Economic Crisis : It’s World-Wide and Long-Term

Posted on October 26, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


It’s not getting better any time soon.
By Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / October 26, 2008

See ‘US government throws oil on fire’ by Henry C K Liu, and ‘What now?’ by Jim Kunstler, Below.

The economic crisis is worldwide and long-term and I think is likely to be at least as bad as the great depression or worse, because this time we are facing increasing natural resource limitations. In brief, far more long term global debt has been issued in the recent bubble era than it is really possible to ever pay back. The USA has been running $2 billion a day trade deficits, about half to pay for imported oil, for a very long time, and the per capita US consumer debt is something like $20,000, not counting the mortgage stuff. There is a global bank run as everyone tries to pull out of their investments, so everyone is dumping commodities and hoarding dollars; we are now in a deflationary spiral.

The most savvy economic analyst (from my point of view), always with lots of numbers and examples to illustrate his points, is Henry C. K. Liu. Here is a long description of the underlying economics of our current situation, the beginning of which follows with a link to the entire story:

US government throws oil on fire
By Henry C. K. Liu / October 23, 2008

Free-market fundamentalists have been operating in denial mode for more than a year, since the US financial sector imploded in a credit crisis from excessive debt in August 2007, claiming that the economic fundamentals were still basically sound, even within the debt-infested financial sector.

As denial was rendered increasingly untenable by unfolding events, champions of market fundamentalism began clamoring for increasingly larger doses of government intervention in failed free markets around the world to restore sound market fundamentals. For the market fundamentalist faithful, this amounts to asking the devil to save god.

Aside from ideological inconsistency, the real cause of the year-long credit crisis has continued to be misdiagnosed in official circles whose members had until recently tirelessly promoted the merit of small government, perhaps even purposely by those in the position to know better and in whom society has vested power to prevent avoidable disaster. The diagnosis misjudged the current credit crisis as only a temporary liquidity quandary instead of recognizing it as a systemic insolvency. (See Fed helpless in its own crisis / Asia Times Online / Jan. 26, 2008.)

The misdiagnosis led to a flawed prognosis that the liquidity crunch could be uncorked by serial injections of more government funds into intractable credit and capital market seizure. This faulty rationale was based on the fantasy that distressed financial institutions holding assets that had become illiquid could be relieved by wholesale monetization of such illiquid asset with government loans, even if such government loans are collateralized by the very same illiquid assets that private investors have continued to shun in the open market.

It is not that government officials know more than market participants about the true value of these illiquid assets; it is only that government officials with access to taxpayers’ money have decided to ignore market forces to artificially support asset overvaluation, the original root cause of the problem. Instead of being the solution, the government with flawed responses backed by the people’s money has become part of the problem.

President George W Bush told the American people on October 10 that “the fundamental problem is this: As the housing market has declined, banks holding assets related to home mortgages have suffered serious losses. As a result of these losses, many banks lack the capital or the confidence in each other to make new loans. In turn, our system of credit has frozen, which is keeping American businesses from financing their daily transactions – and creating uncertainty throughout our economy.”

Skipping over the basic fact that the housing market has been declining because of a burst credit bubble, the president went on to identify five problems, the first of which is that “key markets are not functioning because there’s a lack of liquidity – the grease necessary to keep the gears of our financial system turning. So the Federal Reserve has injected hundreds of billions of dollars into the system. The Fed has joined with central banks around the world to coordinate a cut in interest rates. This rate cut will allow banks to borrow money more affordably – and it should help free up additional credit necessary to create jobs, and finance college education, and help American families meet their daily needs. The Fed has also announced a new program to provide support for the commercial paper market, which is freezing up. As the new program kicks in over the next week or so, it will help revive a key source of short-term financing for American businesses and financial institutions.”

Read all of this article here / Asia Times.

My own criticism of Liu is that he is mostly unaware of the profound economic implications of peak oil. It was a the sharp price rise in oil associated with a peaking in world oil production (peak oil is here now) that caused a global oil bidding war and cost-push inflation that finally sent the world economy into its current deflationary spiral. When the world economy is closely interconnected by finance capital, there are periodic global business cycles of overproduction, much like we have national recessions. Hundreds of trillions in derivatives have spread the risk of contraction everywhere.

It was about time for the hugely over-leveraged global credit bubble to lose steam, and sharply rising energy/transportation costs finally dragged the global economy down and initiated contraction, which is self-reinforcing on the way down. But sooner or later, maybe a year, all the newly created bailout money will get spent somewhere. My guess is that it will gravitate toward vital commodities like oil and food as declining oil production reasserts itself, and whoever has money will start bidding up these prices again. With decreasing oil, this is likely to reinitiate a raging bout of stagflation and then hyperinflation. You are quite unlikely to get a healthy recovery from a bunch of emergency bailouts aimed at the investment banks.

I will say the peak oil guys usually understand economics better the economists understand peak oil, probably since the latter are trained to ignore natural limits to growth. Kunstler is always fun to read and is one of the few who simultaneously understands peak oil and economics. Here’s Kunstler’s: “What Now?”

What Now?
By Jim Kunstler / October 20, 2008

It’s fascinating to read the commentators in mainstream journals like The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal all strenuously pretending that “the worst is over” (maybe… we hope… fingers crossed… hail Mary full of grace… et cetera). The cluelessness would be funny if it didn’t involve a world-changing catastrophe. All nations that have reached the fork-and-spoon level of civilization are now engineering a vast network of cyber-cables that lead directly from their central bank computers to the Death Star that is hovering above world financial affairs like a giant cosmic vacuum cleaner, sucking up dollars, euros, zlotys, forints, krona, what-have-you. As fast as the keystrokes create currency-pixels, the little electron-denominated units of exchange are sucked out of the terrestrial economies into the black hole of money death. That’s what the $700-billion bail-out (excuse me, “rescue plan”) and all its associated ventures are about.

To switch metaphors, let’s say that we are witnessing the two stages of a tsunami. The current disappearance of wealth in the form of debts repudiated, bets welshed on, contracts canceled, and Lehman Brothers-style sob stories played out is like the withdrawal of the sea. The poor curious little monkey-humans stand on the beach transfixed by the strangeness of the event as the water recedes and the sea floor is exposed and all kinds of exotic creatures are seen thrashing in the mud, while the skeletons of historic wrecks are exposed to view, and a great stench of organic decay wafts toward the strand. Then comes the second stage, the tidal wave itself — which in this case will be horrific monetary inflation — roaring back over the mud flats toward the land mass, crashing over the beach, and ripping apart all the hotels and houses and infrastructure there while it drowns the poor curious monkey-humans who were too enthralled by the weird spectacle to make for higher ground. The killer tidal wave washes away all the things they have labored to build for decades, all their poignant little effects and chattels, and the survivors are left keening amidst the wreckage as the sea once again returns to normal in its eternal cradle.

So, that’s what I think we will get: an interval of deflationary depression followed by a destructive wave of inflation that will wipe out both constructed debt and constructed savings, scraping the financial landscape clean. There’s no question that stage one is underway. But we can be sure the giant wave of money recklessly loaned into existence in just a few weeks time will wash back through the global economy leaving a swath of destruction.

And then what? The societies of the world will be faced with the task of rebuilding systems of fruitful activity, i.e., real economies based on productive behavior rather than the smoke-and-mirrors of Frankenstein-finance con games. In fact, excuse me while I switch metaphors again, because the Frankenstein story — the New Prometheus — is yet another apt narrative to inform us what we have done. We have “played” with financial fire and brought to life a monster now bent on killing us. One question that this metaphor-narrative raises is: when will the angry peasant mob storm the castle with their flaming brands and cries for blood from the makers of this monster? Rather soon, I think.

Perhaps, in some countries (maybe the USA, if we’re lucky), this will take the more orderly form of systematic prosecutions, bringing to justice persons who perpetrated swindles involving the alphabet soup of investment “products” that have gone bad in so many accounts (and ruined so many individuals, institutions, and governments). I think it has already begun with the inquisitors summoning the shifty Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers — but there are hundreds of other characters like him out there, who scored untold millions of dollars in activities that were simply grand swindles. I wouldn’t be surprised if, eventually, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson found himself in the dock to answer how come, when he ran Goldman Sachs, there was a special unit in the company dedicated to short-selling the very mortgage-backed securities that another unit in the company was so busy pawning off to every pension fund on God’s green earth.

Apart from orderly prosecutions (which can certainly turn harsh and cruel), there is the possibility of sociopolitical upheaval — revolution, violence, civil war, war between nations, the whole menu of monkey-human mischief that afflicts mankind. We are not necessarily immune to it here in the USA, despite our cherished notion of exceptionalism, which would have us inoculated against all the common vicissitudes of history.

Anyway, prosecution through the courts, while perhaps satisfying the hunger for justice (or, more particularly, revenge), is not a productive economic activity. So, the question begs itself again: what will we do? Under the best circumstances we will reorganize our society and economy at a lower level of energy use (and probably a lower scale of governance, too). The catch is, it will have to be a whole lot lower. I think we’ll be very lucky fifty years from now to have a few hours a day of electricity to do things with.

The energy story and its hand-maiden, the climate change situation, are both lurking out there beyond the immediate spectacle of the financial fiasco. Both these things imply pretty strongly that the economic relations currently unraveling will not be rebuilt — not the way they were before, or even close to it. The best outcome will be societies that can practice small-scale “process-intensive” organic agriculture and equally small-scale process-intensive modes of manufacture in the context of very local sociopolitical networks. An accompanying hope is that we can remain civilized in the process. Personally, while I recognize the appeal (to others, not me) of the “singularity” narrative, which has the human race making a sudden evolutionary leap into some kind of cyborg-nirvana, I regard it as an utter bullshit fantasy that has zero chance of occurring, given our stark predicament.

But returning to the short term, or “the present,” shall we say, there is the matter of how the US gets through the election and then the first months of a new government, even while the larger fiasco continues. I’m voting for Mr. Obama. While I believe he will make a much better president than the addled old mad dog Mr. McCain has become, I feel sorry for anyone who is placed nominally “in charge” of things this coming year. The best a President Obama can do is offer some reassurance to a public that is totally unprepared for the convulsion now upon us. Mr. Obama will certainly not have “money” to “spend” on any of the promised social support programs that have been endlessly debated. But he could clearly articulate the reality we’re facing, and ask not necessarily for “sacrifice,” as the common plea goes, but for something more and better: for bravery and resolute spirit, for intelligence and resilience, for kindness and generosity — among a people long unused to consorting with the better angels of their nature. He’s already begun to set the example by appearing in public with his sleeves rolled up. The change that has been in the air all year — that Mr. Obama has talked so much about — is coming in a bigger dose than anyone expected. I hope we’re ready to get with the program.

[Jim Kunstler’s new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers.]

Source / Clusterfuck Nation

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Another of the "Coalition of the Willing" Leaves

Posted on October 26, 2008 by RagBlog


Kazakhstan Withdraws Troops from Iraq
By John C. K. Daly / October 24, 2008

The strategic seismic shockwave unleashed throughout the former Soviet Union by the August military confrontation between Georgia and Russia continues to reverberate throughout the Caucasus and Central Asia, as national leaders there reassess their relationships with Washington and Moscow. During the clash Azerbaijan, unable to use either the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline or its backup oil export routes through Georgia, shifted petroleum exports northward to Russia through the Baku-Novorossiysk line and initiated its first oil swap with Iran, both temporary solutions that Baku is now considering extending.

As the conflict has put an apparent chill on Caspian and Caucasian nations’ interest in new pipelines ignoring the Kremlin’s wishes, the momentum against embracing unilateral military relations with the U.S. also seems to be gathering pace. On October 22 Kazakhstan, the Caspian’s other rising petro-state, provided Washington with a small but significant military gesture in the aftermath of the Caucasus clash by withdrawing its peacekeepers from Iraq. In a concurrent move largely unnoticed in the media, Georgia has also withdrawn its forces.

In its Iraq Weekly Status Report the U.S. Department of State briefly noted:

“Georgia and Kazakhstan held end-of-mission ceremonies at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Delta in Wasit province October 20, formally concluding their participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Both Georgia and Kazakh troops operated primarily from FOB Delta, conducting various missions including humanitarian assistance operations, explosive ordnance disposal, convoy security, perimeter and base defense, quick reaction force duties, and traffic control points operations” (Iraq Weekly Status Report, Unclassified, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department of State, October 22).

The Kazakh Ministry of Defense (MoD) press service was more forthcoming and posted an announcement about the withdrawal on its website in Russian but, interestingly enough, not in Kazakh or English (http://www.mod.kz/indexd0a5.html?post=9&id=1263(=rus)).

The MoD noted, “In five years Kazakhstan’s peacekeeping contingent completely fulfilled its task and completed its mission in Iraq. At the request of the government of Iraq and in connection with the significant stabilization of the situation, Kazakh soldiers returned home.”

The decision to withdraw the forces followed a three-day visit to Iraq, beginning on October 18 by a Kazakh Ministry of Defense delegation led by Deputy Defense Minister Lieutenant-General Bolat Sembinov. During the visit Sembinov met with General Raymond Odierno, Commanding General of Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), and with Iraqi National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Defense Minister Abdul Qader al-Obaidi, Interior Ministry military operations director Abdelaziz Mohammed Jasim, and Latif Hamad Alturfa, the governor of Iraq’s southern Wasit Province, where the Kazakh troops were deployed.

Defense Minister Daniyal subsequently commented on the contingent’s performance during a working visit to the Atyrau region, telling journalists:

“We withdrew our group from Iraq. Our soldiers did a very decent job, defusing more than 5 million mines and stocks of ammunition and shells. Kazakh doctors, together with their Iraqi colleagues and counterparts from other countries, provided medical assistance to more than 500 Iraqis. I am satisfied overall with the actions of our units in Iraq. Our troops gained experience working in difficult conditions. And most importantly, the military fulfilled a very important duty and assisted in restoring peace and stability in the country” (Nomad, October 22).

The symbolic value of the Kazakh presence in Iraq, which began in September 2003, far outweighed its actual numbers at any given time. Over five years nine contingents totaling 290 Kazakh peacekeeping troops were rotated through Iraq, most recently last May.

If the withdrawal of Kazakh troops from Iraq symbolizes Astana’s changing bilateral military relationship with Washington in the twilight of the Bush administration, its larger military commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization remain undiminished. While in Atyrau, Akhmetov reaffirmed Kazakhstan’s intention to maintain its Partnership for Peace (PfP) relationship with NATO. In commenting on his recent visit to Brussels, Akhmetov said, “We received a positive assessment of the Republic of Kazakhstan’s cooperation with this very important bloc. The partnership is particularly effective in such areas as peacekeeping and the security sector, for example, assistance on land and at sea” (Kazinform, October 23). Last month Kazakh, British, and U.S. troops held their annual “Steppe Eagle 2008” joint peacekeeping exercise near Almaty from September 15 to September 27, which was attended by the NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia, Ambassador Robert F. Simmons (www.nato.int/docu/update/2008/09-september/e0915e.html).

While the U.S. can hardly be happy about losing another member of the rapidly dwindling “coalition of the willing,” it seems that Astana is merely deemphasizing unilateral military commitments to Washington and merging them with larger multilateral structures, such as NATO and the OSCE.

If the U.S. administration is perturbed about the political fallout from the Caucasian confrontation with its new-found Eurasian allies, Moscow is equally distressed. Russia has also drawn lessons from its confrontation with Georgia about the reliability of its relations with its Commonwealth of Independent States associates Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan and associate member Turkmenistan (Georgia, under Section 1, Article 9 of the CIS Charter served notice on August 18 of its intention to withdraw, which becomes effective on August 17, 2009).

On September 22 President of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences General Makhmut Akhmetovich Gareev commented bitterly about the tepid response of Russia’s CIS colleagues to the Georgian crisis, remarking,

The entire West came out against us and CIS countries are vacillating to this day following Russia’s decisive actions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and against this general background the old truth was clearly highlighted once again: under all circumstances only two allies, the Army and Navy, invariably remain for Russia at a difficult time (Krasnaia Zvezda, October 22).

Disappointment in partners aside, perhaps bellicose politicians in both Moscow and Washington might reflect upon the old Russian peasant proverb, “It’s a broad road that leads to war, but a narrow path that leads home again.” As both nations are finding out, their soldiers are walking that path increasingly alone.

Source / Eurasia Daily Monitor

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World Hunger: Such a Goddamned Nuisance

Posted on October 26, 2008 by RagBlog


World Food Day: Global Crises’ Double Standards
By Ramzy Baroud / October 25, 2008

The 25th annual World Food Day, marked on 16 October, was an occasion whose arrival and passing received little media attention or governmental fanfare. Evidently, much of the world media and governments are consumed with an economic crisis of epic proportions, which is perceived in the US as the worst such upheaval since the Great Depression. In the rest of the world, it’s depicted as the worst economic crisis in recent memory or, as the BBC termed it, “the most tumultuous times on record in the global financial markets.”

There is hardly any disagreement that Wall Street’s woes are manmade. Regardless of what terminology one wishes to apply (miscalculations, greed, or wholesale failure in the US capitalist system, rooted in the economic philosophies of Milton Friedman and his ultra laissez- faire approach), the fact is the US economic crisis is not a fleeting phenomenon and no quick fixes can provide a magic remedy.

In an interview with Fox Business Network, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson expressed regret, unusual to any top US official, for the economic “mistakes” made and which are promising a global recession for years to come. “We’re not proud of all the mistakes that were made by many different people, different parties, failures of our regulatory system, failures of market discipline that got us here.” However, he promised that the US “will mitigate the impact on the real economy and we’ll get this financial system working again.”

There is no reason to doubt Paulson’s commitment to the financial system. In fact, when it’s the rich and powerful whose wealth and influence are at stake, the US government, if not most world governments, hold true to their word. While the IMF had repudiated governments in Asia, Africa and South America for many years for any slight intervention in their country’s economies (for a “free market economy” has to be entirely unregulated in order for natural checks and balances to resolve whatever crisis is at hand, they were told), the Bush administration and leading Western powers moved with no hesitation to nationalise some of the largest institutions in their own markets. Like China’s brand of capitalism that operates under communist symbols, the US, the UK and others are becoming increasingly socialist under the banner of capitalism. Of course, it’s not socialism for the downtrodden, but corporate welfare in its most stark manifestations.

Consider the size of the entire US GDP for 2007 — $13,800 billion — to appreciate the awesomeness of the US rescue package of $700 billion. Still, in the UK the percentage is much higher as the country’s GDP for 2007 was estimated at $2,457 billion while the government’s rescue package is $680 billion. A more astonishing number: the rescue package for the entire Eurozone estimated at $1,370 billion. Conventional wisdom, as parroted by almost every financial expert on most media outlets, states that such lofty numbers are simply a reflection of the scale of the crisis at hand. In fact, some argue that the Bush administration’s greatest fault is intervening too little too late, by failing to nationalise Lehman Bros as it did Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It’s rather ironic that those who cried foul every time a Third World government dared intervene in their national economy — even if to guarantee the welfare of the poorest segments of society — said nothing as the US, the UK and others defied every rule of the free market economy long championed by neoliberal economists. Even leading US Republicans who chastised “Big Government” at every turn (especially to block welfare programmes that mostly benefit the poor) cheered the government on as it moved to bail out the rich who, as usual, are likely to remain unaccountable for risking the retirement funds and life savings of millions of Americans.

A dominant argument to justify government behaviour is, yet again, the trickle down effect: a term coined by a Ronald Reagan speechwriter that simply means that what is good for the rich is, eventually, good for the poor. While elites in every society eagerly infuse such “Reaganomics” at every turn, the world’s poor is yet to feel the trickles, which poses an interesting question: Why the unprecedented and historic urgency to bailout the rich (for the sake of the poor, at an imaginary point in the future), while the poor can easily be saved without such roundabouts plans?

The fact is that neither America’s poor nor Africa’s poor are on the minds of European leaders, nor the Bush administration, as their high officials continue to hold anxious meetings and offer the most generous rescue packages. If indeed it’s the plight of humanity that is worrying these governments, then maybe they should consider the following, according to Oxfam, UK: “The number of hungry people now stands at 967 million. And around 24,000 people die daily of hunger-related causes. Around 2.7 billion people live on less than £1 a day; up to 80 per cent of this income goes on food.” Care International’s calculations are equally bleak, with 220 million people of the number above on the brink of starvation.

According to Oxfam, the main reasons for world poverty are also manmade: “biofuel policies, high fuel prices, growing global demand, unfair world trade rules, and climate change.” Long before the Wall Street financial crisis, there existed a much more dangerous crisis, the world food crisis, dubbed a “perfect storm”. The latter is much more consequential for it affected the very lives, not simply the standard of living, of many millions around the world.

Barbara Stocking wrote in the New Statesman, “According to the latest figures, the food crisis has resulted in an extra 119 million malnourished people, bringing the total to almost one billion — nearly one in seven people now goes hungry. This is hunger on so vast a scale that it is difficult to understand how the world arrived at this point.”

It’s very telling that trillions have already been spent to patch up leading world financial institutions, while out of the comparatively small sum of $12.3 billion pledged in Rome earlier this year, to offset the food crisis, only $1 billion has been delivered. The hope that at least extreme poverty can be eradicated by the end of 2015, as stipulated in the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, seems as unrealistic as ever, not due to lack of resources but a lack of true concern for the world’s poor.

Whether the American, European or any other government infused bailout packages rectify the financial crisis or not, chances are that 16 October 2009 will bring similarly devastating news about the plight of the world’s poor and which is likely to remain that: mere “news” that requires little action, if any at all.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

Source / ZNet

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Expecting Change with a New Leader? Think Again

Posted on October 25, 2008 by RagBlog


Shame And The 2008 Election
By Angie Riedel / October 25, 2008

The presidential election is only a matter of days away now. I wish I could say there is reason to be optimistic that it will bring an end to the reign of greed and destruction of the bush regime. The reality is that there is little to be optimistic about.

A new president will not herald the changes we want and so desperately need. There will be no more than a changing of faces that will still tell us lies. We will still have a king instead of a leader. He will still act as though the constitution is somewhere between optional and flat out objectionable.

We will still have a government that is separated from us, that asserts a right to be above us and to rule over us with two separate sets of laws. The laws for themselves forgive every felony and lie, and excuse every wrongful death, theft and trespass. The laws for us forgive nothing, excuse nothing, and mete out brutal punishments and imprisonment even before crimes have been committed.

We will still be held hostage by, and held accountable for the mental midgetry of our disconnected elites. We will still have multimillionaire legislators and multimillionaire White House denizens who’s services are already pre-purchased by people whose interests are in direct conflict with our own.

Too many of our elected pseudo-deities literally have no idea what it means to work for a dollar, or to struggle to get by, or to slowly drown in insurmountable debt and burden until the point is finally reached where there are no further options and everything is lost. They have no idea what it’s like to feel yourself going down for the last count while nobody seems to care. I guarantee you, they don’t know, and they don’t care. They’re too busy handing free hundreds of billions of our hard earned dollars to billionaire bankers who blow more cash on a few days at the spa than ten of us earn in a year. They call that a “bail out”. What it needs to be called is a bald faced rip off the likes of which has never been seen, the biggest most despicable financial heist in living history.

No discussion whatsoever has been raised to change the system of the ultra rich sucking the life blood out of the struggling working class, and nothing will be done to change it. Therefore no matter who wins the prestigious career prize of the presidency, we the people will still not be served. We will continue to be used, marginalized and lied to while they rip us off and treat us with ever more disrespect. Who’s going to stop them? They’re supposed to be stopping themselves.

Where are the checks and balances? That’s a dang good question. They’re gone. And I’m sorry but whoever the next president is, do you really expect him to bring them back?

It’s always been the case that every right and freedom we’ve ever won for ourselves has only come about through tremendous struggle, and with our government fighting us every step of the way; and now that process will be harder than ever. The very idea of the people having anything resembling a fair share of prosperity or having any true freedom has become officially undesirable. Such things would threaten the imperial rule of this globalist oligarchy. All that matters to them is themselves. The only other thing that matters is that we comply. And should we fail to comply the punishments are ever more swift in coming.

I wish I could say that democracy and freedom have not been imprisoned, tortured and murdered along with the still uncounted civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they are every bit as dead as the innocent citizens of those foreign lands, and every bit as dead and wounded and permanently disabled as our own soldiers who went to those foreign lands with the desire to serve and do something good for those people and yet so often ended up betrayed, disillusioned, abandoned and treated like chattel.
In spite of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans have made it perfectly clear that we want our troops pulled out of the Middle East now, both of the leading candidates have already pledged to keep all battlefronts going, and to fund them and even to send more troops abroad. The 2008 election won’t bring an end to the militarism we abhor, it will extend it.

The depth and breadth of the damage done in the small space of eight years truly exceeds comprehension. Please don’t believe it was all a string of accidents made by inept and clumsy clowns and morons. This much destruction took a tremendous amount of planning and concerted effort to achieve. It is no accident that it all plays right into the hands of those who want to shove their one world government and Agenda 21 treachery down our throats.

The neo-con machine has consciously worked to undo and destroy everything we believe in and stand for. Bush has recklessly spent more money than all presidents before him combined. He has broken every rule of democratic government in the name of his self-proclaimed imperial right to be “the decider”. He’s broken every law he didn’t like in spite of being well counseled that it’s still criminal when the president does it. This president proclaimed his own lawbreaking to be his presidential prerogative, as if his own personal desires are of more value than the laws we need to protect us specifically from the likes of him. That won’t change with the 2008 elections. What president is going to give up having imperial power?

The bush regime has consistently treated the working class and the poor with disrespect and contempt. Every assault on our freedoms and rights has been carried out with characteristic smugness and arrogance. His anti-democracy team purposely sought to undermine and redefine freedom, rights and justice not to improve upon these concepts but to negate them.

Little if anything that belongs to us has been left unmolested. We’ve had sweeping attacks on all of our rights and now none of them remain intact enough to afford us the protection that was all we had to defend ourselves with. A million names on the no-fly list, “free speech zones”, gag orders, kidnapping and torture, and trashing the Geneva Conventions are barely the beginning.

Property rights, health rights, parenting rights are all in some stage of being totally usurped by the government. Rights to privacy, to be safe and secure in our own homes and with our own property, these are mere memories. Reasonable expectations of common sense business and industrial regulations to protect us from all manner of corporate greed, predation, malfeasance and unconscionable usury, these literally no longer exist. No more legal protection from intrusive, warrantless wiretaps and unregulated collection of all of our most intimate, personal data, permanently stored and on sale cheap. In all good sense, in every legal sense and in common decency these things should never have happened.

Warrantless searches, seizures and destruction of our personal property by brutal thugs called police; the infiltration and tracking of our private lives, personal associations and activities; being squeezed to the marrow for tax dollars that are shamelessly wasted on the extravagances of the wealthy and well protected; a CIA owned and manipulated press with a multimillion dollar budget used to lie to us; the overturn of posse comitatus; these have all been made reality with subterfuge or with devious tactical legislation specifically devised to negate our rights. This short list doesn’t even begin to cover the long list of abuses that this government is now legally entitled to perpetrate against us. If you think the next president is going to turn any of that around, don’t hold your breath. You’ll be long dead and none of this will have changed, at least not for the better.

Protecting and defending our rights, our freedom, the constitution, or ensuring there is a bona fide democratic process was not a part of this government’s game plan. On the contrary. They set out to destroy all of these things for us, while retaining frighteningly exalted versions of them only for themselves. Our lives, our values and our laws mean nothing to these people. So, today, in accordance with their extremist belief system, Americans will only get as much freedom and justice as they can afford to buy, and trust me, you and I can’t afford them.

The same goes for our health and food and all basic human necessities. Henceforth, it is official that if you can’t afford these things because of the despicable fiscal policies of this government then you’ll just have to die, apparently. You’ll also have to bear the insult of being blamed for being victimized by zealous ideologues and their system of rampant corruption and raging anti-American values.

Are there still any Christians out there who believe these people are following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ? Good God, I hope not. They are the obscene and defiant antithesis of Christ.

Did you hear what the president’s press secretary had to tell us about our crisis of unemployment? Bush will veto legislation that would extend the number of weeks of unemployment benefits for American workers who cannot find work. The unavailability of work due to tens of millions of jobs being sent off to other countries does not warrant any extension of unemployment benefits for working people. After handing the breath taking instant, no-strings attached free gift of $850 Billion dollars to billionaire bankers to bail them out of their gambling debts at our expense, our need for food to eat and a roof over our heads does not warrant the puny amount of dollars required to save our very lives.

Hundreds of billions of dollars, no, trillions of dollars have flowed like cheap wine through the office of this president as though there was no end to it, as though it was free for the taking in limitless amounts. With borrowed billions he has greased the greedy palms of favored cronies, war profiteers, loyalist campaign contributors, billionaire bankers and fellow multimillionaire capitalists, and he’s even paying off the selfsame terrorist insurgents that he initially sent us overseas to kill. Now they’re on the payroll too. It seems everyone is being lavishly rewarded with our money, except us.

In all history never have the rich been so rich. Glutting themselves on the people’s money, their wealth has expanded so profoundly that it’s literally obscene. And yet our national infrastructure is crumbling away. Bankrupt cities and counties are in dire need of major updates and maintenance of public roads, buildings and public utilities. Bridges and highway overpasses are collapsing, levies are breaking, hurricanes and floods are demolishing cities, fires rage across thousands of acres, drought scorches vast areas of numerous states, and people are dying from all of these things; a million families are losing their homes, losing their dreams, losing their prosperity and hope.

Did the people who suffered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina’s burst levies receive any of that luxurious and speedy multibillion dollar generosity? No, afraid not. Still not. Sorry. That sort of thing just doesn’t appeal to the interests of the wealthiest people in the world.

The small percentage of citizens that own outright the vast majority of all our nation’s wealth don’t care about anyone but themselves. They exist to gratify their own greed and they do it by raping this nation and its citizens. They’re not about to feel bad about it. They’re much too morally bankrupt and proud of it to give a damn how much harm they cause, or how much suffering they leave in their wake. They prefer to focus on their own luxuries and comforts, to enjoy their prestige and overwhelming advantages. They fully expect us to be fine with that, and even to support it. They’ve shown us this repeatedly and without exception with their own actions and have told us so in their own words over and again.

There is nothing there to be proud of.

Nothing so shameful as this should ever have reached into imagination much less have been achieved. What manner of despicable beings are these? How can these people bear to be inside their own skins? They are revolting in the truest sense of the word. They are utter and abject failures as human beings.

There is nothing to feel but shame from predating other people or from bludgeoning other people into submission or to death. There is no conceivable reason to feel pride after lying, deceiving, stealing and in every other way cheating to gain the desired ends. Cheating is not winning, it is stealing and it is lying, it’s something to be ashamed of. Winning is something that can only be done fairly, ethically and morally and none of these people are burdened by any obligations to moral considerations. They truly are, at least in my deeply sincere opinion, amongst the literal scum of the earth. Few could aspire to become any lower life form than these people. They thoroughly disgust me.

I am ashamed of what this country has been turned into. I am ashamed of the immorality and disdain for ethics those in authority have so widely sown and made normal. I am ashamed of the arrogance and the shocking cruelty of our leadership and their sickening inability to tell the truth or take responsibility, or to show respect to anyone outside of their own private clan. This is a rapacious clique of billionaire thieves flying death flags of the Free Market instead of championing a free world. These are delusional ideologues desperate to justify their unjustifiable behavior by repeating romanticized odes to dead capitalist theorists and with dialogues of phony religiosity used as cover for their raging greed, racism, sexism, and classism. They are bullies and cowards always leaving the hard work to others, always taking the cream for themselves and leaving the clean up behind for their victims to cope with. These are not decent people.

I can’t count how many times my stomach has been turned listening to the arrogant insincerity of these men and women who say they are there to serve us but who only serve themselves. We have been besieged by tragedy and destruction from within and without; and we should never have to endure vicious attacks from within. True to form, in the wake of every disaster they’ve stepped up and served themselves, helped themselves to more of what they want, grabbing ever more for themselves at our expense, leaving us to flounder and beg and fend for ourselves. After robbing us of our wealth it is not possible for us to fend for ourselves, you bastards.

They’ve spun countless lies to cover their criminal acts and more lies designed to inspire fear and weakness, tearing us apart. They’ve created enemies and threats we never had before they arrived. They’ve used their monopoly of media and their wealth to fabricate the illusion that everyone agrees with them and supports them when nothing could be further from the truth. They do not even have the courage to show us who they really are or to let us see the condition this country is really in, burying international reports, gagging scientists and medical experts and demanding censorship and even outright fraud. They have truly earned the deep contempt that is felt for them all over the world.

Shame on them for their icy hearts of stone. Shame on them for their ravenous greed, their incivility, and their dishonesty. Shame on them for their world record breaking selfishness. Mountains of shame on them.

These people are the walking embodiments of shame. They are the living, breathing personification of all the worst qualities that men can possess. They have no honor, no compassion and no desire for either. They have abused the trust of tens of millions of people who would do anything asked of them because they believe in the rightness and honor of their leadership.

It is profoundly unwise to follow unproven strangers just because they are in positions of authority, and though many who did so have since come to bitterly regret it, they have still not learned the lesson and they will simply do it again. Next month.

To anyone sputtering on themselves because they’re enraged at my failure to properly notice our wonderful American freedoms, or because they still, for some incomprehensible reason, believe and support the bush crime family, you are pounding your fists in defense of the very predators who have ripped you off which you can’t see or admit to because of your brainwashing; a gift to you courtesy of those same conniving liars. But spare me your protestations for this simple reason: the powers that be have no moral ground to stand on. None. I can’t think of even one single thing they’ve done to make this nation stronger, healthier or more prosperous. It is not more free, it is less free. It is not more just, it is less just. It is not more prosperous it is rife with unemployment and an economy teetering on the brink of total collapse. They’ve cleaned us out and left us bankrupt. There’s not a single thing in their well documented history that this country can feel proud of. All that’s been done has been done in deceit and disdain not only for us but for people all over the world. They have absolutely nothing to their credit.

Legitimate leaders take responsibility, they do not claim to have rights of control over the lives of others. Genuine leaders do not demand compliance to their arbitrary personal beliefs and selfish goals. Legitimate leaders empower and strengthen those they lead, they do not predate them or cheat them or deprive them of justice, nor do they force a nation to its knees in poverty and worry about the future. They do not bankrupt the nation and pocket the cash. They do not create enemies everywhere they go due to their stubborn, small minded ignorance, arrogance and hypocrisy. They do not call for wars based on lies and deceit in order to serve the goals of another country at the expense of our own goals, prosperity and progress. They do not militarize the police force and teach it to hate and violate the public at will without fear of accountability. They’re leaving no legacy beyond their profound criminal greed and dishonesty. So what are you defending? Your right to be violated?

True leaders don’t take, they give. These people have done nothing but take. All they’ve given us is a bottomless nightmare to contend with and right on cue, they will all be long gone, safe and snug and comfortable when the worst comes to kick the rest of us down and cause us more suffering than most of us can handle. This will not end with the bush administration, this is the new normal.

I’m sorry, but no matter who is elected, if they even are fairly elected, there will be very little difference between tomorrow and today. None of the critical problems and core issues that have taken us so far from where we were and who we are, have ever been mentioned. If they’re not even mentioned, then there is no possibility that anything can change.

We are on our own.

If freedom actually means anything to anyone, it’s time to ponder that fact well and decide where you stand on it. Then realize the 2008 presidential elections will not bring us out of this terrible tide, but with all intent and capability will push us further into it.

www.thinkorbeeaten.blogspot.com

Source / Information Clearing House

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Iraq Status of Forces Agreement Languishes

Posted on October 25, 2008 by RagBlog


Iraq’s prime minister won’t sign U.S. troop deal
By Roy Gutman / October 24, 2008

BAGHDAD — Fearing political division in the parliament and in his country, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki won’t sign the just-completed agreement on the status of U.S. forces in Iraq, a leading lawmaker said Friday.

The new accord’s demise would be a major setback for the Bush administration, which has been seeking to establish a legal basis for the extended presence of the 151,000 U.S. troops in this country, and for Iraq, which won notable concessions in the draft accord reached a week ago.

“No, he will not” submit the agreement to the parliament, Sheikh Jalal al Din al Sagheer, the deputy head of the Shiite Muslim Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, told McClatchy. “For this matter, we need national consensus.”

Instead, Sagheer said, Iraq’s political leaders are considering seeking an extension of the United Nations mandate for the presence of U.S. troops, which will expire on Dec. 31. Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, has assured Iraq that it wouldn’t veto an extension, he said, adding that one was likely to last between six months and a year.

Ali al Adeeb, the chief of staff of Maliki’s Dawa party, said Wednesday that the Iraqi parliament “cannot approve this pact in its current form.”

Top U.S. military officials have warned of serious consequences if the agreement isn’t signed. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said earlier this week that Iraq’s forces “will not be ready to provide for their security” after the current U.N. mandate runs out. “And in that regard there is great potential for losses of significant consequence,” Mullen said.

Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told USA Today: “Without (a security agreement), we would potentially have to cease all operations.”

Iraqis, however, are adamant that the accord must be open to further amendments if they’re to approve it.

“The problem is that when we were given the latest draft, we were told the American negotiators will accept no amendments to it, and the Iraqi government has more requirements,” said Sagheer, an Islamic cleric who later led the Friday prayers broadcast on national television.

He said that Maliki had come to the Political Council for National Security, a top decision-making body, and said the new accord was the best he could obtain, but it didn’t include everything that Iraq wanted.

If Maliki signed the accord and turned it over to the parliament, “I’m sure that the agreement will not be approved for 10 years,” Sagheer said.

The cleric said the draft accord was “good, in general,” but its timing was bad. If an Iraqi negotiator accepted the agreement, “he will be taken as an agent for the Americans,” and if he were to reject it, “he will be taken for an agent for Iran.”

A second factor is that the accord comes just before the U.S. elections, and an Iraqi negotiator had to ask whether it was best to negotiate with the lame-duck Bush administration or wait for its successor. More important, Sagheer said, are the approaching provincial elections in Iraq, which could be held early next year.

“Iraqi politicians don’t want to give their competitors the chance to use this agreement to destroy them,” he said.

The accord contains a number of American concessions, calling for U.S. troops to withdraw to their bases by June 2009 and to leave Iraq by the end of 2011 — both dates subject to extension, but only if the Iraqi government requests it.

The accord also would allow Iraq to prosecute U.S. troops except when they’re on U.S. bases or on military operations, strips private military contractors of U.S. legal protection and reclaims control over Baghdad’s “Green” zone, the location of the U.S. Embassy and military headquarters and much of the Iraqi government’s headquarters.

Sagheer said that setting a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal was a “historic” accomplishment.

He also acknowledged that an extension of the current U.N. mandate might not reflect the gains made in the status of forces draft.

“For everything there is a price,” he said. “And although (the accord) has many advantages, it also has many disadvantages, as it does for the coalition forces.”

The problem for Iraqis, he said, was “the feeling with some of the parties that America has no intention of withdrawing within the timetable.” Iraqis, he said, had so many negative experiences while a British mandate under the League of Nations from 1920 to 1932 that they fear a written agreement. “We have the feeling that if the Iraqi government accepts the demands, it will give a legal right to be occupied, so we don’t have any kind of sovereignty.”

Other politicians said that if Washington agrees to extend the negotiations, the talks will never end.

“This is all a game to win time. When the current issues are settled, they will just find new ones. . . . They are delaying to appease Iran,” said Mithal al Alusi, a secular Sunni legislator whos’ critical of the current Shiite-led government.

(Corinne Reilly of the Merced, Calif., Sun-Star, and McClatchy special correspondents Hussein Kadhim and Mohamed al Dulaimy contributed to this article.)

Source / McClatchy

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Vetting John McCain : The Keating Five Scandal

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

John McCain, with his lawyers, before he testified before the Senate Ethics Committee in 1991 about his involvement in the Keating Five scandal. Photo by Andrea Mohin / NYT.

John McCain, Charles Keating and the S&L Scandal
By Sherman De Brosse / The Rag Blog / October 25, 2008

This is the fourth in a series by Rag Blog contributor Sherman De Brosse, a retired history professor, on John McCain, his shady involvements, past and present, and his wrong-headed and ill-informed political positions.

Twice, John McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five Scandal has intruded in the current political campaign. When Sarah Palin and John Mc Cain started associating Barack Obama with William Ayers, the Obama campaign put up a video about it. The mainstream media did not follow up by explaining what it was all about.

The matter came up again with the “Joe the Plumber” phenomenon because Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher bears the same name as Charles Keating’s son-in-law and executive vice president. Some see a connection because that is a rare last name and some people with that name are big GOP contributors. It is probably purely coincidental, but McCain’s deep involvement in the scandal is important because it reflects on his character and long-time pattern of delivering for big contributors.

Banker Charles Keating also got into the Phoenix business of befriending Arizona politicians. He gave a $55,000 campaign contribution to Bob Corbin, a former Marley employee, who ran unopposed for attorney general. He would supervise state-chartered banks. Keating got his start as a lawyer for Carl Lindner, who made great profits from the Vietnam War. One of the nation’s wealthiest men, Lindner owned seven S&L’s that were to fail. As owner of United Brands, he was in a position to reap profits from the government’s secret programs to fund and supply the Nicaraguan contras through Honduras.

Keating purchased property for his office in Phoenix from a mob-connected attorney in 1980. He had a mansion in the Bahamas, where the same attorney family had a casino.

Prudential Insurance loaned him $2 million in 1985. He had numerous dealings with BCCI, which turned out to be the bank of crooks and criminals.

Keating had invested 17.5 million in TrendInvest without notifying his American Continental board. Walter Bush, cousin to the current president, was involved with Continental, which later collapsed. There were many other baffling investments. Some think he was laundering CIA money involved in its Latin American operations.

Keating had a business relationship with Hensley. Keating was good at buying political influence, and he had a ten year close relationship with John McCain, donating about $112,000 to McCain campaigns. Nine times, he paid to transport McCain’s family and babysitter to his place in the Bahamas, often on a private plane. In addition, he permitted Cindy and her father to buy into a lucrative shopping center in California. In return McCain helped him convince Ronald Reagan to deregulate the Savings and Loan industry and place a Keating friend on the board that regulated it. Deregulation was a green light for Keating to build the Phoenician, a resort, in partnership with the rulers of Kuwait. The federal government seized it in February, 1989. His bellmen were permitted to remove 24 cartons of documents.

When the Feds started investigating Keating, McCain organized the “Keating Five” senators to put pressure on the Federal Home Loan Bank board to back off. At one point McCain even demanded that the chairman of that board not participate in the investigation of Keating.

When Keating began to get into trouble and marketed $230 million in bad bonds, he came up with a scheme to cover them with profits from a water scheme. He and a partner bought up a lot of water rights and then had the legislature pass a law requiring Phoenix to first buy as much water as Keating could sell before going to other vendors. They planned to pump about a million acre feet of water in a year. De Concini would also profit because he had purchased some water rights. Such a scheme could only take place in a state where the press looked the other way and the politicians were largely corrupt. The Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette were owned by the family of Dan Quayle.

The Arizona House of Representatives breezed the bill through in two days, but Jerry Gilespie held up things in the Senate. He found a way to stop it dead in its tracks, but he lost his seat in the next election. No wire service reported the story but it was covered by Phoenix Magazine in 1989. This doomed Keating.

As late as May, 1988, Keating thought he had won his battle against the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. On the 20th, he threw a big party because Senators Mc Cain and De Concini, with three others, had succeeded in having the investigation of his Lincoln Savings moved from San Francisco to Washington. In excitement, he removed his shirt to reveal a tee shirt with a skull and bones superimposed over the letters FHLBB. He had spent a million dollars buying politicians. It looked like he had won, but he was done in when the water scheme petered out.

Keating was eventually fined 3.6 billion and sent to prison. He has been called the father of the S&L crisis. McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and was only told he exercised “poor judgment.” Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties that seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform. Mrs. McCain retained her profitable partnership with Keating.

See other Rag Blog articles by Sherman DeBrosse on John McCain and Sarah Palin.

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Sarah Palin and the Anti-Abortion Terrorists

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Sarah Palin gave anti-abortion terrorists ‘a wink and a nod.’
by MissLaura / October 25, 2008

Terrorism:

n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

Sarah Palin, as Meteor Blades wrote, gave anti-abortion terrorists a wink and a nod when she refused to use the word “terrorist” to describe clinic bombers.

At Blue Hampshire, Mike Caulfield has a list of their victims:

Donald L. Catron
Claudia Gilmore
Shot 12/28/91 at
Central Health Center for Women in Springfield, Missouri
Victims: Wounded

Dr. David Gunn
Shot 3/10/93 at clinic in Pensacola, Florida
Victim: Murdered

Dr. George Tiller
Shot 8/19/93 at clinic in Wichita, Kansas
Victim: Wounded

Dr. Wayne Patterson
Shot in Mobile, Alabama
Victim: Murdered

Dr. John Britton
James Barrett
June Barrett
Shot 7/29/94 outside clinic in Pensacola, Florida
Victims: Murdered (John and James) and wounded (June)

Dr. Garson Romalis
Shot 11/8/94 at home in Vancouver, British Columbia
Victim: Wounded
Terrorist: At large.

Shannon Lowney
Leanne Nichols
Shot 12/30/94 at clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts
Victims: Murdered
Terrorist: John Salvi.

Anjana Agrawal
Antonio Hernandez
Brian Murray
Jane Sauer
Richard J. Seron
Shot 12/94 at clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts
Victims: Wounded

Dr. Hugh Short
Shot 11/10/95 at home in Ancaster, Ontario
Victim: Wounded

Dr. Calvin Jackson
Stabbed 12/96 outside the Orleans Women’s Clinic in New Orleans, Louisiana
Victim: Wounded

Unidentified Victims
4-7 victims of 2 bombs 1/16/97 outside the Northside Family Planning Services clinic near Atlanta, Georgia
Victims: Wounded

Unidentified Doctor
Shot 10/28/97 at home in Perinton, New York
Victim: Wounded

Dr. Jack Fainman
Shot 11/11/97 at home in Winnipeg, Manitoba
Victim: Wounded

Officer Robert Sanderson
Bombed 1/29/98 outside New Woman, All Women Health Care Clinic in Birmingham, Alabama
Victim: Murdered

Emily Lyons
Bombed 1/29/98 outside New Woman, All Women Health Care Clinic in Birmingham, Alabama
Victim: Wounded

Dr. Barnett Slepian
Shot 10/23/98 at home in Amherst, New York
Victim: Murdered

What’s chilling is that that list was compiled from an anti-abortion site. As Mike pointed out to me in an email, when people look at the escalating rhetoric around the McCain-Palin campaign and directed at Obama, and say “this could lead to violence,” they ignore that it has already led to violence.

Clinic bombers and shooters don’t just intend to kill or maim — they intend, entirely literally, to terrorize. To make others too fearful to provide or seek abortions. It is an act of violence with the intent of intimidation or coercion, for ideological or political reasons — the very definition of terrorism.

And it’s working. Restrictive state laws are not the only reason 87 percent of American counties lack even one abortion provider. No, the threat of terrorism is largely responsible for that.

And this once, Sarah Palin’s outrageous answer came not from ignorance but from knowing intent. It’s one more reason it’s so important to do more than merely defeat her on November 4. We have to repudiate everything she stands for.

Opponents of a woman’s right to choose are doing everything they can to take away that right. While this post focuses on violent means, they are also seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade. Right now, South Dakota is the front line in that battle. You can help by giving to the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families through the Orange to Blue list.

Source / Daily Kos

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Worst Offender : eBay Bans Ivory Sales

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


‘eBay auctions account for nearly two-thirds of the global trade in endangered species.’
By Casey Miner / October 24, 2008

eBay announced this week that it would ban all sales of elephant ivory on its site after the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) reported (.pdf) that eBay auctions account for nearly two-thirds of the global trade in endangered species.

The animal-rights group tracked 7,000 online listings in 11 countries, cross-referencing the names of animals on endangered species lists with product keywords like trophy, oil, claw, and rug. The amount of trade in the US, they said, was ten times higher than the next-highest countries, China and the UK. Nearly 75 percent of trades were in elephant ivory; another 20 percent were exotic birds. Primates, cats, and other animals made up the difference.

Part of what’s so insidious about online trading is how difficult it is to police. The sheer volume of auctions on big sites like eBay, where close to $2,000 worth of goods changes hands every second, makes it hard to verify every seller’s claims. So, for example, a seller who claims his ivory earrings are “pre-ban”—made from ivory obtained before the US banned such imports in 1989—covers his back legally, but may not have documentation to back up his claims.

In light of these difficulties, it make sense to institute a global ban, which eBay has now said it will do for ivory sales by the beginning of 2009. But as IFAW points out in its report, the scope of internet trading far exceeds the ability of any one group to track, and the online black market is likely much bigger than we know.

Source / Blue Marble / Mother Jones

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Shouldn’t a Global Treaty Against Guns Be Next?

Posted on October 25, 2008 by RagBlog


Too Many Guns
By Frida Berrigan / October 23, 2008

We’ve heard a lot about gun control and the second amendment in this election season. A McCain-Palin poster, featuring Alaska’s 44-year-old governor with a big gun and the viewer in her rifle sights, is just one of the more graphic indications that gun control is a lightning-rod issue that distracts, distorts, and dismays.

More than 200 years after our founding fathers enshrined the right to “bear arms” in our Constitution, we have more arms than we can bear. Wars are fought, fortunes are made, and nations rise and fall on these weapons. At the human-to-human level crimes are committed, vengeance is taken, rage is given full range, and terror is wreaked from the barrel of these weapons.

The United States is the world’s largest arms-supplying nation. In 2007, the United States entered into over $19.1 billion in Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreements with other nations and for 2008, sales of military goods and services mushroomed to $34 billion — triple the volume of the Bush administration’s first year.

U.S. exports range from combat aircraft to Pakistan, Greece, and Chile to small arms and light weapons to the Philippines, Egypt, and Georgia. Since the beginning of the war on terror, the United States has transferred more than $88 billion in weapons and military material through the Foreign Military Sales channel. In 2006 and 2007, U.S. weapons and military training went to over 168 states and territories. But it’s not just big weapons systems transferred legally.

Illegal Weapons Sales

U.S. small arms are briskly — and illegally — sold all over the world. And we need not look further than our southern border to see the intersection of small arms trade and big military policy. The newspapers are full of stories of horrific violence between drug cartels and the Mexican military and police. The New York Times reported recently that 3,700 people have been killed in violent incidents related to the drug trade and organized crime so far this year. In the article “Killings Haunt Mexican School Children,” Times reporter Marc Lacey documents the impact drug violence is having on Mexican school children. The headmaster at a school near where 11 mutilated bodies were dumped relates that his students are asking questions like: “Why did they die?”

Since a military-led crackdown on drug traffickers began more than 18 months ago, thousands have died in drug-related violence, including police officers and soldiers, as well as cartel members, corrupt officials, and countless innocent bystanders according to Mexican authorities.

The violence is fueled in part by the high-tech, high-quality weapons bought at gun shows and shops in the United States. According to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, more than 90% of guns seized after shootings or police raids in Mexico or at the border can be traced back to the United States. Last year alone, 2,455 weapons traces concluded that the guns had been purchased in the United States.

Where do they come from? There are more than 6,700 licensed gun dealers across four states within a short drive of the United States’ 2,000-mile border with Mexico — three dealers for every mile of border territory. Each state has its own set of laws for gun sales. California has instituted a 30-day waiting period and banned the sale of assault rifles; neighboring Nevada and Arizona have not. The ease with which huge numbers of deadly weapons are bought and smuggled has led law-enforcement officials to dub the region an “iron river of guns.”

This is our right to bear arms in practice. And it’s not saving lives or guarding liberties. A glut in arms production and patchwork state-by-state laws regulating the sale of guns means that it’s relatively easy for narco-traffickers and criminals to get their hands on everything from assault rifles to handguns, as well as all the ammunition they need.

In the last 10 years, the international community succeeded in establishing a global treaty against antipersonnel landmines and a global ban on cluster bombs — weapons of indiscriminate effect that can leave behind thousands of unexploded “bomblets” that pose a threat to military personnel and civilians alike.

A common thread that unites these efforts is the demand that human rights and humanitarian concerns be placed front and center in decisions on what weapons are transferred, and how they are used.

In addition, each campaign has made effective arguments suggesting that beyond the humanitarian benefits of curbing these weapons, there are national security and economic benefits as well: promoting stability, removing risks to traditional armed forces and peacekeeping operations, and making the nations of the global South safe for development.

Shouldn’t a global treaty against guns be next?

Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Frida Berrigan is a senior program associate at the Arms and Security Initiative of the New America Foundation.

Source / Foreign Policy in Focus

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For the Dart Players in the Audience

Posted on October 25, 2008 by RagBlog

Being a long-time birder and having participated in league darts for years in Edmonton, Alberta, I had to post this. My apologies to those who are offended by an innocent hummer being so “mistreated,” but I believe he was fine after the photographic ordeal. And I don’t think he would’ve listened to direction regarding his target anyway.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Latest on the McCain Hoax : Campaign Role in Sensationalized News

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Graphic by Talking Points Memo.

McCain Communications Director Gave Reporters Incendiary Version Of “Carved B” Story Before Facts Were Known
By Greg Sargent / October 24, 2008

See ‘Rick Sanchez Calls Out Media That Fell For “Mutilation” Hoax’ by Sam Stein — and two Videos — below.

John McCain’s Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established — and even told reporters outright that the “B” carved into the victim’s cheek stood for “Barack,” according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain’s Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the “B” stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

The KDKA reporter had called McCain’s campaign office for details after seeing the story — sans details — teased on Drudge.

The McCain spokesperson’s claims — which came in the midst of extraordinary and heated conversations late yesterday between the McCain campaign, local TV stations, and the Obama camp, as the early version of the story rocketed around the political world — is significant because it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time.

The claims to KDKA from the McCain campaign were included in an early story that ran late yesterday on KDKA’s Web site. The paragraphs containing these assertions were quickly removed from the story after the Obama campaign privately complained that KDKA was letting the McCain campaign spin a racially-charged version of the story before the facts had been established, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

The story with the removed grafs is still right here. We preserved the three missing grafs from yesterday:


A source familiar with what happened yesterday confirmed that the unnamed spokesperson was communications director Peter Feldman. Feldman was also quoted yesterday making virtually identical assertions on the Web site of another local TV station, WPXI. But those quotes, which we also preserved here, are also no longer available on WPXI’s site, for reasons that are unclear.

This is problematic because the McCain campaign doesn’t want to have been perceived as pushing an incendiary story that not only turned out to be a hoax but which police officials said today risked blowing up into a “national incident” and has local police preparing to file charges against the hoaxster.

There’s no evidence that anyone from McCain national headquarters put out a version of events like this.

After the story appeared on KDKA’s site and this and other pieces in the local press started flying around the political world, an Obama spokesperson in the state angrily insisted to KDKA that it was irresponsible for the station to air the McCain spokesperson’s incendiary version of events before the facts were fully known, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

After that, KDKA went back to McCain’s Pennsylvania spokesperson, Feldman, and asked if he stood by the story as he’d earlier told it, but he started backing off the story, a source familiar with the talks says. That prompted KDKA to remove the grafs.

Feldman couldn’t immediately be reached, and a McCain HQ spokesperson declined to comment.

Source / TPM

Ashley’s Perp Walk:

Rick Sanchez Calls Out Media That Fell For “Mutilation” Hoax
By Sam Stein / October 24, 2008

The big political story of the day revolves around what turned out to be a non-story. Several media outlets (the vast majority conservative) were left with egg on their faces after they trumpeted up the tale of a McCain volunteer who claimed to have been assaulted by a large black man because of a McCain bumper sticker on her car. On her face was carved a backwards ‘B’ (meant to represent Obama’s name). The Drudge Report called it “mutilation.”

It was a hoax. And now, some in the fourth estate are left to explain why they pushed this apparent political ploy. Those in the business who showed some prudence are calling out their competitors for taking the bait.

On CNN today, anchor Rick Sanchez did just that, naming the outlets that not only reported but actively pushed the story of Ashley Todd. In addition to explaining why his station didn’t report the story, Sanchez dug the knife in a bit deeper when it came to Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio talk show host who appeared on CNN Thursday and blamed “that side” (i.e. the Democrats) for engaging in “extraordinarily” disturbing acts.

“Part of the story is the fact that it was reported by the media,” said Sanchez. “We would not be telling the story now had it not been carried by so many outlets. As I mentioned before, it was mentioned on, as a matter of fact I have a list and not to mention names, but the initials of the news organizations are Fox News, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Newsday. And also radio talk show hosts went on their radio stations and talked ad infinitum about the story yesterday, one of them even seemingly being a braggadocio about it when he was on the air with our own Wolf Blitzer yesterday.”

Separately, the College Republicans — a group of which Todd is a member — sought to distance themselves from the whole affair, telling the Huffington Post: “When Ms. Todd initially contacted us claiming to have been attacked, our first reaction was obviously to be concerned for her safety … We are as upset as anyone to learn of her deceit. Ashley must take full responsibility for her actions.”

Source / The Huffington Post

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Poverty: Governments Can Be Forced to Do Right

Posted on October 25, 2008 by RagBlog

More than 116 million people stood against poverty this weekend.
© Global Call to Action against Poverty

Anti-Poverty Rallies Smash World Record
By Haider Rizvi / October 23, 2008

UNITED NATIONS – The worldwide anti-poverty mass action that took place last weekend has broken all previous records for coordinated public demonstrations on a single issue, says Guinness World Records, the ultimate authority on evaluating achievements.

Guinness said Wednesday more than 116 million people took part in public gatherings and demonstrations organized by anti-poverty activists in 131 countries across the world, making it “the biggest mobilization ever on a single issue.”

Organizers said the mass action on Oct. 17-19, which drew nearly 2 percent of the world’s population, sent a clear message to world leaders that people will not stay seated while promises to end poverty remain unfulfilled.

“This is a wonderful statement of global determination and commitment to end the injustice of extreme poverty,” said Desmond Tutu, archbishop of Cape Town, adding: “116 million people have stood together to say [that]. This message must be heard by leaders.”

The worldwide actions, billed as “Stand Up and Take Action,” were jointly organized by two international groups, the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) and the UN Millennium Campaign.

“The largest Stand Up is truly an historical event and as keepers and adjudicators of world records we are delighted to ratify such an important record and make this official,” said Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records.

“Mass mobilization has the power to change the course of history, and we will not stop mobilizing and advocating for action until the MDGs are achieved for the poorest people in the world.” – Salil Shetty, Millennium Campaign

In a statement, Glenday congratulated “every individual” for taking part in the event and said he welcomed them to the “family of Guinness World Records.”

The UN Millennium Campaign’s Eveline Herkens said the event shows that, “business as usual cannot go on. Leaders must take note and act now.”

The UN Millennium Campaign was established by the former UN chief Kofi Annan in 2002, about two years after world leaders agreed to set the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — a series of measures to effectively reduce poverty, illiteracy, diseases, and environmental pollution by 2015.

Like his predecessor, the current UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is urging both the governments of rich and poor countries to do more to achieve all the MDGs and to end extreme poverty by half in the next 7 years in accordance with their pledge.

The Millennium Campaign says it is the responsibility of developing countries to work toward the Goals on reducing poverty and improving healthcare, education, and the environment, especially by “[ensuring] greater accountability to citizens and efficient use of resources.”

For their part, adds the Campaign, the world’s wealthier countries must “deliver on their end of the bargain with more and more effective aid, more sustainable debt relief, and fairer trade rules, well in advance of 2015.”

Asia Leads Way

Guinness said people in Asia came in the largest numbers to participate in the “Stand Up and Take Action” campaign against poverty. Its verified record shows 73,151,847 people took part in the campaign in Asia, the largest continent on Earth.

The list shows 24,496,151 participants in Africa; 17,847,870 in Arab States; 951,788 in Europe; 211,250 in Latin America; 210,803 in Oceania; and 123,920 in North America.

UN staff in Bonn stand up against poverty. © MT_bulli (flickr)

The Guinness records show that in the Philippines, more than 35 million people participated, which is equivalent to one third of the country’s population. The group mentions Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Thailand, and Uganda as countries where people raised their concerns about poverty in massive numbers.

In the industrialized world, major events took place in Italy and Germany where hundreds of thousands of people demanded more and better aid to developing countries and the implementation of fair international trade rules.

Are World Leaders Listening?

“This is a new kind of action the world is seeing,” said GCAP’s Sylvia Borren. “It’s the local influencing the global. Women in villages in Africa are connecting and joining millions of citizens and other countries. The young people are taking ownership of the MDGs like never before.”

Inspired by the unprecedented turnout at the anti-poverty events, Martin Luther King III said it’s now up to the leaders of the world to match the passion and commitment of their people and deliver on their commitments. “My father,” he added in a statement, “proved that when the voices of citizens become too loud to ignore, governments are forced to do the right thing.”

The son of America’s great civil rights leader may be right.

According to the Millenium Campaign’s Salil Shetty, world leaders have already started to respond. “Mass mobilization has the power to change the course of history,” said Shetty, “and we will not stop mobilizing and advocating for action until the MDGs are achieved for the poorest people in the world.”

Source / OneWorld.net

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