From ths at psalience.org Mon Oct 17 12:46:35 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:46:35 +0200 Subject: [THS] Berlin Researchers Crack the Ptolemy Code Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111017124537.06a030f8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,720513,00.html Mapping Ancient Germania Berlin Researchers Crack the Ptolemy Code By Matthias Schulz Photo Gallery: Ptolemy's Geography Photos A 2nd century map of Germania by the scholar Ptolemy has always stumped scholars, who were unable to relate the places depicted to known settlements. Now a team of researchers have cracked the code, revealing that half of Germany's cities are 1,000 years older than previously thought. Info The founding of Rome has been pinpointed to the year 753. For the city of St. Petersburg, records even indicate the precise day the first foundation stone was laid. Historians don't have access to this kind of precision when it comes to German cities like Hanover, Kiel or Bad Driburg. The early histories of nearly all the German cities east of the Rhine are obscure, and the places themselves are not mentioned in documents until the Middle Ages. So far, no one has been able to date the founding of these cities. Our ancestors' lack of education is to blame for this dearth of knowledge. Germanic tribes certainly didn't run land survey offices -- they couldn't even write. Inhabitants this side of the Rhine -- the side the Romans never managed to occupy permanently -- used only a clumsy system of runes. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, people here lived in thatched huts and dugout houses, subsisting on barley soup and indulging excessively in dice games. Not much more is known, as there are next to no written records of life within the barbarians' lands. Astonishing New Map That may now be changing. A group of classical philologists, mathematical historians and surveying experts at Berlin Technical University's Department for Geodesy and Geoinformation Science has produced an astonishing map of central Europe as it was 2,000 years ago. The map shows that both the North and Baltic Seas were known as the "Germanic Ocean" and the Franconian Forest in northern Bavaria was "Sudeti Montes." The map indicates three "Saxons' islands" off the Frisian coast in northwestern Germany -- known today as Amrum, F?hr and Sylt. It also shows a large number of cities. The eastern German city that is now called Jena, for example, was called "Bicurgium," while Essen was "Navalia." Even the town of F?rstenwalde in eastern Germany appears to have existed 2,000 years ago. Its name then was "Susudata," a word derived from the Germanic term "susutin," or "sow's wallow" -- suggesting that the city's skyline was perhaps less than imposing. This unusual map draws on information from the mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy, who, in 150 AD, embarked on a project to depict the entire known world. Living in Alexandria, in the shadow of its monumental lighthouse, the ancient scholar drew 26 maps in colored ink on dried animal skins -- a Google Earth of the ancient world, if you will. Rainy Realm of Barbarians One of these drawings depicts "Germania Magna," the rainy realm inhabited, according to Roman sources, by rough barbarians whose reproductive drive, they said, was giving rise to an alarming number of tribes. Ptolemy demonstrated extensive knowledge of this remote area, indicating the locations of mountains, rivers and islands. An index lists 94 "poleis," or cities, noting their latitude and longitude accurately to within a few minutes. The map shows settlements as far afield as the Vistula River in present-day Poland, where Burgundians, Goths and Vandals once lived, and mentions the Saxons for the first time. It appears Ptolemy was even familiar with the Swina River, which flows from the Szczecin Lagoon into the Baltic Sea, near the present day German-Polish border. It seems surprising that an academic living along the Nile had such detailed knowledge of northern Europe -- and it's certain that Ptolemy never took his own measurements in the Germanic lands. Instead, researchers believe he drew on Roman traders' travel itineraries, analyzed seafarers' notes and consulted maps used by Roman legions operating to the north. Yet the data the ancient geographer used is distorted. Errors of scale crept in as he transcribed the Earth's sphere to the flat plane of a map. Ptolemy believed the northern lands to be narrower and more elongated than they are and bent Jutland in Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein in Germany too far to the east. 'Enchanted Castle' Ptolemy also failed to accurately connect the different parts of his map. Mistakes worked their way in despite his attempts to locate calibration points to tie together his patchwork of geographical information. The inevitable result was confusion. Linguists and historians have tried repeatedly to decode the yellowed document -- in vain. Among researchers, it came to be known as an "enchanted castle," a mystery no one could crack. Access to Germany's prehistory was believed closed off forever. Now the ancient map appears to be revealing its secrets at last. For the first time, a high-caliber team of experts in the field of surveying and mapping came together in a bid to solve the map's perplexing puzzle. The Berlin-based team pored over the recalcitrant data for six years, working together to develop a so-called "geodetic deformation analysis" that would help to correct the map's mistakes. The result is an index that pinpoints the hometowns of the legendary figures Siegfried and Arminius to within 10 to 20 kilometers (6 to 12 miles). A new book, "Germania und die Insel Thule" ("Germania and the Island of Thule"), has just been published about the project. The publisher, Darmstadt-based WBG, calls it a "sensation." The Istanbul Connection The essential question is whether the new data is accurate. Ptolemy's "Geography" is preserved only in duplication. The copy so far considered the most authentic is an edition produced around the year 1300 and kept by the Vatican. But the team of experts in Berlin had the great fortune to be able to refer to a parchment tracked down at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, Turkey, the former residence of the Ottoman sultans. The document, consisting of unbound sheepskin pages with writing in Roman capital letters, is the oldest edition of Ptolemy's work ever discovered. A reproduction of this version is due to be published next year. Using the parchment as a reference and drawing on their own geographical expertise, the academics from Berlin seem to have finally managed to bridge the gap back to the realm of Odin and Valhalla. Part 2: 'Lost Places in Our Past' The new map suggests that minor German towns such as Salzkotten or Lalendorf have existed for at least 2,000 years. "Treva," located at the confluence of the Elbe and Alster Rivers, was the precursor to Hamburg; Leipzig was known as "Aregelia." All this offers up rather exciting prospects, since it makes half the cities in Germany suddenly 1,000 years older than previously believed. "Our atlas is a treasure map," team member Andreas Kleineberg says proudly, "and the coordinates lead to lost places in our past." Archaeological interest in the map will likely be correspondingly large. Archaeologists' opinions on the Germanic tribes have varied over the years. In the 19th century, Germany's early inhabitants were considered brave, wild-bearded savages. The Nazis then transformed them into great heroes, and in the process of coming to terms with its Nazi past, postwar Germany quickly demoted the early Germanic peoples to proto-fascist hicks. The Romans, it was said, had to put up a border wall between themselves and the nuisance Germans before they could finally get some peace. Bribes and Assassinations More recent research proves this view to be complete invention. New excavations show that the Germanic groups were anything but isolated -- quite the contrary. Veritable hordes of Roman traders crossed the border to deal in amber, pomade, smoked fish and leather with their neighbors. Caesar mentioned that his people traded with the "Sueben," the Swabians of southwestern Germany. As far back as the first century AD, a Roman knight traveled from Carnuntum, a legion camp near Vienna, to the Baltic Sea coast to trade in amber. Roman diplomats were also eager to intervene in their neighbors' affairs, bribing tribal princes, organizing assassinations and supporting their favorites all the way to the throne. Excavations in the state of Lower Saxony in August 2008 even uncovered a battlefield containing the remains of 3rd century weapons. Closer inspection revealed that a Roman legion equipped with catapults had advanced as far as the Harz region in central Germany in a lightning campaign probably intended to punish insubordinate tribes. These soldiers didn't have to struggle through wastelands and swamps to get there. "We were able to locate 11 settlements along the highway that started at Moers on the Rhine and reached as far as the Sambia peninsula in present day Kaliningrad," Kleineberg explains. Most Germanic sites appear to have been situated along rivers and at road junctions, indicated by the word "furd" included in many place names. "Lupfurdum," the predecessor to Dresden, for example, was located at a shallow, fordable spot along the Elbe River. Hanover, then "Tulifurdum," was a place where the Leine River could be crossed. Researchers believe Ptolemy's map now allows them to trace the path followed by amber traders from the Vienna area up to Gdansk Bay as well. Military Work It was primarily surveyors with the Roman army, which appears to have advanced as far as the Vistula River, who collected information on the barbarians' lands. Dieter Lelgemann, a geodesist in Berlin, is firmly convinced that "Ptolemy was drawing on work done by military engineers." The ancient astronomer indicated cities' exact locations down to minutes of degrees. These coordinates, once decoded, indeed often turn out to line up precisely with sites where archaeologists have previously found Gothic or Teutonic houses and grand burial tombs erected for tribal princes. The evidence suggests that the researchers in Berlin have truly cracked the code. The group appears, for example, to have accurately located three particularly important Germanic sites, known to Ptolemy as "Eburodunum," "Amisia" and "Luppia." The new calculations put these sites at the present day cities of Brno, Fritzlar und Bernburg (Saale), all places already possessing unusually distinguished recorded histories: * Waldau, now a part of Bernburg in eastern Germany, was mentioned in a monastic chronicle for the first time in 806, at which point the town was also a military center. * Brno in the Czech Republic has offered up a wealth of splendid Germanic archaeological finds and was likely a stop along the amber trading route. * Legend has it that Fritzlar in central Germany is the site where the missionary St. Boniface felled the Donar Oak, a sacred symbol to the Germanic Chatti tribe, in 723. Astonishing Finds The next question is what these metropolises of early northern Europe looked like. Old maps mark them with massive defensive towers, but this makes little sense, since the Germanic tribes didn't have stone structures, only wood and clay mortar. But this doesn't mean the villages this side of the Alps were unimpressive. On this point too, experts are adjusting their views. A town on the Elbe River called Hitzacker, for example, has yielded up astonishing archaeological finds over the years, such as magnificent tombs filled with silver dishes. This year, archaeologists added houses, a large farmstead and ironworking ovens to their finds here. The area under investigation extends across more than 10 hectares (25 acres). This settlement too can be found in the new atlas. In Ptolemy's day, it was called "Leufana," a center of the Germanic Lombards. From ths at psalience.org Mon Oct 17 12:47:37 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:47:37 +0200 Subject: [THS] Climate change downsizing fauna, flora: study Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111017124725.04b848c0@mail.messagingengine.com> Climate change downsizing fauna, flora: study October 16th, 2011 in Space & Earth / Environment Climate change is reducing the body size of many animal and plant species, including some which supply vital nutrition for more than a billion people already living near hunger's threshold, according to a study released Sunday. >From micro-organisms to top predators, nearly 45 percent of species for which data was reviewed grew smaller over multiple generations due to climate change, researchers found. The impact of rapidly climbing temperatures and shifts in rainfall patterns on body size could have unpredictable and possible severe consequences, they warned. Previous work established that recent climate change has led to sharp shifts in habitat and the timing of reproductive cycles. But impact on the size of plants and animals has received far less attention. Jennifer Sheridan and David Bickford at the National University of Singapore looked at scientific literature on climate-change episodes in the distant past and at experiments and observations in recent history. Fossil records, they found, were unambiguous: past periods of rising temperatures had led both marine and land organisms to become progressively smaller. During a warming event 55 million years ago -- often seen as an analogue for current climate change -- beetles, bees, spiders, wasps and ants shrank by 50 to 75 percent over a period of several thousand years. Mammals such as squirrels and woodrats also diminished in size, by about 40 percent. The pace of current warming, though, is far greater than during this so-called Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). It, too, has begun to shrink dozens of species, the study found. Among 85 examples cited, 45 percent were unaffected. But of those remaining, four out of five had gotten smaller, while a fifth got bigger. Some of the shrinkage came as a surprise. "Plants were expected to get larger with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide," but many wound up stunted due to changes in temperature, humidity and nutrients available, the researchers said. For cold-blooded animals -- including insects, reptiles and amphibians -- the impact is direct: experiments suggest that an upward tick of one degree Celsius translates into roughly a 10 percent increase in metabolism, the rate at which an organism uses energy. That, in turn, results in downsizing. The common toad, for example, has measurably shriveled in girth in only two decades, along with some tortoises, marine iguanas and lizards. Overfishing has been blamed for decreased body size in both wild and commercially-harvested aquatic species, threatening the key source of protein of a billion people around the world, mainly in Africa and Asia. But experiments and observational studies have shown that warming waters play a role as well, especially in rivers and lakes. Birds -- including passerines, goshawks and gulls -- and mammals such as soay sheep, red dear and polar bears, have also trended towards less bulk. Some of the most worrying changes are at the bottom of the food chain, especially in the ocean, where tiny phytoplankton and calcium-building creatures are dwindling in size due to acidification and the reduced capacity of warmer water to hold oxygen and nutrients. Carbon pollution has probably locked in an additional 1.0 C increase in average global temperatures, and continued emissions of greenhouse gases could push up the thermometre another 4.0 to 5.0 C (7.4 to 9.0 F) by centuries end, according to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Because warming is occurring at unprecedented rates, "may organisms may not respond or adapt quickly enough", especially those with long generation times, the authors noted in an email. "We do not yet know the exact mechanisms involved, or why some organisms are getting smaller while others are unaffected," they added. "Until we understand more, we could be risking negative consequences that we can't yet quantify." The study is published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change. (c) 2011 AFP "Climate change downsizing fauna, flora: study." October 16th, 2011. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-climate-downsizing-fauna-flora.html From ths at psalience.org Mon Oct 17 12:52:13 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:52:13 +0200 Subject: [THS] Fox(!) Poll Shows HUGE Support for 'Occupy Wall Street' Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111017125203.069ea048@mail.messagingengine.com> Fox(!) Poll Shows HUGE Support for 'Occupy Wall Street' 'Occupy Wall Street' Ain't No Tea Party UK's Cameron: 'I Support Gay Marriage BECAUSE I'm Conservative' Krugman Nails It: 'Panic of the Plutocrats' 'Green News Report': Glenn Beck: 'They're Going to Kill Us' MORE BRAD BLOG ALERT October 12, 2011 Twitter: @TheBradBlog Facebook: Group page Fox 'News' Poll Reflects Overwhelming Support for 'Occupy Wall Street' Protesters Online polls finds 69% agree that "'Occupy Wall Street' protesters represent your views about the nation's economic problems." Um, our guess is that these results won't be getting much air time on Fox "News"... FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8837 Occupy Wall Street is No 'Tea Party' -- Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning While both phenomena --- Occupy Wall Street and the "Tea Party" --- have emerged at a time of acute economic distress and a sense of alienation, disenchantment and betrayal brought on by an increasingly authoritarian corporate capitalism, they are as different as night is to day FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8831 Krugman: 'Panic of the Plutocrats' The New York Times' Paul Krugman absolutely nails the rapidly growing fear and loathing amongst the Oligarchy as Republicans scramble to support years of corporatist cronyism and corruption over the very real grass-roots uprising of "Occupy Wall Street" protesters who've had enough and are now finally fighting for the general welfare of middle-class American citizens. "This reaction tells you something important," Krugman writes. "Namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called 'economic royalists,' not the people camping in Zuccotti Park" FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8836 'I Support Gay Marriage BECAUSE I'm Conservative': British PM David Cameron UK Prime Minister David Cameron speaking at last week's annual Conservative Party conference in Manchester... "I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I'm a Conservative." So, again, with the vast majority of self-identified "conservatives" in the U.S. not actually conservative at all, and most "liberals" not particularly liberal, we know why Rightwing media love to use those completely misleading labels, but what's the pathetic excuse for the rest of the media doing so?... FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8840 'Green News Report' - October 11, 2011 With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen... IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Occupy Wall Street movement pushes back against dirty fossil fuel corporations; World's newest oil spill, now in New Zealand!; Keystone XL pipeline bombshell --- pipeline company's buddies help Obama/Clinton State Dept. approve the pipeline, but no complaints from Republicans; Million-dollar Solyndra bankruptcy gets more coverage than Billion-dollar Iraq war contracting corruption; PLUS: Rightwing freakout over peaceful Occupier protests challenging corporate greed ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!... 6-MINUTE RADIO REPORT: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8839 'OccupyWallStreet' Toon of the Moment: Land of the Free URL: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8835 IN CASE YOU MISSED THESE PREVIOUSLY 'WORSE THAN JIM CROW ERA' 96-year old TN voter Dorothy Cooper denied Photo ID under state GOP's new voter suppression laws. After 70 years of voting without a problem, even during the Jim Crow era, Cooper was told that her birth certificate wasn't even enough... FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8829 GOP Official: 'Zero Votes For Some Candidates' Wrong' Republican Election Director Calls Into 'Malloy Show' on Probs With PA County's E-Voting Systems Venango County's Craig Adams says candidates reported to have received ZERO votes on ES&S voting machines in 2008 election... FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8834 Newsbusters Loves Me! They Really Love Me! UPDATED: Author of article tries to explain his complaint against us FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8830 Brad's Guest Hosting Last Week on the 'Malloy Show' We had a great week of Occupation Nation shows! Thanks to all for listening, chatting, calling and occupying your public airwaves! All the archives now follow below... FRI 10/7: Greg Palast, Ernest A. Canning, Craig Adams & more Occupation Nation!... THU 10/6: Malloy in DC, Joshua Holland in SF, Nancy Tobi on hand-counted ballots... WED 10/5: Malloy from DC, Jesse LaGreca, Dr. Roger Johnston, Occupation Nation!... CNN Calls The BRAD BLOG 'The Squeakiest Wheel on the Subject of Voting' HELP US KEEP SQUEAKING! Please donate: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8102 -- From ths at psalience.org Mon Oct 17 13:13:27 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:13:27 +0200 Subject: [THS] Stop the War Coaltion is headed by the great, Tony Benn. Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111017131307.046d39d0@mail.messagingengine.com> This just in from London. Stop the War Coaltion is headed by the great, Tony Benn. Tony Benn is the principal inspiration and architect of the globalization of the Wall Street is War Street Movement. The videos linked below are nothing less than utterly brilliant, and you certainly will not be able to see them on western broadcast channels. Michael Carmichael Planetary/USA 1818 Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard Suite 111 Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514 USA www.planetarymovement.org STOP THE WAR COALITION Newsletter No.1223 16 October 2011 Email office at stopwar.org.uk Tel: 020 7801 2768 Web: http://stopwar.org.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/STWuk Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/stopthewarcoalition IN THIS NEWSLETTER: 1) WALL STREET IS WAR STREET: THE PROTESTS GO GLOBAL 2) FILM, VIDEO AND PHOTOS OF THE ANTI-WAR ASSEMBLY ********************************* 1) WALL STREET IS WAR STREET: THE PROTESTS GO GLOBAL The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests this weekend have spread worldwide taking in 1000 towns and cities in 80 countries. We could be witnessing the start of a global movement on a scale we haven't seen since tens of millions went on to the streets in 2003 to oppose the Iraq war. At the heart of the US Occupy Wall Street demands is the call to cut the war machine (SEE http://bit.ly/qDXOFP) which has consumed over a trillion dollars in the past ten years and is currently fighting wars in seven countries - Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and - the latest addition - Uganda, where Obama has just deployed US troops. (SEE http://bit.ly/r1e0yu) If the "war on terror" is included - the latest instalment of which is the ludicrous Iranian "plot", the war-addicted Barack Obama - holder of the Nobel Peace Prize - is currently waging eight wars. (SEE http://bit.ly/nEArmP) We need to make the cost of the UK war machine integral to the OWS movement here, which has begun so impressively this weekend with Occupy the London Stock Exchange. This year alone Britain is spending ?9 billion on the wars in Afghanistan and Libya and on the maintenance of the Trident nuclear missile system. Recent Stop the War articles have shown how this money could be used to fund public services, rather than the government's current policy of decimating them. (SEE http://bit.ly/qxLqXO AND http://bit.ly/odNXt3) ********************************* 2) FILM, VIDEO AND PHOTOS OF THE ANTI-WAR ASSEMBLY Stop the War has been flooded with positive comments about the Anti-War Assembly in Trafalgar Square on 8 October - more than we've had for any event for years. These are typical of the responses: "Great day! What a great feeling to be amongst so many people who feel so passionate about this issue. And what an outstanding list of speakers and performers!" - Sean Murphy. "Amazing day! I loved how everyone came together through creativity, through music, art and poetry...it was beautiful!" - Madeleine McCabe We have now posted a 45 minute TV film of the event, which captures the spirit and inspiration of the day, including the march to Downing Street at the end of the Assembly, led by 106-year-old Hetty Bower, which blockaded David Cameron's official residence. (SEE http://bit.ly/pYJ6Pb) Also on the Stop the War website are videos of the speeches by John Pilger, George Galloway, Brian Eno and many more. (SEE http://bit.ly/pC0CYW) We have begun creating picture galleries for the hundreds of photographs we have been sent of the event. (SEE http://bit.ly/pe08yk AND http://bit.ly/qJv6ZH). More to follow soon. Many thanks to all the speakers, filmmakers, actors, musicians and artists who made the Antiwar Assembly in Trafalgar Square on 8 October such a success. From ths at psalience.org Mon Oct 17 15:10:56 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:10:56 +0200 Subject: [THS] Steven Jonas: Mitt's Army of God: But What Does God Want? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111017150612.047ef090@mail.messagingengine.com> Mitt's Army of God: But What Does God Want? Published on BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT, Sun. Oct. 9, 2011 URL: http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13064 Steven Jonas, MD, MPH So there was Mitt, addressing the cadets and faculty at The Citadel, in Charleston, SC. You know, that Charleston, the capitol of the first state to secede from the Union, on December 20, 1860. Why they were so concerned that the spread of slavery into the territories might be slowed or even stopped that they couldn't even give Lincoln the courtesy of waiting until he was inaugurated the following March. You know, that Charleston, which celebrated the 150th anniversary of that day just last year, as if it were a national holiday, not a mark of the start of a rebellion. You know, that Charleston, from whence in the 2000 Presidential GOP primaries Karl Rove spread the rumor that Sen. McCain had fathered a black (ohmygosh) baby. You know, that Charleston, where the debate as to whether to fly the rebel battle flag over the State capitol is still ongoing. That's where Mitt took the opportunity to tell the world, that "God created the United States," has in the past led the world, and that under his presidency, in the 21st century, the US was going to continue to lead it, whether "the world" liked it or not. He would do this by, in his first hundred days, among other things "review" the timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan (and it would not appear that for him shortening it would be a considered option), restore cuts in missile defense, permanently deploy carrier groups off the coast of Iran, increase military spending over all and increase the armed forces by 100,000 men. (He apparently didn't mention how he would go about financing these measures or how he would recruit the additional troops, but that's another story.) And he told the assembled throng that yes indeed, God created the United States, to be a world leader, not a follower. It is on these latter two points that one might in particular raise some questions. First as to God creating the U.S., if that were the case he/she must have done so behind the backs the Founding Fathers. For almost to a man (no women involved back then) they were either deists or atheists. But if God did so nevertheless, he was really clever, making sure that he/she was not mentioned by name in the Constitution, and neither was either Christianity or any of its specific variants existing at the time. And then, one might say, fiendishly clever (if one can use that term about God) to note that the references to religion in the document, say in article VI and amendment I, provide for keeping it out of the affairs of state, not including it. But, as they say, God does move in mysterious ways! Second, as to God creating the US to lead the world, that surely would have come as a surprise to Pres. George Washington, no less a Founding Father than first president of the United States, from whose Farewell Address the most referenced part is the one warning against "foreign entanglements." Third, one must go on to ask just which God is Romney talking about. The founding account to which he adheres as a Mormon is rather different from the one that the non-Mormon Christians as The Citadel adhere to. In fact, one might fairly assume that at least some of them would agree with the Perry-supporter Pastor Jeffress that Mormonism is a "cult." (Gov./Rev. Perry [1] disassociated himself from that position. Were he to get the GOTP nomination in the end, guess who his most likely pick for VP would be.) So we've got a few problems here. But let's say all of the above could be sorted out. According to Romney, just what sort of a USA would God be in favor of, or at least, through Romney as president, be associating him/herself with? Well, first of all, God would be entirely against the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, which Romney has described as "class warfare." Then God would be entirely for "cutting the budget," which of course means cutting the budget for everything the GOTP does not like while, presumably under Romney ramping up military spending significantly. God would likely support the recommendation of at least some Romney advisors to launch an article-51-of-the-UN-charter-violating and therefore Article-VI-of-the-US-Constitution-violating preemptive war on Iran (2). Romney's God would approve of the ever-widening gap in the US between the ultra-rich and the rest of us which spawned Occupy Wall Street. God would approve of the increasing dependence on fossil fuels which, through climate change, threatens the very existence of an increasing number of the species God, as Romney et al, cultists or not, tell us, created including ours. Romney's God would presumably approve of letting the US infrastructure continue to crumble. Romney's God would approve of destroying Social Security and letting the US health care delivery system continue to go to hell in a hand-basket. Romney's God, according to Romney, has established a "unique destiny" for America, in that "the 21st century should be an American century, in which America has the strongest economy and the strongest military" (3). Ah well, there you have it. It's all in perception. The US is strong, the US should lead the world whether the rest of the nations like it or not and will willingly follow or not, whether the US has the personnel, political, and financial resources to this or not, and God had somehow or other told Romney that this is the case. And this man could be the next president of the United States. God's honest truth. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- References: 1."Ask Governor Perry," Published on BuzzFlash at Truthout on Fri, 08/12/2011, URL: http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12934 2. http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/10/07/338979/romney-advisers-war-iran/#.To9Vzl6sN84.email 3. Cornwell, R., "Robust Romney says ?unique US' should be ready to act alone," The Independent (UK), Oct. 8, 2011, p. 33. This is Dr. Jonas' Commentary No. 184 for BuzzFlash, now at Truthout. Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY) and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of over 30 books. In addition to being a columnist for BuzzFlash/Truthout (http://www.buzzflash.com, http://www.truth-out.org/), he is the Managing Editor of and a Contributing Author to TPJmagazine.net. From ths at psalience.org Tue Oct 18 14:04:43 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:04:43 +0200 Subject: [THS] Christopher Hitchens: Is Mormonism a cult? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111018135850.06463038@mail.messagingengine.com> Is Mormonism a cult? Who cares? It?s their weird and sinister beliefs we should be worried about. By Christopher Hitchens | Posted Monday, Oct. 17, 2011, at 11:05 AM ET | Posted Monday, Oct. 17, 2011, at 11:05 AM ET Mitt Romney and the weird and sinister beliefs of Mormonism. Mitt Romney I have no clear idea whether Pastor Robert Jeffress is correct in referring to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more colloquially known as the Mormons, as ?a cult.? There do seem to be one or two points of similarity. The Mormons have a supreme leader, known as the prophet or the president, whose word is allegedly supreme. They can be ordered to turn upon and shun any members who show any signs of backsliding. They have distinctive little practices, such as the famous underwear, to mark them off from other mortals, and they are said to be highly disciplined and continent when it comes to sex, booze, nicotine, and coffee. Word is that the church can be harder to leave than it was to join. Hefty donations and tithes are apparently appreciated from the membership. Whether this makes it a cult, or just another of the born-in-America Christian sects, I am not sure. In any case what interests me more is the weird and sinister belief system of the LDS, discussion of which it is currently hoping to inhibit by crying that criticism of Mormonism amounts to bigotry. To give some examples. The founder of the church, one Joseph Smith, was a fraud and conjurer well known to the authorities of upstate New York. He claimed to have been shown some gold plates on which a new revelation was inscribed in no known language. He then qualified as the sole translator of this language. (The entire story is related in Fawn Brodie?s biography, No Man Knows My History.* It seems that we can add, to sausages and laws, churches as a phenomenon that is not pleasant to watch at the manufacturing stage. Edmund Wilson wrote that it was powerfully shocking to see Brodie as she exposed a religion that was a whole-cloth fabrication.) On his later forays into the chartless wilderness, there to play the role of Moses to his followers (who were permitted and even encouraged in plural marriage, so as to go forth and mass-produce little Mormons), Smith also announced that he wanted to be known as the Prophet Muhammad of North America, with the fearsome slogan: ?Either al-Koran or the Sword.? He levied war against his fellow citizens, and against the federal government. One might have thought that this alone would raise some eyebrows down at the local Baptist Church. Saddling itself with some pro-slavery views at the time of the Civil War, and also with a ?bible? of its own that referred to black people as a special but inferior creation, the Mormon Church did not admit black Americans to the priesthood until 1978, which is late enough?in point of the sincerity of the ?revelation? they had to undergo?to cast serious doubt on the sincerity of their change of heart. More recently, and very weirdly, the Mormons have been caught amassing great archives of the dead, and regularly ?praying them in? as adherents of the LDS, so as to retrospectively ?baptize? everybody as a convert. (Here the relevant book is Alex Shoumatoff?s The Mountain of Names.) In a hollowed-out mountain in the Mormons? stronghold state of Utah is a colossal database assembled for this purpose. Now I have no objection if Mormons desire to put their own ancestors down for posthumous salvation. But they also got hold of a list of those put to death by the Nazis? Final Solution and fairly recently began making these massacred Jews into honorary LDS members as well. Indeed, when the practice was discovered, the church at first resisted efforts to make them stop. Whether this was cultish or sectarian it was certainly extremely tactless: a crass attempt at mass identity theft from the deceased. The first time I visited Salt Lake City, in 1970, the John Birch Society bookshop was almost a part of the Tabernacle. Ezra Taft Benson, later to be the president of the church, was a member of its board of 12 Apostles?and sought their approval?when he served in Eisenhower?s Cabinet for eight years. He was, if not a member of the Birch Society, a strong endorser. His pamphlet, ?Civil Rights: Tool of Communist Deception? is well-remembered. This was the soil that nurtured Cleon Skousen and the other paranoid elements who in the end incubated Glenn Beck.* I merely make the point that the Mormon Church has a distinctly politicized record, and is in a weak position to complain when its leaders are asked political questions that arise directly from their membership. So far, Mitt Romney, who praised Skousen as recently as recently as 2007, has evaded most questions by acting as if he was being subjected to some kind of religious test for public office. He?s been supported in this by some soft-centered types who think that any dislike for any ?faith group? is ipso facto proof of some sort of prejudice. Sorry, but this will not wash. I don?t think I would want to vote for a Scientologist or a Moonie for high office, or indeed any other kind, and I think attempts to silence criticism of such outfits are the real evidence of prejudice. The waters are muddied, of course, by the fact that the first attack on Romney came from a man who is himself a clerical bigmouth, exploiting religion for political purposes and handing out Rick Perry endorsements. This is the sort of Southern Baptist who believes, in the words of the old ditty: We are the pure and chosen few And all the rest are damned There?s room enough in hell for you We don?t want heaven crammed. As I pointed out a few weeks ago, Perry has not just accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior, but has expressed the view that those who do not join him are headed for eternal damnation. He has sought to revise and extend his second set of remarks, but not by much. And he believes in miraculous births from virgins, talking snakes, walking cadavers, and other things that feel distinctly weird and cultish to me. The fact is that what we have here is a clash between two discrepant forms of Christianity, in which the good Pastor Jeffress holds no especially high ground and in which the Latter-day Saints, unless they lie, are among the fastest-growing churches in the United States. The Mormons apparently believe that Jesus will return in Missouri rather than Armageddon: I wouldn?t care to bet on the likelihood of either. In the meanwhile, though, we are fully entitled to ask Mitt Romney about the forces that influenced his political formation and?since he comes from a dynasty of his church, and spent much of his boyhood and manhood first as a missionary and then as a senior lay official?it is safe to assume that the influence is not small. Unless he is to succeed in his dreary plan to borrow from the playbook of his pain-in-the-ass predecessor Michael Dukakis, and make this an election about "competence not ideology," he should be asked to defend and explain himself, and his voluntary membership in one of the most egregious groups operating on American soil. Corrections, Oct. 17, 2011: This article originally misidentied Fawn Brodie?s biography of Joseph Smith as No Man Knows My Name. (Return to the corrected sentence.) This article also originally misidentified Cleon Skousen as Glenn Skousen. (Return to the corrected sentence.) http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/10/is_mormonism_a_cult_who_cares_it_s_their_weird_and_sinister_beli.html From ths at psalience.org Tue Oct 18 14:08:42 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:08:42 +0200 Subject: [THS] More DSK Scandal Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111018140737.04a0ea20@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/681508/more_dsk_scandal%3A_french_police_chief_allegedly_flew_prostitutes_to_new_york_for_orgies More DSK Scandal: French Police Chief Allegedly Flew Prostitutes to New York for Orgies By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, AlterNet Posted on October 17, 2011 French prosecutors may have dropped Tristane Banon's rape charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but the scandals just won't quit. During an undercover prostitution sting in France, officials have uncovered information that Jean-Christophe Lagarde, a police chief who hoped to work for DSK if he became president, hired prostitutes and organized orgies for DSK while he was IMF chief, including flying prostitutes to New York. Daily Mail: French judges are aware that Mr Lagarde, a departmental commissioner in France's national police force, had discussed setting up a protection unit for Mr Strauss-Kahn if he became President of France. The highly-respected Sunday paper, which has seen inquiry documents, said that Mr Lagarde also accompanied prostitutes to New York, where Mr Strauss-Kahn was working as IMF chief. Strauss-Kahn is likely to be interviewed as a witness in the prostitution sting, which has already taken down five men for "procuring prostitutes, organized conspiracy in criminal acts, and money laundering." LaGarde "expects to be taken into custody" over the allegations. But a prostitute has also told them that the pair organised an orgy in the spring of 2010 'in a duplex suite of a luxury central Paris hotel', according to the Journal du Dimanche (JDD) newspaper. According to the JDD, the illegal prostitute racket not only provided girls for luxury French hotels like the Carlton in Lille, but also ones in the U.S. They are thought to have been selected for Mr Strauss-Kahn by Dominique Alderweireld, a 62-year-old 'pimp' nicknamed 'Dodo', who made a number of trips to see Mr Strauss-Kahn in New York. He has since been arrested. From ths at psalience.org Tue Oct 18 23:58:30 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 23:58:30 +0200 Subject: [THS] Fukushima: Immune-destroying radiation sickeness spreads Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111018235714.04542018@mail.messagingengine.com> Fukushima: Immune-destroying radiation sickeness spreads http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/news/intrnational/2011/10/17/1203.html DATE: 17 OCTOBER 2011 POSTED BY : SPECIAL TO THE CANADIAN Once a malicious ?baseless rumour? on the net, now it is written up in a regional newspaper with readership in Tokyo and Kanto area. Tokyo Shinbun has reported that many children in Koriyama City in Fukushima Prefecture, 50 kilometers from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, are suffering inexplicable nosebleed, diarrhea, and lack of energy since the nuke plant accident. A 39-year-old mother of two told the doctor that her 6-year-old daughter had nosebleed everyday for 3 weeks in April. For 1 week, the daughter bled copiously from both nostrils. The mother said their doctor told her it was just a seasonal allergy from pollen. Her other child, 2-year-old son, had nosebleed from end of April to May. The pediatrician from The Bridge to Chernobyl, Yurika Hashimoto, told the mother it was hard to determine whether the nosebleed was the result of radiation exposure, but they should have the blood test done for white blood cells. It was important to keep record, the doctor advised. Ionizing radiation has a deleterious effect on the immunity mechanism, particularly when large but sublethal doses are applied over a short period of time. The hematopoietic system is extremely sensitive, and a fall in the lymphocytes is one of the most characteristic manifestations. The normal balance of the microflora of the intestinal and respiratory tracts is disturbed, which results in a bacteremia and may lead to death of the host. Active immunity is seriously interfered with if the irradiation occurs shortly before the injection of an antigen. There is also reduced resistance to pathogenic micro-organisms, which may lead to fatal infections. Prolonged irradiation at low levels does not seem to affect immunity adversely. Active immunization should be carried out well in advance of exposure to radiation, and supportive treatment commenced immediately after exposure to large doses. Internet site references: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1849852 http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2011/06/16/children-suffering-severe-radiation-sickness-50-km-from-fukushima-nuclear-plant/ From ths at psalience.org Wed Oct 19 00:01:55 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:01:55 +0200 Subject: [THS] Why Occupy Wall Street Is Bigger Than Left vs. Right Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111019000143.04541d88@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-occupy-wall-street-is-bigger-than-left-vs-right-20111017 Why Occupy Wall Street Is Bigger Than Left vs. Right POSTED: OCTOBER 17, 9:46 AM ET Comment74 Demonstrators associated with the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement face off with police in the streets of the financial district of New York. Spencer Platt/Getty Images I was surprised, amused and annoyed all at once when I found out yesterday that some moron-provocateur linked to notorious right-wing cybergoon Andrew Breitbart had infiltrated a series of private e-mail lists ? including one that I have been participating in ? and was using them to run an expos? on the supposed behind-the-scenes marionetting of the OWS movement by the liberal media. According to various web reports, what happened was that a private "cyber-security researcher" named Thomas Ryan somehow accessed a series of email threads between various individuals and dumped them all on BigGovernment.com, Breitbart's site. Gawker is also reporting that Ryan forwarded some of these emails to the FBI and the NYPD. I have no idea whether those email exchanges are the same as the ones I was involved with. But what is clear is that some private email exchanges between myself and a number of other people ? mostly financial journalists and activists who know each other from having covered the crisis from the same angle in the last three years, people like Barry Ritholz, Dylan Ratigan, former regulator William Black, Glenn Greenwald and myself ? ended up being made public. There is nothing terribly interesting in any of these exchanges. Most all of the things written were things all of us ended up saying publicly in our various media forums. In my case, what I wrote was almost an exact copy of my Rolling Stone article last week, suggesting a list of demands for the movement. I said I thought having demands was a good idea and listed a few things I thought demonstrators could focus on. Others disagreed, and there was a friendly back-and-forth. So I was amazed to wake up this morning and find that various right-wing sites had used these exchanges to build a story about a conspiracy of left-wing journalists. "Busted. Emails Show Liberal Media & Far Left Cranks Conspired With #OWS Protesters to Craft Message," wrote one. Breitbart's site, BigGovernment.com, went further, saying that the Occupy Washington D.C. movement is "working with well-known media members to craft its demands and messaging while these media members report on the movement." The list, the site wrote, include: ...well known names such as MSNBC?s Dylan Ratigan, Rolling Stone?s Matt Tiabbi [sic] who both are actively participating; involvement from other listers such as Bill Moyers and Glenn Greenwald plus well-known radicals like Noam Chomsky, remains unclear. Aside from the appalling fact of these assholes stealing private emails and bragging about it in public, the whole story is completely absurd. None of the people on the list, as far as I know, are actually organizers of OWS -- I know I'm not one, anyway. In fact, I was surprised by the entire characterization of this list as being some kind of official wing of OWS. I thought it was just a bunch of emails from friends of mine, talking about what advice we would give protesters, if any of them asked, which in my case anyway they definitely did not. This whole episode to me underscores an unpleasant development for OWS. There is going to be a fusillade of attempts from many different corners to force these demonstrations into the liberal-conservative blue-red narrative. This will be an effort to transform OWS from a populist and wholly non-partisan protest against bailouts, theft, insider trading, self-dealing, regulatory capture and the market-perverting effect of the Too-Big-To-Fail banks into something a little more familiar and less threatening, i.e. a captive "liberal" uprising that the right will use to whip up support and the Democrats will try to turn into electoral energy for 2012. Tactically, what we'll see here will be a) people firmly on the traditional Democratic side claiming to speak for OWS, and b) people on the right-Republican side attempting to portray OWS as a puppet of well-known liberals and other Democratic interests. On the Democratic side, we've already seen a lot of this behavior, particularly in the last week or so. Glenn Greenwald wrote about this a lot last week, talking about how Obama has already made it clear that he is "on the same side as the Wall Street protesters" and that the Democratic Party, through the DCCC (its House fundraising arm), has jumped into the fray by circulating a petition seeking 100,000 party supporters to affirm that ?I stand with the Occupy Wall Street protests.?(I wonder how firmly the DCCC was standing with OWS sentiment back when it was pushing for the bailouts and the repeal of Glass-Steagall Act). We've similarly heard about MoveOn.org jumping into the demonstrations and attempting, seemingly, to assume leadership roles in the movement. All of this is the flip side of the coin that has people like Breitbart trying to frame OWS as a socialist uprising and a liberal media conspiracy. The aim here is to redraw the protests along familiar battle lines. The Rush Limbaughs of the world are very comfortable with a narrative that has Noam Chomsky, MoveOn and Barack Obama on one side, and the Tea Party and Republican leaders on the other. The rest of the traditional media won't mind that narrative either, if it can get enough "facts" to back it up. They know how to do that story and most of our political media is based upon that Crossfire paradigm of left-vs-right commentary shows and NFL Today-style team-vs-team campaign reporting. What nobody is comfortable with is a movement in which virtually the entire spectrum of middle class and poor Americans is on the same page, railing against incestuous political and financial corruption on Wall Street and in Washington. The reality is that Occupy Wall Street and the millions of middle Americans who make up the Tea Party are natural allies and should be on the same page about most of the key issues, and that's a story our media won't want to or know how to handle. Take, for instance, the matter of the Too-Big-To-Fail banks, which people like me andBarry Ritholz have focused on as something that could be a key issue for OWS. These gigantic institutions have put millions of ordinary people out of their homes thanks to a massive fraud scheme for which they were not punished, owing to their enormous influence with government and their capture of the regulators. This is an issue for the traditional "left" because it's a classic instance of overweening corporate power -- but it's an issue for the traditional "right" because these same institutions are also the biggest welfare bums of all time, de facto wards of the state who sucked trillions of dollars of public treasure from the pockets of patriotic taxpayers from coast to coast. Both traditional constituencies want these companies off the public teat and back swimming on their own in the cruel seas of the free market, where they will inevitably be drowned in their corruption and greed, if they don't reform immediately. This is a major implicit complaint of the OWS protests and it should absolutely strike a nerve with Tea Partiers, many of whom were talking about some of the same things when they burst onto the scene a few years ago. The banks know this. They know they have no "natural" constituency among voters, which is why they spend such fantastic amounts of energy courting the mainstream press and such huge sums lobbying politicians on both sides of the aisle. The only way the Goldmans and Citis and Bank of Americas can survive is if they can suck up popular political support indirectly, either by latching onto such vague right-populist concepts as "limited government" and "free-market capitalism" (ironic, because none of them would survive ten minutes without the federal government's bailouts and other protections) or, alternatively, by presenting themselves as society's bulwark against communism, lefty extremism, Noam Chomsky, etc. All of which is a roundabout way of saying one thing: beware of provocateurs on both sides of the aisle. This movement is going to attract many Breitbarts, of both the left and right variety. They're going to try to identify fake leaders, draw phony battle lines, and then herd everybody back into the same left-right cage matches of old. Whenever that happens, we just have to remember not to fall for the trap. When someone says this or that person speaks for OWS, don't believe it. This thing is bigger than one or two or a few people, and it isn't part of the same old story. From ths at psalience.org Wed Oct 19 19:40:44 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:40:44 +0200 Subject: [THS] Naomi Wolf has been arrested at OWS Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111019194008.06721388@mail.messagingengine.com> [VIDEO] http://wp.me/pkFiL-8cj Uploaded by WeAreNinetyNine on Oct 19, 2011 Naomi Wolf, the celebrated feminist author and campaigner, has been arrested at an Occupy Wall Street protest outside an awards ceremony held to honour New York's governor. Wolf and a companion were led away in handcuffs from the street in front of Skylight Studios in Manhattan. Inside, the New York state governor, Andrew Cuomo, was being presented with the "game changer of the year" award from the Huffington Post website, for which Wolf is a contributor. She was detained after ignoring police warnings to stay off the street in front of the building and where a crowd of about 50 Occupy Wall Street protesters had gathered. Wolf had been at the event, hosted by Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and attended by a number of celebrities, including the reality TV star Kim Kardashian, who was presented with a "business leader" award. The protesters arrived at the event in SoHo to demonstrate their support of a "millionaires' tax", which Cuomo, a Democrat, opposes. According to Ryan Devereaux, a reporter for the liberal TV news organisation Democracy Now, some chanted: "Where is Cuomo? Protecting the 1%!" There was a dispute with police, who said protesters were blocking the sidewalk. Wolf came and told them they "didn't need a permit for a megaphone". According to another witness, Wolf objected to a police officer's assertion that the group were blocking the street. "Tell it to the judge," the officer is reported to have said. It was unclear what charges Wolf, author of the best-selling book The Beauty Myth, might face. Most people detained during the month-long protests have been arrested on misdemeanors. Witnesses said protesters marched to a nearby police precinct, where they chanted and sang songs. A police officer came out of the building and used the protesters' now-famous "human mic" call-and-response system to tell them Wolf had been released from another precinct after being issued with a summons. Earlier in the evening, it was revealed that a New York Police Department investigation had censured a police officer who used pepper spray on Occupy Wall Street protesters last month. Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna faces losing 10 vacation days after the incident on 24 September near Union Square, shortly after the protests began in lower Manhattan, according to the Associated Press. Video from the protests shows a small group of mostly women corralled by orange netting used by officers to control crowds. Bologna approaches and seemingly without warning blasted a cluster of women with pepper spray. Two of the women crumple on the sidewalk in pain. One screams. The incident sparked outrage by demonstrators and helped propel the movement into the media spotlight. From ths at psalience.org Wed Oct 19 23:16:30 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 23:16:30 +0200 Subject: [THS] Europe's lost decade as $7 trillion loan crunch looms Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111019231611.04696a80@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8830072/Europes-lost-decade-as-7-trillion-loan-crunch-looms.html Europe's lost decade as $7 trillion loan crunch looms Europe?s banks face a $7 trillion lending contraction to bring their balance sheets in line with the US and Japan, threatening to trap the region in a credit crunch and chronic depression for a decade. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 8:30PM BST 16 Oct 2011 CommentsComments The risk is "Japanisation" without the benefits of Japan: without a single government, or a trade super-surplus, or 1pc debt costs, or unique social cohesion. Even today, the jobless rate for youth is near 10pc in Japan. It is already 46pc in Spain, 43pc in Greece, 32pc in Ireland, and 27pc in Italy. We will discover over time what yet more debt deleveraging will do to these societies. Stephen Jen from SLJ Macro Partners says the loan to deposit (LTD) ratio of Europe?s lenders is 1.2, much like Japanese banks in the early 1990s at the onset of the country?s Lost Decade (now two decades). How Europe allowed this to happen will no doubt be the subject of many enquiries. Suffice to say that it was an intellectual failure by everybody: lenders, economists, regulators and the European Central Bank. The ECB misread the implications of the global capital surplus in the middle of the last decade (like the Fed) and gunned the M3 money supply at double-digit rates (like the Fed). This great error further juiced the fatal flood of lending from North Europe to Club Med. Interestingly, it is what US lending did to Germany in the late 1920s. When the music stopped -- when Wall Street cut off loans, as Germany has now cut off loans to Spain -- trouble ensured within two years. Weimar limped on, but not for long. Related Articles * German foreign minister hits out at US over debt crisis 16 Oct 2011 * Europe in ?2 trillion rescue bid 15 Oct 2011 * G20 has three weeks to solve eurozone debt crisis 14 Oct 2011 * Debt crisis: live 19 Oct 2011 * Rio in ?5bn asset sale 17 Oct 2011 The Japanese eventually trimmed their LTD ratio to the current safe level of 0.7pc, the same as US banks. It is a fair bet that new bank rules and market pressure will force Europe to do likewise. Mr Jen said this means slashing the loan book from $19 trillion to nearer $12 trillion, given the dearth of fresh deposits. It will be an ice-cold douche for the world. European banks have $3.4 trillion of cross-border loans to emerging markets (BIS data), three-quarters of the total. They account for 46pc in Asia, 63pc in Latin America, and 90pc in Eastern Europe. Either these banks will cut funding to Eastern Europe, or they will curtail loans at home. Most likely they will do both. Mr Jen said a lot of nasty "feedback loops" will blight the whole European region for a long time. The sheer scale of Europe?s bank excesses -- roughly equal to Alan Greenspan?s household bubble in America -- shows what EU leaders are up against as they thrash out their latest "Grand Plan" to save Euroland. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have bowed to pressure from Washington and the International Monetary Fund for bank recapitalizations, by compulsion if necessary. Lenders must raise core Tier I capital ratios to 9pc or 10pc. This is a wise precaution given that Germany plans to impose a Greek default on Europe?s banking system. But it is also "pro-cyclical". It tightens credit further. Lenders threaten to shrink their loan books to meet the target rather than dilute their share base by raising money in a hostile market. If governments are forced to step in, it will not be much prettier. The IMF pitches fresh capital needs at ?200bn, but what if Credit Suisse is nearer the mark at ?400bn? Such sums would push the public debt of several states over the danger line, intensifying the vicious circle as banks and sovereigns drag each other down. Indeed, it you look at each component of the Grand Plan, every one creates a secondary chain of consequences that may ultimately prove self-defeating. It is why I fear there may be no plausible solution to Europe?s crisis. The structural damage has already gone too far. We are told the Franco-German plan will offer Greece debt-relief worth having, perhaps a 50pc haircut for banks. Investors are understandably furious. This unpicks the voluntary accord for 21pc haircuts agreed in July. "A deal is a deal," said Charles Dallara from the Institute of International Finance (IIF). Moreover, 50pc is not enough. It creates a banking panic without actually solving Greece?s problem. A third of Greece?s ?364bn debt is owed to the IMF, EU, and ECB. That is deemed untouchable. Angela Merkel has so far managed to deflect popular anger over bail-out loans by insisting that they have not cost German taxpayers one Pfennig. Stephane Deo from UBS said Greece might have to "repudiate its debt entirely" with a 100pc haircut for banks to give itself enough oxygen to breathe again. This would be an earthquake. No sane investor believes this will stop with Greece. Portugal is in much the same trouble, despite the heroic austerity drive of premier Pedro Passos Coelho -- a latter day Marques de Pombal. The country?s total debt will top 360pc of GDP next year, and its current account deficit is stuck near 10pc of GDP. This mix is worse than in Greece. It is untenable. We all told too that the EU?s ?440bn bail-out fund (EFSF) -- at last approved after high drama in Slovakia -- will be ramped up with "leverage". It is assumed that German lawmakers will tamely go along with this, a mere three weeks after finance minister Wolfgang Sch?uble seemed to promise that no such that leverage would occur. The proposal du jour is Allianz?s "Achleitner Plan", letting the EFSF guarantee the first tranche of losses on bonds: 40pc for Greece, Portugal, and Ireland; 25pc for Italy and Spain. This would boost coverage to nearly ?3 trillion of debt issuance. This plan is dangerous. It concentrates risk, like a Lloyds spiral syndicate, or the "CDOs" and other instruments of legerdemain in the US subprime bubble. There is a high chance that this bluff would be called if Europe tips into a double-dip recession. Credit markets have already begun to issue their verdict. Yield spreads on the EFSF?s 10-year bonds have almost doubled over Bunds since July. French spreads jumped last week to a post-EMU record of 92 points. Remember that France?s banking liabilities are 409pc of GDP (ECB data), compared to 338pc for Spain, 331pc for Germany, 250pc for Italy, 213pc for Greece. Any such leverage must inevitably cost France its `AAA? rating, with parallel effects in Austria as it struggles with a wave of fresh woes in Hungary, Ukraine, and the Balkans. This sets off its own treacherous dynamic. Even if the IMF and the China-led `BRICS? were to step with in half a trillion or so, this would create a fresh problem. Foreign purchases of EMU bonds would force up the value of the euro. The effect would tighten the trade noose even further on Spain, Italy, and France. Perhaps that is why Brazil?s Guido "currency war" Mantega likes the idea. It is exchange manipulation behind diplomatic cover. There is much talk of EMU fiscal union, most recently the "Soros Plan". But what Germany means by EU economic government is better policing of Club Med budgets, not debt-pooling or eurobonds. It should be clear after the ruling of the German constitutional court last month and the fiery debates in the Bundestag that Berlin will not alienate its sovereign fiscal powers to the EU. Merkozy?s Grand Plan may buy time. It may shift the stress point from one part of the unworkable structure to another. But it cannot conjure away the 30pc gap in competitiveness between Germany and Latin Europe that has built up over fifteen years. It is this intra-EMU currency misalignment that is asphyxiating Club Med and destroying the banks. The ECB can of course save Euroland, if it is willing to launch stimulus a l?outrance with bond purchases near 20pc of GDP -- like the Bank of England. A reflation policy would undoubtedly lift the South off the reefs, perhaps by targeting M3 growth of 5pc in Italy and Spain for three years. It would allow EMU laggards to claw their way to back to viability. Any such attempt to correct North-South imbalances from both ends requires an inflationary boom in Germany. That is the price that Germany must pay. But as events have made all too clear over recent months, this runs smack into German ideology and the Teutonic granite of the Bundesbank. So perhaps there is no solution for EMU after all. Kultur is the ultimate economic fundamental. From ths at psalience.org Wed Oct 19 23:18:41 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 23:18:41 +0200 Subject: [THS] Iran: Unfolding a plot: Mossad at work Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111019231332.04696a80@mail.messagingengine.com> Iran: Unfolding a plot: Mossad at work: Despite its evidently make-believe facade, the cooked-up story of the Saudi envoy assassination plot does not seem to be something which can be easily banished from the minds of the American powers that be. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205139.html === Says Mossad Gave Supposed Iranian Terrorist Arbabsiar Fake Papers: The so called Iranian terror plot has continued to come apart at the seems. Today, a Pakistani Intelligence official told the Pakistani Urdu-language daily that the Mossad gave Mansour Arbabsiar fake id papers only three months ago. http://goo.gl/7gX6f === 'Saudi envoy plot suspect is MKO man': Interpol has gained information about the second suspect in the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States indicating that he is a key member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO). http://www.presstv.ir/detail/205177.html === The FBI Goes Rogue On Iran By Lawrence Davidson There has always been a fine line dividing the criminal from the police. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29446.htm === Ahmadinejad Rejects US 'Murder Plot' Claims Video Ahmadinejad said that anyone who heard the claims "laughs", but warned the US to be mindful of the allegations it made. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29435.htm === Who is Really Behind It? The Implausibility of an Iranian Plot By Esam Al-Amin The clear winners of any escalation with Iran are those who want to attack Iran militarily in the region, namely Israel and Saudi Arabia. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29438.htm === Iran Says Plot was Mujahedin Put-Up Job By Michael Rubin It would not be the first time the Mujahedin al-Khalq has forced intelligence agencies and the press to scramble with an elaborate hoax. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29439.htm === From ths at psalience.org Thu Oct 20 11:41:25 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:41:25 +0200 Subject: [THS] Vicente Fox calls for legalisation of drugs Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111020114023.06a2a1a8@mail.messagingengine.com> BBC News 19 October 2011 The former President of Mexico has told the BBC that he holds the United States responsible for the violence in his country. Vicente Fox, who was president from 2001 to 2006, said consumption of drugs in the US was at the root of the problem and he called for the legalisation of drugs in America. Forty-five thousand people are estimated to have been killed since Mexico's current President Felipe Calderon launched his war on the drug cartels five years ago. Speaking to the BBC's Katty Kay, Mr Fox said it was time to withdraw the military and to seek an alternative strategy. Watch TV interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15379360 -- From ths at psalience.org Thu Oct 20 11:42:25 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:42:25 +0200 Subject: [THS] People of Sirte Still Resisting NATO Backed Rebels Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111020114210.044e0590@mail.messagingengine.com> The Destruction Of Sirte By Patrick O'Connor If at any point during Libya's civil war Gaddafi's forces had done what the TNC fighters are doing now, there would have been blanket demands of charges for war crimes and crimes against humanity. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29447.htm === People of Sirte Still Resisting NATO Backed Rebels Video Ahmed Bani, a military spokesperson from the rebels admitted that they are not making any progress in Sirte. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29448.htm === From ths at psalience.org Thu Oct 20 11:46:01 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:46:01 +0200 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?Norman_Finkelstein_and_John_Mearsheimer=3A_G?= =?iso-8859-1?q?reater_Israel=97or_Peace=3F?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111020114359.044e2800@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29451.htm [illustrations at original url above] Greater Israel?or Peace? Pathbreaking scholars Norman Finkelstein and John Mearsheimer speak out about the precarious future of the Jewish state. By Norman Finkelstein and John Mearsheimer October 19, 2011 " American Conservative" - -Shortly before Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in New York to seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state, TAC?s Scott McConnell sat down with Norman Finkelstein and John Mearsheimer to discuss the deeper currents shaping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since then, President Obama has given a speech shocking in its deference to Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel?s right-wing coalition, and there is no immediate prospect for renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations?the ?peace process? begun with discussions in Oslo, Norway in 1991. Israel has announced fresh plans to move settlers into Palestinian areas of Jerusalem it conquered in 1967. As daunting as the prospects for peace may be, Israel no longer enjoys immunity from criticism within the American media and academy?thanks in large part to the work of scholars like Mearsheimer and Finkelstein, who have forced a debate among foreign-policy thinkers and the American left over the price Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians all pay for Tel Aviv?s policies. One of America?s most important dissident scholars, Norman Finkelstein has written six books touching on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2007, after he had been recommended by DePaul University?s political science department and described by the university as an ?outstanding teacher,? he was denied tenure thanks to an unprecedented lobbying campaign waged by Alan Dershowitz, who had long sparred with Finkelstein over Israel. Finkelstein is the child of European Jews who survived Auschwitz and Majdanek, which gave added force to his book The Holocaust Industry, critical of ways Israel has exploited the Holocaust for financial and political gain. His most recent work, This Time We Went Too Far, is an analysis of Israel?s 2008-09 war against the Palestinians in Gaza. Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago is one of America?s foremost international relations scholars. He created a storm in 2006 when he and co-author Stephen Walt of Harvard University published the essay ?The Israel Lobby,? which was later expanded into a best-selling book. Scott McConnell: Have we come to the end of the Oslo process? Is a two-state solution still a viable possibility? Norman Finkelstein: The problem is the definition of terms. The Oslo process, contrary to what?s widely understood, was largely a success. It?s true now that it may be at an impasse, but as it was originally conceived, it was largely a success. The Israeli leadership was very clear about what it intended from the Oslo process. Mainly, Rabin said?the former prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin?that if we can get the Palestinians to do the dirty work in the Occupied Territories, there?s going to be less pressure from human rights organizations. They wouldn?t cause as many problems if the Palestinians were doing the policing. And there was a military reason: namely, a large number of Israeli troops was bogged down in the Occupied Territories. That meant time taken away from military training. The quid pro quo was, well, in 1990-91 the PLO made what seemed to have been a tactical or strategic error by supporting Saddam Hussein, and they lost all of their funding from the Gulf States. And basically the United States and Israel threw them a life preserver, saying, ?If you switch sides, you do what we want you to do, we?ll keep you alive.? That was the choice that the Palestinians made, or the Palestinian leadership made. But then a new problem arose, and that?s Hamas began to rise in power. John Mearsheimer: The Israelis?and this was especially true of Rabin when the Oslo peace process got started?had no interest in giving the Palestinians a viable state. What they wanted was to restrict the Palestinians to a handful of Bantustans that were located inside of Greater Israel, and it could be called a Palestinian state. In a very important way, Oslo has been successful in that it has allowed the Israelis, working with the Palestinian Authority, to create a situation where the Palestinians have some autonomy in these Bantustans. McConnell: You say this about Rabin too? He?s considered the most peace-oriented Israeli. Finkelstein: He was the most rigid. Even Rabin?s wife, afterwards, during the Camp David negotiations, said that her husband would never have agreed to the concessions that [Prime Minister Ehud] Barak made. Now remember, Barak barely made any concessions. But she said her husband would have never agreed to that. I think she?s probably right. In Rabin?s last speech to the Knesset before he was assassinated, he said, ?I don?t support a Palestinian state.? He said, ?Something less than it.? Mearsheimer: It?s also important to understand the American position since the Oslo process began has reflected very clearly the Israeli position. It was considered politically unacceptable in the United States to use the words ?Palestinian state? until Bill Clinton?s last month in office. The first time Bill Clinton uttered the words ?Palestinian state? was in January of 2001. If you remember, in 1998 Hillary Clinton, who was then the first lady, said that she thought it would be very good for peace in the region if Palestinians had a state of their own. All hell broke loose. The president had to dissociate himself from his wife because it was so controversial. This was 1998, five years after the Oslo peace accords had been signed. As unusual as this may sound, or as paradoxical as this may sound, it was actually George W. Bush who was the first president who really put the issue of a Palestinian state on the table. But even he realized that with Ariel Sharon as his counterpart in Israel there was no way he could push in any meaningful manner for the Palestinians to get a viable state of their own. And again, that?s the key to having a deal. McConnell: Do you think there is a framework for a possible deal in the kind of negotiations that went on late in Barak?s term before Sharon?s election, at the 2001 Taba summit and things like that? Finkelstein: What you can say with a fair amount of generality is that if you look at the Taba map, and you look at the map that [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert presented in 2006, they look the same. They all call for keeping about 9 percent of the West Bank, and they all call for keeping the large settlement blocs, what?s called Ariel in the north and Maale Adumim in the center. It is impossible to construct a Palestinian state with those maps. Mearsheimer: Ariel reaches far out into the West Bank and actually sits on top of the largest aquifer in the West Bank, and it was put there for a purpose. Maale Adumim is designed to give Israel control well out into the heart of the West Bank. And the people who built those settlements understood full well that it would be almost impossible for any Israeli political leader to abandon them and turn them over to the Palestinians. The reason that the Oslo peace process is dead and that you?re not going to get a two-state solution is that the political center of gravity in Israel has moved far enough to the right over time that it?s, in my opinion, unthinkable that the Israelis would number one, give up the Jordan River valley; number two, abandon Ariel and Maale Adumim; and number three, allow for a capital in East Jerusalem. So given all those factors, I think that we?re rapidly reaching the point?in fact, I think we?ve reached that point?where we?re going to have a Greater Israel which runs from the Jordan River valley to the Mediterranean. Finkelstein: I don?t agree with that. There are many reasons to be pessimistic. But there are also some grounds for a reasonable amount of optimism. Things are changing in the region, and things are changing in the world. Like you say, the Israeli political establishment has moved to the right. The Israeli population has moved to the right, it has a siege mentality. But those are political factors. And then the question is trying to change the calculus of power. Here things are changing. There are changes in American public opinion, which are quite significant when you look at the polls. There are changes in Jewish public opinion. There are major regional changes?what?s happening now between Israel and Turkey that?s part of an Arab Spring. Mearsheimer: I think there?s no question that the international environment that Israel operates in is changing in profound ways, and developments in Turkey and Egypt are probably the best two examples of that. As a result of all this, Israel has a growing sense that it?s isolated, that it really only has one friend in the world, which is the United States. Now the $64,000 question is whether that?s likely to lead Israel to be more flexible in the short to medium term, or is it likely to cause them to hunker down and be much less flexible and even more bellicose than they have been. And I would bet that the latter would be the case. McConnell: What difference does it make that Turkey and Egypt are no longer de facto allies of Israel? Finkelstein: I think a lot of it is psychological, and not psychological in the sense of Oprah psychological. It?s a whole way of relating to the region. Israel has the sense that this is its region. And it?s very disorienting for them to feel as if they?re losing control in that part of the world, that the natives are getting restless. Mearsheimer: I put Norman?s point in slightly different terms, that is to say, I think what is at stake for the Israelis here is legitimacy, and I think that for them, and for most countries, legitimacy matters greatly. If you read the Israeli press, you?ll see there are all sorts of concerns about de-legitimization. And if you listen to people in the American Jewish community talk about what?s happening to Israel, they?re deeply concerned about de-legitimization. What?s happening here with Turkey and with Egypt is that as those countries become more democratized and more critical of Israel, they?re adding fuel to that de-legitimization fire. There?s no question that most European governments will support Israel at the UN, and there?s certainly no question that the United States will. But the support in Europe, and even the support in the United States, is not terribly deep. It?s wide, right, but not deep. Finkelstein: Actually support for Israel is no longer that wide. It used to be fair to say wide but not deep, wide and thin. But now if you look at the polls, it?s actually quite surprising. In Pew polls of the last few years, the negative opinion of Israel is kind of astonishing. Mearsheimer: It?s right down there with Iran, North Korea Finkelstein: Well, it?s always ranked with Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan. They?re the four countries least liked in the world. But even if you take countries which have the strongest Israel lobbies?apart from the U.S., it?s Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, and Australia?look at the polls. Even in places like Canada, the polls show about 15 to 20 percent having a positive view of Israel, 60 or 70 percent having a negative view. Public opinion has really swung. Even in the U.S., by the way. McConnell: Let?s try to tease this out, I mean, the number of Americans who consider themselves pro-Israeli as opposed to pro-Palestinian has been kind of constant, like a 60 to 10 ratio, and hasn?t changed very much over a generation. Finkelstein: Except?if you put it ?pro-Israel versus pro-Palestinian,? that?s correct?if you look at it in terms of, ?Do you have a positive or negative opinion of Israel?? for the first time in the last two or three years it?s come down to 50/50. It has changed. Mearsheimer: I think that?s very important, but I think there?s an even more important indicator of how weak the support is. And that is that if you ask Americans if the United States should support Israel or the Palestinians in their conflict, roughly 70 percent, sometimes up to 75 percent, say we should favor neither side. It?s really quite remarkable. We have this special relationship where we favor Israel axiomatically over Palestinians at every critical juncture. But here you have a situation where the American people, three-fourths of them, are saying that the United States should favor neither side. In fact, what the American people want to see is the United States act as a?what?s the word? McConnell: Neutral arbiter. Mearsheimer: Yeah, a neutral arbiter rather than as Israel?s lawyer. When you think about how Americans deal with Israel, there are three dimensions to it. One is how people think about Israel and America?s relationship with Israel. Number two is how they talk about it, and number three is actual U.S. policy. There?s great variation among those three dimensions. I think that over the past ten years how Americans think about Israel has changed in significant ways. More and more people are aware of what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. They understand that this is bad for the United States from a strategic point of view, and it?s morally bankrupt behavior. There has been a significant change in the discourse as well over the past ten years. And that?s largely a result of the Internet. It?s very difficult for pro-Israel forces to shape the discourse on the Internet the way they exercise great influence with the New York Times or CBS or even NPR. So the discourse has really changed, especially when you get away from the mainstream media, which is increasingly less important. But what?s depressing is that U.S. policy has hardly changed at all. And the question you have to ask yourself is what does this mean for the long term. In a world where people are thinking very differently from the policy-makers and talking very differently from the policy-makers, how does this play itself out? McConnell: Norman, you?ve been on this subject a long time, a whole career. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the beginning of your involvement and whether you?ve sensed a change in response to what you say compared to the way it was 20 or 30 years ago, or 10 or 15 years ago? Finkelstein: I?m sort of second generation. I think the Edward Said, Noam Chomsky generation was first?that was the generation of the ?70s, where it was really virtually impossible to say anything on the topic without being ostracized. I came in right after the Lebanon War of June 1982. And the Lebanon War was Israel?s first public relations disaster in the United States, at least after the ?67 War. They took a big blow back then. It?s forgotten, but it was a PR disaster. Immediately afterwards they tried to recoup from it. Actually, one of the initiatives they took to recoup was how I got started. I think the Joan Peters book From Time Immemorial was simply a propaganda exercise to try to recoup from the ?82 war. The next big change occurs with the 1987 Palestinian Intifada, which I think had a very substantial impact, though it was temporary, on public opinion in the United States. I was already teaching by ?88. And I remember in my class?I was at Brooklyn College at the time?a student who was not particularly political, he was what you?d call a typical white ethnic, he was either Irish or Italian, from Bay Ridge or Bensonhurst, he said in class, ?Stone vs. Uzi, that doesn?t sound fair.? And that was the image that was being projected then. The next big turning point probably came with the Second Intifada, which had a very negative impact because of the suicide bombings. But it also had a positive impact because the Israeli repression was so terrible; again, it alienated significant numbers of people. As for myself, I don?t know if you were familiar with the lingo from back in the ?30s and ?40s, but there were all of these young Americans, many of whom incidentally were Jewish, in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who went to go fight fascism in Spain. And at that point, to fight fascism made you pro-Communist, because?you know the whole thing. And then they went to fight in World War II again. So they come back, and a lot of them are called before [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy, the very same people who fought in World War II. And why were they called before McCarthy? Well, they called themselves premature anti-fascists. They were anti-fascists before it was politically correct to be anti-fascists because they were anti-fascist at the time of Franco, and at that time the Americans supported Franco. So even though personally my political positions aren?t really radical at all, and even though I don?t particularly like the nomenclature, I say I was a premature anti-Zionist. Mearsheimer: Can I ask Norman a quick question McConnell: Yeah, sure. Mearsheimer: which I think is important to readers and for me and Scott. You say that you?re an anti-Zionist. Finkelstein: No, I don?t. I say I don?t like the nomenclature. Mearsheimer: You said you were an anti-Zionist before your time. Finkelstein: I said that just to make the parallel with anti-fascist. Mearsheimer: But here?s the question. Do you, Norman Finkelstein, think it?s a good thing there?s a Jewish state? Finkelstein: No. But I don?t think it?s a good thing to have Christian states, Muslim states, or any kind of ethnic states. There is a difference between saying remember let?s be clear about what the UN said. The UN said, ?We want to create a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine.? Mearsheimer: Right. Finkelstein: But then the UN went on to say, and it was very explicit in the recommendation, ?There cannot be any discrimination whatsoever in the Jewish state against an Arab minority.? Now, you may ask the reasonable question, ?Well, if there can?t be any discrimination whatsoever, what do they mean by a Jewish state?? They never answer that. But it doesn?t necessarily follow from the idea that you say there should be two states that you believe it should be a Jewish state or that you?re a Zionist. There?s no connection between the two. Mearsheimer: I was just interested in what your preferences were. Finkelstein: I think one of the problems when we discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict is people talk too much in terms of ?What?s your preference??, like politics is a Chinese menu?I?ll take one from column A and two from column B. That?s not what politics is about. Politics is about what is realistically possible in terms of your long-term values, your philosophical perspective. What is really possible now in my opinion are two states, basically what people call the international consensus. It doesn?t mean it?s my philosophical preference. If you asked me, I?d say I would like to see a world without states. McConnell: When does a two-state solution become not realistically possible? Mearsheimer: The reason that people continue to talk about a two-state solution even though I think it?s no longer realizable is that many Palestinians don?t see a viable alternative; they don?t think that a one-state solution will work. And in the case of many Israelis and their American supporters, they?re basically sticking their heads in the sand because they don?t want to talk about a one-state solution, because they understand that a one-state solution is basically an apartheid state. Finkelstein: You know, I can see John?s point, but we have to be clear about what John?s point is. He was talking about political facts and political will. He said that the political spectrum has shifted in Israel and that it?s going to be very hard to get these people to budge. Yes, that?s true. It?s going to be hard to get them to budge, but the problem is, to put it simply, it?s never been tried. The only time it really was tried to get them to budge was the First Intifada, and you know, the First Intifada was very sobering for Israel. I lived there during the First Intifada. I used to go every summer. You?d be very surprised what it looked like. They had to have 500,000 troops there. When you went in the Occupied Territories then, you saw 65-year-old men?they had to bring up all their reserves, and they were putting in six months. Once there is a real mass action and summoning of will, you may see things shift in Israel. It?s just not been tried. All that?s been tried is this thing called a ?peace process.? Nothing happens because there was no pressure on them; the Israelis treat the whole thing like a joke. Mearsheimer: A lot has changed since 1987 when the First Intifada broke out. First of all, there are many more settlers. And if you leave 60-plus percent of those settlers, you still have to remove Finkelstein: 200,000. Mearsheimer: Right. You still have to remove a Finkelstein: If you look at the polls, the polls vary. But as high as 60 percent say they?re willing to be bought out. The Israeli expression is ?quality of life settlers.? They just moved there because Israel gave them tons of mortgage subsidies and everything. They say, ?Give us money, we?ll leave.? Mearsheimer: But the fact is that if 40 percent of the settlers were to resist removal, it would be incredibly bloody. Finkelstein: Yeah, but then you look at the polls, and the polls say about 10,000 or 15,000 would resist violently. The rest say they would oppose it, but if the army gives an order, ?You have to leave,? only about 10,000 or 15,000 say that they would resist violently. In my opinion that?s mostly bravado. The actual number will probably be several thousand. And then the Israeli former security people say there?s a really easy way to handle them: all we?ll do is say, ?We?re leaving. You want to stay in Hebron with 160,000 crazy Arabs? Stay. We?re going.? And the Israeli security people say, ?You?ll see how fast they?ll leave.? Mearsheimer: Your point that pressure has not been brought to bear on the Israelis up to now is correct. But the reason that pressure has not been brought to bear is because the United States protects Israel at every turn. If the United States were willing to put serious sanctions on Israel, there?s no question that we could get Israel to move to a two-state settlement very quickly. And by the way, that would be good for Israel, good for the Palestinians, and good for us. And the fact that we don?t do it is really quite shocking because it?s a win-win-win situation. Finkelstein: Correct. Mearsheimer: But then the question is, who?s going to put pressure on Israel? Finkelstein: That?s why I said there are new factors. It is true that the U.S. is the key factor, but now with the Arab Spring there are regional factors. For a lot of the Arab countries, or a lot of the Arab leaders, this has become a drain on them. Turkey and Egypt, they want to modernize and this Israel/Palestine thing is a drain on them. They have a real incentive to want to resolve it. But the other thing is, as we?ve all agreed, there are changes in public opinion. The challenge is translating the changes in public opinion into some sort of political force. There is raw material; it still requires work. It?s a hard job, but our possibilities now are greater than ever. Mearsheimer: Yeah. I hope that you?re right, but I think that you?re wrong. The reason has to do with how American politics works. The way this political system of ours was set up in the beginning gave huge amounts of influence to interest groups, interest groups of all sorts. In the present situation, interest groups that have lots of money can influence the political process in profound ways. The principal reason that we don?t have any financial reform after the 2008 financial crisis is, in large part, because of the interest groups or lobbies associated with the financial industry. They?re just so powerful in Washington that Congress really can?t stand up to them. As a result, we?ve done very little to fix the system that caused this disaster in 2008. When it comes to foreign policy, we, of course, have interest groups?like the Cuban lobby, the Israel lobby, the Armenian lobby?that can wield lots of influence. In this day and age, where money really matters, and where the Israel lobby has lots of money to throw at political candidates, it is very easy for it to get its way. And foolishly, in my opinion, the lobby tends to support the hard-line policies of Israel, which I don?t think are in Israel?s interests. The end result is that virtually nobody on Capitol Hill will stand up to Benjamin Netanyahu. And the president won?t either. Finkelstein: Everything you said, of course, is true and I don?t bury my head in the ground. The only addition to what you said is, I haven?t seen any real attempt to challenge the lobby. There?s never been a serious opposition in Washington. They?ve never had to contend with anybody. It is true money talks. No question about it. But then we don?t know how many people in Congress?I know you may react cynically to it?but we don?t really know how many are just misinformed. They just don?t know what?s going on because there?s nobody on the other side doing anything. How many people in Congress are really sick of the bribery and bullying of AIPAC, but there?s nobody with whom they can stand? There?s no lobby here. It?s work that we have to do. And then, once we have done our part and nothing budges, I?ll see your side. But it?s the same thing with the Palestinians. I saw what happened during the First Intifada. The Israelis were in a complete panic. They didn?t know what to do. They didn?t know if they were coming or going. The people had real power. McConnell: My fear is that Israel, if they were faced with a third Intifada as a result of, say, the dead-end of the Palestinian-UN thing, would welcome it. Mearsheimer: It?s very clear that when the Palestinians turn to terrorism it works to Israel?s advantage. It makes much more sense for the Palestinians to pursue a Gandhi-like policy. The other reason that the Palestinians do not want to turn to terrorism or to a third Intifada is the threat of further expulsion. I believe that there are lots of Israelis who would welcome an opportunity to drive the Palestinians McConnell: Across the Jordan River. Yeah. Mearsheimer: out of Greater Israel and solve the demographic problem that way. The reason I believe that Israel is in such trouble over the long term is that you?re going to end up with a Greater Israel, where there are going to be more Palestinians than Israeli Jews. In fact, I think I could make a convincing argument that right now there are more Palestinians than Israeli Jews living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. But certainly 20 years down the road, the numbers are going to clearly favor the Palestinians, and I believe that will be an apartheid state. It will be impossible for Israel to maintain that state. McConnell: What keeps Israel from trying to push the Palestinians out of the West Bank? Finkelstein: I remember during the Second Intifada, I had a several hour conversation with Rantissi, who was the head of Hamas?he was subsequently assassinated by Israel. And I said to him, ?You know, these suicide bombings, they just give Israel the pretext to commit massacres.? And he said to me, ?Israel does what it wants. It doesn?t need pretext.? I said to him, ?If Israel did what it wanted to do, none of you would be here.? Israel has real constraints and limits imposed on it by international public opinion. People are very na?ve about that. Even the Gaza massacre, the Israeli invasion of 2008 to 2009, okay, it was terrible. No question about it. Killed 1,400 people. Lebanon 2006, July, August, it killed 1,200 people, 1,000 civilians. It was horrible. But it was really small potatoes next to Lebanon 1982. Lebanon ?82, the estimates are they killed between 15,000 and 20,000 people. That?s a big difference because the limits have increased on them. Mearsheimer: And what has increased the limits? Finkelstein: Well, public opinion has put real constraints on what Israel can do, even though what it did in Gaza was terrible, I?ll be the first one to say. It?s still much less than they were once able to get away with. Every time there?s a war, they have been hoping to do a mass expulsion: during that attack on Iraq in 2003; they were hoping to do it in 1990??91. If you read the Israeli newspapers, they?re always talking about the transfer. They can?t do it because public opinion puts real constraints on them. I think sometimes we underestimate just how vulnerable Israel is on the public-relations front. That?s why they spend so much money on propaganda. And that?s why they panic every time they feel like they?re losing the propaganda war. Because they realize just how vulnerable they are and how big the constraints on them are. Otherwise it makes no sense why they invest so much in that image of theirs. Mearsheimer: When Norman says that Israelis and their supporters in the United States care greatly about what people think about Israel, I think that?s a further way of saying they?re worried deeply about Israel?s legitimacy. And this is why people like Norman and people like me, and Steve Walt, and Jimmy Carter, and Noam Chomsky, and Edward Said are viewed as being so dangerous to Israel. When Norman tells you about all the times he?s been blacklisted and mafia-like tactics have been used on him, basically what?s going on there is that the lobby is interested in marginalizing him and silencing him because it knows how dangerous he is. Israel?s greatest advantage in the world today is in terms of its material resources. It?s a rich country that has one of the most formidable militaries on the planet. And of course, it?s joined at the hip with the United States, which has the most formidable military in the world. But where Israel is particularly weak and is threatened is in the realm of ideas. I like to think about this in Gramscian terms. Gramsci used to talk about wars of ideas. What?s happened here is that as the material balance of power has moved in Israel?s favor, the balance of ideas has moved against Israel. People like Norman, who are what I like to call the ?corridor cutters? on this issue, help in a major way, pushing in that direction. Then people like Jimmy Carter, Steve Walt, and I came along and stood on the shoulders of people like Norman. All of us have been attacked, viciously attacked in some cases, and ostracized in other cases because we are viewed as a threat. Again, it all gets back to that important concept of legitimacy. McConnell: There?s some voice in me, not mine, but I can hear a voice saying if you?re a realist in terms of power politics, ideas matter much less than military/economic strength and things like that. Mearsheimer: The truth is sometimes ideas don?t matter very much, and sometimes they really do. This is a case where ideas do matter. What the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians has become an important part of our discourse about the Middle East. It simply does not work to Israel?s advantage. My argument is that this situation is only going to get worse over time. Israel is going to be more isolated, and the United States, which of course backs Israel at every turn, is going to be increasingly isolated as well. Finkelstein: On the strictly military plane, it is true Israel is very powerful. But we should also bear in mind that it?s become a very modern country. One of the consequences of becoming a modern country is people don?t want to die. Israel has a very effective, automated military. But when it comes to actual battlefield engagement, the Israeli soldiers don?t want to fight. McConnell: What happened in Lebanon in 2006? Finkelstein: It?s very clear Israel did not launch a major ground offensive for one reason: it did not want to take a large number of casualties. Lebanon proved to be for them a complete disaster. Now they make claims?there?s a tiny bit of truth to it?their claim was that because they were bogged down during the Second Intifada in policing action in the West Bank, there had been no time for rehearsals for ground/air coordination and that?s why things went so badly in Lebanon. There?s a little bit of truth to it, but a bigger truth is Hezbollah people, they?re ready to die. They?re not afraid to go out there and get killed. The Israelis don?t want to get killed. The same thing happened in Gaza. Gaza was a?there was no war. As one person put it, it was like a child with a magnifying glass burning ants. It was all a high-tech war. Once a friend of mine?she?s an Israeli, I went to high school with her?she was very offended, and she said why did I call Israel a modern-day Sparta? She says, ?You don?t know Israelis. They?re not Sparta. They like the Beatles. They like this, they like that.? I said, ?You misunderstood what I said. I said a high-tech Sparta.? Because it?s true, they are not Spartans. They like cafes. They like the good life. Mearsheimer: They like unfair fights. Finkelstein: They want to live. Mearsheimer: But I think there?s a more important point at play here, which is not to say this point is not important. As Israel becomes a modern economy, and you have more and more people who are secular, wealthy, and like to lead the good life, what begins to happen is that they begin to think about the exit option. They think about leaving Israel. Because they don?t want to live in Sparta. They?d much prefer to live in Europe or in the United States. McConnell: Are you guys surprised by how quickly Obama seemed to have climbed down from making a solution to the conflict a top priority? By all indications he was someone who understood the moral and political case for a Palestinian state. Mearsheimer: He did not step away from the problem quickly. Shortly after taking office in January 2009 he began to put pressure on Israel?throughout 2009, throughout 2010, and even earlier this year Obama was putting pressure on the Israelis. That of course is why Netanyahu came to Washington and spoke before AIPAC and spoke before Congress and went toe to toe, in effect, with Obama. The sad truth is that Netanyahu beat him at every turn, and now with the election looming and the economy in shambles, Obama is in no position to pick a fight with Israel. Finkelstein: Even if Obama prevailed over Netanyahu, the settlement he was calling for was roughly that map where Israel would keep about 10 percent?9 or 10 percent?of the West Bank, including all the major settlement blocs. If you include the settlement blocs, like Maale Adumim, there?s no state because the way that settlement bloc is constructed, it separates Jerusalem from the whole West Bank. So you have this little island of Jerusalem. Metropolitan Jerusalem is about 30 to 40 percent of the Palestinian economy. If you separate Jerusalem, there?s no state. Even if Obama prevailed and you got the 10 percent map, it still has no relationship to what a viable Palestinian state would look like. Mearsheimer: I don?t think, Norman, that it?s clear whether Obama was thinking in terms of what?s called the Israeli map or whether he was thinking in terms of the Palestinian map. But I believe that most of his Middle East advisers and Obama understand that the only way we?re going to solve this is to give the Palestinians a viable state, and that means basically the Palestinian map. Finkelstein: No, I don?t think that?s true, John. I mean Mearsheimer: Then I wonder why you?re so optimistic that we can solve this one? Finkelstein: Oh, because as I said, I totally agree with you on Congress. I totally agree with you on the executive. On those points there?s no disagreement at all. What I said is there is a changed political configuration now. There are changes in public opinion. There are changes in Jewish opinion. There?s a lot of work to be done. But there are reasons to be optimistic. McConnell: Can you elaborate on the changes in Jewish opinion? Finkelstein: Trying to understand Jewish relationships with Israel, there are three factors. There is the ethnic factor, which is the one people tend to home in on?Israel, Jewish State, of course Jews love Israel. That?s how people usually reason. There is a second factor. That?s the citizenship factor, namely American Jews are American citizens, and they have a good life here, and they are very wary of being hit with the dual-loyalty charge. So wherever it looks like there are tensions between the U.S. and Israel, or tensions might be brewing, Americans Jews are very cautious and very wary. That was very noticeable between ?48 and ?67, when American Jews had no interest whatsoever in Israel. It?s easily documented. Even those people who subsequently became Israel?s supporters, like Norman Podhoretz?if you look at Commentary magazine, as I have, between 1960 and 1967, there?s virtually nothing on Israel. And then there?s the third factor. It?s the ideological factor. American Jews are liberal. They are liberal Democrats ever since Roosevelt in ?32. Last presidential election, 80 percent of Jews voted for Obama. More Jews voted for Obama than Latinos voted for Obama. American Jews are liberal, and they vote liberal and Democratic. Now for a long time on this ideological level, they were able to reconcile being liberal with being supportive of Israel, because Israel was the light unto the nations, bringing Western civilization to the barbaric East Mearsheimer: Only democracy. Finkelstein: Only democracy in the Middle East, and all the rest. Well, in the last ten or 15 years, it?s wearing thin, and American Jews are having a lot of trouble as liberals?especially young American Jews on college campuses, which tend to be more liberal than American society in general?they?re having a lot of trouble reconciling their liberal beliefs with the way Israel carries on, and Israeli conduct and Israeli society in general. And therefore you can see in a lot of polls?the best pollster in the American Jewish community, by a far margin, is Stephen Cohen. And Cohen says, ?Support for Israel is dying.? He claims it?s dying because of intermarriage; you know, the ethnic factor. Jews are now intermarrying at a rate of about 6o percent. He says that it?s obvious that among the intermarried Jews, interest in Israel tends to plummet. And again, there?s a lot of statistical evidence. The intermarriage factor is significant. But I think as big a factor now is the liberalism factor. They just can?t do it anymore. Mearsheimer: This is the Peter Beinart thesis. Finkelstein: No, that?s the Norman Finkelstein thesis, which Peter Beinart took. [laughter] Finkelstein: Because I was working on it since 2007. You know, I lectured very widely on it. I wrote a book. I started the book. It was called A Farewell to Israel: The Coming Break-up of American Jewish Support for Israel. I?ve since re-titled it. It?s now called Knowing Too Much because I think that?s the problem. American Jews now know too much. They don?t know what to do with it. McConnell: And Birthright Israel isn?t enough to counter this? Finkelstein: It?s not enough, no, because Birthright Israel, first of all, is self-selective. Many of them are just Mearsheimer: It?s propaganda. It?s very hard to propagandize Jews. They?re very knowledgeable, and they?re critical thinkers. Finkelstein: That?s the other thing. All of the scholarship that comes out?those are the sectors where Jews tend to be, in the highly educated, literate sectors. That information is reaching them, and they don?t know what to do with it. You can see it in colleges now. It used to be when someone like me would come speak, it would be hysteria, with the audience shouting and screaming. Then they realized, ?Well, we don?t really want to do that anymore.? So they would start having vigils outside and passing out leaflets. Now, nothing. Nothing. There?s only one way they can work now: behind the scenes. They try to put pressure to not invite him because he?s this or he?s that. Behind the scenes they?re working very hard, but in the public arena?in the court of public opinion?they have vanished because it?s hopeless. How do you defend it? They don?t like me, not because of my beliefs, they don?t like me because they know I?m going to have the facts. I read. I patiently go through all the reports. That?s what they fear. It?s not my politics because, as I said, my politics are not radical. It?s the facts. They?re in dread of that because there?s no defense anymore. McConnell: How much are you speaking now on campuses? Finkelstein: Quite a lot. Let?s put it this way: I could easily speak every day, if I were to accept every invitation, but it?s impossible because my forte is knowing the facts, which means I have to sit home and work. I have to read. I don?t want to become a rhetorical speaker. My effectiveness is mastering all of the data and being able to respond. People ask me, ?Why don?t you ever lose your cool? Why don?t you get angry? I get so angry.? I say, ?Because the reason you get angry is frustration. You know what the other person is saying is not true, but you don?t know how to answer it. You don?t know the facts, and that?s where the anger and frustration come from.? When you know how to answer it, you just sit very patiently. You?ll get your turn, and then you?ll answer. That?s why I can?t accept all the speaking engagements, because I?ve got to know the facts. Then we?ll be effective, and I still say we could win. John knows that, because I saw that you can have very big meetings at the University of Chicago, which has a very large Jewish population. There was one meeting where John and I were present, I don?t remember which one it was. Mearsheimer: Yeah, it was during operation Cast Lead in January 2009. Finkelstein: It must have been what? 1,500 people? Mearsheimer: It was a huge audience. They turned away, I think, 800 people. Finkelstein: And they can?t answer, the other side. There?s nothing. Nothing. And that?s what?s causing a lot of Jews?that?s, for me, what?s breaking up the whole support. It?s like?oh, what?s his name??David Remnick said a few months ago. He said, ?How long is this occupation going to go on?? He said, ?I can?t take it anymore.? But what he really meant was, ?I can?t justify it anymore.? How do you justify it? Copyright ? 2008 The American Conservative ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Netanyahu Slaps Abbas Gilad Shalit Exchange May be Poisoned Chalice for Abbas By Ian Black Hamas, not Fatah, is gaining popularity in the West Bank after the deal with Israel to release Palestinian prisoners. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29450.htm === 'Theater of the Absurd': Netanyahu and His Endgame in Palestine By Ramzy Baroud The entire Israeli colonial project would have been unfeasible without US funding, political backing and the silencing of any country that tried to challenge this iniquitous paradigm. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29449.htm From ths at psalience.org Thu Oct 20 11:50:25 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:50:25 +0200 Subject: [THS] Saudi envoy assassination plot: Unfolding a Plot: Mossad at Work Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111020114717.044e23a0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29454.htm Unfolding a Plot: Mossad at Work By Ismail Salami October 19, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Despite its evidently make-believe facade, the cooked-up story of the Saudi envoy assassination plot does not seem to be something which can be easily banished from the minds of the American powers that be. The heat over Iran in the US government is growing rapidly. Some Republican congressmen have expressed their interest in waging an all-out war against Iran, a threat they keep refreshing every time they have an excuse. They have clearly stated that Washington should not dismiss the idea of resorting to military force against Iran, an idea which is being strengthened in Congress. ?I don?t think you should take it off the table,? Michigan Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has said. It is quite natural that he was vehemently supported by the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator John McCain, who have always maintained an antagonistic approach towards Iran. Hawkish Gingrich said on CNN, ?Our goal should be the replacement of the Iranian dictatorship, and we have done nothing of consequence to systematically undermine the regime.? The US government keeps preaching at others and talking of dismantling this or that regime which they term as ?dictatorial? or ?sponsor of terrorism?. Now that the lot has fallen to the US government itself, they are at a loss and appear despondently desperate. The implosive voice that is eroding the American system from within cannot be easily smothered or contained. Therefore, the US has to find a way to divert international attention from what is going on in the country and zoom in on Iran. This can be one simple reason but it is very plausible. However, a bigger scenario is at work in collaboration with the Mossad and other intelligence services. Soon, Washington?s political equation was abruptly disturbed when a top ISI official revealed that the man involved in the alleged assassination plot of the Saudi envoy Adel al-Jubeir had received forged documents from Mossad. ?The accused man [Mansour Arbabsiar] received fake ID documents from Mossad three months ago,? the Pakistani Urdu-language Ummat Daily quoted the Inter-Services Intelligence officer as saying on condition of anonymity. According to the Pakistani intelligence expert, the man in question was slated to carry out an operation codenamed Foss Fling for the notorious Israeli intelligence agency. In parallel with this appalling revelation, The Independent ran a story about Adam Werritty, an unofficial ?chief of staff? to British Defense Minister Liam Fox, his best man and former flat mate who accompanied him on a number of official visits and virtually made all his decisions and even held top level meetings. Things went wrong though when it became manifest that he had in February arranged a meeting between Fox and senior Mossad operatives at a security conference taking place in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, where they discussed effective plans to overthrow the ?Iranian regime?. Werritty was said to have regularly met Iranian anti-government groups, Israeli operatives and right-wing US groups with an overwhelming interest in destabilizing President Ahmadinejad and overthrowing the Islamic government. According to the report, Werritty had travelled to Iran on several occasions and held secret meetings with opposition groups with the express intention of expediting the fall of the Islamic government in Iran. Interestingly, MI6 was informed of his connections and debriefed him after he returned from overseas trips. Werritty was financially backed by murky sources such as Bicom, an Israeli advocacy organization based in the UK. Bicom which stands for Britain Israel Communications Research Center is in fact a front organization based in London tasked with security and intelligence activities as well as promotion of Zionism. Apart from garnering support for the Zionist regime among Britons, the office also serves as a bridge between Mossad and MI6. The CEO of the office, Lorna Fitzsimons, a former MP, is noted for her constant support for the Zionists. She used to be a member of the campaign group, Labor Friends of Israel (LFI). It is basically a lobby group promoting Zionism within the British Labor Party in particular and in Britain, in general. And Werritty is an influential member of the organization and a highly regarded agent for Mossad. These postulations aside, there has recently emerged an interesting piece of information about a second person held on suspicion of involvement in the alleged plot. The information reveals a man named Gholam Hussein Shakouri who is closely connected with the fabricated prime suspect. Shakouri, who is a cousin of Mansour Arbabsiar, is reportedly a member of the MKO, a notorious anti-Iranian terrorist organization now based at the Ashraf camp in Iraq and strongly supported by the US government although the organization has been widely designated as a terrorist organization. The MKO man has travelled to a number of countries with many fake IDs, including forged Iranian passports. He was last seen in Washington and at Camp Ashraf, where MKO members are based. One of the passports Shakouri used was issued on November 30, 2006 in Washington numbered K10295631. The terrorist organization MKO has more than 3,000 members at the camp. Members of the group have been involved in several assassination and sabotage activities in Iran. The loosely-structured assassination plot is part of an extensive espionage and sabotage network supported and co-funded by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and CIA. The marriage of the pernicious intelligence agencies e.g. Mossad, CIA and MI6 in trying to sabotage and cripple the Islamic government indicates a diligently wrought out plan over many years and one which has been heavily funded. In the final analysis, what seemed at first to be a simplistic effort by the US to corner Iran into political isolation has begun to branch out into ramifications of Kafkaesque proportions. Ismail Salami is an Iranian author and political analyst. A prolific writer, he has written numerous books and articles on the Middle East. His articles have been translated into a number of languages. From ths at psalience.org Thu Oct 20 11:56:53 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:56:53 +0200 Subject: [THS] Chris Hedges: This One Could Take Them All Down Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111020115210.044e26b8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29452.htm "This One Could Take Them All Down." [video at url above] By Chris Hedges Chris Hedges: "What happens is in all of these movements ... the foot soldiers of the elite -- the blue uniformed police, the mechanisms of control -- finally don't want to impede the movement and at that point the power elite is left defenseless ... the only thing I can say having been in the middle of similar movements is that this one is real, and this one could take them all down ... I can guarantee you that huge segments of those blue uniformed police sympathize with everything that you're doing." -- Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges brings his 20 years of experience as a war correspondent, having covered movements and revolutions throughout the the world, to the discussion. Posted October 19, 2011 From ths at psalience.org Thu Oct 20 12:35:31 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:35:31 +0200 Subject: [THS] Video - Dylan Ratigan MSNBC: Prosecute The Banks In 2012 Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111020123506.044e19c0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29460.htm Prosecute The Banks In 2012 Greater Employment - Less Fraud Video - Dylan Ratigan MSNBC "We Put The U.S. Treasury Up For Auction And Goldman Sachs Was The Highest Bidder!" Posted October 19, 2011 From ths at psalience.org Thu Oct 20 12:50:30 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:50:30 +0200 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?!!!!_William_Bowles=3A_Attempts_at_=91reform?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ing=92_capitalism_Doomed?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111020124325.06a7ce88@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29456.htm Occupy The World! To the Barricades Comrades? By William Bowles October 19, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Four years ago in a Ministry of Defence Review, the Whitehall Mandarins, more astutely than any so-called Lefty, determined the following: ?The Middle Class Proletariat ? The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples? attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world?s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.? ? ?UK Ministry of Defence report, The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036? (Third Edition) p.96, March 2007 Yeah, I know, I?m always using this quote (I first used it four years ago) but it illustrates the great intellectual divide between the political class and the citizens they rule, including our Left, now made so apparent by what the pundits are now calling the ?Occupy The World? (OTW) movement. It seems that only our very own ruling class foresaw OTW. Dig a little deeper into OTW and we find that with a few exceptions, there are no challenges to capitalism, mostly it?s a ?clean up your act? kinda thing. Throw a few billionaires in jail, add some regulation and things will eventually turn out just fine. Dream on But we?ve been here before. This is what attempts at ?reforming? capitalism in the past have looked like. We lived under such a system from 1945 until the late 1970s, before the Empire reasserted itself, proving once again, that concepts like ?democracy? under capitalism, are at best, mere conveniences and so vague a concept that it can be made to resemble almost anything. And once the so-called Good Life that capitalism allegedly had offered us started to wear thin and capitalism once more plunged us into war and poverty, so too the ?Good Life? had to be dumped. Belt-tightening time again. But unlike 1968, or even the ?Anti-Globalization Movement? that some are comparing OTW to, socialism is barely mentioned, let alone the central motif. Yes, there are increasing anti-capitalist references but in 1968, politics was at the very heart of the situation. It wasn?t about money but about posing a real alternative to capitalism. The concept of belonging to a class still existed in the public?s consciousness, even if it lacked the collective will to do anything about it. Am I being altogether too cruel to OTW? It is after all, early days in the development of OTW. It might all fizzle out or if it doesn?t, the political class might have to use the logical response to the MoD?s quote above: suppress it. Something for which, no doubt in another (secret) report, the Whitehall Mandarins have laid out the strategy and tactics to be employed in suppressing a burgeoning (socialist?) revolution. After all, when ?[f]aced by th[o]se twin challenges, the world?s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest?, says it all. You have to take this stuff seriously! It?s not a game and the state is very adept at employing whatever tactics it chooses to suppress serious dissent including the use of agents provocateurs (a long-standing ?tradition?) to infiltrate and provoke pointless confrontations with the state, in order not only to justify suppression but more importantly, as part of a propaganda war waged through the media, where we have no counter-voice. Repression of course carries its own risks and far from being a solution could only further excerbate the problem. Timing is all. This is not a game. The political class is fighting for its life and that of its masters, the corporations. That?s why they write those reports. Just as with the insurrections earlier this year in the UK, the state had a clear response to it and the role of the media was central to its effectiveness in spreading the state?s message. Let it ?burn baby, burn? and turn the world?s cameras onto the conflagration, followed by a good dose of Victorian ?rough justice? (pity they?ve abolished hard labour and deportation to Australia). Make an example of them should anyone else have ideas about following in their footsteps. The key here is the observation made by the Whitehall Mandarins about ?class interests?. Now if well-paid and no doubt loyal members of the political class? intelligentsia have gotten it figured out (and so far, their prediction is right on the money), how come the ?Left? hasn?t? Currently class is something almost entirely absent from the OTW movement. Without it eventually taking centre stage, OTW is bound to be stillborn. But there are some positive signs that some kind of ?consensus? mechanism is emerging from the chaos akin to some kind of ?self-organizing? principle. After all, we have what the MoD report called ?access to knowledge, resources and skills? necessary to produce workable alternatives not only to capitalism but to fashion a new kind of inclusive democracy, one that hasn?t existed before. The aim is to create a venue for democratic deliberation and open debate in a place normally associated with secretive privilege. People working in the City of London have played a starring role in creating the global economic crisis. Since our representative institutions have thus far failed to address this crisis in a way that is both sensible and just, it is only fitting that we should use the City as a place in which [to] work on solutions ourselves. ? ?Talk Amongst Yourselves? By Dan Hind It?s not a ?peasants revolt? kinda thing, though of course inevitably those hit the worst by the crisis will revolt first. But the crisis of capital has now hit those who make up the very bedrock of capitalist society?s justification for existing, its so-called middle classes. These are the major consumers in our economy, not only is their consumption a major chunk of our GDP (as well its debt), they are also the managers and technicians of capitalism and the state machine. Piss them off and things could get out of hand just as the MoD has predicted. Some on the Left in the UK are still calling for revitalizing the Labour Party as a potential force for socialism but if so, then it means that it would have to come from its decimated grassroots membership, a tall if not impossible order to carry out. At the first signs of revolt in the Labour Party?s constituency membership, the Party Machine will intervene and purge its ranks just as it has done so many times in the past. For a Left largely pinning its hopes on a working class that no longer exists, it will have to broaden and deepen its knowledge of how capitalism has evolved and transformed the nature of the working class and learn to seek connections to a much more diverse and complex alliance of forces if we are to defeat the Empire. What an irony that the Left?led largely by middle class intellectuals?fails to see what has happened, trapped as it is in its own patronizing and nostalgic vision of the working class aka George ?middle class? Orwell?s ?Road to Wigan Pier?. And this is the problem: it?s always middle class intellectuals on the Left who have set the agenda, not for their own ?class? mind but for an idea that emerged in the middle of the 19th century; that the organized industrial working class would undertake the Revolution, led of course by middle class intellectuals. OTW is nevertheless a transcendent moment, one to cherish and sustain and no doubt just the first shot across the bows of Global Capital but for it to have a chance of success it will have challenge corporate capitalism?s right to exist. To do this we will first have to dispel the ?bad apple? theory as the cause of the current crisis. That it?s just a question of regulating capitalism, smoothing out the rough edges, eliminating the extremes and above all, restoring ?competition?, so-called real capitalism. But this could only be done by breaking up the giant corporations and abolishing the financial sector in its entirety as it currently exists. Is it likely that advocates of ?real? capitalism aka Max Keisser could undertake such a mission? The way I understand it, a ?real? capitalist economy would consist only of small competing private businesses, cooperatives, public utilities and the self-employed, and one assumes massive state intervention in order to make it all happen. Sounds a bit like my favourite kind of socialism, William Morris?s version and not an overly ambitious objective given the political will to carry it out. But who will break up Shell or Goldman Sachs? Who will smash the military-industrial-media complex? Only a state owned and managed by the working class can undertake such a momentous task. OTY OTW William Bowles- http://williambowles.info From ths at psalience.org Thu Oct 20 12:52:09 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:52:09 +0200 Subject: [THS] Carmen Yarrusso: A Manifesto for the Impending Second American Revolution Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111020125135.044b7ce8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29457.htm A Manifesto for the Impending Second American Revolution By Carmen Yarrusso "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." --John F. Kennedy October 19, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The vast social injustice rife throughout the world has finally reached a tipping point. The smell of revolution is ripe in the air. We the people of planet earth have finally had enough. The immense human suffering caused by collaborating, corrupt governments throughout the world is about to awaken all humanity to a common cause. When Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire, he ignited a fire of revolution for social justice that will eventually engulf every corrupt government on earth. This fire won't die until we the people of planet earth unite in revolution and take back our respective governments from the elite oligarchs who now own and control them. Soon this fire will burn hot in America, the world's epicenter of corrupt government. Each year, lobbyists transfer millions in legal bribes from corporate special interests to our government "representatives" in return for billions of our tax dollars. For example, last year alone, big oil, the richest industry on earth, gave our "representatives" $28,000,000 in return for $3,800,000,000 in tax breaks. The elite oligarchs are getting fabulously rich while a record 44,000,000 Americans live in poverty, a record 40,000,000 Americans rely on food stamps, 30,000,000 Americans are unemployed or underemployed, a record 6,000,000 Americans have given up looking for a job, millions of Americans have lost their homes to foreclosure by the same banksters bailed out by billions of our tax dollars, and, unlike our privileged "representatives" in Washington, 51,000,000 Americans have no health insurance. America is ripe for revolution. Our government actively facilitated the banksters' robbery of billions from the American people and then audaciously bailed out these crooks with billions of our tax dollars. While accepting millions in corporate bribes from the health insurance industry, our government refused to even discuss single-payer, a proven health care system that costs half what we Americans pay, provides superior health care, and covers every citizen! These two examples alone show our government's complete contempt for social justice and intellectual honesty. America is ripe for revolution. Years ago politicians tried to hide their dishonesty. Our current government openly sells out the American people with impunity. Obama made a deal with the big pharmaceuticals that will cost the American people billions more for their medicine. Most Americans were against continuing the billions in tax cuts for the very rich, but that didn't matter to our "representatives". They patted themselves on the back for passing a "compromise" bill extending the tax cuts for the very rich (with a few crumbs thrown to the American people), while freezing federal worker's pay (a de facto tax increase for millions of middle-class Americans), reducing heating oil subsidies for the poor, and slashing at many other programs that help ordinary Americans'just when that help is desperately needed. America is ripe for revolution. WikiLeaks confirmed that our government often lies to us about its foreign policies. Our government bribes, threatens, or severely punishes foreign governments that resist US hegemony. Our government invaded Iraq based on a pack of lies that ultimately will cost the American people trillions (not to mention thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives). Showing utter contempt for our intelligence, our government called this illegal invasion, "Operation Iraqi Freedom". International law means nothing to our government. Our government recently stood alone in killing a UN resolution condemning Israel's expansion of illegal settlements on stolen, occupied land (France, Germany, UK, Brazil, South Africa, and India all voted in favor). Yet, our government tells us they hate us because of our freedoms. America is ripe for revolution. EVERY year our government gives billions of our tax dollars to various violent, oppressive governments (at least 4 billion go to Israel alone), where millions of human beings live in extreme poverty without any real political voice. But if these oppressed people dare to rise up and fight for life and dignity, they're labeled "terrorists" and billions more of our tax dollars are spent killing these "terrorists" created by our government's unjust foreign policies. Charging us hundreds of billions EVERY year, which could be spent actually benefiting the American people, our government now spends more on war and war preparation than all other countries on earth combined. But they hate us because of our freedoms. America is ripe for revolution. Why our deeply corrupt political system can't be reformed Trying to reform a deeply corrupt political system using the same deeply corrupt political system is like trying to fix your broken arms using your broken arms. The vast majority of Americans understand that voting in new "representatives" is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (meet the new boss, same as the old boss). Both political parties are bribed by and beholden to the same big money. The only thing our just-for-show elections change is which special interests get our tax dollars and how much they get. There are many honest members of Congress. But they're virtually powerless against a deeply corrupt political system where various mischief mechanisms can be used to obstruct legislation benefiting the American people or to expedite legislation benefiting special interests. For example, legislation benefiting the American people can be killed by filibuster or killed in a standing committee without even getting a floor vote. This is obviously a highly rigged system. Members of Congress know if they don't play by the rigged rules, they'll soon be out of a job. Our "representatives" regularly coerce their colleagues to vote against their consciences by using various deals, bribes, and threats. Many votes are split right down party lines. Political expediency and reelection necessarily rank higher than the interests of the American people. Even a cursory look at the workings of our political system shows reason is easily trumped by deal making or coercion (the various mischief mechanisms available to our "representatives" guarantee this). That's precisely why we see so many examples of patently unreasonable legislation that unambiguously favors special interests at the expense of the American people. Be clear though, our political system is designed to work exactly this way. Unless the world's most powerful government's deeply corrupt political system (based on deals, coercion, and especially deceit) is overthrown and replaced by a political system based on reason, things will surely get much worse for all the people of planet earth. Why a second American revolution is our only option Quite simply, it's either revolution or business as usual. Our political system is openly rigged to prevent any real reform. Besides, the elite oligarchs controlling our government would never give up their power (and massive source of money) short of a revolt by the American people. Could any sensible person doubt this? To change our government from one that's for sale to the highest bidder to a government that looks out for the best interests of the American people is no small change. It's not even a big change. It's a revolutionary change. Our task is to replace night with day, wrong with right. We must replace our political system with its exact opposite. We must overthrow a patently unreasonable political system (by design) and replace it with a political system based on reason that forces congressional accountability and intellectual honesty. A political system based on reason would turn government upside down A political system based on reason would destroy the multi-million dollar lobbying industry because special interests only pay big money for unreasonable legislation (or protection from unreasonable legislation bought by competitors). Philanthropic groups aside, special interests wouldn't pay much for reasonable legislation. Congressional bribe money would virtually disappear under a reasonable political system. That would mean our "representatives" would lose their major source of cash since they wouldn't be able to sell their political influence for very much ("Psst, give my campaign $100,000 and I'll work hard to get your very reasonable bill through the Senate.") Of course there would still be competition between reasonable bills for our limited tax dollars, which would bring in modest "special interest" money to members of Congress who could present clear, cogent arguments (insuring reason prevails). But there would be no incentive for special interests to spend big money trying to influence legislation (as they do now) since bills would tend to pass or fail based on their reasonableness, rather than based on who can play the best political game of deal making, coercion, and deceit. A political system based on reason would tend to recruit members of Congress from a pool of people with sound reasoning skills, unlike our current system that tends to recruit from a pool of people highly skilled at talking out of both sides of their mouths. If you can't lie through your teeth with a big smile, don't run for Congress. A reasonable political system would put substance ahead of appearance, the exact opposite of our current unreasonable system. Unlike our current political system, where deception is its lifeblood, a political system based on reason would severely punish those caught using deception. For example, science, a system based on reason, would never tolerate scientists falsifying data, evading inquiry, or any other form of deceit. Of course, falsifying data, evading inquiry and many other forms of deceit are standard practice in Congress. Understanding the mechanics of deception in Congress Our government can't just give our tax dollars to special interests; it must deceive us into thinking that giving them our money is good for us. For example, our government couldn't say to us, "we're going to invade Iraq to take control of its oil." No, our government needed to deceive us with WMD, aluminum tubes, and vials of anthrax. Our government's most powerful tool of deception is the lackey mainstream media (essentially the propaganda arm of our government). Mainstream media are supposed to keep us informed about our government's activities. But as profit-driven corporations that get billions from our "representatives" (e.g. for deceptive 30-second TV ads), they're much more motivated to promote and perpetuate government deception than to expose it. It's simply smart business. Our "representatives" use various mischief mechanisms to deceive us. But all boil down to one thing: evasion. Those supporting unreasonable government policies cannot possibly defend these policies with clear, rational arguments. So they offer shallow, specious justifications (dutifully passed on to the American people by mainstream media) and then simply evade responding to the obvious flaws in their justifications. A simple Internet based system called Wikiarguments could put an end to Congressional evasion and force Congressional accountability. The philosophy behind Wikiarguments; why it would revolutionize government Our current political system, with crucial help from mainstream media, allows and even promotes blatant deception and evasion by our government "representatives". They're never forced to justify their positions with clear, rational arguments (written down so they can be scrutinized). Currently, sponsors and supporters of unreasonable legislation typically offer shallow, specious justifications and then simply evade inquiry. Mainstream media do little to challenge these specious justifications and when they do, our "representatives" simply spout more specious nonsense until the clock runs out. A wikiarguments system would prevent this evasion because it would require our "representatives" to not only justify their positions initially, but, more importantly, to defend them from ongoing inquiry using clear, rational, written arguments. Unlike the ephemeral TV interviews, "debates", and public statements of our "representatives", their best arguments would always be right there on the Internet subject to scrutiny and inquiry by the American people. The sheer idiocy of our current political system is easily illustrated. Unlike Congress, our Supreme Court gives us their best rational arguments--pro and con--to justify their votes (both sides posted on the Internet for our scrutiny and comparison). Imagine if Supreme Court Justices weren't required to justify and defend their conclusions with clear, written, rational arguments. Suppose they could just vote and evade inquiry. Would we not see the assault on truth and sheer idiocy of such a system? Imagine if scientists weren't required to justify and defend their positions with clear, written, rational arguments. Suppose they could just present their conclusions and evade inquiry. Would we not see the assault on truth and sheer idiocy of such a system? So why don't we see the assault on truth and sheer idiocy of a political system that allows our "representatives" to evade giving us their best rational arguments for their positions (both sides posted on the Internet for our scrutiny and comparison). Is the integrity of our Congressional conclusions somehow less important to our lives than the integrity of our Supreme Court conclusions or our scientists' conclusions? Is it not sheer idiocy to hold our Supreme Court and scientists to a high standard of truth, completely abandon that standard of truth for our "representatives", and then expect anything other than the immense wake of human suffering--clearly caused by our corrupt government--here and throughout the world? America is ripe for revolution. Aspects of a Wikiarguments system Wikiarguments is an Internet-based (wiki) system that would force congressional accountability and make government deception much more difficult. It would provide a secure mechanism for anonymous submissions to expose government deception, but, more importantly, it would also provide a simple system of forced accountability where our "representatives" could no longer evade giving us clear, rational justifications for their positions (instead of the evasive, specious claptrap they typically give us now). We?d be able to visit an Internet site and view clear, rational arguments for all Congressional bills -pro and con?side by side for easy comparison. We wouldn?t need mainstream media pundits to interpret government policies for us; we?d be getting both sides right from the horse?s mouth. Evasions and flawed reasoning by either side would quickly become apparent. A search capability would allow us to find the current best arguments?pro and con?for any bill in Congress. When a bill is introduced, those "representatives" initiating the bill would be required to post a clear, rational (wiki) argument explaining the merits of the bill. Those opposing the bill would then be required to post their corresponding clear, rational (wiki) argument explaining why the bill is unreasonable and shouldn't pass. What makes a Wikiarguments system such a powerful weapon against government evasion and deception is this: the individual arguments are dynamic. As you will see, dynamic arguments prevent lots of mischief and tend to punish liars while rewarding truth-tellers. The individual wikiarguments would be managed much like Wikipedia entries except there would be multiple entries per subject (pro and con arguments) instead of the one entry per subject in Wikipedia. Thus all members of Congress would be able to edit--update and improve--the wikiarguments they favor. Both sides of an issue would be free to update their respective wikiargument as new facts emerge, to correct mistakes, or to highlight flaws in the opposing wikiargument. In this manner, wikiarguments for both sides--pro and con--would evolve as collaborative efforts, which would converge toward a best (consensus) argument for each side of any given issue (bill). A Wikiarguments system would differ significantly from a forum-type venue--where people argue back and forth--because the emphasis is on an evolving, converging, end product: the current best argument(s) for each side of an issue. The emphasis would be on building a clear, concise, rational argument for a given position, which would then compete with its corresponding--opposing--argument openly on the Internet. The American people would watch as wikiarguments for each side evolve and do battle on the Internet. Our "representatives" would not be able to fool us with deceptions because any evasions, flaws, speciousness, or other deceptions would be promptly emphasized in the corresponding opposing wikiarguments, which would be posted on the Internet for the entire world to see. But unreasonable bills are often supported by both political parties because both are typically bribed by the same big money. How would a Wikiarguments system force our "representatives" to post honest arguments against such unreasonable bills? By providing two additional?pro and con??shadow? wikiarguments for each issue that could be edited anonymously by anyone on earth, like Wikipedia entries. The American people would have direct input to legislation through these ?shadow? wikiarguments. A visitor to the site would view two pairs of pro and con wikiarguments per issue (bill), one pair maintained by members of Congress and a corresponding pair maintained by the public at large. If our "representatives" were in cahoots, and not providing a cogent wikiargument against an unreasonable bill, the corresponding (con) public wikiargument would expose the disingenuous (con) government argument. Cogent wikiarguments would stand out starkly from specious wikiarguments. Why? Because it?s relatively easy to construct clear, cogent arguments when truth is on your side. But when truth isn?t on your side, the best you can do is clever specious arguments. But even clever specious arguments couldn?t possibly survive the vast inquiry an Internet-based Wikiarguments system would subject them to?the whole world would be watching and someone would point out any flaws or deceit. Dishonest politicians would no longer be able to hide from us and shrink from inquiry. Conclusion Thomas Paine said, "It is error only, and not truth that shrinks from inquiry." Only dishonest members of Congress would shrink from explaining their positions using clear, written, rational arguments. Our government's unreasonable domestic policies cause countless millions of Americans to suffer greatly. Our government's unreasonable foreign policies cause countless millions around the world to suffer greatly. The most rogue government on earth must be reined in before it destroys us all. We Americans can no longer stand by like sheep waiting for slaughter. America is ripe for revolution. Carmen Yarrusso, a software engineer for 35 years, designed and modified computer operating systems (including Internet software). He has a BS in physics and studied game theory and formal logic during his years with the math department at Brookhaven National Lab. He lives in New Hampshire and often writes about uncomfortable truths. From ths at psalience.org Thu Oct 20 12:54:49 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:54:49 +0200 Subject: [THS] Libya : NATO war crimes charges Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111020125423.044b8198@mail.messagingengine.com> Libya : NATO war crimes charges: Is NATO using forbidden weaponry in Libya: Once again, we see the demonic nature of NATO, which perpetrates war crimes almost daily as it supports terrorists, murderers, rapists, arsonists, looters and torturers in Libya http://english.pravda.ru/world/africa/19-10-2011/119379-nato_war-0/ From ths at psalience.org Thu Oct 20 12:42:36 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:42:36 +0200 Subject: [THS] The End Of Free Trade Is The Only Way Out Of This Depression Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111020123655.044e1728@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29455.htm [graphs as attached file or see url for illustrations - graphs] The End Of Free Trade Is The Only Way Out Of This Depression By Scott Cruickshank October 19, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Right from the very beginning there was only one possible outcome if free trade ever took hold in America. Industrial and economic collapse. Ross Perot knew it and tried to warn everybody. Very few listened. What is going on in America today, the factory closures, the unemployment, the debt, the experiment with globalism could not have come out any other way. Economic ruin was predestined right from day one when America signed on to NAFTA, GATT, the WTO and a raft of other free trade deals that have been signed in the last 20 to 25 years. A national economy is very much like what the American family farm was at the turn of the 20th century. On the family farm mom, pop and the kids worked all year to produce as much as they possibly could to provide for their own needs for the upcoming year. Pop worked the fields and raised his livestock. Mom canned vegetables, cured meat, spun yarn and made candles. The boys chopped wood and helped pop where they were needed. The girls knitted socks, milked the cows and fed the pigs. Everyone did their part to produce the maximum amount of manufactured goods and agricultural produce they could. At the end of the year, if all went well, the family found that they had produced enough of everything they needed to keep them alive, warm and healthy for another year. If things went really well, the family had more than enough of everything. When that happened, they loaded their un-needed surplus into their wagon and took it to town and sold it all. The surplus candles were snapped up by the hotel along with the extra firewood. Restaurants bought the meat they didn?t need. Surplus spools of yarn went to the dry goods store and so on. Now the family had everything they needed and a bunch of money besides, that they could use to purchase things they could not make themselves. Such as ammo for pop?s hunting rifle, shoes for the horses, coffee from South America and real cane sugar from Cuba to put in it. And maybe they had some money left over to stash away in the bank for a rainy day. That?s if the year went good. When luck ran bad, the farm family never produced enough of anything to satisfy their needs. Faced with shortages, and the prospect of death, eventually the family had to go into town and clean out their bank account and take out loans to cover what they were short. That?s where we are today in America and countless other once Western nations. When America as a nation began to stop producing enough of what it needed to supply it?s citizens needs, there was only one thing that could have happened. America had to go into town, clean out the bank account and start borrowing to make up the difference. For the first 75 years of the 20th century, family farm America had great years. It produced a surplus of everything year after year after year. Then came the pivotal year of 1975. That was the last year the American economy produced a surplus of goods to trade overseas. It has not done so since. What is remarkable is how fast the bank account emptied and the debt piled up. There is a chart you can download at the link at the bottom of the page that illustrates the rocket sled ride to ruin. The chart covers the period from WWII, when good economic figures began to be compiled, to the present day. The chart traces the US trade surplus/deficit, US household debt, US corporate debt, and the US Federal Debt. For the period from WWII to 1975, during the surplus years, the debt charts were essentially at a flat line. After 1975, the debt in all categories took off like a rocket ship. What that chart is showing is that the moment national production falls beyond subsistence levels, the borrowing to make up the difference begins, and only accelerates from there. What I hope you?ll come to understand, what the charts show, is that there is no way out of this depression we?re in right now unless America and the rest of the West starts producing again. That is a demand you must add to your #Occupy America wish list. TARPs will do nothing. Temporary job programs will do nothing. Raising or lowering taxes on who and for how much will not matter. Minting more money will do nothing. Economic protectionism at the border and economic production within is America?s only salvation. Scott Cruickshank?s note on the chart: In the margins of the chart, are some personal notes, a little dot connecting on my part. The charts actually tell you far more about what happened to America than they seem to let on. In fact you can explain many social changes that happened during the 1970?s and 80?s, not just the economic changes. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 01atradeanddebt.jpg Type: application/octet-stream Size: 605026 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.psalience.org/pipermail/ths/attachments/20111020/65a1017a/attachment-0001.obj From ths at psalience.org Thu Oct 20 13:14:53 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:14:53 +0200 Subject: [THS] Naomi Wolf: how I was arrested at Occupy Wall Street Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111020131029.04bdb9e0@mail.messagingengine.com> 1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/19/naomi-wolf-arrest-occupy-wall-street Naomi Wolf: how I was arrested at Occupy Wall Street Arresting a middle-aged writer in an evening gown for peaceable conduct is a far cry from when America was a free republic Naomi Wolf | guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 October 2011 12.05 EDT Last night I was arrested in my home town, outside an event to which I had been invited, for standing lawfully on the sidewalk in an evening gown. Let me explain; my partner and I were attending an event for the Huffington Post, for which I often write: Game Changers 2011, in a venue space on Hudson Street. As we entered the space, we saw that about 200 Occupy Wall Street protesters were peacefully assembled and were chanting. They wanted to address Governor Andrew Cuomo, who was going to be arriving at the event. They were using a technique that has become known as "the human mic" ? by which the crowd laboriously repeats every word the speaker says ? since they had been told that using real megaphones was illegal. In my book Give Me Liberty, a blueprint for how to open up a closing civil society, I have a chapter on permits ? which is a crucial subject to understand for anyone involved in protest in the US. In 70s America, protest used to be very effective, but in subsequent decades municipalities have sneakily created a web of "overpermiticisation" ? requirements that were designed to stifle freedom of assembly and the right to petition government for redress of grievances, both of which are part of our first amendment. One of these made-up permit requirements, which are not transparent or accountable, is the megaphone restriction. So I informed the group on Hudson Street that they had a first amendment right to use a megaphone and that the National Lawyers' Guild should appeal the issue if they got arrested. And I repeated the words of the first amendment, which the crowd repeated. Then my partner suggested that I ask the group for their list of demands. Since we would be inside, we thought it would be helpful to take their list into the event and if I had a chance to talk with the governor I could pass the list on. That is how a democracy works, right? The people have the right to address their representatives. We went inside, chatted with our friends, but needed to leave before the governor had arrived. I decided I would present their list to his office in the morning and write about the response. On our exit, I saw that the protesters had been cordoned off by a now-massive phalanx of NYPD cops and pinned against the far side of the street ? far away from the event they sought to address. I went up and asked them why. They replied that they had been informed that the Huffington Post event had a permit that forbade them to use the sidewalk. I knew from my investigative reporting on NYC permits that this was impossible: a private entity cannot lease the public sidewalks; even film crews must allow pedestrian traffic. I asked the police for clarification ? no response. I went over to the sidewalk at issue and identified myself as a NYC citizen and a reporter, and asked to see the permit in question or to locate the source on the police or event side that claimed it forbade citizen access to a public sidewalk. Finally a tall man, who seemed to be with the event, confessed that while it did have a permit, the permit did allow for protest so long as we did not block pedestrian passage. I thanked him, returned to the protesters, and said: "The permit allows us to walk on the other side of the street if we don't block access. I am now going to walk on the public sidewalk and not block it. It is legal to do so. Please join me if you wish." My partner and I then returned to the event-side sidewalk and began to walk peacefully arm in arm, while about 30 or 40 people walked with us in single file, not blocking access. Then a phalanx of perhaps 40 white-shirted senior offices descended out of seemingly nowhere and, with a megaphone (which was supposedly illegal for citizens to use), one said: "You are unlawfully creating a disruption. You are ordered to disperse." I approached him peacefully, slowly, gently and respectfully and said: "I am confused. I was told that the permit in question allows us to walk if we don't block pedestrian access and as you see we are complying with the permit." YouTube footage of Naomi Wolf being arrested He gave me a look of pure hate. "Are you going to back down?" he shouted. I stood, immobilised, for a moment. "Are you getting out of my way?" I did not even make a conscious decision not to "fall back" ? I simply couldn't even will myself to do so, because I knew that he was not giving a lawful order and that if I stepped aside it would be not because of the law, which I was following, but as a capitulation to sheer force. In that moment's hesitation, he said, "OK," gestured, and my partner and I were surrounded by about 20 officers who pulled our hands behind our backs and cuffed us with plastic handcuffs. We were taken in a van to the seventh precinct ? the scary part about that is that the protesters and lawyers marched to the first precinct, which handles Hudson Street, but in the van the police got the message to avoid them by rerouting me. I understood later that the protesters were lied to about our whereabouts, which seemed to me to be a trickle-down of the Bush-era detention practice of unaccountable detentions. The officers who had us in custody were very courteous, and several expressed sympathy for the movements' aims. Nonetheless, my partner and I had our possessions taken from us, our ID copied, and we were placed in separate cells for about half an hour. It was clear that by then the police knew there was scrutiny of this arrest so they handled us with great courtesy, but my phone was taken and for half an hour I was in a faeces- or blood-smeared cell, thinking at that moment the only thing that separates civil societies from barbaric states is the rule of law ? that finds the prisoner, and holds the arresting officers and courts accountable. Another scary outcome I discovered is that, when the protesters marched to the first precinct, the whole of Erickson Street was cordoned off ? "frozen" they were told, "by Homeland Security". Obviously if DHS now has powers to simply take over a New York City street because of an arrest for peaceable conduct by a middle-aged writer in an evening gown, we have entered a stage of the closing of America, which is a serious departure from our days as a free republic in which municipalities are governed by police forces. The police are now telling my supporters that the permit in question gave the event managers "control of the sidewalks". I have asked to see the permit but still haven't been provided with it ? if such a category now exists, I have never heard of it; that, too, is a serious blow to an open civil society. What did I take away? Just that, unfortunately, my partner and I became exhibit A in a process that I have been warning Americans about since 2007: first they come for the "other" ? the "terrorist", the brown person, the Muslim, the outsider; then they come for you ? while you are standing on a sidewalk in evening dress, obeying the law. 2) http://bit.ly/o8yUpI Updates from naomiwolf.org 3) http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8854 So Much For the First Amendment: Author, Reporter Naomi Wolf Just Latest of 1,500 Arrested For Peacable Assembly at #OccupyWallStreet Protests By Brad Friedman on 10/19/2011 2:48pm The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution declares: ...the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Isn't that quaint? Josh Holland takes a look at what happened to that apparently antiquated notion from the document which used to carry some weight in the way this country was governed, as he notes that some 1,500 American citizens have now been arrested while peaceably assembling to petition the Government for a redress of grievances over the past month since Occupy Wall Street began. Last night, while the GOP debated Casino Capitalism (in an actual casino!), Give Me Liberty author and reporter Naomi Wolfe became one of the latest to have had her Constitutional right to peaceably assemble for redress of grievances taken away from her, as seen in the following video (in which that "Democrat Party-sponsored" "mob"was attempting to petition Democratic NY state Governor Andrew Cuomo for a redress of grievances)... Wolf wrote about her arrest seen above, "for standing lawfully on the sidewalk in an evening gown" at the UK's Guardian today, noting that she explained to the NYPD before she was cuffed that she was both a "NYC citizen and a reporter". As her article's sub-header notes, "Arresting a middle-aged writer in an evening gown for peaceable conduct is a far cry from when America was a free republic." "I became exhibit A in a process that I have been warning Americans about since 2007," Wolfe writes. "First they come for the 'other' ? the 'terrorist', the brown person, the Muslim, the outsider; then they come for you ? while you are standing on a sidewalk in evening dress, obeying the law." This afternoon she told Huffington Posts' Jason Cherkis, "I didn?t choose to get myself arrested. I chose to obey the law and that didn?t protect me." So, where are all the outraged "Tea Partiers" who used to decry supposed abuses of the U.S. Constitution under our authoritarian regime? Oh, right, they were just pretending to give a damn about any of it...like good little scammed Fox "News" soldiers. * * * P.S. Here's hoping Wolf makes out as well following her inappropriate arrest asDemocracy Now!'s Amy Goodman did after hers. * * * UPDATE 10/19/11: In her Guardian piece, Wolf explained that the NYPD had told her the permit for the event she was attending (an annual Huffington Post event which Gov. Cuomo was also scheduled to attend, thus the protesters) when she came across the #OWS folks, forbade protesters from using the public sidewalks outside the building. Suspecting the claim from the police was bullshit, she says she requested to see a copy of that permit prior to her arrest, but was not allowed to. Since posting the article above, Wolf contacted me to note that she has finally tracked down a copy of the type of permit HuffPo had last night and --- surprise, surprise --- the claim by cops appears to, in fact, be bullshit... "It seems that the mysterious ominous unspecified 'permit' the cops referenced and used to lock us up was a RED CARPET EVENT permit that says nothing about restricting pedestrian access!!!," she tells me. Linking to the permit at her Facebook page, Wolf writes: I do believe I have found the permit. See any reference to pedestrians being denied access to the sidewalks?http://www.nyc.gov/html/...remiere_permit_final.pdf From ths at psalience.org Fri Oct 21 13:24:43 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:24:43 +0200 Subject: [THS] Climate change Conference in London: grave threat to security and health Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111021132339.06c55658@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15342682 Climate change 'grave threat' to security and health By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News Climate change poses "an immediate, growing and grave threat" to health and security around the world, according to an expert conference in London. Officers in the UK military warned that the price of goods such as fuel is likely to rise as conflict provoked by climate change increases. A statement from the meeting adds that humanitarian disasters will put more and more strain on military resources. It asks governments to adopt ambitious targets for curbing greenhouse gases. The annual UN climate conference opens in about six weeks' time, and the doctors, academics and military experts represented at the meeting (held in the British Medical Association's (BMA) headquarters) argue that developed and developing countries alike need to raise their game. Scientific studies suggest that the most severe climate impacts will fall on the relatively poor countries of the tropics. UK military experts pointed out that much of the world's trade moves through such regions, with North America, Western Europe and China among the societies heavily dependent on oil and other imports. Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, climate and energy security envoy for the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), said that conflict in such areas could make it more difficult and expensive to obtain goods on which countries such as Britain rely. "If there are risks to the trade routes and other areas, then it's food, it's energy," he told BBC News. "The price of energy will go up - for us, it's [the price of] petrol at the pumps - and goods made in southeast Asia, a lot of which we import." Coffee climate A number of recent studies have suggested that climate impacts will make conflict more likely, by increasing competition for scarce but essential resources such as water and food. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, for example, recently warned that climate change "will increase the risks of resource shortages, mass migration and civil conflict", while the MoD's view is that it will shift "the tipping point at which conflict occurs". Alejandro Litovsky, founder of the Earth Security Initiative, said that even without the increasing effect of conflict, prices of essential goods were bound to rise. "From the year 2000 onwards, we have been seeing commodity prices climb, and this is not likely to stop," he said. "It is primarily driven by resource scarcity, and the trends suggest that depletion of these natural resources is unlikely to be reversed in the near future without drastic interventions." He also said that degradation of natural resources such as forests and freshwater was removing much of the resilience that societies formerly enjoyed. Last week, multinational coffee house Starbucks warned that climate change threatened the world's coffee supplies in 20-30 years' time. Compromised by carbon The military officers at the meeting also emphasised the interest that armed forces have in reducing their own carbon footprint. In Afghanistan, for example, fuel has to be delivered by road from Pakistan. By the time it reaches its destination, it can cost 10 times the pump price. And the convoys are regularly targeted by opposing forces. Several officers admitted that armed forces were "the gas-guzzlers of the world" - and while that was sometimes necessary in operations, reducing fossil fuel use and adopting renewables wherever possible made sense from economic and tactical points of view. Rear Admiral Morisetti recalled that when commanding an aircraft carrier, it took a gallon of oil to move just 12 inches (30cm), while as many as 20 tonnes per hour were burned during a period of intensive take-off and landing. "You can do that [with oil prices at] $30 a barrel, but not at $100 or $200," he said. Health gains On the health side, doctors warned of a raft of impacts, particularly in developing countries. Hunger and malnutrition were likely to increase, and some infectious diseases were likely to spread, they said. Poorer societies could expect to see an unholy symbiosis between the two, with under-nourished people more prone to succumb to infections. Tackling carbon emissions, by contrast, would bring a range of health benefits, they argue in their statement. "Changes in power generation improve air quality. "Modest life style changes - such as increasing physical activity through walking and cycling - will cut rates of heart disease and stroke, obesity, diabetes, breast cancer, dementia and depressive illness. "Climate change mitigation policies would thus significantly cut rates of preventable death and disability for hundreds of millions of people around the world." No cause for optimism As the UN summit in South Africa approaches, the statement here calls on the EU to increase its ambition and pledge to reduce emissions by 30% from 1990 levels by 2020, rather than the current target of 20%. Currently, there does not appear to be political consensus for such a move within EU governments, however. Additional recommendations are that developing country governments should analyse climate threats to their health and security, and that all governments should stop construction of new coal-fired power stations without carbon capture and storage (CCS) - which, as commercial CCS systems do not exist, would as things stand amount to a complete ban. Without urgent action, carbon emissions could rise to levels that should cause major alarm, said Chris Rapley, professor of climate science at University College London. Already, he noted, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has risen to about 380 parts per million [ppm] - whereas in the millions of years before the pre-industrial era, it fluctuated between about 180ppm during Ice Ages and about 280ppm in the warm interglacial periods. "If we don't do something, then at the rate we're going, carbon emissions will continue to accelerate, and the atmospheric concentration is not going to be 450ppm or 650ppm by the end of the century, but 1,000ppm," he said. "That is 10 times the difference between an Ice Age and an interglacial; and you have to be a pretty huge optimist to think that won't bring major changes." From ths at psalience.org Fri Oct 21 13:41:27 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:41:27 +0200 Subject: [THS] Gareth Porter: U.S. Officials Peddle False Intel to Support Terror Plot Claims Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111021134029.06d8d608@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29434.htm U.S. Officials Peddle False Intel to Support Terror Plot Claims By Gareth Porter October 17, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- - - Officials of the Barack Obama administration have aggressively leaked information supposedly based on classified intelligence in recent days to bolster its allegation that two higher- ranking officials from Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were involved in a plot to assassinate Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir in Washington, D.C. The media stories generated by the leaks helped divert press attention from the fact that there is no verifiable evidence of any official Iranian involvement in the alleged assassination plan, contrary to the broad claim being made by the administration. But the information about the two Iranian officials leaked to NBC News, the Washington Post and Reuters was unambiguously false and misleading, as confirmed by official documents in one case and a former senior intelligence and counterterrorism official in the other. The main target of the official leaks was Abdul Reza Shahlai, who was identified publicly by the Obama administration as a "deputy commander in the Quds Force" of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Shahlai had long been regarded by U.S. officials as a key figure in the Quds Force's relationship to Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq. The primary objective of the FBI sting operation involving Iranian- American Manssor Arbabsiar and a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant that was started last June now appears to have been to use Arbabsiar to implicate Shahlai in a terror plot. U.S. officials had learned from the DEA informant that Arbabsiar claimed that Shahlai was his cousin. In September 2008, the Treasury Department designated Shahlai as an individual "providing financial, material and technical support for acts of violence that threaten the peace and stability of Iraq" and thus subject to specific financial sanctions. The announcement said Shahlai had provided "material support" to the Mahdi Army in 2006 and that he had "planned the Jan. 20, 2007 attack" by Mahdi Army "Special Groups" on U.S. troops at the Provincial Coordination Center in Karbala, Iraq. Arbabsiar's confession claims that Shahlai approached him in early spring 2011 and asked him to find "someone in the narcotics business" to kidnap the Saudi ambassador to the United States, according to the FBI account. Arbabsiar implicates Shahlai in providing him with thousands of dollars for his expenses. But Arbabsiar's charge against Shahlai was self-interested. Arbabsiar had become the cornerstone of the administration's case against Shahlai in order to obtain leniency on charges against him. There is no indication in the FBI account of the investigation that there is any independent evidence to support Arbabsiar's claim of Shahlai's involvement in a plan to kill the ambassador. The Obama administration planted stories suggesting that Shahlai had a terrorist past, and that it was therefore credible that he could be part of an assassination plot. Laying the foundation for press stories on the theme, the Treasury Department announced Tuesday that it was sanctioning Shahlai, along with Arbabsiar and three other Quds Force officials, including the head of the organisation, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, for being "connected to" the assassination plot. But Michael Issikof of NBC News reported the same day that Shahlai "had previously been accused of plotting a highly sophisticated attack that killed five U.S. soldiers in Iraq, according to U.S. government officials and documents made public Tuesday afternoon". Isikoff, who is called "National Investigative Correspondent" at NBC News, reported that the Treasury Department had designated Shahlai as a "terrorist" in 2008, despite the fact that the Treasury announcement of the designation had not used the term "terrorist". On Saturday, the Washington Post published a report closely paralleling the Issikof story but going even further in claiming documentary proof of Shahlai's responsibility for the January 2007 attack in Karbala. Post reporter Peter Finn wrote that Shahlai "was known as the guiding hand behind an elite militia of the cleric Moqtada al Sadr", which had carried out an attack on U.S. troops in Karbala in January 2007. Finn cited the fact that the Treasury Department named Shahlai as the "final approving and coordinating authority" for training Sadr's militiamen in Iran. That fact would not in itself be evidence of involvement in a specific attack on U.S. forces. On the contrary, it would suggest that he was not involved in operational aspects of the Mahdi Army in Iraq. Finn then referred to a "22-page memo that detailed preparations for the operation and tied it to the Quds Force ." But he didn't refer to any evidence that Shahlai personally had anything to do with the operation. In fact, U.S. officials acknowledged in the months after the Karbala attack that they had found no evidence of any Iranian involvement in the operation. Talking with reporters about the memo on Apr. 26, 2007, several weeks after it had been captured, Gen. David Petraeus conceded that it did not show that any Iranian official was linked to the planning of the Karbala operation. When a journalist asked him whether there was evidence of Iranian involvement in the Karbala operation, Petraeus responded, "No. No. No [W]e do not have a direct link to Iran involvement in that particular case." In a news briefing in Baghdad Jul. 2, 2007, Gen. Kevin Bergner confirmed that the attack in Karbala had been authorised by the Iraqi chief of the militia in question, Kais Khazali, not by any Iranian official. Col. Michael X. Garrett, who had been commander of the U.S. Fourth Brigade combat team in Karbala, confirmed to this writer in December 2008 that the Karbala attack "was definitely an inside job". Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force, is on the list of those Iranian officials "linked" to the alleged terror plot, because he "oversees the IRGC-QF officers who were involved in this plot" , as the Treasury Department announcement explained. But a Reuters story on Friday reported a claim of U.S. intelligence that two wire transfers totaling 100,000 dollars at the behest of Arbabsiar to a bank account controlled by the FBI implicates Soleimani in the assassination plot. "While details are still classified," wrote Mark Hosenball and Caren Bohan, "one official said the wire transfers apparently had some kind of hallmark indicating they were personally approved" by Soleimani. But the suggestion that forensic examination of the wire transfers could somehow show who had approved them is misleading. The wire transfers were from two separate non-Iranian banks in a foreign country, according to the FBI's account. It would be impossible to deduce who approved the transfer by looking at the documents. "I have no idea what such a 'hallmark' could be," said Paul Pillar, a former head of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center who was also National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East until his retirement in 2005. Pillar told IPS that the "hallmark" notion "pops up frequently in commentary after actual terrorist attacks,", but the concept is usually invoked "along the lines of 'the method used in this attack had the hallmark of group such and such'." That "hallmark" idea "assumes exclusive ownership of a method of attack which does not really exist," said Pillar. "I expect the same could be said of methods of transferring money." Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006. This item was first posted at IPS From ths at psalience.org Fri Oct 21 13:42:21 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:42:21 +0200 Subject: [THS] Exposed: The "Humanitarian" War In Libya Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111021134149.06c2a128@mail.messagingengine.com> No Evidence? No Problem!! Exposed: The "Humanitarian" War In Libya Must Watch Video How the CIA Used "Libyan Expatriates" To Engineer Consent For Regime Change. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29428.htm From ths at psalience.org Fri Oct 21 13:44:18 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:44:18 +0200 Subject: [THS] Andrew J. Bacevich: America: With God on our side Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111021134358.06c2a3b8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29430.htm America: With God on our side Presidential candidates feel no shame in asserting divine purpose in U.S. policies and actions. In this ubiquitous view of American exceptionalism, the nation is not bound by rules to which others must submit. By Andrew J. Bacevich October 17, 2011"LA Times" -- In the United States, despite a Constitution that mandates the separation of church and state, religion and politics have become inseparable. To lend authority to their views, presidential aspirants of both parties regularly press God into service. They know what he intends. So the claims made by Republican front-runner Mitt Romney in a recent speech at the Citadel managed to be both striking and unexceptionable. "God did not create this country to be a nation of followers," Romney announced. "America must lead the world." Absent the "clarity of American purpose and resolve, the world becomes a far more dangerous place," with freedom itself in jeopardy. To avert this catastrophe, Romney declared, "this century must be an American century," with the United States economically preeminent and wielding "the strongest military in the world." Whence do these insights derive? "Why should America be any different than scores of other countries around the globe?" Romney asked rhetorically. His answer captures the essence of our present-day civic religion: "I believe we are an exceptional country with a unique destiny and role in the world." The Hebrew Bible provides no evidence to support this proposition. Nor do the teachings of Jesus Christ and his disciples. Yet the American Bible incorporates a de facto Third Testament, which validates this assertion of American uniqueness. That testament, fashioned from a carefully tailored rendering of the 20th century, recounts the story of a new chosen people serving as God's instrument of salvation, leading humankind onward to the promised land. For anyone aspiring to high office, professing fealty to this Third Testament has become all but obligatory. And Romney took care to do so in his Citadel speech. Genuflecting before the "generations that fought in world wars, that came through the Great Depression and that gained victory in the Cold War," he summoned his listeners to "seize the torch" their forebears had held aloft, continuing the inexorable advance toward "freedom, peace and prosperity." This, he made clear, defines America's calling, one to which citizens of all religious persuasions (or none at all) can subscribe. "This is America's moment," Romney insisted. He likened those who disagree to Third Testament villains, proposing that the nation should "crawl into an isolationist shell" and "wave the white flag of surrender," acquiescing in the claim that "America's time has passed." All of this Romney dismissed as "utter nonsense." Now duty confers prerogatives. And God's elect are not bound by rules to which others must submit. Among other things, they need not admit error. "I will never, ever apologize for America," Romney promised. Apologies imply misjudgments, mistakes or wrongdoing, none of which figure in the Third Testament's depiction of a nation unsullied by malign intent or sordid action. Above all, the United States need not apologize for its pursuit of permanent military supremacy or for its propensity for violence. "When America is strong," Romney declared, "the world is safer." The post-Cold War era, with unquestioned U.S. military preeminence going hand in hand with widespread disorder, offers little to substantiate this proposition. Even so, an insistence that American military power and its application are conducive to peace remains one of the Third Testament's central tenets. So, whereas a single Chinese aircraft carrier poses a looming danger, a dozen American aircraft carriers make the U.S. Navy a global force for good. A brief Russian incursion into Georgia threatens peace; protracted wars resulting from the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan advance it. In his Citadel speech, Romney said nothing that a thousand politicians and pundits have not already said a thousand times and will say again. The significance of his presentation lies not in its originality but in its familiarity. Are Mormons really Christians? Romney has rendered the question moot. In all the ways that count politically, he has shown himself to be a true believer, committed to a faith-based approach to statecraft. No leading contender for the Republican nomination will challenge the positions that Romney laid out. After all, they share his certain knowledge that God has designated America as his earthly agent. They endorse Romney's emphasis on enhancing U.S. military power as the key to perpetuating an American century. And they mirror his lack of interest in the world as it is, indulging instead the pretense that it's still 1945. The eventual Republican nominee, whoever that may be, will argue that President Obama believes none of these things ? hence his unworthiness for a second term. For his part, the president will exert himself to prove otherwise. As he has done before, Obama will signal his own allegiance to militant exceptionalism, offered as positive proof that he is authentically American. Rival messianic visions will compete. Most experts expect bread-and-butter issues to decide the upcoming election. Yet regardless of the final outcome, the real winner is going to be the concept of American exceptionalism. Whoever takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2013, will be someone who believes in the American Bible's Third Testament. In that regard ? whether for better or worse ? the outcome appears foreordained. One might even say that God wills it. Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the editor of "The Short American Century: A Postmortem," to be published next year. Copyright ? 2011, Los Angeles Times From ths at psalience.org Fri Oct 21 13:50:02 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:50:02 +0200 Subject: [THS] !!!! Chris Hedges: A Movement Too Big to Fail Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111021134502.06c28bd0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29431.htm A Movement Too Big to Fail By Chris Hedges October 17, 2011 "Truthdig" - - There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of ?liberal? groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform. Resistance, real resistance, to the corporate state was displayed when a couple of thousand protesters, clutching mops and brooms, early Friday morning forced the owners of Zuccotti Park and the New York City police to back down from a proposed attempt to expel them in order to ?clean? the premises. These protesters in that one glorious moment did what the traditional ?liberal? establishment has steadily refused to do?fight back. And it was deeply moving to watch the corporate rats scamper back to their holes on Wall Street. It lent a whole new meaning to the phrase ?too big to fail.? Tinkering with the corporate state will not work. We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands. This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart. But the liberal class has no credibility left. It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars. The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along. Groups such as MoveOn and organized labor will find themselves without a constituency unless they at least pay lip service to the protests. The Teamsters? arrival Friday morning to help defend the park signaled an infusion of this new radicalism into moribund unions rather than a co-opting of the protest movement by the traditional liberal establishment. The union bosses, in short, had no choice. The Occupy Wall Street movement, like all radical movements, has obliterated the narrow political parameters. It proposes something new. It will not make concessions with corrupt systems of corporate power. It holds fast to moral imperatives regardless of the cost. It confronts authority out of a sense of responsibility. It is not interested in formal positions of power. It is not seeking office. It is not trying to get people to vote. It has no resources. It can?t carry suitcases of money to congressional offices or run millions of dollars of advertisements. All it can do is ask us to use our bodies and voices, often at personal risk, to fight back. It has no other way of defying the corporate state. This rebellion creates a real community instead of a managed or virtual one. It affirms our dignity. It permits us to become free and independent human beings. Martin Luther King was repeatedly betrayed by liberal supporters, especially when he began to challenge economic forms of discrimination, which demanded that liberals, rather than simply white Southern racists, begin to make sacrifices. King too was a radical. He would not compromise on nonviolence, racism or justice. He understood that movements?such as the Liberty Party, which fought slavery, the suffragists, who fought for women?s rights, the labor movement and the civil rights movement?have always been the true correctives in American democracy. None of those movements achieved formal political power. But by holding fast to moral imperatives they made the powerful fear them. King knew that racial equality was impossible without economic justice and an end to militarism. And he had no intention of ceding to the demands of the liberal establishment that called on him to be calm and patience. ?For years, I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions in the South, a little change here, a little change there,? King said shortly before he was assassinated. ?Now I feel quite differently. I think you?ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire system, a revolution of values.? King was killed in 1968 when he was in Memphis to support a strike by sanitation workers. By then he had begun to say that his dream, the one that the corporate state has frozen into a few safe clich?s from his 1963 speech in Washington, had turned into a nightmare. King called at the end of his life for massive federal funds to rebuild inner cities, what he called ?a radical redistribution of economic and political power,? a complete restructuring of ?the architecture of American society.? He grasped that the inequities of capitalism had become the instrument by which the poor would always remain poor. ?Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism,? King said, ?but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God?s children.? On the eve of King?s murder he was preparing to organize a poor people?s march on Washington, D.C., designed to cause ?major, massive dislocations,? a nonviolent demand by the poor, including the white underclass, for a system of economic equality. It would be 43 years before his vision was realized by an eclectic group of protesters who gathered before the gates of Wall Street. The truth of America is understood only when you listen to voices in our impoverished rural enclaves, prisons and the urban slums, when you hear the words of our unemployed, those who have lost their homes or cannot pay their medical bills, our elderly and our children, especially the quarter of the nation?s children who depend on food stamps to eat, and all who are marginalized. There is more reality expressed about the American experience by the debt-burdened young men and women protesting in the parks than by all the chatter of the well-paid pundits and experts that pollutes the airwaves. What kind of nation is it that spends far more to kill enemy combatants and Afghan and Iraqi civilians than it does to help its own citizens who live below the poverty line? What kind of nation is it that permits corporations to hold sick children hostage while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves to save their sons and daughters? What kind of nation is it that tosses its mentally ill onto urban heating grates? What kind of nation is it that abandons its unemployed while it loots its treasury on behalf of speculators? What kind of nation is it that ignores due process to torture and assassinate its own citizens? What kind of nation is it that refuses to halt the destruction of the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, dooming our children and our children?s children? ?America,? Langston Hughes wrote, ?never was America to me.? ?The black vote mean [nothing],? the rapper Nas intones. ?Who you gunna elect/ Satan or Satan? In the hood nothing is changing,/ We aint got no choices.? Or listen to hip-hop artist Talib Kweli: ?Back in the ?60s, there was a big push for black politicians, and now we have more than we ever had before, but our communities are so much worse. A lot of people died for us to vote, I?m aware of that history, but these politicians are not in touch with people at all. Politics is not the truth to me, it?s an illusion.? The liberal class functions in a traditional, capitalist democracy as a safety valve. It lets off enough steam to keep the system intact. It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. This is what happened during the Great Depression and the New Deal. Franklin Delano Roosevelt?s greatest achievement was that he saved capitalism. Liberals in a functioning capitalist democracy are at the same time tasked with discrediting radicals, whether it is King, especially after he denounced the war in Vietnam, or later Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader. The stupidity of the corporate state is that it thought it could dispense with the liberal class. It thought it could shut off that safety valve in order to loot and pillage with no impediments. Corporate power forgot that the liberal class, when it functions, gives legitimacy to the power elite. And the reduction of the liberal class to silly courtiers, who have nothing to offer but empty rhetoric, meant that the growing discontent found other mechanisms and outlets. Liberals were reduced to stick figures, part of an elaborate pantomime, as they acted in preordained roles to give legitimacy to meaningless and useless political theater. But that game is over. Human history has amply demonstrated that once those in positions of power become redundant and impotent, yet retain the trappings and privileges of power, they are brutally discarded. The liberal class, which insists on clinging to its positions of privilege while at the same time refusing to play its traditional role within the democratic state, has become a useless and despised appendage of corporate power. And as the engines of corporate power pollute and poison the ecosystem and propel us into a world where there will be only masters and serfs, the liberal class, which serves no purpose in the new configuration, is being abandoned and discarded by both the corporate state and radical dissidents. The best it can do is attach itself meekly to the new political configuration rising up to replace it. An ineffectual liberal class means there is no hope of a correction or a reversal through the formal mechanisms of power. It ensures that the frustration and anger among the working and the middle class will find expression now in these protests that lie outside the confines of democratic institutions and the civilities of a liberal democracy. By emasculating the liberal class, which once ensured that restive citizens could institute moderate reforms, the corporate state has created a closed system defined by polarization, gridlock and political charades. It has removed the veneer of virtue and goodness that the liberal class offered to the power elite. Liberal institutions, including the church, the press, the university, the Democratic Party, the arts and labor unions, set the parameters for limited self-criticism in a functioning democracy as well as small, incremental reforms. The liberal class is permitted to decry the worst excesses of power and champion basic human rights while at the same time endowing systems of power with a morality and virtue it does not possess. Liberals posit themselves as the conscience of the nation. They permit us, through their appeal to public virtues and the public good, to see ourselves and our state as fundamentally good. But the liberal class, by having refused to question the utopian promises of unfettered capitalism and globalization and by condemning those who did, severed itself from the roots of creative and bold thought, the only forces that could have prevented the liberal class from merging completely with the power elite. The liberal class, which at once was betrayed and betrayed itself, has no role left to play in the battle between us and corporate dominance. All hope lies now with those in the street. Liberals lack the vision and fortitude to challenge dominant free market ideologies. They have no ideological alternatives even as the Democratic Party openly betrays every principle the liberal class claims to espouse, from universal health care to an end to our permanent war economy to a demand for quality and affordable public education to a return of civil liberties to a demand for jobs and welfare of the working class. The corporate state forced the liberal class to join in the nation?s death march that began with the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Liberals such as Bill Clinton, for corporate money, accelerated the dismantling of our manufacturing base, the gutting of our regulatory agencies, the destruction of our social service programs and the empowerment of speculators who have trashed our economy. The liberal class, stripped of power, could only retreat into its atrophied institutions, where it busied itself with the boutique activism of political correctness and embraced positions it had previously condemned. Russell Jacoby writes: ?The left once dismissed the market as exploitative; it now honors the market as rational and humane. The left once disdained mass culture as exploitative; now it celebrates it as rebellious. The left once honored independent intellectuals as courageous; now it sneers at them as elitist. The left once rejected pluralism as superficial; now it worships it as profound. We are witnessing not simply a defeat of the left, but its conversion and perhaps inversion.? Hope in this age of bankrupt capitalism comes with the return of the language of class conflict and rebellion, language that has been purged from the lexicon of the liberal class, language that defines this new movement. This does not mean we have to agree with Karl Marx, who advocated violence and whose worship of the state as a utopian mechanism led to another form of enslavement of the working class, but we have to learn again to speak in the vocabulary Marx employed. We have to grasp, as Marx and Adam Smith did, that corporations are not concerned with the common good. They exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill and lie to make money. They throw poor families out of homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars to make profits, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women. They worship money and power. And, as Marx knew, unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the perfect metaphor for the corporate state. It is part of the same nightmare experienced in postindustrial mill towns of New England and the abandoned steel mills of Ohio. It is a nightmare that Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans, living in terror and mourning their dead, endure daily. What took place early Friday morning in Zuccotti Park was the first salvo in a long struggle for justice. It signaled a step backward by the corporate state in the face of popular pressure. And it was carried out by ordinary men and women who sleep at night on concrete, get soaked in rainstorms, eat donated food and have nothing as weapons but their dignity, resilience and courage. It is they, and they alone, who hold out the possibility of salvation. And if we join them we might have a chance. Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. Copyright ? 2011 Truthdig, L.L.C. From ths at psalience.org Fri Oct 21 13:51:14 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:51:14 +0200 Subject: [THS] Revealed: Fox's Best Man 'Had Links to Mossad' Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111021135103.06c28e60@mail.messagingengine.com> UK: Liam Fox Resignation Exposes Tory Links to US Neocons By Toby Helm and Jamie Doward We need to know just how far and how deep the links into US politics go. This crisis has discovered traces of a stealth neocon agenda. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29419.htm === Revealed: Fox's Best Man 'Had Links to Mossad' By Jane Merrick and James Hanning Adam Werritty, the man at the centre of the Liam Fox cash-for-access scandal, has been involved in an audacious plot to topple Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it was claimed last night. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29421.htm === Was Mossad Using Fox and Werritty as 'Useful Idiots'? By Craig Murray Ex-Ambassador reveals how links made by 'advisers' set alarm bells ringing. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29424.htm === From ths at psalience.org Fri Oct 21 13:54:58 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:54:58 +0200 Subject: [THS] Uri Avnery: The Holocaust-state Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111021135206.06c290f0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29422.htm The Holocaust-state A Ghetto with Nuclear Weapons. By Uri Avnery October 16, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- On Yom Kippur eve last week, when real Jews were praying for their lives, I sat on the seashore of Tel Aviv, thinking. It was my first Yom Kippur without Rachel, and the dark water reflected my mood. I was thinking about our state, the State of Israel, in which I have, so to speak, a founder?s share. Will it endure? Will it be here in another 100 years? Or is it a passing episode, a historic fluke? When asked for his assessment of the French Revolution, Zhou Enlai famously replied: ?It?s too early to tell.? The Zionist Revolution ? and that?s what it was ? started more than a hundred years after the French one. It is certainly much too early to tell. Once, in a more cheerful mood, I told my friends: ?Perhaps we are all wrong. Perhaps Israel is not really the final shape of the Zionist enterprise. Like the planners of every great project, the Zionists decided first to build a ?pilot?, a prototype, in order to test their scheme. Actually, we Israelis are only guinea pigs. Sooner or later another Theodor Herzl will come by and, after analyzing the faults and mistakes of this experiment, will draw up the blueprint of the real state, which will be far superior.? Herzl 2 will start by asking: where did Herzl 1 go wrong? Herzl 1 visited Palestine only once, and that only for the express purpose of meeting the German emperor, whom he wanted to enlist for his enterprise. The Kaiser insisted on seeing him at the gate of Jerusalem, listened patiently to what he had to say and then purportedly commented to his aides: ?It?s a grand idea, but you can?t do it with Jews!? He meant the Jews he knew ? the members of a world-wide religious-ethnic community. Herzl intended to turn these into a modern-style nation, like the other modern nations of Europe. Herzl was not a profound thinker, he was a journalist and dramatist. He ? and his successors ? saw the necessary transformation as basically a question of logistics. Get the Jews to Palestine, and everything will fall into place automatically. The Jews will become a normal people, a people (?Volk?) like other peoples. A nation among nations. But the Jews of his day were neither a people nor a nation. They were something rather different. Whilst anomalous in 19th century Europe, the Jewish Diaspora was quite normal 2000 years earlier. The large-scale social structure of that time was a network of Diasporas ? autonomous religious-ethnic entities dispersed throughout the ?civilized? (Mediterranean) world. The ruling empires ? Persian, Alexandrine, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman ? recognized them as the natural fabric of society. Nations in the modern territorial sense were then inconceivable. A Jew in Jerusalem did not belong to the same society as a Hellenist in Caesarea, only a hundred miles away. A Christian man in Alexandria could not marry the Jewish girl next door, but she could marry a Jewish man in far-away Antiochia. Since then, Europe has changed many times, until the emergence of the modern nations. The Jews did not change. When Herzl looked for a solution to the ?Jewish problem?, they were still the same ethnic-religious Diaspora. No problem, he thought, once I get them to Palestine, they will change. But an ethnic-religious community, living for millennia as a persecuted minority in a hostile environment, acquires a mentality of its own. It fears the ?Goyish? government, the source of unending evil edicts. It sees everyone outside the community as a potential enemy, unless proven otherwise (and even then). It develops an intense sense of solidarity with members of its own community, even a thousand miles away, supporting them through thick and thin, whatever they do. In their helpless situation, the persecuted dream of a day of revenge, when they can do unto others as others have done unto them. All this pervades their world-view, their religion and their traditions, transmitted from generation to generation. Jews have prayed to God for centuries, year after year, on Pesach eve: ?Pour your wrath upon the Goyim ? When the Zionists started to arrive and founded the new community, called the ?Yishuv? (settlement), it seemed that Herzl had been right. They started to behave like the embryo of a real nation. They discarded religion and despised the Diaspora. To be called ?exile Jew? was the worst possible insult. They saw themselves as ?Hebrew?, rather then Jewish. They started to build a new society and a new culture. And then the awful thing happened: the Holocaust. It brought all the old Jewish convictions back with a vengeance. Not only the Germans were the guilty, but all the nations who looked on and did not lift a finger to save the victims. So all the old beliefs were true after all: the whole world is against the Jews, we must defend ourselves whatever it takes, we can only rely on ourselves. The attitude of the Yishuv towards Jewishness and the Diaspora was a terrible mistake, we must repent and embrace everything we despised only yesterday: Jewish religion, Jewish traditions, the Jewish Shtetl. The late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an observant Jew, maintained that the Jewish religion had died 200 years ago, and that the one thing that linked the Jews all over the world was the Holocaust. Right from its founding, the State of Israel became the Holocaust-state. But we are not a helpless ghetto anymore ? we have powerful armed forces, we can indeed do unto others as others have done unto us. The old existential fears, mistrusts, suspicions, hatreds, prejudices, stereotypes, sense of victimhood, dreams of revenge, that were born in the Diaspora, have superimposed themselves on the state, creating a very dangerous mixture of power and victimhood, brutality and masochism, militarism and the conviction that the whole world is against us. A ghetto with nuclear weapons. Can such a state survive and flourish in the modern world? European nation-states have fought many wars. But they never forgot that after a war comes peace, that today?s enemy may well be tomorrow?s ally. Nation-states remain, but they are becoming more and more interdependent, joining regional structures, giving up huge chunks of their sovereignty. Israel cannot do that. Public opinion polls show that the vast majority of Israelis believe that there will never be peace. Not tomorrow, not in a hundred years. They are convinced that ?the Arabs? are out to throw us into the sea. They see mighty Israel as the victim surrounded by enemies, while our ?friends? are liable to stick a knife in our back any time. They see the eternal occupation of Palestinian territories and the setting up of belligerent settlements all over Palestine as a result of Arab intransigence, not as its cause. They are supported in blind solidarity by most of the Jews around the world. Almost all Israeli parties, including the main opposition, insist that Israel be recognized as the ?nation-state of the Jewish people?. This means that Israel does not belong to the Israelis (the very concept of an ?Israeli nation? is officially rejected by our government) but to the worldwide ethnic-religious Jewish Diaspora, who have never been asked whether they agree to Israel representing them. It is the very negation of a real nation-state that can live in peace with its neighbors and join a regional union. I have never labored under any illusions about the magnitude of the task my friends and I set ourselves decades ago. It is not to change this or that aspect of Israel, but to change the fundamental nature of the state Itself. It is far more than a matter of politics, to substitute one party for another. It is even far more than making peace with the Palestinian people, ending the occupation, evacuating the settlements. It is to effect a basic change of [or ?in?] the national consciousness, the consciousness of every Israeli man and woman. It has been said that ?you can get the Jews out of the ghetto, but you can?t get the ghetto out of the Jews.? But that is exactly what needs to be done. Can it be done? I think so. I certainly hope so. Perhaps we need a shock ? either a positive or a negative one. The appearance here of Anwar Sadat in 1977 can serve as an example of a positive shock: by coming to Jerusalem while a state of war was still in effect, he produced an overnight change in the consciousness of Israelis. So did the Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn in 1993. So did, in a negative way, the Yom Kippur war, exactly 38 years ago, which shook Israel to the core. But these were minor, brief shocks compared to what is needed. A Second Herzl could, perhaps, effect such a miracle, against the odds. In the words of the first Herzl: ?If you want it, It is not a fairy tale.? Uri Avnery is an Israeli peace activist and a former Knesset member. He is the founder of Gush Shalom. http://zope.gush-shalom.org From ths at psalience.org Fri Oct 21 14:03:28 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:03:28 +0200 Subject: [THS] The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111021135539.06c29380@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29427.htm The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America By Robert Reich October 16, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward. We are going to battle once again. Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we?re all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy. Regressives take the opposite positions. Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today?s Republican right aren?t really conservatives. Their goal isn?t to conserve what we have. It?s to take us backwards. They?d like to return to the 1920s ? before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act. In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants. Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s ? the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the ?rot? is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover?s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it). In truth, if they had their way we?d be back in the late nineteenth century ? before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons ? railroad, financial, and oil titans ? ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few. Listen carefully to today?s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don?t help the poor or unemployed or anyone who?s fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy. The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation?s wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America?s wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker?s wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers? wage. This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court. Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts (and, all too often, Kennedy) claim they?re conservative jurists. But they?re judicial activists bent on overturning seventy-five years of jurisprudence by resurrecting states? rights, treating the 2nd Amendment as if America still relied on local militias, narrowing the Commerce Clause, and calling money speech and corporations people. Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action. Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s. In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform. Perhaps this is what?s beginning to happen again across America. Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. http://robertreich.org/ ? 2011 Robert Reich From ths at psalience.org Fri Oct 21 14:07:53 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:07:53 +0200 Subject: [THS] Stephen M. Walt: "Where is the U.S.-Iran Confrontation Headed?" Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111021140730.06d8d608@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29413.htm "Where is the U.S.-Iran Confrontation Headed?" Obama Doubles Down By Stephen M. Walt October 15, 2011 "FP" -- I had planned to write about something else this morning, but the simmering confrontation with Iran keeps intruding. For starters, President Obama is standing firmly behind the administration's allegations, but without offering any new evidence to support them. This approach isn't going to wash, however, especially if journalists do their job, start asking a lot of probing questions, and don't allow themselves to get spun by "anonymous" sources and inside leaks. Add to the mix a New York Times story -- clearly based on briefings from U.S. officials -- that "militants trained and financed by Iran's Quds Force attacked United States forces in Iraq on Wednesday." As Time magazine's Tony Karon notes on his own blog, "Washington certainly seems to be scooping up everything it can find on alleged Iranian malfeasance to throw into the p.r. battle. U.S. and Saudi intelligence officials told the Washington Post that they believe that Iran was behind the May 16 killing of a Saudi diplomat in the Pakistani city of Karachi." Put it all together, and it looks like the Administration is making a concerted campaign to ratchet up the pressure on Tehran. Countries like Britain, Saudi Arabia and France are going along with that program, and no doubt Israel is happy to see this development too. But so far other countries appear to be at best agnostic about the whole business, which is still the only sensible response in light of the paltry public evidence offered to date. And as I said yesterday, if Obama & co. can't produce some smoking gun support for their assertions, the backlash could be formidable. More to the point: what's the endgame here? What is the positive purpose to be gained from this new campaign? If there really is hard and reliable evidence of a serious Iranian plot to bomb buildings in the United States and to kill foreign emissaries on our soil, then that's one thing. But if this turns out to be a much more ambiguous business -- either a rogue Iranian operation, a false flag scheme, or a case of FBI entrapment -- then what are we trying to accomplish by rolling out a seemingly well-orchestrated round of new accusations, especially when there's little chance of getting the sort of "crippling sanctions" that might actually alter Iran's behavior? Are we just trying to divert attention from other issues (the economy, the "Arab Spring," the failed diplomacy on Israel-Palestine, etc.), or is this somehow linked to the 2012 campaign? Last point: as one would expect, Obama is already facing pressure from the right to do more. He's resisted their calls to attack Iran before, and if I had to bet I'd say he'll do so again. But the overall pattern of his presidency has been to accommodate hardline pressure on a variety of fronts, without necessarily adopting their entire agenda. And if you believe half of what Ron Suskind and Bob Woodward have written about Obama, he is a president who is prone to being played by his advisors, especially on national security matters. He escalated in Afghanistan, extended the deadline for withdrawal from Iraq, ramped up the drone war, ratcheted up sanctions on Iran, kept Gitmo up and running, and went spineless on Israel-Palestine after a promising start. There was an obvious domestic payoff to this approach: by tilting so heavily to the rightwing status quo, he's pretty much taken foreign policy off the table in the 2012 campaign. The GOP candidates can carp in various ways, but there's so little daylight between their views and his policies that he's not really vulnerable there. But all that still leaves the more important question: where is this one headed? Like the alleged assassination plot itself, I'm still scratching my head on that one. Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Ren?e Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. From ths at psalience.org Fri Oct 21 14:18:29 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:18:29 +0200 Subject: [THS] Andrew Gavin Marshall: The people of the world are waking up... Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111021141757.06c29758@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29417.htm A Brief Message for Humanity: We Want to be Free! By Andrew Gavin Marshall October 15, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Can you hear it? Taste it? Smell it? See it? Touch it? Can you feel it? The people of the world are waking up, rising up, acting up, fed up, not giving up, but getting up, standing up, climbing up looking up. Around the world, in every place, in every case, in every situation, circumstance, and altercation, the powers of our world, sitting firm in their positions, atop the institutions of our domination, proffering the ideas of our indoctrination, seek to confuse, divide, control, co-opt, crush, define, repress, overrun, undermine, and cause distress to all those people, everywhere, who look forward with new eyes, crying out to the world, and in to themselves, ?We want to be free!? No cry, echoed through all eternity, ever carried such prominence, such eternal relevance and for all past and present circumstance. ?We want to be free!? No single idea, before or hereafter, has such enormous power, such overwhelming possibility, such unsurpassable resonance with the potential for such everlasting permanence. ?We want to be free!? From Tunisia, to Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Palestine to Greece, France, and Spain, Germany, England, Iceland, and Italy across the lands of Asia, and the sea itself, to Canada, America (even the South) Honduras, Chile, and Brazil, from Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, to the birthplace of humanity in that continent across the ocean, that great and wonderful landmass with those great and wonderful people in Africa. Everywhere, people cry out the same. ?We want to be free!? Everywhere, at all times and in all places, there are those among us, not separate, but indeed, very much human, who have lost their way, thrown their heart to the wind, love only themselves and their bank accounts, who seek to dominate, obfuscate, eradicate, the earth they plunder, and push the rest of us under, control, corrupt, and devastate. Their cause is profit and power, their means are deception and dehumanization, and yet their greatest weakness is their own deprivation, their disassociation, endless demoralization and reckless devastation. All they touch and control, has no warmth of heart, no hope of happiness, no joy of love like that which may be found in the smallest country, in the poorest village, with the poorest family, with the saddest story and the hardest life. For even in the greatest of tragedies, humans reach out to one another and find each other in their hearts and minds, hopes and dreams, actions and interactions. Do not hate and despise those who sit above, in their towers of despair, in their prisons of profit, their cells of control, for they live, daily, paying the price for power. By segregating themselves from everyone else, they deprive themselves of all the humanity they can experience, learn, and love. Do not hate them, for they are weak and petty. Pity them for their self-isolation, love them for their human weakness, which we all share alike. Any such position of power can turn the most benevolent of beings into the most treacherous of tyrants. It is not the human which is depraved, but the society built up around us which makes the human depraved. Don?t hate the people, help the people! For they too, know not what freedom tastes, smells, sounds, looks and feels like. Let us show them the way, let all of us, together and forever, cry out, ?We want to be free!? Let them hear us, fear us, hate us, hurt us, push us, press us, crush us, curse us, and let them see us stand back on our feet, look above and beyond their petty positions, and again cry out, ?We want to be free!? Let them see what humanity is capable of creating, instead of destroying. Let them see how humanity can cooperate, not segregate. Let them see, and tremble, and falter and fail, for when they come crashing down to the earth upon which we all stand, from which we all are provided our necessities of life, let us offer them a hand, lift them up, and join the call, ?We want to be free!? This is not the beginning of the end, this is the end of the beginning. This struggle will not be fought and won in the streets of New York, in the sands of the Middle East, in the mountains of Asia or the plains of Africa. This struggle will be fought and won inside every individual human being on this planet, in your heart and mind. But we come together, these new and wonderful days, to see and meet one another, as if for the first time, and to feel what it is to be ?human?, to be standing side by side, crying out, ?No more!? No more war, no more injustice, no more racism and militarism and hatred and dehumanization, no more plundering and destruction, no more segregation and isolation, no more empire and domination, no more institutions and executions, no more division and deprivation. No more. No more. We want to be free! We want to be free! We want to be free. And so, some day, not today, perhaps not tomorrow, perhaps not this year or the next, perhaps not in my lifetime or those of all the rest, but some day free, we will be. You can feel it, today, everywhere. Always. It?s within each of us and between all of us. It?s here, just see it, take it, and make it yours! In our struggle for freedom, to throw off the chains that bind us, we become the idea that unites us. The very act of demanding and seeking freedom, requires all the efforts to release those chains and shackles which hold your mind in thinking that there is no way, no chance, no point. The very call, ?We want to be free!? is an act of freedom. For all the institutions and ideas of power built up around us, individually and collectively, have been put there to prevent us from ever making such a call, from ever standing up against them, from ever speaking from our hearts and acting from our instincts. If you want freedom, be freedom. The only way to get it, is to act like you already have it. And indeed, in truth, you do. So stand, unite, and call out to the world as they call back to you, ?We want to be free!? And some day soon, so it will be. Andrew Gavin Marshall IS a 24 year old independent researcher and writer based out of Montreal, Canada. http://andrewgavinmarshall.com From ths at psalience.org Fri Oct 21 17:53:05 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:53:05 +0200 Subject: [THS] !!!!! GM crops promote superweeds, food insecurity and pesticides Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111021175137.04680240@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/19/gm-crops-insecurity-superweeds-pesticides GM crops promote superweeds, food insecurity and pesticides, say NGOs Report finds genetically modified crops fail to increase yields let alone solve hunger, soil erosion and chemical-use issues John Vidal, environment editor guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 October 2011 11.53 EDT GM crops promote superweeds, food insecurity and pesticides, say NGOs Link to this video Genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has vastly increased the use of chemicals and the growth of "superweeds", according to a report by 20 Indian, south-east Asian, African and Latin American food and conservation groups representing millions of people. The so-called miracle crops, which were first sold in the US about 20 years ago and which are now grown in 29 countries on about 1.5bn hectares (3.7bn acres) of land, have been billed as potential solutions to food crises, climate change and soil erosion, but the assessment finds that they have not lived up to their promises. The report claims that hunger has reached "epic proportions" since the technology was developed. Besides this, only two GM "traits" have been developed on any significant scale, despite investments of tens of billions of dollars, and benefits such as drought resistance and salt tolerance have yet to materialise on any scale. Most worrisome, say the authors of the Global Citizens' Report on the State of GMOs, is the greatly increased use of synthetic chemicals, used to control pests despite biotech companies' justification that GM-engineered crops would reduce insecticide use. In China, where insect-resistant Bt cotton is widely planted, populations of pests that previously posed only minor problems have increased 12-fold since 1997. A 2008 study in the International Journal of Biotechnology found that any benefits of planting Bt cotton have been eroded by the increasing use of pesticides needed to combat them. Additionally, soya growers in Argentina and Brazil have been found to use twice as much herbicide on their GM as they do on conventional crops, and a survey by Navdanya International, in India, showed that pesticide use increased 13-fold since Bt cotton was introduced. The report, which draws on empirical research and companies' own statements, also says weeds are now developing resistance to the GM firms' herbicides and pesticides that are designed to be used with their crops, and that this has led to growing infestations of "superweeds", especially in the US. Ten common weeds have now developed resistance in at least 22 US states, with about 6m hectares (15m acres) of soya, cotton and corn now affected. Consequently, farmers are being forced to use more herbicides to combat the resistant weeds, says the report. GM companies are paying farmers to use other, stronger, chemicals, they say. "The genetic engineering miracle is quite clearly faltering in farmers' fields," add the authors. The companies have succeeded in marketing their crops to more than 15 million farmers, largely by heavy lobbying of governments, buying up local seed companies, and withdrawing conventional seeds from the market, the report claims. Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta, the world's three largest GM companies, now control nearly 70% of global seed sales. This allows them to "own" and sell GM seeds through patents and intellectual property rights and to charge farmers extra, claims the report. The study accuses Monsanto of gaining control of over 95% of the Indian cotton seed market and of massively pushing up prices. High levels of indebtedness among farmers is thought to be behind many of the 250,000 deaths by suicide of Indian farmers over the past 15 years. The report, which is backed by Friends of the Earth International, theCenter for Food Safety in the US, Conf?d?ration Paysanne, and theGaia foundation among others, also questions the safety of GM crops, citing studies and reports which indicate that people and animals have experienced apparent allergic reactions. But it suggests scientists are loath to question the safety aspects for fear of being attacked by establishment bodies, which often receive large grants from the companies who control the technology. Monsanto disputes the report's findings: "In our view the safety and benefits of GM are well established. Hundreds of millions of meals containing food from GM crops have been consumed and there has not been a single substantiated instance of illness or harm associated with GM crops." It added: "Last year the National Research Council, of the US National Academy of Sciences, issued a report, The Impact of Genetically Engineered Crops on Farm Sustainability in the United States, which concludes that US farmers growing biotech crops 'are realising substantial economic and environmental benefits ? such as lower production costs, fewer pest problems, reduced use of pesticides, and better yields ? compared with conventional crops'." David King, the former UK chief scientist who is now director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University, has blamed food shortages in Africa partly on anti-GM campaigns in rich countries. But, the report's authors claim, GM crops are adding to food insecurity because most are now being grown for biofuels, which take away land from local food production. Vandana Shiva, director of the Indian organisation Navdanya International, which co-ordinated the report, said: "The GM model of farming undermines farmers trying to farm ecologically. Co-existence between GM and conventional crops is not possible because genetic pollution and contamination of conventional crops is impossible to control. "Choice is being undermined as food systems are increasingly controlled by giant corporations and as chemical and genetic pollution spread. GM companies have put a noose round the neck of farmers. They are destroying alternatives in the pursuit of profit." From ths at psalience.org Fri Oct 21 23:31:34 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 23:31:34 +0200 Subject: [THS] Leaked Memo: The Corporate Board Rooms Fear the Occupy Movement Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111021232954.063e4c88@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.nationofchange.org/leaked-memo-corporate-board-rooms-fear-occupy-movement-occupying-their-board-rooms-targeting-individ Leaked Memo: The Corporate Board Rooms Fear the Occupy Movement Occupying Their Board Rooms Targeting Individual Executives October2011.org / Special Report Published: Wednesday 19 October 2011 As the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters are hitting the streets worldwide, another movement is quietly unfolding online: OccupyTheBoardroom.org (OTB) Below is a memorandum leaked to the Freedom Plaza occupation of Washington, DC that comes from a corporate consultant and shows the fear they are developing of the Occupy Movement. The memorandum from Fay Feeney, a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, describes how corporations should prepare to combat the Occupation Movement. Corporations fear their leaders being held personally accountable for the actions of concentrated corporate interests. They especially fear their names and addresses being known and their board rooms being invaded by OccupyTheBoardroom.org. Feeney suggests: "board members and corporate counsels prepare themselves for a bumpy ride by future-proofing their companies." Among the steps taken to protect themselves is to use social networks to gather intelligence so "board chairs and CEOs should always remain one step ahead in protecting their boardroom." These executives should be afraid. There is a legitimate anger at the unfairness of the economy. Where the 400 wealthiest Americans have wealth equal to 154 million Americans, while paying an average of 17.4% in federal taxes. Many working Americans pay double that rate. The unfairness in the economy and economic insecurity of Americans is energizing this movement and people will want those who collapsed the economy for their personal and corporate profits to be held accountable. Kevin Zeese I?ve been watching the Occupy Wall Street for implications on the boardroom. This weekend a site was launched called Occupy the Boardroom. I?m sending you a recent article from Corporate Secretary Magazine that contains guidance on this issue. I?ll be keeping an eye on this movement at www.riskforgood.com/blog. Occupy Wall Street Moves to The Boardroom Here?s what corporate counsels, board chairs and CEOs should know. As the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters are hitting the streets worldwide, another movement is quietly unfolding online: OccupyTheBoardroom.org (OTB). The new coalition surfaced on Saturday with the intention of delivering the messages of those who were hurt by the recession to the CEOs of top financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. There are currently over 200 CEOs listed on the website, including Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup, and Mukesh Ambani, a Bank of America board member. ?The 1 percent have addresses. The 99 percent have messages,? the website says. The idea is the ?1 percent? reflects board members while the 99 percent are those willing to have their voices heard. Users can access a list of CEOs and share their stories regarding bankruptcy, job losses and unfair treatment. According to OTB (which claims it has the contact information for all members listed), prizes will be awarded to ?the best, funniest and most revelatory interactions.? Moreover, the website promises to ?hand-deliver? the stories to the executive selected by a user. All messages, videos and images will be publicly viewable. The coterie has already received close to 2,300 tweets and 5,000 ?likes? on Facebook. ?The anger, frustration and collective voice is too large to ignore,? says Fay Feeney, a corporate board consultant who provides board chairs with advice on ways to improve boardroom performance. ?This [OTB website] is personal and targeted to what you earn (along with power and influence) [and] banks are among the first businesses to be called out, occupied and disrupted.? As the OWS protests continues to morph into a massive movement, Feeney suggests that board members and corporate counsels prepare themselves for a bumpy ride by future-proofing their companies: i. Get your crisis communication plan ready ? protect your reputation and brand ii. Get OWS on your risk map and board agenda. Evaluate the business opportunity and assess the impact on your business strategy, competitors, clients, employees and on your CEO and directors. iii. Take action now! It is not too early to begin counteracting the impact this movement could have on your business. iv. Listen: By using social media, you can begin to gather business intelligence specific to your business. Protests can spin out of control, and with real time data processing from Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites, getting a message across is now faster than ever. Governance professionals, board chairs and CEOs should always remain one step ahead in protecting their boardroom, Feeney says. *********** Article by Aarti Maharaj Published at http://www.corporatesecretary.com. Please call me at 310-372-0591 or email me at fay at riskforgood.com to accelerate your boardroom to take action on this issue. All the best, From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 22 12:43:31 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 12:43:31 +0200 Subject: [THS] Matt Taibbi: Occupy Wall Street: Washington Still Doesn't Get It Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111022124013.065fa310@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/occupy-wall-street-washington-still-doesnt-get-it-20111021 Occupy Wall Street: Washington Still Doesn't Get It ROLLING STONE - Matt Taibbi POSTED: October 21, 8:25 AM ET Occupy Wall Street participants carry on their occupation of Zuccotti Park EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images I'll have more coming out about this in a few days, but there have been two disgusting developments in the realm of plutocratic intervention on behalf of Wall Street that everyone protesting should take note of. The fact that both of the following things took place in the middle of the full fever of OWS, when everyone is supposedly trying to placate anti-banker sentiment and Obama and the DCCC are supposedly pledging support of the protesters, shows how completely bankrupt this system is and how necessary street-level protests have become. Popular uprising is probably the only move left to stop developments like the following: 1) Bank of America is shifting a huge collection of Merrill Lynch derivatives contracts onto its own federally-insured balance sheet. This move of risky instruments off the uninsured Merrill balance sheet onto the commercial bank's balance sheet was done to prevent Bank of America's creditors from attacking the firm with collateral calls and other sorties. Essentially, an irresponsible debtor, B of A, is keeping a loan shark from breaking his legs by getting his rich parents to co-sign his loan. The parents in this metaphor would be the FDIC. The FDIC naturally is not pleased with this development, but the Fed, the supreme banking regulator, is apparently encouraging this move. Here's how Bloomberg characterized this move: In short, the Fed's priorities seem to lie with protecting the bank-holding company from losses at Merrill, even if that means greater risks for the FDIC's insurance fund. Again and again, the Fed proves it has no appetite for allowing Wall Street to eat its own pain, and continually encourages banks to stick the government with its losses and bad assets. This move will allow Bank of America to keep a Band-Aid over its disastrous financial situation far longer than it would be able to in a genuinely free market. People should be outraged at this development. 2) Barack Obama is apparently expressing willingness to junk big chunks of Sarbanes-Oxley in exchange for support for his jobs program. Business leaders are balking at creating new jobs unless Obama makes compliance with S-O voluntary for all firms valued at under $1 billion. Here's how to translate this move: companies are saying they can't attract investment unless they can hide their financials from investors. So the CEOs and gazillionaires on Obama's Jobs Council want the politically-vulnerable president to give them license to cook the books in exchange for support for his jobs program. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "All you're going to do is have more fraud. The ultimate losers are going to be investors," said Jeff Klink, a former federal prosecutor whose Gateway Center firm helps clients prevent and detect fraud. If the financial crisis proved anything, it's that Wall Street companies in particular have been serial offenders in the area of dishonest accounting and book-cooking. Sarbanes-Oxley is obviously no panacea, but removing it in exchange for a temporary, election-year job boost is exactly the kind of myopic, absurdly irresponsible shit that got us into this mess in the first place. For Obama to pull this in the middle of these protests is crazy. If anyone thought OWS has already done its job, and Washington has gotten the message already, think again. They're not going to change until the protesters force them to change, it seems. From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 22 12:47:59 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 12:47:59 +0200 Subject: [THS] Interview With Jailed Climate Activist Tim DeChristopher Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111022124720.045a1e10@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/exclusive-interview-with-jailed-climate-activist-tim-dechristopher-20111019 Exclusive: Interview With Jailed Climate Activist Tim DeChristopher POSTED: October 19, 3:30 PM ET | By Jeff Goodell Tim DeChristopher, left and defense attorney Ron Yengich leave the Frank E. Moss Federal Courthouse in Salt Lake City on the opening day of his trial. AP Photo/Jim Urquhart Lots of people talk about how committed they are to taking action to solve the climate crisis ? but few people have as much skin in the game as Tim DeChristopher. Last July 26, DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in federal prison for disrupting a federal auction for oil and gas leases back in 2008. He spent a few days in the county jail before being moved to a private prison in Nevada. Now he?s doing time at Herlong Federal Correctional Institute, a medium-security prison in Northern California. If all goes well, he will be released on April 21, 2013. DeChristopher has limited access to the phone, but I was able to reach him the other night and talk with him about his life behind bars, as well as what the emergence of the Occupy protests mean for the climate and environmental movement. How are you holding up? I feel like I?m doing pretty well. I get a lot of time to just read and reflect and write letters, and I feel like I?m recharging myself, and refocusing. I just finished reading Nelson Mandela?s autobiography A Long Walk to Freedom. What?s your living situation like? It?s a big open room. It?s like a cubicle instead of a cell, with seven-foot walls around it. We have a desk, a chair, a couple of lockers. I have a job working in food service for breakfast and lunch ? that takes up about two hours of my time each day. I?m finished with that shortly after breakfast, which is at 6 a.m. Then I usually walk a couple of miles as the sun is coming up. Then I read for a while. Lunch is at 10:30. In the afternoon, I work out. Then more reading and writing. Then I take a walk again around sunset. That's about it. Are you able to keep up with the news from the outside world? Yeah, they keep the TV news on here pretty often. And I?m able to get magazine subscriptions, and other folks here get the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, so I am able to read those. What's your take on the Occupy Wall Street protests? It?s been very exciting to watch. It?s one of the most promising developments we?ve had in a long time in this country. Most of the things that activists have done for as long as I?ve been involved have been very contained, very controlled. This is the first time in a long time that we?ve had protests that no one person or one group is really controlling or pulling the strings on ? and that?s part of why the Establishment is so scared of it. Environmental and climate activists have tried to organize major protests that command people?s attention but have largely failed. Why has Occupy Wall Street succeeded? I haven?t seen the environmental movement try this kind of thing. I?ve never seen an environmental group launch something that didn?t have an end-date or that they couldn?t completely control. Nobody knows if anyone in the environmental moment could have done anything like this, because most of the leaders in the movement were too afraid to try. That?s really a lot of what has defined the strategy of the environmental movement for the past decade or so ? it?s the fear of making a mistake. So what are lessons in this for the climate movement? I think what?s important is that these protests are not one-day actions. From the perspective of those in power, when there is a one-day action, no matter how big it is, no matter how many towns it?s in all across the country, those politicians or executives know that all they have to do is keep their head down for that one day and it will pass by, the news cycle will move on, and everyone will forget about it. But this is something that?s not going away, and that?s also what?s inspiring people to join in. It?s hard not to contrast the Occupy protests with the demonstrations in Washington D.C. against the Keystone pipeline last summer. The Keystone action was very buttoned-down, very respectable. That?s not at all what is happening here ? there?s lots of anger on display. That?s true ? and it?s true about the Left in general. And I think it?s why the Tea Party had so much success ? they were the only ones expressing outrage about where the country is heading. They didn?t have any intellectual argument to back it up, but they were the only ones who were expressing the way that people were actually feeling ? which was pretty angry. So a lot of people followed them, not with their heads, but with their hearts. And I think that?s something that is often missing on the Left. So in your view, what does the climate movement need to do right now? I don?t know ? campaign for Jon Huntsman? [laughs]. I actually think he would be far better on climate issues than Obama. (I don?t think I had hopes of radical change from Obama, but even so, he has been phenomenally disappointing, especially on climate change.) But a big part of what the climate movement needs to do is get behind the Occupy protests. Everybody in the activist world is looking for that soft-spot. Everyone is charging the wall, and most people get repelled. Most actions don?t really go anywhere because they run up against that hard wall. The Occupy protests have hit a soft spot. They have found that little crack. And now they are pushing, and they are making that crack grow. The rest of us need to keep pushing and break that hole in the wall. One of the things that?s been made clear in the last few years is that we?re not going to deal appropriately with the climate crisis under the system of corporate rule that we have right now. We can?t deal with the climate crisis without overthrowing that corporate rule ? and hopefully the Occupy protests can hold out until we do that and establish a democratic government in this country. Because that?s what it?s going to take, not just to deal with the climate crisis and reduce emissions, but also to try to prepare for the inevitable changes that we?re already on track for. I think we have to return power to the citizens if we?re going to have any hope of holding on to our humanity through the rough period that is inevitably ahead. From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 22 13:47:51 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 13:47:51 +0200 Subject: [THS] Message from MAPS in reply to Paul Craig Roberts - The Day America Died In-Reply-To: References: <23953033.20217.1317774070712.JavaMail.root@m07> <6.2.3.4.2.20111005142107.06b34810@spamarrest.com> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111022130157.044fcd48@mail.messagingengine.com> At 02:43 21/10/2011, AskMAPS did write: >Peter, >Thank you for contacting MAPS. The article that you have shared with us is deeply >saddening and can easily leave one feeling hopeless... [continued below] Hello Mason at AskMAPS, Nice sentiment, but probably without much global effect. You may have noticed I unsubscribed from MAPS Forum as a result of the Paul Craig Roberts article (below) being rejected by the moderator as irrelevant to psychedelic research. Maybe so, in a narrow sense, but unless every possible individual and institution starts actively combatting what the USA has become both at home and on the world stage, and certainly not collaborating with it in any way, Paul Craig Roberts' worst fears will be completely relevant, since not only psychedelic research, but much else will become irrelevant. It'll be brute survival and little else. It is no longer sufficient for MAPS members just to continue on as before, hoping for the best, resting on their admittedly significant laurels (but significant only to a time that is quickly drawing to a close) and hoping that somehow, just somehow, morality and justice, and clear thinking might somehow miraculously emerge from the halls of the U.S. Federal Government, if not in general then at least in some of its agencies and that tend to grow and influence other branches. It ain't gonna' happen. That's what Paul Craig Roberts writes below, with great force. My purpose is NOT to "leave you feeling hopeless". As Alan Watts wrote in the 1950s, "The more alarming and destructive aspects of Western civilization should not blind us to the fact that at this very time it is also in one of its most creative periods." However, that "creative period" is today in greater danger than ever, and it will require not only a re-evaluation and re-orientation of our methods and plans both individual and collective, but certainly a level of radical activism not seen since the 1960s, and much more, on the part of us ALL, if we are to even hope that the current destructive trends - and the U.S. federal government is, more than any other institution, the main perpetrator of those trends - can be reversed before it is too late. Exactly what should you do? I don't know. And even if I did you wouldn't want me to tell you. But previously I suggested that MAPS should be taking a far more radical and activist approach. Just as a for instance, if labor unions, professors, and others can lend their support to the Occupy Wall Street movement, why not MAPS? OWS is the only light I can see at the moment, and it is fragile. Professors support Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Movements Everywhere [PETITION] http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Professors-supporting-Occupy/ Rick has said he protests, but not through MAPS. Why not? It is time for the U.S. government to realise that its support is rapidly crumbling EVERYWHERE, and indeed they fear that, as has been shown : http://www.nationofchange.org/leaked-memo-corporate-board-rooms-fear-occupy-movement-occupying-their-board-rooms-targeting-individ Leaked Memo: The Corporate Board Rooms Fear the Occupy Movement Occupying Their Board Rooms Targeting Individual Executives October2011.org / Special Report Published: Wednesday 19 October 2011 AT LEAST you should subscribe to, and read daily, the headlines and a few articles at ICH, or at my own newsletter THS, you will NEVER get such a wide view of world events at any other single source. Without exposure to such a view you will not have the least inkling what is going on, its gravity, and how the U.S. federal government is its #1 perpetrator. ICH http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/ sign up: http://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?llr=iqnuv6bab&p=oi&m=1101581137416 [THS] TheHarderStuff : An activism-oriented daily newsletter of political, ecological, and drug policy news collected and retransmitted from internet and other sources. TheHarderStuff - individual messages or digest option List-Subscribe: , Read the list archives at: http://lists.psalience.org/pipermail/ths/ At 02:43 21/10/2011, AskMAPS did write: >Peter, > >Thank you for contacting MAPS. The article that you have shared with us is deeply saddening and can easily leave one feeling hopeless. I get that feeling, as I am sure you do at this moment in US and global history. This feeling is informative, as it speaks to the intense desire within us to see what is right emerge in the world. That desire and ambition is alive and well here, and we feel that it is not a blinded ambition but one stepped in concrete successes. We have met many benchmarks that, I am sure at one point, were considered to be mere delusional aims by many, and we hope to meet more in the future. > >Sincerely, >Mason Schreck >MAPS >askmaps at maps.org > >On Oct 5, 2011, at 5:31 AM, Peter Webster wrote: > >>At 02:19 05/10/2011, Brad Burge, MAPS did write: >> >>>Breaking News: Federal Committee Blocks >>>Study of Marijuana for Vets with PTSD >>>October 4, 2011 >> >>I hope no one is surprised by intransigence and stupidity on the part of the U.S. Federal Government, and I also hope that no one expects one or another branch of that government to act in good faith and with an even minimal morality, when the primary branches of that government are doing such deeds as... >> >>please read the following by one who was a long-time conservative and member of that government ( see his bona fides following the article): >> >>http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29285.htm >> >>[quotations from the article following] >> >>"Now the US government not only can seize a US citizen and confine him in prison for the rest of his life without ever presenting evidence and obtaining a conviction, but also can have him shot down in the street or blown up by a drone." >> >>"Readers ask me what they can do. Americans not only feel powerless, they are powerless... Voting has no effect... To expect salvation from an election is delusional. All you can do, if you are young enough, is to leave the country. The only future for Americans is a nightmare." >> >> >>[For the moment it seems that only Muslims are targeted, but watch out - the ratchet of FASCISM goes in but one direction. Who will be in the next category of perceived threats? See below. -ths newsletter] >> >> >> >>The Day America Died >> >>By Paul Craig Roberts >> >>October 03, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- September 30, 2011 was the day America was assassinated. >> >>Some of us have watched this day approach and have warned of its coming, only to be greeted with boos and hisses from ?patriots? who have come to regard the US Constitution as a device that coddles criminals and terrorists and gets in the way of the President who needs to act to keep us safe. >> >>In our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Lawrence Stratton and I showed that long before 9/11 US law had ceased to be a shield of the people and had been turned into a weapon in the hands of the government. The event known as 9/11 was used to raise the executive branch above the law. As long as the President sanctions an illegal act, executive branch employees are no longer accountable to the law that prohibits the illegal act. On the president?s authority, the executive branch can violate US laws against spying on Americans without warrants, indefinite detention, and torture and suffer no consequences. >> >>Many expected President Obama to re-establish the accountability of government to law. Instead, he went further than Bush/Cheney and asserted the unconstitutional power not only to hold American citizens indefinitely in prison without bringing charges, but also to take their lives without convicting them in a court of law. Obama asserts that the US Constitution notwithstanding, he has the authority to assassinate US citizens, who he deems to be a ?threat,? without due process of law. >> >>In other words, any American citizen who is moved into the threat category has no rights and can be executed without trial or evidence. >> >>On September 30 Obama used this asserted new power of the president and had two American citizens, Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan murdered. Khan was a wacky character associated with Inspire Magazine and does not readily come to mind as a serious threat. >> >>Awlaki was a moderate American Muslim cleric who served as an advisor to the US government after 9/11 on ways to counter Muslim extremism. Awlaki was gradually radicalized by Washington?s use of lies to justify military attacks on Muslim countries. He became a critic of the US government and told Muslims that they did not have to passively accept American aggression and had the right to resist and to fight back. As a result Awlaki was demonized and became a threat. >> >>All we know that Awlaki did was to give sermons critical of Washington?s indiscriminate assaults on Muslim peoples. Washington?s argument is that his sermons might have had an influence on some who are accused of attempting terrorist acts, thus making Awlaki responsible for the attempts. >> >>Obama?s assertion that Awlaki was some kind of high-level Al Qaeda operative is merely an assertion. Jason Ditz concluded that the reason Awlaki was murdered rather than brought to trial is that the US government had no real evidence that Awlaki was an Al Qaeda operative. >> >>Having murdered its critic, the Obama Regime is working hard to posthumously promote Awlaki to a leadership position in Al Qaeda. The presstitutes and the worshippers of America?s First Black President have fallen in line and regurgitated the assertions that Awlaki was a high-level dangerous Al Qaeda terrorist. If Al Qaeda sees value in Awlaki as a martyr, the organization will give credence to these claims. However, so far no one has provided any evidence. Keep in mind that all we know about Awlaki is what Washington claims and that the US has been at war for a decade based on false claims. >> >>But what Awlaki did or might have done is beside the point. The US Constitution requires that even the worst murderer cannot be punished until he is convicted in a court of law. When the American Civil Liberties Union challenged in federal court Obama?s assertion that he had the power to order assassinations of American citizens, the Obama Justice (sic) Department argued that Obama?s decision to have Americans murdered was an executive power beyond the reach of the judiciary. >> >>In a decision that sealed America?s fate, federal district court judge John Bates ignored the Constitution?s requirement that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law and dismissed the case, saying that it was up to Congress to decide. Obama acted before an appeal could be heard, thus using Judge Bates? acquiescence to establish the power and advance the transformation of the president into a Caesar that began under George W. Bush. >> >>Attorneys Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Turley point out that Awlaki?s assassination terminated the Constitution?s restraint on the power of government. Now the US government not only can seize a US citizen and confine him in prison for the rest of his life without ever presenting evidence and obtaining a conviction, but also can have him shot down in the street or blown up by a drone. >> >>Before some readers write to declare that Awlaki?s murder is no big deal because the US government has always had people murdered, keep in mind that CIA assassinations were of foreign opponents and were not publicly proclaimed events, much less a claim by the president to be above the law. Indeed, such assassinations were denied, not claimed as legitimate actions of the President of the United States. >> >>The Ohio National Guardsmen who shot Kent State students as they protested the US invasion of Cambodia in 1970 made no claim to be carrying out an executive branch decision. Eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The guardsmen entered a self-defense plea. Most Americans were angry at war protestors and blamed the students. The judiciary got the message, and the criminal case was eventually dismissed. The civil case (wrongful death and injury) was settled for $675,000 and a statement of regret by the defendants. >> >>The point isn?t that the government killed people. The point is that never prior to President Obama has a President asserted the power to murder citizens. >> >>Over the last 20 years, the United States has had its own Mein Kampf transformation. >> >>Terry Eastland?s book, Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency, presented ideas associated with the Federalist Society, an organization of Republican lawyers that works to reduce legislative and judicial restraints on executive power. Under the cover of wartime emergencies (the war on terror), the Bush/Cheney regime employed these arguments to free the president from accountability to law and to liberate Americans from their civil liberties. War and national security provided the opening for the asserted new powers, and a mixture of fear and desire for revenge for 9/11 led Congress, the judiciary, and the people to go along with the dangerous precedents. >> >>As civilian and military leaders have been telling us for years, the war on terror is a 30-year project. After such time has passed, the presidency will have completed its transformation into Caesarism, and there will be no going back. >> >>Indeed, as the neoconservative ?Project For A New American Century? makes clear, the war on terror is only an opening for the neoconservative imperial ambition to establish US hegemony over the world. >> >>As wars of aggression or imperial ambition are war crimes under international law, such wars require doctrines that elevate the leader above the law and the Geneva Conventions, as Bush was elevated by his Justice (sic) Department with minimal judicial and legislative interference. >> >>Illegal and unconstitutional actions also require a silencing of critics and punishment of those who reveal government crimes. Thus Bradley Manning has been held for a year, mainly in solitary confinement under abusive conditions, without any charges being presented against him. A federal grand jury is at work concocting spy charges against Wikileaks? founder Julian Assange. Another federal grand jury is at work concocting terrorists charges against antiwar activists. >> >>?Terrorist? and ?giving aid to terrorists? are increasingly elastic concepts. Homeland Security has declared that the vast federal police bureaucracy has shifted its focus from terrorists to ?domestic extremists.? >> >>It is possible that Awlaki was assassinated because he was an effective critic of the US government. Police states do not originate fully fledged. Initially, they justify their illegal acts by demonizing their targets and in this way create the precedents for unaccountable power. Once the government equates critics with giving ?aid and comfort? to terrorists, as they are doing with antiwar activists and Assange, or with terrorism itself, as Obama did with Awlaki, it will only be a short step to bringing accusations against Glenn Greenwald and the ACLU. >> >>The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, is a regime that does not want to be constrained by law. And neither will its successor. Those fighting to uphold the rule of law, humanity?s greatest achievement, will find themselves lumped together with the regime?s opponents and be treated as such. >> >>This great danger that hovers over America is unrecognized by the majority of the people. When Obama announced before a military gathering his success in assassinating an American citizen, cheers erupted. The Obama regime and the media played the event as a repeat of the (claimed) killing of Osama bin Laden. Two ?enemies of the people? have been triumphantly dispatched. That the President of the United States was proudly proclaiming to a cheering audience sworn to defend the Constitution that he was a murderer and that he had also assassinated the US Constitution is extraordinary evidence that Americans are incapable of recognizing the threat to their liberty. >> >>Emotionally, the people have accepted the new powers of the president. If the president can have American citizens assassinated, there is no big deal about torturing them. Amnesty International has sent out an alert that the US Senate is poised to pass legislation that would keep Guantanamo Prison open indefinitely and that Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) might introduce a provision that would legalize ?enhanced interrogation techniques,? an euphemism for torture. >> >>Instead of seeing the danger, most Americans will merely conclude that the government is getting tough on terrorists, and it will meet with their approval. Smiling with satisfaction over the demise of their enemies, Americans are being led down the garden path to rule by government unrestrained by law and armed with the weapons of the medieval dungeon. >> >>Americans have overwhelming evidence from news reports and YouTube videos of US police brutally abusing women, children, and the elderly, of brutal treatment and murder of prisoners not only in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prisons abroad, but also in state and federal prisons in the US. Power over the defenseless attracts people of a brutal and evil disposition. >> >>A brutal disposition now infects the US military. The leaked video of US soldiers delighting, as their words and actions reveal, in their murder from the air of civilians and news service camera men walking innocently along a city street shows soldiers and officers devoid of humanity and military discipline. Excited by the thrill of murder, our troops repeated their crime when a father with two small children stopped to give aid to the wounded and were machine-gunned. >> >>So many instances: the rape of a young girl and murder of her entire family; innocent civilians murdered and AK-47s placed by their side as ?evidence? of insurgency; the enjoyment experienced not only by high school dropouts from torturing they-knew-not- who in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but also by educated CIA operatives and Ph.D. psychologists. And no one held accountable for these crimes except two lowly soldiers prominently featured in some of the torture photographs. >> >>What do Americans think will be their fate now that the ?war on terror? has destroyed the protection once afforded them by the US Constitution? If Awlaki really needed to be assassinated, why did not President Obama protect American citizens from the precedent that their deaths can be ordered without due process of law by first stripping Awlaki of his US citizenship? If the government can strip Awlaki of his life, it certainly can strip him of citizenship. The implication is hard to avoid that the executive branch desires the power to terminate citizens without due process of law. >> >>Governments escape the accountability of law in stages. Washington understands that its justifications for its wars are contrived and indefensible. President Obama even went so far as to declare that the military assault that he authorized on Libya without consulting Congress was not a war, and, therefore, he could ignore the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a federal law intended to check the power of the President to commit the US to an armed conflict without the consent of Congress. >> >>Americans are beginning to unwrap themselves from the flag. Some are beginning to grasp that initially they were led into Afghanistan for revenge for 9/11. From there they were led into Iraq for reasons that turned out to be false. They see more and more US military interventions: Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and now calls for invasion of Pakistan and continued saber rattling for attacks on Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. The financial cost of a decade of the ?war against terror? is starting to come home. Exploding annual federal budget deficits and national debt threaten Medicare and Social Security. Debt ceiling limits threaten government shut-downs. >> >>War critics are beginning to have an audience. The government cannot begin its silencing of critics by bringing charges against US Representatives Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. It begins with antiwar protestors, who are elevated into ?antiwar activists,? perhaps a step below ?domestic extremists.? Washington begins with citizens who are demonized Muslim clerics radicalized by Washington?s wars on Muslims. In this way, Washington establishes the precedent that war protestors give encouragement and, thus, aid, to terrorists. It establishes the precedent that those Americans deemed a threat are not protected by law. This is the slippery slope on which we now find ourselves. >> >>Last year the Obama Regime tested the prospects of its strategy when Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, announced that the government had a list of American citizens that it was going to assassinate abroad. This announcement, had it been made in earlier times by, for example, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, would have produced a national uproar and calls for impeachment. However, Blair?s announcement caused hardly a ripple. All that remained for the regime to do was to establish the policy by exercising it. >> >>Readers ask me what they can do. Americans not only feel powerless, they are powerless. They cannot do anything. The highly concentrated, corporate-owned, government-subservient print and TV media are useless and no longer capable of performing the historic role of protecting our rights and holding government accountable. Even many antiwar Internet sites shield the government from 9/11 skepticism, and most defend the government?s ?righteous intent? in its war on terror. Acceptable criticism has to be couched in words such as ?it doesn?t serve our interests.? >> >>Voting has no effect. President ?Change? is worse than Bush/Cheney. As Jonathan Turley suggests, Obama is ?the most disastrous president in our history.? Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who stands up for the Constitution, but the majority of Americans are too unconcerned with the Constitution to appreciate him. >> >>To expect salvation from an election is delusional. All you can do, if you are young enough, is to leave the country. The only future for Americans is a nightmare. >> >>Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was appointed by President Reagan Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and confirmed by the US Senate. He was Associate Editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, and he served on the personal staffs of Representative Jack Kemp and Senator Orrin Hatch. He was staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, staff associate of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, and Chief Economist, Republican Staff, House Budget Committee. He wrote the Kemp-Roth tax rate reduction bill, and was a leader in the supply-side revolution. He was professor of economics in six universities, and is the author of numerous books and scholarly contributions. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions. >> From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 22 13:52:40 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 13:52:40 +0200 Subject: [THS] Gaddafi's Last Words As Rebels Dragged Him Through Street Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111022135028.06627708@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/ Gaddafi's Last Words As Rebels Dragged Him Through Street Video Gaddafi is alive and talking in the video footage. Continue ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Clinton on Qaddafi: "We Came, We Saw, He Died" Video Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared a laugh with a television news reporter moments after hearing deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had been killed. Continue ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gaddafi Death: Envoy Slams 'Sadistic' Triumphalism By RT ?The faces of the leaders of ?world democracies? are so happy, as if they remembered how they hanged stray cats in basements in their childhoods,? Continue ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ How The West won Libya They are fighting over the carcass as vultures. By Pepe Escobar We also know that change the world can believe in will be the day NATO enforces a no-fly one over Saudi Arabia to protect the Shi'ites in the eastern province. Continue ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gaddafi A Revolutionary Spirit By Professor Idris Samawi Hamid He died while valiantly fighting in defence of Libya against the combined forces of NATO and Wahhabi reactionarism Continue ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lion of Africa Killed in Combat By Gerald A. Perreira The battle is not over ? this struggle continues and with greater impetus following the martyrdom of our leader. The Muammar Qaddafi that I knew would not want us to mourn him but rather to organize and carry forward his mission. And make no mistake, as your empire crumbles, our day will come in his name. Continue From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 22 13:55:19 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 13:55:19 +0200 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?John_Pilger=3A_The_Son_of_Africa_Claims_a_Co?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ntinent=92s_Crown_Jewels?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111022135318.066aaae8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29461.htm The Son of Africa Claims a Continent?s Crown Jewels By John Pilger October 19, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only ?engage? for ?self-defence?, says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way. Obama?s decision is described in the press as ?highly unusual? and ?surprising?, even ?weird?. It is none of these things. It is the logic of American foreign policy since 1945. Take Vietnam. The priority was to halt the influence of China, an imperial rival, and ?protect? Indonesia, which President Nixon called ?the region?s richest hoard of natural resources the greatest prize?. Vietnam merely got in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its goal. Like all America?s subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually ?self defence? or ?humanitarian?, words long emptied of their dictionary meaning. In Africa, says Obama, the ?humanitarian mission? is to assist the government of Uganda defeat the Lord?s resistance Army (LRA), which ?has murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa?. This is an accurate description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the United States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the CIA-arranged murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first legally elected prime minister, and the CIA coup that installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as Africa?s most venal tyrant. Obama?s other justification also invites satire. This is the ?national security of the United States?. The LRA has been doing its nasty work for 24 years, of minimal interest to the United States. Today, it has few than 400 fighters and has never been weaker. However, US ?national security? usually means buying a corrupt and thuggish regime that has something Washington wants. Uganda?s ?president-for-life? Yoweri Museveni already receives the larger part of $45 million in US military ?aid? ? including Obama?s favourite drones. This is his bribe to fight a proxy war against America?s latest phantom Islamic enemy, the rag-tag al Shabaab group based in Somalia. The RTA will play a public relations role, distracting western journalists with its perennial horror stories. However, the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. In the world of self-serving, institutionalised paranoia that justifies what General David Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official American ?threat?. When I interviewed Bryan Whitman, an assistant secretary of defence at the Pentagon last year, I asked him to describe the current danger to America. Struggling visibly, he repeated, ?Asymmetric threats asymmetric threats?. These justify the money-laundering state-sponsored arms conglomerates and the biggest military and war budget in history. With Osama bin Laden airbrushed, China takes the mantle. Africa is China?s success story. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilisation, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams. What they want is resources, especially fossil fuels. With Africa?s greatest oil reserves, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi was one of China?s most important sources of fuel. When the civil war broke out and Nato backed the ?rebels? with a fabricated story about Gaddafi planning ?genocide? in Benghazi, China evacuated its 30,000 workers in Libya. The subsequent UN security council resolution that allowed the west?s ?humanitarian intervention? was explained succinctly in a proposal to the French government by the ?rebel? National Transitional Council, disclosed last month in the newspaper Liberation, in which France was offered 35 per cent of Libya?s gross national oil production ?in exchange? (the term used) for ?total and permanent? French support for the NTC. Running up the Stars and Stripes in ?liberated? Tripoli last month, US ambassador Gene Cretz blurted out: ?We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources!? The de facto conquest of Libya by the US and its imperial partners heralds a modern version of the ?scramble for Africa? at the end of the 19th century. Like the ?victory? in Iraq, journalists have played a critical role in dividing Libyans into worthy and unworthy victims. A recent Guardian front page carried a photograph of a terrified ?pro-Gaddafi? fighter and his wild-eyed captors who, says the caption, ?celebrate?. According to General Petraeus, there is now a war ?of perception conducted continuously through the news media?. For more than a decade the US has tried to establish a command on the continent of Africa, AFRICOM, but has been rebuffed by governments, fearful of the regional tensions this would cause. Libya, and now Uganda, South Sudan and Congo, provide the main chance. As WikiLeaks cables and the US National Strategy for Counter-terrorism reveal, American plans for Africa are part of a global design in which 60,000 special forces, including death squads, already operate in 75 countries, soon to be 120. As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s ?defence strategy? plan, America simply wishes to rule the world. That this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the ?Son of Africa?, is supremely ironic. Or is it? As Frantz Fanon explained in Black Skin, White Masks, what matters is not so much the colour of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray. www.johnpilger.com From ths at psalience.org Sat Oct 22 14:00:59 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 14:00:59 +0200 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?_!!!!_Paul_Craig_Roberts=3A_Now_that_the_CIA?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=92s_proxy_army_has_murdered_Gadhafi?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111022135551.066aae88@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29468.htm The End Of History By Paul Craig Roberts October 20, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Now that the CIA?s proxy army has murdered Gadhafi, what next for Libya? If Washington?s plans succeed, Libya will become another American puppet state. Most of the cities, towns, and infrastructure have been destroyed by air strikes by the air forces of the US and Washington?s NATO puppets. US and European firms will now get juicy contracts, financed by US taxpayers, to rebuild Libya. The new real estate will be carefully allocated to lubricate a new ruling class picked by Washington. This will put Libya firmly under Washington?s thumb. With Libya conquered, AFRICOM will start on the other African countries where China has energy and mineral investments. Obama has already sent US troops to Central Africa under the guise of defeating the Lord?s Resistance Army, a small insurgency against the ruling dictator-for-life. The Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, welcomed the prospect of yet another war by declaring that sending US troops into Central Africa ?furthers US national security interests and foreign policy.? Republican Senator James Inhofe added a gallon of moral verbiage about saving ?Ugandan children,? a concern the senator did not have for Libya?s children or Palestine?s, Iraq?s, Afghanistan?s and Pakistan?s. Washington has revived the Great Power Game and is vying with China. Whereas China brings Africa investment and gifts of infrastructure, Washington sends troops, bombs and military bases. Sooner or later Washington?s aggressiveness toward China and Russia is going to explode in our faces. Where is the money going to come from to finance Washington?s African Empire? Not from Libya?s oil. Big chunks of that have been promised to the French and British for providing cover for Washington?s latest war of naked aggression. Not from tax revenues from a collapsing US economy where unemployment, if measured correctly, is 23 percent. With Washington?s annual budget deficit as huge as it is, the money can only come from the printing press. Washington has already run the printing press enough to raise the consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U) to 3.9% for the year (as of the end of September), the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers (CPI-W) to 4.4% for the year, and the producer price index (PPI) to 6.9% for the year. As statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) has shown, the official inflation measures are rigged in order to hold down cost of living adjustments to Social Security recipients, thus saving money for Washington?s wars. When measured correctly, the current rate of inflation in the US is 11.5%. What interest rate can savers get without taking massive risks on Greek bonds? US banks pay less than one-half of one percent on FDIC insured savings deposits. Short-term US government bond funds pay essentially zero. Thus, according to official US government statistics American savers are losing between 3.9% and 4.4% of their capital yearly. According to John Williams? estimate of the real rate of inflation, US savers are losing 11.5% of their accumulated savings. As retired Americans receive no interest on their savings, they are having to spend down their capital. The ability of even the most prudent retirees to survive the negative rate of interest they are receiving and the erosion by inflation of any pensions that they receive will come to an end once their accumulated assets are exhausted. Except for Washington?s favored mega-rich, the one percent that has captured all of the income gains of recent years, the rest of America has been assigned to the trash can. Nothing whatsoever has been done for them since the financial crisis hit in December 2007. Bush and Obama, Republican and Democrat, have focused on saving the 1 percent while giving the finger to the 99 percent. Finally, some Americans, though not enough, have caught on to the flag-waving rah-rah ?patriotism? that has consigned them to the trash bin of history. They are not going down without a fight and are in the streets. Occupy Wall Street has spread. What will be the fate of this movement? Will the snow and ice of cold weather end the protests, or send them into public buildings? How long will the local authorities, subservient to Washington as they are, tolerate the obvious signal that the population lacks any confidence whatsoever in the government? If the protests last, especially if they grow and don?t decline, the authorities will infiltrate the protestors with police provocateurs who will fire on the police. This will be the excuse to shoot down the protestors and to arrest the survivors as ?terrorists? or ?domestic extremists? and to send them to the $385 million dollar camps built under US government contract by Cheney?s Halliburton. The Amerikan Police State will have taken its next step into the Amerikan Concentration Camp State. Meanwhile, lost in their oblivion, conservatives will continue to bemoan the ruination of the country by homosexual marriage, abortion, and ?the liberal media.? Liberal organizations committed to civil liberty, such as the ACLU, will continue to rank a woman?s right to an abortion with defense of the US Constitution. Amnesty International will assist Washington in demonizing its next target for military attack while turning a blind eye to the war crimes of President Obama. When we consider what Israel has got away with, being as it is under Washington?s bought protection--the war crimes, the murders of children, the eviction in total disregard of international law of Palestinians from their ancestral homes, the bulldozing of their houses and uprooting of their olive groves in order to move in fanatical ?settlers,? the murderous invasions of Lebanon and Gaza, the wholesale slaughter of civilians--we can only conclude that Washington, Israel?s enabler, can get away with far more. In the few opening years of the 21st century, Washington has destroyed the US Constitution, the separation of powers, international law, the accountability of government, and has sacrificed every moral principle to achieving hegemony over the world. This ambitious agenda is being attempted while simultaneously Washington removed all regulation over Wall Street, the home of massive greed, permitting Wall Street?s short-term horizon to wreck the US economy, thus destroying the economic basis for Washington?s assault on the world. Will the US collapse in economic chaos before it rules the world? Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was appointed by President Reagan Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and confirmed by the US Senate. He was Associate Editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, and he served on the personal staffs of Representative Jack Kemp and Senator Orrin Hatch. He was staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, staff associate of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, and Chief Economist, Republican Staff, House Budget Committee. He wrote the Kemp-Roth tax rate reduction bill, and was a leader in the supply-side revolution. He was professor of economics in six universities, and is the author of numerous books and scholarly contributions. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.