, and had not forgotten it for one day since. "Christ, have mercy! These teachers and kids trying to get to school are threatened and hassled by these erratic and illegal settlers, and a trigger-happy IDF! What a daily life to have to contend with! I cannot imagine watching my child have to go through a checkpoint or be verbally and physically abused just to get to school! What are we teaching these kids, when they grow up looking up the barrel of an Israeli soldier's weapon of destruction?" Next, she opened a press conference summary from September 6, 2005, from Dr. Mustafa Bargouthi regarding the Palestinian National Initiative's report regarding the aftermath of the "disengagement" and the bottom line was that there are more settlers, more walls, and more corruption in the PA. Dr. Mustafa Bargouthi, stated that 'Ninety percent of security violations in Palestine are committed by security forces and intelligence. These forces must be disciplined; the rule of law and an independent judiciary must be installed. [And] it is estimated that 30 percent of the 160,000 salaried government employees do not attend work of any kind. This kind of corruption and nepotism must be ended.' Terese moaned when she read about the violations since the cease-fire agreement of February 8, 2005: "Christ, have mercy! Seventy-five Palestinians, including seventeen innocent children, and fourteen Israelis, including two innocent children, have been murdered. Two thousand Palestinians have been arrested; there have been 2,306 checkpoints imposed, and 8,700 acres of Palestinian land has been confiscated by the Israeli government! And how can these settlers sleep at night, after attacking Palestinians 394 times since the cease-fire agreement? I feel bad about these screwed-up settlers, but they are a cult that has been allowed to get out of control. The Israeli government enticed and encouraged them to settle in illegal land, and this is what it has come to! And yet, the illegal settlements continue! "And, what a farce the so-called disengagement in Gaza was. "The Israeli government still controls all access to Gaza by land, sea, and air. Bargouthi documented that only 25 of over 150 settlements will be dismantled, and only 8,475 of over 436,000 settlers [less than 2 percent of settlers] have been evacuated. Meanwhile, in the past year, 12,800 new settlers have moved into the West Bank - 50 percent more settlers than were evacuated." "This is no withdrawal, this is BS! "Until Palestinians have control of Gaza's borders and a guaranteed passage between Gaza and the West Bank, it is not a withdrawal; it's just BS propaganda! And Gaza is less than 6 percent of the occupied territories, and that leaves 94 percent of Palestinian territories under the boot of the IDF. The corruption in the PA government and hot tempers from those under occupation are a powder keg that's getting ready to blow! "What's it going to take to wake the world up to the fact that most of our problems with radical Islamist fundamentalist militants leads us back to the conflict in Israel and Palestine? "All roads do indeed lead to Jerusalem. "What's it going to take before the International community gets it together and insists, in unity, upon the upholding of international law as the rule we all live by? And that includes Israel and America, too, for both ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I wonder, what's the point of signing on, but then not doing it? "What's it going to take to wake up the legions of blind U.S. Christian Zionists to their indifference to the misery of their sisters and brothers in Israel and Palestine? Their blind allegiance to the Israeli government has allowed our best friend in the world to become a big bully. What's it going to take to break through the ignorance that hard-earned U.S. tax dollars are being used to continue the occupation and apartheid wall?" On December 28, 2008, Haaretz reported: "Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about. Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public - all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces "Cast Lead". "Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. "The Prime Minister's Bureau misinformed the media in stating the discussion would revolve around global jihad.In its summary announcement.the Prime Minister's Bureau devoted one line to the situation in Gaza, compared to one whole page that concerned the outlawing of 35 Islamic organizations. "While Barak was working out the final details with the officers responsible for the operation, Livni went to Cairo to inform Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, that Israel had decided to strike at Hamas. "In parallel, Israel continued to send out disinformation in announcing it would open the crossings to the Gaza Strip and that Olmert would decide whether to launch the strike following three more deliberations on Sunday - one day after the actual order to launch the operation was issued. "The final decision was made.when Barak met with Chief of Staff General Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the Shin Bet Security Service Yuval Diskin and the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Amos Yadlin. Barak sat down with Olmert and Livni several hours later for a final meeting, in which the trio gave the air force its orders."http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1050426.html On December 27, 2008, I received this plea written by Nahida, a child of Gaza: Look at me I would love to write poetry about love, Paint rainbows and butterflies, Smell the scent of rose buds, And dance; Dance with the melody of birds singing I would love to close my eyes and see children smiling No guns pointing at their heads Tell them stories of little fairies in far away lands Not bullets shooting. missile exploding But How can I? There is a knife in my heart I am hurting Hurting I bleed, I cringe I cry HUMANITY, WHERE ARE YOU? I am being slaughtered Under your watchful eyes I am cold. cold.. cold I cringe I cry Humanity, where are you? Why do you turn your face away? Why do you keep looking the other way? I am here Languishing In Gaza alleyways Humanity, where are you? Look at me Look at me I am here In Gaza alleyways I cringe I cry Humanity, Enough turning the other way. - By nahida On December 21, 2009, I emailed the following: Dear Mr. Omar Youssef, omaryoussef at hotmail.com As you are the US Egyptian Embassy contact person and I am an American member of the New Fourth Estate- an activist journalist- I am writing you to express my full support for the December 31, 2009 Gaza Freedom March. I am beseeching you to urge the Egyptian government to realize that civil society has risen up because governments have failed and on the way to Egypt are over 1,300 committed international Internet connected delegates who are seeking to NONVIOLENTLY raise awareness regarding the misery of the 1.5 million human open air prisoners in Gaza who have been denied their human rights. The 1,300 internationals represent millions around the world who are sending desperately needed medical aid, school supplies, winter jackets for the children and most of all; LOVE, HOPE and the message that the world will NOT give up until the siege is lifted and the occupation ends. Please, let the people in. And out. Most Sincerely, Eileen Fleming, Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org A Feature Correspondent for Arabisto.com Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory" Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu" Gaza Freedom March Worldwide Solidarity Actions: December 27th and 31st, 2009 Australia Sydney Gaza Freedom Vigil Sydney December 27, 2009 5:00pm Town Hall Square Sydney, Australia ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sat Dec 26 23:14:18 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:14:18 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] =?iso-8859-1?q?Fwd=3A__Obama_Continues_to_Privatize_Ame?= =?iso-8859-1?q?rica=27s_Imperial_Wars?= Message-ID: <006701ca8747$6f8e3960$1bad57ca@jfos> Excerpt: "The Congressional Research Service estimates that as many as 56,000 civilian contractors may accompany the 30,000 uniformed troops scheduled for deployment to Afghanistan. That's a ratio of almost two-to-one civilian to military. The Afghanistan/Pakistan theater has become the modern world's first large scale corporate/civilian war.(snip) The official statistics on civilians in the war zones do not include covert operations, or "black ops," which have been steadily increasing since President Obama took office, especially in Pakistan." http://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com/pic.php?f=blackwater_mercs.jpg Obama Continues to Privatize America's Imperial Wars 25 12 2009 A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford The Pentagon has methodically insulated its wars from most of U.S. civil society. "For the United States, war has devolved to a matter of contracts, a multi-trillion dollar cash cow for corporations, a self-perpetuating financial bubble that feeds the planet's most dangerous and nonproductive, useless classes." The mercenary is the ideal corporate warrior. "The mercenary war is a simple commercial transaction - a private affair between employee and management." It is now beyond question that civilian military contractors - mercenaries - are permanently embedded in the structure and longterm planning of the United States Armed Forces. In recent years, about half the U.S. personnel in the combined South Asia theaters of war - Afghanistan and Pakistan - have been civilians, according to Pentagon figures. The one-to-one ratio of military to civilians - a percentage that would have been unthinkable prior to the invasion of Iraq - may become even more lopsidedly mercenary with President Obama's troop escalation in Afghanistan. The Congressional Research Service estimates that as many as 56,000 civilian contractors may accompany the 30,000 uniformed troops scheduled for deployment to Afghanistan. That's a ratio of almost two-to-one civilian to military. The Afghanistan/Pakistan theater has become the modern world's first large scale corporate/civilian war. The official statistics on civilians in the war zones do not include covert operations, or "black ops," which have been steadily increasing since President Obama took office, especially in Pakistan. The Pakistani military is extremely sensitive to the influx of thousands of American mercenaries. Much of the Pakistani press and public believe the Americans are sneaking in mercenaries to threaten the Pakistani state and seize its nuclear arsenal, which is likely one reason the Pakistanis have systematically delayed the processing of American travel documents. The mercenary outfit formerly known as Blackwater is one of the most hated names in Pakistan. For the United States, war has devolved to a matter of contracts, a multi-trillion dollar cash cow for corporations, a self-perpetuating financial bubble that feeds the planet's most dangerous and nonproductive, useless classes. "Those who are most likely to be killed in U.S. wars are from families and towns that are least likely to complain." Ever since the near disintegration of the U.S. military in Vietnam, the rulers of the United States have schemed to make war an activity that directly touches only a small proportion of the population. In 1972, the all-volunteer system made it possible for the Pentagon to socially engineer the demographics of the military. In the post-9/11 era, as any viewer of PBS News Hour can observe, the troops most likely to die are small town whites and Latinos - demographics that are not prone to political protest and, at any rate, wield little power in American society. To put it bluntly, those who are most likely to be killed in U.S. wars are from families and towns that are least likely to complain, and are in no positioned to protest effectively, anyway. Recent brown immigrants and white kids from nowheresville are precious to the Pentagon precisely because they present so few political problems. Mercenaries are even better - ideal. The vast majority have already been trained in the combat arms. They are separate from the military chain of command, which can always disavow their crimes with no prejudice to the honor of the uniformed services. Most importantly, the mercenary war is a simple commercial transaction - a private affair between employee and management, and none of the general public's business. Notions of democracy, shared national culpability, citizen's obligations to one another and to the human species - none of this enters the equation in corporate war-making. It is pure killing for profit - or pure profit for killing - on an industrial scale. For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com. BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford at BlackAgendaReport.com. ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Dec 28 20:32:28 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:32:28 +1100 Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Dirty deal at Copenhagen, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, Dennis Brutus tribute, Pakistan, US health, Guatemala, Xmas truce Message-ID: <4B39865C.8070503@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: Dirty deal at Copenhagen, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, Dennis Brutus tribute, Pakistan, US health, Guatemala, Xmas truce * * * 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 at dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in Links. * * * Hamba kahle Comrade Dennis Brutus (1924-2009) There will come a time There will come a time we believe When the shape of the planet and the divisions of the land Will be less important; We will be caught in a glow of friendship a red star of hope will illuminate our lives A star of hope A star of joy A star of freedom -- Dennis Brutus, Caracas, October 18, 2008 December 26, 2009 -- World-renowned political organiser and one of Africa's most celebrated poets, Dennis Vincent Brutus, died early on December 26 in Cape Town, in his sleep, aged 85. * Read more How to cure the post-Copenhagen hangover By Patrick Bond, Durban December 23, 2009 -- In Copenhagen, the world's richest leaders continued their fiery fossil fuel party last Friday night, December 18, ignoring requests of global village neighbours to please chill out. Instead of halting the hedonism, US President Barack Obama and the Euro elites cracked open the mansion door to add a few nouveau riche guests: South Africa's Jacob Zuma, China's Jiabao Wen (reportedly the most obnoxious of the lot), Brazil's Lula Inacio da Silva and India's Manmohan Singh. By Saturday morning, still drunk with their power over the planet, these wild and crazy party animals had stumbled back onto their jets and headed home. The rest of us now have a killer hangover, because on behalf mainly of white capitalists (who are having the most fun of all), the world's rulers stuck the poor and future generations with the vast clean-up charges - and worse: certain death for millions. * Read more Pakistan: Special appeal for families of killed socialist activists By Farooq Tariq, Nasir Mansoor and Khalid Mahmood December 27, 2009 -- The Labour Party Pakistan has lost our four most brilliant comrades, Abdul Salam, Najma Khanum, Rehana Kausar and Wahid Baloch, in a road accident on December 13 near Ormara, Baloachistan. * Read more Copenhagen: Morales and Chavez a `smashing success' -- an insider's report from the ALBA delegation By Ron Ridenour December 23, 2009 -- "Nobel War Prize winner walked in and out of a secret door, and that is the way capitalism and the United States Empire will end up leaving the planet, through a secret back door." So spoke Venezuela President Hugo Chavez from the plenary podium on the last afternoon, December 18, of the 12-day long Copenhagen climate conference (COP15). "While the conference was a failure, it, at least, led to more consciousness of what the problem is for all of us. Now starts a new stage of the struggle for the salvation of humanity, and this is through socialism. Our problem is not just about climate, but about poverty, misery, unnecessary child deaths, discrimination and racism--all related to capitalism", Chavez said at the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Latin America (ALBA) press conference held at the Bella Centre immediately following Chavez' last remarks at the plenary. * Read more United States: Healthcare bill -- a nightmare before Christmas By Billy Wharton December 25, 2009 -- Call it the nightmare before Christmas or Santa's lump of healthcare coal. Either title captures the disastrous qualities of the healthcare reform bill passed by US Senate on December 24. After months of media coverage, a summer of wild town hall meetings and all the high-sounding rhetoric one could swallow, a 2000 page monster has been birthed. * Read more Photo essay: Justice for the disappeared of Guatemala -- Exhumations in Villalobos Photos and text by James Rodr?guez * Read more CPI (ML): `Shameful betrayal' at Copenhagen -- India and China sign undemocratic US-scripted accord By Radhika Krishnan December 24, 2009 -- Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation -- The 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) has finally ended in Copenhagen, and it is now time to officially write the obituary. This week-long conference, where 110 countries got together to try and evolve a blueprint to handle the climate change crisis, has quite predictably and most unfortunately ended in failure. Predictable, because for a long time now there have been indications that the US would continue to hold the rest of the world to ransom by refusing to accept responsibility for its role in creating the climate crisis. * Read more The soldiers' Christmas truce -- A bas la guerre! Nie wieder Kreig! Das walte Gott! Peace on Earth! Review by Phil Shannon Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce By Stanley Weintraub The Free Press, 2001 206 pages It was the war that was supposed "to be over by Christmas". It very nearly was. A spontaneous soldiers' truce broke out along the Western Front on Christmas Eve 1914, four months after the start of hostilities. * Read more Climate Justice Now! statement: Call for `System change not climate change' unites global movement Corrupt Copenhagen "accord" exposes gulf between peoples' demands and elite political interests By the Climate Justice Now! coalition December 22, 2009 -- The highly anticipated UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15) ended with a fraudulent agreement, engineered by the United States and dropped into the conference at the last moment. The "agreement" was not adopted. Instead, it was "noted" in an absurd parliamentary invention designed to accommodate the United States and permit UN secretary generla Ban Ki-moon to utter the ridiculous pronouncement, "We have a deal", in a spectacular disrespect for the multilateralism that should be the basis of the United Nations. * Read more Excellent news from Copenhagen: Capitalist politicians exposed, foundations laid for mass movement By Daniel Tanuro December 19, 2009 -- We knew the United Nations summit in Copenhagen would not conclude with a new international treaty but a simple statement of intent - just one more. But the text adopted at the end of the meeting is worse than anything we could imagine: no quantified objectives for carbon-emissions reduction, no reference year for measuring them, no deadlines, no date! * Read more Democracy Now! interview: Hugo Chavez on how to tackle climate change: `We must go from capitalism to socialism' December 21, 2009 -- Democracy Now! -- We speak with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez about climate change, the Copenhagen summit and President Obama. Chavez calls the COP15 summit undemocratic and accuses world leaders of only seeking a face-saving agreement. "We must reduce all the emissions that are destroying the planet," Chavez says. "That requires a change in the economic model: we must go from capitalism to socialism." * Read more El Salvador: FMLN welcomes Hugo Chavez's call for a Fifth International Translated by Lara Pullin of the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network * 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: From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Thu Dec 31 17:24:33 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (Dion Giles) Date: Fri, 01 Jan 2010 09:24:33 +0800 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: NYCCAN steps up fight for truth Message-ID: <20100101012434.49EB11237E@fep05.mfe.bur.connect.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From papadop at peak.org Thu Dec 31 23:35:28 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:35:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Mai-not] FORBES spins for Monsanto Message-ID: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0118/americas-best-company-10-gmos-dupont-planet-versus-monsanto.html?partner=alerts Company of the Year -- The Planet Versus Monsanto Robert Langreth and Matthew Herper, 12.31.09, 04:40 PM EST Forbes Magazine dated January 18, 2010 Monsanto's first round of attackers said its seeds were evil. Now the charge is that Monsanto's seeds are too good. Monsanto biochemist Roy Fuchs takes fish oil pills every morning in hopes of warding off heart disease. He'd much rather get his omega-3 fatty acids in a granola bar or cup of yogurt. But it is tricky to add omega-3s to food products without adding unwanted flavors. After a while on the shelf, omega-3-enriched products can smell and taste like old fish, he says. Fuchs hopes that the new genetically engineered soybeans Monsanto is working on will solve this problem. The soybeans contain two new genes to make a tasteless oil that is converted inside the body into the form of omega-3 thought to be good for the heart. In a 157-patient study presented at a cardiology conference in November, those volunteers who had high triglycerides saw their levels drop 26% after eating 15 grams of the oil daily for three months. Wouldn't that be a wonderful product to have for sale? Stops heart disease--and protects the environment, too. People could get their nutritional supplements without depleting fish stocks. Monsanto needs crowd-pleasers like this to get past its image problems. In economic terms, the company is a winner. It has created many billions of dollars of value for the world with seeds genetically engineered to ward off insects or make a crop immune to herbicides: Witness the vast numbers of farmers who prefer its seeds to competing products, and the resulting $44 billion market value of the company. In its fiscal 2009 Monsanto sold $7.3 billion of seeds and seed genes, versus $4 billion for second-place DuPont and its Pioneer Hi-Bred unit. Monsanto, of St. Louis, netted $2.1 billion on revenue of $11.7 billion for fiscal 2009 (ended Aug. 31). Its sales have increased at an annualized 18% clip over five years; its annualized return on capital in the period has been 12%. Those accomplishments earn it the designation as FORBES' Company of the Year. But economic achievement is not the same thing as public adulation. Over most of the time that Monsanto has been working to make humanity better fed, it has been the object of vicious criticism. In the first round of attacks the company was portrayed as the Satan of agriculture for daring to modify the genes in corn and soybeans. That people have been selecting plant genes for 5,000 years was no defense; Monsanto's gene-splicing threatened the world with ecological catastrophe. Genetically modified crops were the subject of legislation outlawing them and numerous protests in Europe and elsewhere in which biotech crops were ripped from the ground. In 2002 Zambia, during a famine, rejected a cargo of donated corn because it might have been tainted with the offending seeds. Over time the protests have mellowed, and the legal impediments to GM are gradually falling. It didn't make sense for a hungry planet to reject tools to increase the productivity of farmers. Much of Europe, while still forbidding the planting of GM crops, permits the importation of foods made from them. But now Monsanto has a new round of enemies. This time its supposed sin is making seeds that are too good. The company has something too close to a monopoly in some seed markets. The public is hard to please, isn't it? But Monsanto perseveres. It has been in biotech long enough to develop a thick corporate skin. Chief Executive Hugh Grant, 51, is both manager and evangelist. He says the new generation of biotech crops will go beyond mere herbicide tolerance and pest-killing to help feed the world. "There is bigger demand for food than ever. There is no new farmland," he says. "The business model is you provide more yield to growers, and you are rewarded for that." He vows to increase gross profit (approximately $6.8 billion in 2009) by 25% over the next three years. By marrying conventional breeding with genetic engineering, Monsanto aims to produce more food for less money on the same amount of land. Conventional breeding--these days a high-tech matchmaking process guided by DNA sequencing machines--will help boost maximum yields. Biotech genes will ensure that pests, weeds, drought and other problems don't destroy a crop's potential, Grant says. "It is like computers in the 1960s," says Robert T. Fraley, Monsanto's chief technology officer. "We are just at the beginning of the explosion of technology we are going to see." Adds Grant: "Our pipeline is richer and deeper than it has ever been." A new corn variety that includes eight genes for pest resistance and herbicide tolerance could become the company's next big product. It is due out this spring. Also in testing are drought-tolerant corn, corn that needs less fertilizer and higher-yielding biotech soybeans and corn. Farmers complain about Monsanto's prices, but they still buy the seeds. Ninety percent of the U.S. soybean crop and 80% of the corn crop and cotton crop are grown with seeds containing Monsanto's technology. Other countries are also growing Monsanto's biotech crops, including India, with 20 million acres of cotton; Brazil, with 35 million acres of soybeans; and Argentina, with 43 million acres of soybeans. (Brazil once blocked genetically modified plants, but farmers planted the crops anyway, and it eventually legalized them.) Packaged foods with corn syrup or soybean oil likely contain the fruits of Monsanto's gene-modified agriculture. But agriculture is not a business that tolerates resting on your laurels. Monsanto faces a rough 2010. Rivals are producing more competitive products, and farmers are likely to resist further price increases. Sales of the herbicide Roundup, the company's second-biggest product, have been declining as renewed availability of raw materials allows other companies to make cheap generics. Monsanto laid off 8% of its staff this fall. Another headache: The Justice Department is looking broadly at competition in agriculture--and is asking questions about Monsanto's practices in particular. One trend in Monsanto's favor: Demand for grain is likely to grow as emerging countries like China adopt a meat-heavy Western diet. It takes a lot of feed to make all that steak. "How are you going to feed everybody? Yield. Farmers are going to get better yield with genetically modified seeds," says Edward Jones analyst Daniel Ortwerth. Monsanto "is chasing every acre in the world, figuring what bugs are eating people's crops and how to stop them." He predicts Monsanto's sales (after a slight drop in 2010) will climb 10%, to $13 billion, in fiscal 2011. The business model here is productivity: increasing the tons of crop that can be produced per hour of labor and/or per acre of land. Monsanto created soybeans, corn and other plants resistant to Roundup by inserting a gene from glyphosate-resistant bacteria found near a Roundup factory in Luling, La. Farmers can plant their crops and then, whenever weeds emerge, spray on Roundup without worrying about killing their crop. Monsanto's other main line of products is corn and cotton seeds containing genes for pest-killing toxins produced by the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. Organic farmers have been spraying these natural pesticides on their crops for decades. Monsanto's technology puts the stuff right into the plant. "We are getting more bushels per acre with the same amount of fertilizer" and fewer pesticides, says Champaign, Ill. farmer John Reifsteck, who plants mostly biotech corn and soybeans on his 1,800 acres. Terry Wanzek, a farmer in Jamestown, N.D., used to plant mostly conventional wheat. Now he plants mostly bioengineered corn and soybeans because they produce crops that are more reliable and more profitable. "Wheat and barley haven't kept up with the times," he says. Even some organic farmers are clamoring for genetically modified crops. Don J. Cameron grows both organic and conventional cotton on his farm in Helm, Calif. The organic fields cost $500 per acre to weed by hand, versus only $30 an acre for glyphosate-immune fields. Lately he can't even sell organic cotton because the stuff coming out of India, Syria and Uganda is so cheap. "I feel the organic industry has painted itself in a corner saying that all genetically modified organisms are bad. Eventually they're going to have to allow it," Cameron says. The enemies haven't disappeared entirely. A 2009 Union of Concerned Scientists study calculated that only 14% of recent corn-crop yield increases are due to genetically engineered Bt corn. Roundup-ready corn and soy seeds don't increase crop yield at all, it found. Genetic engineering of crops "is inherently risky," says Greenpeace Policy Director Marco Contiero. "We cannot recall crops that are released into the environment." He says Monsanto's dominance decreases seed biodiversity. Monsanto, formed in 1901, was a food additives and chemical company before starting crop biotech research in 1981. Its biotech crops come out of the same genetic engineering revolution that produced companies like Genentech and Amgen But while biotech medicines hit the market in 1982 with the approval of recombinant insulin, biotech crops took longer to develop. (The chemical business was spun off in 1997.) Some of the difficulty was technical. It took a while to figure out how to regenerate whole plants from genetically modified plant cells. In one method scientists would blast new genes into plant cells at high velocity with a gene gun. An advance came in the early 1980s, when researchers at Monsanto and, independently, in Europe discovered that the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens could do the job more precisely. The bacteria cause benign tumors called crown gall disease in trees. Researchers remove disease-causing genes from the bacteria, add new genes of interest and then mix the bacteria and plant cells in a petri dish; the bacteria do the hard work of inserting the new genes into the plant. Most of Monsanto's genetic engineering work still uses this method. Monsanto's foray into biotechnology was controversial from the start. Its first genetically engineered product, bovine growth hormone for boosting milk production, was introduced in 1994 to a furious debate over whether it was deleterious to health. "It probably wasn't the wisest product to bring out first," admits Earl Harbison, Monsanto's president from 1986 to 1993. "But we had it." (Monsanto sold the product line to Eli Lilly in 2008.) Initially Monsanto aimed to roll out biotech seeds slowly, Harbison says, building consensus by engaging potential critics. "Seeds are not products people have to accept," he says. The go-slow approach evaporated when Robert Shapiro, who had been head of Monsanto's former Nutrasweet business, became Monsanto's chairman. Highly promotional, Shapiro courted the press with stories about how Monsanto's crops were going to help the environment by reducing pesticides and pushed seeds through friendly regulators. A backlash was inevitable. Making crops resistant to Roundup was an obvious idea. But it proved difficult to do until someone came up with the clever idea of trying genes from bacteria living in the wastewater near a Roundup plant. "I walked in the lab one day and saw the results on my robot, and it was 'Holy cow,'" recalls Monsanto Vice President Stephen Padgette. Roundup-ready soybeans were introduced in 1996. Bt-endowed cotton came that same year, followed by Bt corn in 1997. The cry went up that genetically engineered crops would cause allergies, but this has not been true for marketed crops "at all," says University of Georgia researcher Wayne Parrott. Then it was charged that Bt corn would kill butterflies or do other bad things to the environment. But the effect on the environment is just the opposite. GM seeds lower pesticide use or, in the case of Roundup resistance, may reduce soil erosion by making low-till farming more practical. "We have to feed people in a less destructive way," says uc, Davis plant biologist Pamela Ronald, author of the pro-biotech book Tomorrow's Table. "Genetically engineered crops can be useful for that." When drug giant Pharmacia (now Pfizer agreed to merge with Monsanto in 1999 to snag its arthritis drugs, Pharmacia shares dropped because drug investors wanted no part of the controversial seed business. The genetically modified crop controversy reached a climax in 2000, when a competing genetically modified corn product--one not approved for human consumption--was detected in Kraft taco shells, prompting a nationwide recall and yet more bad publicity. When Monsanto was spun off from Pharmacia in 2002 sales of the synthetic seeds were gaining, but the company was not making money on them. "We were a mile wide and an inch deep," recalls Monsanto molecular biologist David Stark. There were research projects in everything from wheat to turf grass to coffee. Hugh Grant, a company lifer who snared the top job in 2003, killed most of these projects and bet heavily on three big crops--corn, soybeans and cotton. These crops were the most likely to generate sales big enough to justify the $100 million investment that new genetically engineered crops require. Bioengineered corn and soybeans are less controversial because they are rarely sold directly to consumers. Grant also realized that genetic engineering alone was not enough for success in the seed business. It cannot replace conventional breeding methods, which allow crop scientists to create hundreds of seed varieties tailored to different soils and weather. Monsanto's research budget is now split equally between genetic engineering and conventional breeding. "If you have incredibly brilliant biotech and extraordinarily average seed, you will end up with average crop yields," Grant says. "The thing the [genetic engineering] does is protect that preprogrammed yield." Grant's job gets more difficult from here on out. A main patent on Roundup-ready soybean seed expires in 2014. This could threaten $500 million in royalties Monsanto gets from licensing this genetic trait to competitors, estimates JPMorgan. Monsanto just introduced a second-generation herbicide-tolerant product that it says will produce 7% more soybeans per acre. But rivals like DuPont are working on their own herbicide-tolerant seeds. Dupont hopes to combine its herbicide-tolerant trait with the Roundup-proof trait; Monsanto is suing DuPont to stop it. "It's all being slowly chipped away," says Ticonderoga Securities analyst Chris L. Shaw, who calls the company overvalued. Then there are antitrust questions. Competitors like DuPont, which has countersued Monsanto on antitrust grounds, and some farmer groups object to Monsanto's licensing agreements with numerous small seed companies. They say the agreements are too restrictive and limit other companies' ability to blend in their own traits. Monsanto says the Department of Justice has made inquiries "similar to the claims made by DuPont" in its lawsuit. "Concentration in the seed industry has resulted in higher prices and less choice" for farmers, complains William Wenzel of the Wisconsin nonprofit Farmer to Farmer Campaign on Genetic Engineering. Wisconsin dairy farmer Paul Rozwadowski blames Monsanto for the difficulties he has had finding the conventional corn seed that he has used for decades. "Monsanto is taking over the industry," he says. "They are trying to eliminate all conventional seed." "Any time you have a firm with 90% to 95% market share and you have concerns about supercompetitive pricing, you're going to get on the doj's radar," says Brian A. Weinberger, an antitrust attorney at Buchalter Nemer. "If Monsanto clamps down too hard on the licensees, it puts itself front and center." Monsanto says it licenses its genetic traits broadly and is so far ahead simply because it bet heavily on genetic engineering years before the competition. "Farmers vote one spring at a time. You get invited back if you do a good job," Grant says. Since 2005 Monsanto has been gradually moving back into other food crops, including fruits and vegetables. Among the projects in the works are a lettuce with the crunch of iceberg and the nutrients of romaine, and a watermelon whose flesh doesn't leak after being cut. This research involves conventional breeding. Monsanto abandoned its biotech wheat research in 2004 after it proved too controversial. In July Monsanto reentered the wheat business by acquiring conventional breeder WestBred for $45 million. It hopes to use genetic engineering to create drought-tolerant varieties. "When people are confused or worried the natural tendency is to just say no," says Monsanto scientist Stark. "The only thing we can do is produce products with real benefits and hope that people eventually become comfortable what we are doing is good."