Somehow, Snoop Dogg’s repertoire gets weirder (and, consequently, more awesome) with this country-inspired ode to Johnny Cash. At this rate, Snoop’s entrance into experimental territory might make him the next Bjork. With braids. And weed. And songs about ladies’ butts.
BuzzFeed
Snoop Dogg’s “My Medicine”
Source. / BuzzFeed
Thanks to Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog / Posted June 14, 2008
Rag Blogger Mariann Wizard passed this piece along and we decided to post it even though it’s from January of 2007. Fact is, that makes it even more remarkable.
TOKYO — In many countries, higher oil prices have hurt pocketbooks and led to worries about economic slowdowns. But here in Japan, Kiminobu Kimura, an architect, says he has not felt the pinch. In fact, his monthly energy bill is lower than a year ago.
A reason is his new home fuel cell, a machine as large and quiet as a filing cabinet that sits in front of his house and turns hydrogen into electricity and cold water into hot — at a fraction of regular utility costs. But even with the futuristic device, which is available for now only in Japan, Mr. Kimura has not let up on the other shortcuts that leave him unscathed by last year’s oil squeeze.
Energy-efficient appliances abound in the many corners of his cramped home. There is the refrigerator that beeps when left open and the dishwasher that is compact enough to sit on the kitchen counter. In some homes, room heaters have a sensor that directs heat only toward occupants; there are “energy navigators” that track a home’s energy use.
And then Mr. Kimura, 48, says there are the little things that his family of four does to squeeze fuel bills, like reusing warm bath water to wash laundry and bicycling to buy groceries.
“It’s not just technology, it’s a whole mind-set,” said Hitoshi Ikuma, a specialist in energy issues at the Japan Research Institute. “Energy conservation is almost an obsession here among government, companies, regular citizens, everyone.”
Japan is the most energy-efficient developed country on earth, according to most specialists, who say it is much better prepared than the United States to prosper in an era of higher global energy prices. And if there is any lesson that Japan can offer to Americans, they say, it is that there is no one fix-all solution to living with oil above $50 a barrel.
Rather, as Mr. Kimura shows, it is a combination of many things, from the most advanced technologies to the simplest frugality in everyday life — and an obsession with saving energy that keeps his family huddled in a single heated room during winter.
Japan tops most global comparisons of energy efficiency in wealthy nations. Its population and economy are each about 40 percent as large as that of the United States, yet in 2004 it consumed less than a quarter as much energy as America did, according to the International Energy Agency, which is based in Paris.
Japan’s obsession with conservation stems from an acute sense of insecurity in a resource-poor nation that imports most its energy from the volatile Middle East, a fact driven home here by the 1970s shocks. The guiding hand of government has also played a role, forcing households and companies to conserve by raising the cost of gasoline and electricity far above global levels. Taxes and price controls make a gallon of gasoline in Japan currently cost about $5.20, twice America’s more market-based prices.
The government in turn has used these tax revenues to help Japan seize the lead in renewable energies like solar power, and more recently home fuel cells. One way has been a subsidy of about $51,000 for each home fuel cell. This allowed Mr. Kimura to buy his cell last year for about $9,000, far below production cost. His cell, which generates one kilowatt-hour of energy per hour, provides just under half of his household’s electricity, and has cut his electricity bill by the same amount, he said.
The device works by converting natural gas into hydrogen, which the fuel cell then uses to generate electricity. Heat released by the process is used to warm water.
The first two fuel cells were installed in the prime minister’s residence in April 2005. Since then, some 1,300 have been sold, according to the trade ministry. The ministry forecasts that as sales pick up, production cost will fall to about $5,000 by decade’s end. Experts say that Japan is far more willing to embrace new technologies than the United States, where opposition to hydrogen storage tanks in Tarrytown, N.Y., forced General Motors to scrap an experimental filling station for fuel-cell cars last year.
Higher energy prices have also created strong domestic demand in Japan for more conventional and new energy-saving products of all sorts. That has spurred the invention and development of things like low-energy washing machines and televisions and high-mileage cars and hybrid vehicles, experts say. Japanese factories also learned how to cut energy use and become among the most efficient in the world.
Companies like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are now reaping the benefits in booming overseas sales of their highly efficient electric turbines, steel blast furnaces and other industrial machinery, particularly in the United States. The environment ministry forecasts that exports will help turn energy conservation into a $7.9 billion industry in Japan by 2020, about 10 times its size in 2000.
Read all of it here. / The New York Times / Jan. 6, 2007
Thanks to Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog
Climate Change Protesters Hijack Coal Train
by Martin Wainwright / June 12, 2008
Climate change campaigners hijacked a train carrying coal to Britain’s biggest power station this morning, swarming on to the roof of its 20 huge trucks.
The 40 protesters stopped the regular delivery service to Drax in Yorkshire disguised as railway workers in yellow warning jackets and waving red flags, having read up on standard railway safety rules.
The ambush took place at an iron girder bridge over the river Aire between the villages of Gowdall and Hirst Courteney at 8am GMT. One group then used the bridge girders and climbing equipment to scale the 12ft high trucks.They hoisted a huge banner reading “Leave it in the ground” – referring to the coal destined for the power station’s furnaces. The protesters carried food, water and even a portable lavatory with the intention of being able to remain on board for several days.
As the driver of the EWS train radioed for advice, a second group of protesters used shovels which they had also brought with them to start emptying the gravel-like power station coal on to the track. Police arrived half-an-hour later and sealed off the area, after calls from motorists stuck at a level crossing which was closed as a safety precaution.
A lone police constable was initially instructed to stay at the level crossing 500 yards from the train, but he was soon reinforced by other North Yorkshire officers. They sealed off the bridge from both sides, while the driver stayed in his cab.
“We are ready to stay here for as long as Gordon Brown and the government keep burning polluting fuel in these power stations,” said one of the protesters before clipping climbing ropes to the train’s wheels and the bridge girders. Although flimsy, the web would risk damage to the train or bridge if any attempt was made to drive off.
The raiders initially lay concealed on the edge of track as two earlier trains took supplies into Drax, whose eight vast cooling towers are guarded by coils of barbed wire. The power station was the scene of a spectacular but unsuccessful siege two years ago by Climate Camp, the group behind today’s action.
The rooftop group included one woman protester dressed as a canary – the traditional warning of dangerous pollution down a coal mine. She said: “The government and the country needs a warning,” before fixing on an orange cardboard beak to go with her bright yellow feather coat.
Commuters in the early morning rush hour included an engineer at Drax who was cycling to work and had to stop at the Hirst Courteney level crossing. He said: “There are interesting arguments to be had, but at the end of the day, these people use electricity like the rest of us, don’t they.”
The Drax line is likely to be closed until the protesters leave, and safety checks including the removal of the shovelled coal are expected to disrupt supplies to the power station for several days afterwards.
Drax responded to the hijacking by defending their record, setting out details of emission cuts of an estimated 3m tonnes a year at a cost of £180m. The plant, which supplies 7% of Britain’s electricity, is improving burning efficiency, says the company, and increasingly using renewable biofuels.
Melanie Wedgbury, head of external affairs at the plant, said: “We are the largest power station but also the cleanest and most efficient. It’s only because we are the biggest that we produce the most CO2. For every unit of electricity we generate, we generate less CO2 than any other of the coal-fired stations.”
The campaigners promised more protests later this summer, when another power station will face an attempt to close it down, similar to the Drax Climate Camp in 2006. One of the coal-shovellers on top of a freight wagon said: “Last year was Heathrow, this year it’ll be a coal-fired power station because those are the two big things, aviation fuel and burning coal.”
© 2008 The Guardian
Source / The Guardian UK / Common Dreams
The Rag Blog
I am against government by crony.
Harold Ickes, resigning as Secretary of the Interior, February 1946
It was a longer hill to climb than the one climbed by John Ashcroft, but Tommy Thompson has reason to be happy with the rewards he received upon arriving at the summit. So do the 9/11 responders who were feeling forgotten.
John Ashcroft’s entrée into the world of private enterprise was announced in January 2008. It was then we learned of the procedure that the Justice Department adopted when dealing with corporations that in a perfect world might be charged with criminal conduct but in a Bush world are permitted to avoid prosecution. Culpable corporations enter into deferred prosecution agreements pursuant to which they are not criminally indicted but instead agree to have their conduct monitored for a set period by the Justice Department or someone hired by the Justice Department. Corporations like this arrangement since they avoid trial on criminal charges and the Justice Department likes it because it is full of Bush appointees who like corporations and know that they are run by good people, many of whom paid good money to help Mr. Bush get elected and don’t deserve to have their reputations sullied by criminal charges. The price corporations pay for not being prosecuted (which is not the same thing as a bribe) is that the corporation that is not being prosecuted pays a fine and has to also pay the cost of the monitor. Here is one example of how that worked in practice.
In 2005 the Justice Department began investigating five companies that make almost all the replacement hips and knees used in the United States. They were accused of paying kickbacks to surgeons. Criminal complaints were filed charging the companies with conspiracy to violate the anti-kickback laws One of the companies investigated was Zimmer Holdings, a medical supply company in Indiana. After completing its investigation the government agreed to defer prosecution of Zimmer in exchange for its agreeing to pay a fine of $169.5 million and agreeing to pay John Ashcroft for serving as monitor. Mr. Ashcroft was to be paid between $28 and $52 million for the 18 months of monitoring.
The latest crony to benefit from his friendship with George Bush is Tommy Thompson.
Tommy Thompson was the Health and Human Services Secretary from 2001 to 2005. During that time he was criticized for his failure to aggressively track and treat health problems arising out of the events of 9/11. Like Mr. Thompson, George Bush was criticized for refusing to adequately fund 9/11 notwithstanding repeated promises to the public and the victims of 9/11 that that was one of his first priorities. His 9/11-budget request for FY 2009 cut funding for those programs by 77 percent from what was appropriated in the FY 2008 budget. The 2008 budget appropriated $108 million and the 2009 budget $24 million. Commenting on the $24 million a White House spokesman said the reduced amount reflected Mr. Bush’s “continued commitment to World Trade Center Workers.” Hillary Clinton, by contrast, said: “With the announcement of his final budget, the President had one last opportunity to demonstrate that he would not forget the sacrifices made by those who responded to 9/11 and are now sick from the toxins released during those attacks. I am disappointed and saddened to see that the President chose not to acknowledge the clear health care needs of these heroes. ” Estimates of the cost of monitoring and treating Ground Zero workers are about $218 million a year.
The disappointment Senator Clinton expressed has been ameliorated by the great news that notwithstanding the cuts in the budget, the administration has generously handed an $11 million contract to Logistics Health, Inc. of which Mr. Thompson is president. He didn’t have it as easy as Mr. Ashcroft since three other companies were considered and there was always the outside chance cronyism would not prevail. It did.
Under the contract the company will be paid $11 million. It will give annual physicals to World Trade Center responders, diagnose and treat their illnesses and provide a pharmacy benefit to the injured workers. It’s not the many hundreds of millions that a concerned president might have provided. But it’s a little something and, best of all, it helps out yet another one of George Bush’s old friends. As his administration winds down it is safe to say that lots of his friends will find lucrative employment in the private sector. That’s the least he can do for those who have willingly worked for a man described by some as the worst president in history. There have to be rewards other than the guilt by association with which they will be forever tainted.
Christopher Brauchli brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu. For political commentary see my web page humanraceandothersports.com.
Source / Common Dreams
The Rag Blog
On June 9, 2008, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, (D.,Ohio) made a remarkable presentation before the Congress of the United States calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush. Below are Kucinich’s 35 articles of impeachment, followed by the full text of Article I. In the ensuing days, The Rag Blog will present further texts from Kucinich’s impeachment resolution.
These articles of impeachment were introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressman Dennis Kucinich on June 9, 2008, as H. Res. 1258
Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio
In the United States House of Representatives
Monday, June 9th, 2008
A Resolution
Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:
Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against President George W. Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors.
In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the following abuses of power.
Article I
Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq.
Article II
Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression.
Article III
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War.
Article IV
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States.
Article V
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression.
Article VI
Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114.
Article VII
Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.
Article VIII
Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter.
Article IX
Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor.
Article X
Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes.
Article XI
Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq.
Article XII
Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation’s Natural Resources.
Article XIIII
Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries.
Article XIV
Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Article XV
Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq.
Article XVI
Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors.
Article XVII
Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives.
Article XVIII
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy.
Article XIX
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to “Black Sites” Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture.
Article XX
Imprisoning Children.
Article XXI
Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government.
Article XXII
Creating Secret Laws.
Article XXIII
Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
Article XXIV
Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment.
Article XXV
Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens.
Article XXVI
Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements.
Article XXVII
Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply.
Article XXVIII
Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice.
Article XXIX
Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Article XXX
Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare.
Article XXXI
Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency.
Article XXXII
Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change.
Article XXXIII
Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911.
Article XXXIV
Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001.
Article XXXV
Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders.
Bush Article of Impeachment I
In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed”, has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, illegally spent public dollars on a secret propaganda program to manufacture a false cause for war against Iraq.
The Department of Defense (DOD) has engaged in a years-long secret domestic propaganda campaign to promote the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This secret program was defended by the White House Press Secretary following its exposure. This program follows the pattern of crimes detailed in Article I, II, IV and VIII.. The mission of this program placed it within the field controlled by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a White House task-force formed in August 2002 to market an invasion of Iraq to the American people. The group included Karl Rove, I. Lewis Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Stephen Hadley, Nicholas E. Calio, and James R. Wilkinson.
The WHIG produced white papers detailing so-called intelligence of Iraq’s nuclear threat that later proved to be false. This supposed intelligence included the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger as well as the claim that the high strength aluminum tubes Iraq purchased from China were to be used for the sole purpose of building centrifuges to enrich uranium. Unlike the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, the WHIG’s white papers provided “gripping images and stories” and used “literary license” with intelligence. The WHIG’s white papers were written at the same time and by the same people as speeches and talking points prepared for President Bush and some of his top officials.
The WHIG also organized a media blitz in which, between September 7-8, 2002, President Bush and his top advisers appeared on numerous interviews and all provided similarly gripping images about the possibility of nuclear attack by Iraq. The timing was no coincidence, as Andrew Card explained in an interview regarding waiting until after Labor Day to try to sell the American people on military action against Iraq, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”
September 7-8, 2002:
NBC’s “Meet the Press: Vice President Cheney accused Saddam of moving aggressively to develop nuclear weapons over the past 14 months to add to his stockpile of chemical and biological arms.
CNN: Then-National Security Adviser Rice said, regarding the likelihood of Iraq obtaining a nuclear weapon, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
CBS: President Bush declared that Saddam was “six months away from developing a weapon,” and cited satellite photos of construction in Iraq where weapons inspectors once visited as evidence that Saddam was trying to develop nuclear arms.
The Pentagon military analyst propaganda program was revealed in an April 20, 2002, New York Times article. The program illegally involved “covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recruited 75 retired military officers and gave them talking points to deliver on Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and MSNBC, and according to the New York Times report, which has not been disputed by the Pentagon or the White House, “Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.”
According to the Pentagon’s own internal documents, the military analysts were considered “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who would deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.” In fact, they did deliver the themes and the messages but did not reveal that the Pentagon had provided them with their talking points. Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and Fox News military analyst described this as follows: “It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.'”
Congress has restricted annual appropriations bills since 1951 with this language: “No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress.”
A March 21, 2005, report by the Congressional Research Service states that “publicity or propaganda” is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) “covert propaganda.”
These concerns about “covert propaganda” were also the basis for the GAO’s standard for determining when government-funded video news releases are illegal:
“The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the viewing audience to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the information. The prepackaged news stories are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public. When the television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual — the essential fact of attribution is missing.”
The White House’s own Office of Legal Council stated in a memorandum written in 2005 following the controversy over the Armstrong Williams scandal:
“Over the years, GAO has interpreted ‘publicity or propaganda’ restrictions to preclude use of appropriated funds for, among other things, so-called ‘covert propaganda.’ … Consistent with that view, the OLC determined in 1988 that a statutory prohibition on using appropriated funds for ‘publicity or propaganda’ precluded undisclosed agency funding of advocacy by third-party groups. We stated that ‘covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties’ would run afoul of restrictions on using appropriated funds for ‘propaganda.'”
Asked about the Pentagon’s propaganda program at White House press briefing in April 2008, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino defended it, not by arguing that it was legal but by suggesting that it “should” be: “Look, I didn’t know look, I think that you guys should take a step back and look at this look, DOD has made a decision, they’ve decided to stop this program. But I would say that one of the things that we try to do in the administration is get information out to a variety of people so that everybody else can call them and ask their opinion about something. And I don’t think that that should be against the law. And I think that it’s absolutely appropriate to provide information to people who are seeking it and are going to be providing their opinions on it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that all of those military analysts ever agreed with the administration. I think you can go back and look and think that a lot of their analysis was pretty tough on the administration. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t talk to people.”
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and Commander in Chief, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.
Documentation:
David Barstow, Behind TV Analysts: Pentagon’s Hidden Hand, New York Times, April 20, 2008.
Pentagon Pundit Scandal Broke the Law, the Center for Media and Democracy.
Joshua Bolton, Memorandum For Heads of Departments and Agencies: Use of Government funds for Video News Releases, March 11, 2005.
Steven G. Bradbury, Memorandum For The General Counsels of the Executive Branch, March 1, 2005.
Carl Levin’s Letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, April 22, 2008.
Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro’s letter to major news outlets asking them to disclose Ethics Standards for Military Analysts, April 24, 2008.
NBC Meet the Press, Interview with Dick Cheney, September 8, 2002.
New York Times, Parts of the Message Machine: Excerpts from Documents, April 19, 2008.
Rep. Paul Hodes, Congressman Hodes Calls for Hearing on Bush Administration Manipulation of Iraq War News Analysts, April 24, 2008.
David Barstow, Two Inquiries Set on Pentagon Publicity Effort, May 24, 2008.
Source. / AfterDowningStreet.org. With links to all the articles in full..
Go here for a PDF chart listing and summarizing the articles, by Elizabeth de la Vega.
Read all of the articles in a PDF.
Also see The Crimes of George W. Bush. / Next Left Notes
And, to pressure Congress to take up the Articles of Impeachment, go to 35 Reasons To Call (202) 225-5126 / CommonDreams
Thanks to CodePink/Austin / The Rag Blog
Obama’s Chicago Boys
by Naomi Klein / June 12, 2008
Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, “Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market.”
Demonstrating that this is no mere spring fling, he has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart’s most prominent defenders, anointing the company a “progressive success story.” On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, “I won’t shop there.” For Furman, however, it’s Wal-Mart’s critics who are the real threat: the “efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits” are creating “collateral damage” that is “way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing ‘Kum-Ba-Ya’ in the interests of progressive harmony.”
Obama’s love of markets and his desire for “change” are not inherently incompatible. “The market has gotten out of balance,” he says, and it most certainly has. Many trace this profound imbalance back to the ideas of Milton Friedman, who launched a counterrevolution against the New Deal from his perch at the University of Chicago economics department. And here there are more problems, because Obama–who taught law at the University of Chicago for a decade–is thoroughly embedded in the mind-set known as the Chicago School.
He chose as his chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist on the left side of a spectrum that stops at the center-right. Goolsbee, unlike his more Friedmanite colleagues, sees inequality as a problem. His primary solution, however, is more education–a line you can also get from Alan Greenspan. In their hometown, Goolsbee has been eager to link Obama to the Chicago School. “If you look at his platform, at his advisers, at his temperament, the guy’s got a healthy respect for markets,” he told Chicago magazine. “It’s in the ethos of the [University of Chicago], which is something different from saying he is laissez-faire.”
Another of Obama’s Chicago fans is 39-year-old billionaire Kenneth Griffin, CEO of the hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. Griffin, who gave the maximum allowable donation to Obama, is something of a poster boy for an unbalanced economy. He got married at Versailles and had the after-party at Marie Antoinette’s vacation spot (Cirque du Soleil performed)–and he is one of the staunchest opponents of closing the hedge-fund tax loophole. While Obama talks about toughening trade rules with China, Griffin has been bending the few barriers that do exist. Despite sanctions prohibiting the sale of police equipment to China, Citadel has been pouring money into controversial China-based security companies that are putting the local population under unprecedented levels of surveillance.
Now is the time to worry about Obama’s Chicago Boys and their commitment to fending off serious attempts at regulation. It was in the two and a half months between winning the 1992 election and being sworn into office that Bill Clinton did a U-turn on the economy. He had campaigned promising to revise NAFTA, adding labor and environmental provisions and to invest in social programs. But two weeks before his inauguration, he met with then-Goldman Sachs chief Robert Rubin, who convinced him of the urgency of embracing austerity and more liberalization. Rubin told PBS, “President Clinton actually made the decision before he stepped into the Oval Office, during the transition, on what was a dramatic change in economic policy.”
Furman, a leading disciple of Rubin, was chosen to head the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, the think tank Rubin helped found to argue for reforming, rather than abandoning, the free-trade agenda. Add to that Goolsbee’s February meeting with Canadian consulate officials, who left with the distinct impression that they had been instructed not to take Obama’s anti-NAFTA campaigning seriously, and there is every reason for concern about a replay of 1993.
The irony is that there is absolutely no reason for this backsliding. The movement launched by Friedman, introduced by Ronald Reagan and entrenched under Clinton, faces a profound legitimacy crisis around the world. Nowhere is this more evident than at the University of Chicago itself. In mid-May, when university president Robert Zimmer announced the creation of a $200 million Milton Friedman Institute, an economic research center devoted to continuing and augmenting the Friedman legacy, a controversy erupted. More than 100 faculty members signed a letter of protest. “The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place in recent decades, strongly buttressed by the Chicago School of Economics, have by no means been unequivocally positive,” the letter states. “Many would argue that they have been negative for much of the world’s population.”
When Friedman died in 2006, such bold critiques of his legacy were largely absent. The adoring memorials spoke only of grand achievement, with one of the more prominent appreciations appearing in the New York Times–written by Austan Goolsbee. Yet now, just two years later, Friedman’s name is seen as a liability even at his own alma mater. So why has Obama chosen this moment, when all illusions of a consensus have dropped away, to go Chicago retro?
The news is not all bad. Furman claims he will be drawing on the expertise of two Keynesian economists: Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute and James Galbraith, son of Friedman’s nemesis John Kenneth Galbraith. Our “current economic crisis,” Obama recently said, did not come from nowhere. It is “the logical conclusion of a tired and misguided philosophy that has dominated Washington for far too long.”
True enough. But before Obama can purge Washington of the scourge of Friedmanism, he has some ideological housecleaning of his own to do.
Source / The Nation
The Rag Blog
Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog
BAGHDAD — As statistics go, at least 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the occupation, now in its fifth year. Every one of them has left behind once loved ones to mourn the loss and to think of what might have been.
This is the land of the Arabian Nights, and of love stories that became fables far and wide. In these stories, in the traditions of which they were born, the lover thought nothing of giving up his life for a beloved. But no one thought death would come to this land under the present circumstances.
All who have died had their own love stories, if not all romantic ones. And that must be a million of them. The figure of 655,000 – of Iraqis who died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation — came from the British medical journal Lancet based on a study in July last year. The number would have risen significantly after one of the bloodiest years of the occupation.
The deaths are not the only tragedies to have fallen upon Iraq’s love stories.
“We were engaged to be married after the end of the war,” Hussam Abdulla, a 28-year-old engineer from Baghdad told IPS. “We thought the war would not last more than a month, and so we planned our marriage for May 2003. But everything went wrong. I was detained for two years, and my fiancée’s family had to flee to Egypt because her father was a senior army officer whose life was threatened first by occupation forces and later by death squads.”
Abdulla’s engagement never led to marriage.
And it was the lucky ones who fled the country early. Others stayed on to face death, detention, or a living hell at home. Army officers, doctors, journalists and artists came particularly to be targeted by death squads.
“I thought the man I loved simply dumped me,” a 25-year-old woman, who asked to be called Arwa, told IPS. “He told me he will call me as soon as he finds a job in Jordan, but he just disappeared. His family told me they did not know where he is.”
Much later, she was told he had been detained by U.S. forces near the Jordanian border. “The U.S. authorities said his name did not exist on their files. But I will wait for him, even if I have to wait all my life.”
Tens of thousands of detained Iraqis have never been found on any U.S. military records. Their families still do not know whether they are dead or alive.
“I told my fiancée to find herself someone else for a husband,” 32-year-old Khalik Obeidy, who was visiting Baghdad from Fallujah, told IPS. “I lost my job as an army officer, and my family house was blasted during the U.S. siege of Fallujah, so our marriage seems to be next to impossible.
“But also, getting married in such a situation will only mean more agony. And bringing up children is more than difficult. My fiancée still says things will improve, she says she will wait. She’s crazy.”
Stories of broken engagements and marriages are everywhere in Baghdad.
“In 2006, I sent my wife and two daughters to Jordan for work, and I was supposed to follow them after selling the car and the furniture,” 40-year-old teacher Tariq Khalaf from Baghdad told IPS. “But my father died, and I had to stay here to look after the rest of the family. Now I don’t know whether to bring them back to this Iraqi hell, or just stay separated.”
Jassim Alwan, who recently made the dangerous trip to Baghdad from Samarra, 90km north of the capital city, tells the story of 23-year-old Abdullah that everyone in Samarra seems to know.
“He has a scruffy beard, and he keeps wandering the streets,” Alwan told IPS. “Abdullah is now better known than the mayor of the city. He was a wonderful guy. And then his bride was shot by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint. The poor guy could not stand the shock.”
This is the kind of love story Iraqis tell nowadays. “The country of the Arabian Nights and of wonderful poetry is no longer good for love,” Maki al-Nazzal, political analyst and poet, told IPS. “All Iraqi poetry under occupation is now about death and separation.”
[*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region.]
Source / IPS
The Rag Blog
“Whose top advisers are linked to war profiteers?” asks John Cusack in a new TV ad linking John McCain and George Bush (“Both…Bet you can’t tell them apart”). The ad, produced by MoveOn.org, starts airing today and is already being passed around the Internet.
Cusack’s righteous rage over the billions being pocketed in Iraq by companies like Blackwater, Halliburton, and Bechtel is the beating heart of his brilliant War Inc. The film, a corrosive, audaciously funny takedown of the Right’s push toward privatized war, has become a surprise, grassroots-driven hit — despite having almost no ad money behind it.
I saw the film before it was finished, and even before the final edit, the music, etc., I was overwhelmed by how it captured the insanity going on in Iraq. War Inc. has pulled off the near-impossible: it has a found a savage, reality-altering humor amidst the tragedy of Iraq.
It masterfully wields my favorite creative weapon: satire. It punches you in the gut, making you laugh, wince, and become outraged all at the same time. Naomi Klein rightly calls War, Inc. “one of those rare satires with the danger left in.”
Political satire designed to confront the powers-that-be with painful truths and to produce not just laughs but change is rarely seen in today’s multiplexes. And that’s not surprising; it’s a high-wire act few even dare to attempt. But when someone does and succeeds at it — think Stanley Kubrick, Paddy Chayefsky, Joseph Heller, Billy Wilder — the effect is indelible.
Lewis Lapham identified the satirist’s project as “the crime of arson, meaning to set a torch of words to the hospitality tents of pompous and self-righteous cant.” And that great satirical arsonist Mark Twain wrote that exposure to good satire made citizens less likely to be “shriveled into sheep.”
The great satirists have always been passionate reformers challenging the status quo. “Sometimes,” says Paul Krassner, whose satiric and radical journalism inspired Cusack and his co-creators, “humor is just a way of calling attention to the contradictions or the hypocrisy that’s going on officially. … That’s the function of humor — it can alter your reality.” Which is exactly what War, Inc. does.
When in 1729, Jonathan Swift wrote the most famous work of political satire of all time, “A Modest Proposal,” he was seeking to light a fire under the indifference toward the twin Irish crises of hunger and over-population. His proposal was to feed young children to hungry men. “I have been assured,” he wrote, “that a young healthy child, well-nursed, is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”
You can imagine the blowback from those who failed to grasp the satiric point Swift was trying to make. Similarly, the satire-challenged Right has tried to attack Cusack and War, Inc. as (all together now) unpatriotic and a slam on American troops. They’ve also gotten their knickers in a twist, outraged that someone would try to find humor in the death and suffering of U.S. soldiers.
But Cusack’s targets are not our troops but private military contractors, war profiteers, and flag-waving politicians who, as Cusack puts it, support “keeping our troops in harm’s way in Iraq but not the bipartisan G.I. bill of rights to support them when they return home.” (And, yes, he’s talking about you, Messrs Bush and McCain).
Indeed, since the film’s release Cusack has received many moving emails and postings on his MySpace page from soldiers and military family members supporting the film and its message. Their missives run from disappointment to disillusionment and fury over being asked to serve and sacrifice while mercenaries are better paid — and often better treated.
Among the emails:
From Sgt. Brent Sammann, an active-duty soldier in the US Army:
I’m a first-hand witness to the exploitation by KBR and other companies lending their services to the war effort — services us soldiers are fully capable of doing ourselves…. The military is being overcharged by these companies on a regular basis. Also, the poor service and treatment we get from some of their employees who make three times as much as those of us serving our country that are not in it for the money but are trying to make the world a better place for everyone.
From SPC (P) Johnny Rhodes in 3/2 SCR Infantry based in Diyala, Iraq:
After being awake for 3 days I may be a little bit out of it, so excuse any rambling or incoherence on my part. Off the top of my head, I can easily say that KBR in particular is of no help here in my area of Iraq. They do, jobs soldiers could do, get paid way better for it, but the work is almost always substandard…. at any given time there are hordes of these guys tying up the phones and internet, cramming the chow hall, etc. Which makes the soldiers have to wait. And wait. And wait. They also paid way more than me, for a job, I could do with my eyes closed.
From Brenda Clampitt, of Baton Rouge, LA, the wife of a soldier stationed at Camp Adder in Tallil, Iraq:
[My husband] drives the trucks and Humvees and escorts the KBR around where they need to go. He doesn’t understand why they get paid way more then he does when [he and his fellow soldiers] are the ones doing the protecting, and are the ones getting shot at and blown up. He has seen soldiers die in front of him; he has seen lives destroyed and the country torn apart. My husband would serve his country whether he got paid or not, that is just how he is. He loves his country and wants to protect it but he sees first hand what is going on over there and he doesn’t like it…. I myself am sick and tired of this war. It is dragging on and on and it is all about the money. I am not anti war. But I am FOR everything your movie is about.
Today’s lead editorial in the New York Times, titled “Interrogation for Profit,” decries “one of the Bush administration’s most blatant evasions of accountability in Iraq — the outsourcing of war detainees’ interrogation to mercenary private contractors” and calls on Congress to approve “measures to make war-zone contractors liable for criminal behavior.” The editorial concludes: “The way out of the Iraq fiasco must include an end to the outsourced shadow armies.”
This indictment has the same urgency of War Inc. Especially with John McCain reminding us that it’s “not that important” to him when our troops come home.
Source. / The Huffington Post
The Rag Blog
“Hark! Hear the children sing/Glory to the Holly King”
Once again the Oak King and Holly King enact their ritual dance. This is the season for the Holly King to win. He is god of the Waning year and will rule until the Winter Solstice. We are now entering the dark half of the year, when we contemplate our actions and make the plans we will implement in the coming year. It is important to remember that the words Dark and Light have no reference to Evil and Good; they serve to indicate the perspective of activity or contemplation in the course of the year, nothing more. Both are necessary.
Decorate your altar and table with the colors white, red, golden yellow, green, blue, and tan. Dress yourself using these colors and encourage your guests to do likewise. For a centerpiece, you could fill and surround your cauldron with fresh flowers and ivy, but use fresh, not artificial. If you have a pot of heliotrope in the garden, use it as your centerpiece as heliotrope is especially good to use on this day. The preferred candle colors to use are light blue, green, and yellow; red and gold are also acceptable.
This is a fire festival. A backyard barbeque pit will serve city-dwellers’ purposes quite nicely; country celebrants have the option for a bigger fire, possibly a bonfire. If neither option is available to you, light a lot of candles. Remember to include animals in your celebrations, be they pets, familiars, or work beasts. It is also important to include fairies, elves, and sprites in your plans as they are more prominent in their activities on this day. Leaving some food, herbs, fruit juice, etc. for them will suffice and if any should present themselves during your celebration, drink a toast to them.
As you bless yourself, your friends, pets and plants, remember that this is also a time to destroy any amulets you have made that have outlived their usefulness. The preferred method is to cast them into the ceremonial fire. When the ashes cool, scatter these ashes throughout the garden. This brings blessings to the land. You may also perform magick for love, healing, and prosperity. Yellow is the color signifying prosperity at this festival, not green.
Serve your guests lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, especially yellow and orange food. Lemons and oranges are appropriate, as are summer squash and pumpernickel bread. All flaming foods are also appropriate, so your menu could include shish-ke-bob. Traditional drinks for this festival are ale, mead, and fresh fruit juice.
At this celebration it is important to have fun and play. We are filled with delight and joy, life is good, food is in abundance, the future lies before us as an unrolling path that will take us to delightful places. Adventure abounds. The possibilities are infinite. The only taboos are: do not give away any fire, do not sleep away from home, do not neglect your animals. Respect these taboos and have a Wonderful Time!
Kate Braun / The Rag Blog
Unfulfilled promises haunt Afghanistan
By Bilal Sarwary / June 13, 2008
KABUL — Gone are the days when the Afghan summer was the season of plenty.
Now, as the snow melts off the Afghan peaks, a sense of foreboding hangs in the air. The summer in Afghanistan is fighting season.
Over a traditional Afghan dinner of rice, lamb and delicious Afghan bread, a senior Afghan official in his Kabul mansion admits he expects Taleban attacks to rise, but insists that they will not win.
“They can’t take over any place,” he says, as he struggles with a bony piece of meat.
After a few seconds he forgets the food and repeats in a serious tone the Afghan government line that continuing Taleban suicide bombings shows their “weakness”.
But he says the fighting is at stalemate and blames alleged outside support.
“We are fighting a war whose very source is based outside of Afghanistan, inside of Pakistan. As long as the Taleban has a base, we won’t be able to win this war.”
Chaotic
While the doubts about the fight against the Taleban continue, so too do the doubts among ordinary Afghans about life since the Taleban were toppled in 2001.
One morning I took an early tour of Kabul.
At 0700 there was already a chaotic traffic jam at Charahi Malak Azghar in the heart of the city.
Land cruisers belonging to the United Nations, warlords and government officials sit alongside taxis and vehicles belonging to common Afghans.
All of these vehicles are competing for space. There are no traffic lights, and no traffic rules. Street children and beggars were gathered along the main road.
Saqib Baghlani, 43, a high school teacher, sits on his old Chinese bicycle.
He welcomes the demise of the Taleban. “Afghanistan has made remarkable progress compared to its pre-war and Taleban days,” declares the tall, confident, blue-eyed teacher.
But he says the failures of his government are unacceptable.
He insists that President Hamed Karzai should fire corrupt officials and provide people with basic services, such as health care and clean drinking water, as this could bring peace.
“Go and see who owns these expensive houses in (the suburb of) Wazir Akbar Khan and who is driving land cruisers,” he says. “Karzai should ask these officials how they got so rich overnight, instead of making empty promises again and again.”
He castigates government ministers. “We are not asking for skyscrapers. The demands of our people are simple. Millions of dollars are going towards land cruisers and salaries. Everyone is corrupt.”
What puzzles poorer Afghans is why so many basic problems haven’t been solved, despite the billions of dollars of international aid.
A short walk from the affluent neighbourhoods of Wazir Akbar Khan and Shari Naw, in the streets of downtown Kabul, Afghanistan’s unemployed are gathered in their hundreds.
Most say they have to wait for days, hoping to find one day’s work to feed their entire family.
Kabul is considered the safest spot in the country, but basic services such as clean drinking water, electricity, and sewage systems remain unavailable to most people.
Waiting outside one of Kabul’s main government hospitals is Haji Baz Mohammad. He has accompanied a patient from his home province in northern Afghanistan. He is busy praying and is visibly sad.
”We are not politicians or people who have the aid money,” he says. “Where are the roads, clinics and reconstruction that were promised to us?”
Climate of mistrust
Driving through west Kabul, you can still see the destruction wrought during the factional infighting between warring Mujahideen factions in 1992, which left at least 70,000 Kabulis dead and the Afghan capital destroyed.
One of the most pervasive problems in post-Taleban Afghanistan is corruption.
Cabinet ministers and parliamentarians vow to fight it at every level. President Hamid Karzai has established several anti-corruption offices.
But, for Afghans like Ajmal Haidary, 42, a shopkeeper in West Kabul, this is another empty promise. “Every night, I hear ministers and MPs talk about corruption; this is all talk.”
One aide to President Karzai admits the government has failed and that it needs to attend to the plight of the people.
But he says you have to remember the strains on Kabul, a city originally built for 400,000 that is now home to almost four million people.
“From traffic jams to corruption to a lack of electricity, it’s a failure that needs to be fixed before it is too late,” he says. “However, don’t forget the improvements we have achieved.”
One judicial official warns that there is a culture of impunity in Afghanistan now that creates a climate of mistrust among common Afghans.
Seven years after the Taleban were removed from power, the worry is that for many Afghans the promises of a better future seem to be becoming a distant dream.
Source / BBC News
The Rag Blog
Now here’s a surprise – Junior is contemptuous of the Supremes’ decision to uphold habeas corpus. In his own words, “It’s just a god damned piece of paper.”
As Juan Cole points out, this 5-4 Supreme Court ruling mimics the one that brought Junior to the White House in 2000.
Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog
Bush Disagrees with High Court Guantanamo Bay Ruling
By Paula Wolfson / June 12, 2008
ROME — U.S. President George Bush says he disagrees with a Supreme Court ruling that prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility have the right to challenge their detention before civilian judges. VOA’s Paula Wolfson reports Mr. Bush spoke out on the high court ruling while in Rome for talks with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
While the president was meeting with Italian leaders, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its latest ruling on Guantanamo.
The president said he disagrees. “We will abide by the court’s decision. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.”
Speaking at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Berlusconi, Mr. Bush said the White House will study the narrow 5-4 court opinion to see if new legislation is needed.
“It was a deeply divided court. And I strongly agree with those who dissented,” he said.
The status of the prisoners at the military facility at Guantanamo Bay has been a source of friction between the United States and Europe.
Throughout his European tour, Mr. Bush has been urging European leaders to look beyond such differences and work with the United States on global issues, such as the diverse challenges found in the Middle East.
During their talks in Rome, Prime Minister Berlusconi said once again that Italy wants to be included in the group of countries working to convince Iran to suspend uranium enrichment.
The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany are already involved in the initiative. President Bush said in Rome he will consider the Italian request. But White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley says Italy, which is one of Iran’s biggest trading partners, might not make a good addition to the negotiating team.
“Italy has a very robust set of commercial relations with Iran. This is always a problem for countries when their commercial ties sometimes seem to be at variance with their national security requirements,” he said.
During his appearance with President Bush, Prime Minister Berlusconi dismissed that notion, saying those commercial ties are an asset.
“Our offer [to join the negotiations] is based on the fact we know Iran very well from the inside, we have some leading companies that are in these countries [this country] and therefore we think this would be very useful,” he said.
Mr. Bush’s official welcome in Rome was warm. But the reception was very different in the streets of the Italian capital where the president is very unpopular, mainly because of the Iraq war.
Security is extremely tight for his visit, with thousands of extra policemen deployed throughout the city.
Demonstrators greeted the president when he arrived in Rome Wednesday, and there were protest banners hanging across the street from a hillside villa where he held a morning meeting with Italian entrepreneurs.
The president will meet with Pope Benedict at the Vatican on Friday before heading on to Paris, London and Belfast – the last stop on his so called “farewell tour” of Europe.
Source / Voice of America News
The Rag Blog
Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
