The Rag Blog

09/10/07 “ICH’ — — The US economy continues its slow death before our eyes, but economists, policymakers, and most of the public are blind to the tottering fabled land of opportunity.

In August jobs in goods-producing industries declined by 64,000. The US economy lost 4,000 jobs overall. The private sector created a mere 24,000 jobs, all of which could be attributed to the 24,100 new jobs for waitresses and bartenders, and the government sector lost 28,000 jobs.

In the 21st century the US economy has ceased to create jobs in export industries and in industries that compete with imports. US job growth has been confined to domestic services, principally to food services and drinking places (waitresses and bartenders), private education and health services (ambulatory health care and hospital orderlies), and construction (which now has tanked). The lack of job growth in higher productivity, higher paid occupations associated with the American middle and upper middle classes will eventually kill the US consumer market.

The unemployment rate held steady, but that is because 340,000 Americans unable to find jobs dropped out of the labor force in August. The US measures unemployment only among the active work force, which includes those seeking jobs. Those who are discouraged and have given up are not counted as unemployed.

With goods producing industries in long term decline as more and more production of US firms is moved offshore, the engineering professions are in decline. Managerial jobs are primarily confined to retail trade and financial services.

Franchises and chains have curtailed opportunities for independent family businesses, and the US government’s open borders policy denies unskilled jobs to the displaced members of the middle class.

When US companies offshore their production for US markets, the consequences for the US economy are highly detrimental. One consequence is that foreign labor is substituted for US labor, resulting in a shriveling of career opportunities and income growth in the US. Another is that US Gross Domestic Product is turned into imports. By turning US brand names into imports, offshoring has a double whammy on the US trade deficit. Simultaneously, imports rise by the amount of offshored production, and the supply of exportable manufactured goods declines by the same amount.

The US now has a trade deficit with every part of the world. In 2006 (the latest annual data), the US had a trade deficit totaling $838,271,000,000.

The US trade deficit with Europe was $142,538,000,000. With Canada the deficit was $75,085,000,000. With Latin America it was $112,579,000,000 (of which $67,303,000,000 was with Mexico). The deficit with Asia and Pacific was $409,765,000,000 (of which $233,087,000,000 was with China and $90,966,000,000 was with Japan). With the Middle East the deficit was $36,112,000,000, and with Africa the US trade deficit was $62,192,000,000.

Public worry for three decades about the US oil deficit has created a false impression among Americans that a self-sufficient America is impaired only by dependence on Middle East oil. The fact of the matter is that the total US deficit with OPEC, an organization that includes as many countries outside the Middle East as within it, is $106,260,000,000, or about one-eighth of the annual US trade deficit.

Moreover, the US gets most of its oil from outside the Middle East, and the US trade deficit reflects this fact. The US deficit with Nigeria, Mexico, and Venezuela is 3.3 times larger than the US trade deficit with the Middle East despite the fact that the US sells more to Venezuela and 18 times more to Mexico than it does to Saudi Arabia.

What is striking about US dependency on imports is that it is practically across the board. Americans are dependent on imports of foreign foods, feeds, and beverages in the amount of $8,975,000,000.

Americans are dependent on imports of foreign Industrial supplies and materials in the amount of $326,459,000,000–more than three times US dependency on OPEC.

Americans can no longer provide their own transportation. They are dependent on imports of automotive vehicles, parts, and engines in the amount of $149,499,000,000, or 1.5 times greater than the US dependency on OPEC.

In addition to the automobile dependency, Americans are 3.4 times more dependent on imports of manufactured consumer durable and nondurable goods than they are on OPEC. Americans no longer can produce their own clothes, shoes, or household appliances and have a trade deficit in consumer manufactured goods in the amount of $336,118,000,000.

The US “superpower” even has a deficit in capital goods, including machinery, electric generating machinery, machine tools, computers, and telecommunications equipment.

What does it mean that the US has a $800 billion trade deficit?

It means that Americans are consuming $800 billion more than they are producing.

How do Americans pay for it?

They pay for it by giving up ownership of existing assets–stocks, bonds, companies, real estate, commodities. America used to be a creditor nation. Now America is a debtor nation. Foreigners own $2.5 trillion more of American assets than Americans own of foreign assets. When foreigners acquire ownership of US assets, they also acquire ownership of the future income streams that the assets produce. More income shifts away from Americans.

How long can Americans consume more than they can produce?

American over-consumption can continue for as long as Americans can find ways to go deeper in personal debt in order to finance their consumption and for as long as the US dollar can remain the world reserve currency.

The 21st century has brought Americans (with the exception of CEOs, hedge fund managers and investment bankers) no growth in real median household income. Americans have increased their consumption by dropping their saving rate to the depression level of 1933 when there was massive unemployment and by spending their home equity and running up credit card bills. The ability of a population, severely impacted by the loss of good jobs to foreigners as a result of offshoring and H-1B work visas and by the bursting of the housing bubble, to continue to accumulate more personal debt is limited to say the least.

Foreigners accept US dollars in exchange for their real goods and services, because dollars can be used to settle every country’s international accounts. By running a trade deficit, the US insures the financing of its government budget deficit as the surplus dollars in foreign hands are invested in US Treasuries and other dollar-denominated assets.

The ability of the US dollar to retain its reserve currency status is eroding due to the continuous increases in US budget and trade deficits. Today the world is literally flooded with dollars. In attempts to reduce the rate at which they are accumulating dollars, foreign governments and investors are diversifying into other traded currencies. As a result, the dollar prices of the Euro, UK pound, Canadian dollar, Thai baht, and other currencies have been bid up. In the 21st century, the US dollar has declined about 33 percent against other currencies. The US dollar remains the reserve currency primarily due to habit and the lack of a clear alternative.

The data used in this article is freely available. It can be found at two official US government sites: here and here.

The jobs data and the absence of growth in real income for most of the population are inconsistent with reports of US GDP and productivity growth. Economists take for granted that the work force is paid in keeping with its productivity. A rise in productivity thus translates into a rise in real incomes of workers. Yet, we have had years of reported strong productivity growth but stagnant or declining household incomes. And somehow the GDP is rising, but not the incomes of the work force.

Something is wrong here. Either the data indicating productivity and GDP growth are wrong or Karl Marx was right that capitalism works to concentrate income in the hands of the few capitalists. A case can be made for both explanations.

Recently an economist, Susan Houseman, discovered that the reliability of some US economics statistics has been impaired by offshoring. Houseman found that cost reductions achieved by US firms shifting production offshore are being miscounted as GDP growth in the US and that productivity gains achieved by US firms when they move design, research, and development offshore are showing up as increases in US productivity. Obviously, production and productivity that occur abroad are not part of the US domestic economy.

Houseman’s discovery rated a Business Week cover story last June 18, but her important discovery seems already to have gone down the memory hole. The economics profession has over-committed itself to the “benefits” of offshoring, globalism, and the non-existent “New Economy.” Houseman’s discovery is too much of a threat to economists’ human capital, corporate research grants, and free market ideology.

The media has likewise let the story go, because in the 1990s the Clinton administration and Congress overturned US policy in favor of a diverse and independent media and permitted a few mega-corporations to concentrate in their hands the ownership of the US media, which reports in keeping with corporate and government interests.

The case for Marx is that offshoring has boosted corporate earnings by lowering labor costs, thereby concentrating income growth in the hands of the owners and managers of capital. According to Forbes magazine, the top 20 earners among private equity and hedge fund managers are earning average yearly compensation of $657,500,000, with four actually earning more than $1 billion annually. The otherwise excessive $36,400,000 average annual pay of the 20 top earners among CEOs of publicly-held companies looks paltry by comparison. The careers and financial prospects of many Americans were destroyed to achieve these lofty earnings for the few.

Hubris prevents realization that Americans are losing their economic future along with their civil liberties and are on the verge of enserfment.

SEPTEMBER 8 — Alex Bainbridge, chairing the Stop Bush/Make Howard History anti-APEC rally told the gathered crowd that there were 10,000 people gathered at Sydney’s Town Hall. A contingent of hundreds of high school students arrived at Town Hall, chanting “Troops out now!”, while a contingent of hundreds of trade unionists arrived chanting “The workers united will never be defeated!”

Despite provocative policing, and the presence of a tiny group of masked neo-Nazis led by retired Macquarie University academic Andrew Fraser, the rally was peaceful. Police behaviour included confiscating polls off banners, despite the fact that this was outside the “declared zone” where the APEC laws would have allowed them to do this; driving the Public Order and Riot Squad vehicles, including the new $600,000 water cannon, sirens blaring, past the Town Hall at 8.45am while rally organisers were setting up; and sealing the exits to Hyde Park after protesters had marched there.

However, protesters followed the calls of rally organisers not to be provoked and there were only a handful of arrests: mostly of neo-Nazis but also including two protesters for taking their clothes off.

Other protesters were arrested after the rally, including two activists on the list of “excluded persons” (despite their not being in the zone they were excluded from) who were briefly detained before being released without charge.

A welcome to country was given by Jenny Munroe, who linked PM John Howard’s recent military/police intervention into Northern Territory indigenous communities with his nuclear diplomacy at the APEC summit. She pointed out that the latter would not only mean more uranium mining on aboriginal land, but would encourage plans for nuclear waste dumps in indigenous communities.

She also spoke about the situation in Palm Island, where the police officer who beat Mulrunji to death in 2004 walked free while Lex Wotton has been jailed for protesting against the murder. “The legal system needs to be thrown out, we need to start working on a new one”, she said.

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle also spoke about Howard’s APEC uranium deals, as well as pointing out that Howard, US President George Bush and NSW Premier Morris Iemma were “in bed with the coal industry”. She called for renewable energy as genuine solution to climate change rather than the APEC leaders preferred phantom solutions: “clean” coal and “safe” nuclear energy.

She condemned the anti-worker agenda of APEC and called for the scrapping of all of Howard’s Work Choices, as opposed to scrapping just bits of it as ALP “ooopsition” leader Kevin Rudd was proposing.

The march was led by the Maritime Union of Australia and the Fire Brigade Employees Union (FBEU). The MUA’s Warren Smith told the rally that the walls surrounding the APEC meeting zone did not symbolise keeping protesters out but that capitalism was in jail, saying that whenever one of the organisations of global capitalism, such as the G8, the G20, the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organisation, met, they had to do so behind walls to hide from protests. He said that APEC means war, driving down wages, nuclear power and the profits of big corporations. “We say no!”, he said.

Emphasising the importance of peaceful protest, he congratulated the rally for having the organisation and discipline needed to “throw Howard into the dustbin of history”. He said that the time of neoliberalism and war was up because “the people are here!”

The FBEU’s Simon Flynn linked the struggles of workers, Indigenous people, environmentalists and anti-war activists saying it was “time to unite in a new movement”. He said that the discussions of the 21 leaders at APEC had nothing to do with democracy: “This is democracy!” he said, referring to the assembled crowd. Condemning Howard for the war in Iraq and for Work Choices he said that the ALP was equivocating. Reminding protesters of the ALP’s origins as a party to represent workers’ unions he said “now is not the time for the tail to wag the dog”.

Other speakers included US Iraq war veteran Matt Howard, Keysar Trad from the Islamic Friendship Association and Pip Hinman from the Stop the War Coalition, and a statement was read from Melbourne trade unionist Omar Merhi.

There was a very diverse attendance. Theresa Suddaby came from Bulla Burra in the Blue Mountains, and told Green Left Weekly: “I’m here protesting for the right to protest.” Peter McGregor, who came to town on the “Stop Bush Express” from Newcastle, explained to GLW why he was protesting: “Whenever war criminals such as George Bush and John Howard appear in public, it’s important people come out also in public, to protest them.”

“They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military.”

This particular spine-chiller comes from Alexis Debat, excitingly identified as “director of terrorism and national security” at the Nixon Center. According to Debat, the big takeout is what the U.S. Air Force has in store, as opposed to mere “pinprick strikes” against the infamous nuclear facilities.

Predicting imminent war on Iran has been one of the top two items in Cassandra’s repertoire for a couple of years now, rivaled only by global warming as a sure-fire way to sell newspapers and boost website hits.

Debat was re-roasting that well-scorched chestnut, the “Shock and Awe” strategy, whereby-back in March of 2003-the U.S. Air Force proposed to reduce Iraq’s entire military to smoldering ruins. In the event, “Shock and Awe” was a resounding failure, like all such pledges by Air Force commanders to destroy the enemy’s military since the birth of aerial bombardments nearly a century ago. Such failures have never stopped the US Air Force from trying once again, and there are no doubt vivid attack plans now circulating the government.

Will it come to pass? In his memoirs, I Claud (which I’m happy to say CounterPunch Books/AK Press will be republishing next spring,) my father offers a useful recipe on this matter of prediction.

One morning, as we at length relaxed at breakfast by a brazier on the terrace of the Café du Dôme, he [Robert Dell, the diplomatic correspondent of the Manchester Guardian] said to me: “Do you want to get what used to be called a ‘scoop’ for your horrid little paper every day?” (The “horrid little paper” was, of course, the Daily Worker, whose diplomatic correspondent I then was.)

“That would be nice.”

“Well then, all you have to do is to read all the continental papers available every morning, take lunch with one or more of Europe’s leading politicians or diplomats, make up your mind what is the vilest action that, in the circumstances, the French, British, Italian or German government could undertake, and then, in the leisure of the afternoon, sit down at your typewriter and write a dispatch announcing that that is just what they are going to do. You can’t miss. Your news will be denied two hours after it is published and confirmed after twenty four.”

So, whether in 24 hours or 24 days or at some point before the end of his term, we should predict Bush will send the bombers on their way to Teheran to destroy the usual targets–power stations and kindred civilian infrastructure, hospitals, maybe a few bomb shelters crammed with women and children.

But will it really come to pass?

Despite the unending stream of stories across the months announcing that an attack on Iran is on the way, I’ve had my doubts. Amid the housing slump here, with the possibility of an inflationary surge as the credit balloon threatens to explode, would the US government really want to see the price of gas at the pump go over $5? What would Hugo Chavez do? Even a hiccup in flows from Venezuela would paralyze refineries here, specifically designed for Venezuelan crude. China has a big stake in Iran. It’s also Uncle Sam’s banker. The Chinese don’t have to destroy the dollar, merely squeeze its windpipe, or revalue their currency enough to double retail prices in Wal-Mart. The Republicans and the presidential candidates wouldn’t want that on the edge of an election year.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff know the Iraq War has almost broken the US Army. Wouldn’t they adamantly oppose the notion of an attack on Iran, which would see Shiite resistance groups in Iraq cut US supply convoys from Kuwait bringing fuel and water to the big US bases? Wouldn’t Shiite forces as a whole finally commence a campaign of eviction of the American occupier? Wouldn’t this puncture the fantasy that General Petraeus’ “surge” is working?

The other side of the ledger isn’t hard to fill in either. The oil companies like a crisis that sends up the price of their commodity. The Chinese are a prudent lot and don’t want to rock the world economy. Politically, both they and Russia would like to see the US compound the disaster in Iraq and get into a long-term mess in Iran. Israel wants an attack on Iran, and the Israel lobby calls the shots in US foreign policy. What Israel wants, Israel gets. The US peace movement is in disarray, and sizable chunks of it would be delighted to see bombs shower down on the woman-hating ayatollahs and Ahmadinejad, the holocaust denier.

Amid the disaster of their Middle Eastern strategy Bush and his advisors may hype themselves into one last desperate throw, emboldened by the fact that the selling of the surge has been a success even though all the Democrats need to do is cite the UN, which says the number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has gone from 50,000 to 60,000 a month. Or quote Associated Press which counted 1,809 Iraqi civilians killed in August, compared with 1,760 in July. The Sunni split in Anbar province is not one likely to be replicated in Baghdad or elsewhere and anyway had nothing to do with the hike in US troop levels. Bush didn’t dare go to Baghdad.

Weigh it all up, and you’d be foolish to bet that an attack on Iran won’t happen. I knew Noam Chomsky used to be dubious about the likelihood of a U.S. attack and emailed him last week to ask if he is still of that opinion. Here’s his answer.

Yes, I was quite sceptical. Less so over the years. They’re desperate. Everything they touch is in ruins. They’re even in danger of losing control over Middle Eastern oil — to China, the topic that’s rarely discussed but is on every planner or corporation exec’s mind, if they’re sane. Iran already has observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — from which the US was pointedly excluded. Chinese trade with Saudi Arabia, even military sales, is growing fast. With the Bush administration in danger of losing Shiite Iraq, where most of the oil is (and most Saudi oil in regions with a harshly oppressed Shiite population), they may be in real trouble.

Under these circumstances, they’re unpredictable. They might go for broke, and hope they can salvage something from the wreckage. If they do bomb, I suspect it will be accompanied by a ground assault in Khuzestan, near the Gulf, where the oil is (and an Arab population — there already is an Ahwazi liberation front, probably organized by the CIA, which the US can “defend” from the evil Persians), and then they can bomb the rest of the country to rubble. And show who’s boss.

09/08/07 “ICH” — – The overwhelming majority of the American people are not breaking any laws.

We cannot say that about the government.

It looks increasingly hypocritical when the government insists that it must break the law in order to save us. It’s become the government’s mantra that it cannot protect us unless it breaks the law at will, without oversight, and without our knowledge or consent. It’s been openly stated that unless our basic rights are fully yielded to the government, further terrorist attacks will come, and because of our failure to yield what literally defines us, those attacks will be our own fault.

The implications of this illogic are chilling. Our reticence to allow the government to break the law at will makes us complicit with terrorists.

As revolting a notion as that is, and as obviously untrue as it is, nevertheless, Congress has systematically passed laws forcing us to lie down and take it, in the name of security.

Several of the amendments to the constitution, our basic inalienable rights, have been thoroughly and systematically undermined due to government urging and incessant claims that they need our rights in order to do their jobs.

Every shred of our privacy has become a thing of the past, as we now know that every electronic communication in this country is collected, scanned and archived even though it is patently illegal and clearly unjustified. A real time national surveillance grid is being established and interconnected with every possible government and private interest that can utilize our most personal information against us, or for it’s own benefit and profit. This is further darkened by the concerted efforts of government to refuse to allow us the ability to look into these situations, much less reject them.

The sweeping banner of national security is always unfurled when we are alarmed by bizarre government activity, and seems to be all it takes to prevent the people from obtaining the truths we need to be able to discern whether government activity is warranted. The people need to know whether what the government is doing is in our own best interest or not. That can never become something that is too much to ask. To the extent that it has, we have been seriously diminished, undermined and disempowered.

Why is the focus of government activity regarding national security so widespread when they obviously need to be focused only where needed? Why look at 100% of the grid when only a small fraction of it is of actual pertinence to their efforts to provide security to the nation? Not only does this spread their efforts incredibly thin, it wastes time and energy and man-hours, and it dilutes whatever successful outcomes this unprecedented microscopic surveillance could ostensibly turn up.

Why are they making their own jobs so much harder and so much less successful by looking in all of the places that will never bear fruit?

It’s time to ask for clarification of the term ‘national security’. Exactly what do they mean when they say those words? Because we as a nation have never felt less secure, in fact we have never been less secure than we are right now.

It’s really no wonder that there’s been little in the way of turning up actual terrorists in our own country. There are simple facts like, there aren’t many terrorists here to begin with, if any. As of yet, all these years after 9-11, not a single credible terrorist has been discovered and taken out of operation. No one has been held accountable for 9-11 and of course, the infamous Osama Bin Laden, an intelligence operative, has vanished into thin air, and is all but forgotten. He seems only to turn up at those times when his prerecorded threats against us seem to serve the government’s will to a “T”, supporting their assertions and plans, providing justification for the continuing need for their uncomfortable way of doing things.

Why does the government suddenly find our rule of law so inconvenient? It seems to severely burden the highest office in the land to be confined to operating inside of the law. What is the law for then if it is not good enough for the government to believe in? Why have laws at all? Again, the hypocrisy is unsettling. It is the president’s responsibility to uphold the law, yet it’s now a situation where he decides the law, rejecting and redefining it at will. As no one in America is above the law, at what point does the president deem himself beyond it’s confines? More importantly, why would he want to?

Why would our president find the law to be so repellent? Does he not believe in the value of the rule of law? The questions are left to answer themselves. The government no longer feels compelled to answer to us.

We have seen abuses of citizens here and of hundreds of private individuals abroad who have been arrested and imprisoned without charges being filed. Certainly if there is sufficient cause to deprive someone of their freedom, there could be no problem filing charges at the time of their arrest. An arrest can only come because of specific charges. It remains seriously difficult to understand why charges are not filed, and those imprisonments continue for years. The right to know what one is being charged with, the right to defend oneself and call witnesses and provide exonerating evidence, even the right to a lawyer, a phone call, or to contact one’s family, all of these rights have been stricken, and are bitterly fought against by the very government charged with upholding these very laws.

One is left to conclude there are no charges to be made against these arrestees, and what follows is that the reasons for those arrests don’t truly exist. Why the arrests then? Why the torture? Why the refusal to provide the legal protections that define our beliefs?

All of it is wholly frightening and valid reason to worry.

The bill of rights defines our values. We don’t look at those rights as something unusual or optional or arbitrarily reserved for ourselves. On the contrary, we believe our bill of rights represents what we deeply believe is right, not just for ourselves but for everyone on this earth. That is why anyone who comes here is entitled to the same legal protections that we are. We believe this is the right thing to do for everyone.

For that reason one is deeply concerned when our president, attorney general, and our military heads feel compelled to deprive people of the rights we live by, on the grounds that people in other countries are not us. Or, that people anywhere who they deem to be suspect, without evidence to support that assertion, should immediately be deprived of due process. This is exactly the time and reason for due process. These are not grounds to mistreat anyone. If our government believed in our principles would they not take our principles with them everywhere they went on the planet? Would they not uphold them here at home? It seems outsourcing is confined only to our jobs and futures, not our human values. What a shame. What an inconceivable, perplexing shame.

I am no longer sure of what our government stands for. It seems completely opposed to everything we treasure most. It lusts for wars of aggression, it dismisses our laws, it disrespects our rights and contends they keep them from doing their jobs. They use the law against us, to tie our hands and keep us from knowing what they’re doing, and worse, to prevent us from stopping them from doing things we abhor.

The endless string of abuses of law and human rights, the invasions of our privacy, the heavy handed treatment of law abiding people at airports and by police, the exorbitant costs of their visions and philosophies, their refusal to consider the people while granting corporations every accommodation and benefit, the dollar in it’s death throws, the perversions exposed in official after official, all combine to paint an obvious picture. These are not people who deserve to be trusted. These are not people who have our security in mind. These are not people we should hand the reigns of the nation to as they are driving us directly to our own demise.

Why is our Congress complicit in allowing this? Where is the belief that our nation is good, and the recollection that the people are paying for everything, and the knowledge that we don’t want the country to be changed into a fascist dictatorship? We don’t want to be bankrupt and jobless and homeless and hopeless. Does that really need to be said? Is that not self evident to our elected representatives?

When we have to make a case for justice, freedom, prosperity, privacy, human rights and peace, then we have lost them already.

When we are forced to beg for what supposedly defines us and keep hearing those requests denied for our own “security”, we must face the reality that everything we once had is gone, and is not coming back.

Government has separated itself from us. It has abandoned the people and now seeks only to exert unlimited control over us, and to do with us as it will. Just as it can dismiss the law, it has dismissed the notion of the people being of consequence. This country has become their own property to do with as they choose, and we seem only to be standing in their way, along with our rights and the laws we once had that protected us.

Does anyone really believe that we willingly gave it all away believing it would make us safe? The painful truth of it is, that’s exactly what we did. It could not be any more clear. Americans are the stupidest people on earth.

St. Louis.

His government broke his heart but it could not break Air Force veteran Charles Powell’s spirit. Fighting back tears, the 64 year-old vet stood tall and resolute in front of 400 of his comrades, describing in verse the final steps of a painful disillusionment.

Each summer during the national convention of Veterans For Peace, time is reserved for a Veterans’ Speakout, where any member can rise to say whatever is on their mind.

When the veterans gathered in 2002, prior to the invasion of Iraq, George Bush and the hawks of Washington were pounding away on the war drums. That year, Powell, who had served on a Titan ICBM launch crew during the Cuban missile crisis, read his poem titled, “I Won’t Let Them Take My Flag.” He noted the warmongers were “again waving my flag” as a buildup to invasion, and he countered what he felt was a manipulation of the national symbol with the following lines reminiscent of the great Langston Hughes.

But to me ‘Old Glory’ still stands for the liberty, justice and solidarity yet to come. So I still wave it too. I wave it for health care, education, housing and food for all. I wave it for peace and love and I wave it for hope. Most of all, I wave it for the America yet to be.

After four and a half years of war in Iraq, Veterans For Peace convened again this summer and Charles Powell was there as always. As his turn came at the Speakout microphone he struggled a few seconds to compose himself. Then, in a clear voice growing more determined as he spoke, Powell mirrored the pain, regret and anger in the hearts of so many who listened.

I WILL SALUTE NO MORE FOREVER

As a child I learned to Worship that piece of colored cloth.

My family, my school, the movies, TV taught me to believe that fragment of fabric stood for good things.

I watched my father, a World War II Army veteran, give homage to that wad of material.

As an airman I saluted that banner for the four years I served in the Air Force where I stood ready to help launch Titan Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles on command.

Then I became aware that the wonderful things for which that clump of colors is suppose to represent, have not been achieved.

I came to know that awful, unlawful, unwise and immoral acts have occurred under the stars and stripes.

But I still clung onto the belief and hope that someday, somehow conditions would change and the good things for which that rag is still supposed to stand would yet be realized.

However, I’ve been forced to come to my senses.

Now we have: preemptive war, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, stop loss, neglect of returning veterans, ignored infrastructure, billions of dollars squandered on war and occupation, extraordinary rendition, secret imprisonment, warrantless domestic spying, disenfranchisement of voters, stolen elections, torture, suspension of habeas corpus and denial of due process.

So, even though hearing “America The Beautiful” still increases my heartbeat.

Although seeing those stripes still brings a lump to my throat.

Even though the sight of those stars continues to bring tears to my eyes.

I won’t pledge to it anymore.

I won’t remove my cap.

I won’t stand in respect.

I won’t wave it.

I will salute no more forever.

Around 50 people have bared their bottoms in protest against APEC and the visiting US President George W Bush.

A group calling themselves ‘Bums for Bush’ exposed themselves in Sydney’s Hyde Park during a protest rally this afternoon.

Organiser Will Saunders says it’s a fun and Australian way to get the anti-Iraq war message across.

“It may be the strength of feeling about George Bush, that protest doesn’t need to be all doom and gloom and shooting slogans,” he said.

“Just because you feel strongly about an issue doesn’t mean you can’t have a laugh about it as well.”

Mr Saunders says it was hoped a world record for mooning would be broken, but fewer than expected numbers actually turned up.

One of the people to bare her bottom, Jo, said it was worth it for her despite the cold weather.

“We all have a bit of joke don’t we, but although we can have a bit of a joke by dropping our pants today we are deadly serious about how this deadly war has to end in Iraq,” she said.

Meanwhile, around 200 people protested on Elizabeth street near St James station to demonstrate against any passing motorcades belonging to APEC.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – The war in Iraq is not over, but one legacy is already here in this city and others across America: an epidemic of brain-damaged soldiers.

Thousands of troops have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. These blast-caused head injuries are so different from the ones doctors are used to seeing from falls and car crashes that treating them is as much faith as it is science.

“I’ve been in the field for 20-plus years dealing with TBI. I have a very experienced staff. And they’re saying to me, ‘We’re seeing things we’ve never seen before,”‘ said Sandy Schneider, director of Vanderbilt University’s brain injury rehabilitation program.

Doctors also are realizing that symptoms overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder, and that both must be treated. Odd as it may seem, brain injury can protect against PTSD by blurring awareness of what happened.

But as memory improves, emotional problems can emerge: One of the first “graduates” of Vanderbilt’s program committed suicide three weeks later.

“Of all the ones here, he would not have been the one we would have thought,” Schneider said. “They called him the Michelangelo of Fort Campbell” – a guy who planned to go to art school.

As more troops return from the war, brain injuries are a growing burden – for them, for the few programs to treat them, and for taxpayers who pay for their care and disability if they cannot hold jobs.

GENEVA, Sept 7 (Reuters) – Most of Iraq’s provinces are severely restricting entry to people fleeing violence and lawlessness, leaving some displaced families “without a place to go”, an international aid agency said on Friday.

The restrictions in 11 of Iraq’s 18 governorates make it harder for Iraqis fleeing violence to move within the country to seek safety, the International Organisation for Migration said.

Many of the more than 2.2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) within Iraq cannot access shelter and other basic services, while neighbouring Syria is joining Jordan in imposing tighter visa restrictions, the IOM said.

“The vast majority of (Iraqi) governorates have now closed their doors to newly displaced persons… Their fate is more and more difficult,” spokesman Jean-Philippe Chauzy told a briefing.

Rafiq Tschannen, IOM’s Iraq chief of mission, said: “Entry and registration restrictions imposed by most governorates and stricter visa restrictions said to soon be imposed by Syria and Jordan for Iraqi refugees could mean Iraqis who remain inside the country will be effectively marooned without a place to go.”

Many provinces or governorates — ranging from Babylon in largely Sunni Muslim central Iraq to Kerbala, Najaf and Basra in the largely Shi’ite Muslim south and all three semi-autonomous Kurdish provinces in the north — have restricted entry and registration, according to the IOM’s latest report.

In the southern governorates, entry is “increasingly restricted due to security concerns and the strain displacement is placing on local capacities,” it said.

People entering these southern provinces are frequently only registered if they originate from there or can prove family ties to the area, it said. Inability to register prevents people from transferring their food cards and accessing basic services.

In the western Anbar province there are no official restrictions but “the intensity of inter-tribal conflict requires IDPs to have tribal ties to an area in order to stay there”, the IOM said.

More than a million of the 2.2 million internal refugees have been uprooted since the bombing of a Shi’ite shrine in the town of Samarra in early 2006, which sparked a wave of sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis.

IOM’s report was based on an assessment of more than 111,000 displaced families, or some 670,000 people, who had fled since the bombing. Some 70 percent of the displaced had fled Baghdad.

SAN FRANCISCO, Sep 5 (IPS) – The head of the U.S. federal government agency that doles out benefits to disabled veterans is under fire for saying Bible study is “more important than doing [my] job.”

Two organisations, Veterans for Common Sense (VCS) and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), demanded an investigation Tuesday of Daniel Cooper, President George W. Bush’s undersecretary for benefits at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Their complaint stems from an appearance Cooper made in a fundraising video for the evangelical group Christian Embassy, which carries out missionary work among the Washington elite as part of the Campus Crusade for Christ.

In the video, Cooper says of his Bible study, “it’s not really about carving out time, it really is a matter of saying what is important. And since that’s more important than doing the job — the job’s going to be there, whether I’m there or not.”

Veterans for Common Sense and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation believe Cooper violated the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits government officials from advocating a particular religion while on the job.

They also believe Cooper violated ethics rules that prohibit government officials from using their name, picture, or title for proselytising or fundraising.

“We’re very concerned about this because hundreds of thousands of veterans are waiting for their benefits while Cooper himself says that promoting his religion is more important than helping the veterans,” Veterans for Common Sense’s Paul Sullivan told IPS.

Since Cooper was appointed the head of the Veterans Benefits Administration, the number of veterans waiting on their disability claims has increased dramatically, from 325,000 in 2002 to 600,000 today.

On average, a U.S. war veteran must wait six months for an answer to their application. If a vet decides to appeal a denial, the process often drags on as long as three years.

In addition, Veterans Administration hospitals, clinics and counseling centres report that more than 52,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). But under Cooper’s leadership, only 19,000 of those veterans were approved for service-connected disability compensation for PTSD, a significant discrepancy.

The groups are also upset that Cooper gave his top aid, Ronald Aument, the deputy secretary for benefits, a 33,000-dollar cash bonus while the claims backlog grew larger.

“He’s prostituting his position,” argued Mikey Weinstein, the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. “We could have done just as poorly as he’s done by sticking a German Shepard or a cactus in that job.”

Sullivan and Weinstein turned to the Federal Bureau of Investigation after the Veterans Administration’s own inspector general cleared Cooper of any wrongdoing.

“We made a referral to the designated agency ethics official,” said Cathy Gromek, a spokeswoman for the VA inspector general’s office. “He reviewed the video, and he determined that conduct portrayed in the video did not violate federal laws or regulations.”

When asked to provide a copy of the inspector’s report, Gromek told IPS it was not readily available. A request would need to be made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), she said — a bureaucratic process that often takes weeks, or even months. Veterans for Common Sense has already filed a formal request for the report, but whatever it shows, the organisation’s director Paul Sullivan told IPS the FBI still needs to get involved.

“It’s like the fox guarding the henhouse,” Sullivan said. “VA’s Inspector General, who is a political appointee, should not be investigating other political appointees within his own department.”

Daniel Cooper wasn’t the only high ranking official in the Christian Embassy video. The video also featured Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson and a slew of current and retired Pentagon officials, including Army brigadier generals Vincent Brooks and Robert Caslen, retired Army Chaplain Col. Ralph Benson, and Air Force major generals Peter Sutton and John Catton.

Long time observers of the religious right say the controversy surrounding Daniel Cooper is part of a pattern.

“Evangelicals have been working through the military and government agencies since the Cold War as part of the fight against ‘Godless Communism’, but they tried to follow certain boundaries” said Chip Berlet, a senior analyst of Political Research Associates in Boston. “With the Bush administration we’ve seen many egregious examples of officials stepping way out of line of any kind of boundary, of which this promotional video is a particularly notable example.”

In 2005, for example, the group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State issued a report accusing officials at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs of religious discrimination.