From thinker at thelakebc.ca Mon Feb 2 21:21:37 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Mon Feb 2 21:19:03 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] To my friends Message-ID: <200902030318.n133Ipbp008101@karma.reboot.ca> I went for a colonoscopy examination, for the first time in my life, last week on Thursday and it was found that I had a large, approx. 15 cm. long, most likely cancerous tumour in my colon, on the lower left. We have some excellent surgeons here in Williams Lake, and as there was no time to waste, I'm scheduled for a major operation, to remove part of my colon, tomorrow, Tuesday, morning sometime after 8:30. Although this whole thing came like a lightning out of the blue, we're taking it upbeat and in very good spirits, and are planning and looking forward to complete recovery to a better health than before. Please don't bother with sympathy messages, as I'm shutting this machine off right after this message goes out. However, as a firm believer in the power of positive thinking, I would like to ask some of you to please send some positive mental messages my way, tomorrow morning. Let's face it, I'll need all the help I can get. All the very best to all of you and I hope to be back on line sometime next week. Meanwhile, learn from my lesson and have yourselves checked out. There's absolutely nothing to it. It is totally harmless and painless. Cheers, Ed. From duanebehrens at cox.net Mon Feb 2 21:53:11 2009 From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens) Date: Mon Feb 2 21:53:12 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] To my friends In-Reply-To: <200902030318.n133Ipbp008101@karma.reboot.ca> Message-ID: <20090202225311.V97WY.1027078.imail@fed1rmwml30> ED [snip]: Please don't bother with sympathy messages, as I'm shutting this machine off right after this message goes out. However, as a firm believer in the power of positive thinking, I would like to ask some of you to please send some positive mental messages my way, tomorrow morning. Let's face it, I'll need all the help I can get. DUANE: You can tell us "not to bother," but there is no "sympathy" in this message. Only kind and caring thoughts for a thoughtful, compassionate man, along with Jane's and my strong, positive wishes that your complete recovery begins tomorrow. With respect and admiration, Duane Behrens -- http://perzuki.smugmug.com/ From siamdave at yahoo.ca Tue Feb 3 10:56:25 2009 From: siamdave at yahoo.ca (Dave Patterson) Date: Tue Feb 3 10:56:49 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: A Brief History of the New World Order References: <3A8F5912-6DC4-4FAC-8E88-710C25E0B8D0@quaylargo.com> Message-ID: <200902032356250296.031CB8C1@smtp-adsl.totonline.net> *********** BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE *********** On 09-02-02 at 9:44 PM Richard Moore wrote: A Brief History of the New World Order rkm@quaylargo.com 2 Feb 2009 "For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." – David Rockefeller, Memoirs, 6-11-6 World War I and the birth of the new-world-order project The beginning of anything is always problematic to pin down. For every beginning, there are always antecedents, causes, preparations, broader canvases to consider, etc. For my money, World War I – the war to end all wars – is a sensible choice, as the launch-event into the new world order project. Of course one must go further back for motivation, the conception of means, and for the vision. Some refer all the way back to The Illuminati, which was (still is?) a real conspiratorial clique aiming for global governance,. Others refer to Cecil Rhodes, who quite effectively used his wealth from diamond mining to promote his vision of global Anglo-Saxon dominance. Regardless of the details of the preceding historical thread, WWI was the epochal event that began an identifiable program toward a new world order, a single global hierarchy, controlling all global affairs, under the control of elite financiers. The British Empire represented the ultimate evolution of one particular path to global dominance: a single hegemonic power, playing off other powers against one another in a balance of powers strategy. Certain mechanisms of power were perfected in this era. I refer to the integration of propaganda, racism, intelligence operations, covert intervention, diplomacy, financial manipulation, and naked military power – all orchestrated, with considerable art and brutality, in the pursuit of imperialist objectives. The real power behind the British government, however, by 1900, had long been the elite banking families of The City, in league with their colleagues in Europe and America. In Marxist terms, we would call this community the capitalist elite of the day, and they were the ones envisioning our now-unfolding new world order.. Within the context of the British Empire, they had exercised considerable power over global affairs and finance, and they had outgrown the relatively limited vision of the British imperial model. Britain itself, circa 1900, despite being still seen as the greatest world power, had become only a shadow of its former self. Once the manufacturer to the world – it enjoyed a near monopoly on industrial production for a century – it had now been eclipsed industrially by both Germany and the USA. Britain was no longer the obvious choice, as the base for a global power grab. As Alexis d'Tocqueville had noted earlier in Democracy in America, the nations most inherently destined for greatness were the USA and Russia. Of the two, c. 1900, the USA was certainly more promising, from a capitalist perspective, as a power base. So the decision was made, to shift hegemony from London to Washington, and to create the context for a more evolved model of global hegemony. For centuries The City's banking elite and Britain's nationalist elite had collaborated harmoniously. One might not have imagined a distinction between them; they were, it seemed, of a whole. But while in British circles generally, c. 1900, European dominance and the rise of Germany were the big issues, the bankers were looking at a broader canvas, and with a longer-range lens. A splitting of the ways was beginning, and a betrayal among global elites was in the offing. In British nationalist eyes, control over the balance of power in Europe was everything. America was far away, and up until then its only imperialist adventures were also far away, peripheral to European affairs. Germany, however, had become an urgent threat to European dominance, with its industrial productivity and its plans for a Berlin-Baghdad railway and a wider rail network, undercutting Britain's sea-based dominance of world trade. British nationalists, quite naturally, were thinking in terms of war with Germany, as the only available means of maintaining British hegemony. The banking elite, more slyly, was seeing such an adventure as a way to kill several birds with one stone. And thus began a classic betrayal scenario. For the time being they were still seemingly one, still comrades, the bankers and the nationalists .. They worked together to set the stage for war, creating encircling alliances which would bring everyone and their cousin in against Germany and her allies, once a match was lit under the carefully prepared conflagration. And then came the small matter of finance. Long before, the Rothschilds, the classic model of an elite banking family, learned that the financing of wars is the most profitable and reliable of all banking operations. Britain could indeed prosecute the war with Germany, with the help of her alliances, and prevail, and she could also stake out strategic claims in the Middle East – but where would she get the money for the troops and ships? Don't worry about that, we'll take care of you, said the friendly bankers. So Johnny goes marching off to war, allegedly to end war, while the British state pursues with vigor its nationalist objectives. Meanwhile the City's bankers appointed their man in America – JP Morgan – to broker America's support of the British war effort. By making America the financier and goods-supplier of Britain's war on Germany, Germany could be brought to its knees militarily, and Britain could be brought to its knees financially – while at the same time America could be turned into a proto-superpower. All of these things coming together at one time – that is why I see WWI as the birth of the new-world-order project. WWI was the making of America, as a world power. Its actual military participation was minimal, late, and secondary. Much more important were the internal industrial expansion, the influx of funding to the domestic economy, and the business consolidation that occurred. Money went from New York to London, on loan, and then the money was sent back to Chicago, or Cleveland, or wherever, to purchase the goods of war. While Europeans and Brits were being slaughtered in their millions, Americans were experiencing boom times, leading into its golden age of the roaring 1920s. When the war ended, Britain had accomplished her imperial objectives, had won the battle for European hegemony, and eliminated Germany as an immediate threat. In the process, however, she had inadvertently lost the war for global hegemony: Europe was no longer the focus of world power. Guns and troops had won the battle, but debt had won the war. All of Europe – winners and losers alike – were destitute as the war ended, and the victorious allies were encumbered by astronomical debt to the American Treasury and to the banking elite. The European economic malaise that emerged out of the Treaty of Versailles is usually blamed, in popular mythology, on the 'shortsightedness of chauvinistic diplomats', eg. Clemenceau, in seeking revenge on their erstwhile enemies. Or it is blamed on 'narrow-minded protectionist measures' adopted by European nations in the postwar years. In reality, it was the enforcement of debt collection that caused the malaise, and it was Morgan's men, not diplomats, who dictated the draconian terms of repayment. The betrayal, of Britain by the bankers, was now complete, and the dagger was being twisted in the guts of the betrayed. Britain and its allies could not afford the repayment terms out of their own pockets, so the fiction was propagated that Germany had started the war, and that it must therefore pay reparations to the innocent victors. As usual, the victors write the histories. The whole repayment scenario was carefully scripted by Morgan's men, in the terms of the treaty, so that Europe would be struggling for decades to pay their debts to America and to Morgan's financing syndicate. The focus of global hegemony had shifted Westward across the Atlantic. While Europe had been devastated by war, America had built up its infrastructures and expanded its industrial base. While Europe emerged deeply in debt, America emerged with a strong balance sheet and an astronomical amount in the accounts-receivable column, to be paid by the war's 'victors', and subsidized by the 'losers'. While Europe struggled to rebuild – requiring still more borrowing – America could continue its economic expansion, capture global markets, and generally exploit its privileged financial and industrial position. >From a nationalist perspective, we could say that America won WWI, and all of Europe lost – and lost big. The Europeans were bound to pay America huge sums for the privilege of having devastated one another. But in America as in Britain, one must draw a distinction between nationalist-minded elites, and financial elites. During the war the bankers had shown the face of a true comrade to both Britain and America – enabling the one to win the war, and facilitating the rise to power of the other. Each of the banker's "friends" got what it wished for. (One needs to be very careful of what one wishes for.) We have seen how the banking comrade betrayed his British nationalist friends, by shifting the ground of hegemony westward while the old ground was being bitterly contested. It turns out that the American nationalist friends were also betrayed at the same time, by the same banking comrade, in a coup that will be described in the next section. Britain had won the battle for Europe, for a while; America had won the battle for strongest nation, for a longer while – but it was the banking elite who won the war – for discretionary power over the future course of world affairs. The Federal Reserve and the subversion of the American republic "Let me issue and control a nations money and I care not who writes the laws.." – Amshall Rothschild "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currencies, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their prosperity until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." – Thomas Jefferson Even while Britain was arranging its encircling alliances, and creating the conditions for inevitable war, banking-agent Morgan and his cohorts were busy arranging the means of financing the adventure, and creating the conditions so that that the banking elite would be the decider-behind-the-scenes and a primary raker-in-of-profits, as America exploited its position of dominance in the post-WWI era. The time-tested formula, by which banking elites had come to dominate European governments, was the creation of a privately-owned central bank. Such a bank, according to the trusty formula, has the power to control credit, the money supply, and interest rates, to issue the currency of the nation, and to loan that currency at interest to the government. The implementation of that fatal formula in America, however, had severe obstacles to overcome. The dangers of a central bank were well known to the Founding Fathers, and sentiment among political elites remained strong in the republic against such an institution. Earlier implementations had occurred, and each had been dissolved, to beneficial effect, by a subsequent administration. In order to overcome these political obstacles, the bankers employed two other time-tested formulas: buying politicians, and creating panic through engineered crisis. Like so many well-minded politicians, who for the most part try to do good during their tenure, Woodrow Wilson found it necessary, at a critical juncture in his career, to make a pact with the devil. The path to the Presidency would be opened to him, and in most things he could have his own mind, but if a bill came before him establishing a central bank, he was to sign it. The pact was made, the coffers were opened, and the road to the Presidency was successfully travelled. With Wilson elected, and his signature assured, it remained only to manipulate the Federal Reserve Bill (which was written by banking-agent Paul Warburg) through Congress. Step One was to create a banking panic, which JP Morgan was able to accomplish simply by leaking rumors to the press that a certain New York bank was in trouble, causing a run on the bank, and from there the crisis spread domino-fashion and general panic ensued. When the panic was at its peak, the Federal Reserve Bill was introduced into Congress, along with false and sombre assurances that the result would be financial stability, and an end to boom-bust cycles. The general panic created enough political support that a vocal minority of Congress came to support the bill. Step Two, in manipulating the bill through Congress, was to call for a vote late one night, when most of Congress had gone home for Christmas, while the minority-in-favor had been tipped off to stick around. The bill passed, Wilson signed it promptly, and the coup was complete. The devil got his due, and just in time to maximize elite gains (both political and economic) from the financing of WWI. Wilson lived to rue the day he shook hands with the devil. He expressed this later in strong terms: "We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world – no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men." "Some of the biggest men in the United States are afraid of something. They know there is a power somewhere, so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it" The war had served as a vehicle to transfer the focus of hegemony to America, and much else was shipped across the Atlantic along with that focus. The lessons Britain had learned in its centuries of empire were brought over as well – the sly coordination of the overt and the covert, secret collaborations between private and public actors, the artful use of deception and betrayal, and all the other tricks of internal intrigue and geopolitical dominance. The Council on Foreign Relations was established, directly on the model of a similar British organization. The emerging American giant was being carefully tutored by past masters of global games. In a single decade the Anglo-American banking elite had managed to devastate Europe, launch America on the path to hegemony, secure direct control of American finance and behind-the-scenes control of American political affairs – and rake in astronomical profits in the process. Let this be a lesson to those who assume that elites aren't clever enough to carry out big projects successfully in this complicated world of ours. And in fact these kinds of elite manipulations are not really rocket science. When you have control over finance, and you have your tentacles into high-level political circles – and you have centuries of experience at this kind of thing – there's a lot you can accomplish using routine methods. Among the routine methods are deception, betrayal, artificial crises, bubble and burst economic cycles, engineered conflicts – and above all – never hesitating to finance wars to get what you want; genocide is a legitimate means. As Henry Kissinger put it, when America betrayed the Kurds and was enthusiastically supporting Saddam Hussein, "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs". It's really just a matter of thinking big, and not giving a damn about anyone else but you and your friends and your shared power. These people have a philosophy: if we weren't on top, someone else would be. Typical gangster reasoning. World War II and the consolidation of American hegemony WWI had been such a successful project that planning began immediately for a grander sequel, another giant step toward a new world order. In the early 1920's, still in the days of the Weimar Republic, a team of Krupp engineers were secretly tasked with a project: come up with designs for a line of military equipment suitable for a war twenty years from now. Thus were conceived the advanced weapons that served the Reich so well when the time came. Even though Germany was destitute, and treaty-bound not to rearm, someone knew, and told Krupp, that all this would change – and within the designated timeframe. There were two primary elite objectives for the inter-war years: collecting the WWI debts, and creating the conditions for a larger-scale war that would consolidate America's hegemonic role in world affairs. As in WWI, the plan would be to get others to do the hard work, and for the yanks to come in when most of the fighting was over, pick up all the marbles, and score the points for victory. And once again, the banking elite would be financing the war (as it turns out, all sides) and raking in profits beyond measure. Ongoing destitution in Europe was useful for two reasons: it maximized debt repayment, and it created the conditions in which elites could socially engineer the reconstruction process. Destitute people are likely to accept whatever crumbs of hope are thrown their way. When Mussolini came along, with his vision of fascism, elites saw a man who could 'instill the discipline' necessary to enable debt repayment. He was promptly funded by the Anglo-American bankers. Mussolini's fascist ideas resonated with ideas popular among American elites. Eugenics, for example, including the killing or sterilizing of "undesirables", was a cause promoted by Rockefeller, Ford, and many others. And the primary tenet of fascism – the individual is subservient to the needs of the state – is music to the ears of ruthless elites everywhere, and in particular to our friendly banking elites. Hitler was a project of the Anglo-American bankers. His charismatic brilliance was noticed early, and his Mein Kampf served as an effective marketing brochure for himself: here was a man determined to do exactly what the financial elite would love to see happen – he wanted to invade and decimate the anti-capitalist Soviet Union. His rise to power was funded largely through the auspices of the Anglo-American bankers, and immense profits were made by investing in the German rearmament process. And he was good about debt repayments. Germany fighting Russia, that was a good start for the next war project. Meanwhile, in the Pacific, Japan was looming as a new power. In 1905 she had bettered Russia in the Russo-Japanese war and she was rapidly industrializing. Japan had imperialist aspirations and this fit perfectly into elite planning. Japan against China, and Germany against Russia, was precisely the kind of global war that elites, comfortable in New York, would be happy to fight, and win. Many a dollar was made investing in Japan's imperialist adventures, and selling them supplies and equipment, prior to Pearl Harbor.. Meanwhile, in the USA, there were profits and gains of other kinds to be made during the inter-war years. First came the bubble, aka the roaring twenties. Everyone and his cousin was playing the market. Everything was going up, as carefully stage managed by the new Federal Reserve financial autocracy. With a strong economy, and all that cash coming in from debt repayments, the bubble was easy to manage. Lots of people made a bundle, but the biggest bundles were stashed away by those at the top who financed the episode. The house always wins. Next came the consolidation phase, aka the Great Depression. If America was to emerge from the next war project as global hegemon, the important thing was to own as much of America as possible. By comparison, current profits were secondary. And the most convenient way to buy up American assets was to create a depression, whereby everything would be on the market at fire-sale prices. Elementary, my dear Watson. All of these threads wove together perfectly as WWII began. The masses of people in Europe and Asia were engaged in murdering one another, and destroying one another's countries, while the USA continued to stay out of the fray, and the Anglo-American banking elite was profiting from its investments and loans to all sides of the conflicts. America's entry into the war was carefully delayed, coming just in time to determine the outcome, but after much of the fighting had already occurred. In order to facilitate this delay, the virtues of neutrality were promoted in the mainstream media right up until Pearl Harbor, despite considerable grassroots anti-fascist sentiment. When the right time came for entry, banking-agent Roosevelt initiated a series of provocations against Japan, designed to force them to attack. The Japanese codes had been broken, the date of the attack on Pearl Harbor was known, and the valuable aircraft carriers were put safely out to sea. Out-of-date ships were left as sacrificial lambs, eg the Arizona. Day of Infamy indeed.. By such an arranged incident, the neutrality propaganda could be instantly reversed, and a declaration of war readily obtained from a neutralist-minded Congress. Many of them pacifists yesterday, the young men of America were now all lining up to enlist. So easy, when you pull all the strings, to turn a whole nation around on a dime. "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances." —Harry S. Truman, New York Times, June 24, 1941 Even after declaring war on Japan and Germany, America participated only marginally, with a holding action in the Pacific, a troop buildup in the British isles, and a bombing campaign against the Reich. The real fighting was happening in China and on the Eastern Front of the German campaign. America was happy for the fighting to go on, as long as a big winner didn't emerge, a potential threat to US hegemony. Every day the fighting continued, the bankers were profiting from the financing, and potential rivals to America were being weakened. Only when Germany was defeated at Stalingrad, and the huge Russian army began advancing westward, did America finally commit masses of ground troops to combat. There was no need to defeat Hitler; Stalin was taking care of that business on the Eastern Front, where 80% of the German divisions were fighting. The task of the American troops was to race eastward to halt the advance of Russia as quickly as possible. Much to the consternation of Stalin, after the allies landed in Italy, the yanks allowed three more German divisions to transfer unmolested from Italy to the Eastern Front, as one way of slowing down the Russian advance. Once again betrayal, this time of ally Russia. The WWII project achieved all of its objectives admirably. While having fought only marginally, and suffered negligible casualties – in comparison with the other major combatants – the US emerged with an intact infrastructure, 40% of the world's wealth and industrial capacity, control of the seven seas, a monopoly on atomic weapons, strategic footholds in the Middle East oil sheikdoms, and general popular acclaim as the heroic champion of democracy. Quite naturally, the world's eyes turned to Washington for leadership in shaping the postwar world. And America was ready with a blueprint. The bankers had selected a committee, from their Council on Foreign Relations, and sent it over to the White House to design the postwar architecture. America was now secured as a hegemonic base of operations, more viable for that role than Britain had been, and it was time to move forward with the next phase of the new-world-order project. Thus were launched, promptly after the war ended, the Bretton Woods globalist institutions – the UN, IMF, and World Bank – the early foundation stones for an eventual one-world government.. Note to the reader: In my harsh description of America's participation in WWII, I in no way mean to dishonor the brave men and women who fought and sacrificed in that war as GI's. They were not deceiving or betraying, they were fighting with all their hearts for freedom. They were as much the victims of elite games as were all the others who lost their lives. The short American Century: preparing the world to accept global governance The WWII project was, like the first war project, a remarkable success for the banking elites. Again, as before, the next stage of the larger new-world-order project was promptly set in motion. With its hegemonic position, America would serve as an ideal base of operations for this next stage, but a global American Empire was not to be the final outcome. America was to be used and betrayed, like Britain before it, and this time the plan called, and still calls, for a world government to be installed, making the whole Earth into a base of operations, a private fiefdom, to be owned and ruled directly by the banking elite. The unfolding of this third phase of the new-world-order project took about six decades, and as we lived through it we saw what seemed to be many surprising and unpredictable episodes. However, if we step back and look at the big picture, the key elements of the project become clear. The following objectives have all been achieved, and they were all carefully orchestrated to reach their conclusions at about the same time, which turned out to be the end of 2008: • the rise and fall of America as hegemonic imperial power • the preservation of American military supremacy as its only major asset • the universal destabilization of localized economic systems • a worldwide extended boom-bust cycle, ending with most of the world destitute and hopelessly in debt In the final section of this article we will examine how these conditions are currently being exploited, under the charismatic and deceptive leadership of banking-agent Barak Obama, to bring about the final installation of the New World Order. In this section, we'll briefly review how each of these objectives was systematically achieved. As it was in the heyday of the British Empire, the interests of banking elites and nationalist-minded elites (in America this time) were more or less aligned as the postwar era began. A grand campaign of imperialist operations in the Global South served both their interests. With a policy of containment with respect to the communist world, and of Pax Americana with respect to Europe – precluding Europe from becoming a military competitor – America was able to maintain military hegemony in the "free world" and use its forces to achieve direct imperialist objectives in the Global South, without needing to directly confront other major powers. America employed a much more refined and efficient model for imperial management than the British Empire had ever been able to achieve. Besides avoiding direct military conflicts with major competitors, Washington spurned the burden and expense of colonial administration, and instead focused on regime-change operations as a way of keeping small nations under control. The installation of corrupt dictators was the preferred model (eg, the Shah, Noriega, Marcos, Saddam, etc ad nauseum), who once installed were encouraged to enrich themselves and their cronies as they suppressed their populations, so that investors from the North could exploit the nation's resources and workers. Eventually such dictators would always outlive their usefulness. Either they would lose control of rebellious populations (eg Marcos), or they would get uppity and start defending their national interests (eg Noriega). When such a time came, the elite-controlled mass media would suddenly discover that there was a ruthless dictator loose in the world, and the successor regime change would be widely welcomed as a 'victory for democracy'. The faces would change, and perhaps some reforms would be implemented, but in the end there would be another proxy in place doing whatever needs to be done to facilitate exploitation by foreign investors. Such has been the nature of the free world era in the South. A critical underpinning of the Cold War and the Pax Americana regime was the mythology of a communist threat. In fact Russia posed no real threat, not militarily nor in terms of covert subversion. Russia had been devastated by the war, and the last thing it wanted was to get involved in another one. It had been invaded by Europe time and again, WWI being only the most recent example, and its main concerns were security and national development.. Russia tried time and again to normalize relations with the West, and to pursue large-scale nuclear disarmament, but was each time rebuffed. With the destruction caused by WWI, and with the West again exhibiting hostility, Russia had little choice but to hold on to Eastern Europe as a protective barrier against another attack. Certainly Eastern Europeans were not happy with clumsy, autocratic Russian rule, but they were not being economically exploited as was the Southern "free world". Living conditions in Eastern Europe were typically better than in the Soviet Union itself, and better than in the South. It's "satellites" were an economic and political burden to the Soviets, an investment not in imperialism but in national security. Now that Eastern Europe has been separated from Russia, and Washington is putting missiles and radar installation there and extending NATO, it is clear that Russia's attempt to maintain a buffer made perfect defensive sense. The "communist threat" provided a handy excuse for US interventionism, for maintaining a strong US military, and for the ongoing development of America's nuclear arsenal. Equally important, enabled by the fiction that Russia threatened the entire West, America was able to portray itself as the 'friend and protector of Europe', justify the economic isolation of the socialist block, and justify as well the Pax Americana regime in the "free world". But as in Britain before, the interests of nationalism and of the banking elite were not to remain aligned. Even as America continued to extend its hegemony in a geopolitical and military sense, the seeds of economic decline were being planted by the bankers. The first step was to start moving manufacturing overseas, leading to the de-industrialization of America and yielding increased profits to investors and transnational corporations. After that Reagan was ushered into power, bringing with him a full scale assault on the stability of the American national economy. The program of economic destabilization was then extended globally, as the globalization project. Globalization, with its deregulation of corporations and international finance, has certainly been a profit bonanza for international banks and transnational corporations. It's deeper purpose, however, has been to destroy localized economic systems and to make everyone dependent on the global marketplace for essential goods and services. Not only has self-sufficiency been undermined for nations everywhere, but mutual-benefit bilateral trade arrangements have been largely eliminated as well. Under the hocus-pocus doctrine of free trade, a situation has been created where, to the maximum extent possible, all goods and services are generated in the lowest-waged parts of the world, and then sold on the global market to the highest bidders. Not only does this maximize the profits of the middlemen (the bankers and transnational corporations), and drive wages down everywhere, but it also results in market prices that are largely beyond the reach of the Global South. Under globalization, we've seen the most draconian system of imperialism every imposed on the South, and it's an imperialism managed by the bankers (via their globalist institutions) directly, not by an imperialist nation, as in the days of earlier empires. Just as with the Native Americans and the Australian Aborigines in the 1800's, the whole population of the South is now considered to be 'in the way' of ongoing economic development and the accelerated exploitation of Southern resources. A program of wholesale genocide, on a scale much larger than the Holocaust, is now underway in the South, facilitated by economic and social destabilization, in turn facilitated by "free trade" and by covert interventions. The campaign for biofuel development, which makes little or no sense from an energy perspective, has the main (and intended) consequence of accelerating the program of genocide by substantially increasing the price of food on the global market. Keep this in mind when next you listen to banking-agent Al Gore's inspiring speeches about "energy independence". Of all the advantages the banking elites enjoy from this globalized and unregulated economic system, the most strategic is the discretionary power they have to arbitrarily manipulate global affairs. And of the tools available to them under this regime, the most potent is the ability to manipulate high-level finance. By such means Japan and the Southeast "Tigers" were cut down to size, and any number of other boom-bust cycles have been engineered over the past several decades (eg Brazil, Argentina).. It is this ability to manipulate high-level finance that has been used to create the climactic conclusion of this short American Century: the engineered global banking collapse and the ensuing general panic. This manufactured panic was then exploited to push through the disastrous bailout schemes that are transferring insolvency from the banks to the governments. By intentionally committing economic suicide, the bankers have managed to kill not their banking system, but the economic viability of nations worldwide. >From a big-picture perspective, the entire period since the end of WWII can be seen as one big boom-bust cycle. It brought us the greatest period of sustained economic growth the world has ever seen, and in the end, with the engineered collapse and bailouts, all the marbles are now being picked up by the banking elites. Game over. Obama and the marketing of subservience: installing the New World Order As with the two world-war projects, the short-American-Century project was a complete success, in preparing the ground for a global system of governance by, of, and for the elite bankers. Again, the main elements of this penultimate sub-project: • the rise and fall of America as hegemonic imperial power • the preservation of American military supremacy as its only major asset • the universal destabilization of localized economic systems • a worldwide extended boom-bust cycle, ending with most of the world destitute and hopelessly in debt To be more precise, the destitution and hopelessness are only now beginning to unfold. We've seen the first wave of business failures and personal insolvencies, but many more will follow domino fashion. The amount of the losses the banks have suffered have still not been disclosed, and massive credit-card defaults are yet to come, as the ranks of the unemployed continue to soar globally. The classic, time-tested way to implement big social-engineering changes is to first create a crisis, and then in the ensuing panic to offer a solution – the 'solution' being the original goal of the entire exercise. We've seen this formula used to facilitate the installation of the Federal Reserve system, the passage of the bailout schemes, the entry of America into WWII, etc. On a still-grander scale, it is the formula that will lead to the creation of a one-world government. The problem in this case is the collapse of national economies and the global financial system; the solution will be a Global Central Bank – in sum, a global-scale replay of the Federal Reserve project. Banking-agent Gordon Brown seems to be the one who has been assigned the task of moving this agenda forward. In a recent article in BBC News he begins framing the context of the debate to come: Gordon Brown sets stage for the New World Order https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/newslog/2009-02/msg00007.html Once a global central bank has been achieved, using the IMF and World Bank as a starting point, the consolidation of a one-world government will be straightforward to achieve. The ability to manipulate global and national finance will be centralized in that elite-run bank, and the UN provides the nucleus from which a formal governmental structure can be fashioned. UN "reform" will of course be required – to eliminate whatever vestiges of democratic representation still exit there – and appropriate reform measures are already underway, although, not surprisingly, this process hasn't been featured prominently (yet) in mainstream news reports. That will soon change. Now let us examine the Obama phenomenon, how he was brought to power, what he has said, and what he has done. Obama's primary skill is his amazing charismatic ability to woo progressives, who are in the overwhelming majority worldwide. His skill was recognized when he was a relative nobody, and he was ushered along a fast-track into national politics, and ultimately into the White House – still with no significant experience of any kind to qualify him for such a job. His Presidential campaign was funded out of elite coffers, he was championed throughout by the elite-controlled media, his inauguration was featured worldwide, and commentators were saying that he was not just the new American leader, but also the global leader that the world needs at this time. He is quite clearly the elite choice for the Presidency at this most pivotal time in history. Nonetheless – a testament to his charisma – he managed to position himself as a people's candidate, and all those thousands of volunteers who campaigned and canvassed for him, and raised funds for him, believe that it was their efforts that brought him to power. They saw McCain and Palin as the enemies who needed to be defeated, while in fact they were unelectable sacrificial lambs put forward in order to help assure Obama's victory. Obama promises change, warns us that there will be hard times ahead, and says he will need our help and support in getting through his difficult changes. People everywhere are prepared to give him that support. If he were really a people's candidate, he would be saying the same things, and the difficult changes would involve the unseating of the banking elite, the restoration of strong national sovereignty and currencies, an end to US military aggressiveness, a campaign for nuclear disarmament, a restoration of civil liberties, and the establishment of cooperative international relations, particularly with the Russian Federation. With the universal respect and admiration he has garnered, and given that the support is strongest in progressive circles, such changes would not be beyond his abilities to pursue, provided he was not assassinated JFK style. But if he were of JFK's caliber, a man who followed his own mind at great risk to himself, he would never have been selected early and fast-tracked into the White House. He, like Woodrow Wilson and many others before him, has clearly made his own pact with the devil. Obama may indeed have a fundamentally good heart, and he may try to 'do good' within the constraints of his situation, but on the big decisions, like Wilson before him, he will fulfill the terms of his pact – or he will be eliminated. And as far as his actual program has been revealed so far, it all lines up perfectly with elite plans to install the New World Order. In particular, his embracing of the bailout schemes – he made a point of lobbying to release the final funds in Bush's phase of the bailout – reveals his true colors. His plans to spend billions on infrastructure development will cement the hopeless indebtedness of America to the elite bankers, while doing little for ordinary people. Rather than abandoning military aggressiveness, he has announced an intention to shift the focus of US military operations to Afghanistan, close on the Russian border. Although he has talked about ending torture, and made a big splash about closing Guantanamo – eventually – he left renditions as a gaping loophole: Obama continues torture policy https://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/newslog/2009-02/msg00004.html When Russia and China were ideologically communist, they were demonized for that and were 'outsiders' to the elite global system. Now that Russia and China have embraced capitalist ways, they still remain 'outsiders', and are routinely condemned in the elite media for 'human rights violations', 'currency manipulations', and whatever other 'crimes' can be dreamed up against them. No matter that most of the regimes supported by Washington are corrupt and brutally dictatorial, the condemnations are reserved for Russia and China. One might ask why. The answer is that neither Russia nor China have submitted themselves to the elite's central bank formula. They have central banks of course, but the government controls them, and uses them to achieve national objectives. In the elite's central bank model, the central banks must be for-profit institutions, privately owned by elements of the international banking elite – not subservient instruments of national policy. In the global struggle between nationalist interests and elite banking interests, Russia and China are the last major holdouts for national sovereignty. They stand in the way of the New World Order. This is why it has been essential for America, even while being brought to its knees economically and in most other industrial sectors, to maintain military superiority, particularly in the realm of nuclear weapons and space-based command-and-control systems. An attempt was made to subvert Russia by non-military means, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but thanks to Putin that effort finally failed. China jumped into the capitalist game, in terms of trade and exports, but it has maintained strict control over its domestic economy and it has been rapidly upgrading its military, employing the cost-effective doctrine of asymmetric warfare. Surely Russia and China will be given an opportunity to submit to the new-world-order's central government – on elite banker's terms – and they might, just possibly, in desperation, go along. But quite likely they will refuse, and that's the real reason that America has been urgently pursuing its agenda of space-based, whole-theater, military dominance. Such esoteric capabilities serve no significant purpose in 'fighting 'terrorism' or in peripheral conflicts such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan – but they are essential if a 'successful' nuclear first-strike is to be carried out against Russia and China. Even if 'successful', the West is likely to lose several major cities in the exchange, and that's why deep underground bunkers have been prepared for the elites, and for those they consider to be essential operatives in the new-world-order regime. If and when World War III comes about, it will be over within hours, and nothing will then stand in the way of the New World Order. All other ducks have been carefully lined up, and Obama is the perfect fellow to keep us hypnotized while our freedoms, and all vestiges of democracy, are erased once and for all from the face of the Earth. Welcome to the new world order; please install your chip according to the enclosed instructions. rkm ___________________________ subscribe mailto: cyberjournal-subscribe@googlegroups.com websites: http://www.governourselves.org/ http://escapingthematrix.org/ http://cyberjournal.org recent archives: http://groups.google.com/group/cyberjournal http://groups.google.com/group/newslog old archives: http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/ http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?lists=newslog Moderator: rkm@quaylargo.com (comments welcome) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To unsubscribe from this group, send email to cyberjournal-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cyberjournal?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- *********** END FORWARDED MESSAGE *********** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090203/127e85fd/attachment-0001.html From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Wed Feb 4 01:07:08 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Wed Feb 4 01:27:55 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: South American revolution, Brazil, Israeli apartheid, Bolivia, Tamils, Gaza, Germany, Hamas, Bolsheviks, BBC Message-ID: <49893E9C.1040103@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: South American revolution, Brazil, Israeli apartheid, Bolivia, Tamils, Gaza, Germany, Hamas, Bolsheviks, BBC * * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to links@dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links/. * * * Luis Bilbao: Venezuela and `the rebirth of the idea of revolution' . Interview with Luis Bilbao, conducted by Agustina Desalvo for the Argentinian journal Raz?n y Revoluci?n, issue #18 (second semester 2008). Translated by Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/Green Left Weekly's Federico Fuentes. Luis Bilbao is a central participant in the construction of the mass United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and in the formation of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR); founding editor of the Latin America-wide monthly magazine Am?rica XXI. Luis Bilbao will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets. * Read more Brazil: Landless Workers' Movement marks 25th anniversary, announces `new phase' in struggle Joao Pedro Stedile (video) addresses the January 24, 2009, national meeting of Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement, marking the MST's 25th anniversary. Stedile is co-founder of the MST. Below the videos Michael Fox reports on the MST's ``new phase'' in the agrarian reform struggle, against Brazil's mainly US-owned agro-industry. * Read more Lessons from South Africa for the fight against Israeli apartheid Salim Vally of the Palestine Solidarity Committee of South Africa, addressing a meeting on February 7, 2008, part of Toronto's Israeli Apartheid Week, draws on the experiences of the South African anti-apartheid movement to inspire the Palestinian anti-apartheid movement. Salim Vally was deeply involved in the South African anti-apartheid movement. Watch at http://links.org.au/node/878 Sydney, April 10-12 (Easter), 2009: World at a Crossroads - Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century World At a Crossroads: Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century * Read more Sri Lanka: Genocide of the Tamil minority By Brian Senewiratne January 23, 2009 -- There is a humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka, where the Tamil minority in the island's north and east are facing annihilation at the hands of the Sinhalese-dominated government. This article will deal with the current crisis, with the more fundamental problem of the legacy left by colonial British rule (1796-1948) dealt with in later articles. These colonial administrative structures will need to be reversed of there is ever to be peace or prosperity in Sri Lanka. * Read more Bolivia's vice-president:'We are consolidating our process of change' Interview with Bolivia's vice-president Alvaro Garcia Linera conducted by Pablo Stefanoni from Argentina's Clarin newspaper. Introduction and translation by Green Left Weekly's Federico Fuentes. January 31, 2009 -- The people of Bolivia on January 25 voted overwhelming to approve a new constitution, a demand first raised by the indigenous movements in the early 1990s. It was also a key promise of the successful 2005 election campaign of the country's first indigenous president, Evo Morales. * Read more Solidarity map of Israel's Gaza massacres By Solidarity Maps Solidarity Maps is a project from a group of Lebanese and Palestinian designers, architects, researchers, media people, and many other random activists who have worked together previously, mainly doing media and mapping work during the summer 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon, and some of them later on advocacy and design for the reconstruction of Nahr el-Bared refugee camp. * Read more Italian metalworkers, Western Aust. maritime workers call for boycott of apartheid Israel * Read more Germany: Die Linke, Hesse and the `super election' year By Duroyan Fertl January 29, 2009 -- Germany kicked off a "super election year" on January 18 when voters in the western German state of Hesse returned to the polls for the second time in twelve months. The new election had become necessary after months of negotiations to form a coalition government collapsed late last year, when four parliamentary members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) rebelled against a plan to form government with the assistance of the far-left party, Die Linke. * Read more Hamas and Palestine's right to exist By Tony Iltis January 28, 2009 -- If Western politicians and media are to be believed, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is an anti-Semitic, religious fundamentalist, terrorist outfit that forms part of an al Qaeda- (or, alternatively, Iranian-) led movement which seeks to violently impose Islamic law on the world, and is dedicated to the annihilation of Jews. However, what is Hamas's actual practice and the source of its strong popularity among Palestinians? * Read more Pamphlet: Revolutionaries and parliament: The Bolshevik experience By Maurice Sibelle One of the greatest obstacles to winning working people to the perspective of a socialist revolution is the widespread and deeply ingrained illusion -- inculcated in their minds day-in and day-out by the capitalist rulers -- that through the institutions of bourgeois democracy, particularly parliament, working people can defend and advance their interests. * Read more The aid appeal that the BBC does not want you to see By Dave Riley That emergency appeal for humanitarian aid for Gaza that the BBC refuses to broadcast? Watch it for yourself: * Read more * * * Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information, experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090204/69284753/attachment.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Feb 4 18:20:06 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Feb 4 19:43:24 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] Sydney to Break Australian Media Silence with the "The HardEvidence - 9/11 was an Inside Job!" Message-ID: <006101c98733$191e0750$2ead57ca@jfos> From: John Bursill - Truth Action Australia and 911oz.com Calling all media, academics, peace activists and politicians, to look at the "hard evidence that 9/11 was an inside job"! Sydney 9/11 Truth Advocates are to bring together the "Best of the Best" that the International 9/11 Truth Movement has to offer to an explosive weekend of truth in November 2009! As it is widely accepted in the 9/11 research circles that the Controlled Demolition of World Trade Centre 7 and the Twin Towers has provided the best argument that "9/11 was an inside job", so it stands to reason that we must continue to present this evidence to our communities. We must also be very confident that we have the "hard evidence" to bring to trial individuals and organisations that assisted, organised and carried out the demolition of those buildings in broad daylight on September the 11th, 2001. To do that we continue to call for an international investigation into the events of 9/11 and support the victims families for their call for a re-investigation in the USA! This re-investigation being completely independent and one that has the power to answer all of the well researched questions that the family members of the 9/11 Commission Steering Committee have already put on the record. So on Saturday the 14th of November we will hold an event called The Hard Evidence "9/11 was an Inside Job!" in Sydney with speakers Dr Steven Jones, Richard Gage(AIA) and Janice Mathews. These speakers with the aid of an expert panel will prove that the Towers(1,2 & 7) were brought down in the manner of an "Controlled Demolition" on 9/11. The same expert scientists, activists and scholars are calling on the "9/11 Truth Debunkers" to present questions and make argument as to why the CD Hypothesis is wrong; if they can? Obviously it is extremely unlikely that any "Debunkers" will show up as they prefer to frequent forums with their hit and run methods and often resorting to blatant censorship or denial when the evidence is just to tough to refute! The following day, the 15th of November we will be bringing together the finest group of 9/11 Truth Activists in the world to show us all the way forward and the lessons learnt so far in their quest for truth. With people like Luke Rudowski, Cosmos(YT), Janice Mathews, Richard Gage, Steven Jones and Ken Jenkins you will simply be discussing and learning from the most experienced team of 9/11 Truth Advocates on the planet today! This event being supported and presented by WeAreChange.org , TruthAction.org and 911Truth.org is a first and we hope that the ties between these organisations continue to grow into an unstoppable force for change and peace in today's world! Below is an overview of this explosive weekend of truth in November... An Overview of Two Sydney Events - 14th and 15th November 2009 ¨C Presented by "Truth Action Australia" and "911oz.com" in conjunction with "911Truth.org" , "TruthAction.org" and "WeAreChange.org" *Event 1 - 14th November 2009* The Hard Evidence ˇ°9/11 was an inside job!ˇ± Time/Date: 8:30am - 6pm on Saturday the 14th of November 2009. Evening event TBA when finalised. Venue: Tom Mann Theartre, 136 Chalmers St, Surry Hills, Sydney CBD, Capacity max 300 seated. Speakers; Richard Gage (Architect - AIA) ¨C Founder ˇ°Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truthˇ± www.AE911Truth.org Dr Steven Jones (Physicist) ¨C Co-Founder of ˇ°Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justiceˇ± www.STJ911.org Janice Mathews (Activist/Teacher) - Director of www.911Truth.org Additional Panel of Experts including; Dr David Leifer (Architect and Incorporated Engineer) ¨C Member of ˇ°Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truthˇ± Dr Frank Legge (Chemist) ¨C Co-Editor ˇ°The Journal of 9/11 Studiesˇ± Paul Mason (Structural Engineer) ¨C Member of ˇ°Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truthˇ± James OˇŻNeill (Barrister) ¨C Peace Campaigner and Political Activist Janice Mathews ¨C 911Truth.org Campaign Director and International 9/11 Truth Organiser Luke Rudowski ¨C 9/11 Truth & Justice Activists and Reporter ¨C WeAreChange.org Cost: $50 Adults and $25 for Children, Students and the Unemployed. Note: Fee may be waved for activists on an individual basis. Media welcome at NO Cost! Note: This event will run at a loss due to travel expenses for our overseas guests. Sponsorship will be required to meet costs so please consider sponsoring a speaker if possible! Preliminary Schedule Title: The Hard Evidence ˇ°9/11 was an inside jobˇ± 8:30am - 9:15am: Arrival and Registration 9:20am - "Welcome to Country" with Darawal Man Les Bursill 9:25am - Remembering the Australian Victims with Paster Al Person 9:30am ¨C 10pm: Introduction to event, updates and an overview of the aims and arguments of the 9/11 Truth Movement with Janice Mathews International Activism Coordinator and Director of 911truth.org 10am ¨C 12am: Richard Gage(AIA) ˇ°Blueprint for Truthˇ± ¨C Founder of "Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truthˇ± www.AE911Truth.org 12 noon ¨C 1pm ¨C Lunch Break - Snacks and Drinks will be available to purchase at venue! 1pm ¨C 3pm: Dr Steven Jones ˇ°The Hard Evidence of Controlled Demolitionˇ± - Co-Founder ˇ°Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justiceˇ± www.STJ911.org 3pm ¨C 3-30pm ¨C Tea Break - Snacks and Drinks will be available to purchase at venue! 3:30pm ¨C 5:30pm ¨C Panel Discussion and Audience Questions ˇ°Bring on the Debunkersˇ± ¨C This is a challenge to the people that are opposing the relevance and the evidence of the ˇ°9/11 Truth Movementˇ± of a ˇ°Conspiracyˇ± other than the ˇ°Official Conspiracy Theoryˇ±. Panel Includes; Dr Steven Jones, Richard Gage, Dr David Leifer, Dr Frank Legge, Paul Mason, James OˇŻNeill, Janice Mathews and Luke Rudowski moderated by John Bursill 6pm - Doors Closed The host of this event will be John Bursill of Truth Action Australia and Janice Mathews of 911truth.org **************************** *Event 2 - 15th of November 2009* 9/11 Truth in Action ˇ°we are change!ˇ± Details; Time/Place: 9am - 5pm on Sunday the 15thth of November 2009 Venue: Tom Mann Theartre, 136 Chalmers St, Surry Hills, Sydney CBD; Capacity max 300 seated. Cost: $30 confirmed seat or by donation at door if seats are still available. Speakers; Ken Jenkins (Psychologist, Engineer and Film Maker/Director) Pioneering 9/11 Researcher, Activist, Activism Analyst and Distributor of 9/11 Documentary Films at www.911TV.org Producer of Davis Ray Griffin's Video Lecture Series Janice Mathews (Activist, Editor, Coordinator and Organizer) the face and voice of the International 9/11 Truth Movement Cosmos (Activist Organizer) One of the original 9/11 Truth Activists and Founder of the ˇ°Eleventh Day of Every Monthˇ± Campaign and www.TruthAction.org Luke Rudowski (9/11 Truth and Justice Activist, Film Maker and Reporter) Founder of www.WeAreChange.org and one of the original team that developed the ˇ°Truth Squadˇ± as seen in the recent film ˇ°Truth Risingˇ± The 9/11 Chronicles Hereward Fenton (Anthropologist, 9/11 Researcher and Truth Activist) Founder and Web Master of www.911oz.com John Bursill (Engineer, 9/11 Truth Campaigner and Event Organizer) Founder of Truth Action Australia www.TruthAction.org.au Evelyn Gilbert (Political, Financial and 9/11 Truth Activist) New Zealand 9/11 Truth Organizer and full time Blogger/Writer No set schedule for this event has been finalizedˇ­ Here is a basic list of topics we hope to cover! MSM Silence and Denial Becoming the Media Disinformation The ˇ°Eleventh Day of Every Month Campaignˇ± Truth Squads and Breaking the Matrix Avoiding Race or Religious based Arguments or Focus Opening ˇ°New Mindsˇ± to 9/11 Truth and the Reality of ˇ°False Flag Terrorismˇ±! Using our Resources Effectively; E-mail, Internet, DVD, Video and Protest New Ideas and Methods The event will include lectures, Panel Discussions and audience participation will be encouraged with plenty of time for questions! The Hosts of this event will be Cosmos (YT) (www.TruthAction.org) and Luke Rudowski (www.WeAreChange.org) and Janice Mathews (www.911Truth.org) The event is presented by www.TruthAction.org , www.WeAreChange.org and www.911Truth.org Event Organiser - John Bursill; Advisers - Ken Jenkins, Cosmos, hummux, Janice Mathews, Luke Rudowski and Hereward Fenton For information and forward reserve bookings contact johnbursill@aapt.net.au or call 0414878499 or international +61 2 414878499 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090205/b66835ee/attachment.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Feb 4 18:43:32 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Feb 4 19:44:03 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] Current crisis and impact on class struggle in India Message-ID: <006b01c98733$36d12d90$2ead57ca@jfos> Yet another compelling example of the GLOBAL economic/social/POLITICAL crises resulting from the Capitalist Mode of Production and Distriburion john GurgaonWorkersNews - Working Paper: Current crisis regime and impact on class struggle in India 1. The character of the Shining India after the crash 1991 2. Landmarks of the current crisis in India a) The Crisis Blow b) The state's reaction 3. Margins of the crisis regime in India a) The Social Unrest of the Rural World b) The Energy Crunch c) The Industrial Impasse d) The political consequences for the crisis regime 4. New frame-work and potentials for proletarian unrest Dear friends, On the web-site you can find a working-paper on the impact of the current crisis. It is an invitation for further debate. We hope that it will be refined, sharpened and widened by your response. www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com Gurgaon_workers_news@yahoo.co.uk We hope that the daily organisational forms of the people in struggle - their cooperation at work, their exchange as neighbours, their experience and mobility as migrants - will become the foundation of a wider movement. There are first signs that the miserable boom of the recent years and the current crisis will show up in new desires within the coming struggles: the boom has shown us the enormous social productivity and wealth; the crisis is just the boom?s other face, showing us that as long as this productivity and wealth has to express itself in money terms; in GDP growth, in share prices or plan targets, it will consequently be based on mass misery. The automated welding departments and CAD embroidery machines will automatically produce the 14-hours shifts in the slum workshops or rising numbers of unemployed workers and shut-down sick factory units; the rise in cash-crop in some areas will be based on the general social demise of the rural poor. If we want to be of help for these struggles and understand their full potentials we need a wider debate about actual changes in the daily conditions of the rural and urban proletariat. As a small step we attach a questionnaire for local use, as a platform for a wider exchange of experience. News from the Special Exploitation Zone - www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Wed Feb 4 19:42:36 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Wed Feb 4 19:44:21 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: In America, Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event Message-ID: <007501c98733$40ca9570$2ead57ca@jfos> http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts01262009.html ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Thu Feb 5 06:31:11 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Thu Feb 5 06:32:50 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] WSF - Report from Cy Gonick, a Canadian Ecosocialist at the World Social Forum Message-ID: <498AA3CF.11255.53FF9B67@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> Cy Gonick, publisher and co-ordinating editor of Canada's longest- running left-wing magazine, Canadian Dimension ( http://www.canadiandimension.com/index.php ), was in Belem, Brazil, last week, for the World Social Forum. The following are excerpts from his emails from Belem. Here is an excerpt from his report on Day 5 relating to a three hour session on ecosocialism: Terisa Turner, a prof at Guelph University in Canada, offered the most optimistic prognosis of our immediate future. She described several examples of grass roots movements successfully stopping resource multinational corporations and keeping fossil fuel in the ground. She argued for a joint global strategy of all out support for these efforts of halting resource development combined with consumer boycott campaigns - which would deprive capital of energy and resources and markets. And direct trade deals that cut out the multinatinationals in place of capitalist trade/investment agreements, citing the arrangement between Cuba and Venezuela oil for medical services. She asked, who is engaged in these efforts? Indigenous peoples with women in the foreground. What is their means? Direct action to shut-down production and keep fossil fuel in the ground. She ended her presentation with a call for a people?s charter on climate change in opposition to the Kyoto Protocal and sanctions against governments and corporations that violate its measures. As for Copenhagen December 2009, she called for a mass organization to stop the proceedings, like Seattle 1999. fyi-janet ================== http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=618 A Canadian Ecosocialist at the World Social Forum February 3, 2009 Cy Gonick, publisher and co-ordinating editor of Canada's longest- running left-wing magazine, Canadian Dimension ( http://www.canadiandimension.com/index.php ), was in Belem, Brazil, last week, for the World Social Forum. The following are excerpts from his emails from Belem. The full text of Cy's letters can be found on the Canadian Dimension Blog. http://www.canadiandimension.com/blog/ Day One An estimated hundred thousand delegates opened the 2009 World Social Forum with a spirited march down the main street of this northern port city of Belem in the heart of the Amazon. An equal number of local residents lined the streets observing the carnival-like demonstration and cheering on the boisterous marchers along with their drummers, banners and chanters. . This veteran marcher/activist had never before been surrounded by such a sea of humanity as committed as himself to changing the world. I can say that the feeling was exhilarating, bordering on jubilation - knowing all the work in organizing, capacity building and struggles of so many diverse movements that brought these people together but with the usual caution that so much more needs to be done. Day Two For me the most exciting thing that happened at the WSF today was the moment the roof collapsed with the ceiling fan crashing down a few feet from where I was sitting in a meeting room along with 60 others listening intently to a presentation against the principle of compensation for environmental damage. This was the first of a series of presentations on ecosocialism at the 2009WSF, the ones I especially came here to participate in. The concept we were introduced to is that no level of compensation is sufficient to cover the forever damage to nature inflicted by giant resource corporations in the course of their everyday operations. The only acceptable remedy is one of fully repairing the damage/loss so that the land/waters/air is left in the same shape as it was prior to so-called development. It was just at the point that Terisa Turner (of the University of Guelph and an occasional contributor to Canadian Dimension) rose to ask how very poor indigenous peoples faced with an offer of a large cash compensation could turn it down, that the roof caved in! Fortunately no one was injured. Day Three This session, sub-titled "The Significance of the WSF of the Participation of the Indigenous Peoples of the World" examined the WSF's special effort to include indigenous peoples in the planning as well as the content of the Forum. It was explained to us by J'ai Sen who chaired the session, that the first few years of the Forum were planned as "white settler" events with virtually no provision for first peoples. That began to change as the WSF shifted from Brazil to Nairobi and Mumbai. But it was only at this 2009 WSF in Belem that a real effort was to be made to not only have a strong indigenous presence at the Forum but their involvement in its planning. Presentations were made by indigenous representatives from Columbia, India, Peru (Hugo Blanco) and Canada (Ben Powers). The meeting was conducted in classic participatory style with statements invited from the audience being responded to by the main speakers. Hugo Blanco, the remarkably vigorous revolutionary peasant leader, now in his mid 80s, is the leader of the Campesino Confederation of Peru. He added a strong anti-capitalist flavour to the session and his perspective seemed to be fully supported by the other speakers. The most insightful presentation was provided by the Canadian, Ben Powers of the Indigenous Environmental Movement. Ben also acted as translator for Blanco and other speakers. More than a thousand indigenous peoples, mainly from within Brazil, made their way to Belem, a two week journey for many of them. Day 4 The three hour session I attended was really interesting. Sponsored by the Ecosocialist International Network, an organization I'm active in, the session featured a discussion on indigenous peoples and ecosocialism with presentations mainly by Brazilian ecosocialists. The session was chaired by Beatriz Leandro of the Brazilian Network of Socialists. The session opened with Ana Isla, a South American scholar now teaching at Brock University and on the editorial Board of Capitalism, Socialism, Nature, summarizing her research on the impact of the development of the rainforest in Costa Rica that eats up the soil and robs the people of the trees that produce their food and livelihood, eventually displacing them into the cities where women are forced into the sex trade. Adilson Viera, Secretary General of the Workers Union of the Amazon, described how the resource workers he represents, like fishermen, are ecosocialists in everything but name, resisting the encroachment of capital that destroys their livelihood. In his history of ecosocialism in Brazil, Mauricius Laxe (Brazilian Network of Ecosocialists) described how it started back in 1991 with the ecosocialist manifesto for Brazil that attracted over a hundred supporters back then. A year later in response to the UN's Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, regarded by them as capital's response to the environmental crisis, they organized the march of the oppressed. In 1996 the association of socialists and environmentalists of northern Brazil was formed and signed onto the first ecosocialist manifesto drawn up by Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy on the occasion of the 2003 World Social Formation. A second ecosocialist manifesto has been drafted for this 2009 WSF meeting. During the discussion following the presentation, Laxe said that the term 'socialist' is a drawback especially among peasants and indigenous peoples, and suggested that ecosocialism be replaced by ecopolitics. That generated awide ranging discussion. We were informed that the ultra violent Shining Path Maoist group has given socialism a very bad name in Peru. Joel Kovel intervened to say that in the old USSR, Leon Trotsky expressed total contempt for rural existence, resulting in a troubled legacy for socialism among peasants everywhere. Joel went on to give a short discourse on how in his last ten years, Marx began to re- evaluate his theses that all peoples had to pass through several stages of history and that none could be skipped and in particular, that capitalism could not be skipped to arrive at the socialist stage. He hinted towards the end of his life that communal societies might not have to go through capitalism. Joel suggested that ecosocialists need to return to this question as it relates to indigenous peoples in the age of globalization. By this time the ageless Peruvian revolutionary Hugo Blanco joined the session and offered a number of points including that the two features indigenous peoples "from Canada to Chile" have in common are collectivism and love of nature and that in their 500 year resistance to capitalist encroachment on their lands they are natural ecosocialists. Day Five The three hour session on ecosocialism featured two very good talks one by Joel Kovel, author of the fabulous book, The Enemy of Nature; the other by Terisa Turner, a prof at Guelph University in Canada. Both Joel and Terisa have contributed articles to Canadian Dimension sometime in the past two or three years. Joel Kovel is really the father of ecosocialism. He described how this was the second gathering of ecosocialists from around the world, the first having taken place in Paris in 2007. There, a small group of mainly northern intellectuals decided that it was important that the second gathering include a large contingent of indigenous people from the global south. That?s why they chose to meet in Belem, smack in the middle of the Amazon. Joel boldly stated that the only way to save the planet is to end capital?s compulsion to grow. Some form of world government is necessary to impose limits to growth which, if effective, would collapse the capitalist system since its existence requires endless accumulation. But societies will only transcend capitalism with ecosocialism which he defined as production based on free association of workers combined with ecocentric means and ends. Whereas absentee owners can easily damage the environment, when workers come to own the means of production they work with, they are much less likely to damage, let alone destroy nature which they are part of, depending upon it for both their survival and their comforts. In his concluding remarks Joel said that, inspired by the ecosocialist measures of Cuba and Bolivia under Evo Morales, he is convinced that ecosocialists have no alternative but to intervene in state formations as they currently exist starting with a mass intervention at Copenhagen, site of the UN meeting to reformulate the Kyoto Protocol. Secondly, he urged the development of autonomous zones within capitalist societies that would establish islands of freely associated labour as capitalism lurches from crisis to crisis. Thirdly, he said that what?s needed now is a mass mobilization of society to demand a series of structural reforms to prevent climate change, reforms that capitalism cannot endure. Terisa Turner offered the most optimistic prognosis of our immediate future. She described several examples of grass roots movements successfully stopping resource multinational corporations and keeping fossil fuel in the ground. She argued for a joint global strategy of all out support for these efforts of halting resource development combined with consumer boycott campaigns - which would deprive capital of energy and resources and markets. And direct trade deals that cut out the multinatinationals in place of capitalist trade/investment agreements, citing the arrangement between Cuba and Venezuela oil for medical services. She asked, who is engaged in these efforts? Indigenous peoples with women in the foreground. What is their means? Direct action to shut-down production and keep fossil fuel in the ground. She ended her presentation with a call for a people?s charter on climate change in opposition to the Kyoto Protocal and sanctions against governments and corporations that violate its measures. As for Copenhagen December 2009, she called for a mass organization to stop the proceedings, like Seattle 1999. [Coming soon: As soon as we receive it, Climate and Capitalism will publish a report on the Ecosocialist International Network meeting that was held in Belem immediately after the World Social Forum.] From marcel at starchak.ca Thu Feb 5 09:29:16 2009 From: marcel at starchak.ca (marcel@starchak.ca) Date: Thu Feb 5 09:29:51 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak Message-ID: <08cf075ae659e3243eda8a13ca60cb60@shell-4000-rally.org> Excellent news: I spoke to Ed's wife Marta last night and she reports that his surgery went very well and the 'good poke around under the hood' turned up nothing else of concern. Pretty damn good for an 82 year old. He'll be recovering in hospital until early next week after which he will resume complaining about the government. Thanks to everyone for the positive thoughts, it worked. From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Thu Feb 5 11:31:07 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (diongiles1@aapt.net.au) Date: Thu Feb 5 11:32:09 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak Message-ID: <380-220092451731712@M2W041.mail2web.com> I've been snowbound in London and out of communication - have just managed to get into my mail, only to find Ed has been unwell. I'll read the rest of the story now but in the meantime please pass on to Ed and Marta my very best wishes for his rapid and uncomplicated recovery. Dion Giles Original Message: ----------------- From: marcel@starchak.ca Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:29:16 -0700 To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Subject: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak Excellent news: I spoke to Ed's wife Marta last night and she reports that his surgery went very well and the 'good poke around under the hood' turned up nothing else of concern. Pretty damn good for an 82 year old. He'll be recovering in hospital until early next week after which he will resume complaining about the government. Thanks to everyone for the positive thoughts, it worked. _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com ? Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft? Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail From duanebehrens at cox.net Thu Feb 5 11:45:21 2009 From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens) Date: Thu Feb 5 11:45:28 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] U.S. Terror Threat a Hoax Message-ID: <20090205124521.II6ML.1085631.imail@fed1rmwml30> "Neocons do not have Secret Service protection. Dreadful to contemplate, but it would be child?s play for al Qaeda to assassinate any and every neocon [as the U.S. and Israel do to their enemies]. Yet, neocons move around freely . . . a good indication that the US does not have a terrorist problem." [and] "If Hamas WERE armed by Iran [as we are told they are], Israel?s assault on Gaza would have cost Israel its helicopter gunships, its tanks, and hundreds of lives of its soldiers." --an article by Paul Craig Roberts-- According to US government propaganda, terrorist cells are spread throughout America, making it necessary for the government to spy on all Americans and violate most other constitutional protections. Among President Bush?s last words as he left office was the warning that America would soon be struck again by Muslim terrorists. If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us. We would know it from events. As there are no events, the US government substitutes warnings in order to keep alive the fear that causes the public to accept pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national ID cards, and inconveniences and harassments when they fly. The most obvious indication that there are no terrorist cells is that not a single neocon has been assassinated. I do not approve of assassinations, and am ashamed of my country?s government for engaging in political assassination. The US and Israel have set a very bad example for al Qaeda to follow. The US deals with al Qaeda and Taliban by assassinating their leaders, and Israel deals with Hamas by assassinating its leaders. It is reasonable to assume that al Qaeda would deal with the instigators and leaders of America?s wars in the Middle East in the same way. Today every al Qaeda member is aware of the complicity of neoconservatives in the death and devastation inflicted on Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza. Moreover, neocons are highly visible and are soft targets compared to Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. Neocons have been identified in the media for years, and as everyone knows, multiple listings of their names are available online. Neocons do not have Secret Service protection. Dreadful to contemplate, but it would be child?s play for al Qaeda to assassinate any and every neocon. Yet, neocons move around freely, a good indication that the US does not have a terrorist problem. If, as neocons constantly allege, terrorists can smuggle nuclear weapons or dirty bombs into the US with which to wreak havoc upon our cities, terrorists can acquire weapons with which to assassinate any neocon or former government official. Yet, the neocons, who are the Americans most hated by Muslims, remain unscathed. The ?war on terror? is a hoax that fronts for American control of oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security complex, the assault on civil liberty by fomenters of a police state, and Israel?s territorial expansion. There were no al Qaeda in Iraq until the Americans brought them there by invading and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who kept al Qaeda out of Iraq. The Taliban is not a terrorist organization, but a movement attempting to unify Afghanistan under Muslim law. The only Americans threatened by the Taliban are the Americans Bush sent to Afghanistan to kill Taliban and to impose a puppet state on the Afghan people. Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine, or what little remains of Palestine after Israel?s illegal annexations. Hamas is a terrorist organization in the same sense that the Israeli government and the US government are terrorist organizations. In an effort to bring Hamas under Israeli hegemony, Israel employs terror bombing and assassinations against Palestinians. Hamas replies to the Israeli terror with homemade and ineffectual rockets. Hezbollah represents the Shi?ites of southern Lebanon, another area in the Middle East that Israel seeks for its territorial expansion. The US brands Hamas and Hezbollah ?terrorist organizations? for no other reason than the US is on Israel?s side of the conflict. There is no objective basis for the US Department of State?s ?finding? that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. It is merely a propagandistic declaration. Americans and Israelis do not call their bombings of civilians terror. What Americans and Israelis call terror is the response of oppressed people who are stateless because their countries are ruled by puppets loyal to the oppressors. These people, dispossessed of their own countries, have no State Departments, Defense Departments, seats in the United Nations, or voices in the mainstream media. They can submit to foreign hegemony or resist by the limited means available to them. The fact that Israel and the United States carry on endless propaganda to prevent this fundamental truth from being realized indicates that it is Israel and the US that are in the wrong and the Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis, and Afghans who are being wronged. The retired American generals who serve as war propagandists for Fox ?News? are forever claiming that Iran arms the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents and Hamas. But where are the arms? To deal with American tanks, insurgents have to construct homemade explosive devices out of artillery shells. After six years of conflict the insurgents still have no weapon against the American helicopter gunships. Contrast this ?arming? with the weaponry the US supplied to the Afghans three decades ago when they were fighting to drive out the Soviets. The films of Israel?s murderous assault on Gaza show large numbers of Gazans fleeing from Israeli bombs or digging out the dead and maimed, and none of these people are armed. A person would think that by now every Palestinian would be armed, every man, woman, and child. Yet, all the films of the Israeli attack show an unarmed population. Hamas has to construct homemade rockets that are little more than a sign of defiance. If Hamas were armed by Iran, Israel?s assault on Gaza would have cost Israel its helicopter gunships, its tanks, and hundreds of lives of its soldiers. Hamas is a small organization armed with small caliber rifles incapable of penetrating body armor. Hamas is unable to stop small bands of Israeli settlers from descending on West Bank Palestinian villages, driving out the Palestinians, and appropriating their land. The great mystery is: why after 60 years of oppression are the Palestinians still an unarmed people? Clearly, the Muslim countries are complicit with Israel and the US in keeping the Palestinians unarmed. The unsupported assertion that Iran supplies sophisticated arms to the Palestinians is like the unsupported assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. These assertions are propagandistic justifications for killing Arab civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in order to secure US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- http://perzuki.smugmug.com/ From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Thu Feb 5 13:21:02 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Thu Feb 5 13:23:00 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak In-Reply-To: <380-220092451731712@M2W041.mail2web.com> References: <380-220092451731712@M2W041.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <498B03DE.1420.557772CC@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> Marcel I wonder if you would also pass along my best wishes for a speedy and full recovery- to the stalwart essence of mai-not Ed Deak. He is a marvel of resistance which can only stand him in good stead in this case. I hold him in my thoughts and meditations ! all the best, janet eaton, mai-not participant with Ed, since 1999 or so ! ======================== On 5 Feb 2009 at 12:31, diongiles1@aapt.net.au wrote: From: "diongiles1@aapt.net.au" To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Subject: RE: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak Date sent: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 12:31:07 -0500 Send reply to: diongiles1@aapt.net.au, A renewed Mai-Not I've been snowbound in London and out of communication - have just managed to get into my mail, only to find Ed has been unwell. I'll read the rest of the story now but in the meantime please pass on to Ed and Marta my very best wishes for his rapid and uncomplicated recovery. Dion Giles Original Message: ----------------- From: marcel@starchak.ca Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:29:16 -0700 To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Subject: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak Excellent news: I spoke to Ed's wife Marta last night and she reports that his surgery went very well and the 'good poke around under the hood' turned up nothing else of concern. Pretty damn good for an 82 year old. He'll be recovering in hospital until early next week after which he will resume complaining about the government. Thanks to everyone for the positive thoughts, it worked. _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com - Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft? Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Feb 5 23:11:07 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu Feb 5 23:15:02 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] workers general strike in France - Europe wide next ? see Facebook... Message-ID: <02d201c98819$d8887030$09ad57ca@jfos> Interesting involvement of French university faculty members + primary & secondary school teachers in Fr and Germany! J ".... a growing number of economists say the unrest (n China) proves that it is not the exchange rate but years of sweatshop wages and income inequality in China that have distorted global competition and stifled domestic demand. The Far Eastern Economic Review headlined its latest issue "The coming crack-up of the China Model". Global Strike to defend workers' rights against bosses and governments http://www.facebook.com/group.php? sid=3f9c7cb88fa197294a3a35328a94b6be&gid=45930152402 FACTBOX-Global financial crisis sparks unrest in Europe http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL4163275?sp=true Feb 4 (Reuters) - Here are some details of protests linked to the global financial crisis: * BRITAIN: -- A decision by France's Total to bring in Italian and Portuguese workers to build a unit at the Lindsey oil refinery in eastern England has triggered a week of protests by thousands of energy workers at sites around Britain. * BULGARIA: -- Farmers blocked the sole Danube bridge link with Romania and rallied across Bulgaria on Wednesday. They are demanding the government set a minimum protective price for milk and stop imports of cheap substitutes, such as powdered milk. -- Last month Bulgarians staged rallies to demand economic reforms in the face of the global slowdown, calling on the Socialist-led government to act or step down. One rally in Sofia turned into a riot. * FRANCE: -- Hundreds of thousands of strikers marched in French cities on Jan. 29 to demand pay rises and job protection. Some protesters clashed with police, but no major violence was reported. The one-day strike failed to paralyse the country and support from private sector workers appeared limited. Labour leaders hailed the action, which marked the first time France's eight union federations had joined forces against the government since President Nicolas Sarkozy took office in 2007. * GERMANY: -- Thousands of German public sector workers went on strike on Tuesday to press for more pay during the worst economic downturn in decades, in action that affected transport and schools across the country. Public transport ground to a halt in 10 cities across Bavaria, while schools and hospitals suffered walk-outs in northern Germany, service sector union Verdi said. Local authorities and schools were also affected in the east of the country, it added. * GREECE: -- Greek farmers had set up roadblocks across the country, protesting against low prices, but most were taken down last week after the government pledged 500 million euros ($652 million) in aid. Blockades continued on and off at the border with Bulgaria, and on Tuesday riot police clashed for a second day with farmers from Crete. -- High youth unemployment was a main driver for rioting in Greece in December, initially sparked by the police shooting of a youth in an Athens neighbourhood. The protests forced a government reshuffle. * ICELAND: -- Prime Minister Geir Haarde resigned last week after a series of protests, some of which had turned violent. The first leader in the world to fall as a direct result of the credit crunch, he was replaced by Johanna Sigurdardottir, who heads a new centre-left coalition. The collapse of the country's fast-expanding banks under a weight of debt last year forced the country to take a $10 billion IMF-led rescue package. * LATVIA: -- Latvia's agriculture minister quit on Tuesday amid protests by farmers over falling incomes. -- A 10,000-strong protest in Latvia on Jan. 16 descended into a riot. Government steps to cut wages, as part of an austerity plan to win international aid, have angered people. * LITHUANIA: -- Also on Jan. 16, police fired teargas to disperse demonstrators who pelted parliament with stones in protest at government cuts in social spending to offset an economic slowdown. Police said 80 people were detained and 20 injured. Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said the violence would not stop an austerity plan launched after a slide in output and revenues. * RUSSIA: -- Thousands of opposition supporters rallied in Moscow and the far east port of Vladivostok on Jan. 31 in a national day of protests over hardships caused by the financial crisis. On Sunday hundreds of demonstrators in Moscow called for Russia's leaders to resign. -- Street rallies were held in almost every major city over the weekend. The pro-Kremlin United Russia party also drew thousands to rallies in support of government anti-crisis measures. -- About 100 protesters were arrested in Vladivostok last month during protests against hikes in second-hand car import duties. (Writing by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit; editing by Mark Trevelyan) ++++++++++++++++ Workingmen, Unite! Conditions they are bad, And some of you are sad; You cannot see your enemy, The class that lives in luxury, -You workingmen are poor, -Will be for evermore, -As long as you permit the few To guide your destiny. Shall we still be slaves and work for wages? It is outrageous-has been for ages; This earth by right belongs to toilers, And not to spoilers of liberty. The master class is small, But they have lots of "gall." When we unite to gain our right, If they resist we'll use our might; There is no middle ground, This fight must be one round. To victory, for liberty, Our class is marching on! Workingmen, unite! We must put up a fight, To make us free from slavery And capitalistic tyranny; This fight is not in vain, We've got a world to gain. Will you be a fool, a capitalist tool, And serve your enemy? http://money-free.ning.com/forum/topics/world-strike-song-book +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In late January, there was a general strike in France. 'Solidarity w/ workers general strike in France on Jan 29/2009 Trade unions in France, CGT, CFDT, FOR, FSU, CFE-CGC, CFTC, UNSA and SOLIDARY called workers in the private and public, the unemployed and pensioners in France for a general strike on 29 January 2009.' Solidarity with workers general strike in France http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=47522423983 -------------------- Subject: Workers Struggles Grow in France: Two Million on the Streets, Universities on Strike/A request from February 03, 2009 By: Eric Lerner The national general strike on Thursday, Jan 29 in France was a resounding success for the unions, left political parties and many other groups who called it, with some two million workers in the streets, equal to the largest of recent mobilizations. While in Paris the march of some 200,000 was not exceptionally large, the protests were very widespread, with major demonstrations in dozens of cities that have rarely seen such marches. Support for the strike in the opinion polls was high as well, with 70% of the French agreeing with the aims of the strike. In Paris, the demonstrators came mainly with the banners of the unions, with both the largest federations the CGT and the more leftist SUD being most in evidence. There were large numbers of professionals, health workers and social workers, marching in protest of the Sarkozy government's attacks on all public service sectors. The strike occurred against the background of the nearly two-week old unlimited general strike in Guadalupe, where the latest demonstration called out 65,000 people nearly 15% of the island's total population. Despite the protests, Sarkozy vowed to continue with his "reforms", his word for his attacks on the public sector, which predated the economic crisis, but have only intensified since then. On Saturday, a national meeting was called to try to unify the many struggles of professionals in education, health, justice and social services. The Paris meeting was packed with 700 participants and filled the day with tales of the disastrous effects of the Sarkozy reforms in slashing budgets and attempting to roll back worker gains of past decades. The reforms reflected policies being implemented across Europe. However, when there were calls for action, including refusing to carry out unjust laws, those at the podium resisted. "Words are actions" protested one of the organizers of the event. In the end there was broad agreement only on the need to set up coordinating committees with representatives from all the professions. A few participants also called for broadening such committees to representing all those in the struggle, including workers in the private sector, students, undocumented immigrants and the unemployed. The confrontation with the government broadened on Monday, when professors voted to begin a national unlimited strike of all university and research institutions. Some 300 elected delegates from 74 universities, including a few student representatives, met at the Sorbonne University in Paris as the General Assembly of the National Coordination of the Universities. The delegates were elected for the meeting by the faculties -they were not union officials. They unanimously voted to extend to all institutions an unlimited strike which has already begun at Strasbourg University and some other campuses. The key demands of the strike were to roll back government decrees that would make graduate studies vastly more difficult, limiting them essentially to the wealthy, slashing enrollments, and greatly reducing the pay of new professors. The strike was also protesting the recently passed "loi LRU" which, under the pretext of giving individual universities autonomy, concentrated all powers in the hands of university directors, taking then way from the faculties.There was a general realization that the strike could only win if it gather the support of the students, and reached out to other parts of the educational system. The delegates agreed to adopt a demand to undo the Sarkozy "reforms" for primary and second school teachers. There was general agreement that mobilizing students, organizing an active strike with political meetings substituting for classes, was a priority. However, only a handful of students were delegates. The formula adopted for the next General Assembly, three faculty delegates and one student delegate per university, was also not the most welcoming for students, who,after all, vastly outnumber the faculty. The first key test of the strike will come Tuesday, the first day of the strike on most campuses, where support from the bulk of the faculty and students will become visible. A second key test will be on Thursday, with the first mass demonstrations. If the faculty can succeed in bringing in students and the broader community, the movement in the university may fan the flames of workers' protests throughout France. ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Feb 5 23:52:43 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu Feb 5 23:52:54 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] "unlimited" strike, French university strikes intensify Message-ID: <034601c9881f$259c1700$09ad57ca@jfos> This is a most important development - the involvement (at last!) of influential sections of the 'middle class' john Extract: " as they said in Argentina in 2002 "?Que se vayan todos!" ("All of them must go!") The pattern is clear: governments that respond to a crisis created by free-market ideology with an acceleration of that same discredited agenda will not survive to tell the tale. As Italy's students have taken to shouting in the streets: "We won't pay for your crisis!" http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/06/global-recession- backlash "unlimited" strike, French university strikes intensify Twenty cities across Frances see marches of lecturers and students over job cuts and status changes * Gwladys FoucheThursday 5 February 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/feb/05/ internationaleducationnews-france Thousands of French university lecturers took to the streets today amid violent clashes as part of a growing "unlimited" strike movement against government higher education reform plans. Lecturers and students marched in around twenty cities across the country, including Paris, Marseille and Bordeaux. In Strasbourg, police used tear gas against demonstrators (1600 according to police, 2500 according to unions), some of who threw projectiles at officers. Police occupied the steps of the university's main building. The clash occurred during a visit by the French higher education and research minister, Val?rie P?cresse. "The whole university is on strike today, there are no classes," a local professor, Hubert Whitechurch, told the daily Lib?ration newspaper. Teaching has stopped at several other institutions, including the three universities of Toulouse, one university in Lyon (Lyon II), and most university departments in Marseille. The unlimited strike action began on Monday but staff at one Paris university, Paris XIII, have been on strike for three weeks. In other departments, lecturers are not returning marked papers to students. In total, an estimated 45% of classes are affected across the country, with unions claiming that more than one in two lecturers are not working. Strikers are protesting against 200 job cuts planned for this year, a change to their professional status that would grant more powers to university presidents over their staff's careers, and a reform to the way lectures, across all sectors, are trained. Traditionally, career advancement in French universities is half decided by a national higher education council that is independent from individual heads of universities, and half by universities themselves. The reforms say that all promotions should be decided by university presidents. In addition, the amount of time a lecturer shares between research and teaching is also decided at the national level. But under the proposals, it is decided by individual heads of universities. "We are profoundly angry with what's going on," says St?phane Tassel from the National Union of Higher Education (Snesup), the main union representing higher education professionals. "It's like coping with a disease. We went through denial and despair, now we're angry." Concerning the job cuts, Tassel said this was the first time in at least 15 years that job cuts are taking place. "It's unprecedented," he said. Speaking about the reforms concerning university teachers' status, Tassel said too much power was granted to university presidents. "They can dictate how many hours we teach or do research, and who gets promoted. This goes against the principle of collegiality we have been following." Another contested reform concerns the way lecturers across all sectors are trained. Under the new plans, they will need to complete a masters at university, instead of attending a specialised training institute. "Universities are supposed to take charge of lecturer training this month, but nobody knows how it is supposed to be working," said Tassel, adding that the movement is spreading fast. "We can't keep up with the number of local decisions reaching us at the moment. And colleagues who don't usually go on strike do." But the government appears to be steadfast. "The reforms are necessary to improve the way French universities work," P?cresse told French radio this morning. She has previously argued that reforms are necessary to improve the competitiveness of French universities, which are lagging behind internationally. "I deplore the fact that students are not getting their grades back. They should not be the victims of this strike," she said, adding that she would work closely with university presidents to explain how the change to lecturers' status would work in practice. Today's industrial action is the latest in a long-running campaign of demonstrations among French education professionals. Just last week, thousands of primary and secondary school teachers took to the streets during a national strike to protest against job cuts and wide-ranging school reforms. Industrial action is expected to continue in higher education, with unlimited strikes carrying on and a national demonstration scheduled in Paris next Tuesday. -------------------- as they said in Argentina in 2002 "?Que se vayan todos!" ("All of them must go!") ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From fresch at ica.net Fri Feb 6 20:57:31 2009 From: fresch at ica.net (Fred Schneider) Date: Fri Feb 6 21:40:58 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd.: Nationalized Banks Are "Only Answer, " Economist Stiglitz Says Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20090206203338.0250e0a8@ica.net> I guess Ed Deak would be very interested in this article. I hope he will be well soon to catch up with all the Mai-not news. I wonder if many (if any!) ordinary people have an idea who is behind the economic ups and downs. All you have to do is surf to the web for "NWO" (New World Order), "illuminati" and/or "Rothschild" and you get plenty of information about who is in secret control of the world's wealth and even governments. One sample (of many): Organizational chart of the Rothschild Occupational Government http://www.soveriegn.freeservers.com/rothschild.htm (Brief) excerpt: The Rothschilds, along with some of their associated banking families, have long been involved in the creation and/or development of such movements as the Bavarian Illuminati, the Zionist movement, International Communism, the Bolshievik Revolution, and the German National Socialist party (Nazis). Their biggest customers for loans are governments. To secure those loans, as with any other, they need security. They acquire that security two ways: By lending to competing countries to maintain a military balance, and by setting up national banks under their [own] control. "New World Order" (also translated as "New Order of the Centuries") was by no means new with the creation of the Great Seal of the United States. It is an old Illuminati slogan, used by Adolph Hitler, and later, by President George Bush, the son of a Hitler supporter, Prescott Bush. Perhaps this is mere coincidence, but is that really likely? Particularly in light of the fact that George is a member of the same Skull and Bones Society that his father used as a cover for transfering funds to Hitler? The Illuminati was founded in Bavaria in 1792, by a Freemason grandmaster named Adam Weishaupt. Adam received backing from the Rothschild family to build the Illuminati. He even converted to the Rothschild religion. He had been a Jesuit, but became a Jew. - (End of excerpt) The question is: who supplies the the "money" for all the world's countries' debts and who collects the interest on all those debts? Does Obama know? - Fred Schneider. Forwarded article: Economy | 06.02.2009 Nationalized Banks Are "Only Answer," Economist Stiglitz Says http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4005355,00.html Joseph Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001. Under US President Bill Clinton he served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1995- 1997. He was chief economist of the World Bank from 1997-2000 and was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He is currently a professor at Columbia University in New York. DW-WORLD: Many experts fear that while things are bad now, we haven't seen the worst of the crisis yet. Do you share the belief that we are facing a long decline that could rival the great depression? Joseph Stiglitz: We live in a very different world than during the Great Depression. Then, we had a manufacturing economy. Now we have a service-sector economy. Many people in the in the United States are already working part time because they can't get full-time jobs. People are talking more about the 'comprehensive' measures of unemployment, and these show unemployment at very high levels, around 15 percent. So it clearly is a serious downturn. Another big difference between now and the Great Depression is then we didn't have a safety net. Now we have unemployment insurance. Economists Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb, who predicted the global economic downturn, have called for a nationalization of banks in order to stop the financial meltdown. Do you agree? The fact of the matter is, the banks are in very bad shape. The U.S. government has poured in hundreds of billions of dollars to very little effect. It is very clear that the banks have failed. American citizens have become majority owners in a very large number of the major banks. But they have no control. Any system where there is a separation of ownership and control is a recipe for disaster. The Institute of International Finance estimates that the private flow of capital to developing countries will shrink by about two-thirds. Are we facing a situation where we could see a total collapse of many developing countries? I think many governments of emerging nations actually have a much better central banking system than the United States. They realized the risks of excessive leverage, excessive dependance on real estate lending and so they took much more prudent actions. Many developing countries also built up large reserves and are in a better position to meet this crisis than they were a decade ago. But some will face very difficult times, potentially defaults. Some of these countries are suffering from having paid too much attention to what has gone on in the United States. Should steps be taken to help these developing countries? Very definitely. I think it is absolutely imperative not just for the interest of these countries, not just from a humanitarian perspective, but from the perspective of global stability. It is not possible to have a strong global economy when there are large pockets of economic turmoil. The World Bank has called for advanced industrial countries as they are bailing out their own industries and provide subsidies, to set aside some amounts for the developing countries, who can't compete on this uneven playing field. US President Obama blasted banks for paying out billions in bonuses to executives while still on brink of collapse. Do yo agree with him that their behavior is "shameful" and "irresponsible"? Yes, it is shameful and irresponsible. But it is not a surprise ... for years the executives of American firms have defended their outrageous compensation, saying it's important as an incentive scheme. How in the world can you give bonuses of billions of dollars when your firm has had record losses of billions of dollars? Unless you're rewarding people for failure you shouldn't be getting bonuses, you should be getting penalties. In her speech at the World Economic Forum, German Chancellor Merkel warned the U.S. of protectionism and criticized subsidies for American auto companies. Is she correct? Do you see a danger that the U.S. will resort to protectionist measures? Yes, very clearly. We have always been aware that protectionism takes two forms: Tariffs and subsidies. Subsidies distort the playing field just like tariffs do. Subsidies are even more unfair and even more distorting, because while developed countries can give subsidies, poor countries can't afford to do so. Rich countries are distorting the level playing field by giving huge subsidies, not necessarily in the intention of protection, but with the consequence of protection. Merkel recently called for an international financial oversight body, and concensus on the issue is growing. How realistic do you think it is that governments and companies would give up sovereignty to an international entity? Merkel's idea is a very important one, which I have long supported. You need to have coordination of global economic policy that goes beyond the IMF, which has failed, and the World Bank. You cannot say that we have open borders without global regulation. It is inconceiveable as we go forward that we would allow financial products that are risky, manufactured in countries with inadequate regulation, to come without regulation into the United States and vice versa. International companies that are committed to gobalization should be at the forefront of calling for international regulation. Michael Knigge interviewed Joseph Stiglitz My home page: "http://home.ica.net/~fresch/index.htm" ======================================== Fred Schneider, 905-279-7199, Fax: same, call first! #37-425 Meadows Blvd. Mississauga, ON, L4Z 1N3 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090206/dc9ce1b0/attachment.html From dnevrghm at powerup.com.au Sat Feb 7 00:19:38 2009 From: dnevrghm at powerup.com.au (Doug Everingham) Date: Sat Feb 7 10:28:07 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] To my friends In-Reply-To: <200902030318.n133Ipbp008101@karma.reboot.ca> References: <200902030318.n133Ipbp008101@karma.reboot.ca> Message-ID: I share Ed's belief (faith?) in positive thinking by a patient to help to boost recovery. I am less sure about minds reaching out to influence each other with no physical or chemical linkage. There are degrees of agnosticism between skeptics and believers in spiritualism, telepathy, water divining and other possibly supernatural functions. We should respect the 'good faith' (bona fides) and not ridicule healing effect) of beliefs, even including apparent delusional contradictions, of otherwise rational and scientific pilgrims thru our slowly unfolding world. ? Doug > ==== > From: thinker@thelakebc.ca > Subject: [Mai-not] To my friends > Date: 3 February 2009 1:21:37 PM > To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net > Reply-To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net > > I went for a colonoscopy examination, for the first time in my > life, last week on Thursday and it was found that I had a large, > approx. 15 cm. long, most likely cancerous tumour in my colon, on > the lower left. > > We have some excellent surgeons here in Williams Lake, and as there > was no time to waste, I'm scheduled for a major operation, to > remove part of my colon, tomorrow, Tuesday, morning sometime after > 8:30. > > Although this whole thing came like a lightning out of the blue, > we're taking it upbeat and in very good spirits, and are planning > and looking forward to complete recovery to a better health than > before. > > Please don't bother with sympathy messages, as I'm shutting this > machine off right after this message goes out. However, as a firm > believer in the power of positive thinking, I would like to ask > some of you to please send some positive mental messages my way, > tomorrow morning. Let's face it, I'll need all the help I can get. > > All the very best to all of you and I hope to be back on line > sometime next week. Meanwhile, learn from my lesson and have > yourselves checked out. There's absolutely nothing to it. It is > totally harmless and painless. > > Cheers, Ed. > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090207/433cebbe/attachment.html From jomut at yahoo.com Mon Feb 9 15:45:58 2009 From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa) Date: Mon Feb 9 15:46:01 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak In-Reply-To: <380-220092451731712@M2W041.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <876283.27361.qm@web31102.mail.mud.yahoo.com> John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake) jomut@yahoo.com chakane@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/jomut ? Hi ? Kinda surprised because I did not get Ed's original message in my inbox (his messages are one among quite a few that I cannot access unless I visit the mai-not pipermail site) but I cannot tell you how relieved I am that Ed managed to persuade the docs to do a good job on him!? Stands to reason because the docs?must have known that Ed wouldnt abide second rate efforts. ? Dunno that I have keyed in?his address correctly but I think he can still get my message through the listserv anyway. He better not spent too much time getting back otherwise George Dubious will start crowing in retirement that he managed to?deliver a telling blow on?one of his fiercest critics immediately after leaving office.? Besides, Wham Bam might easily get away with his halfhearted attempts at browbeating imperial finance into shyly retreating! ? Roll up the shirtsleeves quickly Ed! ? John ==================== ? --- On Thu, 2/5/09, diongiles1@aapt.net.au wrote: From: diongiles1@aapt.net.au Subject: RE: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Date: Thursday, February 5, 2009, 5:31 PM I've been snowbound in London and out of communication - have just managed to get into my mail, only to find Ed has been unwell. I'll read the rest of the story now but in the meantime please pass on to Ed and Marta my very best wishes for his rapid and uncomplicated recovery. Dion Giles Original Message: ----------------- From: marcel@starchak.ca Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:29:16 -0700 To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Subject: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak Excellent news: I spoke to Ed's wife Marta last night and she reports that his surgery went very well and the 'good poke around under the hood' turned up nothing else of concern. Pretty damn good for an 82 year old. He'll be recovering in hospital until early next week after which he will resume complaining about the government. Thanks to everyone for the positive thoughts, it worked. _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com ? Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft? Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090209/6d133d81/attachment.html From oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au Tue Feb 10 02:06:46 2009 From: oscarptyltd at ozemail.com.au (Clem Clarke) Date: Tue Feb 10 02:07:03 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] [Fwd: Once Upon a Time in Republican Land...] Message-ID: <49913596.7090205@ozemail.com.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090210/2fdb9ab2/attachment.html From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Tue Feb 10 20:42:07 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Tue Feb 10 21:03:03 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: Climate and bushfires; boycott Israel; Philippines new left party; WSF; Canada; Castro on Obama; British strike debate; Venezuela & Israel Message-ID: <49923AFF.3020908@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: Climate and bushfires; boycott Israel; Philippines new left party; WSF; Canada; Castro on Obama; British strike debate; Venezuela & Israel * * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to links@dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links/. * * * Meltdown, fires as climate emergency hits Australia: Urgent action required By Katherine Bradstreet Melbourne, February 7, 2009 -- The heatwave across south-eastern Australia in recent weeks has given a hint of what we can expect as global temperatures continue to rise: black-outs, fatalities and transport chaos as privatised infrastructure fails. Many are in mourning as bushfires have devastated rural Victoria, with the death toll passing triple figures and more than 750 homes destroyed. The country town of Marysville has been erased from the map. Several other towns have all but been destroyed. Even before the bushfire catastrophe, South Australia and Victoria had seen a sharp increase in deaths as a result of the heatwave, with Adelaide's central morgue quite literally overflowing -- the "excess" cadavers were stored temporarily in a refrigerated freight container. * Read more South Africa: Victory for workers' solidarity as Israeli ship sneaks out of Durban still loaded Congress of South African Trade Unions and Palestine Solidarity Committee (South Africa) [See http://links.org.au/node/888 for more background information.] February 6, 2009 -- The Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU) is pleased to announce that its members, dock workers belonging to the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU), achieved a victory last night when they stood firm by their decision not to offload the Johanna Russ, a ship that was carrying Israeli goods to South Africa. This, despite threats to COSATU members from sections of the pro-Israel lobby, and despite severe provocation. * Read more New left party -- Power of the Masses Party -- formed in Philippines Interview with Sonny Melencio, chairperson of Partido Lakas ng Masa of the Philippines. Conducted by Peter Boyle for Green Left Weekly and Links International Journal of Socialist Renewalin Manila on February 1, 2009. * Read more Sydney, April 10-12 (Easter), 2009: World at a Crossroads - Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century World At a Crossroads: Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century * Read more World Social Forum: `We won't pay for the crisis. The rich must pay!' Declaration of the Assembly of Social Movements at the World Social Forum, January 27-February 1, 2009, Belem, Brazil. * Read more Spain: Video -- Anti-apartheid protesters disrupt Israeli basketball team's game Barcelona, February 5, 2009 -- Protesters opposed to Israel's apartheid policies and its atrocities in Gaza chanted slogans and waved Palestinian flags during a basketball match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Barcelona on Thursday, February 5, 2009. Despite tight police security, protesters managed to disrupt the game by running onto the court before being dragged away by aggressive cops and security guards. Tel Aviv was thrashed 85-65 by Barcelona. Boicot del partit de b?squet Bar?a -- Maccabi de Tel Aviv. Palau Blaugrana. 5 de febrer de 2009. Boicot a Israel. Solidaritat amb Palestina!! Watch at http://links.org.au/node/895 The capitalist crash and the challenges facing socialists in Canada By Roger Annis and John Riddell [Roger Annis will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets.] The first casualty of the financial collapse has been the claim that "there is no alternative" to unrestricted free market capitalism. The imperialist governments are bankrolling imperilled banks and industrial conglomerates with immense bailouts -- an estimated $5.1 trillion in the US alone by November 2008 -- while preparing "stimulus" packages aimed at restoring financial markets. * Read more San Francisco trade unionists support boycott of apartheid Israel San Francisco trade unionists support boycott of apartheid Israel, protest in soldarity with the Palestinian people, January 10, 2009. Watch at http://links.org.au/node/892 Australia: Climate Summit unites new environment movement By Simon Butler, Canberra * Read more Fidel Castro: Contradictions between Obama's politics and ethics By Fidel Castro Ruz February 4, 2009 -- A few days ago I referred to some of Obama's ideas which point to his role in a system that denies every principle of justice. I'd rather address some questions of many that could be raised and that the new President of the United States should answer. * Read more Chavismo: Christian, pro-Muslim, pro-Jewish and anti-Nazi By Roy Chaderton Matos, Venezuela's ambassador to the Organization of American States. January 30, 2009 -- Watching television footage of one of the necessary and legitimate protests against the Israeli Embassy in Caracas, I spotted a lone sign with a slogan that left me thunderstruck. The slogan was something like: "We condemn Hitler for not having completed his work of extermination..." The frightening message, totally alien to the Bolivarian process and the Chavista commitment to liberty, democracy, equality and social justice, shows that, every now and then in our struggles and protests, "loose cannons" come dog us and that we have to detect them and neutralise them and expel them like any foreign body. * Read more South African dockworkers announce ban on Israeli ship; Palestinians salute decision FREE PALESTINE! ISOLATE APARTHEID ISRAEL! February 3, 2009 -- In a historic development for South Africa, South African dock workers have announced their determination not to offload a ship from Israel that is scheduled to dock in Durban on Sunday, February 8, 2009. This follows the decision by COSATU to strengthen the campaign in South Africa for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against apartheid Israel. * Read more `For international solidarity between workers' -- British left debates Lindsey oil refinery strike wave (updated Feb. 7) A range of views from the British and Scottish left on the strike wave that erupted at the Lindsey oil refinery and rapidly spread across the country. Statements from Socialist Resistance, Scottish Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party, Respect MP George Galloway, the Socialist Party, the Morning Star, Lenin's Tomb blog and the Socialist Unity blog. * Read more * * * Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information, experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090211/f466d564/attachment.html From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Feb 12 00:45:07 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu Feb 12 00:54:35 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: Asia: The Coming Fury Message-ID: <027201c98cde$b93f94f0$7fad57ca@jfos> Excerpt: "If Taiwan and Korea pioneered the model and Southeast Asia successfully followed in their wake, China perfected the strategy of export-oriented industrialization. With its reserve army of cheap labor unmatched by any country in the world, China became the "workshop of the world," drawing in $50 billion in foreign investment annually by the first half of this decade. To survive, transnational firms had no choice but to transfer their labor-intensive operations to China to take advantage of what came to be known as the "China price," provoking in the process a tremendous crisis in the advanced capitalist countries' labor forces. This process depended on the U.S. market. As long as U.S. consumers splurged, the export economies of East Asia could continue in high gear. The low U.S. savings rate was no barrier since credit was available on a grand scale. China and other Asian countries snapped up U.S. treasury bills and loaned massively to U.S. financial institutions, which in turn loaned to consumers and homebuyers. But now the U.S. credit economy has imploded, and the U.S. market is unlikely to serve as the same dynamic source of demand for a long time to come. As a result, Asia's export economies have been marooned. The Illusion of "Decoupling" ############# ############# The collapse of Asia's key market has banished all talk of decoupling. The image of decoupled locomotives - one coming to a halt, the other chugging along on a separate track - no longer applies, if it ever had. Rather, U.S.-East Asia economic relations today resemble a chain-gang linking not only China and the United States but a host of other satellite economies. They are all linked to debt-financed middle-class spending in the United States, which has collapsed.(snip) The Coming Fury In China, about 20 million workers have lost their jobs in the last few months, many of them heading back to the countryside, where they will find little work. The authorities are rightly worried that what they label "mass group incidents," which have been increasing in the last decade, might spin out of control. With the safety valve of foreign demand for Indonesian and Filipino workers shut off, hundreds of thousands of workers are returning home to few jobs and dying farms. Suffering is likely to be accompanied by rising protest, as it already has in Vietnam, where strikes are spreading like wildfire. Korea, with its tradition of militant labor and peasant protest, is a ticking time bomb. Indeed, East Asia may be entering a period of radical protest and social revolution that went out of style when export-oriented industrialization became the fashion three decades ago. full article by Walden Bello at http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5855 Interesting times ahead! John Foster Victoria, Australia ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Thu Feb 12 01:12:41 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Thu Feb 12 01:12:51 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: The Risk of Military Keynesianism Message-ID: <02c501c98ce1$4bda0780$7fad57ca@jfos> Excerpt: "Call it the new military Keynesianism: the use of military spending to stimulate the economy and pull the country out of recession. Proponents of this approach even enlist FDR on their side by arguing that the United States didn't exit the Great Depression until it shifted to a war footing after Pearl Harbor. Today, the advocates of military Keynesianism are pushing back against the Obama stimulus package - which already includes over $10 billion for the Pentagon and $1 billion for nuclear programs at the Department of Energy - with a proposal to maintain U.S. military spending at 4% of GDP. The rest of the world isn't immune to these arguments."(snip) The United States is responsible for nearly half of all global military spending. During the last 10 years, when global military spending increased by 45%, the United States set the pace. Now, during a period of global belt-tightening, the military Keynesianism with which the U.S. government is flirting threatens to establish another pattern for both our allies and competitors. Challenging the central thesis of military Keynesianism - that military spending can pull the world out of recession - requires two primary counter-arguments. First, defense spending is not an effective stimulus package. Investments in the civil sector, as several studies have demonstrated, produce more jobs than investments in the military sector. Second, in order to secure sufficient funds to address economic recession and climate change - without saddling future generations with crippling debt - governments must begin to shift military spending toward human needs. Full article by John Feffer - the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus. at http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5854 ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Thu Feb 12 15:57:26 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Thu Feb 12 15:55:48 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] =?utf-8?q?Binational_poll_shows_strong_opposition_to_N?= =?utf-8?q?AFTA=E2=80=99s_Chapter_11_-Cans/Americans_say_put_env_fi?= =?utf-8?q?rst_COC_?= Message-ID: <49946306.9621.7A0FB97B@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> The poll, conducted by Environics, found that over 70 per cent of Americans and Canadians believe energy corporations should not be allowed to sue governments (which current, controversial provisions of Chapter 11 of NAFTA allow) for changes in government policy that protect the environment or otherwise promote the public interest. "NAFTA is a dangerous barrier to effective government policies addressing climate change and diminishing energy resources. Over half of the complaints under NAFTA?s chapter 11 have directly challenged environmental policies," says Andrea Harden-Donahue, Energy Campaigner with the Council of Canadians.....This has a tremendous impact on any discussions in Canada or between Canada and the U.S. towards adopting an effective climate change policy." fyi-janet =========================== http://www.canadians.org/media/energy/2009/09-Feb-09.html For Immediate Release February 9, 2009 Canadians and Americans Say, Put the Environment and People First Binational poll shows strong opposition to use of NAFTA?s Chapter 11 OTTAWA / February 9, 2009 - U.S. President Barack Obama should press ahead with plans to renegotiate NAFTA when he meets with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper later this month to discuss binational energy and environmental policies, concludes the Council of Canadians, which has commissioned a new binational poll of Canadians and Americans on NAFTA and Canada-U.S. energy policy. The poll, conducted by Environics, found that over 70 per cent of Americans and Canadians believe energy corporations should not be allowed to sue governments (which current, controversial provisions of Chapter 11 of NAFTA allow) for changes in government policy that protect the environment or otherwise promote the public interest. The poll also found that an overwhelming 9 out of 10 Canadians believe the Harper government should pursue a comprehensive strategy to create more green jobs in renewable energy and improved energy efficiency. This means Obama is more in tune with Canadians? green priorities than Harper. Obama has shown strong support for renewable energy, a strategy sorely lacking from the recent Canadian federal budget. "There is remarkable agreement between Canadians and Americans on the need to promote the public interest and constrain the power of energy corporations. And there is overwhelming consensus among Canadians on the desire to promote renewable energy," says Maude Barlow, Chair of the Council of Canadians. "Unfortunately, the Canadian government and Big Oil refuse to change NAFTA, which leaves energy and environmental security a victim of the whims of the market." "Americans and Canadians want a green energy future and agree that the time to start is now," says Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, senior attorney at the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council. "There are clean technologies ready for roll-out at this moment, so we are seeing no patience for environmentally destructive fuels like tar sands oil. We have to hold energy companies to a higher level of accountability." "NAFTA is a dangerous barrier to effective government policies addressing climate change and diminishing energy resources. Over half of the complaints under NAFTA?s chapter 11 have directly challenged environmental policies," says Andrea Harden-Donahue, Energy Campaigner with the Council of Canadians. "This is a problem that is only going to get worse and more costly as both governments try to come to terms with the growing environmental and economic crises. This has a tremendous impact on any discussions in Canada or between Canada and the U.S. towards adopting an effective climate change policy." -30- For more information or to arrange an interview contact: Dylan Penner, Council of Canadians, 613 795-8685 BINATIONAL POLL RESULTS Environics Research Group was commissioned by the Council of Canadians to conduct a poll on attitudes towards energy policy and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Between January 22 and February 1, 2009, 1,000 Canadians and 1,000 American respondents were interviewed, resulting in a margin of error of +/-3.09 per cent 19 times out of 20 for each country polled. 1. The following question was asked of Americans and Canadians: Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, allows corporations to sue member governments for compensation anytime they feel that government policies, such as environmental policies, might reduce their profits. DO YOU STRONGLY SUPPORT, SOMEWHAT SUPPORT, SOMEWHAT OPPOSE OR STRONGLY OPPOSE ENERGY COMPANIES BEING ABLE TO SUE NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS FOR LOST PROFITS AS A RESULT OF GOVERNMENT POLICIES? RESULTS: United States: SUPPORT 26% OPPOSE 71% DON?T KNOW/REFUSED 3% Canada: SUPPORT 23% OPPOSE 72% DON?T KNOW/REFUSED 5% 2. The following question was asked of Canadians only: Addressing climate change will likely involve more energy conservation and efficiency, as well as transitioning to renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and tidal power. DO YOU STRONGLY SUPPORT, SOMEWHAT SUPPORT, SOMEWHAT OPPOSE OR STRONGLY OPPOSE THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT DEVELOPING A COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY TO CREATE MORE "GREEN JOBS" THROUGH IMPROVED ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND THE EXPANSION OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES? RESULTS: SUPPORT 93% OPPOSE 5% DON?T KNOW/REFUSED 2% For Immediate Release February 9, 2009 Canadians and Americans Say, Put the Environment and People First Binational poll shows strong opposition to use of NAFTA?s Chapter 11 OTTAWA / February 9, 2009 - U.S. President Barack Obama should press ahead with plans to renegotiate NAFTA when he meets with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper later this month to discuss binational energy and environmental policies, concludes the Council of Canadians, which has commissioned a new binational poll of Canadians and Americans on NAFTA and Canada-U.S. energy policy. The poll, conducted by Environics, found that over 70 per cent of Americans and Canadians believe energy corporations should not be allowed to sue governments (which current, controversial provisions of Chapter 11 of NAFTA allow) for changes in government policy that protect the environment or otherwise promote the public interest. The poll also found that an overwhelming 9 out of 10 Canadians believe the Harper government should pursue a comprehensive strategy to create more green jobs in renewable energy and improved energy efficiency. This means Obama is more in tune with Canadians? green priorities than Harper. Obama has shown strong support for renewable energy, a strategy sorely lacking from the recent Canadian federal budget. "There is remarkable agreement between Canadians and Americans on the need to promote the public interest and constrain the power of energy corporations. And there is overwhelming consensus among Canadians on the desire to promote renewable energy," says Maude Barlow, Chair of the Council of Canadians. "Unfortunately, the Canadian government and Big Oil refuse to change NAFTA, which leaves energy and environmental security a victim of the whims of the market." "Americans and Canadians want a green energy future and agree that the time to start is now," says Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, senior attorney at the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council. "There are clean technologies ready for roll-out at this moment, so we are seeing no patience for environmentally destructive fuels like tar sands oil. We have to hold energy companies to a higher level of accountability." "NAFTA is a dangerous barrier to effective government policies addressing climate change and diminishing energy resources. Over half of the complaints under NAFTA?s chapter 11 have directly challenged environmental policies," says Andrea Harden-Donahue, Energy Campaigner with the Council of Canadians. "This is a problem that is only going to get worse and more costly as both governments try to come to terms with the growing environmental and economic crises. This has a tremendous impact on any discussions in Canada or between Canada and the U.S. towards adopting an effective climate change policy." -30- For more information or to arrange an interview contact: Dylan Penner, Council of Canadians, 613 795-8685 BINATIONAL POLL RESULTS Environics Research Group was commissioned by the Council of Canadians to conduct a poll on attitudes towards energy policy and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Between January 22 and February 1, 2009, 1,000 Canadians and 1,000 American respondents were interviewed, resulting in a margin of error of +/-3.09 per cent 19 times out of 20 for each country polled. 1. The following question was asked of Americans and Canadians: Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, allows corporations to sue member governments for compensation anytime they feel that government policies, such as environmental policies, might reduce their profits. DO YOU STRONGLY SUPPORT, SOMEWHAT SUPPORT, SOMEWHAT OPPOSE OR STRONGLY OPPOSE ENERGY COMPANIES BEING ABLE TO SUE NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS FOR LOST PROFITS AS A RESULT OF GOVERNMENT POLICIES? RESULTS: United States: SUPPORT 26% OPPOSE 71% DON?T KNOW/REFUSED 3% Canada: SUPPORT 23% OPPOSE 72% DON?T KNOW/REFUSED 5% 2. The following question was asked of Canadians only: Addressing climate change will likely involve more energy conservation and efficiency, as well as transitioning to renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and tidal power. DO YOU STRONGLY SUPPORT, SOMEWHAT SUPPORT, SOMEWHAT OPPOSE OR STRONGLY OPPOSE THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT DEVELOPING A COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY TO CREATE MORE "GREEN JOBS" THROUGH IMPROVED ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND THE EXPANSION OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES? RESULTS: SUPPORT 93% OPPOSE 5% DON?T KNOW/REFUSED 2% From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Fri Feb 13 00:30:59 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Fri Feb 13 00:29:24 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Capitalism's Self-inflicted Apocalypse by Michael Parenti Feb 10, 2009 Message-ID: <4994DB63.31678.7BE5E512@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> Excerpt from Parenti's lengthy analysis: After the overthrow of communist governments in Eastern Europe, capitalism was paraded as the indomitable system that brings prosperity and democracy, the system that would prevail unto the end of history. The present economic crisis, however, has convinced even some prominent free-marketeers that something is gravely amiss. Truth be told, capitalism has yet to come to terms with several historical forces that cause it endless trouble: democracy, prosperity, and capitalism itself, the very entities that capitalist rulers claim to be fostering.... In sum, free-market corporate capitalism is by its nature a disaster waiting to happen. Its essence is the transformation of living nature into mountains of commodities and commodities into heaps of dead capital. When left entirely to its own devices, capitalism foists its diseconomies and toxicity upon the general public and upon the natural environment--and eventually begins to devour itself. The immense inequality in economic power that exists in our capitalist society translates into a formidable inequality of political power, which makes it all the more difficult to impose democratic regulations. If the paladins of Corporate America want to know what really threatens "our way of life," it is their way of life, their boundless way of pilfering their own system, destroying the very foundation on which they stand, the very community on which they so lavishly feed. It is only in countries where capitalism has been reined in to some degree by social democracy that the populace has been able to secure a measure of prosperity; northern European nations such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark come to mind. But even in these social democracies popular gains are always at risk of being rolled back. To the extent that life is bearable under the present U.S. economic order, it is because millions of people have waged bitter class struggles to advance their living standards and their rights as citizens, bringing some measure of humanity to an otherwise heartless politico-economic order. --- Michael Parenti*, ICH Feb 10, 2009 * Michael Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, in the United States and abroad. He is the author of twenty books: Please visit his website http://michaelparenti.org fyi-janet ========================= http://informationclearinghouse.info/article21957.htm Information Clearinghouse February 10, 2009 Capitalism's Self-inflicted Apocalypse By Michael Parenti After the overthrow of communist governments in Eastern Europe, capitalism was paraded as the indomitable system that brings prosperity and democracy, the system that would prevail unto the end of history. The present economic crisis, however, has convinced even some prominent free-marketeers that something is gravely amiss. Truth be told, capitalism has yet to come to terms with several historical forces that cause it endless trouble: democracy, prosperity, and capitalism itself, the very entities that capitalist rulers claim to be fostering. Plutocracy vs. Democracy Let us consider democracy first. In the United States we hear that capitalism is wedded to democracy, hence the phrase, "capitalist democracies." In fact, throughout our history there has been a largely antagonistic relationship between democracy and capital concentration. Some eighty years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis commented, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Moneyed interests have been opponents not proponents of democracy. The Constitution itself was fashioned by affluent gentlemen who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to repeatedly warn of the baneful and dangerous leveling effects of democracy. The document they cobbled together was far from democratic, being shackled with checks, vetoes, and requirements for artificial super majorities, a system designed to blunt the impact of popular demands. In the early days of the Republic the rich and well-born imposed property qualifications for voting and officeholding. They opposed the direct election of candidates (note, their Electoral College is still with us). And for decades they resisted extending the franchise to less favored groups such as propertyless working men, immigrants, racial minorities, and women. Today conservative forces continue to reject more equitable electoral features such as proportional representation, instant runoff, and publicly funded campaigns. They continue to create barriers to voting, be it through overly severe registration requirements, voter roll purges, inadequate polling accommodations, and electronic voting machines that consistently "malfunction" to the benefit of the more conservative candidates. At times ruling interests have suppressed radical publications and public protests, resorting to police raids, arrests, and jailings- applied most recently with full force against demonstrators in St. Paul, Minnesota, during the 2008 Republican National Convention. The conservative plutocracy also seeks to rollback democracy's social gains, such as public education, affordable housing, health care, collective bargaining, a living wage, safe work conditions, a non- toxic sustainable environment; the right to privacy, the separation of church and state, freedom from compulsory pregnancy, and the right to marry any consenting adult of one's own choosing. About a century ago, US labor leader Eugene Victor Debs was thrown into jail during a strike. Sitting in his cell he could not escape the conclusion that in disputes between two private interests, capital and labor, the state was not a neutral arbiter. The force of the state--with its police, militia, courts, and laws-was unequivocally on the side of the company bosses. From this, Debs concluded that capitalism was not just an economic system but an entire social order, one that rigged the rules of democracy to favor the moneybags. Capitalist rulers continue to pose as the progenitors of democracy even as they subvert it, not only at home but throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Any nation that is not "investor friendly," that attempts to use its land, labor, capital, natural resources, and markets in a self-developing manner, outside the dominion of transnational corporate hegemony, runs the risk of being demonized and targeted as "a threat to U.S. national security." Democracy becomes a problem for corporate America not when it fails to work but when it works too well, helping the populace move toward a more equitable and livable social order, narrowing the gap, however modestly, between the superrich and the rest of us. So democracy must be diluted and subverted, smothered with disinformation, media puffery, and mountains of campaign costs; with rigged electoral contests and partially disfranchised publics, bringing faux victories to more or less politically safe major-party candidates. Capitalism vs. Prosperity The corporate capitalists no more encourage prosperity than do they propagate democracy. Most of the world is capitalist, and most of the world is neither prosperous nor particularly democratic. One need only think of capitalist Nigeria, capitalist Indonesia, capitalist Thailand, capitalist Haiti, capitalist Colombia, capitalist Pakistan, capitalist South Africa, capitalist Latvia, and various other members of the Free World--more accurately, the Free Market World. A prosperous, politically literate populace with high expectations about its standard of living and a keen sense of entitlement, pushing for continually better social conditions, is not the plutocracy's notion of an ideal workforce and a properly pliant polity. Corporate investors prefer poor populations. The poorer you are, the harder you will work-for less. The poorer you are, the less equipped you are to defend yourself against the abuses of wealth. In the corporate world of "free-trade," the number of billionaires is increasing faster than ever while the number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world's population. Poverty spreads as wealth accumulates. Consider the United States. In the last eight years alone, while vast fortunes accrued at record rates, an additional six million Americans sank below the poverty level; median family income declined by over $2,000; consumer debt more than doubled; over seven million Americans lost their health insurance, and more than four million lost their pensions; meanwhile homelessness increased and housing foreclosures reached pandemic levels. It is only in countries where capitalism has been reined in to some degree by social democracy that the populace has been able to secure a measure of prosperity; northern European nations such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark come to mind. But even in these social democracies popular gains are always at risk of being rolled back. It is ironic to credit capitalism with the genius of economic prosperity when most attempts at material betterment have been vehemently and sometimes violently resisted by the capitalist class. The history of labor struggle provides endless illustration of this. To the extent that life is bearable under the present U.S. economic order, it is because millions of people have waged bitter class struggles to advance their living standards and their rights as citizens, bringing some measure of humanity to an otherwise heartless politico-economic order. A Self-devouring Beast The capitalist state has two roles long recognized by political thinkers. First, like any state it must provide services that cannot be reliably developed through private means, such as public safety and orderly traffic. Second, the capitalist state protects the haves from the have-nots, securing the process of capital accumulation to benefit the moneyed interests, while heavily circumscribing the demands of the working populace, as Debs observed from his jail cell. There is a third function of the capitalist state seldom mentioned. It consists of preventing the capitalist system from devouring itself. Consider the core contradiction Karl Marx pointed to: the tendency toward overproduction and market crisis. An economy dedicated to speedups and wage cuts, to making workers produce more and more for less and less, is always in danger of a crash. To maximize profits, wages must be kept down. But someone has to buy the goods and services being produced. For that, wages must be kept up. There is a chronic tendency-as we are seeing today-toward overproduction of private sector goods and services and underconsumption of necessities by the working populace. In addition, there is the frequently overlooked self-destruction created by the moneyed players themselves. If left completely unsupervised, the more active command component of the financial system begins to devour less organized sources of wealth. Instead of trying to make money by the arduous task of producing and marketing goods and services, the marauders tap directly into the money streams of the economy itself. During the 1990s we witnessed the collapse of an entire economy in Argentina when unchecked free marketeers stripped enterprises, pocketed vast sums, and left the country's productive capacity in shambles. The Argentine state, gorged on a heavy diet of free-market ideology, faltered in its function of saving capitalism from the capitalists. Some years later, in the United States, came the multi-billion-dollar plunder perpetrated by corporate conspirators at Enron, WorldCom, Harkin, Adelphia, and a dozen other major companies. Inside players like Ken Lay turned successful corporate enterprises into sheer wreckage, wiping out the jobs and life savings of thousands of employees in order to pocket billions. These thieves were caught and convicted. Does that not show capitalism's self-correcting capacity? Not really. The prosecution of such malfeasance- in any case coming too late-was a product of democracy's accountability and transparency, not capitalism's. Of itself the free market is an amoral system, with no strictures save caveat emptor. In the meltdown of 2008-09 the mounting financial surplus created a problem for the moneyed class: there were not enough opportunities to invest. With more money than they knew what to do with, big investors poured immense sums into nonexistent housing markets and other dodgy ventures, a legerdemain of hedge funds, derivatives, high leveraging, credit default swaps, predatory lending, and whatever else. Among the victims were other capitalists, small investors, and the many workers who lost billions of dollars in savings and pensions. Perhaps the premiere brigand was Bernard Madoff. Described as "a longstanding leader in the financial services industry," Madoff ran a fraudulent fund that raked in $50 billion from wealthy investors, paying them back "with money that wasn't there," as he himself put it. The plutocracy devours its own children. In the midst of the meltdown, at an October 2008 congressional hearing, former chair of the Federal Reserve and orthodox free-market devotee Alan Greenspan confessed that he had been mistaken to expect moneyed interests--groaning under an immense accumulation of capital that needs to be invested somewhere--to suddenly exercise self- restraint. The classic laissez-faire theory is even more preposterous than Greenspan made it. In fact, the theory claims that everyone should pursue their own selfish interests without restraint. This unbridled competition supposedly will produce maximum benefits for all because the free market is governed by a miraculously benign "invisible hand" that optimizes collective outputs. ("Greed is good.") Is the crisis of 2008-09 caused by a chronic tendency toward overproduction and hyper-financial accumulation, as Marx would have it? Or is it the outcome of the personal avarice of people like Bernard Madoff? In other words, is the problem systemic or individual? In fact, the two are not mutually exclusive. Capitalism breeds the venal perpetrators, and rewards the most unscrupulous among them. The crimes and crises are not irrational departures from a rational system, but the converse: they are the rational outcomes of a basically irrational and amoral system. Worse still, the ensuing multi-billion dollar government bailouts are themselves being turned into an opportunity for pillage. Not only does the state fail to regulate, it becomes itself a source of plunder, pulling vast sums from the federal money machine, leaving the taxpayers to bleed. Those who scold us for "running to the government for a handout" are themselves running to the government for a handout. Corporate America has always enjoyed grants-in-aid, loan guarantees, and other state and federal subventions. But the 2008-09 "rescue operation" offered a record feed at the public trough. More than $350 billion was dished out by a right-wing lame-duck Secretary of the Treasury to the biggest banks and financial houses without oversight--not to mention the more than $4 trillion that has come from the Federal Reserve. Most of the banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of New York Mellon, stated that they had no intention of letting anyone know where the money was going. The big bankers used some of the bailout, we do know, to buy up smaller banks and prop up banks overseas. CEOs and other top banking executives are spending bailout funds on fabulous bonuses and lavish corporate spa retreats. Meanwhile, big bailout beneficiaries like Citigroup and Bank of America laid off tens of thousands of employees, inviting the question: why were they given all that money in the first place? While hundreds of billions were being doled out to the very people who had caused the catastrophe, the housing market continued to wilt, credit remained paralyzed, unemployment worsened, and consumer spending sank to record lows. In sum, free-market corporate capitalism is by its nature a disaster waiting to happen. Its essence is the transformation of living nature into mountains of commodities and commodities into heaps of dead capital. When left entirely to its own devices, capitalism foists its diseconomies and toxicity upon the general public and upon the natural environment--and eventually begins to devour itself. The immense inequality in economic power that exists in our capitalist society translates into a formidable inequality of political power, which makes it all the more difficult to impose democratic regulations. If the paladins of Corporate America want to know what really threatens "our way of life," it is their way of life, their boundless way of pilfering their own system, destroying the very foundation on which they stand, the very community on which they so lavishly feed. Michael Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, in the United States and abroad. He is the author of twenty books: Please visit his website http://michaelparenti.org From ptuffley at xtra.co.nz Sat Feb 14 03:17:33 2009 From: ptuffley at xtra.co.nz (Peter Tuffley) Date: Sat Feb 14 03:18:07 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak In-Reply-To: <08cf075ae659e3243eda8a13ca60cb60@shell-4000-rally.org> References: <08cf075ae659e3243eda8a13ca60cb60@shell-4000-rally.org> Message-ID: <6F8A5BB8-AC7E-490E-B77B-31614496187D@xtra.co.nz> Unbeknown to me until just now, my emailer decided (without asking me) to put a whole pile of messages, including all the mai-not messages relating to Ed's illness, into my spam folder so I didn't know they had arrived. So I have only just caught up with the news about Ed's illness and the outcome of his operation. I will do my best to make up by sending positive thoughts for a speedy and permanent recovery. Peter On 6/02/2009, at 4:29 AM, wrote: > Excellent news: I spoke to Ed's wife Marta last night and she > reports that > his surgery went very well and the 'good poke around under the hood' > turned > up nothing else of concern. Pretty damn good for an 82 year old. > He'll be > recovering in hospital until early next week after which he will > resume > complaining about the government. > > Thanks to everyone for the positive thoughts, it worked. > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not From dale_young at telus.net Sat Feb 14 03:28:01 2009 From: dale_young at telus.net (Dale Young) Date: Sat Feb 14 03:29:51 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak In-Reply-To: <6F8A5BB8-AC7E-490E-B77B-31614496187D@xtra.co.nz> References: <08cf075ae659e3243eda8a13ca60cb60@shell-4000-rally.org> <6F8A5BB8-AC7E-490E-B77B-31614496187D@xtra.co.nz> Message-ID: <49968EA1.2030202@telus.net> I'm on another list that Ed also contributes to, and the following message came through this afternoon from someone who had visited Ed. I'm sure he would want it forwarded to the mai-not group too. "Ed was anxious for everyone to know so they could think positivley to make him well. "Something went wrong with Ed Deak's operation. He was doing fine then had problems and had to have a second operation yesterday and he is in intensive care. He is likely to be in hospital for awhile this time. He asked for us to "think positively" for him to help get him through it. "I will be seeing him again and will relay any messages." I'll forward any further news I receive about Ed. Dale Peter Tuffley wrote: > > Unbeknown to me until just now, my emailer decided (without asking me) > to put a whole pile of messages, > including all the mai-not messages relating to Ed's illness, into my > spam folder so I didn't know they had arrived. > > So I have only just caught up with the news about Ed's illness and the > outcome of his operation. > > I will do my best to make up by sending positive thoughts for a speedy > and permanent recovery. > > Peter > > > On 6/02/2009, at 4:29 AM, wrote: > >> Excellent news: I spoke to Ed's wife Marta last night and she reports >> that >> his surgery went very well and the 'good poke around under the hood' >> turned >> up nothing else of concern. Pretty damn good for an 82 year old. He'll be >> recovering in hospital until early next week after which he will resume >> complaining about the government. >> >> Thanks to everyone for the positive thoughts, it worked. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Mai-not mailing list >> Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >> http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Sat Feb 14 14:18:13 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Sat Feb 14 14:16:34 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Michael Hudson: Bubble Economy 2.0: The Financial Recovery Plan from Hell [globalresearch.ca F11] Message-ID: <4996EEC5.24830.84019E04@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> Michael Hudson on "How to save the economy from Wall Street" [] There is an alternative to ward all this off, and it is the classic definition of freedom from debt peonage and predatory credit. The only real solution to today?s debt overhang is a debt write-down. [] A second policy would be to restore the power of state attorneys general to bring financial fraud charges against the most egregious mortgage lenders ...On the basis of reinstated fraud charges, the government might claw back the bank bonuses, salaries and bank earnings that represented the profits from America?s greatest financial and real estate fraud in history. [] Also to ward off repetition of the Bubble Economy, the Treasury could impose the "Tobin tax" of 1% on purchases and options for stocks, bonds and foreign currency.... [] It is easy enough for fiscal policy to prevent a new real estate bubble. Simply shift the tax system back to where it originally was, on the land?s site-rental value. The reality is that taxing land appreciation rather than wages or corporate profits would save homeowners from having to take on so much debt in order to obtain housing. It would save the economy from seeing "wealth creation" take the form of the "unearned increment" being capitalized into higher bank loans with their associated carrying charges (interest and amortization). The wealth tax originally fell mainly on real estate. The most immediate and politically feasible priority of the Obama Administration thus should be to repeal the Bush Administration?s drastic tax cuts for the top brackets and its moratorium on the estate tax. ....The most immediate and politically feasible priority of the Obama Administration thus should be to repeal the Bush Administration?s drastic tax cuts for the top brackets and its moratorium on the estate tax. -- - MIchael Hudson, President of The Institute for the Study of Long- Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1972 and 2003) fyi-janet See earlier posting http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney08292008.html " You have to realize that what they're trying to do [ Aug 2008] is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They're not trying to make the economy more equal, and they're not trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted) infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re- assertion of pre- industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage. The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of economic progress and rising living standards; it's the dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite." --- Professor Michael Hudson * ======================= http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HUD200 90211&articleId=12265 Bubble Economy 2.0: The Financial Recovery Plan from Hell by Michael Hudson Global Research, February 11, 2009 Martin Wolf started off his Financial Times column today (February 11) with the bold question: "Has Barack Obama?s presidency already failed?"[1] The stock market had a similar opinion, plunging 382 points. Having promised "change," Mr. Obama is giving us more Clinton-Bush via Robert Rubin?s prot?g?, Tim Geithner. Tuesday?s $2.5 trillion Financial Stabilization Plan to re-inflate the Bubble Economy is basically an extension of the Bush-Paulson giveaway - yet more Rubinomics for financial insiders in the emerging Wall Street trusts. The financial system is to be concentrated into a cartel of just a few giant conglomerates to act as the economy?s central planners and resource allocators. This makes banks the big winners in the game of "chicken" they?ve been playing with Washington, a shakedown holding the economy hostage. "Give us what we want or we?ll plunge the economy into financial crisis." Washington has given them $9 trillion so far, with promises now of another $2 trillion- and still counting. A true reform - one designed to undo the systemic market distortions that led to the real estate bubble - would have set out to reverse the Clinton-Rubin repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act so as to prevent the corrupting conflicts of interest that have resulted in vertical trusts such as Citibank and Bank of America/Countrywide/Merrill Lynch. By unleashing these conglomerate grupos (to use the term popularized under Pinochet with Chicago Boy direction - a dress rehearsal of the mass financial bankruptcies they caused in Chile by the end of the 1970s) The Clinton administration enabled banks to merge with junk mortgage companies, junk-money managers, fictitious property appraisal companies, and law-evasion firms all designed to package debts to investors who trusted them enough to let them rake off enough commissions and capital gains to make their managers the world?s highest-paid economic planners. Today?s economic collapse is the direct result of their planning philosophy. It actually was taught as "wealth creation" and still is, as supposedly more productive than the public regulation and oversight so detested by Wall Street and its Chicago School aficionados. The financial powerhouses created by this "free market" philosophy span the entire FIRE sector - finance, insurance and real estate, "financializing" housing and commercial property markets in ways guaranteed to make money by creating and selling debt. Mr. Obama?s advisors are precisely those of the Clinton Administration who supported trustification of the FIRE sector. This is the broad deregulatory medium in which today?s bad-debt disaster has been able to spread so much more rapidly than at any time since the 1920s. The commercial banks have used their credit-creating power not to expand the production of goods and services or raise living standards but simply to inflate prices for real estate (making fortunes for their brokerage, property appraisal and insurance affiliates), stocks and bonds (making more fortunes for their investment bank subsidiaries), fine arts (whose demand is now essentially for trophies, degrading the idea of art accordingly) and other assets already in place. The resulting dot.com and real estate bubbles were not inevitable, not economically necessary. They were financially engineered by the political deregulatory power acquired by banks corrupting Congress through campaign contributions and public relations "think tanks" (more in the character of Orwellian doublethink tanks) to promote the perverse fiction that Wall Street can be and indeed is automatically self-regulating. This is a travesty of Adam Smith?s "Invisible Hand." This hand is better thought of as covert. The myth of "free markets" is now supposed to consist of governments withdrawing from planning and taxing wealth, so as to leave resource allocation and the economic surplus to bankers rather than elected public representatives. This is what classically is called oligarchy, not democracy. This centralization of planning, debt creation and revenue-extracting power is defended as the alternative to Hayek?s road to serfdom. But it is itself the road to debt peonage, a.k.a. the post-industrial economy or "Information Economy." The latter term is another euphemistic travesty in view of the kind of information the banking system has promoted in the junk accounting crafted by their accounting firms and tax lawyers (off-balance-sheet entities registered on offshore tax-avoidance islands), the AAA applause provided as "information" to investors by the bond-rating cartel, and indeed the national income and product accounts that depict the FIRE sector as being part of the "real" economy, not as an institutional wrapping of special interests and government-sanctioned privilege acting in an extractive rather than a productive way. "Thanks for the bonuses," bankers in the United States and England testified this week before Congress and Parliament. "We?ll keep the money, but rest assured that we are truly sorry for having to ask you for another few trillion dollars. At least you should remember our theme song: We are still better managers than the government, and the bulwark against government bureaucratic resource allocation." This is the ideological Big Lie sold by the Chicago School "free market" celebration of dismantling government power over finance, all defended by complex math rivaling that of nuclear physics that the financial sector is part of the "real" economy automatically producing a fair and equitable equilibrium. This is not bad news for stockholders of more local and relatively healthy banks (healthy in the sense of avoiding negative equity). Their stocks soared and were by far the major gainers on Tuesday?s stock market, while Wall Street?s large Bad Banks plunged to new lows. Solvent local banks are the sort that were normal prior to repeal of Glass Steagall. They are to be bought by the large "troubled" banks, whose "toxic loans" reflect a basically toxic operating philosophy. In other words, small banks who have made loans carefully will be sucked into Citibank, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo - the Big Four or Five where the junk mortgages, junk CDOs and junk derivatives are concentrated, and have used Treasury money from the past bailout to buy out smaller banks that were not infected with such reckless financial opportunism. Even the Wall Street Journal editorialized regarding the Obama Treasury?s new "Public-Private Investment Fund" to pump a trillion dollars into this mess: "Mr. Geithner would be wise to put someone strong land independent in charge of this fund - someone who can say no to Congress and has no ties to Citigroup, Robert Rubin or Wall Street."[2] None of this can solve today?s financial problem. The debt overhead far exceeds the economy?s ability to pay. If the banks would indeed do what Pres. Obama?s appointees are begging them to do and lend more, the debt burden would become even heavier and buying access to housing even more costly. When the banks look back fondly on what Alan Greenspan called "wealth creation," we can see today that the less euphemistic terminology would be "debt creation." This is the objective of the new bank giveaway. It threatens to spread the distortions that the large banks have introduced until the entire system presumably looks like Citibank, long the number-one offender of "stretching the envelope," its euphemism for breaking the law bit by bit and daring government regulators and prosecutors to try and stop it and thereby plunging the U.S. financial system into crisis. This is the shakedown that is being played out this week. And the Obama administration blinked - as these same regulators did when they were in charge of the Clinton administration?s bank policy. So much for the promised change! The three-pronged Treasury program seems to be only Stage One of a two-stage "dream recovery plan" for Wall Street. Enough hints have trickled out for the past three months in Wall Street Journal op-eds to tip the hand for what may be in store. Watch for the magic phrase "equity kicker," first heard in the S&L mortgage crisis of the 1980s. It refers to the banker?s share of capital gains, that is, asset price inflation in Bubble #2 that the Recovery Program hopes to sponsor. The first question to ask about any Recovery Program is, "Recovery for whom?" The answer given on Tuesday is, "For the people who design the Program and their constituency" - in this case, the bank lobby. The second question is, "Just what is it they want to `recover??" The answer is, the Bubble Economy. For the financial sector it was a golden age. Having enjoyed the Greenspan Bubble that made them so rich, its managers would love to create yet more wealth for themselves by indebting the "real" economy yet further while inflating prices all over again to make new capital gains. The problem for today?s financial elites is that it is not possible to inflate another bubble from today?s debt levels, widespread negative equity, and still-high level of real estate, stock and bond prices. No amount of new capital will induce banks to provide credit to real estate already over-mortgaged or to individuals and corporations already over-indebted. Moody?s and other leading professional observers have forecast property prices to keep on plunging for at least the next year, which is as far as the eye can see in today?s unstable conditions. So the smartest money is still waiting like vultures in the wings - waiting for government guarantees that toxic loans will pay off. Another no-risk private profit to be subsidized by public-sector losses. While the Obama administration?s financial planners wring their hands in public and say "We feel your pain" to debtors at large, they know that the past ten years have been a golden age for the banking system and the rest of Wall Street. Like feudal lord claiming the economic surplus for themselves while administering austerity for the population at large, the wealthiest 1% of the population has raised their appropriation of the nationwide returns to wealth - dividends, interest, rent and capital gains - from 37% of the total ten years ago to 57% five years ago and it seems nearly 70% today. This is the highest proportion since records have been kept. We are approaching Russian kleptocratic levels. The officials drawn from Wall Street who now control of the Treasury and Federal Reserve repeat the right-wing Big Lie: Poor "subprime families" have brought the system down, exploiting the rich by trying to ape their betters and live beyond their means. Taking out subprime loans and not revealing their actual ability to pay, the NINJA poor (no income, no job, no audit) signed up to obtain "liars? loans" as no-documentation Alt-A loans are called in the financial junk-paper trade. I learned the reality a few years ago in London, talking to a commercial banker. "We?ve had an intellectual breakthrough," he said. "It?s changed our credit philosophy." "What is it?" I asked, imagining that he was about to come out with yet a new magical mathematics formula? "The poor are honest," he said, accompanying his words with his jaw dropping open as if to say, "Who would have guessed?" The meaning was clear enough. The poor pay their debts as a matter of honor, even at great personal sacrifice and what today?s neoliberal Chicago School language would call uneconomic behavior. Unlike Donald Trump, they are less likely to walk away from their homes when market prices sink below the mortgage level. This sociological gullibility does not make economic sense, but reflects a group morality that has made them rich pickings for predatory lenders such as Countrywide, Wachovia and Citibank. So it?s not the "lying poor." It?s the banksters? fault after all! For this elite the Bubble Economy was a deliberate policy they would love to recover. The problem is how to start a new bubble to make yet another fortune? The alternative is not so bad - to keep the bonuses, capital gains and golden parachutes they have given themselves, and run. But perhaps they can improve in Bubble Economy #2. The Treasury?s newest Financial Stability Plan (Bailout 2.0) is only the first step. It aims at putting in place enough new bank-lending capacity to start inflating prices on credit all over again. But a new bubble can?t be started from today?s asset-price levels. How can the $10 to $20 trillion capital-gain run-up of the Greenspan years been repeated in an economy that is "all loaned up"? One thing Wall Street knows is that in order to make money, asset prices not only need to rise, they have to go down again. Without going down, after all, how can they rise up? Without a crucifixion for the economy, how can there be a resurrection? The more frenetic the price fibrillation, the easier it is for computerized buy-and-sell programs to make money on options and derivatives. So here?s the situation as I see it. The first objective is to preserve the wealth of the creditor class - Wall Street, the banks and the other financial vehicles that enrich the wealthiest 1% and, to be fair within America?s emerging new financial oligarchy, the richest 10% of the population. Stage One involves buying out their bad loans at a price that saves them from taking a loss. The money will be depicted to voters as a "loan," to be repaid by banks extracting enough new debt charges in the new rigged game the Treasury is setting up. The current loss will be shifted the onto "taxpayers" and made up by new debtors - in both cases labor, onto whose shoulders the tax burden has been shifted steadily, step by step since 1980. An "aggregator" bank (sounds like "alligator," from the swamps of toxic waste) will buy the bad debts and put them in a public agency. The government calls this the "bad" bank. (This is Geithner?s first point.) But it does good for Wall Street - by buying loans that have gone bad, along with loans and derivative guarantees and swaps that never were good in the first place. If the private sector refuses to buy these bad loans at prices the banks are asking for, why should the government pretend that these debt claims are worth more. Vulture funds are said to be offering about what they were when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt: about 22 cents on the dollar. The banks are asking for 75 cents on the dollar. What will the government offer? Perhaps the worst alternative is that is now being promoted by the banks and vulture investors in tandem: the government will guarantee the price at which private investors buy toxic financial waste from the banks. A vulture fund would be happy enough to pay 75 cents on the dollar for worthless junk if the government were to provide a guarantee. The Treasury and Federal Reserve pretend that they simply would be "providing liquidity" to "frozen markets." But the problem is not liquidity and it is not subjective "market psychology." It is "solvency," that is, a realistic awareness that toxic waste and bad derivatives gambles are junk. Mr. Geithner has not been able to come to terms with how to value this - without bringing the Obama administration down in a wave of populist protest - any more than Mr. Paulson was able to carry out his original Tarp proposal along these lines. The hardest task for today?s banksters is to revive opportunities for creditors to make a new killing. (It?s the economy that?s being killed, of course.) This seems to be the aim of the Public/Private investment company that Mr. Geithner is establishing as the second element in his plan. The easiest free lunch is to ride the wave of a new bubble - a fresh wave of asset-price inflation to be introduced to "cure" the problem of debt deflation. Here?s how I imagine the ploy might work. Suppose a hapless family has bought a home for $500,000, with a full 100% $500,000 adjustable-rate mortgage scheduled to reset this year at 8%. Suppose too that the current market price will fall to $250,000, a loss of 50% by yearend 2009. Sometime in mid 2010 would seem to be long enough for prices to decline by enough to make "recovery" possible - Bubble Economy 2.0. Without such a plunge, there will be no economy to "rescue," no opportunity for Tim Geithner and Laurence Summers to "feel your pain" and pull out of their pocket the following package - a variant on the "cash for trash" swap, a public agency to acquire the $500,000 mortgage that is going bad, heading toward only a $250,000 market price. The "bad bank" was not quite ready to be created this week, but the embryo is there. It will take the form of a public/private partnership (PPP) of the sort that Tony Blair made so notorious in Britain. And speaking of Mr. Blair, I am writing this from England, where almost every America-watcher I talk to has expressed amazement at Obama?s performance last week idealizing England?s counterpart to George Bush when it comes to unpopularity contests. Blair?s tenure in office was a horror story, not something to be congratulated for. He privatized the railroads and entering into the disastrous public/private partnership that doubled, tripled or quadrupled the cost of public projects by adding on a heavy financial overhead If Obama does not realize how he shocked Britain and much of Europe with his praise, then he is in danger of foisting a similar public/private financialized "partnership" on the United States The new public/private institution will be financed with private funds - in fact, with the money now being given to re- capitalize America?s banks (headed by the Wall St. bank?s that have done so bad). Banks will use the Treasury money they have received by "borrowing" against their junk mortgages at or near par to buy shares in a new $5 trillion institution created along the lines of the unfortunate Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. Its bonds will be guaranteed. (That?s the "public" part - "socializing" the risk.) The PPP institution will have the power to buy and renegotiate the mortgages that have passed into the hands of the government and other holders. This "Homeowner Rescue Trust" will use its private funding for the "socially responsible" purpose of "saving the taxpayer" and middle class homeowners by renegotiating the mortgage down from its original $500,000 to the new $250,000 market price. Here?s the patter talk you can expect, with the usual Orwellian euphemisms. The Homeowners Rescue PPP will appear as a veritable Savior Bank resurrected from the wreckage of Bubble #1. Its clients will be families strapped by their mortgage debt and feeling more and more desperate as the price of their major asset plummets more deeply into Negative Equity territory. To them, the new PPP will say: "We?ve got a deal to save you. We?ll renegotiate your mortgage down to the current market price, $250,000, and we?ll also lower your interest rate to just 5.50%, the new rate. This will cut your monthly debt charges by nearly two thirds. Not only can you afford to stay in your home, you will escape from your negative equity." The family probably will say, "Great." But they will have to make a concession. That?s where the new public/private partnership makes its killing. Funded with private money that will take the "risk" (and also reap the rewards), the Savior Bank will say to the family that agrees to renegotiate its mortgage: "Now that the government has absorbed a loss (in today?s travesty of "socializing" the financial system) while letting let you stay in your home, we need to recover the money that?s been lost. If we make you whole, we want to be made whole too. So when the time comes for you to sell your home or renegotiate your mortgage, our Homeowners Rescue PPP will receive the capital gain up to the original amount written off." In other words, if the homeowner sells the property for $400,000, the Homeowners Rescue PPP will get $150,000 of the capital gain. If the home sells for $500,000, the bank will get $250,000. And if it sells for more, thanks to some new clone of Alan Greenspan acting as bubblemeister, the capital gain will be split in some way. If the split is 50/50 and the home sells for $600,000, the owner will split the $100,000 further capital gain with the Homeowners Rescue PPP. It thus will make much more through its appropriation of capital gains (the new debt-fueled asset-price inflation being put in place) than it extracts in interest! This would make Bubble 2.0 even richer for Wall Street than the Greenspan bubble! Last time around, it was the middle class that got the gains - even if new buyers had to enter a lifetime of debt peonage to buy higher-priced homes. It really was the bank that got the gains, of course, because mortgage interest charges absorbed the entire rental value and even the hoped-for price gain. But homeowners at least had a chance at the free ride, if they didn?t squander their money in refinancing their mortgages to "cash out" on their equity to support their living standards in a generation whose wage levels had stagnated since 1979. As Mr. Greenspan observed in testimony before Congress, a major reason why wages have not risen is that workers are afraid to strike or even to complain about being worked harder and harder for longer and longer hours ("raising productivity"), because they are one paycheck away from missing their mortgage payment - or, if renters, one paycheck or two away from homelessness. This is the happy condition of normalcy that Wall Street?s financial planners would like to recover. This time around, they may not be obliged to make their gains in a way that also makes middle class homeowners rich. In the wake of Bubble Economy #1, today?s debt-strapped homeowners are willing to settle merely for a plan that leaves them in their homes! The Homeowners Rescue PPP can appropriate for its stockholder banks and other large investors the capital gains that have been the driving force of U.S. "wealth creation," bubble-style. That is what the term "equity kicker" means. This situation confronts the economy with a dilemma. The only policies deemed politically correct these days are those that make the situation worse: yet more government money in the hope that banks will create yet more credit/debt to raise house prices and make them even more unaffordable; credit/debt to inflate a new Bubble Economy #2. Lobbyists for Wall Street?s enormous Bad Bank conglomerates are screaming that all real solutions to today?s debt problem and tax shift onto labor are politically incorrect, above all the time-honored debt write-downs to bring the debt burden within the ability to pay. That is what the market is supposed to do, after all, by bankruptcy in an anarchic collapse if not by more deliberate and targeted government policy. The Bad Banks, having demanded "free markets" all these years, fear a really free market when it threatens their bonuses and other takings. For Wall Street, free markets are "free" of public regulation against predatory lending; "free" of taxing the wealthy so as to shift the burden onto labor; "free" for the financial sector to wrap itself around the "real" economy like parasitic ivy around a tree to extract the surplus. This is a travesty of freedom. As the putative neoliberal Adam Smith explained, "The government of an exclusive company of merchants, is, perhaps, the worst of all governments." But worst of all is the "freedom" of today?s economic discussion from the wisdom of classical political economy and from historical experience regarding how societies through the ages have coped with the debt overhead. How to save the economy from Wall Street There is an alternative to ward all this off, and it is the classic definition of freedom from debt peonage and predatory credit. The only real solution to today?s debt overhang is a debt write-down. Until this occurs, debt service will crowd out spending on goods and services and there will be no recovery. Debt deflation will drag the economy down while assets are transferred further into the hands of the wealthiest 10 percent of the population, operating via the financial sector. If Obama means what he says, he would use his office as a bully pulpit to urge repeal the present harsh creditor-oriented bankruptcy law sponsored by the banks and credit-card companies. He would campaign to restore the long-term trend of laws favoring debtors rather than creditors, and introduce legislation to restore the practice of writing down debts to reflect the debtor?s ability to pay, imposing market reality to debts that are far in excess of realistic valuations. A second policy would be to restore the power of state attorneys general to bring financial fraud charges against the most egregious mortgage lenders - the prosecutions that the Bush Administration got thrown out of court by claiming that under an 1864 National Bank Act clause, the federal government had the right to override state prosecutions of national banks - and then appointing a non-prosecutor to this enforcement position. On the basis of reinstated fraud charges, the government might claw back the bank bonuses, salaries and bank earnings that represented the profits from America?s greatest financial and real estate fraud in history. And to prevent repetition of the past decade?s experience, the Obama Administration might help popularize a new psychology of debt. The government could encourage "the poor" to act as "economically" as Donald Trumps or Angelo Mozilo?s would do, making it clear that debt write-downs are a right. Also to ward off repetition of the Bubble Economy, the Treasury could impose the "Tobin tax" of 1% on purchases and options for stocks, bonds and foreign currency. Critics of this tax point out that it can be evaded by speculators trading offshore in the rights to securities held in U.S. accounts. But the government could simply refuse to provide deposit insurance and other support to institutions trading offshore, or simply could announce that trades in such "deposit receipts" for shares would not have legal standing. As for trades in derivatives, depository institutions - including conglomerates owning such banks - can simply be banned as inherently unsafe. If foreigners wish to speculate on financial horse races, let them. Financial policy ultimately rests on tax policy. It is the ability to levy taxes, after all, that gives value to Treasury money (just as it is the inability to collect on debts that has depreciated the value of commercial bank deposits). It is easy enough for fiscal policy to prevent a new real estate bubble. Simply shift the tax system back to where it originally was, on the land?s site- rental value. The "free lunch" (what John Stuart Mill called the "unearned increment" of rising land prices, a gain that landlords made "in their sleep") would serve as the tax base instead of burdening labor and industry with income taxes and sales taxes. This would achieve the kind of free market that Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Alfred Marshall described, and which the Progressive Era aimed to achieve with America?s first income tax in 1913. It would be a market free of the free lunch that Chicago Boys insist does not exist. But the recent Bubble Economy and today?s Bailout Sequel have been all about getting a free lunch. A land tax would prevent housing prices from rising again. It is the most hated tax in America today, largely because of the disinformation campaign that has been mounted by the real estate interests and amplified by the banks that stand behind them. The reality is that taxing land appreciation rather than wages or corporate profits would save homeowners from having to take on so much debt in order to obtain housing. It would save the economy from seeing "wealth creation" take the form of the "unearned increment" being capitalized into higher bank loans with their associated carrying charges (interest and amortization). The wealth tax originally fell mainly on real estate. The most immediate and politically feasible priority of the Obama Administration thus should be to repeal the Bush Administration?s drastic tax cuts for the top brackets and its moratorium on the estate tax. The aim should be to bring down the polarization between creditors and debtors that has concentrated over two-thirds of the returns to wealth in the richest 1% of the population. If alternatives to the Bubble Economy such as these are not promoted, we will know that promises of change were mere rhetoric, Tony Blair style. [1] Martin Wolf, "Why Obama?s new Tarp will fail to rescue the banks," Financial Times, Feb. 11, 2009. [2] "Geithner at the Improv," Wall Street Journal editorial, February 11, 2009. Michael Hudson is a frequent contributor to Global Research.Global Research Articles by Michael Hudson Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist specializing in the balance of payments and real estate at the Chase Manhattan Bank (now JPMorgan Chase & Co.), Arthur Anderson, and later at the Hudson Institute (no relation). In 1990 he helped established the world?s first sovereign debt fund for Scudder Stevens & Clark. Dr. Hudson was Dennis Kucinich?s Chief Economic Advisor in the recent Democratic primary presidential campaign, and has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments, as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached via his website, www.michael-hudson.comand his email mhmichael-hudson.com. _ From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Feb 16 06:25:54 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (diongiles1@aapt.net.au) Date: Mon Feb 16 06:26:04 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak Message-ID: <380-220092116122554607@M2W103.mail2web.com> Sounds very troubling. I'm in UK and have poor and infrequent Internet access - will try to reach Marta by phone. Dion Original Message: ----------------- From: Peter Tuffley ptuffley@xtra.co.nz Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:17:33 +1300 To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Subject: Re: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak Unbeknown to me until just now, my emailer decided (without asking me) to put a whole pile of messages, including all the mai-not messages relating to Ed's illness, into my spam folder so I didn't know they had arrived. So I have only just caught up with the news about Ed's illness and the outcome of his operation. I will do my best to make up by sending positive thoughts for a speedy and permanent recovery. Peter On 6/02/2009, at 4:29 AM, wrote: > Excellent news: I spoke to Ed's wife Marta last night and she > reports that > his surgery went very well and the 'good poke around under the hood' > turned > up nothing else of concern. Pretty damn good for an 82 year old. > He'll be > recovering in hospital until early next week after which he will > resume > complaining about the government. > > Thanks to everyone for the positive thoughts, it worked. > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com - Microsoft? Exchange solutions from a leading provider - http://link.mail2web.com/Business/Exchange From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Mon Feb 16 13:57:44 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Mon Feb 16 13:56:09 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] The shopping spree is over for consumption-mad countries G&M Feb 16 Message-ID: <49998CF8.22157.8E3B930A@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> The bottom line is that consumer markets in Western developed countries have peaked, and will never again return to their former level.... But when the books are written on this tumultuous time, how many will say that an end to ever-escalating consumerism was inevitable? And raise your hand if you think that living with a little less stuff doesn't have to mean living less. --Gwyn Morgan, retired founding CEO of EnCana Corp. fyi-janet ========================== http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090216.wragendamo rgan0216/BNStory/Business/columnists The shopping spree is over for consumption-mad countries Article Comments (39) GWYN MORGAN Globe and Mail Update Read Bio | Latest Columns February 16, 2009 at 10:50 AM EST As Prime Minister Stephen Harper, U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown urge banks to resume lending, a commentary from the Bank for International Settlements provides a clinically clear perspective. The BIS report argues that "high leverage was a key cause of the financial crisis. ... Bank balance sheet leverage built up because trading books could be easily funded in the wholesale debt markets ... leveraged structured mortgage products were highly sensitive to adverse shocks to housing markets. In addition, insurance and hedging strategies made leverage seem safer than it had before." Now here is the BIS report's punch line: "The first dilemma is how to prevent a severe contraction of viable credits to households and non- financial firms, while at the same time facilitating an orderly reduction of excessive leverage in the financial system." How indeed. Squaring the need for additional lending with the fact that high leverage was a key cause of the financial crisis is a seemingly impossible task. If too much debt got us into this mess, then how will more debt get us out? There is no question that restoration of normal credit lines to small and medium-sized businesses is absolutely crucial if we are to prevent this financial tsunami from washing away enterprises so important to our economy. But restoring personal credit is another matter. As political leaders urge consumers to return to shopping malls and auto dealerships with patriotic messages such as: "Show confidence in your country"; the question is, "With what?" Consumers have been living beyond their means during a decade-long shopping spree fuelled by debt. Zero equity mortgages, house flipping, multiple maxed out credit cards and deferring car payments until next year regardless of your credit rating drove average household debt in the United States and Britain to almost twice disposable income, the highest in the world. Canadian household debt is quite a lot lower at 1.4 times, but even this doesn't tell the whole story. U.S. and British house prices have fallen much more dramatically than in Canada, and negative home equity is effectively another form of debt. While Canadians' debt wall isn't nearly as high, the reality is that it will take the next decade to pay off the household debts accumulated during the past decade, so the buying spree is over here, too. If this weren't bad enough news for the retail, auto and housing sectors, there's the demographic reality that population growth is stagnant in the United States and Canada and is falling in Western Europe and Japan. And then there's the silver tsunami. The over-60 age group in these countries is expected to increase to more than 25 per cent of the population during the coming payback decade. As people approach retirement, they spend less because they've already accumulated what they need and are more frugal with their retirement funds. The bottom line is that consumer markets in Western developed countries have peaked, and will never again return to their former level. Then there are governments, the biggest debtors of all. As Mr. Obama implores Congress to approve an $800-billion (U.S.) stimulus addition to a previously projected deficit of $1.2-trillion, heavily indebted governments in Europe and Japan roll out their own deficit-funded bank bailouts and stimulus packages. The multitrillion euro, yen and dollar question is: "How will they ever pay it back?" Unlike Canada, these countries continued deficit spending in the boom years and now they face the demographic reality of a declining taxpayer base struggling with rising interest costs on national debts. Canada faces the same demographic reality, but from a stronger financial base ... so far. All the more reason for our Conservative government to resist knee-jerk calls for even more spending before the ink is dry on the last deficit-bulging budget. Just as debt-fuelled consumerism in the developed countries drove the job-creating industrialization of the Asian workshop countries, the deleveraging-dictated decline of Western consumerism has the opposite effect. Recent GDP and job loss data show that intra-Asian trade and rising national demand have not immunized China from a precipitous drop in exports to the West. Nevertheless, China holds two aces in this great global game: more than $1-trillion of reserves and a population of savers versus debtors. This means that Beijing has the funds to help weather the storm without incurring national debt, and that many consumers have the capacity to spend some of their savings as confidence returns. Many of the old adages apply here: what goes around comes around; you reap what you sow. Well, it'll soon be payback time for both individuals and governments who have dug themselves into a great debt hole. History will record it as the disastrous fallout from the bundling of bad loans for resale to investors that ended centuries of Western consumer market dominance. But when the books are written on this tumultuous time, how many will say that an end to ever-escalating consumerism was inevitable? And raise your hand if you think that living with a little less stuff doesn't have to mean living less. Gwyn Morgan is the retired founding CEO of EnCana Corp. From radred at ix.netcom.com Mon Feb 16 15:10:12 2009 From: radred at ix.netcom.com (Carol) Date: Mon Feb 16 15:10:24 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Barney Frank: Cut the military budget Message-ID: <25496065.1234818612868.JavaMail.root@elwamui-huard.atl.sa.earthlink.net> This piece will be published in the Nation Magazine's March 2 edition. In a message dated 2/16/2009 12:47:24 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, gkohls@cpinternet.com writes: Cut the Military Budget By Barney Frank I am a great believer in freedom of expression and am proud of those times when I have been one of a few members of Congress to oppose censorship. I still hold close to an absolutist position, but I have been tempted recently to make an exception, not by banning speech but by requiring it. I would be very happy if there was some way to make it a misdemeanor for people to talk about reducing the budget deficit without including a recommendation that we substantially cut military spending. Sadly, self-described centrist and even liberal organizations often talk about the need to curtail deficits by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that have a benign social purpose, but they fail to talk about one area where substantial budget reductions would have the doubly beneficial effect of cutting the deficit and diminishing expenditures that often do more harm than good. Obviously people should be concerned about the $700 billion Congress voted for this past fall to deal with the credit crisis. But even if none of that money were to be paid back--and most of it will be--it would involve a smaller drain on taxpayer dollars than the Iraq War will have cost us by the time it is concluded, and it is roughly equivalent to the $651 billion we will spend on all defense in this fiscal year. When I am challenged by people--not all of them conservative--who tell me that they agree, for example, that we should enact comprehensive universal healthcare but wonder how to pay for it, my answer is that I do not know immediately where to get the funding but I know whom I should ask. I was in Congress on September 10, 2001, and I know there was no money in the budget at that time for a war in Iraq. So my answer is that I will go to the people who found the money for that war and ask them if they could find some for healthcare. It is particularly inexplicable that so many self-styled moderates ignore the extraordinary increase in military spending. After all, George W. Bush himself has acknowledged its importance. As the December 20 Wall Street Journal notes, "The president remains adamant his budget troubles were the result of a ramp-up in defense spending." Bush then ends this rare burst of intellectual honesty by blaming all this "ramp-up" on the need to fight the war in Iraq. Current plans call for us not only to spend hundreds of billions more in Iraq but to continue to spend even more over the next few years producing new weapons that might have been useful against the Soviet Union. Many of these weapons are technological marvels, but they have a central flaw: no conceivable enemy. It ought to be a requirement in spending all this money for a weapon that there be some need for it. In some cases we are developing weapons--in part because of nothing more than momentum--that lack not only a current military need but even a plausible use in any foreseeable future. It is possible to debate how strong America should be militarily in relation to the rest of the world. But that is not a debate that needs to be entered into to reduce the military budget by a large amount. If, beginning one year from now, we were to cut military spending by 25 percent from its projected levels, we would still be immeasurably stronger than any combination of nations with whom we might be engaged. Implicitly, some advocates of continued largesse for the Pentagon concede that the case cannot be made fully in terms of our need to be safe from physical attack. Ironically--even hypocritically, since many of those who make the case are in other contexts anti-government spending conservatives--they argue for a kind of weaponized Keynesianism that says military spending is important because it provides jobs and boosts the economy. Spending on military hardware does produce some jobs, but it is one of the most inefficient ways to deploy public funds to stimulate the economy. When I asked him years ago what he thought about military spending as stimulus, Alan Greenspan, to his credit, noted that from an economic standpoint military spending was like insurance: if necessary to meet its primary need, it had to be done, but it was not good for the economy; and to the extent that it could be reduced, the economy would benefit. The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy. I am working with a variety of thoughtful analysts to show how we can make very substantial cuts in the military budget without in any way diminishing the security we need. I do not think it will be hard to make it clear to Americans that their well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face. So those organizations, editorial boards and individuals who talk about the need for fiscal responsibility should be challenged to begin with the area where our spending has been the most irresponsible and has produced the least good for the dollars expended--our military budget. Both parties have for too long indulged the implicit notion that military spending is somehow irrelevant to reducing the deficit and have resisted applying to military spending the standards of efficiency that are applied to other programs. If we do not reduce the military budget, either we accustom ourselves to unending and increasing budget deficits, or we do severe harm to our ability to improve the quality of our lives through sensible public policy. From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Mon Feb 16 16:29:39 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (diongiles1@aapt.net.au) Date: Mon Feb 16 16:29:52 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak Message-ID: <380-220092116222939786@M2W021.mail2web.com> I've been trying to reach Marta on a number that used to work: + 1 250 243 2263. I get voice mail but it doesn't include a name. Anyone know the right number? Dion Giles Original Message: ----------------- From: Dale Young dale_young@telus.net Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 01:28:01 -0800 To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Subject: Re: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak I'm on another list that Ed also contributes to, and the following message came through this afternoon from someone who had visited Ed. I'm sure he would want it forwarded to the mai-not group too. "Ed was anxious for everyone to know so they could think positivley to make him well. "Something went wrong with Ed Deak's operation. He was doing fine then had problems and had to have a second operation yesterday and he is in intensive care. He is likely to be in hospital for awhile this time. He asked for us to "think positively" for him to help get him through it. "I will be seeing him again and will relay any messages." I'll forward any further news I receive about Ed. Dale Peter Tuffley wrote: > > Unbeknown to me until just now, my emailer decided (without asking me) > to put a whole pile of messages, > including all the mai-not messages relating to Ed's illness, into my > spam folder so I didn't know they had arrived. > > So I have only just caught up with the news about Ed's illness and the > outcome of his operation. > > I will do my best to make up by sending positive thoughts for a speedy > and permanent recovery. > > Peter > > > On 6/02/2009, at 4:29 AM, wrote: > >> Excellent news: I spoke to Ed's wife Marta last night and she reports >> that >> his surgery went very well and the 'good poke around under the hood' >> turned >> up nothing else of concern. Pretty damn good for an 82 year old. He'll be >> recovering in hospital until early next week after which he will resume >> complaining about the government. >> >> Thanks to everyone for the positive thoughts, it worked. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Mai-not mailing list >> Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >> http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com ? Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft? Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail From siamdave at yahoo.ca Mon Feb 16 20:17:41 2009 From: siamdave at yahoo.ca (Dave Patterson) Date: Mon Feb 16 20:17:44 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] test Message-ID: <200902170917410390.00172606@smtp-adsl.totonline.net> test -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090217/2bc1c545/attachment.html From thinker at thelakebc.ca Mon Feb 16 23:12:32 2009 From: thinker at thelakebc.ca (Ed Deak) Date: Mon Feb 16 23:08:03 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Status of my father, Ed Deak In-Reply-To: <380-220092116122554607@M2W103.mail2web.com> References: <380-220092116122554607@M2W103.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <200902170507.n1H57ptG031427@karma.reboot.ca> Hi Giles, Many thanks for the e-mail and phone call concerning my father's progress. He has asked me to give you an update of his condition in the hospital and it has not turned out as speedy as we thought it would be. Dad had a turn for the worse a week ago and it took a huge toll from his health. Five days after his surgery on Tuesday evening, Dad began to feel extreme pain and chills to his body and by Wednesday afternoon, the doctors ordered a battery of tests and x-rays to find out what was happening. They determined toxins were leaking in to his abdominal cavity and on Thursday afternoon at 5pm Dad had another surgery to repair what was apparently a broken staple from the first operation. They completely flushed out the poisons and opened his side to install 3 bags, one of which will have to remain till the colon heals. Our family went to see him again today and we are happy he can eat simple food for the first time in 18 days, but he is very weak. A touch of pneumonia has set in to his lungs so the hospital staff are taking every precaution to clear it up. He has had trouble sleeping so he needs allot of rest to catch up. He also needs some good home cooking to gain back the 40 -50 lbs he lost in this short time. We are all very positive about Dad's recovery, including Dad himself, however it will be a long healing process once he returns home. He's a pretty stubborn guy as you probably know, so I don't think he'll be laying down in bed for too long. We will continue to keep you updated on his condition and if you would like to send an e-mail to my address, it is: mary_deak@hotmail.com You can also forward this note to any of Dad's friends. Kind regards, Mary Deak At 04:25 AM 16/02/2009, you wrote: >Sounds very troubling. I'm in UK and have poor and infrequent Internet >access - will try to reach Marta by phone. Dion > >Original Message: >----------------- >From: Peter Tuffley ptuffley@xtra.co.nz >Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:17:33 +1300 >To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net >Subject: Re: [Mai-not] Status of Ed Deak > > > >Unbeknown to me until just now, my emailer decided (without asking me) >to put a whole pile of messages, >including all the mai-not messages relating to Ed's illness, into my >spam folder so I didn't know they had arrived. > >So I have only just caught up with the news about Ed's illness and the >outcome of his operation. > >I will do my best to make up by sending positive thoughts for a speedy >and permanent recovery. > >Peter > > >On 6/02/2009, at 4:29 AM, wrote: > > > Excellent news: I spoke to Ed's wife Marta last night and she > > reports that > > his surgery went very well and the 'good poke around under the hood' > > turned > > up nothing else of concern. Pretty damn good for an 82 year old. > > He'll be > > recovering in hospital until early next week after which he will > > resume > > complaining about the government. > > > > Thanks to everyone for the positive thoughts, it worked. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Mai-not mailing list > > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > > >-------------------------------------------------------------------- >mail2web.com - Microsoft? Exchange solutions from a leading provider - >http://link.mail2web.com/Business/Exchange > > > >_______________________________________________ >Mai-not mailing list >Mai-not@globalproblematique.net >http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not > >No virus found in this incoming message. >Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com >Version: 8.0.233 / Virus Database: >270.10.23/1950 - Release Date: 2/12/2009 6:46 PM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090216/8b3e6f65/attachment.html From dale_young at telus.net Tue Feb 17 02:30:31 2009 From: dale_young at telus.net (Dale Young) Date: Tue Feb 17 02:32:28 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Status of my father, Ed Deak In-Reply-To: <200902170507.n1H57ptG031427@karma.reboot.ca> References: <380-220092116122554607@M2W103.mail2web.com> <200902170507.n1H57ptG031427@karma.reboot.ca> Message-ID: <499A75A7.6080407@telus.net> Hello Mary, May I forward this message about your father to the Sunrise list as well, please? We have all been anxiously waiting further words too, and thinking positive thoughts, as Ed requested. Regards and best wishes, Dale Young Ed Deak wrote: > Hi Giles, > > Many thanks for the e-mail and phone call concerning my father's > progress. He has asked me to give you an update of his condition in the > hospital and it has not turned out as speedy as we thought it would be. > Dad had a turn for the worse a week ago and it took a huge toll from his > health. > Five days after his surgery on Tuesday evening, Dad began to feel > extreme pain and chills to his body and by Wednesday afternoon, the > doctors ordered a battery of tests and x-rays to find out what was > happening. They determined toxins were leaking in to his abdominal > cavity and on Thursday afternoon at 5pm Dad had another surgery to > repair what was apparently a broken staple from the first operation. > They completely flushed out the poisons and opened his side to install 3 > bags, one of which will have to remain till the colon heals. > Our family went to see him again today and we are happy he can eat > simple food for the first time in 18 days, but he is very weak. A touch > of pneumonia has set in to his lungs so the hospital staff are taking > every precaution to clear it up. He has had trouble sleeping so he needs > allot of rest to catch up. He also needs some good home cooking to gain > back the 40 -50 lbs he lost in this short time. > We are all very positive about Dad's recovery, including Dad himself, > however it will be a long healing process once he returns home. He's a > pretty stubborn guy as you probably know, so I don't think he'll be > laying down in bed for too long. > We will continue to keep you updated on his condition and if you would > like to send an e-mail to my address, it is: mary_deak@hotmail.com > You can also forward this note to any of Dad's friends. > > Kind regards, > > Mary Deak > From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Feb 17 03:35:18 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (diongiles1@aapt.net.au) Date: Tue Feb 17 03:35:28 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Status of my father, Ed Deak Message-ID: <380-22009221793518410@M2W011.mail2web.com> I've replied to Mary that knowing the facts has made me much more positive that Ed is just the bloke to find the winning combination of stubborn will and cautious deference to his temporary limitations. It will be a relief when the pneumonia is beaten. Dion Giles Original Message: ----------------- From: Dale Young dale_young@telus.net Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:30:31 -0800 To: mai-not@globalproblematique.net Subject: Re: [Mai-not] Status of my father, Ed Deak Hello Mary, May I forward this message about your father to the Sunrise list as well, please? We have all been anxiously waiting further words too, and thinking positive thoughts, as Ed requested. Regards and best wishes, Dale Young Ed Deak wrote: > Hi Giles, > > Many thanks for the e-mail and phone call concerning my father's > progress. He has asked me to give you an update of his condition in the > hospital and it has not turned out as speedy as we thought it would be. > Dad had a turn for the worse a week ago and it took a huge toll from his > health. > Five days after his surgery on Tuesday evening, Dad began to feel > extreme pain and chills to his body and by Wednesday afternoon, the > doctors ordered a battery of tests and x-rays to find out what was > happening. They determined toxins were leaking in to his abdominal > cavity and on Thursday afternoon at 5pm Dad had another surgery to > repair what was apparently a broken staple from the first operation. > They completely flushed out the poisons and opened his side to install 3 > bags, one of which will have to remain till the colon heals. > Our family went to see him again today and we are happy he can eat > simple food for the first time in 18 days, but he is very weak. A touch > of pneumonia has set in to his lungs so the hospital staff are taking > every precaution to clear it up. He has had trouble sleeping so he needs > allot of rest to catch up. He also needs some good home cooking to gain > back the 40 -50 lbs he lost in this short time. > We are all very positive about Dad's recovery, including Dad himself, > however it will be a long healing process once he returns home. He's a > pretty stubborn guy as you probably know, so I don't think he'll be > laying down in bed for too long. > We will continue to keep you updated on his condition and if you would > like to send an e-mail to my address, it is: mary_deak@hotmail.com > You can also forward this note to any of Dad's friends. > > Kind regards, > > Mary Deak > _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com - Microsoft? Exchange solutions from a leading provider - http://link.mail2web.com/Business/Exchange From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Wed Feb 18 00:25:27 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Wed Feb 18 00:41:46 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: French new party; Venezuela referendum; COSATU; Thailand; Philippines; Darwin; Aust. bushfires; WSF; Message-ID: <499BA9D7.40400@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: French new party; Venezuela referendum; COSATU; Thailand; Philippines; Darwin; Aust. bushfires; WSF; * * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to links@dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links/. * * * France: New Anti-Capitalist Party launched; Responses to French Socialist Party's shift to the right By Sam Wainwright Paris, February 14, 2009 -- On the weekend of February 7-8, more than 600 delegates and as many observers attended the founding conference of France's New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), held at la Plaine-Saint-Denis in the working class suburbs to the north of Paris. Less than a week before, on January 29, around 2.5 million people took to the streets across the country in a nationwide strike against the efforts of the President Nicolas Sarkozy's government to foist the burden of the capitalist economic crisis onto working people. * Read more Venezuela: Democracy, revolution and the `president for life' lie By Chris Kerr Caracas, February 6, 2009 -- According to Black, "We have been educating the public about why you should vote 'no'. The point at issue is to explain to ordinary people and the whole country that indefinite reelection is anti-democratic and a mere personal desire ..." Thus goes the constant and repetitive theme of the corporate media's coverage of the referendum campaign, hammering the same line as the US-funded right-wing opposition. It misleadingly characterises the proposed reform as "indefinite re-election", implying that the vote is about whether or not to make "Chavez president for life". All the amendment would do is remove existing restrictions on standing for election, Chavez, or any other incumbent, would still be required to actually win the popular vote. * Read more Sydney, April 10-12 (Easter), 2009: World at a Crossroads - Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century * Read more Venezuela: Luis Bilbao -- Reasons to be on alert after the referendum victory By Luis Bilbao, translated by Federico Fuentes Luis Bilbao is a central participant in the construction of the mass United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and in the formation of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). He will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. To book your tickets for the conference go to http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/register. February 14, 2009 -- A string of provocations in the days leading up to the constitutional amendment referendum points to the employment of a disturbance plan that could well be followed up with destabilisations attempts after the poll. * Read more COSATU: Actions against Israel's barbarism and in support of Palestinian resistance an unprecedented success The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is humbled by the inspirational messages from all over the world for our boycott, sanctions and divestment campaign against Israel. By Bongani Masuku, COSATU international relations officer February 12, 2009 -- The South African week of action against Israeli barbarism and in support of Palestinian heroism and resistance has been an unprecedented success. COSATU, its affiliates, particularly the South African Transport and Allied Workers' Union (SATAWU) and the rest of Palestinian solidarity movement in South Africa are humbled by the large number of letters of support we have received from trade unions, solidarity groups, workers, activists and people of conscience from all over the world for our stance in solidarity with the people of Palestine. In particular, letters congratulated SATAWU dock workers in Durban for their determined refusal to off-load goods from Israel carried on the Johanna Russ. * Read more Philippines: Urban poor strongly represented in new socialist party [Reihana Mohideen, a representative of the Power of the Masses Party (Partido Lakas ng Masa), will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets.] * Read more Charles Darwin and materialist science; Darwin the reluctant revolutionary Two articles by Canadian Marxist Ian Angus discuss the important legacy of Charles Darwin in the 200th year since his birth and the 150th anniversary year of the publication of On the Origin of Species. This first article appeared in Canada's Socialist Voice, and the second in the Britain's Socialist Resistance. Ian Angus will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets. * Read more Australia: Fire tragedy highlights scale of global warming emergency and need for real action Socialist Alliance statement Melbourne, February 11, 2009 -- Like all people across Australia Socialist Alliance members have been devastated by the Victorian bushfire tragedy, the greatest disaster in peace-time Australian history. We express our condolences to and solidarity with all who have lost family, friends and homes in this shocking holocaust, made worse by the possibility that some of these fires were deliberately lit. We salute the efforts of Victorian Country Fire Authority workers and all volunteers who have sacrificed time, effort and security and done everything in their power to halt the ravages of the fires. Emergency service workers battled for up to 30 hours without sleep trying to control the infernos, help the injured, and attend to the thousands left homeless. * Read more Economic and social advances during the Ch?vez decade in Venezuela Washington, DC - February 5, 2009 -- The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) released a report today on the Venezuelan economy on the tenth anniversary of President Hugo Ch?vez's tenure, which began in February 1999. "Looking at the economic data and social indicators, it's not difficult to see why Ch?vez remains popular and has won so many elections, despite overwhelmingly hostile media coverage", said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of CEPR and lead author of the report, The Ch?vez Administration at 10 Years: The Economy and Social Indicators. * Read more World Social Forum returns to Brazil, marks Latin America's `swing to the left' By Marc Becker February 5, 2009 -- After an absence of four years, the World Social Forum (WSF) returned to Brazil during the last week of January 2009. More than 100,000 people descended on the city of Belem at the mouth of the mighty Amazon River to debate proposals and plan strategies for making a new and better world. * Read more Thailand: `Red Siam' manifesto By Giles Ji Ungpakorn February 9, 2009 -- The enemies of the Thai people and democracy may have their army, courts and prisons. They may have seized and rigged parliament and established the government through crimes like the blockading of the airports and other undemocratic actions by the PAD [Peoples Alliance for Democracy]. Yet those who love democracy, the Redshirts, have strength in numbers and are waking up to political realities. Disorganised and scattered, this movement of ours will be weak, but a party that is organised and self-led can create a democratic fist to smash the dictatorship. While world leaders such as US President Obama struggle to solve the serious economic crisis, the Democrat Party government in Thailand is allowing thousands of workers to lose their jobs. The government sees its priority only in cracking down on the opposition using les majeste, it has even created a website where citizens can inform on each other. Troops have been sent into communities and villages to stifle dissent. * Read more * * * Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information, experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090218/d8aebd20/attachment.html From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Wed Feb 18 00:25:27 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Wed Feb 18 00:41:50 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] What's new at Links: French new party; Venezuela referendum; COSATU; Thailand; Philippines; Darwin; Aust. bushfires; WSF; Message-ID: <499BA9D7.40400@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: French new party; Venezuela referendum; COSATU; Thailand; Philippines; Darwin; Aust. bushfires; WSF; * * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to links@dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links/. * * * France: New Anti-Capitalist Party launched; Responses to French Socialist Party's shift to the right By Sam Wainwright Paris, February 14, 2009 -- On the weekend of February 7-8, more than 600 delegates and as many observers attended the founding conference of France's New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), held at la Plaine-Saint-Denis in the working class suburbs to the north of Paris. Less than a week before, on January 29, around 2.5 million people took to the streets across the country in a nationwide strike against the efforts of the President Nicolas Sarkozy's government to foist the burden of the capitalist economic crisis onto working people. * Read more Venezuela: Democracy, revolution and the `president for life' lie By Chris Kerr Caracas, February 6, 2009 -- According to Black, "We have been educating the public about why you should vote 'no'. The point at issue is to explain to ordinary people and the whole country that indefinite reelection is anti-democratic and a mere personal desire ..." Thus goes the constant and repetitive theme of the corporate media's coverage of the referendum campaign, hammering the same line as the US-funded right-wing opposition. It misleadingly characterises the proposed reform as "indefinite re-election", implying that the vote is about whether or not to make "Chavez president for life". All the amendment would do is remove existing restrictions on standing for election, Chavez, or any other incumbent, would still be required to actually win the popular vote. * Read more Sydney, April 10-12 (Easter), 2009: World at a Crossroads - Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century * Read more Venezuela: Luis Bilbao -- Reasons to be on alert after the referendum victory By Luis Bilbao, translated by Federico Fuentes Luis Bilbao is a central participant in the construction of the mass United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and in the formation of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). He will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. To book your tickets for the conference go to http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/register. February 14, 2009 -- A string of provocations in the days leading up to the constitutional amendment referendum points to the employment of a disturbance plan that could well be followed up with destabilisations attempts after the poll. * Read more COSATU: Actions against Israel's barbarism and in support of Palestinian resistance an unprecedented success The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is humbled by the inspirational messages from all over the world for our boycott, sanctions and divestment campaign against Israel. By Bongani Masuku, COSATU international relations officer February 12, 2009 -- The South African week of action against Israeli barbarism and in support of Palestinian heroism and resistance has been an unprecedented success. COSATU, its affiliates, particularly the South African Transport and Allied Workers' Union (SATAWU) and the rest of Palestinian solidarity movement in South Africa are humbled by the large number of letters of support we have received from trade unions, solidarity groups, workers, activists and people of conscience from all over the world for our stance in solidarity with the people of Palestine. In particular, letters congratulated SATAWU dock workers in Durban for their determined refusal to off-load goods from Israel carried on the Johanna Russ. * Read more Philippines: Urban poor strongly represented in new socialist party [Reihana Mohideen, a representative of the Power of the Masses Party (Partido Lakas ng Masa), will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets.] * Read more Charles Darwin and materialist science; Darwin the reluctant revolutionary Two articles by Canadian Marxist Ian Angus discuss the important legacy of Charles Darwin in the 200th year since his birth and the 150th anniversary year of the publication of On the Origin of Species. This first article appeared in Canada's Socialist Voice, and the second in the Britain's Socialist Resistance. Ian Angus will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets. * Read more Australia: Fire tragedy highlights scale of global warming emergency and need for real action Socialist Alliance statement Melbourne, February 11, 2009 -- Like all people across Australia Socialist Alliance members have been devastated by the Victorian bushfire tragedy, the greatest disaster in peace-time Australian history. We express our condolences to and solidarity with all who have lost family, friends and homes in this shocking holocaust, made worse by the possibility that some of these fires were deliberately lit. We salute the efforts of Victorian Country Fire Authority workers and all volunteers who have sacrificed time, effort and security and done everything in their power to halt the ravages of the fires. Emergency service workers battled for up to 30 hours without sleep trying to control the infernos, help the injured, and attend to the thousands left homeless. * Read more Economic and social advances during the Ch?vez decade in Venezuela Washington, DC - February 5, 2009 -- The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) released a report today on the Venezuelan economy on the tenth anniversary of President Hugo Ch?vez's tenure, which began in February 1999. "Looking at the economic data and social indicators, it's not difficult to see why Ch?vez remains popular and has won so many elections, despite overwhelmingly hostile media coverage", said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of CEPR and lead author of the report, The Ch?vez Administration at 10 Years: The Economy and Social Indicators. * Read more World Social Forum returns to Brazil, marks Latin America's `swing to the left' By Marc Becker February 5, 2009 -- After an absence of four years, the World Social Forum (WSF) returned to Brazil during the last week of January 2009. More than 100,000 people descended on the city of Belem at the mouth of the mighty Amazon River to debate proposals and plan strategies for making a new and better world. * Read more Thailand: `Red Siam' manifesto By Giles Ji Ungpakorn February 9, 2009 -- The enemies of the Thai people and democracy may have their army, courts and prisons. They may have seized and rigged parliament and established the government through crimes like the blockading of the airports and other undemocratic actions by the PAD [Peoples Alliance for Democracy]. Yet those who love democracy, the Redshirts, have strength in numbers and are waking up to political realities. Disorganised and scattered, this movement of ours will be weak, but a party that is organised and self-led can create a democratic fist to smash the dictatorship. While world leaders such as US President Obama struggle to solve the serious economic crisis, the Democrat Party government in Thailand is allowing thousands of workers to lose their jobs. The government sees its priority only in cracking down on the opposition using les majeste, it has even created a website where citizens can inform on each other. Troops have been sent into communities and villages to stifle dissent. * Read more * * * Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information, experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090218/d8aebd20/attachment-0001.html From jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca Wed Feb 18 19:14:26 2009 From: jmeaton at ns.sympatico.ca (Janet M Eaton) Date: Wed Feb 18 19:12:53 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Obama visit puts Canada on the defensive- CCPA Report Feb 17th Message-ID: <499C7A32.6729.99AA3F01@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> http://www.policyalternatives.ca/editorials/2009/02/editorial2106/?pa= BB736455 Obama visit puts Canada on the defensive February 17, 2009 | National Office | Topic(s): Economy & economic indicators, International relations, peace & conflict, International trade & investment, deep integration | Author(s): Bruce Campbell | Publication Type: Editorial When President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper meet in Canada this Thursday, the growing economic crisis will be the main point of discussion. And Harper could quickly find himself in a position he doesn?t like to be in: on the defensive. Canada, as the smaller of the two trading partners, has become much more an exporter of raw and semi-processed resources in recent years - accounting for almost 60% of our exports - and it is deeply dependent on exports to the U.S. The collapse of U.S. demand and of commodity prices is the main factor behind Canada registering in December a major drop in exports and its first trade deficit in 33 years. Canadians should be grateful that Obama is taking bold fiscal steps to confront the most dangerous economic crisis since the 1930s. He is investing almost $800 billion over two years - equivalent to about 2.7% per year of U.S. GDP - in an attempt to prevent the recession from turning into another great depression. Canada has a huge stake in seeing U.S. economic recovery policies succeed. It is essential to our own recovery. However, it could become a political sore point with the Obama administration since Canada has not been nearly as proactive. The Harper government?s proclaimed $40 billion fiscal stimulus package over two years is pretty feeble by comparison. Subtract Harper?s planned spending cuts and infrastructure funding that is contingent on matched provincial and municipal dollars, and the Parliamentary Budget Office calculates that the Harper plan is even more tepid. The real net stimulus effect falls to a mere 0.7% of GDP - one quarter of the U.S. fiscal stimulus. If I were the U.S. president, I would be concerned Canada is free riding on the coat tails of a U.S. recovery initiative without doing its part to prevent a prolonged global economic slump. And I would be pressuring the Canadian Prime Minister to do more. While dragging his feet on stimulus front, Harper appears content to throw darts at the Obama administration for its `buy America? provisions attached to the use of public funds. These requirements will improve the effectiveness of Obama?s stimulus package in jumpstarting the U.S. domestic economy. Since U.S. taxpayers are incurring additional debt to pay for these measures, it makes sense they would want their investments to create jobs at home. Canadians would wish the same. As Harper should know, such domestic procurement policies have been in place in the U.S. for decades and they are legal under international trade agreements. In the current circumstances, any alleged adverse consequences from minor departures from free market ideology (which by the way, got us into this mess in the first place), pale in comparison with the disastrous trade consequences of failing to revive the US economy. The Canadian government should re-examine how it can better pull its weight by improving its own fiscal stimulus package. Instead of lecturing Obama on the theoretical virtues of free trade, the Harper government could implement its own `buy Canadian? policy and create more jobs right here at home. Given the highly integrated nature of sectors like steel and autos, both countries might even agree to mutual exemptions. When Harper and Obama meet this week, the U.S. President will likely repeat assurances that his country will respect its international trade obligations. But he will not compromise on his number one priority: reviving the U.S. economy. While Obama has some need to compromise with Republicans in Congress, there are no votes to be had from pandering to the republican inclinations of our prime minister. On this and other issues, growing policy differences are likely to leave the Harper government at increasingly out of sync with the Obama administration. Bruce Campbell is the Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. www.policyalternatives.ca Download the Report/Study: The Obama Effect: Canada-US Relations in a Time of Economic Crisis - PDF File, 157 Kb http://www.policyalternatives.ca/~ASSETS/DOCUMENT/National_Office_Pubs /2009/The_Obama_Effect_NO_EMBARGO.pdf From netcfs at shaw.ca Wed Feb 18 16:24:36 2009 From: netcfs at shaw.ca (Yves Bajard) Date: Wed Feb 18 19:25:55 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Obama visit puts Canada on the defensive- CCPA Report Feb 17th In-Reply-To: <499C7A32.6729.99AA3F01@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> References: <499C7A32.6729.99AA3F01@jmeaton.ns.sympatico.ca> Message-ID: <1234995876.5049.42.camel@localhost> Two comments on this message: 1. I would hope they deal in 30 seconds with the shame of Canada and the US re: Omar Khadr and resolve the issue rapidly and well. 2. I don't see why Harper should not be on the defensive. He deserves it. Not that Obama will come with the panacea. Neither of the two seem to have grasped the nature and deep causes of the crisis. Or if they do or did, they don't act accordingly. That, according to the CCPA, "Obama is taking bold fiscal steps to confront the most dangerous economic crisis since the 1930s." also shows that the CCPA does not grasp these aspects of the crisis either: It is the deepest crisis humankind has been faced with ever. It is not a financial crisis but a civilizational crisis. And it is just beginning. The rest of Bruce Campbell's paper confirms my assessment. Bets regards Yves Bajard. Le mercredi 18 f?vrier 2009 ? 21:14 -0400, Janet M Eaton a ?crit : > http://www.policyalternatives.ca/editorials/2009/02/editorial2106/?pa= > BB736455 > > Obama visit puts Canada on the defensive > February 17, 2009 | National Office | Topic(s): Economy & economic > indicators, International relations, peace & conflict, International > trade & investment, deep integration | Author(s): Bruce Campbell | > Publication Type: Editorial > > > When President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper meet in > Canada this Thursday, the growing economic crisis will be the main > point of discussion. > > And Harper could quickly find himself in a position he doesn?t like > to be in: on the defensive. > > Canada, as the smaller of the two trading partners, has become much > more an exporter of raw and semi-processed resources in recent years > - accounting for almost 60% of our exports - and it is deeply > dependent on exports to the U.S. > > The collapse of U.S. demand and of commodity prices is the main > factor behind Canada registering in December a major drop in exports > and its first trade deficit in 33 years. > > Canadians should be grateful that Obama is taking bold fiscal steps > to confront the most dangerous economic crisis since the 1930s. He is > investing almost $800 billion over two years - equivalent to about > 2.7% per year of U.S. GDP - in an attempt to prevent the recession > from turning into another great depression. > > Canada has a huge stake in seeing U.S. economic recovery policies > succeed. It is essential to our own recovery. > > However, it could become a political sore point with the Obama > administration since Canada has not been nearly as proactive. > > The Harper government?s proclaimed $40 billion fiscal stimulus > package over two years is pretty feeble by comparison. > > Subtract Harper?s planned spending cuts and infrastructure funding > that is contingent on matched provincial and municipal dollars, and > the Parliamentary Budget Office calculates that the Harper plan is > even more tepid. The real net stimulus effect falls to a mere 0.7% of > GDP - one quarter of the U.S. fiscal stimulus. > > If I were the U.S. president, I would be concerned Canada is free > riding on the coat tails of a U.S. recovery initiative without doing > its part to prevent a prolonged global economic slump. > > And I would be pressuring the Canadian Prime Minister to do more. > > While dragging his feet on stimulus front, Harper appears content to > throw darts at the Obama administration for its `buy America? > provisions attached to the use of public funds. These requirements > will improve the effectiveness of Obama?s stimulus package in > jumpstarting the U.S. domestic economy. > > Since U.S. taxpayers are incurring additional debt to pay for these > measures, it makes sense they would want their investments to create > jobs at home. Canadians would wish the same. > > As Harper should know, such domestic procurement policies have been > in place in the U.S. for decades and they are legal under > international trade agreements. > > In the current circumstances, any alleged adverse consequences from > minor departures from free market ideology (which by the way, got us > into this mess in the first place), pale in comparison with the > disastrous trade consequences of failing to revive the US economy. > > The Canadian government should re-examine how it can better pull its > weight by improving its own fiscal stimulus package. Instead of > lecturing Obama on the theoretical virtues of free trade, the Harper > government could implement its own `buy Canadian? policy and create > more jobs right here at home. > > Given the highly integrated nature of sectors like steel and autos, > both countries might even agree to mutual exemptions. > > When Harper and Obama meet this week, the U.S. President will likely > repeat assurances that his country will respect its international > trade obligations. But he will not compromise on his number one > priority: reviving the U.S. economy. > > While Obama has some need to compromise with Republicans in Congress, > there are no votes to be had from pandering to the republican > inclinations of our prime minister. > > On this and other issues, growing policy differences are likely to > leave the Harper government at increasingly out of sync with the > Obama administration. > > Bruce Campbell is the Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for > Policy Alternatives. www.policyalternatives.ca > > > > > Download the Report/Study: > The Obama Effect: Canada-US Relations in a Time of Economic Crisis - > PDF File, 157 Kb > http://www.policyalternatives.ca/~ASSETS/DOCUMENT/National_Office_Pubs > /2009/The_Obama_Effect_NO_EMBARGO.pdf > > _______________________________________________ > Mai-not mailing list > Mai-not@globalproblematique.net > http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090218/200a7106/attachment.html From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Sat Feb 21 02:27:32 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (diongiles1@aapt.net.au) Date: Sat Feb 21 02:27:57 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Derivatives Powder Keg, etc Message-ID: <380-22009262182732620@M2W041.mail2web.com> All these predictions of doom presuppose one thing - that the world's governments will allow the colossal debts run up my Mr Greed to be transferred to the public treasuries. They need not. How about the Reverend Kevin Rudd drawing his guidance this time not from the Bible but from the tradition of democracy which means rule by the people for the people, and firmly declaring to the greedies: "These derivative debts are not ours, they're yours. No involvement of government - without a referendum - to sink the hard-won national wealth into the pit dug by greedy pigs"? It's not a question that would get many Yes votes from the people, but of course in the absence of democracy the people don't get to answer this question - only the question of which bunch of crooks hands over the national wealth. The message of democracy is also apt for the likes of Obama, Harper, Brown and the whole boiling of the venal pollies. The issue of democracy may end up having to be decided by a revolutionary power struggle against those who are imposing their own minority rule on the nations and using it to plunder the people's wealth. It is well to promote such a struggle by confronting the economists' myths about the real economy having to depend on the non-productive financial economy. Dion Giles ========================== Original Message: ----------------- From: ERA hermann@picknowl.com.au Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:53:55 +1030 To: ERAInf@yahoogroups.com Subject: [ERAInf] Derivatives Powder Keg Economic Reform Australia Information Network Relayed by: Mary Rose Source: Discussion Forum for Global Justice , Web source: http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=329&I temid=1 Derivatives Powder Keg Threatens Economy by Chuck Burr 20 February 2009 There is a quadrillion-dollar powder keg sitting at the center of the world financial markets. If the economy keeps on it present course, it will be ignited into a financial supernova. This is the result of the combination of greed and computers -- derivatives. Derivatives are financial instruments whose values are derived from something else such as assets or indexes such as interest rates or the stock market. They are used to mitigate or hedge the risk of economic loss from the changes in the value of the underlining asset or index. Derivatives can also be used to acquire risk rather than insure against it to speculate, betting that the party seeking insurance will be wrong about the future value. The derivative market is largely unregulated with no loss reserve requirement thanks to Clinton's 2000 Commodities Future Modernization Act. Total world derivatives are $1000 trillion or 19 times the total world GDP of $54 trillion. Over-the-counter derivatives total $684 trillion of which 67 percent are interest rate swaps. Exchange-traded derivatives total $344 trillion. Interest rate swaps are the largest derivative powder keg waiting to blow the world financial markets to supernova. Interest rates swaps are maintained by the spread between the Fed funds and prime mortgage rates. At the end of 2008 Fed funds were at 5.25 percent while mortgage rates were six percent, yielding a spread of less than one percent. To increase the spread to avoid interest rate swaps from imploding, Wall Street bankers took advantage of the U.S. people's ignorance of economics. People look at prices to gage inflation, when it is really the money supply that controls inflation. Prices are the symptom, not the cause. They ran up commodities for a time and then brought about a dramatic drop in prices later to give the perception that deflation might be setting in. This is how they justified the near-zero interest rates we see now, which can yield a huge spread of about five percent, which is more than five times what was available before all the trouble started. Already we have seen the subprime derivatives, large insurers, and investment banks implode. Wall Street CEO's lied through their teeth about the condition of their insolvent companies right up to the day they went bankrupt. The losses are going directly to the people through the bailouts. But the $700 billion bailout to absorb banking toxic waste plus the new $787 stimulus package will ignite hyperinflation and bring double-digit interest rates. Because of the world economic downturn, foreign nations have fewer dollars to buy U.S. Treasuries with. Tax revenues are plummeting world wide as earnings collapse. Bailouts Are Lighting the Fuse The Fed and the Treasury are using debt instruments that are being monetized. In other words, creating money out of thin air (U.S. Monetary Base chart). This is immediately very inflationary, and is how the fuse to interest rates swaps is being lit. Inflation at the wholesale level surged unexpectedly by .8 percent in January well above the 0.2 percent increase that economists had expected. Take JP Morgan Chase for example, and their $90 trillion derivative portfolio. Let's say that $50 trillion are in interest rate swaps. If they have even a mere two percent overhang (loss) where they have to pay out variable rates of interest on two percent more of their total interest rate swaps than the portion of swaps on which they are, by contrast, receiving variable rates of interest, they could suffer horrendous losses that could easily put them under. Let's say that everything balances at a four percent spread as described earlier. But now rates move to 14 percent because of hyperinflation and everyone ignores the rates set by the central banks sending LIBOR and Treasury bill rates to unheard of high levels. Two percent of $50 trillion is a trillion dollars of overhang loss on which you are now paying out 10 percent more, and 10 percent of one trillion is $100 billion, a killer loss. That would put them under. Even an overhang of only one half of one percent pumps out a loss of $25 billion. And what if the overhang is five percent, or 10 percent, or 20 percent? With an overhang of 20 percent, we hit one trillion in losses. And this is only one bank! Our capitalist global casino is a house of cards. If the economy continues to sink, credit default swaps will be the first to blow as we move from hundreds of billions to trillions in corporate quarterly losses. This triggers more deficit spending, which ignites more inflation which lights the fuse to the interest rate swaps supernova. The Pension Bomb Greater financial risk plus plummeting earnings per share pushes stock markets lower, which increases pension deficits and defaults (S&P 500 Corporate Earnings chart). As mentioned in my previous essay, America's 500 largest companies have a deficit of $200 billion in their pension plans. If the Dow hits 4,000, pension deficits would rise to $400 to $500 billion. Retirees lose their pensions and stock market investments. Many will be left with just their FDIC insured deposits if the government does not default. Standard and Poor's estimates that by Q3 2009 S&P 500 earnings will have collapsed by 83 percent from their high in Q2 2007. This will push the Dow to between 5000 and 4000 over the next year. Japan's GDP, formerly a major buyer of U.S. securities, shrank at an annual rate of 12.7 percent from October to December 2008 after contracting for two previous quarters. The UN International Labor Organization estimates that 50 million workers will lose their jobs worldwide in 2009. About 20,000 major banks worldwide collapsed, were sold, or were nationalized in 2008. An estimated 62,000 U.S. companies are expected to shut down this year. The triple whammy is that during the great depression about half the Americans lived on farms, but today only two percent participate in their food production. The big picture for me is that I do not see another Internet boom on the horizon to pull the world economy out of further decline. The Obama stimulus bump will last six to 12 months, but then wear off. Even if we avoid further financial meltdown, starting in the next two to four years peak oil is going to start building relentless downward pressure on the world economy. The best solution is to start powering down to a steady-state economy, and build community gracefully now while we have the resources. Today you can plant your first backyard garden and still go to the grocery store if it does not work out. #### See Chuck Burr's previous articles in Culture Change by using our search engine. And visit culturequake.org to learn more about Culturequake the book and the online magazine. C2009 Chuck Burr LLC Notes: Derivatives www.wikipedia.org The Big Picture S&P500 Q4 Earnings Collapse The New York Times Japan's Economy Plunges at Fastest Pace Since '74 The Big Picture S&P500 Q4 Earnings Collapse Yahoo! Wholesale inflation's biggest jump in 6 months AlterNet U.S. Intel Chief's Shocking Warning: Wall Street's Disaster Has Spawned Our Greatest Terrorist Threat Bob Chapman's The International Forecaster The Quadrillion Dollar Powder Keg Waiting To Blow Toxic Waste Threatens To Poison The Nation State Deficits For The Shrinking World Economy Acts Of Insanity Are What Destroyed The Economy GlobalEurope Anticipation Bulletin 4th quarter 2009 - Beginning of Phase 5 of the global systemic crisis: phase of global geopolitical dislocation -------------------------------------------------------------------- myhosting.com - Premium Microsoft? Windows? and Linux web and application hosting - http://link.myhosting.com/myhosting From dale_young at telus.net Sat Feb 21 15:53:35 2009 From: dale_young at telus.net (Dale Young) Date: Sat Feb 21 15:55:26 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Update on Ed Message-ID: <49A077DF.9090801@telus.net> I received this update on Ed's condition today and I thought you'd all want to know the latest. This is from a friend from another list who saw him in hospital yesterday. "Just came from visiting Ed. He was glad to get your messages. He is having bad luck. The first operation went well but then a staple came loose, and that meant another operation and further complications. Then yesterday they gave him food before his body was ready for it and he was in trouble again, so he is still in intensive care hooked up to many devices and tubes. He will probably be in for a week or longer -- maybe longer, because there is no way Marta can look after him at home until he can do a few things for himself. Besides, their home is more than two hours away by ambulance and Marta doesn't drive. The cause of all this was a polyp with a small cancer in the middle of it. "Ed is angry about the staple and as soon as he can he will be looking into their safety and raising hell about that. . "Ed has a window ledge in ICU but may not have one in a ward although I think they'll keep him in the ICU bed until they need it for someone else. They are short of beds again. There are a bunch of people who should be in residential care in the hospital because we don't have enough beds, never mind subsidized beds, in our for- profit residential care facility (it's all we have, they closed the public facilities) . That's a long sad story." And this added note tonight: "I didn't get to see Ed today because he was sleeping when I went up but the nurse said he had a goodish day. Spoke with Marta and she said he may be going to Kamloops because they have better ways of feeding him there . We should know tomnorrow." Dale From duanebehrens at cox.net Sat Feb 21 17:16:15 2009 From: duanebehrens at cox.net (Duane Behrens) Date: Sat Feb 21 17:37:29 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Update on Ed In-Reply-To: <49A077DF.9090801@telus.net> Message-ID: <20090221181615.F3NT0.80537.imail@fed1rmwml46> Dale, thank you for the update. Having gotten to know Ed through his messages to this list, I open each with both hope and fear . . . . hope that he's improving, fear that he's not. He's certainly battling, isn't he. . . . we expected no less. Thanks again and please give him Jane's and my very best. Duane Behrens ---- Dale Young wrote: ============= I received this update on Ed's condition today and I thought you'd all want to know the latest. This is from a friend from another list who saw him in hospital yesterday. "Just came from visiting Ed. He was glad to get your messages. He is having bad luck. The first operation went well but then a staple came loose, and that meant another operation and further complications. Then yesterday they gave him food before his body was ready for it and he was in trouble again, so he is still in intensive care hooked up to many devices and tubes. He will probably be in for a week or longer -- maybe longer, because there is no way Marta can look after him at home until he can do a few things for himself. Besides, their home is more than two hours away by ambulance and Marta doesn't drive. The cause of all this was a polyp with a small cancer in the middle of it. "Ed is angry about the staple and as soon as he can he will be looking into their safety and raising hell about that. . "Ed has a window ledge in ICU but may not have one in a ward although I think they'll keep him in the ICU bed until they need it for someone else. They are short of beds again. There are a bunch of people who should be in residential care in the hospital because we don't have enough beds, never mind subsidized beds, in our for- profit residential care facility (it's all we have, they closed the public facilities) . That's a long sad story." And this added note tonight: "I didn't get to see Ed today because he was sleeping when I went up but the nurse said he had a goodish day. Spoke with Marta and she said he may be going to Kamloops because they have better ways of feeding him there . We should know tomnorrow." Dale _______________________________________________ Mai-not mailing list Mai-not@globalproblematique.net http://www.globalproblematique.net/mailman/listinfo/mai-not -- http://perzuki.smugmug.com/ From dale_young at telus.net Sat Feb 21 19:14:50 2009 From: dale_young at telus.net (Dale Young) Date: Sat Feb 21 19:16:40 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Update on Ed In-Reply-To: <20090221181615.F3NT0.80537.imail@fed1rmwml46> References: <20090221181615.F3NT0.80537.imail@fed1rmwml46> Message-ID: <49A0A70A.4030107@telus.net> Thanks, Duane. I'll ask my contact to pass on your best wishes. And keep this list up to date as I get more news of Ed. Dale Duane Behrens wrote: > Dale, thank you for the update. Having gotten to know Ed through his messages to this list, I open each with both hope and fear . . . . hope that he's improving, fear that he's not. > > He's certainly battling, isn't he. . . . we expected no less. Thanks again and please give him Jane's and my very best. Duane Behrens > From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Sun Feb 22 17:58:54 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Sun Feb 22 23:30:08 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fwd: European Union in crisis Message-ID: <008101c9955a$49a90a20$36ad57ca@jfos> ON LINE opinion - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate European Union in crisis By Jonathan Fenby Posted Monday, 23 February 2009 Buffeted by the worst recession in 50 years, the biggest and most successful pan-national venture of our time - the European Union - is in danger of unraveling. There's growing fear that the whole European project may be damaged as protectionist pressures mount and the downturn sharpens differences among countries. Countries that rubbed along when the going was good now find themselves scrambling for national solutions in place of a collaborative effort. Papering over cracks that always marked the European club becomes steadily more difficult as companies close, jobless queues lengthen, banks report record losses and the public calls for solutions that escape politicians. Safeguarding national interests, as leading EU governments attempt, as opinion poll ratings fall and popular protests emerge, can easily shade into protectionism. This would undermine the single European market and the supposedly level playing field at the base of the 27-nation community, with the bigger members letting smaller, weaker economies, some recent members, crash into the wall. Easing financial rules is a natural reaction in hard times, but could undermine the regulations governing the euro common currency, to the delight of some EU leaders who have long resented the iron hand of the central bank in Frankfurt. Growing antipathy to workers from the new member nations could damage the EU's open-door policy. It's now plain that European governments failed to appreciate the scale and depth of the crisis; the assertion to parliament last year by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that British banks had been saved - by a slip of the tongue he said the world had been saved - has become a bad joke with a string of worsening results from the City of London, topped by a ?10 billion loss for the HBOS bank, taken over by Lloyds last autumn. The initial schadenfreude of mainland Europe towards the "Anglo-Saxon neo-liberals" of the US and Britain has been replaced by something close to panic as the crisis spreads from the financial world to the real economy. If Brown's reputation as the economic manager has taken a nasty drubbing, events have turned the electoral promises of economic liberalisation from France's President Nicolas Sarkozy on their head. The German model looks vulnerable to the downturn in world trade, with a 2.1 per cent contraction in gross domestic product for the last quarter of 2008, the sharpest drop since reunification in 1990. France, Italy and Spain also recorded much bigger GDP declines than expected during the same quarter. The euro common-currency zone countries face their worst recession with GDP dropping by 1.5 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008. The bond market reflects concern about state finances in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Greece. Unemployment is rising and, according to some estimates, may go up by 50 per cent this year. Adding to the threat of this economic and financial fog enveloping Europe is the rise of popular anger, especially with elections due in Germany and Britain in 2010. The ire against bankers is spreading with riots in Greece, Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria. Trade unions claim to have convinced a million people to join a January national protest in France, called against Sarkozy's policies, but couched in the broader context of the downturn as marchers identified the president with forces costing jobs and security expected from government. Though globalisation has greatly benefited European companies, open borders and free trade elide with the toxic financial waste in a broad brush rejection of the past decade. The call for politicians to "do something", quickly, to end the crisis is whistling for the moon. There are no short-term solutions. But it's not a demand which government leaders can ignore, and the deeper danger rests in their reaction. Speaking at a February 13 meeting of the Group of Seven finance ministers in Rome, German minister Peer Steinbr?ck warned that protectionist measures could turn a financial crisis into a re-run of the 1930s disasters. Indeed, there are disturbing signs of rising populist protectionism. Given Sarkozy's hyper-activism, it's not surprising that France should be at the eye of the storm after he announced a ?6.5 billion aid plan for French automakers, suggesting that they should repatriate production from Central Europe to protect jobs at home. That set protectionist alarm bells ringing in Brussels and brought caustic rejoinders from the Czech Republic, which took over the rotating European Council presidency from France this year and has been annoyed by the French leader's patronising remark that Prague was doing the best it could in the job. Nor did the French president help cross-channel relations when he used a television interview to deride the British economic model for depending too heavily in financial services: Downing Street hit back, citing figures showing that manufacturing represents a bigger slice of the British economy than in France. But Sarkozy is far from alone. German firms have gained an advantage with government measures to reduce non-wage labour costs. An applause-grabbing remark to a Labour Party conference about "British jobs for British workers" has come back to haunt Brown as workers protesting foreign labour brandish placards with his words. Banks in Britain helped by the government are told to lend to the domestic market, not to foreigners. Questioned about this, Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling responded that taxpayers expect this and that other governments should do the same. Aid packages for French and German banks go against the spirit of EU competition policy. Despite summit meetings and expressions of good will in seeking joint solutions, the actions of major EU countries make it clear that priorities are overwhelmingly domestic, whatever the repercussions for weaker neighbours and, longer term, for themselves. The French leader has long chafed under the budget limits set by the European Central Bank, and governments in countries hard hit by the crisis are likely to agitate for relaxation of rules, even if this brings them into conflict with the Germans. "In a time of economic crisis, we see atavistic instincts emerging," Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg told the New York Times in mid-February. His country's Prime Minister, Mirek Topolanek, warned against "beggar-thy-neighbour" policies among the 27 member states and called a EU summit before the end of this month to co-ordinate policies. This was meant to be the year when the EU marched on to a new stage in its development, with president of the European Council serving 30 months rather than the present six-month rotation and a newly anointed diplomatic chief giving the community more global clout. Whether that happens is a matter of crystal-ball gazing. All that's evident is the economic crisis risks tearing holes in Europe's fabric woven over the last 50 years. A government should be capable of looking beyond immediate challenges to cooperating in finding solutions. That, one might naively think, is the purpose of an association like the EU. Yet there's little sign of such action so far. Despite Steinbr?ck's warning, Europe is not about to revert to the 1930s. But in the conflict between the Union's broad communitarian ambitions and immediate imperatives bearing down on politicians, it's clear which is winning, with potentially damaging long-term consequences. Reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal Online - www.yaleglobal.yale.edu - (c) 2009 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Jonathan Fenby is author of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present, just published by Ecco HarperCollins and On the Brink: The Trouble with France. He works for Trusted Sources, a London-based research service. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ? The National Forum and contributors 1999-2009. All rights reserved. ------------------------------------------------------ Provided by Australis http://www.australis.com.au/ From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Mon Feb 23 15:48:17 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Mon Feb 23 15:48:28 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Fw: [S] Britain faces summer of rage - police + Do hedge funds have human rights? Message-ID: <012201c99611$33f1e0f0$40ad57ca@jfos> Brave new 'democracy' under Capitalism! john Middle-class anger at economic crisis could erupt into violence on streets Paul Lewis The Guardian, Monday 23 February 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/23/police-civil-unrest-recession Police are preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned. Britain's most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming "footsoldiers" in a wave of potentially violent mass protests. Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police's public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year. He said that banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, had become "viable targets". So too had the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis. Hartshorn, who receives regular intelligence briefings on potential causes of civil unrest, said the mood at some demonstrations had changed recently, with activists increasingly "intent on coming on to the streets to create public disorder". The warning comes in the wake of often violent protests against the handling of the economy across Europe. In recent weeks Greek farmers have blocked roads over falling agricultural prices, a million workers in France joined demonstrations to demand greater protection for jobs and wages and Icelandic demonstrators have clashed with police in Reykjavik. In the UK hundreds of oil refinery workers mounted wildcat strikes last month over the use of foreign workers. Intelligence reports suggest that "known activists" are also returning to the streets, and police claim they will foment unrest. "Those people would be good at motivating people, but they haven't had the 'footsoldiers' to actually carry out [protests]," Hartshorn said. "Obviously the downturn in the economy, unemployment, repossessions, changes that. Suddenly there is the opportunity for people to mass protest. "It means that where we would possibly look at certain events and say, 'yes there'll be a lot of people there, there'll be a lot of banner waving, but generally it will be peaceful', [now] we have to make sure these elements don't come out and hijack that event and turn that into disorder." Hartshorn identified April's G20 meeting of the group of leading and developing nations in London as an event that could kick-start a challenging summer. "We've got G20 coming and I think that is being advertised on some of the sites as the highlight of what they see as a 'summer of rage'," he said. His comments are likely to be met with disappointment by protest groups, who in recent weeks have complained that police are adopting a more confrontational approach at demonstrations. Officers have been accused of exaggerating the threat posed by activists to justify the use of resources spent on them. Police were said to have been heavy-handed at Greek solidarity marches in London in December and, last month, at protests against Israel's invasion of Gaza. In August 1,000 officers, helicopters and riot horses were drafted to Kent from 26 UK police forces to oversee the climate camp demonstration against the Kingsnorth power station. The massive operation to monitor the protesters cost ?5.9m and resulted in 100 arrests. But in December the government was forced to apologise to parliament after the Guardian revealed that its claims that 70 officers had been hurt in violent clashes were wrong. However, Hartshorn insisted: "Potentially there will be more industrial actions ... History shows that some of those disputes - Wapping, the miners' strike - have caused great tensions in the community and the police have had difficult times policing and maintaining law and order." Both "extreme rightwing and extreme leftwing" elements are looking to "use the fact that people are out of jobs" to galvanise support, he said. A particularly worrying development was the re-emergence of individuals involved in the violent fascist organisation Combat 18, he said. "They are using the fact that there's been lots of talk about eastern European people coming in and taking jobs on the Olympic sites," he said. "They're using those type of arguments to look at getting support." Hartshorn said he also expected large-scale demonstrations this year on environmental issues, with hardcore green activists "joining forces" with middle-class campaigners over issues such as airport expansion at Heathrow and Stansted. With the prospect of angry demonstrations against the economy, that could open the door to powerful coalitions. "All you've got to do then is link in with the environmentalists, and look at the oil companies. They're seen to be turning over billions of pounds profit in issues that are seen to be against the environment." MORE: Do hedge funds have human rights? Companies using the Human Rights Act to mitigate loss of profits are turning it into a 'villain's charter' Hedge funds for example, which are "legal persons" in the sense that as incorporated companies they have a legal personality, are apparently amongst the growing number of corporate victims of human rights violations. Last week two hedge funds ? RAB Special Situations and SRM Global Master Fund ? claimed that the nationalisation of Northern Rock amounted to a violation of their right to "peaceful enjoyment of possessions" set out in the first protocol to the European convention on human rights. MORE http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/jan/28/ hedge-fund-human-rights From jfos at vic.australis.com.au Mon Feb 23 16:20:55 2009 From: jfos at vic.australis.com.au (john foster) Date: Mon Feb 23 16:40:55 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] =?windows-1252?q?Fw=3A_=5BS=5D__=93Dateline_Havana=3A_?= =?windows-1252?q?The_Real_Story_of_US_Policy_and_the_Future_of_Cub?= =?windows-1252?q?a=94?= Message-ID: <023501c99618$81b4a190$40ad57ca@jfos> Dateline Havana is a probing look at U.S. policy and the future of Cuba on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution and the inauguration of President Obama. Reporting from Cuba, Washington D.C. and Miami, Reese Erlich explores Cuba?s strained history with the United States and the power of the Cuba Lobby. ?The Cuba Lobby has its public, political wing, but also it?s secret, military wing,? says Erlich. He unearths telling details about murders of dissenting Cuban Americans and terrorist attacks against Cuba, including the murder of civilians. ?If Muslim Americans were carrying out similar activities on U.S. shores, they would be thrown into jail without trial.? said Erlich. Erlich interviewed key players making U.S. Cuba policy for this book and says, ?The ultra right is weakened in Florida, as evidenced by the Barak Obama victory in Florida. Cubans with views critical of the ultra-rightist domination of their community are more willing to speak out. Other Miami residents are tired of the lack of free speech and free expression in their hometown.? ?Dateline Havana combines good investigative reporting with sharp analysis. Erlich takes us inside the cultures of Cubans and Cuban-Americans, an eyewitness to their lives and their challenging politics over 40 years of reporting from the island nation. Dateline Havana is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the problems and seeing change in U.S. Cuba policy.? -Walter Cronkite, former anchor of CBS Evening News Reese Erlich is co-author of the best-selling book Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn?t Tell You. In 2001, he produced a one-hour radio documentary, ?The Struggle for Iran,? hosted by Walter Cronkite. Erlich is an award winning journalist and author of The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis He reports regularly for National Public Radio, Latino USA, Radio Deutche Welle, Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio, and Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Radio. He also writes for Mother Jones, the San Francisco Chronicle, St. Petersburg Times, Dallas Morning News, and Chicago Tribune. Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5, 773-376-7521, uscubachi@yahoo.com Reese Ehrlich, author of ?Dateline Havana: The Real Story of US Policy and the Future of Cuba? Mon, Feb. 23, noon- 1pm Jerome McDonald Worldview WBEZ, 91.5 Mon. Feb. 23, 4pm Buffett Center Conference Room, Northwestern University 1902 Sheridan Road, Evanston Tues , Feb 24, 2:30 PM followed by book signing Parmer 108, Bluhm Lecture Hall Dominican University 7900 W. Division, River Forest Tues , Feb 24, 7:00 PM No Exit Cafe 6970 N. Glenwood, near Morse L stop half a block from Heartland Cafe doors open at 5:30 mojitos, cuba libres, and other drinks available food service begins at 6pm and continues through event; book signing follows Thurs, Feb 26 6pm DePaul University Room 400, (4th Fl) Richardson Library 2350 North Kenmore Ave. (Fullerton El stop, Red Line) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090224/f1f40be7/attachment.html From papadop at peak.org Tue Feb 24 18:41:00 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Tue Feb 24 18:41:36 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Former Guantanamo detainee arrested at London airport Message-ID: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5geVeaXU9xG7qL0JZOgAtc-odK0zw Agence France Presse LONDON (AFP) A Qatari man held at Guantanamo Bay until last year was detained at London's Heathrow Airport Tuesday on his way to visit a human rights lawyer. Jaralla Saleh Mohammed Kahla al-Marri said he arrived in Britain from Qatar on Sunday to visit lawyer Gareth Pierce but was questioned by British immigration officials because he did not include details of his time at Guantanamo Bay on his visa application. A spokesman for Britain's Home Office said he was unable to comment on individual cases. "They kept me for an hour then said they were going to move me," al-Marri, who is currently being held at Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre near the airport. "They said I was going back to my own country. They said they don't want anyone from Guantanamo here." Al-Marri, who was held in Guantanamo Bay for more than six years before returning to Qatar in July, added: "I said I was here in January and it was fine and if they don't want me here why did they give me a visa?" "There was no question on the visa about are you a Guantanamo detainee?" Pierce has in the past represented, among others, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian man shot dead by British police in a London Underground station when they mistook him for an on-the-run suicide bomber. Al-Marri's ordeal comes a day after Binyam Mohamed, a 30-year-old Ethiopia-born detainee at Guantanamo, arrived in Britain, where he held residency before his detention at the prison camp. From diongiles1 at aapt.net.au Tue Feb 24 23:40:35 2009 From: diongiles1 at aapt.net.au (diongiles1@aapt.net.au) Date: Tue Feb 24 23:40:42 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Where's the Money Gone? Message-ID: <380-22009232574035850@M2W026.mail2web.com> http://www.rense.com/general85/dx.htm Dion Giles -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://link.mail2web.com/mail2web From jomut at yahoo.com Wed Feb 25 11:20:54 2009 From: jomut at yahoo.com (John Mutambirwa) Date: Wed Feb 25 11:21:04 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] banking on distrust Message-ID: <35039.49207.qm@web31103.mail.mud.yahoo.com> John Mutambirwa (Dreaming Awake) jomut@yahoo.com chakane@hotmail.com http://www.geocities.com/jomut ? hi, ? Interesting report, forwarded by a correspondent of mine, on the fratricidal inter-imperialistic spat between Swiss banker, UBS, and the US Department Of Justice.? The latter is accusing the former of providing tax-shelter privileges to a legion of its duplicitous natives. ? Too bad that they have not yet, at the same time,?decided to throw the book at the Wall Street criminals in the US who mugged the world economy in broad daylight! ? Besides, this might turn out to be a symbolic slap-on-the-wrist type of gesture, engaged in to appease the popular, if extremely tepid, national resentment regarding the high-roller economic expediency that has created the current economic doldrums ---? in much the same manner as the Earl of Crossharbour's symbolic incarceration following the raft of post Enron disclosures of corporate slipperiness.? Fat lot of good it did?by way of?discouraging Wall Street's excesses!! ? John ========================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.globalproblematique.net/pipermail/mai-not/attachments/20090225/33fc1667/attachment.html From creuss at bluewin.ch Thu Feb 26 02:36:15 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Thu Feb 26 02:38:43 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Youtube censored WTC7 video Message-ID: On 9-Jan-09, Duane forwarded a link to the teacher's WTC7 freefall video, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address =385x256070 which referred to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xhHYTYtc_I . Youtube has deleted this video "due to terms of use violation". Any idea where this video can still be found online? Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From papadop at peak.org Fri Feb 27 16:55:01 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Fri Feb 27 16:55:50 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Ex-Lobbyists in U.S. Case of Espionage Win a Round Message-ID: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/us/25aipac.html?_r=1 NYTimes -- February 24, 2009 WASHINGTON A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled in favor of two former lobbyists for a pro-Israeli advocacy group in deciding how much classified information they may use in their defense on espionage charges. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, based in Richmond, Va., ruled against the government and in favor of the defendants, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, whose trial is now scheduled for April. The appeals court also refused to entertain the government s objections to a series of formidable hurdles to a conviction put in place by the trial judge. The defendants, former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, were charged with violating the World War I-era Espionage Act for sharing information they learned from foreign policy officials in the Bush administration with journalists, Israeli government officials and fellow Aipac employees. The case has received an extraordinary amount of attention for many reasons, including its inevitable connection to the ways some American-Jewish supporters of Israel try to influence government policy. Supporters of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman have asserted that they were unfairly singled out and were involved in only the kind of free trade in information that is a regular and protected part of policy making. John N. Nassikas III and Baruch Weiss, two of the defense lawyers, said Tuesday that they believed the appellate ruling and an earlier one by the trial judge greatly increased the prosecutors difficulty in continuing the case. These will hopefully cause the government to reconsider its prosecution of the case, they said. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the United States attorney's office in Alexandria, Va., which is handling the case, said, We are reviewing the decision and will respond in court. From papadop at peak.org Fri Feb 27 17:03:44 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Fri Feb 27 17:04:01 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] NAT HENTOFF: Clear and Roving Danger Message-ID: http://jya.com/hentoff.htm The Washington Post, Saturday, February 13, 1999 Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder [letters, Feb. 4 (below)] charges that in my column on roving wiretaps ["Raid on Rights," Jan. 2], I was mistaken as to the dangers of a new change in the law that, as he says, "allows federal officials to wiretap conversations of a given suspect regardless of the phone the suspect uses." This new provision, Mr. Holder assures us, is "a relatively minor adjustment to an existing statute that serves to protect privacy rather than intrude upon it." At first Mr. Holder says that I suggested roving wiretaps are a new idea. But in my column, I noted that "since 1986, a very limited multipoint wiretap [has been] permitted if the target showed a clear intent to evade a conventional wiretap." A conventional wiretap requiring particular descriptions of the place and person to be searched is supposed to prevent the government from using a general search warrant of the kind that the British troops so wantonly used against the colonists. However, electronic roving wiretaps now authorized for the FBI are the equivalent in the physical world of giving its agents blanket permission to follow a suspect around and search every home and business he or she enters. This is hardly "a relatively minor adjustment" to the Fourth Amendment. Mr. Holder claims that roving wiretaps are needed because otherwise, a suspect will keep changing phones to thwart surveillance. But most of us could be suspected of such diversionary tactics. The average length of a federal wiretap in 1997 was 51 days. In that amount of time, many of us use one phone at work, another at home, a phone at a friend's house, a cell phone and occasionally a pay phone. So, as I noted, roving wiretaps actually thwart the purpose of the Fourth Amendment, which requires a particular description of the place to be searched in addition to "the persons or things to be searched." Mr. Holder goes on to say that I am incorrect in stating that the FBI can listen to the wandering phones even if the owner of the phone and his or her family and not the target are using it. Not so, Mr. Holder says. The official eavesdroppers, he claims, can "listen in only on those criminally related conversations in which the suspect is a party." That surveillance must end, he adds, "once the suspect hangs up." But that is not exactly what the new law says. It states that phones can be wiretapped so long as the suspect is "reasonably proximate" to those phones. If the Department of Justice were serious about not intercepting innocent conversations, it would support a roving wiretap amendment mandating that wiretapping not start until the suspect was observed actually using any phone he or she is "proximate" to. The amendment should also require that the rule specifically state that the FBI must hang up as soon as the target does instead of recording everything. Significantly, the Justice Department has been asking the FCC to require phone companies to adjust their systems so that the FBI can continue to listen in on conference calls involving the suspect even after he or she has hung up on that conference call. So much for Mr. Holder's insistence that innocent conversations not be recorded. Mr. Holder says that I have left "the misapprehension that roving wiretaps are used frequently." He notes that, "of all the federal electronic surveillance requests reviewed in the Department of Justice last year, less than one percent involved roving wiretaps." But the new law allowing expansion of roving wiretaps was not signed until Oct. 20 of last year and could not be implemented until guidelines were promulgated. It may be instructive to see the 1999 figures, since the new law is intended to increase electronic surveillance by the Justice Department. In any case, Mr. Holder emphasizes, wiretaps "enabled the FBI to prevent terrorists from blowing up the bridges and tunnels leading into New York City in 1994." But according to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, from 1987 to 1997, only 0.13 percent of authorized wiretaps were used to "investigate crimes involving arson, bombing and firearms violations." The FBI understandably likes to use the specter of terrorism as a reason to expand its wiretapping powers. Mr. Holder says that he is opposed to the government's unreasonable intrusion on an individual's privacy. Yet the Clinton administration, in which he serves, put in place more federal wiretaps in 1995 and 1996 than all those put in place by the individual states in those years. >From the new increase in roving wiretaps to those placed for "intelligence" purposes without probable cause of crime by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, housed at the Justice Department, this is an administration, as Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center says, that "has less regard for the privacy of American citizens" than any since Richard Nixon. _________________________________________________________________ Washington Post, Thursday, February 4, 1999; Page A26 Only Necessary Wiretaps In his Jan. 2 op-ed column, "Raid on Rights," Nat Hentoff is mistaken about a change in the law that allows federal officials to wiretap conversations of a given suspect regardless of the phone the suspect uses. First, Mr. Hentoff suggests that so-called roving wiretaps are a new idea. In fact, they have been legal for more than a decade. In 1986 Congress authorized the roving wiretap to deal with the sophisticated criminal who tries to avoid electronic surveillance by constantly switching phones. This law allows law enforcement to tap the criminal, not the phone. Unfortunately, under the 1986 law, officials could use this authority only if they showed that the suspect was changing phones with the intent of thwarting surveillance. But that requirement forced law enforcement to determine what was going on in the criminal's mind before a court would issue a wiretap order. So now, instead of requiring intent, the modified law requires a showing that the suspect's actions have the effect of thwarting surveillance. Nothing else changed. Second, Mr. Hentoff writes that the FBI can listen to the roving tapped phones "even if the owner of a phone and his or her family -- and not the target -- are using it." That is incorrect. The law requires that federal officials identify the specific suspect in their request to the court and listen in only on those criminally related conversations in which the suspect is a party. In fact, unlike a regular wiretap, roving surveillance must end once the suspect hangs up -- even if the co-conspirators stay on the line. In this regard, roving wiretaps are actually a more limited intrusion upon privacy than "regular" wiretaps. Third, Mr. Hentoff leaves the misimpression that the roving wiretaps are used frequently. The statistics do not support his assertion. Of all of the federal electronic surveillance requests reviewed in the Department of Justice last year, less than one percent involved roving wiretaps -- and almost all of those were against major drug dealers. Wiretapping, properly used under judicial supervision, is an important law enforcement tool. It not only helps law enforcement catch criminals after they commit additional crimes, it helps us prevent criminals from committing the crime at all. For example, court-authorized wiretapping enabled the FBI to prevent terrorists from blowing up the bridges and tunnels leading into New York City in 1994. As a lifelong advocate for the protection of privacy rights, I agree that government should not have the ability to intrude unreasonably on an individual's privacy. But I also understand that law enforcement must have the technical tools to keep pace with the more sophisticated criminals we now must confront. The recent wiretap change is a relatively minor adjustment to an existing statute that serves to protect privacy rather than intrude upon it. ERIC H. HOLDER JR. Washington The writer is deputy attorney general of the United States. _________________________________________________________________ From creuss at bluewin.ch Sat Feb 28 06:20:10 2009 From: creuss at bluewin.ch (Christoph Reuss) Date: Sat Feb 28 06:22:19 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] US, Canada to boycott UN anti-racism conference Message-ID: The message here is that zionist racism is OK. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7916191.stm US may boycott racism conference Page last updated at 02:20 GMT, Saturday, 28 February 2009 The UN conference on racism is expected to open in Geneva in April The US is likely to boycott a UN racism conference, reports suggest, saying a text drawn up for the event criticises Israel and restricts freedom of speech. An unnamed state department official said the draft document for April's forum in Geneva was "unsalvageable". Canada and Israel have also said they plan to boycott the meeting. In 2001, US and Israeli delegates walked out of a similar conference in Durban, South Africa, when a draft document likened Zionism to racism. The 2001 draft expressed "deep concern" at the "increase of racist practices of Zionism and anti-Semitism". It talked of the emergence of "movements based on racism and discriminatory ideas, in particular the Zionist movement, which is based on racial superiority". 'Unsalvageable' A US delegation travelled to Geneva for negotiations earlier in February to try to agree the conference's final document. "Unfortunately, the document being negotiated has gone from bad to worse," the unnamed state department official was quoted as saying by the Washington Post newspaper. "The current text of the draft of the outcome document is, in the United States government's estimation, unsalvageable. "As a result the United States will not participate in the forthcoming negotiations on this text, nor will we be able to participate in a conference that is based on this text," the official said. Washington says the proposed text unfairly singles out Israel for criticism. US officials say they are also concerned that some sections of the draft - which call for restrictions on the defamation of religions - could threaten free speech. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". From papadop at peak.org Sat Feb 28 09:48:13 2009 From: papadop at peak.org (MichaelP) Date: Sat Feb 28 09:49:09 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] Give to the rich to help the poor Message-ID: Thanks LP http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/28/tax-avoidance-aid + The Guardian (London) Saturday 28 February 2009 On Tuesday night, 100 billionaires will gather at London's sumptuous Dorchester hotel, to watch Mr Ted Turner in conversation with Ms Carol Vorderman. Ms Joss Stone will sing, and some model or other will be in attendance. Can you guess the aim of this evening, which I trust you would cross continents to avoid in the infinitely unlikely event that you had been invited? No? Then allow me to assist. The aim is to make the government give tax breaks to the super-rich, in order to tempt them to give the same percentage of income to charity as the poorest 20% of people in this country already do. Feel free to be taken unwell. Initially I assumed the Fortune Forum, for so it is named, was an elaborate living satire, designed to highlight practically everything that is wrong with contemporary life. Alas, The Fortune Forum is all too real. It was dreamt up by an heiress called Renu Mehta, as a kind of vaguely benevolent mini-Davos. It is now in its third year, and has made several donations to the world's neediest people, including paying one Bill Clinton a rumoured $450,000 to address it. But it is the Fortune Forum's latest scheme that really impresses. As the Guardian reported yesterday, Mehta enlisted the Nobel prize winning economist Sir James Mirrlees to come up with a plan to address the shaming statistic that Britain's richest 20% donate 0.8% of their income to charity, while the poorest 20% give 3%. He duly concocted a tax proposal. To wit: 50% of money donated towards the UN's millennium development goals through this scheme would be deducted from an individual or corporation's tax liability (which is of course only 40% or 28% respectively), with the government making up the other 50% from its aid budget. Naturally, the super-rich donors would get to decide on what projects their money was spent. Let's see that in action, shall we? The UK's total overseas aid budget was Brit P4.9bn in 2007-2008. Mehta suggests her scheme could persuade the super-rich to part with an extra Brit P5bn a year, but of course the government is required to backmatch that notional sum, meaning that the entire aid budget would be swallowed up. What this means, effectively, is that control over the UK's aid budget would pass from the Department for International Development to a bunch of private individuals. As the tax campaigner Richard Murphy points out, this is fundamentally undemocratic. Depressingly, Mirrlees and Mehta have already been granted two meetings with the Treasury, at which they insisted the scheme should be extended to those whose tax affairs are offshore, in effect allowing the use of UK taxpayers' money to be directed by tax exiles - and giving them tax relief for the privilege. Did you ever hear anything so defeatist? Rather than make a concerted attempt to close down these offshore havens, the Treasury is now considering further enabling them with a cashback scheme because they are too tight to give the same percentage of their wealth to charity as someone in the lowest income bracket. Allowing this would be a monumental scandal. One suspects Mirrlees is a Nobel economics laureate much in the same way that Henry Kissinger is a Nobel peace laureate. Another of his brainwaves is replacing corporation tax with a higher rate of VAT, a move which would shift the tax burden from the rich to the poor. Yet he will inevitably be lauded for this latest plan by those puffed-up fauxlanthropists who monopolise the aid debate. And so to our old friend Bono, who this week announced he is displeased at being called a hypocrite for moving his tax affairs to the Netherlands, all the while lobbying the Irish government to increase its aid budget. As you may recall, the Tax Justice Network estimates that if tax was paid on the money the world's rich have protected in tax havens, it would raise enough to finance those millennium development goals five times over. "I can understand how people outside the country wouldn't understand how Ireland got to its prosperity," Bono bleated to the Irish Times in the course of promoting his new album, "but everybody in Ireland knows that there are some very clever people in the government and in the revenue who created a financial architecture that prospered the entire nation - it was a way of attracting people to this country who wouldn't normally do business here. And the financial services brought billions of dollars every year directly to the exchequer. What's actually hypocritical is the idea that then you couldn't use a financial services centre in Holland." Now that Ireland's economy has gone belly up, you mean? He's not the brightest, is he? At least he's only parlayed himself into the role of Africa's messiah. For Mehta's part, she keeps waffling that "we have to achieve philanthropic parity". As I wrote here last week, philanthropy begins with paying tax, and given the super-rich's notorious capacity for weaselling out of it, the very last thing we should be slinging their way are further tax breaks, let alone control of aid budgets. From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Sat Feb 28 18:58:37 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Sat Feb 28 19:23:38 2009 Subject: [Mai-not] =?windows-1252?q?=60Let_us_rediscover_Marx=27_--_Two_t?= =?windows-1252?q?alks_on_Michael_Lebowitz=27s_=60Beyond_Capital=3A_Marx?= =?windows-1252?q?=92s_Political_Economy_of_the_Working_Class=27_=7C_Links?= Message-ID: <49A9F9DD.40509@greenleft.org.au> By *Michael A. Lebowitz* Michael Lebowitz will be a featured guest at the /World at a Crossroads/ conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and /Green Left Weekly/. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets. February 16, 2009 -- It is well known that when Karl Marx heard what people calling themselves Marxists were saying, he commented, ``all I know is that I am not a Marxist??. It is not as well known, however, that Marx had little respect for disciples in general. A theory disintegrates, he said, when disciples try to ``explain away?? problems in the theory -- when they engage in ``crass empiricism??, use ``phrases in a scholastic way??, and employ ``cunning argument?? to support the theory. A theory disintegrates, he said, when the point of departure of the disciples is ``no longer reality?? but the theory that the master produced. Although Marx had in mind what had happened to the theories of Hegel and Ricardo at the hands of their disciples, the problem he detected applies to his own theory. /Marx has had too many disciples /-- too many people who simply repeat the theory, too many people who argue endlessly that it is correct in the form that Marx left it. These are people whose mantra is the ``two whatevers?? -- whatever is in /Capital /is right, whatever is/ not /in /Capital /is wrong. With a dialectical perspective, however, we recognise that what is outside /Capital /is essential to understand what is inside it. Full article at http://links.org.au/node/921 Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373