From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 12:03:21 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:03:21 +0100 Subject: [THS] !! The dark days of the Roman Empire Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107115557.0453b008@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.salon.com/2011/10/27/tacitus_annals/singleton/ [history - the story of the same damned thing over and over -ths] Thursday, Oct 27, 2011 11:58 PM UTC2011-10-27T23:58:00Zl, M j, Y g:i A T The dark days of the Roman Empire Tacitus' dismal accounts shed light on what life was like as his society's values were eroding By Adam Kirsch, Barnes & Noble Review Topics:History, Nonfiction This article appears courtesy of the Barnes & Noble Review. After 100 years, the Loeb Classical Library is not just a repository of history ? it is itself a historical document, through which you can trace the evolution of modern understandings of the ancient world. Take, for instance, the introduction to the 1931 Loeb edition of the ?Annals? of Tacitus. The translator, John Jackson, grants that ?the greatness? of the Roman historian?s intellect and literary style can still ?be felt after the lapse of eighteen centuries.? But ?how long they will continue to be felt, one must at whiles wonder,? he goes on to write. On the whole, Jackson finds Tacitus? picture of corruption and political violence in imperial Rome too uniformly dark to be credible. He speaks of the historian?s ?wild exaggerations? and ?poisoned? rhetoric, and complains that he lacked ?a charity that thinks no evil.? At best, Jackson hoped that ?as long as Europe retains the consciousness of her origins,? Tacitus would continue to find ?some? readers. The historical irony could not be thicker; for within the decade, modern Europe would become an uncannily perfect reflection of Tacitus? Rome. With the rise of totalitarianism in Germany, Italy, and Russia, Tacitus? descriptions of Rome under the early Caesars would no longer seem like ?wild exaggerations? but daily news reports. Secret police, anonymous denunciations, constant shifts of the government ?line,? whole societies cowering before the whims of rulers: Tacitus described it all, two millennia earlier. The critic Lionel Trilling, writing about Tacitus in his 1950 book ?The Liberal Imagination,? titled his essay ?Tacitus Now?: ?our political education of the last decades has given us to understand the historian of imperial Rome,? Trilling declared, with his litany of ?dictatorship and repression, spies and political informers, blood purges and treacherous dissension.? Indeed, Tacitus begins the ?Annals? by complaining that the true history of Rome under the ?bad emperors? ? Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, who reigned from A.D. 14 to 69 ? had never been written because of the ?sycophancy? and ?cowardice? those rulers inspired in their subjects. Publius Cornelius Tacitus, who was probably born around 55, had himself completed an illustrious career in politics by the time he wrote the Annals, which appeared in 116. Enough time had passed for him to be able to write the undisguised history of the early Caesars ? in his famous phrase, ?sine ira et studio,? ?without anger and without partiality.? Yet there is no mistaking the moral passion that animates Tacitus? bitter, unsparing history. Above all, what disgusts him in the Rome of early empire is the willingness of its leading citizens to cloak the new imperial rule in venerable republican garments. For centuries, Rome?s elite had prided itself on its rugged independence, stern military discipline, and aristocratic pride. Under Tiberius Caesar, the adopted heir of the first emperor, Augustus, the Senate continued to meet, and the old laws were still on the books. But it was an open secret that real power was in the hands of the arrogant, sexually depraved Tiberius. One of the most famous lines in the ?Annals? comes in Book III, when Tacitus writes that Tiberius, on leaving the Senate, ?had a habit of ejaculating in Greek, ?These men ? how ready they are for slavery!? Even he, it was manifest, objecting though he did to public liberty, was growing weary of such groveling patience in his slaves.? The ?Annals? abound in moments of grim sycophantic comedy. Right at the beginning of Book I, Tacitus describes Tiberius? seizure of power after the death of Augustus. Like his ancestor Julius Caesar, who famously refused a crown while grasping absolute power, Tiberius was determined not to tyrannize openly. When he appeared before the Senate, then, he declared that he couldn?t possibly take over Augustus? role, since he was not up to the job of emperor. The Senate, Tacitus remarks in one of his characteristic strokes of compressed irony, knew better than to believe these denials: their ?one dread was that they might seem to comprehend him.? But then one senator, Asinius Gallus, made a tactical error. Taking Tiberius at his word, Gallus asked him, if he felt ?unequal to the whole weight of government,? which department he would want to undertake. ?This unforeseen inquiry,? Tacitus writes, ?threw [Tiberius] off his balance,? and Gallus, who realized he had made a mistake, tried to cover himself by saying that ?the question had been put to him, not with the hope that he would divide the inseparable, but to gain from his own lips an admission that the body politic was a single organism needing to be governed by a single intelligence.? The whole scene sounds like nothing so much as one of those Stalinist party congresses where the delegates applauded for hours, terrified to be the first to stop. At every turn in the ?Annals,? Tacitus hammers home the failure of the Romans to live up to their ancestral ideals. That is why it is fascinating to read his book alongside a relatively new addition to the Loeb Classical Library, the ?Memorable Doings and Sayings of Valerius Maximus?. The two volumes of this work didn?t make it into the series until 2000, a sign of its relative unimportance in the canon of Latin literature ? indeed, until D. R. Shackleton Bailey?s Loeb translation, there had never been a complete modern English edition. This is because Valerius Maximus is essentially an anthologist, a compiler of stories from Roman history that are mostly known from other sources. He arranges these stories into books and sections, each designed to illustrate a fundamental Roman virtue. The first chapter of Book I, ?De Religione,? gives examples of Roman strictness in religious observance: for instance, a priest named Sulpicius had to give up his office because the mitre slipped from his head while he was performing a sacrifice. Book II.7 is headed ?De Discipline Militari?: military discipline, Valerius writes, is ?the chief glory and mainstay of Roman empire, preserved intact and safe up to the present time with salutary steadfastness.? Thus we read of the Dictator Postumius, whose son ?went forth from his post and routed the enemy of his own motion.? Even though this was a victory, it was against orders, so Postumius had his son beheaded. ?You judged it better that a father should lose a brave son,? Valerius intones, ?than that the fatherland should lose military discipline.? In these pages, we hear the voice of official Roman ideology, in its purest form. Valerius Maximus shows what Rome wanted to believe it was ? much as, for instance, William Bennett?s ?Book of Virtues? is a document of what America wants to believe it is. But what makes ?Memorable Doings and Sayings? ring especially hollow is the date of its composition. It was compiled in A.D. 14-37 ? that is, during the reign of Tiberius Caesar. And the book is festooned with the most shameless flattery of the emperor and his ancestors. It opens with an invocation to Tiberius, ?surest salvation of the fatherland, in whose charge the unanimous will of gods and men has placed the governance of land and sea, by whose celestial providence the virtues of which I shall tell are most kindly fostered and the vices most sternly punished.? If Tacitus? ?Annals? had not survived (as it is, we have only parts of the whole work) we might not know that Tiberius? reign was in fact a time when all the virtues Valerius praises were decaying ? from piety to military discipline (the ?Annals? opens with a description of a mutiny) to ?abstinence and continence.? Thanks to Tacitus, we can hear in Valerius Maximus the voice of one of those ?sycophants? who falsified the history of their day. Read together in the Loeb Classical Library, they offer a living demonstration of every historian?s fundamental choice: whether to tell people what they want to hear or what they need to know. Adam Kirsch is a writer living in New York.More Adam Kirsch From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 12:06:33 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:06:33 +0100 Subject: [THS] Teeth and jaw are from 'earliest Europeans' Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107120555.04540348@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15540464 2 November 2011 Last updated at 21:56 GMT Teeth and jaw are from 'earliest Europeans' By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News Ancient teeth Fragments of our past: A baby tooth from the Grotta del Cavallo, Apulia, southern Italy (L); and a piece of upper-jaw discovered in Kents Cavern, Devon, southern England Related Stories * Cannibal theory over early Briton * Delving deep into Britain's past * Digging deeper into Kents Cavern Two baby teeth and a jaw fragment unearthed in Italy and the UK have something revealing to say about how modern humans conquered the globe. The finds in the Grotta del Cavallo, Apulia, and Kents Cavern, Devon, have been confirmed as the earliest known remains of Homo sapiens in Europe. Careful dating suggests they are more than 41,000 years old, and perhaps as much as 45,000 years old in the case of the Italian "baby teeth". The details are in the journal Nature. The results fit with stone tool discoveries that had suggested modern people were in Europe more than 40,000 years ago. Now, scientists have the direct physical remains of Homo sapiens to prove it. It confirms also that modern people overlapped in Europe with their evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals, for an extended period. These humans went extinct shortly afterwards, and the latest discoveries will raise once again the questions over Homo sapiens' possible role in their relatives' demise. "What's significant about this work is that it increases the overlap and contemporaneity with Neanderthals," explained Dr Tom Higham, from Oxford University, who led the study on the British specimen found at Kents Cavern, Torquay. "We estimate that probably three to five thousand years of time is the amount of the overlap between moderns and Neanderthals in this part of the world," he told the BBC Science in Action programme. The new results indicate, too, that modern humans swept across Europe via a number of different routes, as they populated the world after leaving Africa some 60,000 years ago. Finding suggest humans were living in England as long as 44,000 years ago Both the teeth and the jaw fragment have been known about for decades. In the case of the jaw from Kents Cavern, this was first identified in 1927. The two Italian baby teeth were found in the Grotta del Cavallo in southern Italy in 1964. Scientists have long pondered the specimens' age and origin. Many thought they were more likely to be Neanderthal remains. It is only with the application of the very latest analytical techniques that the specimens' true status can be established. Because of their concerns about modern contamination in the jaw, Higham and colleagues went back to animal fossils found above and below the object in the Torquay cave and re-dated those with greater precision. This produced a likely age for the human remains of between 41,500 and 44,200 years ago. The team also re-examined the shape of the jaw's three teeth, including their internal structure, to remove doubts that the jaw could be Neanderthal. "We've done a new reconstruction, and we've actually found that one of the teeth was in the wrong place. That's for starters," said co-author Prof Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum. "But we've also done a really detailed comparison, right down to the shape of the roots and internal pulp cavities. We've gone to microscopic details to show this really is a modern human. You would never find a Neanderthal fossil that had this many modern human features." Nick Powe, the owner of Kents Cavern in Torquay, gives a tour of the caves in which the jawbone was found Likewise for the Italian baby teeth, Dr Stefano Benazzi and colleagues performed a morphological analysis, comparing the features of their specimens with a wide database of Homo sapiens and Neanderthal remains. Again, this approach indicated the Grotta del Cavallo specimens were from a modern person. The Benazzi team also resorted to advanced radio-carbon dating technology to reassess the age. This was applied to ornamental shell beads found in the same layer as the teeth. "The new dating shows that the teeth must be between 43,000 and 45,000 years ago," said Dr Benazzi from the University of Vienna, Austria. "That makes them the oldest European modern-human currently known," he told BBC News. The re-assessments have further importance because palaeoanthropologists can now put modern humans in the caves at the same time as the stone and bone tool technologies discovered there. Climate story There has been some doubt over who created the so-called Aurignacian artefacts at Kents Cavern and the slightly older Uluzzian technologies at Grotta del Cavallo. It could have been Neanderthals, but there is now an obvious association in time with Homo sapiens. No-one really knows why Neanderthals went extinct or what part - if any - modern humans played in their disappearance. Scientists say it is not necessarily the case that there was conflict between the two groups; it could just have been that Homo sapiens was better equipped to deal with the harsh challenges of the time. "I think it's still very much an open question because climate is also a part of the story," commented Prof Stringer. "The fact is that while these populations were overlapping, the climate of Europe was very unstable. Populations were expanding and shrinking and being pushed around by very rapid changes in environment. "I think it's going to be a combination of factors, with both Neanderthals and modern humans being stressed but the moderns being perhaps a bit better adapted to the changes and being able to get through them. The Neanderthals on the other hand weren't, and they went extinct." Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET at bbc.co.uk More on This Story Related Stories * Cannibal theory over early Briton 07 AUGUST 2009, SCI/TECH * Delving deep into Britain's past 01 OCTOBER 2006, SCI/TECH * Digging deeper into Kents Cavern 14 SEPTEMBER 2009, HISTORY * Channel's key role in pre-history 16 SEPTEMBER 2006, SCI/TECH * Britain's human history revealed 05 SEPTEMBER 2006, From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 13:10:54 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:10:54 +0100 Subject: [THS] Cold fusion debate heats up after latest demo Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107131001.06ab1b10@mail.messagingengine.com> November 4, 2011 Cold fusion debate heats up after latest demo By Natalie Wolchover (Livescience.com) Italian physicist and inventor Andrea Rossi has conducted a public demonstration of his "cold fusion" machine, the E-Cat, at the University of Bologna, showing that a small amount of input energy drives an unexplained reaction between atoms of hydrogen and nickel that leads to a large outpouring of energy, more than 10 times what was put in. The first successful cold fusion experiment was reported two decades ago, but the process has forever been met with heavy skepticism. It's a seemingly impossible process in which two types of atoms, typically a light element and a heavier metal, seem to fuse together, releasing pure heat that can be converted into electricity. The process is an attractive energy solution for two reasons: Unlike in nuclear fission, the reaction doesn't give off dangerous radiation. Unlike the fusion processes that take place in the sun, cold fusion doesn't require extremely high temperatures. But the experimentalists who have supposedly demonstrated cold fusion over the years have been unable to explain the underlying mechanism that drives the miraculous reaction they claim to observe, and so the scientific community has largely turned its back on this line of research. Most physicists ? as well as the United States Deepartment of Energy (DoE), academic journals, and the U.S. Patent Office ? consiider cold fusion machines to be hoaxes, because they say physics rules out the possibility of room-temperature nuclear fusion. "60 Minutes:" More than junk science Life's Little Mysteries reported on the E-Cat machine back in April, when Rossi and fellow physicist Sergio Focardi successfully demonstrated the device for a group of Swedish physicists. At the time, we explained that the Italian physicists are two of a handful of researchers around the world who have kept the cold fusion fire burning. These cold fusion devotees believe that there is a little-understood physical process occurring in their machines that produces a safe, clean and endlessly renewable form of energy. The physicists who were invited to the demonstration in April gave the E-Cat a solid thumbs-up. It produced too much excess heat to have been originating from a chemical process, they wrote in their report, adding that, "The only alternative explanation is that there is some kind of a nuclear process that gives rise to the measured energy production." In the intervening months, Rossi has built a large version of his device that combines many smaller cold fusion modules. At the demo in October, after an initial energy input of 400 watts into each module, each one then produced a sustained, continuous output of 10 kilowatts (470 kW altogether) for three to four hours. Rossi has not published any details about the inner workings of the E-Cat because the device is not patent-protected, but other cold fusion researchers have theories as to how the process works. Peter Hagelstein, an MIT professor of electrical engineering and computer science and one of the most mainstream proponents of cold fusion research, thinks the process may involve vibrational energy in the metal's lattice driving nuclear transitions that lead to fusion. There are several close connections between the E-Cat and other recent experimental results, Hagelstein said, noting that the excess power seems to respond to lattice spacing in both experiments, vacancies within the lattice (e.g., spots where the nickel atoms are missing) seem to be important in both, the excess power seems to increase with operating temperature in relevant operating regimes and other connections. "There is not sufficient reliable information available about the E-cat for a rational opinion to be made yet, in my view," Hagelstein told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. But because of these consistencies, "I am of the view that Rossi's claims probably should be taken seriously until such time as we have sufficient information that provides confirmation or refutation." Rossi has formed a company, Leonardo Corp., which will produce and ? he hopes ? sell E-Cat machichines. In the meantime, Hagelstein and other cold fusion researchers urge the skeptical scientific community to give cold fusion devices such as the E-Cat a closer look. "Are physicists generally, and DoE in particular, so sure that excess power in such experiments is impossible that the very large number of experimental results which show an excess heat effect clearly should continue to be ignored?" he asked. From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 13:22:55 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:22:55 +0100 Subject: [THS] Tim Minchin: Mocking God in the heart of Texas Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107131245.045e4f60@mail.messagingengine.com> Tim Minchin: Mocking God in the heart of Texas When Tim Minchin ? actor, comedian, confirmed atheist ? decided to take his comedy to America's Bible belt, we were concerned he might be burnt at the stake. Here, he describes what happened next Tim Minchin The Observer, Saturday 5 November 2011 tim minchin in texas Don?t cross me: Tim Minchin in Dallas, Texas. Photograph: Danny Turner for the Observer The hire car guy at the airport in Phoenix, Arizona, tells us there are no "standard" cars left, then suggests that for an extra 10 bucks we might want to upgrade to a Camaro ? a muscular Mustang-wannabe into which I have to fold myself like a circus clown. Grizzly, my tour manager (he has a thick beard and the surname of Adams, and has taken to my nickname like a bear to dancing), starts up the engine and we are amused to hear it roar like my VW Golf. I'm not going to use this flashy-body-but-nothing-under-the-hood vehicle as a metaphor for American culture, but it's tempting. Not that I give a shit about cars, but I do quite like lazy symbolism. Speaking of which, looking out of the plane window as we flew in, I'd been struck by the incredible stubbornness required to build such a huge city in the middle of the desert ? the gridded oasis appearing to me as both a triumph over nature and a childishly futile act of defiance, like firing a toothpick at a dragon. Long before Oprah started peddling her popcorn psychology, these people were scarily optimistic. We drive out of the airport past the compulsory orgy of American flags, which despite their quiet fluttering still manage to scream: YOU'RE IN AMERICA! YOU'RE IN AMERICA! YOU'RE IN AMERICA! Where am I? Oh, yeah. Thanks. Whenever a friend or fan finds out I've started touring the States, there is an inevitable raising of the eyebrows (or eyebrow, if they are blessed with that most enviable of talents). There are two reasons behind such browular elevations, the first of which is born of comedy snobbery: Brits and Aussies are very fond of saying that Americans "don't get irony". This is absurd; if anything, they don't get absurdity, which the Brits and the Irish probably "get" better than anyone else. Apart from that, I have observed a surprising consistency in what makes people laugh, notwithstanding geography-specific subject matter, which I avoid. (The only other cultural-comic quirks I have observed are that the English really like camp men making thinly veiled bum-sex double entendres, and Australians love swearing. We think it's fucking hilarious.) The second thing that concerns people about me touring the US is that they fear my penchant for jaunty-but-vehement criticism of religion will at best result in empty auditoriums, and at worst get me shot. But the perception that the country is packed wall-to-wall with Christian fundies is as specious as the irony myth. There is no doubt that many Americans have what seems to be a near-erotic relationship with the two-millennium-dead Middle-Eastern Jewish magician-preacher we call Jesus. But there are frickin' loads of people in America, and even if the percentage of the population that is not religious is only 10% (it's a much greater number, surely), then there are still 33 million potential ticket-buyers. If there is a problem with my US shows, it is the opposite: unlike in the UK and Australia where my audiences are very mixed, here in the US I am preaching ? as it were ? to a congregation that is 99% fully frocked-up choir. One shouldn't be surprised, of course ? nothing increases passion for a philosophy more than living surrounded by people who do not share it. In DC a couple of months ago, I met husband-and-wife biology teachers who had flown up from Kentucky to see my show, and the fella started to cry as he told me how their families don't talk to them any more since they started speaking out about the importance of science in their small Southern town. My first forays into the US live scene were in proper liberal cities. In Portland I was offered cocaine, in Seattle a threesome, in LA cocaine and a threesome. (That I refuse such offers is by the by; it's the thought that counts.) A guy tried to pick me up in a New York cabaret bar, which was a great relief as I've always found it upsetting that dudes don't find me attractive. These were my kind of towns but I assumed my ability to draw a crowd would correlate to my proximity to the coast. And yet here I am in Mesa, Arizona, in a beautiful, new 750-seat theatre, and ? just like in St Louis and Minneapolis and Atlanta and Boulder and Austin ? here comes my audience: a familiar motley crew of teens and grey-hairs, scientists and English teachers, students and statisticians, skinny, shy men in uncool jeans and gloriously big-boobed, tattooed S&M-ish women. Smart, quirky, different and ? overwhelmingly, passionately ? Godless. A little after 8pm, I walk cautiously on to the stage and the crowd goes completely nuts, as is the custom in this culture of ?ber-affirmation. As I sit they spontaneously start singing "Happy Birthday". This is weird, but much less weird than it would be on any other day of the year (it is, actually, my birthday). After the gig I venture out into the theatre's foyer to see if anyone has hung around for an autograph and, sure enough, there's a big group of patient Arizonans waiting with merch and cameras. I recognise among them a sexy, 6ft, 40-ish blonde woman who has previously flown to see me in LA and Portland. She is wearing a belt that has a scrolling LED screen where the buckle should be. I spot it halfway through its scroll and think it says "HEIST" (a brand name, perhaps?) It scrolls again and I realise I'm mistaken. Mesa is serious Mormon country and she has accessorised with a flashing sign nestled against her pubic bone declaring: ATHEIST. Ya gotta admire the balls. Oh, and she'd brought her husband and four young children with her. I have a song in my show that utilises the word "fuck" 160 times in two minutes. Liberal? Eat your heart out San Francisco. I, on the other hand, don't tend to walk around with glowing atheist belt buckles. I've been atheist since I became aware of the term, but my material is not all about religion ? not by a long shot ? and when I do address the topic it is to point out where religiosity meets discrimination. Many comics write about what makes them angry, or, at least, what they observe in the world that is at odds with how they feel it ought to be. This is the case when Seinfeld talks about muffins or McIntyre talks about Argos (brilliantly, I hasten to add). I just happen to be less preoccupied by parking spots and soup nazis, and more by homophobes and creationists. Here in America it seems to be the God stuff that people are coming to see. I don't get to bed until 1.30am, and am up at half-six in the morning for a flight toTexas. No time to Skype my kids, which is depressing ? a digital dad is surely better than a non-dad ? but we need to get to the venue early today, as I'm worried about the piano. Usually we sort out pianos well in advance, but we had a bit of trouble with our planned hire in Dallas. Three days ago, Grizzly received an email from the company who had been booked to supply us with a lovely Baldwin. The subject heading was "CANCEL !!!!!!!!!!" (yep, 10 exclamation marks), and the body of the email read: "I need to decline after watching that insane Tim Minchin. What a God-hater. So sorry, please cancel the Entire Event In Dallas. Go back to Australia we do not appreciate Tim Minchin in TX. WE ARE NOT DELIVERING THE GRAND PIANO!!! NOT FOR 1 MILLION $ HA HA HA. You probably agree. Find a better comedian (not a demon). Love in Christ," And there they signed off. It is clear from the use of caps that the writer of this email is a bit of a goose, and I am certainly not suggesting he is a typical Christian, nor a typical citizen of Dallas. But it's amusing that it happened to be here in Texas that I came across my first proper religious nut. The governor of this fine state is Rick Perry, the Republican presidential frontrunner and a genuine capital-C Conservative ? anti-socialist, pro-guns, anti-gay and yet quaintly enamoured of the aforementioned long-dead Semitic pacifist who said wealth was bad and that you should love everybody. (Perry is also a global-warming denialist ? once you reject evidence as a source of knowledge, you don't gotta believe nothin' you don't like.) As we drive from airport to theatre, the Dallas sky is vertiginous and blindingly blue and the skyscrapers downtown shimmer with Southern confidence, the kind of self-assurance that also means its citizens can get away with a 10-gallon hat and a moustache without looking like a Village Person. The theatre is a gorgeous Art Deco cinema converted into a concert venue, and the people are lovely but that's where the positives end. The instrument brought in to replace God's personal piano is crap, and there's a lovely, shy, but incompetent kid behind the mixing desk. My concerns about security are replaced by frustrations with the frequency of screaming frequencies in crackling fold-back wedges. If I had a religion, its deity would be Audysseus, the sound God, and He would be a vengeful god, dishing out eternal damnation to people with cheap stage monitors. Happily, I get to leave Grizzly to solve my problems, as a local photographer ? hired to take up the challenge of capturing a palatable angle of my ridiculous head ? whisks me away to downtown Dallas. Danny has a Texan drawl, but otherwise fails to fit the clich?. His car is shockingly normal-sized and he starts a diatribe against homophobia that segues happily into a searingly negative review of his governor. He tells me Perry recently organised a "prayer rally" where 30,000 Texans gathered to ask God for rain. Apart from the fact that government promotion and expenditure for such an event surely constitutes a contravention of America's overtly secular constitution, it also failed to work: more drought and terrible fires appear to have been God's chuckling response. Later in the evening, struggling like DJ Dante through acoustic hell, I get the giggles during my song "Thank You God (For Fixing The Cataracts of Sam's Mum)" ? a ditty that pokes fun at the megalomaniacal idea that an omnipotent being might have his attention diverted by the plight of a middle-class woman with minor ocular issues. Here in Texas, where it's perfectly normal to pray before every football match, board meeting and exam, and where the governor will happily organise mass rain-dances while ignoring climate data, it feels like the song has found its spiritual home. The audience response tonight is lovely, and despite (or because of) the polemical tone of much of my material, the room fizzes with positivity. As an encore, I play my sentimental Christmas song and then get them to sing along to a Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". I turn off my microphone, and they break into harmonies without prompting. It's beautiful. After an hour signing stuff for the weird and wonderful heathens of Texas, Grizzly and I walk out of the theatre into the previously dusty Dallas street to find it is absolutely pouring with rain. http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/nov/06/tim-minchin-mocking-god-in-texas From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 13:58:45 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:58:45 +0100 Subject: [THS] We Need Real Jobs Solutions, Not the Keystone XL Pipeline Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107135831.0637ef50@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.domesticworkers.org/we-need-real-jobs-solutions-not-the-keystone-xl-pipeline We Need Real Jobs Solutions, Not the Keystone XL Pipeline Share this: Keystone XL PipelineThe National Domestic Workers Alliance and Domestic Workers United call on the State Department not to approve the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline or to take any actions that lead to the further extraction of Tar Sands oil from Alberta, Canada. The National Domestic Workers Alliance organizes domestic workers in the United States for respect, recognition and fair labor standards. We represent hundreds of thousands of women workers in the U.S. who do the work that makes all other work possible ? the work of caring for homes and families. Many of our members come to the U.S. from countries already severely impacted by climate change and environmental devastation. If approved and constructed, the Keystone XL pipeline will have a huge impact on our communities, on First Nation communities, on global greenhouse gas emissions, and risks major contamination of the largest freshwater aquifer in North America. By building a pipeline from Alberta to Texas, Keystone XL will open up the Tar Sands in Canada to massive ?expansion, and will release huge quantities of this dirty oil into the global energy system. NDWA and DWU are concerned that Keystone XL could double the amount of highly toxic Tar Sands oil being imported into the United States. The Tar Sands has already destroyed vast areas of forest and hurt many local communities. The expansion of the Tar Sands will severely impede our country?s and the world?s efforts to transition to a more sustainable economy. The Alliance and DWU therefore adds their voices to the rising opposition to this dangerous project. We stand with those in the labor movement who oppose Keystone XL, such as the Amalgamated Transit Union, the Transport Workers Union and others. We need jobs, but not jobs based on increasing our reliance on Tar Sands oil. There is no shortage of work to be done. Water pipelines need replacing, bridges and tunnels need repair, and transportation infrastructure must be renewed. We know first hand that many jobs are urgently needed in long-term care, particularly home-based care for our nation?s rapidly growing aging population. We are both part of a broad alliance of organizations that have launched a campaign called Caring Across Generations, to create 2 million new, quality jobs in home care, to help ensure that our loved ones who need care and support can live with dignity and the workers charged with that important work have dignified jobs. This and many other initiatives offer real solutions to our nation?s jobs crisis. The Keystone pipeline is not one of them. On behalf of domestic workers and future generations, we urge decision-makers to focus on the solutions that will allow us to develop a healthy 21st Century economy, one that will truly work for all people and the planet. From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 14:02:32 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:02:32 +0100 Subject: [THS] Obama's USA Kills Women and Kids in Af-Pak - Hundreds of Drones Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107135959.06ab1738@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/11/04/bureau-reporter-meets-16-year-old-just-three-days-before-he-is-killed-by-a-us-drone/ Meeting A Drone Victim Before His Death by Pratap Chatterjee, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism November 4th, 201 A week ago I joined a group of elders and dozens of other young men who had travelled from Waziristan, in northern Pakistan, to Islamabad to discuss the impact of US drone strikes in their communities. Among the group was Tariq Aziz, a quiet 16-year-old, who had come after he received a phone call from a lawyer in Islamabad offering him an opportunity to learn basic photography to help document these strikes. We met for a grand dinner in the conference hall of a luxury hotel. The next day we all met again at an official meeting - a 'Waziristan Grand Jirga'. I filmed Tariq Aziz as he walked in with his friends. Each of them pressed their right palms on the chest of each of the elders who lined up to meet them. Tariq was proud to be part of this meeting. About 18 months earlier, in April 2010, his cousin Aswar Ullah was killed by a missile fired from a drone as he rode a motorcycle near Norak. Tariq, like all of us, listened intently to the speakers, who included the politician and former cricketer Imran Khan. What none of us could have imagined was that 72 hours later, this football-loving teenager would himself be killed by a CIA drone, along with his 12-year-old cousin Waheed Khan. This video, in which Tariq is wearing a dark shirt and ochre hat, is the last video ever taken of him. Children killed Tariq and Waheed's death brought the total number of children killed in drone strikes to 175, according to the Bureau's own findings. As part of an ongoing investigation into drone strikes, the Bureau has documented 306 strikes from remotely piloted drones that have killed between 2,359 and 2,959 people. Over 85% of them have been launched by the administration of President Barack Obama. Tariq came from a poor community on the border with Afghanistan. He was the youngest of seven children. His father, Mumtaz Khan, was away working in the United Arab Emirates as a driver to support his family. Waheed's family was equally poor - the 12-year-old worked in a local shop for a salary of just Rs 2000 a month (roughly ?15 or $23) On October 27, Tariq travelled to Islamabad, where he stayed at the Al Habib hotel, after agreeing to work with Shahzad Akbar, a lawyer who runs the Foundation for Fundamental Rights and is now working with families who have lost relatives to drone strikes. He had agreed to be part of a project organised by Reprieve, a British legal charity, photographing the aftermath of drone strikes in Waziristan. Jemima Khan, the former wife of Imran Khan, who was also at the gathering, has donated a dozen new cameras for use in this project. Jemima Khan During the Jirga, Tariq sat exactly two rows behind Jemima Khan. For four hours the Waziris debated the drone war, and then they listened to a resolution condemning the attacks. The group voted for this unanimously. After lunch, the group travelled to a protest rally outside the Pakistani parliament. Imran Khan, who is now the leader of the Tehreek-e-Insaaf political party, and Clive Stafford Smith, the founder of Reprieve, addressed a gathering of some 2,000 people. The next day, Tariq and the other Waziris returned to their homes, eight hours drive away. On Monday, October 31, Tariq took his cousin Waheed Khan to pick up his newlywed aunt, to take her back to Norak. When the two boys were just 200 yards from the house, two missiles slammed into their car, killing them both instantly. 'I don't see the logic and reasoning in killing two young boys,' Shahzad Akbar told the Bureau. 'We wanted to work with the youth, to include them in the search for accountability.' Akbar says that the CIA had every opportunity to meet with Tariq, if they wanted to, when he visited Islamabad. 'If they were terrorists, why weren't they arrested in Islamabad, interrogated, charged or tried?' On Tuesday, Akbar spoke to Noor Kalam, Tariq's uncle, who said he was devastated by the news. 'We are helpless. We cannot do anything against the Americans,' he told the lawyer. 'We would like insaaf - justice.' Mumtaz Khan, Tariq's father, has flown back from the United Arab Emirates, to mourn the death of his son. He is now in discussions with Akbar to bring a lawsuit against the CIA. He will be the 31st family to sign up. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105704 ISAF Data Show Night Raids Killed over 1,500 Afghan Civilians Analysis by Gareth Porter* U.S. soldiers dismount from their vehicle and U.S. soldiers dismount from their vehicle and prepare to raid a series of compounds in the Maywand District of Afghanistan on Nov. 22, 2010. Credit: U.S. Army/CC BY 2.0 WASHINGTON, Nov 2, 2011 (IPS) - U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) killed well over 1,500 civilians in night raids in less than 10 months in 2010 and early 2011, analysis of official statistics on the raids released by the U.S.-NATO command reveals. That number would make U.S. night raids by far the largest cause of civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan. The report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan on civilian casualties in 2010 had said the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) by insurgents was the leading cause of civilian deaths, with 904. Except for a relatively few women and children killed by accident, the civilians who died in the raids were all adult males who were counted as insurgents in press releases and official data released by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The data on night raids, which were given to selected news media, cover three distinct 90-day night raid campaigns from May through July 2010, early August to early November, and mid-November to mid- February. The combined totals for the three periods indicate that a minimum of 2,599 rank and file insurgents were killed and an additional 723 "leaders" killed or captured in raids. [See Sidebar]. Assuming conservatively that one-third of the alleged leaders were killed, the total number of alleged insurgents killed in the raids was 2,844. Official Data on Night Raids ISAF has leaked a set of statistics on insurgents killed in night raids published in major news outlets covering three 90- day campaigns of night raids. In August 2010, ISAF released figures to the Washington Post showing that 1,031 rank and file insurgents had been killed from May through July. In November 2010 the New York Times reported a total of 968 rank and file insurgents killed in the three months from Aug. 11 through Nov. 11. Reuters reported on Feb. 24, 2011 that 600 people were killed during the 90 days from Nov. 18 to Feb. 18. The figure did not distinguish between rank and file and "leaders". Those three subtotals add up to 2,599 killed from May 2010 to mid-February 2011. The Washington Post and New York Times articles also reported 355 and 368 "leaders" killed or captured during the May-July and August-November periods, totaling 723. An unknown proportion of that total was deliberately assassinated. Nevertheless, it is assumed in estimating the number killed in the raids that the proportion of alleged "leaders" killed to the total killed and captured in the first two campaigns was the same as the proportion of rank and file killed of the total killed and captured: 34 percent of 723, or 245. The sum of the totals of 2,599 alleged insurgents and 245 alleged "leaders" assumed to have been killed in the raids comes to 2,844. The total number or SOF night raids can be estimated from officially leaked subtotals of 3,000 from May through July; 1,572 from Aug. 11 to Nov. 11, and 1,710 from Nov. 18 to Feb. 18. Those subtotals add up to 6,282 night raids for the entire 10 months. SOF night raids during the 10-month period totaled 6,282, according to the same ISAF data. A third crucial statistic, repeated frequently by U.S and NATO officials in 2010 and 2011, is that shots were fired by SOF units in only 20 percent of night raids. A U.S. military source who has been briefed on SOF operation confirmed to IPS what has been generally known among outside observers ? that anytime shots are fired by SOF troops in a night raid, someone is killed. If shots were fired in 20 percent of the 6,282 raids, it means that 2,844 were killed in 1,256 raids. With very rare exceptions, night raids target only individuals rather than groups. They are carried out at night because they are aimed at catching the individual at home asleep and therefore taken completely by surprise. Therefore, a minimum of 1,588 people (2,844 total killed minus the 1,256 targets in the lethal raids) were killed in the raids even though they weren't targeted. Not every one of the untargeted individuals killed in night raids was a noncombatant civilian. But the socio-cultural and physical setting of the raids guarantees that the percentage of civilians in that total is extremely high. Within the Afghan compounds that are the physical targets of U.S. night raids live extended family households that normally include not only the male head of family and his wife, but his brothers, sons and cousins and their families. In Afghanistan, every adult Pashtun male has a weapon in his home, and is obliged by the ancient code of conduct called "Pashtunwali" to defend his home, his family and his friends against armed intruders. In a typical extended family compound, several males have weapons. As a result, the non-targeted civilians killed in night raids have invariably been either close relatives or neighbours who have come out to assist against an armed assault. SOF commanders and the command and staff of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have essentially denied all civilian deaths in night raids, except for women and children, by counting all adult males killed in raids as insurgents. That ISAF policy has been confirmed to IPS by a U.S. military source briefed on the operational aspects of the raids. ISAF has counted adult dead in raids as insurgents even when the victims held prominent positions in the Afghan government, as was the case in the Gardez night raid of Feb. 12, 2010. In that raid, two men who were shot dead in the targeted compound by an SOF unit when they came out of their dwellings with Kalashnikov rifles turned out to have been a district prosecutor and a local police chief. Nevertheless, ISAF reported in its press release on the raid that two insurgents had been killed. The killing of family members and neighbours who responded to night raids with weapons was already a major issue within the U.S. mission to Afghanistan as early as 2008, according to Matthew Hoh, who was the senior U.S. civilian official in Zabul province in 2009. "Pashtunwali was causing serious problems for us in the context of night raids," Hoh told IPS. "It was raised as a key issue in our training even before I went to Afghanistan." The problem had become so prevalent by early 2010 that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal referred to it explicitly in his early 2010 directive on night raids, parts of which were released to the public by ISAF Mar. 5, 2010. McChrystal noted that the Afghan adult male had been "conditioned to respond aggressively in defense of his home and his guests whenever he perceives his home or honor threatened. In a similar situation most of us would do the same." McChrystal expressed regret that these "[i]nstinctive responses by an Afghan man to defend his home and family are sometimes interpreted as insurgent acts, with tragic results." Although a large proportion of those targeted in the estimated 1,256 lethal raids were undoubtedly Taliban insurgents, a very substantial proportion were civilians. Some were targeted after malicious tips by tribal and personal enemies. Others fell victim to a targeting system that is overwhelmingly dependent on electronic intelligence. Phone calls to a known insurgent are regarded as a basis for adding a cell phone number to the "kill/capture list". One detainee picked up in a night raid earlier this year was told by his interrogator that it was because he had made phone calls to an insurgent, IPS learned from a friend of the detainee's family. Hoh, who was briefed on the list, called the Joint Priority Effects List (JPEL) in 2009, told this writer that a large proportion of the targets on the list were not identifiable individuals at all, but mobile phone numbers. But in the Pashtun zones of Afghanistan, contacts with Taliban commanders and other Taliban figures are nearly universal, according to Michael Semple, former deputy EU representative in Afghanistan and a leading specialist on the Afghan insurgency. In addition, SOF commanders have begun consciously targeting individuals who were not believed to be insurgents but who were believed to have provided moral or material support, or to have intelligence information about them. That targeting shift, acknowledged by military officials to the authors of a recent study by the Open Society Foundations and The Liaison Office, was reflected in an 82-percent increase in the number of people seized in raids and detained briefly during the August- November campaign, compared with the May-July campaign. Those detainees were also counted as insurgents in the data released to the news media, despite the fact that up to 90 percent of them were released as civilians within days or months, as IPS reported last June. Some of those targeted civilians were killed in raids when they appeared to challenge the SOF intruders, adding to the 1,588 non- targeted individuals killed in the raids. However, estimating the additional toll of civilians is impossible. The ISAF Public Affairs Officer for SOF issues and officials responsible for civilian casualties monitoring at the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan did not respond to requests for comment on this article. Afghan human rights officials and foreign observers have suggested that fewer civilian deaths have occurred in night raids with the increasing use of the so-called "soft knock", in which Afghan personnel are used to announce the presence of the raiding party with a loudspeaker before entry into the house. The toll of civilians in more recent 90-day periods may well have been reduced in 2011 compared with a year earlier, as suggested by smaller numbers of alleged insurgents said to have been killed over the course of the three campaigns. But night raids clearly remain the overwhelmingly primary ? though still unacknowledged ? cause of civilian deaths in the war. *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. -- From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 14:07:57 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:07:57 +0100 Subject: [THS] Psywar: Managing Public Perception Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107140718.045da488@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26430.htm [video] Managing Public Perception Psywar The real battlefield is your mind How did the land of the free and the home of the brave arrive at a place where citizens could be manipulated with such efficiency and on such a massive scale? Includes original interviews with a number of dissident scholars including Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Peter Phillips (?Project Censored?), John Stauber (?PR Watch?), Christopher Simpson (?The Science of Coercion?) and others. http://metanoia-films.org/ From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 14:32:34 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:32:34 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!!!! Noam Chomsky: Can Revolutionary Pacificism Deliver Peace? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107141128.06ab1420@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29639.htm Can Revolutionary Pacificism Deliver Peace? By Noam Chomsky Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Noam Chomsky has been awarded this year?s Sydney Peace Prize, Australia?s only international peace prize. This is a full transcript of Professor Chomsky?s City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture, ?Revolutionary Pacifism: Choices and Prospects?, reproduced with permission from the Sydney Peace Foundation. November 06, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- As we all know, the United Nations was founded "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." The words can only elicit deep regret when we consider how we have acted to fulfill that aspiration, though there have been a few significant successes, notably in Europe. For centuries, Europe had been the most violent place on earth, with murderous and destructive internal conflicts and the forging of a culture of war that enabled Europe to conquer most of the world, shocking the victims, who were hardly pacifists, but were "appalled by the all-destructive fury of European warfare," in the words of British military historian Geoffrey Parker. And enabled Europe to impose on its conquests what Adam Smith called "the savage injustice of the Europeans," England in the lead, as he did not fail to emphasise. The global conquest took a particularly horrifying form in what is sometimes called "the Anglosphere," England and its offshoots, settler-colonial societies in which the indigenous societies were devastated and their people dispersed or exterminated. But since 1945 Europe has become internally the most peaceful and in many ways most humane region of the earth ? which is the source of some its current travail, an important topic that I will have to put aside. In scholarship, this dramatic transition is often attributed to the thesis of the "democratic peace": democracies do not go to war with one another. Not to be overlooked, however, is that Europeans came to realize that the next time they indulge in their favorite pastime of slaughtering one another, the game will be over: civilisation has developed means of destruction that can only be used against those too weak to retaliate in kind, a large part of the appalling history of the post-World War II years. It is not that the threat has ended. US-Soviet confrontations came painfully close to virtually terminal nuclear war in ways that are shattering to contemplate, when we inspect them closely. And the threat of nuclear war remains all too ominously alive, a matter to which I will briefly return. Can we proceed to at least limit the scourge of war? One answer is given by absolute pacifists, including people I respect though I have never felt able to go beyond that. A somewhat more persuasive stand, I think, is that of the pacifist thinker and social activist A.J. Muste, one of the great figures of 20th century America, in my opinion: what he called "revolutionary pacifism." Muste disdained the search for peace without justice. He urged that "one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist" ? by which he meant that we must cease to "acquiesce [so] easily in evil conditions," and must deal "honestly and adequately with this ninety percent of our problem" ? "the violence on which the present system is based, and all the evil ? material and spiritual ? this entails for the masses of men throughout the world." Unless we do so, he argued, "there is something ludicrous, and perhaps hypocritical, about our concern over the ten per cent of the violence employed by the rebels against oppression" ? no matter how hideous they may be. He was confronting the hardest problem of the day for a pacifist, the question whether to take part in the anti-fascist war. In writing about Muste's stand 45 years ago, I quoted his warning that "The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will teach him a lesson?" His observation was all too apt at the time, while the Indochina wars were raging. And on all too many other occasions since. The allies did not fight "the good war," as it is commonly called, because of the awful crimes of fascism. Before their attacks on western powers, fascists were treated rather sympathetically, particularly "that admirable Italian gentleman," as FDR called Mussolini. Even Hitler was regarded by the US State Department as a "moderate" holding off the extremists of right and left. The British were even more sympathetic, particularly the business world. Roosevelt's close confidant Sumner Welles reported to the president that the Munich settlement that dismembered Czechoslovakia "presented the opportunity for the establishment by the nations of the world of a new world order based upon justice and upon law," in which the Nazi moderates would play a leading role. As late as April 1941, the influential statesman George Kennan, at the dovish extreme of the postwar planning spectrum, wrote from his consular post in Berlin that German leaders have no wish to "see other people suffer under German rule," are "most anxious that their new subjects should be happy in their care," and are making "important compromises" to assure this benign outcome. Though by then the horrendous facts of the Holocaust were well known, they scarcely entered the Nuremberg trials, which focused on aggression, "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole": in Indochina, Iraq, and all too many other places where we have much to contemplate. The horrifying crimes of Japanese fascism were virtually ignored in the postwar peace settlements. Japan's aggression began exactly 80 years ago, with the staged Mukden incident, but for the West, it began 10 years later, with the attack on military bases in two US possessions. India and other major Asian countries refused even to attend the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty conference because of the exclusion of Japan's crimes in Asia ? and also because of Washington's establishment of a major military base in conquered Okiniwa, still there despite the energetic protests of the population. It is useful to reflect on several aspects of the Pearl Harbor attack. One is the reaction of historian and Kennedy advisor Arthur Schlesinger to the bombing of Baghdad in March 2003. He recalled FDR's words when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on "a date which will live in infamy." "Today it is we Americans who live in infamy," Schlesinger wrote, as our government adopts the policies of imperial Japan ? thoughts that were barely articulated elsewhere in the mainstream, and quickly suppressed: I could find no mention of this principled stand in the praise for Schlesinger's accomplishments when he died a few years later. We can also learn a lot about ourselves by carrying Schlesinger's lament a few steps further. By today's standards, Japan's attack was justified, indeed meritorious. Japan, after all, was exercising the much lauded doctrine of anticipatory self-defense when it bombed military bases in Hawaii and the Philippines, two virtual US colonies, with reasons far more compelling than anything that Bush and Blair could conjure up when they adopted the policies of imperial Japan in 2003. Japanese leaders were well aware that B-17 Flying Fortresses were coming off the Boeing production lines, and they could read in the American press that these killing machines would be able to burn down Tokyo, a "city of rice-paper and wood houses." A November 1940 plan to "bomb Tokyo and other big cities" was enthusiastically received by Secretary of State Cordell Hull. FDR was "simply delighted" at the plans "to burn out the industrial heart of the Empire with fire-bomb attacks on the teeming bamboo ant heaps of Honshu and Kyushu," outlined by their author, Air Force General Chennault. By July 1941, the Air Corps was ferrying B-17s to the Far East for this purpose, assigning half of all the big bombers to this region, taking them from the Atlantic sea-lanes. They were to be used if needed "to set the paper cities of Japan on fire," according to General George Marshall, Roosevelt's main military adviser, in a press briefing three weeks before Pearl Harbor. Four days later, New York Times senior correspondent Arthur Krock reported US plans to bomb Japan from Siberian and Philippine bases, to which the Air Force was rushing incendiary bombs intended for civilian targets. The US knew from decoded messages that Japan was aware of these plans. History provides ample evidence to support Muste's conclusion that "The problem after a war is with the victor, [who] thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay." And the real answer to Muste's question, "Who will teach him a lesson?," can only be domestic populations, if they can adopt elementary moral principles. Even the most uncontroversial of these principles could have a major impact on ending injustice and war. Consider the principle of universality, perhaps the most elementary of moral principles: we apply to ourselves the standards we apply to others, if not more stringent ones. The principle is universal, or nearly so, in three further respects: it is found in some form in every moral code; it is universally applauded in words, and consistently rejected in practice. The facts are plain, and should be troublesome. The principle has a simple corollary, which suffers the same fate: we should distribute finite energies to the extent that we can influence outcomes, typically on cases for which we share responsibility. We take that for granted with regard to enemies. No one cares whether Iranian intellectuals join the ruling clerics in condemnation of the crimes of Israel or the United States. Rather, we ask what they say about their own state. We honored Soviet dissidents on the same grounds. Of course, that is not the reaction within their own societies. There dissidents are condemned as "anti-Soviet" or supporters of the Great Satan, much as their counterparts here are condemned as "anti-American" or supporters of today's official enemy. And of course, punishment of those who adhere to elementary moral principles can be severe, depending on the nature of the society. In Soviet-run Czechoslovakia, for example, Vaclav Havel was imprisoned. At the same time, in US-run El Salvador his counterparts had their brains blown out by an elite battalion fresh from renewed training at the John F. Kennedy School of Special Warfare in North Carolina, acting on explicit orders of the High Command, which had intimate relations with Washington. We all know and respect Havel for his courageous resistance, but who can even name the leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, who were added to the long bloody trail of the Atlacatl brigade shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall ? along with their housekeeper and daughter, since the orders were to leave no witnesses? Before we hear that these are exceptions, we might recall a truism of Latin American scholarship, reiterated by historian John Coatsworth in the recently published Cambridge University History of the Cold War: from 1960 to "the Soviet collapse in 1990, the numbers of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of nonviolent political dissenters in Latin America vastly exceeded those in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites." Among the executed were many religious martyrs, and there were mass slaughters as well, consistently supported or initiated by Washington. And the date 1960 is highly significant, for reasons we should all know, but I cannot go into here. In the West all of this is "disappeared," to borrow the terminology of our Latin American victims. Regrettably, these are persistent features of intellectual and moral culture, which we can trace back to the earliest recorded history. I think they richly underscore Muste's injunction. If we ever hope to live up to the high ideals we passionately proclaim, and to bring the initial dream of the United Nations closer to fulfillment, we should think carefully about crucial choices that have been made, and continue to be made every day ? not forgetting "the violence on which the present system is based, and all the evil ? material and spiritual ? this entails for the masses of men throughout the world." Among these masses are 6 million children who die every year because of lack of simple medical procedures that the rich countries could make available within statistical error in their budgets. And a billion people on the edge of starvation or worse, but not beyond reach by any means. We should also never forget that our wealth derives in no small measure from the tragedy of others. That is dramatically clear in the Anglosphere. I live in a comfortable suburb of Boston. Those who once lived there were victims of "the utter extirpation of all the Indians in most populous parts of the Union" by means "more destructive to the Indian natives than the conduct of the conquerors of Mexico and Peru" ? the verdict of the first Secretary of War of the newly liberated colonies, General Henry Knox. They suffered the fate of "that hapless race of native Americans, which we are exterminating with such merciless and perfidious cruelty among the heinous sins of this nation, for which I believe God will one day bring [it] to judgement" ? the words of the great grand strategist John Quincy Adams, intellectual author of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine, long after his own substantial contributions to these heinous sins. Australians should have no trouble adding illustrations. Whatever the ultimate judgment of God may be, the judgment of man is far from Adams's expectations. To mention a few recent cases, consider what I suppose are the two most highly regarded left-liberal intellectual journals in the Anglosphere, the New York and London Reviews of Books. In the former, a prominent commentator recently reported what he learned from the work of the "heroic historian" Edmund Morgan: namely, that when Columbus and the early explorers arrived they "found a continental vastness sparsely populated by farming and hunting people . In the limitless and unspoiled world stretching from tropical jungle to the frozen north, there may have been scarcely more than a million inhabitants." The calculation is off by tens of millions, and the "vastness" included advanced civilizations, facts well known to those who choose to know decades ago. No letters appeared reacting to this truly colossal case of genocide denial. In the companion London journal a noted historian casually mentioned the "mistreatment of the Native Americans," again eliciting no comment. We would hardly accept the word "mistreatment" for comparable or even much lesser crimes committed by enemies. Recognition of heinous crimes from which we benefit enormously would be a good start after centuries of denial, but we can go on from there. One of the main tribes where I live was the Wampanoag, who still have a small reservation not too far away. Their language has long ago disappeared. But in a remarkable feat of scholarship and dedication to elementary human rights, the language has been reconstructed from missionary texts and comparative evidence, and now has its first native speaker in 100 years, the daughter of Jennie Little Doe, who has become a fluent speaker of the language herself. She is a former graduate student at MIT, who worked with my late friend and colleague Kenneth Hale, one of the most outstanding linguists of the modern period. Among his many accomplishments was his leading role in founding the study of aboriginal languages of Australia. He was also very effective in defense of the rights of indigenous people, also a dedicated peace and justice activist. He was able to turn our department at MIT into a center for the study of indigenous languages and active defense of indigenous rights in the Americas and beyond. Revival of the Wampanoag language has revitalized the tribe. A language is more than just sounds and words. It is the repository of culture, history, traditions, the entire rich texture of human life and society. Loss of a language is a serious blow not only to the community itself but to all of those who hope to understand something of the nature of human beings, their capacities and achievements, and of course a loss of particular severity to those concerned with the variety and uniformity of human languages, a core component of human higher mental faculties. Similar achievements can be carried forward, a very partial but significant gesture towards repentance for heinous sins on which our wealth and power rests. Since we commemorate anniversaries, such as the Japanese attacks 70 years ago, there are several significant ones that fall right about now, with lessons that can serve for both enlightenment and action. I will mention just a few. The West has just commemorated the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and what was called at the time, but no longer, "the glorious invasion" of Afghanistan that followed, soon to be followed by the even more glorious invasion of Iraq. Partial closure for 9/11 was reached with the assassination of the prime suspect, Osama bin Laden, by US commandos who invaded Pakistan, apprehended him and then murdered him, disposing of the corpse without autopsy. I said "prime suspect," recalling the ancient though long-abandoned doctrine of "presumption of innocence." The current issue of the major US scholarly journal of international relations features several discussions of the Nuremberg trials of some of history's worst criminals. There we read that the "U.S. decision to prosecute, rather than seek brutal vengeance was a victory for the American tradition of rights and a particularly American brand of legalism: punishment only for those who could be proved to be guilty through a fair trial with a panoply of procedural protections." The journal appeared right at the time of the celebration of the abandonment of this principle in a dramatic way, while the global campaign of assassination of suspects, and inevitable "collateral damage," continues to be expanded, to much acclaim. Not to be sure universal acclaim. Pakistan's leading daily recently published a study of the effect of drone attacks and other US terror. It found that "About 80 per cent [of] residents of [the tribal regions] South and North Waziristan agencies have been affected mentally while 60 per cent people of Peshawar are nearing to become psychological patients if these problems are not addressed immediately," and warned that the "survival of our young generation" is at stake. In part for these reasons, hatred of America had already risen to phenomenal heights, and after the bin Laden assassination increased still more. One consequence was firing across the border at the bases of the US occupying army in Afghanistan ? which provoked sharp condemnation of Pakistan for its failure to cooperate in an American war that Pakistanis overwhelmingly oppose, taking the same stand they did when the Russians occupied Afghanistan. A stand then lauded, now condemned. The specialist literature and even the US Embassy in Islamabad warn that the pressures on Pakistan to take part in the US invasion, as well as US attacks in Pakistan, are "destabilizing and radicalizing Pakistan, risking a geopolitical catastrophe for the United States ? and the world ? which would dwarf anything that could possibly occur in Afghanistan" ? quoting British military/Pakistan analyst Anatol Lieven. The assassination of bin Laden greatly heightened this risk in ways that were ignored in the general enthusiasm for assassination of suspects. The US commandos were under orders to fight their way out if necessary. They would surely have had air cover, maybe more, in which case there might have been a major confrontation with the Pakistani army, the only stable institution in Pakistan, and deeply committed to defending Pakistan's sovereignty. Pakistan has a huge nuclear arsenal, the most rapidly expanding in the world. And the whole system is laced with radical Islamists, products of the strong US-Saudi support for the worst of Pakistan's dictators, Zia ul-Haq, and his program of radical Islamization. This program along with Pakistan's nuclear weapons are among Ronald Reagan's legacies. Obama has now added the risk of nuclear explosions in London and New York, if the confrontation had led to leakage of nuclear materials to jihadis, as was plausibly feared ? one of the many examples of the constant threat of nuclear weapons. The assassination of bin Laden had a name: "Operation Geronimo." That caused an uproar in Mexico, and was protested by the remnants of the indigenous population in the US. But elsewhere few seemed to comprehend the significance of identifying bin Laden with the heroic Apache Indian chief who led the resistance to the invaders, seeking to protect his people from the fate of "that hapless race" that John Quincy Adams eloquently described. The imperial mentality is so profound that such matters cannot even be perceived. There were a few criticisms of Operation Geronimo ? the name, the manner of its execution, and the implications. These elicited the usual furious condemnations, most unworthy of comment, though some were instructive. The most interesting was by the respected left-liberal commentator Matthew Yglesias. He patiently explained that "one of the main functions of the international institutional order is precisely to legitimate the use of deadly military force by western powers," so it is "amazingly na?ve" to suggest that the US should obey international law or other conditions that we impose on the powerless. The words are not criticism, but applause; hence one can raise only tactical objections if the US invades other countries, murders and destroys with abandon, assassinates suspects at will, and otherwise fulfills its obligations in the service of mankind. If the traditional victims see matters somewhat differently, that merely reveals their moral and intellectual backwardness. And the occasional Western critic who fails to comprehend these fundamental truths can be dismissed as "silly," Yglesias explains ? incidentally, referring specifically to me, and I cheerfully confess my guilt. Going back a decade to 2001, from the first moment it was clear that the "glorious invasion" was anything but that. It was undertaken with the understanding that it might drive several million Afghans over the edge of starvation, which is why the bombing was bitterly condemned by the aid agencies that were forced to end the operations on which 5 million Afghans depended for survival. Fortunately the worst did not happen, but only the most morally obtuse can fail to comprehend that actions are evaluated in terms of likely consequences, not actual ones. The invasion of Afganistan was not aimed at overthrowing the brutal Taliban regime, as later claimed. That was an afterthought, brought up three weeks after the bombing began. Its explicit reason was that the Taliban were unwilling to extradite bin Laden without evidence, which the US refused to provide ? as later learned, because it had virtually none, and in fact still has little that could stand up in an independent court of law, though his responsibility is hardly in doubt. The Taliban did in fact make some gestures towards extradition, and we since have learned that there were other such options, but they were all dismissed in favor of violence, which has since torn the country to shreds. It has reached its highest level in a decade this year according to the UN, with no diminution in sight. A very serious question, rarely asked then or since, is whether there was an alternative to violence. There is strong evidence that there was. The 9/11 attack was sharply condemned within the jihadi movement, and there were good opportunities to split it and isolate al-Qaeda. Instead, Washington and London chose to follow the script provided by bin Laden, helping to establish his claim that the West is attacking Islam, and thus provoking new waves of terror. The senior CIA analyst responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden from 1996, Michael Scheuer, warned right away and has repeated since that "the United States of America remains bin Laden's only indispensable ally." These are among the natural consequences of rejecting Muste's warning, and the main thrust of his revolutionary pacifism, which should direct us to investigating the grievances that lead to violence, and when they are legitimate, as they often are, to address them. When that advice is taken, it can succeed very well. Britain's recent experience in Northern Ireland is a good illustration. For years, London responded to IRA terror with greater violence, escalating the cycle, which reached a bitter peak. When the government began instead to attend to the grievances, violence subsided and terror has effectively disappeared. I was in Belfast in 1993, when it was a war zone, and returned a year ago to a city with tensions, but hardly beyond the norm. There is a great deal more to say about what we call 9/11 and its consequences, but I do not want to end without at least mentioning a few more anniversaries. Right now happens to be the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's decision to escalate the conflict in South Vietnam from vicious repression, which had already killed tens of thousands of people and finally elicited a reaction that the client regime in Saigon could not control, to outright US invasion: bombing by the US Air Force, use of napalm, chemical warfare soon including crop destruction to deprive the resistance of food, and programs to send millions of South Vietnamese to virtual concentration camps where they could be "protected" from the guerrillas who, admittedly, they were supporting. There is no time to review the grim aftermath, and there should be no need to do so. The wars left three countries devastated, with a toll of many millions, not including the miserable victims of the enormous chemical warfare assault, including newborn infants today. There were a few at the margins who objected ? "wild men in the wings," as they were termed by Kennedy-Johnson National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, former Harvard Dean. And by the time that the very survival of South Vietnam was in doubt, popular protest became quite strong. At the war's end in 1975, about 70% of the population regarded the war as "fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake," figures that were sustained as long as the question was asked in polls. In revealing contrast, at the dissident extreme of mainstream commentary the war was "a mistake" because our noble objectives could not be achieved at a tolerable cost. Another anniversary that should be in our minds today is of the massacre in the Santa Cruz graveyard in Dili just 20 years ago, the most publicized of a great many shocking atrocities during the Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor. Australia had joined the US in granting formal recognition to the Indonesian occupation, after its virtually genocidal invasion. The US State Department explained to Congress in 1982 that Washington recognized both the Indonesian occupation and the Khmer Rouge-based "Democratic Kampuchea" regime. The justification offered was that "unquestionably" the Khmer Rouge were "more representative of the Cambodian people than Fretilin was of the Timorese people" because "there has been this continuity [in Cambodia] since the very beginning," in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took over. The media and commentators have been polite enough to all this languish in silence, not an inconsiderable feat. A few months before the Santa Cruz massacre, Foreign Minister Gareth Evans made his famous statements dismissing concerns about the murderous invasion and annexation on the grounds that "the world is a pretty unfair place, littered with examples of acquisitions of force," so we can therefore look away as awesome crimes continue with strong support by the western powers. Not quite look away, because at the same time Evans was negotiating the robbery of East Timor's sole resource with his comrade Ali Alatas, foreign minister of Indonesia, producing what seems to be the only official western document that recognizes East Timor as an Indonesian province. Years later, Evans declared that "the notion that we had anything to answer for morally or otherwise over the way we handled the Indonesia-East Timor relationship, I absolutely reject" ? a stance that can be adopted, and even respected, by those who emerge victorious. In the US and Britain, the question is not even asked in polite society. It is only fair to add that in sharp contrast, much of the Australian population, and media, were in the forefront of exposing and protesting the crimes, some of the worst of the past half-century. And in 1999, when the crimes were escalating once again, they had a significant role in convincing US president Clinton to inform the Indonesian generals in September that the game was over, at which point they immediately withdrew allowing an Australian-led peacekeeping force to enter. There are lessons here too, for the public. Clinton's orders could have been delivered at any time in the preceding 25 years, terminating the crimes. Clinton himself could easily have delivered them four years earlier, in October 2005, when General Suharto was welcomed to Washington as "our kind of guy." The same orders could have been given 20 years earlier, when Henry Kissinger gave the "green light" to the Indonesian invasion, and UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan expressed his pride in having rendered the United Nations "utterly ineffective" in any measures to deter the Indonesian invasion ? later to be revered for his courageous defense of international law. There could hardly be a more painful illustration of the consequences of the failure to attend to Muste's lesson. It should be added that in a shameful display of subordination to power, some respected western intellectuals have actually sunk to describing this disgraceful record as a stellar illustration of the humanitarian norm of "right to protect." Consistent with Muste's "revolutionary pacifism," the Sydney Peace Foundation has always emphasized peace with justice. The demands of justice can remain unfulfilled long after peace has been declared. The Santa Cruz massacre 20 years ago can serve as an illustration. One year after the massacre the United Nations adopted The Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, which states that "Acts constituting enforced disappearance shall be considered a continuing offence as long as the perpetrators continue to conceal the fate and the whereabouts of persons who have disappeared and these facts remain unclarified." The massacre is therefore a continuing offence: the fate of the disappeared is unknown, and the offenders have not been brought to justice, including those who continue to conceal the crimes of complicity and participation. Only one indication of how far we must go to rise to some respectable level of civilised behaviour. On Wednesday 2nd November, Prof Chomsky delivered the City of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture. Welcomed to the stage by a standing ovation, the 2000-strong crowd were eager to show their appreciation to Prof Chomsky, whose life's work as a challenger of unjust power has lent influence and inspiration to activists world wide. From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 14:38:06 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:38:06 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?_LeMONDE=3A_De_l=27ambigu=EFt=E9_d=27=EAtre_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=22_juif_=22_=2E=2E=2E?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107143652.045fac48@mail.messagingengine.com> Le Monde Lettre du Proche-Orient by Laurent Zecchini De l'ambigu?t? d'?tre " juif "... Est-il un dangereux terroriste qui cherche ? ?branler le socle sur lequel repose Isra?l, son juda?sme ? Epingler ainsi cet ?crivain isra?lien r?compens? de moult prix litt?raires, auteur de plus de vingt-cinq ouvrages traduits dans une quinzaine de langues, qui a fait de l'identit? juive la trame de son oeuvre et qui, d'ancien combattant de la guerre de 1948, est devenu un militant pour la paix entre Juifs et Palestiniens, quel soup?on iconoclaste ! Pourtant, ? croiser le regard ironique de cet homme de 81 ans, au cours d'une conversation dans son appartement de Tel-Aviv, on sent bien qu'il ne d?pla?t pas ? Yoram Kaniuk de jouer les boutefeux. Tout est de la faute de son petit-fils, Omri, qui un jour lui a dit : " Grand-p?re, pourquoi tu n'es pas comme moi ? " La femme de l'?crivain ?tant chr?tienne, sa fille n'est pas juive, et Omri, selon la loi rabbinique, ne l'est point ; il est m?me officiellement enregistr? comme " sans religion " sur les registres d'?tat civil. Alors Yoram Kaniuk, qui a " toujours aim? la religion juive, comme une m?moire, une culture, une histoire ", mais qui ne croit pas en Dieu, s'est mis en t?te de devenir lui aussi " sans religion ", par " solidari t? " avec Omri. Le minist?re de l'int?rieur l'a ?conduit : pas question de remplacer la mentio n " religion juive " par celle d'" Isra? lien ". S' il voulait " changer de religion ", il devait exciper d'un certificat de conversion ? une autre religion. Mais Yoram Kaniuk ne voulait pas de religion du tout. Son obstination a ?t? payante : le mois dernier, le tribunal de Tel-Aviv lui a donn? raison. Il est devenu " sans religion ", parce que, a dit le juge Gideon Ginat, " la religion est une libert? d?riv?e du droit ? la dignit? humaine ". Ce jugement historique a galvanis? plusieurs centaines d'Isra?liens ulc?r?s par un juda?sme perverti par son identification ? l'Etat. " Pour moi, c'?tait une question de principe, insiste l'auteur de 1948, je voulais vivre dans un pays o? la religion est un choix. Or elle est un dogme. Et on ne peut accepter qu'une d?mocratie soit gouvern?e par un dogme, sinon cela m?ne ? l'Iran ou ? l'Arabie saoudite. " Il va de soi que le parti ultraorthodoxe Shass, qui contr?le le minist?re de l'int?rieur, voit dans ce jugement une tr?s inqui?tante bo?te de Pandore, et dans Yoram Kaniuk un dangereux trublion. D'autant que celui-ci pose la question quasi sacril?ge du " Qu'est-ce qu'?tre juif ? ". Jamais cette interrogation existentielle ne s'est pos?e avec une telle acuit? dans un pays o? le camp la?que se sent assi?g? par les " religieux ". Pour Kaniuk, la r?ponse est claire : " On doit pouvoi r ?tre juif sans ?tre de religion juive ", autrement dit l'identit? juive ne se confond pas avec la religion juive. Seulement, en Isra?l, ce ne sont pas les juges ou les intellectuels qui influencent la " halacha ", la loi juive, ce sont les rabbins. Et, parmi eux, les ultraorthodoxes, qui exercent, selon l'?crivain, " une v?ritable dictature sur le rabbinat ", faisant du juda?sme " un racisme rabbinique ". Le monopole exerc? par les craignant-Dieu (" haredim "), qui se traduit par des pr?ceptes rigoristes s'agissant du mariage, du divorce et des enterrements, provoque un d?but de fronde. A tel point qu'un nombre croissant de juifs pratiquants optent pour des mariages priv?s, afin de s'affranchir de la tutelle d'un rabbinat qui dispose de puissants relais politiques, notamment ? la Knesset. Le Parlement isra?lien devra bient?t se prononcer sur la d?finition officielle d'Isra?l. L'" Etat juif et d?mocratique " dispara?trait au profit de l'" Etat du peuple juif ". Certes, un codicille pr?ciserait qu'Isra? l " a un r?gime d?mocratique ", mais les priori t?s sont nettes : juif d'abord, d?mocratique en sus. Tout cela conforte la d?marche du premier ministre isra?lien, Benyamin N?tanyahou, qui demande aux Palestiniens de reconna?tre Isra?l comm e " Etat juif ". L'?cr ivain Sari Nusseibeh, pr?sident de l'universit? palestinienne Al-Qods, souligne lui aussi l'ambigu?t? du terme " juif ", lequel s'applique ? l'ancienne race des Isra?lites et ? leurs descendants, tout autant qu'? ceux qui pratiquent la religion du juda?sme. Reconna?tre ? Isra?l la qualit? d'" Etat juif " , souligne-t-il, implique qu'il devienne soit une th?ocratie, soit un Etat de l'apartheid, et, dans les deux cas, il cesse d'?tre une d?mocratie. C'est pour cela que Yoram Kaniuk, auteur du livre culte Le Dernier Juif, pr?f?re ?tre " sans religion ". Laurent Zecchini lzecchini at lemonde.fr ? Le Monde From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 14:41:06 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:41:06 +0100 Subject: [THS] The right to dual-boot: Linux groups plead case prior to Windows 8 launch Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107143949.03f9cd10@mail.messagingengine.com> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/10/the-right-to-dual-boot-linux-groups-plead-case-prior-to-windows-8-launch.ars The right to dual-boot: Linux groups plead case prior to Windows 8 launch [ link] With Windows 8 PCs expected to ship with a more secure boot system that may prevent installation of Linux operating systems, Linux groups have laid out a set of recommendations to hardware vendors to preserve the right to install Linux. To get a ?Designed for Windows 8? logo, PCs must ship with UEFI secure boot enabled, preventing the booting of operating systems that aren?t signed by a trusted Certificate Authority. Hardware vendors can provide the option to turn secure boot off, but Linux groups want them to go further: Windows 8 machines should ship in a setup mode giving users more control right off the bat, they argue. Red Hat and Canonical argue that not doing so could restrict "use of unsigned software to a small portion of the market.? Still, Linux is already restricted to a small portion of the market, and hardware vendors are concerned about giving the majority of users a clean out-of-the-box experience. From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 14:05:28 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:05:28 +0100 Subject: [THS] Engineering Consent For Attack On Iran Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107140411.045da488@mail.messagingengine.com> Engineering Consent For Attack On Iran IAEA: Iran Had Model of Nuclear Warhead By Associated Press The UN atomic agency plans to reveal intelligence this week suggesting Iran made computer models of a nuclear warhead and other previously undisclosed details on alleged secret work by Tehran on nuclear arms. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29636.htm === Iran to IAEA: Go Ahead and Publish 'Counterfeit' Report By Farhad Pouladi "I believe that these documents lack authenticity. But if they insist, they should go ahead and publish. Better to face danger once than be always in danger," http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29635.htm === Engineering Consent For Attack On Iran An Inside Look at the (Alleged) Base where Iran is Developing Nuclear Weapons By Yossi Melman According to recent leaks, Iran has carried out experiments in the final, critical stage for developing nuclear weapons - weaponization. This includes explosions and computer simulations of explosions. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29634.htm === Israel Set to Attack Over Iran Nuclear Risk By The Australian ISRAELI President Shimon Peres has warned that an attack on Iran was "more and more likely," ahead of tomorrow's release of a report by the UN nuclear watchdog, which is expected to say Tehran has tested nuclear triggering technology and modified ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29637.htm From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 14:10:43 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:10:43 +0100 Subject: [THS] Eugene Debs: What Humbug! What Rot! What False Pretense! Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107141018.045da0b0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29638.htm What Humbug! What Rot! What False Pretense! The following are excerpts taken from Eugene Debs, Anti-War Speech given at Canton, Ohio June 16, 1918 - Full transcript below By Eugene Debs "They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. This is too much, even for a joke. But it is not a subject for levity; it is an exceedingly serious matter. " "These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United Sates. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that ?patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.? He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people." "Every solitary one of these aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These autocrats, these tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the ?patriots,? while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims?they are the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight. " "The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another?s throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose?especially their lives." "The working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why; Yours but to do and die. That is their motto and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation. If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace. " "It is the minorities who have made the history of this world. It is the few who have had the courage to take their places at the front; who have been true enough to themselves to speak the truth that was in them; who have dared oppose the established order of things; who have espoused the cause of the suffering, struggling poor; who have upheld without regard to personal consequences the cause of freedom and righteousness. It is they, the heroic, self-sacrificing few who have made the history of the race and who have paved the way from barbarism to civilization. The many prefer to remain upon the popular side. They lack the courage and vision to join a despised minority that stands for a principle; they have not the moral fiber that withstands, endures and finally conquers. They are to be pitied and not treated with contempt for they cannot help their cowardice. But, thank God, in every age and in every nation there have been the brave and self-reliant few, and they have been sufficient to their historic task; and we, who are here today, are under infinite obligations to them because they suffered, they sacrificed, they went to jail, they had their bones broken upon the wheel, they were burned at the stake and their ashes scattered to the winds by the hands of hate and revenge in their struggle to leave the world better for us than they found it for themselves." "You need to know that you belong to the great majority of mankind. You need to know that as long as you are ignorant, as long as you are indifferent, as long as you are apathetic, unorganized and content, you will remain exactly where you are. You will be exploited; you will be degraded, and you will have to beg for a job. You will get just enough for your slavish toil to keep you in working order, and you will be looked down upon with scorn and contempt by the very parasites that live and luxuriate out of your sweat and unpaid labor." "Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth." The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech By Eugene Debs June 16, 1918 - Comrades, friends and fellow-workers, for this very cordial greeting, this very hearty reception, I thank you all with the fullest appreciation of your interest in and your devotion to the cause for which I am to speak to you this afternoon. To speak for labor; to plead the cause of the men and women and children who toil; to serve the working class, has always been to me a high privilege; a duty of love. I have just returned from a visit over yonder, where three of our most loyal comrades are paying the penalty for their devotion to the cause of the working class. They have come to realize, as many of us have, that it is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world. I realize that, in speaking to you this afternoon, there are certain limitations placed upon the right of free speech. I must be exceedingly careful, prudent, as to what I say, and even more careful and prudent as to how I say it. I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything that I do not think. I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets. They may put those boys in jail?and some of the rest of us in jail?but they can not put the Socialist movement in jail. Those prison bars separate their bodies from ours, but their souls are here this afternoon. They are simply paying the penalty that all men have paid in all the ages of history for standing erect, and for seeking to pave the way to better conditions for mankind. If it had not been for the men and women who, in the past, have had the moral courage to go to jail, we would still be in the jungles. This assemblage is exceedingly good to look upon. I wish it were possible for me to give you what you are giving me this afternoon. What I say here amounts to but little; what I see here is exceedingly important. You workers in Ohio, enlisted in the greatest cause ever organized in the interest of your class, are making history today in the face of threatening opposition of all kinds?history that is going to be read with profound interest by coming generations. There is but one thing you have to be concerned about, and that is that you keep foursquare with the principles of the international Socialist movement. It is only when you begin to compromise that trouble begins. So far as I am concerned, it does not matter what others may say, or think, or do, as long as I am sure that I am right with myself and the cause. There are so many who seek refuge in the popular side of a great question. As a Socialist, I have long since learned how to stand alone. For the last month I have been traveling over the Hoosier State; and, let me say to you, that, in all my connection with the Socialist movement, I have never seen such meetings, such enthusiasm, such unity of purpose; never have I seen such a promising outlook as there is today, notwithstanding the statement published repeatedly that our leaders have deserted us. Well, for myself, I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses?you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks. When I came away from Indiana, the comrades said: ?When you cross the line and get over into the Buckeye State, tell the comrades there that we are on duty and doing duty. Give them for us, a hearty greeting, and tell them that we are going to make a record this fall that will be read around the world.? ?The Socialists of Ohio, it appears, are very much alive this year. The party has been killed recently, which, no doubt, accounts for its extraordinary activity. There is nothing that helps the Socialist Party so much as receiving an occasional deathblow. The oftener it is killed the more active, the more energetic, the more powerful it becomes. They who have been reading the capitalist newspapers realize what a capacity they have for lying. We have been reading them lately. They know all about the Socialist Party?the Socialist movement, except what is true. Only the other day they took an article that I had written?and most of you have read it?most of you members of the party, at least?and they made it appear that I had undergone a marvelous transformation. I had suddenly become changed?had in fact come to my senses; I had ceased to be a wicked Socialist, and had become a respectable Socialist , a patriotic Socialist?as if I had ever been anything else. What was the purpose of this deliberate misrepresentation? It is so self-evident that it suggests itself. The purpose was to sow the seeds of dissension in our ranks; to have it appear that we were divided among ourselves; that we were pitted against each other, to our mutual undoing. But Socialists were not born yesterday. They know how to read capitalist newspapers ; and to believe exactly the opposite of what they read. Why should a Socialist be discouraged on the eve of the greatest triumph in all the history of the Socialist movement? It is true that these are anxious, trying days for us all?testing days for the women and men who are upholding the banner of labor in the struggle of the working class of all the world against the exploiters of all the world; a time in which the weak and cowardly will falter and fail and desert. They lack the fiber to endure the revolutionary test; they fall away; they disappear as if they had never been. On the other hand, they who are animated by the unconquerable spirit of the social revolution; they who have the moral courage to stand erect and assert their convictions; stand by them; fight for them; go to jail or to hell for them, if need be ?they are writing their names, in this crucial hour?they are writing their names in faceless letters in the history of mankind. Those boys over yonder?those comrades of ours?and how I love them! Aye, they are my younger brothers ; their very names throb in my heart, thrill in my veins, and surge in my soul. I am proud of them; they are there for us; and we are here for them. Their lips, though temporarily mute, are more eloquent than ever before; and their voice, though silent, is heard around the world. Are we opposed to Prussian militarism? Why, we have been fighting it since the day the Socialist movement was born; and we are going to continue to fight it, day and night, until it is wiped from the face of the earth. Between us there is no truce?no compromise. But, before I proceed along this line, let me recall a little history, in which I think we are all interested. In 1869 that grand old warrior of the social revolution, the elder Liebknecht, was arrested and sentenced to prison for three months, because of his war, as a Socialist, on the Kaiser and on the Junkers that rule Germany. In the meantime the Franco-Prussian war broke out. Liebknecht and Bebel were the Socialist members in the Reichstag. They were the only two who had the courage to protest against taking Alsace-Lorraine from France and annexing it to Germany. And for this they were sentenced two years to a prison fortress charged with high treason; because, even in that early day, almost fifty years ago, these leaders, these forerunners of the international Socialist movement were fighting the Kaiser and fighting the Junkers of Germany. They have continued to fight them from that day to this. Multiplied thousands of Socialists have languished in the jails of Germany because of their heroic warfare upon the despotic ruling class of that country. Let us come down the line a little farther. You remember that, at the close of Theodore Roosevelt?s second term as President, he went over to Africa to make war on some of his ancestors. You remember that, at the close of his expedition, he visited the capitals of Europe; and that he was wined and dined, dignified and glorified by all the Kaisers and Czars and Emperors of the Old World. He visited Potsdam while the Kaiser was there; and, according to the accounts published in the American newspapers, he and the Kaiser were soon on the most familiar terms. They were hilariously intimate with each other, and slapped each other on the back. After Roosevelt had reviewed the Kaiser?s troops, according to the same accounts, he became enthusiastic over the Kaiser?s legions and said: ?If I had that kind of an army, I could conquer the world.? He knew the Kaiser then just as well as he knows him now. He knew that he was the Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin. And yet, he permitted himself to be entertained by that Beast of Berlin; had his feet under the mahogany of the Beast of Berlin; was cheek by jowl with the Beast of Berlin. And, while Roosevelt was being entertained royally by the German Kaiser, that same Kaiser was putting the leaders of the Socialist Party in jail for fighting the Kaiser and the Junkers of Germany. Roosevelt was the guest of honor in the white house of the Kaiser, while the Socialists were in the jails of the Kaiser for fighting the Kaiser. Who then was fighting for democracy? Roosevelt? Roosevelt, who was honored by the Kaiser, or the Socialists who were in jail by order of the Kaiser? ?Birds of a feather flock together.? When the newspapers reported that Kaiser Wilhelm and ax-President Theodore recognized each other at sight, were perfectly intimate with each other at the first touch, they made the admission that is fatal to the claim of Theodore Roosevelt, that he is the friend of the common people and the champion of democracy; they admitted that they were kith and kin; that they were very much alike; that their ideas and ideals were about the same. If Theodore Roosevelt is the great champion of democracy ?the arch foe of autocracy , what business had he as the guest of honor of the Prussian Kaiser? And when he met the Kaiser, and did honor to the Kaiser, under the terms imputed to him, wasn?t it pretty strong proof that he himself was a Kaiser at heart? Now, after being the guest of Emperor Wilhelm, the Beast of Berlin, he comes back to this country, and wants you to send ten million men over there to kill the Kaiser; to murder his former friend and pal. Rather queer, isn?t it? And yet, he is the patriot, and we are the traitors. I challenge you to find a Socialist anywhere on the face of the earth who was ever the guest of the Beast of Berlin , except as an inmate of his prison?the elder Liebknecht and the younger Liebknecht, the heroic son of his immortal sire. ?A little more history along the same line. In 1902 Prince Henry paid a visit to this country. Do you remember him? I do, exceedingly well. Prince Henry is the brother of Emperor Wilhelm. Prince Henry is another Beast of Berlin, an autocrat, an aristocrat, a Junker of Junkers?very much despised by our American patriots. He came over here in 1902 as the representative of Kaiser Wilhelm; he was received by Congress and by several state legislatures?among others, by the state legislature of Massachusetts, then in session. He was invited there by the capitalist captains of that so-called commonwealth. And when Prince Henry arrived, there was one member of that body who kept his self-respect, put on his hat, and as Henry, the Prince, walked in, that member of the body walked out. And that was James F. Carey, the Socialist member of that body. All the rest?all the rest of the representatives in the Massachusetts legislature?all, all of them?joined in doing honor, in the most servile spirit, to the high representative of the autocracy of Europe. And the only man who left that body, was a Socialist. And yet , and yet they have the hardihood to claim that they are fighting autocracy and that we are in the service of the German government. A little more history along the same line. I have a distinct recollection of it. It occurred fifteen years ago when Prince Henry came here. All of our plutocracy, all of the wealthy representatives living along Fifth Avenue?all, all of them?threw their palace doors wide open and received Prince Henry with open arms. But they were not satisfied with this; they got down and grovelled in the dust at his feet. Our plutocracy?women and men alike?vied with each other to lick the boots of Prince Henry, the brother and representative of the ?Beast of Berlin.? And still our plutocracy, our Junkers, would have us believe that all the Junkers are confined to Germany. It is precisely because we refuse to believe this that they brand us as disloyalists. They want our eyes focused on the Junkers in Berlin so that we will not see those within our own borders. I hate, I loathe, I despise Junkers and junkerdom. I have no earthly use for the Junkers of Germany, and not one particle more use for the Junkers in the United States. They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. This is too much, even for a joke. But it is not a subject for levity; it is an exceedingly serious matter. To whom do the Wall Street Junkers in our country marry their daughters? After they have wrung their countless millions from your sweat, your agony and your life?s blood, in a time of war as in a time of peace, they invest these untold millions in the purchase of titles of broken-down aristocrats, such as princes, dukes, counts and other parasites and no-accounts. Would they be satisfied to wed their daughters to honest workingmen? To real democrats? Oh, no! They scour the markets of Europe for vampires who are titled and nothing else. And they swap their millions for the titles, so that matrimony with them becomes literally a matter of money. These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United Sates. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that ?patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.? He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people. They would have you believe that the Socialist Party consists in the main of disloyalists and traitors. It is true in a sense not at all to their discredit. We frankly admit that we are disloyalists and traitors to the real traitors of this nation; to the gang that on the Pacific coast are trying to hang Tom Mooney and Warren Billings in spite of their well-known innocence and the protest of practically the whole civilized world. I know Tom Mooney intimately?as if he were my own brother. He is an absolutely honest man. He had no more to do with the crime with which he was charged and for which he was convicted than I had. And if he ought to go to the gallows, so ought I. If he is guilty every man who belongs to a labor organization or to the Socialist Party is likewise guilty. What is Tom Mooney guilty of? I will tell you. I am familiar with his record. For years he has been fighting bravely and without compromise the battles of the working class out on the Pacific coast. He refused to be bribed and he could not be browbeaten. In spite of all attempts to intimidate him he continued loyally in the service of the organized workers, and for this he became a marked man. The henchmen of the powerful and corrupt corporations, concluding finally that he could not be bought or bribed or bullied, decided he must therefore be murdered. That is why Tom Mooney is today a life prisoner, and why he would have been hanged as a felon long ago but for the world-wide protest of the working class. Let us review another bit of history. You remember Francis J. Heney, special investigator of the state of California, who was shot down in cold blood in the courtroom in San Francisco. You remember that dastardly crime, do you not? The United Railways, consisting of a lot of plutocrats and highbinders represented by the Chamber of Commerce, absolutely control the city of San Francisco. The city was and is their private reservation. Their will is the supreme law. Take your stand against them and question their authority, and you are doomed. They do not hesitate a moment to plot murder or any other crime to perpetuate their corrupt and enslaving regime. Tom Mooney was the chief representative of the working class they could not control. They own the railways; they control the great industries; they are the industrial masters and the political rulers of the people. From their decision there is no appeal. They are the autocrats of the Pacific coast?as cruel and infamous as any that ever ruled in Germany or any other country in the old world. When their rule became so corrupt that at last a grand jury indicted them and they were placed on trial, and Francis J. Heney was selected to assist in their prosecution, this gang, represented by the Chamber of Commerce; this gang of plutocrats, autocrats and highbinders, hired an assassin to shoot Heney down in the courtroom. Heney, however, happened to live through it. But that was not their fault. The same identical gang that hired the murderer to kill Heney also hired false witnesses to swear away the fife of Tom Mooney and, foiled in that, they have kept him in a foul prisonhole ever since. Every solitary one of these aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These autocrats, these tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the ?patriots,? while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims?they are the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight. The other day they sentenced Kate Richards O?Hare to the penitentiary for five years. Think of sentencing a woman to the penitentiary simply for talking. The United States, under plutocratic rule, is the only country that would send a woman to prison for five years for exercising the right of free speech. If this be treason, let them make the most of it. Let me review a bit of history in connection with this case. I have known Kate Richards O?Hare intimately for twenty years. I am familiar with her public record. Personally I know her as if she were my own sister. All who know Mrs. O?Hare know her to be a woman of unquestioned integrity.? And they also know that she is a woman of unimpeachable loyalty to the Socialist movement. When she went out into North Dakota to make her speech, followed by plain-clothes men in the service of the government intent upon effecting her arrest and securing her prosecution and conviction?when she went out there, it was with the full knowledge on her part that sooner or later these detectives would accomplish their purpose. She made her speech, and that speech was deliberately misrepresented for the purpose of securing her conviction. The only testimony against her was that of a hired witness. And when the farmers, the men and women who were in the audience she addressed?when they went to Bismarck where the trial was held to testify in her favor, to swear that she had not used the language she was charged with having used, the judge refused to allow them to go upon the stand. This would seem incredible to me if I had not had some experience of my own with federal courts. Who appoints our federal judges? The people? In all the history of the country, the working class have never named a federal judge. There are 121 of these judges and every solitary one holds his position, his tenure, through the influence and power of corporate capital. The corporations and trusts dictate their appointment. And when they go to the bench, they go, not to serve, the people, but to serve the interests that place them and keep them where they are. Why, the other day, by a vote of five to four?a kind of craps game?come seven, come ?leven ?they declared the child labor law unconstitutional?a law secured after twenty years of education and agitation on the part of all kinds of people. And yet, by a majority of one, the Supreme Court a body of corporation lawyers, with just one exception, wiped that law from the statute books, and this in our so-called democracy, so that we may continue to grind the flesh and blood and bones of puny little children into profits for the Junkers of Wall Street. And this in a country that boasts of fighting to make the world safe for democracy! The history of this country is being written in the blood of the childhood the industrial lords have murdered. These are not palatable truths to them. They do not like to hear them; and what is more they do not want you to hear them. And that is why they brand us as undesirable citizens , and as disloyalists and traitors. If we were actual traitors?traitors to the people and to their welfare and progress, we would be regarded as eminently respectable citizens of the republic; we would hold high office, have princely incomes, and ride in limousines; and we would be pointed out as the elect who have succeeded in life in honorable pursuit, and worthy of emulation by the youth of the land. It is precisely because we are disloyal to the traitors that we are loyal to the people of this nation. Scott Nearing! You have heard of Scott Nearing. He is the greatest teacher in the United States. He was in the University of Pennsylvania until the Board of Trustees, consisting of great capitalists, captains of industry, found that he was teaching sound economics to the students in his classes. This sealed his fate in that institution. They sneeringly charged?just as the same usurers, money-changers, pharisees, hypocrites charged the Judean Carpenter some twenty centuries ago?that he was a false teacher and that he was stirring up the people. The Man of Galilee, the Carpenter, the workingman who became the revolutionary agitator of his day soon found himself to be an undesirable citizen in the eyes of the ruling knaves and they had him crucified. And now their lineal descendants say of Scott Nearing, ?He is preaching false economics. We cannot crucify him as we did his elder brother but we can deprive him of employment and so cut off his income and starve him to death or into submission. We will not only discharge him but place his name upon the blacklist and make it impossible for him to earn a living. He is a dangerous man for he is teaching the truth and opening the eyes of the people.? And the truth, oh, the truth has always been unpalatable and intolerable to the class who live out of the sweat and misery of the working class. Max Eastman has been indicted and his paper suppressed, just as the papers with which I have been connected have all been suppressed. What a wonderful compliment they pay us! They are afraid that we may mislead and contaminate you. You are their wards; they are your guardians and they know what is best for you to read and hear and know. They are bound to see to it that our vicious doctrines do not reach your ears. And so in our great democracy, under our free institutions, they flatter our press by suppression; and they ignorantly imagine that they have silenced revolutionary propaganda in the United States. What an awful mistake they make for our benefit! As a matter of justice to them we should respond with resolutions of thanks and gratitude. Thousands of people who had never before heard of our papers are now inquiring for and insisting upon seeing them. They have succeeded only in arousing curiosity in our literature and propaganda. And woe to him who reads Socialist literature from curiosity! He is surely a goner. I have known of a thousand experiments but never one that failed. John M. Work! You know John, now on the editorial staff of the Milwaukee Leader! When I first knew him he was a lawyer out in Iowa. The capitalists out there became alarmed because of the rapid growth of the Socialist movement. So they said: ?We have to find some able fellow to fight this menace.? They concluded that John Work was the man for the job and they said to him: ?John, you are a bright young lawyer; you have a brilliant future before you. We want to engage you to find out all you can about socialism and then proceed to counteract its baneful effects and check its further growth.? John at once provided himself with Socialist literature and began his study of the red menace, with the result that after he had read and digested a few volumes he was a full-fledged Socialist and has been fighting for socialism ever since. ?How stupid and shortsighted the ruling class really is! Cupidity is stone blind. It has no vision. The greedy, profit-seeking exploiter cannot see beyond the end of his nose. He can see a chance for an ?opening?; he is cunning enough to know what graft is and where it is, and how it can be secured, but vision he has none?not the slightest. He knows nothing of the great throbbing world that spreads out in all directions. He has no capacity for literature; no appreciation of art; no soul for beauty. That is the penalty the parasites pay for the violation of the laws of life. The Rockefellers are blind. Every move they make in their game of greed but hastens their own doom. Every blow they strike at the Socialist movement reacts upon themselves. Every time they strike at us they hit themselves. It never fails. Every time they strangle a Socialist paper they add a thousand voices proclaiming the truth of the principles of socialism and the ideals of the Socialist movement. They help us in spite of themselves. Socialism is a growing idea; an expanding philosophy. It is spreading over the entire face of the earth: It is as vain to resist it as it would be to arrest the sunrise on the morrow. It is coming, coming, coming all along the line. Can you not see it? If not, I advise you to consult an oculist. There is certainly something the matter with your vision. It is the mightiest movement in the history of mankind. What a privilege to serve it! I have regretted a thousand times that I can do so little for the movement that has done so much for me. The little that I am, the little that I am hoping to be, I owe to the Socialist movement. It has given me my ideas and ideals; my principles and convictions, and I would not exchange one of them for all of Rockefeller?s bloodstained dollars. It has taught me how to serve?a lesson to me of priceless value. It has taught me the ecstasy in the handclasp of a comrade. It has enabled me to hold high communion with you, and made it possible for me to take my place side by side with you in the great struggle for the better day; to multiply myself over and over again, to thrill with a fresh-born manhood; to feel life truly worthwhile; to open new avenues of vision; to spread out glorious vistas; to know that I am kin to all that throbs; to be class-conscious, and to realize that, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color or sex, every man, every woman who toils, who renders useful service, every member of the working class without an exception, is my comrade, my brother and sister?and that to serve them and their cause is the highest duty of my life. And in their service I can feel myself expand; I can rise to the stature of a man and claim the right to a place on earth?a place where I can stand and strive to speed the day of industrial freedom and social justice. Yes, my comrades, my heart is attuned to yours. Aye, all our hearts now throb as one great heart responsive to the battle cry of the social revolution. Here, in this alert and inspiring assemblage our hearts are with the Bolsheviki of Russia. Those heroic men and women, those unconquerable comrades have by their incomparable valor and sacrifice added fresh luster to the fame of the international movement. Those Russian comrades of ours have made greater sacrifices, have suffered more, and have shed more heroic blood than any like number of men and women anywhere on earth; they have laid the foundation of the first real democracy that ever drew the breath of life in this world. And the very first act of the triumphant Russian revolution was to proclaim a state of peace with all mankind, coupled with a fervent moral appeal, not to kings, not to emperors, rulers or diplomats but to the people of all nations. Here we have the very breath of democracy, the quintessence of the dawning freedom. The Russian revolution proclaimed its glorious triumph in its ringing and inspiring appeal to the peoples of all the earth. In a humane and fraternal spirit new Russia, emancipated at last from the curse of the centuries, called upon all nations engaged in the frightful war, the Central Powers as well as the Allies, to send representatives to a conference to lay down terms of peace that should be just and lasting. Here was the supreme opportunity to strike the blow to make the world safe for democracy. Was there any response to that noble appeal that in some day to come will be written in letters of gold in the history of the world? Was there any response whatever to that appeal for universal peace? No, not the slightest attention was paid to it by the Christian nations engaged in the terrible slaughter. It has been charged that Lenin and Trotsky and the leaders of the revolution were treacherous, that they made a traitorous peace with Germany. Let us consider that proposition briefly. At the time of the revolution Russia had been three years in the war. Under the Czar she had lost more than four million of her ill-clad, poorly-equipped, half-starved soldiers, slain outright or disabled on the field of battle. She was absolutely bankrupt. Her soldiers were mainly without arms. This was what was bequeathed to the revolution by the Czar and his regime; and for this condition Lenin and Trotsky were not responsible, nor the Bolsheviki. For this appalling state of affairs the Czar and his rotten bureaucracy were solely responsible. When the Bolsheviki came into power and went through the archives they found and exposed the secret treaties?the treaties that were made between the Czar and the French government, the British government and the Italian government, proposing, after the victory was achieved, to dismember the German Empire and destroy the Central Powers. These treaties have never been denied nor repudiated. Very little has been said about them in the American press. I have a copy of these treaties, showing that the purpose of the Allies is exactly the purpose of the Central Powers, and that is the conquest and spoilation of the weaker nations that has always been the purpose of war. Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another?s throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose?especially their lives. They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. And here let me emphasize the fact?and it cannot be repeated too often?that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why; Yours but to do and die. That is their motto and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation. If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace. Rose Pastor Stokes! And when I mention her name I take off my hat. Here we have another heroic and inspiring comrade. She had her millions of dollars at command. Did her wealth restrain her an instant? On the contrary her supreme devotion to the cause outweighed all considerations of a financial or social nature. She went out boldly to plead the cause of the working class and they rewarded her high courage with a ten years? sentence to the penitentiary. Think of it! Ten years! What atrocious crime had she committed? What frightful things had she said? Let me answer candidly. She said nothing more than I have said here this afternoon. I want to admit?I want to admit without reservation that if Rose Pastor Stokes is guilty of crime, so am I. If she is guilty for the brave part she has taken in this testing time of human souls I would not be cowardly enough to plead my innocence. And if she ought to be sent to the penitentiary for ten years, so ought I without a doubt. What did Rose Pastor Stokes say? Why, she said that a government could not at the same time serve both the profiteers and the victims of the profiteers. Is it not true? Certainly it is and no one can successfully dispute it. Roosevelt said a thousand times more in the very same paper, the Kansas City Star. Roosevelt said vauntingly the other day that he would be heard if he went to jail. He knows very well that he is taking no risk of going to jail. He is shrewdly laying his wires for the Republican nomination in 1920 and he is an adept in making the appeal of the demagogue. He would do anything to discredit the Wilson administration that he may give himself and his party all credit. That is the only rivalry there is between the two old capitalist parties?the Republican Party and the Democratic Party?the political twins of the master class. They are not going to have any friction between them this fall. They are all patriots in this campaign, and they are going to combine to prevent the election of any disloyal Socialist. I have never heard anyone tell of any difference between these corrupt capitalist parties. Do you know of any? I certainly do not. The situation is that one is in and the other trying to break in, and that is substantially the only difference between them. Rose Pastor Stokes never uttered a word she did not have a legal, constitutional right to utter. But her message to the people, the message that stirred their thoughts and opened their eyes?that must be suppressed; her voice must be silenced. And so she was promptly subjected to a mock trial and sentenced to the penitentiary for ten years. Her conviction was a foregone conclusion. The trial of a Socialist in a capitalist court is at best a farcical affair. What ghost of a chance had she in a court with a packed jury and a corporation tool on the bench? Not the least in the world. And so she goes to the penitentiary for ten years if they carry out their brutal and disgraceful graceful program. For my part I do not think they will. In fact I feel sure they will not. If the war were over tomorrow the prison doors would open to our people. They simply mean to silence the voice of protest during the war. What a compliment it is to the Socialist movement to be thus persecuted for the sake of the truth! The truth alone will make the people free. And for this reason the truth must not be permitted to reach the people. The truth has always been dangerous to the rule of the rogue, the exploiter, the robber. So the truth must be ruthlessly suppressed. That is why they are trying to destroy the Socialist movement; and every time they strike a blow they add a thousand new voices to the hosts proclaiming that socialism is the hope of humanity and has come to emancipate the people from their final form of servitude. How good this sip of cool water from the hand of a comrade! It is as refreshing as if it were out on the desert waste. And how good it is to look into your glowing faces this afternoon! You are really good looking to me, I assure you. And I am glad there are so many of you. Your tribe has increased amazingly since first I came here. You used to be so few and far between. A few years ago when you struck a town the first thing you had to do was to see if you could locate a Socialist; and you were pretty lucky if you struck the trail of one before you left town. If he happened to be the only one and he is still living, he is now regarded as a pioneer and pathfinder; he holds a place of honor in your esteem, and he has lodgment in the hearts of all who have come after him. It is far different now. You can hardly throw a stone in the dark without hitting a Socialist. They are everywhere in increasing numbers; and what marvelous changes are taking place in the people! Some years ago I was to speak at Warren in this state. It happened to be at the time that President McKinley was assassinated. In common with all others I deplored that tragic event. There is not a Socialist who would have been guilty of that crime. We do not attack individuals. We do not seek to avenge ourselves upon those opposed to our faith. We have no fight with individuals as such. We are capable of pitying those who hate us. We do not hate them; we know better; we would freely give them a cup of water if they needed it. There is no room in our hearts for hate, except for the system, the social system in which it is possible for one man to amass a stupendous fortune doing nothing, while millions of others suffer and struggle and agonize and die for the bare necessities of existence. President McKinley, as I have said, had been assassinated. I was first to speak at Portsmouth, having been booked there some time before the assassination. Promptly the Christian ministers of Portsmouth met in special session and passed a resolution declaring that ?Debs, more than any other person, was responsible for the assassination of our beloved President.? It was due to the doctrine that Debs was preaching that this crime was committed, according to these patriotic parsons, and so this pious gentry, the followers of the meek and lowly Nazarene, concluded that I must not be permitted to enter the city. And they had the mayor issue an order to that effect. I went there soon after, however. I was to speak at Warren, where President McKinley?s double-cousin was postmaster. I went there and registered. I was soon afterward invited to leave the hotel. I was exceedingly undesirable that day. I was served with notice that the hall would not be opened and that I would not be permitted to speak. I sent back word to the mayor by the only Socialist left in town?and he only remained because they did not know he was there?I sent word to the mayor that I would speak in Warren that night, according to schedule, or I would leave there in a box for the return turn trip. The Grand Army of the Republic called a special meeting and then marched to the hall in full uniform and occupied the front seats in order to silence me if my speech did not suit them. I went to the hall, however, found it open, and made my speech. There was no interruption. I told the audience frankly who was responsible for the President?s assassination. I said: ?As long as there is misery caused by robbery at the bottom there will be assassination at the top.? I showed them, evidently to their satisfaction, that it was their own capitalist system that was responsible; the system that had impoverished and brutalized the ancestors of the poor witless boy who had murdered the President. Yes, I made my speech that night and it was well received but when I left there I was still an ?undesirable citizen.? Some years later I returned to Warren. It seemed that the whole population was out for the occasion. I was received with open arms. I was no longer a demagogue; no longer a fanatic or an undesirable citizen. I had become exceedingly respectable simply because the Socialists had increased in numbers and socialism had grown in influence and power. If ever I become entirely respectable I shall be quite sure that I have outlived myself. It is the minorities who have made the history of this world. It is the few who have had the courage to take their places at the front; who have been true enough to themselves to speak the truth that was in them; who have dared oppose the established order of things; who have espoused the cause of the suffering, struggling poor; who have upheld without regard to personal consequences the cause of freedom and righteousness. It is they, the heroic, self-sacrificing few who have made the history of the race and who have paved the way from barbarism to civilization. The many prefer to remain upon the popular side. They lack the courage and vision to join a despised minority that stands for a principle; they have not the moral fiber that withstands, endures and finally conquers. They are to be pitied and not treated with contempt for they cannot help their cowardice. But, thank God, in every age and in every nation there have been the brave and self-reliant few, and they have been sufficient to their historic task; and we, who are here today, are under infinite obligations to them because they suffered, they sacrificed, they went to jail, they had their bones broken upon the wheel, they were burned at the stake and their ashes scattered to the winds by the hands of hate and revenge in their struggle to leave the world better for us than they found it for themselves. We are under eternal obligations to them because of what they did and what they suffered for us and the only way we can discharge that obligation is by doing the best we can for those who are to come after us. And this is the high purpose of every Socialist on earth. Everywhere they are animated by the same lofty principles; everywhere they have the same noble ideals; everywhere they are clasping hands across national boundary lines; everywhere they are calling one another Comrade, the blessed word that springs from the heart of unity and bursts into blossom upon the lips. Each passing day they are getting into closer touch all along the battle line, wagig the holy war of the working class of the world against the ruling and exploiting class of the world. They make many mistakes and they profit by them all. They encounter numerous defeats, and grow stronger through them all. They never take a backward step. ? The heart of the international Socialist never beats a retreat. They are pressing forward, here, there and everywhere, in all the zones that girdle the globe. Everywhere these awakening workers, these class-conscious proletarians, these hardy sons and daughters of honest toil are proclaiming the glad tidings of the coming emancipation, everywhere their hearts are attuned to the most sacred cause that ever challenged men and women to action in all the history of the world. Everywhere they are moving toward democracy and the dawn; marching toward the sunrise, their faces all aglow with the light of the coming day. These are the Socialists, the most zealous and enthusiastic crusaders the world has ever known. They are making history that will light up the horizon of coming generations, for their mission is the emancipation of the human race. They have been reviled; they have been ridiculed, persecuted, imprisoned and have suffered death, but they have been sufficient to themselves and their cause, and their final triumph is but a question of time. Do you wish to hasten the day of victory? Join the Socialist Party! Don?t wait for the morrow. Join now! Enroll your name without fear and take your place where you belong. You cannot do your duty by proxy. You have got to do it yourself and do it squarely and then as you look yourself in the face you will have no occasion to blush. You will know what it is to be a real man or woman. You will lose nothing; you will gain everything. Not only will you lose nothing but you will find something of infinite value, and that something will be yourself. And that is your supreme need?to find yourself?to really know yourself and your purpose in life. You need at this time especially to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder. You need to know that you were not created to work and produce and impoverish yourself to enrich an idle exploiter. You need to know that you have a mind to improve, a soul to develop, and a manhood to sustain. You need to know that it is your duty to rise above the animal plane of existence. You need to know that it is for you to know something about literature and science and art. You need to know that you are verging on the edge of a great new world. You need to get in touch with your comrades and fellow workers and to become conscious of your interests, your powers and your possibilities as a class. You need to know that you belong to the great majority of mankind. You need to know that as long as you are ignorant, as long as you are indifferent, as long as you are apathetic, unorganized and content, you will remain exactly where you are. You will be exploited; you will be degraded, and you will have to beg for a job. You will get just enough for your slavish toil to keep you in working order, and you will be looked down upon with scorn and contempt by the very parasites that live and luxuriate out of your sweat and unpaid labor. If you would be respected you have got to begin by respecting yourself. Stand up squarely and look yourself in the face and see a man! Do not allow yourself to fall into the predicament of the poor fellow who, after he had heard a Socialist speech concluded that he too ought to be a Socialist. The argument he had heard was unanswerable. ?Yes,? he said to himself, ?all the speaker said was true and I certainly ought to join the party.? But after a while he allowed his ardor to cool and he soberly concluded that by joining the party he might anger his boss and lose his job. He then concluded: ?I can?t take the chance.? That night he slept alone. There was something on his conscience and it resulted in a dreadful dream. Men always have such dreams when they betray themselves. A Socialist is free to go to bed with a clear conscience. He goes to sleep with his manhood and he awakens and walks forth in the morning with his self-respect. He is unafraid and he can look the whole world in the face, without a tremor and without a blush. But this poor weakling who lacked the courage to do the bidding of his reason and conscience was haunted by a startling dream and at midnight he awoke in terror, bounded from his bed and exclaimed: ?My God, there is nobody in this room.? He was absolutely right. There was nobody in that room. How would you like to sleep in a room that had nobody in it? It is an awful thing to be nobody. That is certainly a state of mind to get out of, the sooner the better. There is a great deal of hope for Baker, Ruthenberg and Wagenknecht who are in jail for their convictions; but for the fellow that is nobody there is no pardoning power. He is ?in? for life. Anybody can be nobody; but it takes a man to be somebody. To turn your back on the corrupt Republican Party and the still more corrupt Democratic Party?the gold-dust lackeys of the ruling class counts for still more after you have stepped out of those popular and corrupt capitalist parties to join a minority party that has an ideal, that stands for a principle, and fights for a cause. This will be the most important change you have ever made and the time will come when you will thank me for having made the suggestion. It was the day of days for me. I remember it well. It was like passing from midnight darkness to the noontide light of day. It came almost like a flash and found me ready. It must have been in such a flash that great, seething, throbbing Russia, prepared by centuries of slavery and tears and martyrdom, was transformed from a dark continent to a land of living light. There is something splendid, something sustaining and inspiring in the prompting of the heart to be true to yourself and to the best you know, especially in a crucial hour of your life. You are in the crucible today, my Socialist comrades! You are going to be tried by fire, to what extent no one knows. If you are weak-fibered and fainthearted you will be lost to the Socialist movement. We will have to bid you goodbye. You are not the stuff of which revolutions are made. We are sorry for you unless you chance to be an ?intellectual.? The ?intellectuals,? many of them, are already gone. No loss on our side nor gain on the other. I am always amused in the discussion of the ?intellectual? phase of this question. It is the same old standard under which the rank and file are judged. What would become of the sheep if they had no shepherd to lead them out of the wilderness into the land of milk and honey? Oh, yes, ?I am your shepherd and ye are my mutton.? They would have us believe that if we had no ?intellectuals? we would have no movement. They would have our party, the rank and file, controlled by the ?intellectual? bosses as the Republican and Democratic parties are controlled. These capitalist parties are managed by ?intellectual? leaders and the rank and file are sheep that follow the bellwether to the shambles. In the Republican and Democratic parties you of the common herd are not expected to think. That is not only unnecessary but might lead you astray. That is what the ?intellectual? leaders are for. They do the thinking and you do the voting. They ride in carriages at the front where the band plays and you tramp in the mud, bringing up the rear with great enthusiasm. The capitalist system affects to have great regard and reward for intellect, and the capitalists give themselves full credit for having superior brains. When we have ventured to say that the time would come when the working class would rule they have bluntly answered ?Never! it requires brains to rule.? The workers of course have none. And they certainly try hard to prove it by proudly supporting the political parties of their masters under whose administration they are kept in poverty and servitude. The government is now operating its railroads for the more effective prosecution of the war. Private ownership has broken down utterly and the government has had to come to the rescue. We have always said that the people ought to own the railroads and operate them for the benefit of the people. We advocated that twenty years ago. But the capitalists and their henchmen emphatically objected. ?You have got to have brains to run the railroads,? they tauntingly retorted. Well, the other day McAdoo, the governor-general of the railroads under government operation; discharged all the high-salaried presidents and other supernumeraries. In other words, he fired the ?brains? bodily and yet all the trains have been coming and going on schedule time. Have you noticed any change for the worse since the ?brains? are gone? It is a brainless system now, being operated by ?hands.? But a good deal more efficiently than it had been operated by so-called ?brains? before. And this determines infallibly the quality of their vaunted, high-priced capitalist ?brains.? It is the kind you can get at a reasonable figure at the market place. They have always given themselves credit for having superior brains and given this as the reason for the supremacy of their class. It is true that they have the brains that indicates the cunning of the fox, the wolf, but as for brains denoting real intelligence and the measure of intellectual capacity they are the most woefully ignorant people on earth. Give me a hundred capitalists just as you find them here in Ohio and let me ask them a dozen simple questions about the history of their own country and I will prove to you that they are as ignorant and unlettered as any you may find in the so-called lower class. They know little of history; they are strangers to science; they are ignorant of sociology and blind to art but they know how to exploit, how to gouge, how to rob, and do it with legal sanction. They always proceed legally for the reaon that the class which has the power to rob upon a large scale has also the power to control the government and legalize their robbery. I regret that lack of time prevents me from discussing this phase of the question more at length. They are continually talking about your patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches. And now among other things they are urging you to ?cultivate? war gardens, while at the same time a government war report just issued shows that practically 52 percent of the arable, tillable soil is held out of use by the landlords, speculators and profiteers. They themselves do not cultivate the soil. They could not if they would. Nor do they allow others to cultivate it. They keep it idle to enrich themselves, to pocket the millions of dollars of unearned increment. Who is it that makes this land valuable while it is fenced in and kept out of use? It is the people. Who pockets this tremendous accumulation of value? The landlords. And these landlords who toil not and spin not are supreme among American ?patriots.? In passing I suggest that we stop a moment to think about the term ?landlord.? ?LANDLORD!? Lord of the Land! The lord of the land is indeed a superpatriot. This lord who practically owns the earth tells you that we are fighting this war to make the world safe for democracy?he who shuts out all humanity from his private domain; he who profiteers at the expense of the people who have been slain and mutilated by multiplied thousands, under pretense of being the great American patriot. It is he, this identical patriot who is in fact the archenemy of the people; it is he that you need to wipe from power. It is he who is a far greater menace to your liberty and your well-being than the Prussian Junkers on the other side of the Atlantic ocean. Fifty-two percent of the land kept out of use, according to their own figures! They tell you that there is an alarming shortage of flour and that you need to produce more. They tell you further that you have got to save wheat so that more can be exported for the soldiers who are fighting on the other side, while half of your tillable soil is held out of use by the landlords and profiteers. What do you think of that? Again, they tell you there is a coal famine now in the state of Ohio. The state of Indiana, where I live, is largely underlaid with coal. There is practically an inexhaustible supply. The coal is banked beneath our very feet. It is within touch all about us?all we can possibly use and more. And here are the miners, ready to enter the mines. Here is the machinery ready to be put into operation to increase the output to any desired capacity. And three weeks ago a national officer of the United Mine Workers issued and published a statement to the Labor Department of the United States government to the effect that the 600,000 coal miners in the United States at this time, when they talk about a coal famine, are not permitted to work more than half time. I have been around over Indiana for many years. I have often been in the coal fields; again and again I have seen the miners idle while at the same time there was a scarcity of coal. They tell you that you ought to buy your coal right away; that you may freeze next winter if you do not. At the same time they charge you three prices for your coat Oh, yes, this ought to suit you perfectly if you vote the Republican or Democratic ticket and believe in the private ownership of the coal mines and their operation for private profit. The coal mines now being privately owned, the operators want a scarcity of coal so they can boost their prices and enrich themselves accordingly. If an abundance of coal were mined there would be lower prices and this would not suit the mine owners. Prices soar and profits increase when there is a scarcity of coal. It is also apparent that there is collusion between the mine owners and the railroads. The mine owners declare there are no cars while the railroad men insist that there is no coal. And between them they delude, defraud and rob the people. Let us illustrate a vital point. Here is the coal in great deposits all about us; here are the miners and the machinery of production. Why should there be a coal famine upon the one hand and an army of idle and hungry miners on the other hand? Is it not an incredibly stupid situation, an almost idiotic if not criminal state of affairs? We Socialists say: ?Take possession of the mines in the name of the people.? Set the miners at work and give every miner the equivalent of all the coal he produces. Reduce the work day in proportion to the development of productive machinery. That would at once settle the matter of a coal famine and of idle miners. But that is too simple a proposition and the people will have none of it. The time will come, however, when the people will be driven to take such action for there is no other efficient and permanent solution of the problem. In the present system the miner, a wage slave, gets down into a pit 300 or 400 feet deep. He works hard and produces a ton of coal. But he does not own an ounce of it. That coal belongs to some mine-owning plutocrat who may be in New York or sailing the high seas in his private yacht; or he may be hobnobbing with royalty in the capitals of Europe, and that is where most of them were before the war was declared. The industrial captain, so- called, who lives in Paris, London, Vienna or some other center of gaiety does not have to work to revel in luxury. He owns the mines and he might as well own the miners. That is where you workers are and where you will remain as long as you give your support to the political parties of your masters and exploiters. You vote these miners out of a job and reduce them to corporation vassals and paupers. We Socialists say: ?Take possession of the mines; call the miner to work and return to him the equivalent of the value of his product.? He can then build himself a comfortable home; live in it; enjoy it with his family. He can provide himself and his wife and children with clothes?good clothes?not shoddy; wholesome food in abundance, education for the children, and the chance to live the lives of civilized human beings, while at the same time the people will get coal at just what it costs to mine it. Of course that would be socialism as far as it goes. But you are not in favor of that program. It is too visionary because it is so simple and practical. So you will have to continue to wait until winter is upon you before you get your coal and then pay three prices for it because you insist upon voting a capitalist ticket and giving your support to the present wage-slave system. The trouble with you is that you are still in a capitalist state of mind. Lincoln said: ?If you want that thing that is the thing you want?; and you will get it to your heart?s content. But some good day you will wake up and realize that a change is needed and wonder why you did not know it long before. Yes, a change is certainly needed, not merely a change of party but a change of system; a change from slavery to freedom and from despotism to democracy, wide as the world. When this change comes at last, we shall rise from brutehood to brotherhood, and to accomplish it we have to educate and organize the workers industrially and politically, but not along the zigzag craft lines laid down by Gompers, who through all of his career has favored the master class. You never hear the capitalist press speak of him nowadays except in praise and adulation. He has recently come into great prominence as a patriot. You never find him on the unpopular side of a great issue. He is always conservative, satisfied to leave the labor problem to be settled finally at the banqueting board with Elihu Root, Andrew Carnegie and the rest of the plutocratic civic federationists. When they drink wine and smoke scab cigars together the labor question is settled so far as they are concerned. And while they are praising Gompers they are denouncing the I.W.W. There are few men who have the courage to say a word in favor of the I.W.W. I have. Let me say here that I have great respect for the I.W.W. Far greater than I have for their infamous detractors. Listen! There has just been published a pamphlet called ?The Truth About the I.W.W.? It has been issued after long and thorough investigation by five men of unquestioned standing in the capitalist world. At the head of these investigators was Professor John Graham Brooks of Harvard University, and next to him John A. Fish of the Survey of the Religious Organizations of Pittsburgh, and Mr. Bruere, the government investigator. Five of these prominent men conducted an impartial examination of the I.W.W. To quote their own words they ?followed its trail.? They examined into its doings beginning at Bisbee where the ?patriots,? the cowardly business men, the arch-criminals, made up the mob that deported 1,200 workingmen under the most brutal conditions, charging them with being members of the I.W.W. when they knew it to be false. It is only necessary to label a man ?I.W.W.? to have him lynched as they did Praeger, an absolutely innocent man. He was a Socialist and bore a German name, and that was his crime. A rumor was started that he was disloyal and he was promptly seized and lynched by the cowardly mob of so-called ?patriots.? War makes possible all such crimes and outrages. And war comes in spite of the people. When Wall Street says war the press says war and the pulpit promptly follows with its Amen. In every age the pulpit has been on the side of the rulers and not on the side of the people. That is one reason why the preachers so fiercely denounce the I.W.W. Take the time to read this pamphlet about the I.W.W. Don?t take the word of Wall Street and its press as final. Read this report by five impartial and highly reputable men who made their investigation to know the truth, and that they might tell the truth to the American people. They declare that the I.W.W. in all its career never committed as much violence against the ruling class as the ruling class has committed against the I.W.W. You are not now reading any reports in the daily press about the trial at Chicago, are you? They used to publish extensive reports when the trial first began, and to prate about what they proposed to prove against the I.W.W. as a gigantic conspiracy against the government. The trial has continued until they have exhausted all their testimony and they have not yet proven violence in a single instance. No, not one! They are utterly without incriminating testimony and yet 112 men are in the dock after lying in jail for months without the shadow of a crime upon them save that of belonging to the I.W.W. That is enough it would seem to convict any man of any crime and send his body to prison and his soul to hell. Just whisper the name of the I.W.W. and you are branded as a disloyalist. And the reason for this is wholly to the credit of the I.W.W., for whatever may be charged against it the I.W.W. has always fought for the bottom dog. And that is why Haywood is despised and prosecuted while Gompers is lauded and glorified by the same gang. Now what you workers need is to organize, not along craft lines but along revolutionary industrial lines. All of you workers in a given industry, regardless of your trade or occupation, should belong to one and the same union. Political action and industrial action must supplement and sustain each other. You will never vote the Socialist republic into existence. You will have to lay its foundations in industrial organization. The industrial union is the forerunner of industrial democracy. In the shop where the workers are associated is where industrial democracy has its beginning. Organize according to your industries! Get together in every department of industrial service! United and acting together for the common good your power is invincible. When you have organized industrially you will soon learn that you can manage as well as operate industry. You will soon realize that you do not need the idle masters and exploiters. They are simply parasites. They do not employ you as you imagine but you employ them to take from you what you produce, and that is how they function in industry. You can certainly dispense with them in that capacity. You do not need them to depend upon for your jobs. You can never be free while you work and live by their sufferance. You must own your own tools and then you will control your own jobs, enjoy the products of your own labor and be free men instead of industrial slaves. Organize industrially and make your organization complete. Then unite in the Socialist Party. Vote as you strike and strike as you vote. Your union and your party embrace the working class. The Socialist Party expresses the interests, hopes and aspirations of the toilers of all the world. Get your fellow workers into the industrial union and the political party to which they rightly belong, especially this year, this historic year in which the forces of labor will assert themselves as they never have before. This is the year that calls for men and women who have courage, the manhood and womanhood to do their duty. Get into the Socialist Party and take your place in its ranks; help to inspire the weak and strengthen the faltering, and do your share to speed the coming of the brighter and better day for us all. When we unite and act together on the industrial field and when we vote together on election day we shall develop the supreme power of the one class that can and will bring permanent peace to the world. We shall then have the intelligence, the courage and the power for our great task. In due time industry will be organized on a cooperative basis. We shall conquer the public power. We shall then transfer the title deeds of the railroads, the telegraph lines, the mines, mills and great industries to the people in their collective capacity; we shall take possession of all these social utilities in the name of the people. We shall then have industrial democracy. We shall be a free nation whose government is of and by and for the people. And now for all of us to do our duty! The clarion call is ringing in our ears and we cannot falter without being convicted of treason to ourselves and to our great cause. Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourselves. Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth. Yes, in good time we are going to sweep into power in this nation and throughout the world. We are going to destroy all enslaving and degrading capitalist institutions and re-create them as free and humanizing institutions. The world is daily changing before our eyes. The sun of capitalism is setting; the sun of socialism is rising. It is our duty to build the new nation and the free republic. We need industrial and social builders. We Socialists are the builders of the beautiful world that is to be. We are all pledged to do our part. We are inviting?aye challenging you this afternoon in the name of your own manhood and womanhood to join us and do your part. In due time the hour will strike and this great cause triumphant?the greatest in history?will proclaim the emancipation of the working class and the brotherhood of all mankind. Eugene Debs - November 5, 1855 ? October 20, 1926 From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 14:58:32 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:58:32 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!!!! Greg Palast: Lazy Ouzo-Swilling, Olive-Pit Spitting Greeks Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107144801.04ad12c8@mail.messagingengine.com> Lazy Ouzo-Swilling, Olive-Pit Spitting Greeks Or, How Goldman Sacked Greece by Greg Palast for In These Times Sunday, November 6, 2011 Here's what we're told:Greece Greece's economy blew apart because a bunch of olive-spitting, ouzo-guzzling, lazy-ass Greeks refuse to put in a full day's work, retire while they're still teenagers, pocket pensions fit for a pasha; and they've gone on a social-services spending spree using borrowed money. Now that the bill has come due and the Greeks have to pay with higher taxes and cuts in their big fat welfare state, they run riot, screaming in the streets, busting windows and burning banks. I don't buy it. I don't buy it because of the document in my hand marked, "RESTRICTED DISTRIBUTION." I'll cut to the indictment: Greece is a crime scene. The people are victims of a fraud, a scam, a hustle and a flim-flam. And--cover the children's ears when I say this--a bank named Goldman Sachs is holding the smoking gun. ******** This is an adaptation of an excerpt from Vultures' Picnic, Greg Palast's new book, out next week, an investigator's pursuit of petroleum pigs, power pirates and high-finance fraudsters. Read the first chapter or just get the book here. ******** In 2002, Goldman Sachs secretly bought up ?2.3 billion in Greek government debt, converted it all into yen and dollars, then immediately sold it back to Greece. Goldman took a huge loss on the trade. Is Goldman that stupid? Goldman is stupid?like a fox. The deal was a con, with Goldman making up a phony-baloney exchange rate for the transaction. Why? Goldman had cut a secret deal with the Greek government in power then. Their game: to conceal a massive budget deficit. Goldman's fake loss was the Greek government's fake gain. Goldman would get repayment of its "loss" from the government at loan-shark rates. The point is, through this crazy and costly legerdemain, Greece's right-wing free-market government was able to pretend its deficits never exceeded 3 percent of GDP. Cool. Fraudulent but cool. But flim-flam isn't cheap these days: On top of murderous interest payments, Goldman charged the Greeks over a quarter billion dollars in fees. When the new Socialist government of George Papandreou came into office, they opened up the books and Goldman's bats flew out. Investors' went berserk, demanding monster interest rates to lend more money to roll over this debt. Greece's panicked bondholders rushed to buy insurance against the nation going bankrupt. The price of the bond-bust insurance, called a credit default swap (or CDS), also shot through the roof. Who made a big pile selling the CDS insurance? Goldman. And those rotting bags of CDS's sold by Goldman and others? Didn't they know they were handing their customers gold-painted turds? That's Goldman's specialty. In 2007, at the same time banks were selling suspect CDS's and CDOs (packaged sub-prime mortgage securities), Goldman held a "net short" position against these securities. That is, Goldman was betting their financial "products" would end up in the toilet. Goldman picked up another half a billion dollars on their "net short" scam. But, instead of cuffing Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein and parading him in a cage through the streets of Athens, we have the victims of the frauds, the Greek people, blamed. Blamed and soaked for the cost of it. The "spread" on Greek bonds (the term used for the risk premium paid on Greece's corrupted debt) has now risen to ? get ready for this--$14,000 per family per year. Euro-nation, the secret Geithner memo, and the Ecuador connection Why did the Greek government throw its nation's fate into Goldman's greasy hands? What the heck was in the "RESTRICTED" document? And why did I have to take it to Geneva, to throw it down in front of the Director-General of the WTO for authentication, a creepy French banker I otherwise wouldn't bother to spit on, and then tear off to Quito to share it with the grateful President of Ecuador? To give you all the answers would require me to write a book. I have: Vultures' Picnic--in Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Fraudsters. It's really quite important to me that you read it, that you get it now. That's a funny statement, I suppose, from an author. But if you've been reading my stories in The Guardian or watching my reports on BBC Newsnight, you've gotten the facts; but I really want to let you inside the investigations, to cross the continents with me and follow down the leads so that you can get a full picture of The Beasts. The Beasts and their trophy wives, intelligence agency go-fers, political concubines and bone-breakers. And besides, it's enormous fun when it's not scary as sh*t. ******** Here's a taste of Chapter 12 - The Generalissimo of Globalization - from the film-enhanced eBook edition. [And more on the 1% Greece-ing us, check out the upcoming issue of In These Times.] Note: I will be in Chicago for In These Times on November 29, part of our 15 city tour that begins this coming Sunday, November 13, in Portland, then moves to San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Denver, Boulder, New Mexico, Albuquerque, Chicago, Madison, New York, DC, Houston, Burlington, and Atlanta. Find out more info here. *** Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores, which will be released on November 14 by Penguin USA. Pre-order it now! For more information about Palast's brand new book and his book-signing events in your city, go to www.VulturesPicnic.org Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts. Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter. GregPalast.com From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 7 17:11:52 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:11:52 +0100 Subject: [THS] The Power of the Mind Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111107171135.045927d8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/the-power-of-the-mind The Power of the Mind January 1, 2008 By davidjones bruce-liptonBy BRUCE H. LIPTON, Ph.D. ? Living in the world under your skin is a bustling metropolis of 50 trillion cells, each of which is biologically and functionally equivalent to a miniature human. Current popular opinion holds that the fate and behaviour of our internal cellular citizens are preprogrammed in their genes. Since Watson and Crick?s discovery of the genetic code, the public has been programmed with perception that DNA acquired from our parents at the moment of conception determines our traits and characters. This conventional view of genetics further has us believe that our inherited gene programs are apparently fixed, the equivalent of a computer?s ?read-only? program. The notion that our fate is indelibly inscribed in our genes was directly derived from the now dated scientific concept known as genetic determinism. It is still a conventional belief that genes ?control? the many wonderful attributes passed down through a family?s lineage, as well as dysfunctional familial traits such as cancer, Alzheimer?s, diabetes and depression, among scores of others. As ?victims? of heredity, genetic forces outside of our control, we naturally perceive of ourselves as being powerless in regard to the unfolding of our lives. Unfortunately, the assumption of being powerless is the road to personal irresponsibility. ?Since I can?t do anything about it anyway why should I care?? Shattering Illusions Just as the Human Genome Project got off the ground in the late 1980?s, scientists began to acquire a paradigm-shattering new view of how life works. Their revolutionary research has become the foundation for a new branch of science known as epigenetic control. The world of epigenetics has shaken the foundations of biology and medicine for it reveals that we are not ?victims? of our genes, but are in fact ?masters? of our genes. The conventional version of heredity still being taught in schools emphasises genetic control, which literally reads as ?control by genes.? However, newly revealed epigenetic control mechanisms provide a profoundly different view of how life is managed. The Greek-derived prefix epi- means ?over or above.? Consequently, the literal translation of epigenetic control reads as ?control above the genes.? Genes do NOT control life ? life is controlled by something above the genes. Knowledge is power and this knowledge of how life works provides the most important element in our quest for self-empowerment. Epigenetics leads us from our perception of victim to our proper role as a participatory creator. The new science of epigenetics recognises that environmental signals are the primary regulators of gene activity. As described in the Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles, cells read and respond to the conditions of their environment using membrane protein perception switches. Activated switches send signals into the cytoplasm to control behaviour and regulate the activity of the genes, the hereditary blueprints used to make the body. Proteins are the cell?s molecular building blocks and their characters provide for our physical and behavioural traits. Amazingly, epigenetic information can modify or edit the readout of a gene blueprint to create over 30,000 different variations of proteins from the same gene. This editing process can provide for normal functional protein products as well as dysfunctional proteins from the same gene. One can be born with healthy genes and through epigenetic processes express mutant behaviours such as cancer. Similarly, one can be born with defective mutant genes and through epigenetic mechanisms create normal healthy proteins and functions. The conventional belief that the genome represents ?read-only? programs is now proven to be false. Epigenetic mechanisms modify the readout of genetic code, therefore genes actually represent ?read-write? programs wherein life experiences actively redefine an individual?s genetic expression. As organisms experience the environment, their perception mechanisms fine-tune genetic expression so as to enhance their opportunities for survival. The environment?s influence over the genome is dramatically revealed in studies on identical twins. When first born, these siblings express almost the same gene activity from their identical genomes. However, as they begin to experience life, their personal individualised experiences and perceptions lead to the activation of profoundly different sets of genes. The ?new? biology is based upon the fact that perception controls behaviour AND gene activity! This revised version of science emphasises the reality that we actively control our genetic expression moment by moment throughout our lives. Rather than seeing ourselves as victims of our genes, we must come to own the responsibility that our perceptions are dynamically shaping our biology and behaviour. The expression of a healthy or dis-eased biology is directly influenced by the accuracy of an individual?s interpretation or perception of their environment. Misperceptions rewrite genetic expression just as effectively as accurate perceptions, yet with far graver, perhaps even life threatening consequences. From the Microcosm of the Cell to the Macrocosm of the Mind For the first three and a half billion years of life on this planet, the biosphere consisted of a massive population of individual single-celled organisms, such as bacteria, yeast, algae, and protozoa like the familiar amoeba and paramecium. About 700 million years ago, individual cells started to assemble into multicellular colonies. The collective awareness afforded in a community of cells was far greater than an individual cell?s awareness. Since awareness is a primary factor in organismal survival, the communal experience offered its citizens a far greater opportunity to stay alive and reproduce. The first cellular communities, like the earliest human communities, were basic hunter-gatherer clans wherein each member of the society offered the same services to support the survival of the community. However, as the population densities of both cellular and human communities reached greater numbers, it was no longer efficient or effective for all individuals to do the same job. In both types of communities, evolution led to individuals taking on specialised functions. For example, in human communities some members focused upon hunting, others upon domestic chores and some upon child rearing. In cellular communities specialisation meant that some cells began to differentiate as digestive cells, others as heart cells, and still others as muscle cells. Most of the trillions of cells forming bodies such as ours have no direct perception of the external environment. Liver cells ?see? what?s going on in the liver, but don?t directly know what?s going on in the world outside of the skin. The function of the brain and nervous system is to interpret environmental stimuli and send out signals to the cells that integrate and regulate the life-sustaining functions of the body?s organ systems. The successful nature of multicellular communities allowed evolving brains to dedicate vast numbers of cells for use in the cataloguing, memorising and integrating complex perceptions. The ability to remember and select among the millions of experienced perceptions in life provides the brain with a powerful creative database from which it can create complex behavioural repertoires. When put into play, these behavioural programs endow the organism with the characteristic trait of consciousness. In this presentation, the term consciousness is used in its most fundamental context the state of being awake and aware of what is going on around you. Many scientists prefer to think of consciousness in terms of a digital quality, an organism either has it or not. However, an assessment of the evolution of biological properties suggests consciousness, like any other quality, evolved over time. Consequently, the character of consciousness would likely express itself as a gradient of awareness from its simpler roots in primitive organisms to the unique character of self-consciousness manifest in humans and other higher vertebrates. The expression of self-consciousness is specifically associated with a small evolutionary adaptation in the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the neurological platform that enables us to realise our personal identity and experience the quality of ?thinking.? Monkeys and lower organisms do not express self-consciousness. When looking into a mirror, monkeys will never recognise that they are looking at them selves; they will always perceive the image to be that of another monkey. In contrast, neurologically more advanced chimps looking in the mirror perceive the mirror?s reflection as an image of themselves. An important difference between the brain?s consciousness and the prefrontal cortex?s self-consciousness is that consciousness enables an organism to assess and respond to the immediate conditions of its environment that are relevant at that moment. In contrast, self-consciousness enables the individual to factor in the consequences of their actions in regard to not only how they impact the present moment but also as to how they will influence the individual?s future. Self-consciousness is an evolutionary adjunct to consciousness in that it provided another behaviour-creating platform that included the role of a ?self? in the decision-making process. While conventional consciousness enables organisms to be participatory members in the dynamics of life?s ?play,? the quality of self-consciousness offers an opportunity to simultaneously be an observer in the ?audience.? From the perspective of our being able to observe the role of ?self? in the unfolding of the ?play,? self-consciousness provides the individual with the option for self-reflection, reviewing and editing their character?s performance. The conscious and self-conscious functions of the brain may be collectively referred to as the mind. In conventional parlance, the brain?s conscious mechanism associated with automated stimulus-response behaviours is referred to as the subconscious or unconscious mind, for the reason that its functions require neither observation nor attention from the self-conscious mind. Subconscious mind functions evolved long before the prefrontal cortex, consequently it historically was able to successfully operate a body and its behaviour without any contribution from, or involvement with, the more evolved self-conscious mind. The subconscious mind is an astonishingly powerful information processor that can record perceptual experiences (programs) and forever play them back at the push of a button. Interestingly, many people only become aware of their subconscious mind?s automated programmed behaviours when they realise they?re engaged in an undesirable behaviour as a result of someone ?pushing their buttons.? The power of the subconscious mind lies in its ability to process massive amounts of data acquired from direct and indirect learning experiences at extraordinarily high rates of speed. It has been estimated that the disproportionately larger brain mass providing the subconscious mind?s function has the ability to interpret and respond to over 40 million nerve impulses per second. In contrast, it is estimated that the diminutive self-conscious mind?s prefrontal cortex can only process about 40 nerve impulses per second. As an information processor, the subconscious mind is one million times more powerful than the self-conscious mind. As a tradeoff in acquiring its computational bravado, the subconscious mind expresses a marginal creative ability, one that may be best compared to that of a precocious five year old. In contrast to the freewill offered by the conscious mind, the subconscious mind primarily expresses prerecorded stimulus-response ?habits.? Once a behaviour pattern is learned, such as walking, getting dressed or driving a car, those programs are processed as habits in the subconscious mind meaning you can carry out these complex functions without paying any attention to them. In contrast to the massive information processing by the subconscious mind, the smaller prefrontal cortex responsible for self-consciousness is limited to juggling only a small number of tasks at the same time. Though its ability for multitasking is physically constrained, the self-conscious mind can focus upon and control any function in the human body. It was once thought that some body?s functions were beyond the control of the self-conscious mind, such involuntary functions included the regulation of heartbeat, blood pressure and body temperature, behaviours controlled by the unconscious autonomic nervous system. However, it is now recognised that yogis and other practitioners that train their conscious minds can absolutely control functions formerly defined as involuntary behaviours. The subconscious and self-conscious components of the mind work in tandem. The subconscious mind controls every behaviour that is not attended to by the self-conscious mind. For most people, their self-conscious minds are rarely focused upon the current moment since their mental processing continuously flits from one thought to another. The self-conscious mind is so preoccupied with thoughts about the future, the past or resolving some imaginary problem, that most of our lives are actually controlled by programs in the subconscious mind. Cognitive neuroscientists conclude that the self-conscious mind contributes only about 5% of our cognitive activity. Consequently, 95% of our decisions, actions, emotions and behaviours are derived from the unobserved processing of the subconscious mind. Simple Insights Profound Consequences! Through the management of ?programmed? perceptions, the mind controls our biology, behaviour and gene activity. The seat of thinking, freewill, personal identity, and our wants, desires and intentions is a small 40 ?bit? self-conscious processor that controls our lives only 5% of the day or less. The million times more powerful subconscious mind controls 95% or more of our lives using ?habits? derived from instincts and the perceptions acquired in our life experiences. This data reveals that our lives are not controlled by our personal intentions and desires as we may inherently believe. Do the math! Our fate is actually under the control of the preprogrammed experiences managed by the subconscious mind. The most powerful and influential programs in the subconscious mind were downloaded into consciousness in the profoundly important formative period between gestation and six years of age. Now here?s the catch ? these life-shaping subconscious programs are direct downloads derived from observing our primary teachers our parents, siblings and local community. Unfortunately, as psychiatrists, psychologists and counsellors are keenly aware, many of the perceptions acquired about ourselves in the formative period are expressed as limiting and self-sabotaging beliefs. Unbeknownst to most parents is the fact that their words and actions are being continuously recorded by their children?s minds. Consequently, when they inform their child that he or she does not deserve things, or that they are not good enough, or smart enough, or that they are sickly, these pronouncements are directly downloaded into their child?s subconscious. Since the role of the mind is to make coherence between its programs and real life, the brain generates appropriate behavioural responses to life?s stimuli to assure the ?truth? of the programmed perceptions. Let?s apply this understanding to the behaviour in one?s life. Consider that you were a 5-year-old child throwing a tantrum in Walmart over your desire to have a particular toy. In silencing your outburst, your father yelled, ?YOU don?t deserve things!? You are now an adult and in your self-conscious mind you are considering the idea that you have the qualities and power to assume a position of leadership at your job. While in the process of entertaining this positive thought in the self-conscious mind, all of your behaviours are now being automatically managed by the programs in your more powerful subconscious mind. Since your fundamental behavioural programs are those derived in your formative years, your father?s admonition that ?you do not deserve things? may become the subconscious mind?s automated directive. So while you are entertaining wonderful thoughts of a positive future and not paying attention, your subconscious mind is automatically engaging self-sabotaging behaviour to assure that your reality matches your program of not-deserving. Now here?s the catch ? Behaviour is automatically controlled by subconscious mind?s programs when the self-conscious mind is not focused on the present moment. When the reflective self-conscious mind is preoccupied in thought and not paying attention, it does not observe the automatic behaviours derived from subconscious mind. Since 95% or more of our behaviour is derived from the subconscious mind then most of our own behaviour is invisible to us! For example, consider you intimately know someone and you also know his or her parent. From your perspective you see that your friend?s behaviour closely resembles their parent. Then one day you casually remark to your friend something like, ?You know Mary, you?re just like your mom.? Back away! In disbelief and perhaps shock, Mary will likely respond with, ?How can you say that!? The cosmic joke is that everyone else can see that Mary?s behaviour resembles her mom?s except Mary. Why? Simply because when Mary is engaging the subconscious behavioural programs she downloaded in her youth from observing her mom, it?s because her self-conscious mind is not paying attention. At those moments, her automatic subconscious programs operate without observation. Another familiar example of how ?invisible? behaviour operates: You are driving your car while having an intense conversation with a friend in the passenger?s seat. You become so involved in the discussion that only later, when your gaze returns to the road, do you realise that you haven?t paid attention to the driving for the last ten minutes. Since the self-conscious mind was preoccupied with the conversation, the car was being driven by the subconscious mind?s ?autopilot? mode. However, if you were asked to describe your driving behaviour during that ten-minute hiatus, you would be forced to say, ?I don?t know I wasn?t paying attention.? Aha! That?s the point ? when the conscious mind is busy, we do not observe our own programmed subconscious behaviours. Consequently, when life does not work out as planned, we rarely recognise that we were very likely contributing to our own disappointments. Since we are generally unaware of the influence of our own subconscious behaviours, we naturally perceive of our selves as victims of forces outside of us when things don?t work out as desired. Unfortunately, assuming the role of victim means that we assume we are powerless in manifesting our intentions. Nothing is further from the truth! The primary determinant in shaping the fate of our lives is the database of perceptions and beliefs programmed in our minds. Where Did That Behaviour Come From? There are three sources of perceptions that control our biology and behaviour. The most primitive perceptions are those we acquire with our genome. Built into our genes are programs that provide fundamental reflex behaviours referred to as instincts. Pulling your hand out of an open flame is a genetically derived behaviour that does not have to be learned. More complex instincts include the ability of newborn babies to swim like a dolphin or the activation of innate healing mechanisms to repair a damaged system or eliminate a cancerous growth. Genetically inherited instincts are perceptions acquired from nature. The second source of life-controlling perceptions represents memories derived from life experiences downloaded into the subconscious mind. These profoundly powerful learned perceptions represent the contribution from nurture. Among the earliest perceptions of life to be downloaded are the emotions and sensations experienced by the mother as she responds to her world. Along with nutrition, the emotional chemistry, hormones, and stress factors controlling the mother?s responses to life experiences cross the placental barrier and influence fetal physiology and development. When the mother is happy, so is the fetus. When the mother is in fear, so is the fetus. When the mother ?rejects? her fetus as a potential threat to family survival, the fetal nervous system is preprogrammed with the emotion of being rejected. Sue Gearhardt?s very valuable book Why Love Matters reveals that the fetal nervous system records memories of womb experiences. By the time the baby is born, emotional information downloaded from the life experiences in womb have already shaped half of that individual?s personality. However, the most influential perceptual programming of the subconscious mind occurs in the time period spanning from the birth process through the first six years of life. During this time the child?s brain is recording all sensory experiences as well as learning complex motor programs for speech, and for learning first how to crawl and then how to stand and ultimately run and jump. Simultaneously, the subconscious mind acquires perceptions in regard to parents, who are they and what they do. Then by observing behavioural patterns of people in their immediate environment (usually parents, siblings and relatives), a child learns perceptions of acceptable and unacceptable social behaviours that become the subconscious programs that establish the ?rules? of life. Nature facilitates the enculturation process by developmentally enhancing the subconscious mind?s ability to download massive amounts of information. EEG readings from adult brains reveal that neural electrical activity is correlated with different states of awareness. Adult EEG readings show that the human brain operates on at least five different frequency levels, each associated with a different brain state: lipton graph EEG vibrations continuously shift from state to state over the whole range of frequencies during normal brain processing in adults. However, brain frequencies in developing children display a radically different behaviour. EEG vibration rates and their corresponding states evolve in incremental stages over time. The predominant brain activity during the child?s first two years of life is delta, the lowest EEG frequency range. In the adult brain, delta is associated with sleeping or unconsciousness. Between two and six years of age, the child?s brain activity state ramps up and it operates primarily in the range of theta. In the adult, theta activity is associated with states of reverie or imagination. While in the theta state, children spend much of their time mixing the imaginary world with the real world. Calm consciousness associated with emerging alpha activity only becomes a predominant brain state after six years of age. By twelve years, the brain expresses all frequency ranges although its primary activity is in beta?s state of focused consciousness. Children leave elementary education behind at this age and enter into the more intense academic programs of junior high. A profoundly important fact in the above timeline that may have missed your attention is that children do not express the alpha EEG frequencies of conscious processing as a predominant brain state until after they are six years old. The predominant delta and theta activity of children under six signifies that their brains are operating at levels below consciousness. Delta and theta brain frequencies define a brain state known as a hypnogogic trance, the same neural state that hypnotherapists use to download new behaviours directly into the subconscious mind of their clients. The first six years of a child?s life is spent in a hypnotic trance. Its perceptions of the world are directly downloaded into the subconscious during this time, without the discrimination of the, as yet, dormant self-conscious mind. Consequently, our fundamental perceptions about life and our role in it are learned before we express the capacity to choose or reject those beliefs. We were simply ?programmed.? The Jesuits were aware of this programmable state and proudly boasted, ?Give us a child until it is six or seven years old and it will belong to the Church for the rest of its life.? They knew that once the dogma of the Church was implanted into the child?s subconscious mind, that information would inevitably influence 95% of that individual?s behaviour for the rest of their life. The inhibition of conscious processing (alpha EEG activity) and the simultaneous engagement of a hypnogogic trance during the formative stages of a child?s life are a logical necessity. The thinking processes associated with the self-conscious mind?s processing cannot operate from a blank slate. Self-conscious behaviour requires a working database of learned perceptions. Consequently, before self-consciousness is expressed, the brain?s primary task is to acquire a working awareness of the world by directly downloading experiences and observations into the subconscious mind. HOWEVER, there is a very, very serious downside to acquiring awareness by this method. The consequence is so profound that it not only impacts the life of the individual, it can also alter an entire civilisation. The issue concerns the fact that we download our perceptions and beliefs about life long before we acquire the ability for critical thinking. Our primary perceptions are literally written in stone as unequivocal truths in the subconscious mind, where they habitually operate for life, unless there is an active effort to reprogram them. When as young children we download limiting or sabotaging beliefs about ourselves, these perceptions become our truths and our subconscious processing will invisibly generate behaviours that are coherent with those truths. As an important point for personal reference, it should be noted that acquired perceptions in the subconscious mind could even override genetically endowed instincts. For example, every human can instinctually swim like a dolphin the moment they emerge from the birth canal. This might prompt you to ask, ?Why is it that we have to work so hard at teaching our children how to swim?? The answer lies in the fact that every time the infant encounters open water, such as a pool, a river, a bathtub, the parents freak out in concern for the safety of their child. However, in the baby?s mind, the parent?s behaviour causes the child to equate water as something to be feared. The acquired perception of water as dangerous and life threatening, overrides the instinctual ability to swim and makes the formerly proficient child susceptible to drowning. The following is further reference to the fact that our unconsciously acquired cultural beliefs control biology and behaviour. Through our developmental experiences we acquire the perception that we are frail, vulnerable organisms subject to the ravages of contagious germs and disease. The belief of being frail actually leads to frailty since the mind?s limiting perceptions inhibit the body?s innate ability to heal itself. This influence of the mind on healing processes is the focus of psychoneuroimmunology, the field that describes the mechanism by which our thoughts change brain chemistry, which in turn regulates the function of the immune system. While negative beliefs can precipitate illness (nocebo effect), the resulting dis-ease state can be alleviated through the healing effects of positive thoughts (placebo effect). Finally, the third source of perceptions that shape our lives is derived from the self-conscious mind. Unlike the reflexive programming of subconscious mind, the self-conscious mind is a creative platform that provides for the mixing and morphing a variety of perceptions with the infusion of imagination, a process that generates an unlimited number of beliefs and behavioural variations. The quality of the self-conscious mind endows organisms with one of the most powerful forces in the Universe, the opportunity to express freewill. Taking Personal Responsibility The conclusions of the ?new? biology provide a radical departure from our conventional beliefs of how life works. In contrast to the notion that we are biochemical automatons driven by genes, the new insights reveal that it is the mind that controls genes, which in turn shape our biology and behaviour. The self-conscious mind, associated with our individual identity and the manifestation of thoughts, is guided by our own personal desires and intentions. While we generally perceive that our self-conscious mind is ?controlling? the show, neuroscience has established the fact that 95% of our behaviour is under the control of the more powerful subconscious mind. As most of our personal and cultural problems arise from the fact that behaviours derived from the subconscious mind are essentially invisible to us, we rarely observe our automated behaviour. Compounding the problem is the fact that fundamental programs in the subconscious mind are derived from others, people who generally do not share your personal goals and aspirations. While our conscious minds are trying to move us toward our dreams, unbeknownst to us our subconscious programs are simultaneously shooting ourselves in the foot and impeding our progress. The subconscious mind is simply a ?record-playback? mechanism that downloads experiences into ?behavioural tapes.? While the self-conscious mind is associated with creativity, the subconscious mind?s function is to engage previously recorded programs. Unlike self-consciousness that is overseen by an entity (you), the subconscious mind is more closely related to a machine, meaning there is no thinking, conscious entity controlling the subconscious programs. We have all been shackled with emotional chains wrought by dysfunctional behaviours programmed by the stories of the past. However, the next time you are talking to ?yourself? with the hope of changing sabotaging subconscious programs, it is important to realise the following information. Using reason to communicate with your subconscious in an effort to change its behaviour would essentially have the same influence as trying to change a program on a cassette tape by talking to the tape player. In neither case is there an entity in the mechanism that will respond to your dialogue. Subconscious programs are not fixed, unchangeable behaviours. We have the ability to rewrite our limiting beliefs and in the process take control of our lives. However, to change subconscious programs requires the activation of a process other than just engaging in a running dialogue with the subconscious mind. There are a large variety of effective processes to reprogram limiting beliefs, which include clinical hypnotherapy, Buddhist mindfulness and a number of newly developed and very powerful modalities collectively referred to as energy psychology. For a list of resources, visit: www.brucelipton.com. . BRUCE H. LIPTON, Ph.D. is an internationally recognised cellular biologist who taught cell biology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and later performed pioneering studies at Stanford University?s School of Medicine. His breakthrough research on the cell membrane in 1977 made him a pioneer in the new science of epigenetics. He is author of The Biology of Belief and a sought after keynote speaker and workshop presenter. He also created a full-length audio course The Wisdom of Your Cells: How Your Beliefs Control Your Biology. From ths at psalience.org Wed Nov 9 22:39:53 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:39:53 +0100 Subject: [THS] Leak of Sarkozy-Obama exchange on Netanyahu Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111109223835.04064198@mail.messagingengine.com> In an obscure Israeli journal published in Hebrew, Mitt Romney promised to "abdicate US foreign policy towards Israel . . . to Israel." [MCM Published 21:28 09.11.11Latest update 21:28 09.11.11 U.S. Republicans hit back after leak of Sarkozy-Obama exchange on Netanyahu A day after Presidents Sarkozy and Obama get caught deriding PM over a 'hot mic', Republicans make very clear who they feel is no friend of Israel. By Natasha Mozgovaya It didn?t take long for Republicans to sharpen their talons a day after French President Sarkozy?s embarrassing exchange with President Obama became public knowledge. The Republicans immediately incorporated the story into a narrative of attack against President Obama, questioning his commitment to Israel. In a formal statement, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said Wednesday that ?President Obama?s derisive remarks about Israel?s Prime Minister confirm what any observer would have gleaned from his public statements and actions toward our longstanding ally, Israel.? ?We cannot have an American president who is disdainful of our special relationship with Israel,? said Romney in the statement. Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann called on President Barack Obama Tuesday to apologize to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the unflattering exchange. ?I call on President Obama to immediately apologize to Prime Minister Netanyahu, and I also believe that the president should demonstrate leadership and demand that the French President Sarkozy do the same,? Bachmann said It's hard to imagine that other contenders such as Texas Governor Rick Perry or Newt Gingrich will miss a chance to take a jab at Obama for his remarks during Wednesday?s Republican debate, set to take place in Detroit. But even Republicans who aren?t seeking the country?s highest office strongly criticized the president?s comments. Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh said that Obama has a pattern of ?throwing American allies under the bus.? Walsh, who demanded that Obama apologize publicly to Netanyahu and the Israel people stated that the President?s comments proved ?once again that President Obama is no friend to Israel. For him Israel is only a political matter to help him get re-elected." Obama wasn?t given any mercy on the blogosphere, either. Republican Jewish Coalition's CEO Matt Brooks wrote in his blog that the sentiments expressed by Obama over a ?hot mic? will ?not exactly come as a surprise?, and that only the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) still ?tries to pretend that there is a friendly working relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu.? White House Spokesperson Jay Carney confirmed the Sarkozy-Obama story on Tuesday, although he refused to comment on the controversial statements, instead choosing to reemphasize the President?s position vis-?-vis peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/focus-u-s-a/u-s-republicans-hit-back-after-leak-of-sarkozy-obama-exchange-on-netanyahu-1.394642 From ths at psalience.org Thu Nov 10 01:35:19 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 01:35:19 +0100 Subject: [THS] Joel S. Hirschhorn: Jobless and Clueless: America's Delusional Democracy Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111110013102.04a67d18@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27508 Jobless and Clueless: America's Delusional Democracy by Joel S. Hirschhorn Global Research, November 6, 2011 When Americans who are the most victimized by our cruel economy still believe in something that is demonstrably no longer true, they are deeply delusional. They desperately want to believe in something once great about American society. The reality is that upward economic mobility has been destroyed, replaced by widely observable downward mobility. Some of the mostly younger jobless that have embraced the Occupy Wall Street and related Occupy efforts know the truth. Consider the results of a new survey of unemployed adults this month: ?More than half of those polled said that they had experienced emotional or mental health problems like anxiety or depression because of their lack of work, and nearly half said that they had felt embarrassed or ashamed not to have jobs.? ?More than a third said that they had had more conflicts or arguments with family and friends because of being jobless.? ?Threats of foreclosure or eviction were reported by a fifth of the unemployed, and one in eight said that they had moved in with relatives or friends.? ?More than half said that they lacked health insurance.? ?A fifth said that they had received food from a nonprofit organization.? ?Nearly two-thirds said they would probably not have enough money to live comfortably during retirement. More than half said that they had taken money out of savings or retirement accounts.? ?7 in 10 of those receiving unemployment benefits said that they feared their benefits would run out before they could find new jobs.? So far, all those results paint an unsurprising profile of unemployed, suffering Americans. Now, consider the result that blew my mind, the reason I am writing this, because more people need to understand something critical about delusional thinking that ultimately makes getting deep, sorely needed reforms of our government and political system extremely difficult. Without that our economy will stay awful, unfair, promoting even more economic inequality. ?Two-thirds of those surveyed said that they still believed it was possible to start out poor in this country, work hard and become rich ? only a little lower than the three-quarters of all Americans? not in the unemployed category who held the same view and were surveyed at the same time. In fact, considerable research in recent years has consistently found that upward mobility in the US is no longer a hallmark of the society. Indeed, there is more upward mobility in Canada and a number of European countries than in the US . Moreover, the jobless more than most should be able to comprehend the ugly reality that downward economic mobility is now a large part of American society. No surprise that the cover story on the new Time magazine is What Ever Happened To Upward Mobility? The basic theme of the article is that the US is no longer an ?opportunity society.? In other words, our country is no longer a place where everyone, if he or she works hard enough, can get ahead. But despite this reality, conservatives and Republicans love to publicly proclaim that the US still offers everyone upward economic mobility. Those two-thirds of the unemployed will probably pay a steep price for their false optimism about their country. They are likely to fall prey to the political propaganda of either Democrats or Republicans. If they are delusional about the American Dream, are they also delusional about other things that may stand in the way of them getting a job? Rather than feel ashamed or embarrassed about being jobless they should get some feedback from others so they can fix their thinking. As Ezra Klein noted: ?Americans are in the odd position of fervently believing in upward mobility while not actually having very much of it. Europeans, conversely, don't really believe in economic mobility but have plenty of it.? Those jobless with this delusional thinking, refusing to think critically, judge the facts and come to a hurtful conclusion, are not the ones I expect to be participating in or supporting the Occupy Wall Street protesters, about three-quarters of whom now disapprove of Mr. Obama?s performance as president. Though the Occupy protesters speak of the rich 1 percent, that is a big underestimate. As Anne Applebaum correctly noted ?Despite all the loud talk of the ?1 per cent? of Americans who, according to a recent study, receive about 17 per cent of the income, a percentage which has more than doubled since 1979, the existence of a very small group of very rich people has never bothered Americans. But the fact that some 20 per cent of Americans now receive some 53 per cent of the income is devastating.? Becoming part of even that larger group of rich Americans is now more difficult than ever. Do unemployed have the right kind of jobs to aspire to the top one percent of income earners? Consider the jobs that account for the top one percent; the top four categories account for nearly 70 percent: corporate and business management not in the financial sector, medical, financial industry executives, and lawyers. This also shows how difficult it is to somehow negatively impact the one percent by protests by the Occupy movement. In our delusional democracy with its delusional prosperity thinking that hard work, great ideas and superior performance will get you into the top one percent is self-delusion, even getting into the top 20 percent is a long shot. The economic system is too rigged against economic justice. Sure, every once in awhile someone starting out poor or average becomes superrich, but that is like winning a super lottery. Best to stop believing in the rags-to-riches myth, unless the system is reformed. A new report by a German foundation examined the nation members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, essentially the world?s democracies. The US ranked terribly low for poverty and poverty prevention as well as income inequality. Only Chile , Mexico and Turkey were ranked lower than the US. What a story. The US two-party plutocracy has allowed the rich and powerful to buy the political system. Except for the rich, the results are dreadful. This is why 89 percent do not trust that government will do the right thing. The best solution is what you find at the getmoneyout.com website, a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics. [Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through www.delusionaldemocracy.com .] Joel S. Hirschhorn is a frequent contributor to Global Research. From ths at psalience.org Thu Nov 10 13:37:37 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:37:37 +0100 Subject: [THS] Greg Palast : Escape from Lady Baba-land Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111110133558.065199d8@mail.messagingengine.com> [on a par with Hunter Thompson's trip through U.S. customs with "basketball-sized" amphetmaine caps stashed in his sneakers. Well, almost. -ths] Escape from Lady Baba-land Getting the hell out of the Islamic Republic of BP with the Deepwater Horizon evidence From Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Predators. A tale of oil, sex, shoes, radiation and investigative reporting - get it now. by Greg Palast [Based on a tip from some guy floating in the Caspian Sea in Central Asia, we take off for Baku, Azerbaijan, the "Islamic Republic of BP." Stopping in London, the deathly ill MI6 double-agent Leslie the Bagman lays out the history of the coup d'etat, hooker-bait and the $30 million "sweetener" paid by Lord Browne to the oil nation's "president"?and suggests we find his old spy-mate, Natasha. In the middle of this Byzantine maze, I'm looking for the real reason for the Deepwater Horizon explosion, not the bullshit seen on CNN. I get the goods, film it, get arrested for filming it, get film confiscated ...except for the film in the little Austin Powers camera-in-a-pen that has to find its way out of the country.] From Chapter 2: "Lady Baba-land." But we're not leaving. That's when we find out the Security Ministry called our hotel and told them to seize our passports. Our passports with the visa stamps that allowed us in and, more importantly, allow us out. Not good, not good. The Ministry police are on the way. "Routine," they tell us. I bet it is. Who the hell turned us in? What wicked little creep said we were hunting for a BP blowout? **** I'm killing nervous time looking up the price of Lady Baba's shoes. And praying. Dear God: You made this mess, so get me the hell out of it. And, what do you know, He answers! A voice in my head says, If you have already checked out of the hotel, Palast, that is, if the hotel tells the Ministry police when they arrive that, sorry, the foreigners have packed up and left hours ago, then the desk clerks are off the hook. The clerks have figured this out too, so when we leg it down the stairs to request the bill to check out, there's a charge of $400 added for the use of a sauna and the services of a "masseuse." James wants to argue but I say, "PAY IT." That's the most expensive massage ever that didn't have a happy ending. James unrolls two thousand in Euro notes, and now we have our passports and have checked out. We don't, however, actually leave the hotel. I sleep in fits, fully clothed, the passport and visa in the front pocket of my pants. *** Made it to the airport. Baba International. We're outta here! Only three X-ray machines and checkpoints stand in our way. No problem. Then there is a problem. I took James's suggestion to quickly move my "pen" from a pile of real pens to the middle of my checked luggage. The cop at Checkpoint One signals me to come over. He shows me the X-ray monitor. Right in the middle, the thick metal camera-pen looks like a gun silencer against my briefs and socks. I pull it out and show that it writes my name. See! He whispers to our fixer in Azeri: "I know exactly what that is. And it's illegal." Here it comes. Hannukah with Baba, or at least his prison warden. The network won't help, the U.S. Embassy will just tsk-tsk: Carrying contraband, Mr. Palast? So sorry. I hate me. Just for some cute film action, I get myself busted. After this selfish walk down Me Street, I suddenly realized Holy No Goddamn I have the "destroyed" notebook pages on there, a hit parade of our sources. I hate me even more. Then the young cop puts it back in my suitcase! And he whispers to my translator, "Get rid of this thing before Checkpoint Two because he'll never make it through." Thank the Lord not every grandson of Baba loves his grandpa's regime. They may carry his riot sticks, but they don't all want to kiss them. Thank you thank you thank you thank you. Now, rather than add a new stupidity to my current stupidity, I do not sneak into a corner to remove the pen-furtive action will be noticed. I kick my baggage over to the second security line . . . then frantically open the case, throw my clothes all over the floor, saying, "Where is it? WHERE IS IT?!" James knows the routine and tells our translator to open her purse and drop it on the floor. "Drop it?" K asks. James, says, "Right NOW!" She does and my socks and underpants and medicine kit fly out, piled all over her bag. I pull out my asthma inhaler, say, "PRAISE GOD!" and take a big hit from the empty medicine injector. I can breath easy now, and carefully replace all my stuff in my bag. Well, not all. A dirty sock has fallen into K's purse, which she's picked up while helping me repack. A dirty sock with a pen inside. From ths at psalience.org Thu Nov 10 13:39:25 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:39:25 +0100 Subject: [THS] Robert Parry: An Iraq-WMD Replay on Iran? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111110133812.04b22e78@mail.messagingengine.com> Robert Parry is one of America's leading journalists on the subject of Iran. During the 1980s, Parry broke many stories during the Iran-Contra case. An Iraq-WMD Replay on Iran? Tuesday 8 November 2011 by: Robert Parry, Consortium News | Op-Ed The U.S. press corps and ?independent? American weapons experts got almost everything wrong about Iraq?s purported WMD before the U.S. invasion in 2003. Now, much the same cast is returning to interpret dubious intelligence about Iran?s nuclear program, reports Robert Parry. ~~~~~~~~ The American public is about to be inundated with another flood of ?expert analysis? about a dangerous Middle Eastern country presumably hiding a secret nuclear weapons program that may require a military strike, although this time it is Iran, not Iraq. In the near future, you will be seeing more satellite photos of non-descript buildings that experts will say are housing elements of a nuclear bomb factory. There will be more diagrams of supposed nuclear devices. Some of the same talking heads will reappear to interpret this new ?evidence.? You might even recognize some of those familiar faces from the more innocent days of 2002-2003 when they explained, with unnerving confidence, how Iraq?s Saddam Hussein surely had chemical and biological weapons and likely a nuclear weapons program, too. For instance, back then, former United Nations weapons inspector David Albright was all over the news channels, reinforcing the alarmist claims about Iraq?s WMD that were coming from President George W. Bush and his neocon-dominated administration. Today, Albright?s Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) is issuing a flurry of alarmist reports about Iran?s nuclear bomb progress, often accompanied by the same kind of satellite photos and diagrams that helped persuade many Americans that Iraq must possess unconventional weapons that turned out to be fictitious. For instance, in the run-up to war in Iraq, Albright co-authored a Sept. 10, 2002, article ? entitled ?Is the Activity at Al Qaim Related to Nuclear Efforts?? ? which declared, ?High-resolution commercial satellite imagery shows an apparently operational facility at the site of Iraq?s al Qaim phosphate plant and uranium extraction facility (Unit-340), located in northwest Iraq near the Syrian border. This site was where Iraq extracted uranium for its nuclear weapons program in the 1980s. ?This image raises questions about whether Iraq has rebuilt a uranium extraction facility at the site, possibly even underground. Unless inspectors go to the site and investigate all activities, the international community cannot exclude the possibility that Iraq is secretly producing a stockpile of uranium in violation of its commitments under Security Council resolutions. The uranium could be used in a clandestine nuclear weapons effort.? Albright?s nuclear warning about Iraq coincided with the start of the Bush administration?s propaganda campaign to rally Congress and the American people to war with talk about ?the smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud.? Though Albright eventually grew skeptical about the alleged resurrection of an Iraqi nuclear program, he remained a firm believer in the Bush administration?s claims about Iraq?s supposed chemical and biological weapons programs as justification for the March 2003 invasion. Gullibility Exposed In summer 2003, after the promised WMD caches proved non-existent, the journalism watchdog group FAIR published a study by Seth Ackerman looking at the American press corps? gullibility and citing the role of weapons experts like Albright. Entitlted ?The Great WMD Hunt,? the article said, ?In part, journalists absorbed their aura of certainty from a battery of ?independent? weapons experts who repeated the mantra of Iraq concealment over and over. Journalists used these experts as outside sources who could independently evaluate the administration?s claims. Yet often these ?experts? were simply repeating what they heard from U.S. officials, forming an endless loop of self-reinforcing scare mongering. ?Take the ubiquitous David Albright, a former U.N. inspector in Iraq. Over the years, Albright had been cited in hundreds of news articles and made scores of television appearances as an authority on Iraqi weapons. A sample prewar quote from Albright (CNN, 10/5/02): ?In terms of the chemical and biological weapons, Iraq has those now. How many, how could they deliver them? I mean, these are the big questions.?? FAIR added: ?But when the postwar weapons hunt started turning up empty, Albright made a rather candid admission (L.A. Times, 4/20/03): ?If there are no weapons of mass destruction, I?ll be mad as hell. I certainly accepted the administration claims on chemical and biological weapons. I figured they were telling the truth. If there is no [unconventional weapons program], I will feel taken, because they asserted these things with such assurance.?? Albright?s official biography at ISIS, which he founded and still heads, also boasts about his media influence: ?The media frequently cite Albright, and he has appeared often on television and radio. A National Journal profile in 2004 called him a ?go-to guy for media people seeking independent analysis on Iraq?s WMD programs.?? The list of media outlets that relied on Albright is indeed impressive, as the bio reports: ?The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Time, Washington Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, London Sunday Times, Guardian, Die Zeit, Ashi Shimbun, Der Spiegel, Stern, and Times of India and by Reuters, Associated Press, AFP and Bloomberg wire services. Albright has also appeared many times on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, 60 Minutes, Dateline, Nightline and multiple National Public Radio shows.? Forgetting Iraq Fiasco Yet, when the Washington Post cited Albright on Monday, as the key source of a front-page article about Iran?s supposed progress toward reaching ?nuclear capability,? all the history of Albright?s role in the Iraq fiasco disappeared. The article by Joby Warrick stated: ?Beginning early in the last decade and apparently resuming ? though at a more measured pace ? after a pause in 2003, Iranian scientists worked concurrently across multiple disciplines to obtain key skills needed to make and test a nuclear weapon that could fit inside the country?s long-range missiles, said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who has reviewed the intelligence files. ??The program never really stopped,? said Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. The institute performs widely respected independent analyses of nuclear programs in countries around the world, often drawing from IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] data. ??After 2003, money [in Iran] was made available for research in areas that sure look like nuclear weapons work but were hidden within civilian institutions,? Albright said.? The Post reported that key elements of this foreboding analysis come from a soon-to-be-released IAEA report, but the Post relied on Albright for emphasis and interpretation. The article said: ?Some of the highlights were described in a presentation by Albright at a private conference of intelligence professionals last week. PowerPoint slides from the presentation were obtained by The Washington Post, and details of Albright?s summary were confirmed by two European diplomats privy to the IAEA?s internal reports. ?Albright said IAEA officials, based on the totality of the evidence given to them, have concluded that Iran ?has sufficient information to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device? using highly enriched uranium as its fissile core. ?The [intelligence] points to a comprehensive project structure and hierarchy with clear responsibilities, timelines and deliverables,? Albright said, according to the notes from the presentation.? The Post cited Albright as describing a key breakthrough for Iran when it obtained the design for an R265 generator, ?a hemispherical aluminum shell with an intricate array of high explosives that detonate with split-second precision. These charges compress a small sphere of enriched uranium or plutonium to trigger a nuclear chain reaction.? The Post reported that the IAEA had received intelligence claiming that a former Soviet nuclear scientist, Vyacheslav Danilenko, explained to Iranian scientists how to develop and test an explosion needed to detonate a nuclear warhead. However, one source told the Post that Danilenko?s work was limited to civilian engineering projects. The Post doesn?t spell out where the new IAEA intelligence originated, but the New York Times reported that ?some of that information came from the United States, Israel and Europe.? Israeli leaders have been trying to rally public support for a bombing campaign against Iran?s nuclear facilities, while Iran remains deeply unpopular with U.S. and European officials. A Different IAEA The IAEA also is not the same organization that bucked the Bush administration?s intelligence regarding Iraq?s supposed nuclear weapons program. As former CIA analyst Ray McGovern wrote on Feb. 21, 2010, the new IAEA chief, Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano, had ?huge shoes to fill when he took over from the widely respected Mohamed ElBaradei, [who] had the courage to call a spade a spade and, when necessary, a forgery a forgery ? like the documents alleging that Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium in Niger.? Citing the contrast between ElBaradei?s expertise and reputation and that of the less known Amano, McGovern added, ?lacking gravitas, one bends more easily. It is a fair assumption that Amano will prove more malleable than his predecessor ? and surely more na?ve.? Now, it appears that Amano?s IAEA has accepted intelligence information from Israel and other enemies of Iran in preparing a report that is sure to add fuel to the fire for a possible military confrontation with Iran. Republican presidential hopefuls are already lining up to beat the war drums and accuse President Barack Obama of softness on Iran. CIA analysts are sure to come under new pressure to back away from an important National Intelligence Estimate from 2007 which concluded that the Iranians had halted work on a nuclear weapons program in 2003. President Bush said the NIE tied his hands when he was considering a military attack on Iran before he left office. Official Washington?s animus toward Iran also continues to be reflected in the intense interest over Iran?s nuclear program, which Iranian officials insist is only for peaceful purposes, compared to the usual silence over Israel?s actual nuclear-weapons arsenal. Not only do the Washington Post and New York Times routinely leave out the existence of the Israeli arsenal of possibly hundreds of atomic bombs when writing stories about Iran conceivably building its first, but experts like Albright also largely ignore the former while obsessing on the latter. Albright?s ISIS has published 36 reports about Iran in the past 12 months alone, compared to only three items on Israel over the past decade, according to the ISIS Web site. It is that sort of even-handedness that Americans can expect in the next days and weeks as the U.S. news media again consults with its favored ?experts? as both groups reprise their pre-Iraq War role on WMD, this time on Iran. [For more on related topics, see Robert Parry?s Lost History, Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep, now available in a three-book set for the discount price of only $29. For details, click here.] http://consortiumnews.com/2011/11/08/an-iraq-wmd-replay-on-iran/ From ths at psalience.org Thu Nov 10 19:11:21 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:11:21 +0100 Subject: [THS] Juan Cole: How a Neoliberal Shell Game Created an Age of Activism Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111110191014.06410d98@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175466/tomgram%3A_juan_co Tomgram: Juan Cole, Protesting a Pasha-the-Tiger World Posted by Juan Cole at 9:15am, November 10, 2011. Here?s the simple truth of it: American priorities couldn?t be clearer at the moment. You would have to be blind not to notice. The numbers, almost any numbers you care to look at, tell the story. In fact, you can hardly turn on the TV news or read a newspaper these days without being whacked over the head by a new set of staggering figures, each shocking in more or less the same way. You want a crystal ball to see the future? No need. Just check out, for example, the recent Pew Research Center study showing that, in 2009, households headed by adults 65 or older had 47 times the wealth of households headed by someone younger than 35. The actual numbers feel more startling yet: $170,494 to $3,662. In 1984, the ratio was 10 to 1. Consider that as your modern American history lesson for the day. We?re talking about the widest ?wealth gap? on record. Those figures tell a tale about the likely lives of upcoming generations: not as good. But let?s not be too cheery about the elderly either. After all, the most recent figures from the Census Bureau show poverty rising among seniors to 15.9%, or roughly one in six of elderly, many driven into debt and poverty by ?out-of-pocket medical expenses.? About one in seven Americans now fall below the official poverty line, the most, writes Business Week, ?since the Bureau began gathering that statistic? 52 years ago. In the meantime, median family income declined by 2.3% in 2010, a year in which the economy expanded by 3%. (Into whose pockets, I wonder, could that money be going?) If you want to think about American priorities another way, consider this figure: the price tag for a year at elite Princeton University ($37,000) is less than for a year in a New Jersey state prison ($43,000). The U.S., in fact, has more people incarcerated than any country on the planet, but places only sixth in college degrees. Its national spending on higher education rose by 21% from 1987 to 2007, but 127% in the same period for correctional spending. Oh, and full-time college students are now borrowing 63% more for their educations than they did a decade ago and graduating, on average, more than $25,000 in debt into a job-poor universe. Which brings up an obvious question: Which society is more likely to prosper, one that puts its money into incarceration or one that puts its money into education? Right now, as the numbers pour in, the question isn?t: Why are all those kids out there in parks and squares and plazas raising a fuss? It?s: Why isn?t everyone protesting -- or 99% of us anyway? TomDispatch regular Juan Cole, whose Informed Comment website is a crucial companion for anyone who wants to understand the Middle East, explains just why, in 2011, we find ourselves in an age of activism globally. If the young are protesting nearly planet-wide, there?s a reason: the world was screwed up in remarkably similar ways in almost any country you care to consider. Tom Protest Planet How a Neoliberal Shell Game Created an Age of Activism By Juan Cole From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to Oakland, a new generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state that has dominated the world ever since the Cold War ended. The massive popular protests that shook the globe this year have much in common, though most of the reporting on them in the mainstream media has obscured the similarities. Whether in Egypt or the United States, young rebels are reacting to a single stunning worldwide development: the extreme concentration of wealth in a few hands thanks to neoliberal policies of deregulation and union busting. They have taken to the streets, parks, plazas, and squares to protest against the resulting corruption, the way politicians can be bought and sold, and the impunity of the white-collar criminals who have run riot in societies everywhere. They are objecting to high rates of unemployment, reduced social services, blighted futures, and above all the substitution of the market for all other values as the matrix of human ethics and life. Pasha the Tiger In the ?glorious thirty years? after World War II, North America and Western Europe achieved remarkable rates of economic growth and relatively low levels of inequality for capitalist societies, while instituting a broad range of benefits for workers, students, and retirees. From roughly 1980 on, however, the neoliberal movement, rooted in the laissez-faire economic theories of Milton Friedman, launched what became a full-scale assault on workers? power and an attempt, often remarkably successful, to eviscerate the social welfare state. Neoliberals chanted the mantra that everyone would benefit if the public sector were privatized, businesses deregulated, and market mechanisms allowed to distribute wealth. But as economist David Harvey argues, from the beginning it was a doctrine that primarily benefited the wealthy, its adoption allowing the top 1% in any neoliberal society to capture a disproportionate share of whatever wealth was generated. In the global South, countries that gained their independence from European colonialism after World War II tended to create large public sectors as part of the process of industrialization. Often, living standards improved as a result, but by the 1970s, such developing economies were generally experiencing a leveling-off of growth. This happened just as neoliberalism became ascendant in Washington, Paris, and London as well as in Bretton Woods institutions like the International Monetary Fund. This ?Washington consensus? meant that the urge to impose privatization on stagnating, nepotistic postcolonial states would become the order of the day. Egypt and Tunisia, to take two countries in the spotlight for sparking the Arab Spring, were successfully pressured in the 1990s to privatize their relatively large public sectors. Moving public resources into the private sector created an almost endless range of opportunities for staggering levels of corruption on the part of the ruling families of autocrats Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunis and Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. International banks, central banks, and emerging local private banks aided and abetted their agenda. It was not surprising then that one of the first targets of Tunisian crowds in the course of the revolution they made last January was the Zitouna bank, a branch of which they torched. Its owner? Sakher El Materi, a son-in-law of President Ben Ali and the notorious owner of Pasha, the well-fed pet tiger that prowled the grounds of one of his sumptuous mansions. Not even the way his outfit sought legitimacy by practicing ?Islamic banking? could forestall popular rage. A 2006 State Department cable released by WikiLeaks observed, ?One local financial expert blames the [Ben Ali] Family for chronic banking sector woes due to the great percentage of non-performing loans issued through crony connections, and has essentially paralyzed banking authorities from genuine recovery efforts.? That is, the banks were used by the regime to give away money to his cronies, with no expectation of repayment. Tunisian activists similarly directed their ire at foreign banks and lenders to which their country owes $14.4 billion. Tunisians are still railing and rallying against the repayment of all that money, some of which they believe was borrowed profligately by the corrupt former regime and then squandered quite privately. Tunisians had their own 1%, a thin commercial elite, half of whom were related to or closely connected to President Ben Ali. As a group, they were accused by young activists of mafia-like, predatory practices, such as demanding pay-offs from legitimate businesses, and discouraging foreign investment by tying it to a stupendous system of bribes. The closed, top-heavy character of the Tunisian economic system was blamed for the bottom-heavy waves of suffering that followed: cost of living increases that hit people on fixed incomes or those like students and peddlers in the marginal economy especially hard. It was no happenstance that the young man who immolated himself and so sparked the Tunisian rebellion was a hard-pressed vegetable peddler. It?s easy now to overlook what clearly ties the beginning of the Arab Spring to the European Summer and the present American Fall: the point of the Tunisian revolution was not just to gain political rights, but to sweep away that 1%, popularly imagined as a sort of dam against economic opportunity. Tahrir Square, Zuccotti Park, Rothschild Avenue The success of the Tunisian revolution in removing the octopus-like Ben Ali plutocracy inspired the dramatic events in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and even Israel that are redrawing the political map of the Middle East. But the 2011 youth protest movement was hardly contained in the Middle East. Estonian-Canadian activist Kalle Lasn and his anti-consumerist colleagues at the Vancouver-based Adbusters Media Foundation were inspired by the success of the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square in deposing dictator Hosni Mubarak. Their organization specializes in combatting advertising culture through spoofs and pranks. It was Adbusters magazine that sent out the call on Twitter in the summer of 2011 for a rally at Wall Street on September 17th, with the now-famous hash tag #OccupyWallStreet. A thousand protesters gathered on the designated date, commemorating the 2008 economic meltdown that had thrown millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes. Some camped out in nearby Zuccotti Park, another unexpected global spark for protest. The Occupy Wall Street movement has now spread throughout the United States, sometimes in the face of serious acts of repression, as in Oakland, California. It has followed in the spirit of the Arab and European movements in demanding an end to special privileges for the richest 1%, including their ability to more or less buy the U.S. government for purposes of their choosing. What is often forgotten is that the Ben Alis, Mubaraks, and Qaddafis were not simply authoritarian tyrants. They were the 1%, and the guardians of the 1%, in their own societies -- and loathed for exactly that. Last April, around the time that Lasn began imagining Wall Street protests, progressive activists in Israel started planning their own movement. In July, sales clerk and aspiring filmmaker Daphne Leef found herself unable to cover a sudden rent increase on her Tel Aviv apartment. So she started a protest Facebook page similar to the ones that fueled the Arab Spring and moved into a tent on the posh Rothschild Avenue where she was soon joined by hundreds of other protesting Israelis. Week by week, the demonstrations grew, spreading to cities throughout the country and culminating on September 3rd in a massive rally, the largest in Israel?s history. Some 300,000 protesters came out in Tel Aviv, 50,000 in Jerusalem, and 40,000 in Haifa. Their demands included not just lower housing costs, but a rollback of neoliberal policies, less regressive taxes and more progressive, direct taxation, a halt to the privatization of the economy, and the funding of a system of inexpensive education and child care. Many on the left in Israel are also deeply troubled by the political and economic power of right-wing settlers on the West Bank, but most decline to bring the Palestinian issue into the movement?s demands for fear of losing support among the middle class. For the same reason, the way the Israeli movement was inspired by Tahrir Square and the Egyptian revolution has been downplayed, although ?Walk like an Egyptian? signs -- a reference both to the Cairo demonstrations and the 1986 Bangles hit song -- have been spotted on Rothschild Avenue. Most of the Israeli activists in the coastal cities know that they are victims of the same neoliberal order that displaces the Palestinians, punishes them, and keeps them stateless. Indeed, the Palestinians, altogether lacking a state but at the complete mercy of various forms of international capital controlled by elites elsewhere, are the ultimate victims of the neoliberal order. But in order to avoid a split in the Israeli protest movement, a quiet agreement was reached to focus on economic discontents and so avoid the divisive issue of the much-despised West Bank settlements. There has been little reporting in the Western press about a key source of Israeli unease, which was palpable to me when I visited the country in May. Even then, before the local protests had fully hit their stride, Israelis I met were complaining about the rise to power of an Israeli 1%. There are now 16 billionaires in the country, who control $45 billion in assets, and the current crop of 10,153 millionaires is 20% percent larger than it was in the previous fiscal year. In terms of its distribution of wealth, Israel is now among the most unequal of the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Since the late 1980s, the average household income of families in the bottom fifth of the population has been declining at an annual rate of 1.1%. Over the same period, the average household income of families among the richest 20% went up at an annual rate of 2.4%. While neoliberalism has produced more unequal societies throughout the world, nowhere else has the income of the poor declined quite so strikingly. The concentration of wealth in a few hands profoundly contradicts the founding principles of Israel?s Labor Zionism, and results from decades of right-wing Likud policies punishing the poor and middle classes and shifting wealth to the top of society. The Indignant Ones European youth were also inspired by the Tunisians and Egyptians -- and by a similar flight of wealth. I was in Barcelona on May 27th, when the police attacked demonstrators camped out at the Pla?a de Catalunya, provoking widespread consternation. The government of the region is currently led by the centrist Convergence and Union Party, a moderate proponent of Catalan nationalism. It is relatively popular locally, and so Catalans had not expected such heavy-handed police action to be ordered. The crackdown, however, underlined the very point of the protesters, that the neoliberal state, whatever its political makeup, is protecting the same set of wealthy miscreants. Spain?s ?indignados? (indignant ones) got their start in mid-May with huge protests at Madrid?s Puerta del Sol Plaza against the country's persistent 21% unemployment rate (and double that among the young). Egyptian activists in Tahrir Square immediately sent a statement of warm support to those in the Spanish capital (as they would months later to New York?s demonstrators). Again following the same pattern, the Spanish movement does not restrict its objections to unemployment (and the lack of benefits attending the few new temporary or contract jobs that do arise). Its targets are the banks, bank bailouts, financial corruption, and cuts in education and other services. Youth activists I met in Toledo and Madrid this summer denounced both of the country?s major parties and, indeed, the very consumer society that emphasized wealth accumulation over community and material acquisition over personal enrichment. In the past two months Spain?s young protesters have concentrated on demonstrating against cuts to education, with crowds of 70,000 to 90,000 coming out more than once in Madrid, and tens of thousands in other cities. For marches in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, hundreds of thousands reportedly took to the streets of Madrid and Barcelona, among other cities. The global reach and connectedness of these movements has yet to be fully appreciated. The Madrid education protesters, for example, cited for inspiration Chilean students who, through persistent, innovative, and large-scale demonstrations this summer and fall, have forced that country?s neoliberal government, headed by the increasingly unpopular billionaire president Sebasti?n Pi?era, to inject $1.6 billion in new money into education. Neither the crowds of youth in Madrid nor those in Santiago are likely to be mollified, however, by new dorms and laboratories. Chilean students have already moved on from insisting on an end to an ever more expensive class-based education system to demands that the country?s lucrative copper mines be nationalized so as to generate revenues for investment in education. In every instance, the underlying goal of specific protests by the youthful reformists is the neoliberal order itself. The word ?union? was little uttered in American television news coverage of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, even though factory workers and sympathy strikes of all sorts played a key role in them. The right-wing press in the U.S. actually went out of its way to contrast Egyptian demonstrations against Mubarak with the Wisconsin rallies of government workers against Governor Scott Walker?s measure to cripple the bargaining power of their unions. The Egyptians, Commentary typically wrote, were risking their lives, while Wisconsin?s union activists were taking the day off from cushy jobs to parade around with placards, immune from being fired for joining the rallies. The implication: the Egyptian revolution was against tyranny, whereas already spoiled American workers were demanding further coddling. The American right has never been interested in recognizing this reality: that forbidding unions and strikes is a form of tyranny. In fact, it wasn?t just progressive bloggers who saw a connection between Tahrir Square and Madison. The head of the newly formed independent union federation in Egypt dispatched an explicit expression of solidarity to the Wisconsin workers, centering on worker?s rights. At least, Commentary did us one favor: it clarified why the story has been told as it has in most of the American media. If the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya were merely about individualistic political rights -- about the holding of elections and the guarantee of due process -- then they could be depicted as largely irrelevant to politics in the United States and Europe, where such norms already prevailed. If, however, they centered on economic rights (as they certainly did), then clearly the discontents of North African youth when it came to plutocracy, corruption, the curbing of workers? rights, and persistent unemployment deeply resembled those of their American counterparts. The global protests of 2011 have been cast in the American media largely as an ?Arab Spring? challenging local dictatorships -- as though Spain, Chile, and Israel do not exist. The constant speculation by pundits and television news anchors in the U.S. about whether ?Islam? would benefit from the Arab Spring functioned as an Orientalist way of marking events in North Africa as alien and vaguely menacing, but also as not germane to the day to day concerns of working Americans. The inhabitants of Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan clearly feel differently. Facebook Flash Mobs If we focus on economic trends, then the neoliberal state looks eerily similar, whether it is a democracy or a dictatorship, whether the government is nominally right of center or left of center. As a package, deregulation, the privatization of public resources and firms, corruption and forms of insider trading, and interference in the ability of workers to organize or engage in collective bargaining have allowed the top 1% in Israel, just as in Tunisia or the United States, to capture the lion?s share of profits from the growth of the last decades. Observers were puzzled by the huge crowds that turned out in both Tunis and Tel Aviv in 2011, especially given that economic growth in those countries had been running at a seemingly healthy 5% per annum. ?Growth,? defined generally and without regard to its distribution, is the answer to a neoliberal question. The question of the 99% percent, however, is: Who is getting the increased wealth? In both of those countries, as in the United States and other neoliberal lands, the answer is: disproportionately the 1%. If you were wondering why outraged young people around the globe are chanting such similar slogans and using such similar tactics (including Facebook ?flash mobs?), it is because they have seen more clearly than their elders through the neoliberal shell game. Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History and the director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan. His latest book, Engaging the Muslim World, is just out in a revised paperback edition from Palgrave Macmillan. He runs the Informed Comment website. Copyright 2011 Juan Cole From ths at psalience.org Sat Nov 12 00:31:23 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:31:23 +0100 Subject: [THS] Congress Members Took Part in Insider Trading: Abramoff Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111112002624.04780cd8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29688.htm [When the president does it, that means it's not illegal, said Nixon. Ev'vrybody wants to get in on de act, said Jimmy Durante. -ths] Congress Members Took Part in Insider Trading: Abramoff By Eamon Javers November 11, 2011 "CNBC" -- As many as a dozen members of Congress and their aides took part in insider trading based on foreknowledge of market moving information on Capitol Hill, disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff told CNBC in an interview. Abramoff, who was once one of the wealthiest and most powerful lobbyists in Washington before a corruption scandal sent him to federal prison for more than three years, said that many of those members of Congress bragged to him about their stock trading prowess while dining at the exclusive restaurant he owned on Pennsylvania Avenue. But Abramoff, whose black trench coat and fedora became one of the most notorious images in recent Washington history after his fall from grace, said he didn't play the stock market himself ? he considered it an inherently unfair "casino" in which the house had far more information than the players. Abramoff made most of his fortune representing ? and, as it turned out, duping ? Native American tribes rich with cash from casino operations. The former lobbyist said the amounts members of Congress earned trading off their inside knowledge ranged from as little as $2,000 to, as much as "several hundred thousand dollars," that was claimed by one member of Congress. Abramoff declined to name the members of Congress. "It was more, 'Look at me, I'm a real great stock trader,'" Abramoff told CNBC of the congressional bragging. "All of a sudden somebody from a background maybe in law, maybe in some other unrelated business area, all of a sudden is picking winners and losers in the market." "I was making far more money than they were," Abramoff recalled. "So I wasn't as impressed as perhaps they thought I'd be." At the time, Abramoff, who was involved in an extensive corruption ring, didn't think much of it. But after years in prison to reflect on the culture of corruption in Washington, Abramoff says he thinks trading based on inside Congressional knowledge is wrong. "These people should not be using whatever information they gain as public servants to benefit themselves, any more than they should be taking bribes," he said. Generally, however, legal analysts say that Wall Street insider trading laws do not apply to Congress. As an open and public institution, the legal assumption has long been that any member of the public can have access to information about how Congress works. In practice, though, that's simply not true, as powerful members of Congress come into contact daily with market-moving tidbits. That gap between the law and the reality has made Capitol Hill a virtual free-fire zone for insider trading. Over the years, academic studies have found that members of the House of Representatives beat the market by as much as six percent per year and members of the Senate do even better than that. And Abramoff says everybody on the inside knew it. "I think it was pretty widely known and it is pretty widely known that it is going on," he said. Abramoff has been making the rounds, speaking with the media this week, to promote his new book, "Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist," which went on sale Monday. Abramoff said that the most valuable type of information for Congressional insider trading is held by congressional investigators who pry deeply into corporate goings on. A particularly easy target is advance knowledge of the announcement of an investigative hearing into a company. "Hearings under almost every circumstance are going to have a bad impact on a company," Abramoff said. "And so some staffers I've seen in the past talking about the fact that, 'Oh, I'm gonna go out and short that company.'" But the man who spread millions around the nation's capital said he didn't like to invest his own money in the stock market. "I'd never really played the stock market," he said. "I viewed it as a big gamble because of the fact you don't have all the information you need. The casino has all the information, and you don't." Follow Eamon Javers on Twitter: @EamonJavers and Facebook ? 2011 CNBC.com From ths at psalience.org Sat Nov 12 00:34:43 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:34:43 +0100 Subject: [THS] Michael S. Rozeff: Obama Wants World War III Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111112003349.04782458@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29692.htm Obama Wants World War III By Michael S. Rozeff November 11, 2011 "Lew Rockwell" --Israel is getting ready to attack Iran. One word from Obama can stop Israel from attacking Iran. Is he saying "No"? I don't hear it. He evidently wants a wider war. Iran is a rather large country that borders on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Iraq, and Turkey; plus the Persian Gulf, and plus being near Saudi Arabia and Syria. All sorts of unknown consequences, short and long term, can occur when Israel attacks Iran. It seems to me that Obama is courting World War III. What concessions have the U.S. ever offered to Iran to have them stop their nuclear developments? And even if it had, why should the Iranians have listened? After all, Gadaffi stopped his program, such as it was, and look what happened to Libya and him. Why should Israel have nuclear weapons and Iran not? It's obvious that the U.S. is following the domino road map laid out under Bush of knocking over one nation after another. Iran knows this. Why should the Iranians not rationally hasten and augment their military programs even more in view of the U.S. and Israeli threats and known strategies? Nations on its borders have already been attacked. A fine mess that U.S. leadership has produced since the Soviet Union fell! It could have led the world to nuclear disarmament and peace. Instead it's created more and more totally useless and destructive warfare. Can anyone see a difference between Obama and Bush? I can't. From ths at psalience.org Sat Nov 12 00:46:54 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:46:54 +0100 Subject: [THS] Mitt Romney: I Won't Let Iran Get Nukes Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111112004554.047b5018@mail.messagingengine.com> [forwarded] The leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, just announced his plan for a US war against Iran on the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Romney will launch his Iran War by imposing a harsher sanctions regime and orchestrating massive military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf. In Romney's statement, he airbrushes the Iran-Contra Scandal from the pages of history - a covert operation run out of the Reagan White House to provide arms to Iran during their war with Iraq. Big Oil is praying for US war against Iran for it will lead to massive hikes in the costs of crude oil. [MCM] I Won't Let Iran Get Nukes Barack Obama is leading us toward a cascade of proliferation in the Middle East. By Mitt Romney The International Atomic Energy Agency's latest report this week makes clear what I and others have been warning about for too long: Iran is making rapid headway toward its goal of obtaining nuclear weapons. Successive American presidents, including Barack Obama, have declared such an outcome to be unacceptable. But under the Obama administration, rhetoric and policy have been sharply at odds, and we're hurtling toward a major crisis involving nuclear weapons in one of the most politically volatile and economically significant regions of the world. Things did not have to be this way. To understand how best to proceed from here, we need to review the administration's extraordinary record of failure. Matt Kaminski on the International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's nuclear development and Mitt Romney's plan on dealing with Iran. As a candidate for the presidency in 2007, Barack Obama put forward "engagement" with Tehran as a way to solve the nuclear problem, declaring he would meet with Iran's leaders "without preconditions." Whether this approach was rooted in na?vet? or in realistic expectations can be debated; I believe it was the former. But whatever calculation lay behind the proposed diplomatic opening, it was predictably rebuffed by the Iranian regime. After that repudiation, a serious U.S. strategy to block Iran's nuclear ambitions became an urgent necessity. But that is precisely what the administration never provided. Instead, we've been offered a case study in botched diplomacy and its potentially horrific costs. In his "reset" of relations with Russia, President Obama caved in to Moscow's demands by reneging on a missile-defense agreement with Eastern European allies and agreeing to a New Start Treaty to reduce strategic nuclear weapons while getting virtually nothing in return. If there ever was a possibility of gaining the Kremlin's support for tougher action against Tehran, that unilateral giveaway was the moment. President Obama foreclosed it. romney romney IIPA/Getty Images Another key juncture came with the emergence of Iran's Green Revolution after the stolen election of 2009. Here?more than a year before the eruption of the Arab Spring?was a spontaneous popular revolt against a regime that has been destabilizing the region, supporting terrorism around the world, killing American soldiers in Iraq, and attacking the U.S. for three decades. Yet President Obama, evidently fearful of jeopardizing any further hope of engagement, proclaimed his intention not to "meddle" as the ayatollahs unleashed a wave of terror against their own society. A proper American policy might or might not have altered the outcome; we will never know. But thanks to this shameful abdication of moral authority, any hope of toppling a vicious regime was lost, perhaps for generations. In 2010, the administration did finally impose another round of sanctions, which President Obama hailed as a strike "at the heart" of Iran's ability to fund its nuclear programs. But here again we can see a gulf between words and deeds. As the IAEA report makes plain, the heart that we supposedly struck is still pumping just fine. Sanctions clearly failed in their purpose. Iran is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power. Recent events have brought White House fecklessness to another low. When Iran was discovered plotting to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador by setting off a bomb in downtown Washington, the administration responded with nothing more than tough talk and an indictment against two low-level Iranian operatives, as if this were merely a common criminal offense rather than an act of international aggression. Demonstrating further irresolution, the administration then floated the idea of sanctioning Iran's central bank, only to quietly withdraw that proposal. Barack Obama has shredded his own credibility on Iran, conveyed an image of American weakness, and increased the prospect of a cascade of nuclear proliferation in the unstable Middle East. The United States needs a very different policy. Si vis pacem, para bellum. That is a Latin phrase, but the ayatollahs will have no trouble understanding its meaning from a Romney administration: If you want peace, prepare for war. I want peace. And if I am president, I will begin by imposing a new round of far tougher economic sanctions on Iran. I will do this together with the world if we can, unilaterally if we must. I will speak out forcefully on behalf of Iranian dissidents. I will back up American diplomacy with a very real and very credible military option. I will restore the regular presence of aircraft carrier groups in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf region simultaneously. I will increase military assistance to Israel and coordination with all of our allies in the region. These actions will send an unequivocal signal to Iran that the United States, acting in concert with allies, will never permit Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. Only when the ayatollahs no longer have doubts about America's resolve will they abandon their nuclear ambitions. Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, is seeking the Republican presidential nomination. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204224604577027921373481512.html?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs%3Darticle From ths at psalience.org Sat Nov 12 14:59:00 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:59:00 +0100 Subject: [THS] Greg Palast: The Fukushima story you didn't hear on CNN Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111112145811.06cc5a38@mail.messagingengine.com> "Completely and Utterly Fail in an Earthquake" The Fukushima story you didn't hear on CNN by Greg Palast for FreePress.org Friday, November 11, 2011 I've seen a lot of sick stuff in my career, but this was sick on a new level. Here was the handwritten log kept by a senior engineer at the nuclear power plant: Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. . . . In fact, the plant was riddled with problems that, no way on earth, could stand an earth- quake. The team of engineers sent in to inspect found that most of these components could "completely and utterly fail" during an earthquake. "Utterly fail during an earthquake." And here in Japan was the quake and here is the utter failure. The warning was in what the investigations team called The Notebook, which I'm not supposed to have. Good thing I've kept a copy anyway, because the file cabinets went down with my office building .... WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWER 1, FIFTY-SECOND FLOOR NEW YORK, 1986 [This is an excerpt in FreePress.org from Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Fraudsters, to be released this Monday. Click here to get the videos and the book.] Two senior nuclear plant engineers were spilling out their souls and files on our huge conference table, blowing away my government investigations team with the inside stuff about the construction of the Shoreham, New York, power station. The meeting was secret. Very secret. Their courage could destroy their careers: No engineering firm wants to hire a snitch, even one who has saved thousands of lives. They could lose their jobs; they could lose everything. They did. That's what happens. Have a nice day. On March 12 this year, as I watched Fukushima melt, I knew: the "SQ" had been faked. Anderson Cooper said it would all be OK. He'd flown to Japan, to suck up the radiation and official company bullshit. The horror show was not the fault of Tokyo Electric, he said, because the plant was built to withstand only an 8.0 earthquake on the Richter scale, and this was 9.0. Anderson must have been in the gym when they handed out the facts. The 9.0 shake was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 90 miles away. It was barely a tenth of that power at Fukushima. I was ready to vomit. Because I knew who had designed the plant, who had built it and whom Tokyo Electric Power was having rebuild it: Shaw Construction. The latest alias of Stone & Webster, the designated builder for every one of the four new nuclear plants that the Obama Administration has approved for billions in federal studies. But I had The Notebook, the diaries of the earthquake inspector for the company. I'd squirreled it out sometime before the Trade Center went down. I shouldn't have done that. Too bad. All field engineers keep a diary. Gordon Dick, a supervisor, wasn't sup- posed to show his to us. I asked him to show it to us and, reluctantly, he directed me to these notes about the "SQ" tests. SQ is nuclear-speak for "Seismic Qualification." A seismically qualified nuclear plant won't melt down if you shake it. A "seismic event" can be an earthquake or a Christmas present from Al Qaeda. You can't run a nuclear reactor in the USA or Europe or Japan without certified SQ. This much is clear from his notebook: This nuclear plant will melt down in an earthquake. The plant dismally failed to meet the Seismic I (shaking) standards required by U.S. and international rules. Here's what we learned: Dick's subordinate at the nuclear plant, Robert Wiesel, conducted the standard seismic review. Wiesel flunked his company. No good. Dick then ordered Wiesel to change his report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, change it from failed to passed. Dick didn't want to make Wiesel do it, but Dick was under the gun himself, acting on direct command from corporate chiefs. From The Notebook: Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. [He said,] "I believe these are bad results and I believe it's reportable," and then he took the volume of federal regulations from the shelf and went to section 50.55(e), which describes reportable deficiencies at a nuclear plant and [they] read the section together, with Wiesel pointing to the appropriate paragraphs that federal law clearly required [them and the company] to report the Category II, Seismic I deficiencies. Wiesel then expressed his concern that he was afraid that if he [Wiesel] reported the deficiencies, he would be fired, but that if he didn't report the deficiencies, he would be breaking a federal law. . . . The law is clear. It is a crime not to report a safety failure. I could imagine Wiesel standing there with that big, thick rule book in his hands, The Law. It must have been heavy. So was his paycheck. He weighed the choices: Break the law, possibly a jail-time crime, or keep his job. What did Wiesel do? What would you do? Why the hell would his company make this man walk the line? Why did they put the gun to his head, to make him conceal mortal danger? It was the money. It's always the money. Fixing the seismic problem would have cost the plant's owner half a billion dollars easy. A guy from corporate told Dick, "Bob is a good man. He'll do what's right. Don't worry about Bob." That is, they thought Bob would save his job and career rather than rat out the company to the feds. But I think we should all worry about Bob. The company he worked for, Stone & Webster Engineering, built or designed about a third of the nuclear plants in the United States. >From the fifty-second floor we could look at the Statue of Liberty. She didn't look back. From ths at psalience.org Sat Nov 12 15:18:20 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 15:18:20 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!!!!!! Matt Taibbi: How I Stopped Worrying... Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111112150726.06c049e8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-i-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-love-the-ows-protests-20111110 How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests Much more than a movement against big banks, they're a rejection of what our society has become. By Matt Taibbi November 10, 2011 8:00 AM ET TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images I have a confession to make. At first, I misunderstood Occupy Wall Street. The first few times I went down to Zuccotti Park, I came away with mixed feelings. I loved the energy and was amazed by the obvious organic appeal of the movement, the way it was growing on its own. But my initial impression was that it would not be taken very seriously by the Citibanks and Goldman Sachs of the world. You could put 50,000 angry protesters on Wall Street, 100,000 even, and Lloyd Blankfein is probably not going to break a sweat. He knows he's not going to wake up tomorrow and see Cornel West or Richard Trumka running the Federal Reserve. He knows modern finance is a giant mechanical parasite that only an expert surgeon can remove. Yell and scream all you want, but he and his fellow financial Frankensteins are the only ones who know how to turn the machine off. That's what I was thinking during the first few weeks of the protests. But I'm beginning to see another angle. Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it. And by being so broad in scope and so elemental in its motivation, it's flown over the heads of many on both the right and the left. The right-wing media wasted no time in cannon-blasting the movement with its usual idiotic clich?s, casting Occupy Wall Street as a bunch of dirty hippies who should get a job and stop chewing up Mike Bloomberg's police overtime budget with their urban sleepovers. Just like they did a half-century ago, when the debate over the Vietnam War somehow stopped being about why we were brutally murdering millions of innocent Indochinese civilians and instead became a referendum on bralessness and long hair and flower-child rhetoric, the depraved flacks of the right-wing media have breezily blown off a generation of fraud and corruption and market-perverting bailouts, making the whole debate about the protesters themselves ? their hygiene, their "envy" of the rich, their "hypocrisy." The protesters, chirped Supreme Reichskank Ann Coulter, needed three things: "showers, jobs and a point." Her colleague Charles Krauthammer went so far as to label the protesters hypocrites for having iPhones. OWS, he said, is "Starbucks-sipping, Levi's-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters [denouncing] corporate America even as they weep for Steve Jobs, corporate titan, billionaire eight times over." Apparently, because Goldman and Citibank are corporations, no protester can ever consume a corporate product ? not jeans, not cellphones and definitely not coffee ? if he also wants to complain about tax money going to pay off some billionaire banker's bets against his own crappy mortgages. Meanwhile, on the other side of the political spectrum, there were scads of progressive pundits like me who wrung our hands with worry that OWS was playing right into the hands of assholes like Krauthammer. Don't give them any ammunition! we counseled. Stay on message! Be specific! We were all playing the Rorschach-test game with OWS, trying to squint at it and see what we wanted to see in the movement. Viewed through the prism of our desire to make near-term, within-the-system changes, it was hard to see how skirmishing with cops in New York would help foreclosed-upon middle-class families in Jacksonville and San Diego. What both sides missed is that OWS is tired of all of this. They don't care what we think they're about, or should be about. They just want something different. We're all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire. Everything from our pop culture to our economy to our politics feels oppressive and unresponsive. We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket. The relentless sameness of the two-party political system is beginning to feel like a Jacob's Ladder nightmare with no end; we're entering another turn on the four-year merry-go-round, and the thought of having to try to get excited about yet another minor quadrennial shift in the direction of one or the other pole of alienating corporate full-of-shitness is enough to make anyone want to smash his own hand flat with a hammer. If you think of it this way, Occupy Wall Street takes on another meaning. There's no better symbol of the gloom and psychological repression of modern America than the banking system, a huge heartless machine that attaches itself to you at an early age, and from which there is no escape. You fail to receive a few past-due notices about a $19 payment you missed on that TV you bought at Circuit City, and next thing you know a collector has filed a judgment against you for $3,000 in fees and interest. Or maybe you wake up one morning and your car is gone, legally repossessed by Vulture Inc., the debt-buying firm that bought your loan on the Internet from Chase for two cents on the dollar. This is why people hate Wall Street. They hate it because the banks have made life for ordinary people a vicious tightrope act; you slip anywhere along the way, it's 10,000 feet down into a vat of razor blades that you can never climb out of. That, to me, is what Occupy Wall Street is addressing. People don't know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: FUCK THIS SHIT! We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values. There was a lot of snickering in media circles, even by me, when I heard the protesters talking about how Liberty Square was offering a model for a new society, with free food and health care and so on. Obviously, a bunch of kids taking donations and giving away free food is not a long-term model for a new economic system. But now, I get it. People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something. It may not be a real model for anything, but it's at least a place where people are free to dream of some other way for human beings to get along, beyond auctioned "democracy," tyrannical commerce and the bottom line. We're a nation that was built on a thousand different utopian ideas, from the Shakers to the Mormons to New Harmony, Indiana. It was possible, once, for communities to experiment with everything from free love to an end to private property. But nowadays even the palest federalism is swiftly crushed. If your state tries to place tariffs on companies doing business with some notorious human-rights-violator state ? like Massachusetts did, when it sought to bar state contracts to firms doing business with Myanmar ? the decision will be overturned by some distant global bureaucracy like the WTO. Even if 40 million Californians vote tomorrow to allow themselves to smoke a joint, the federal government will never permit it. And the economy is run almost entirely by an unaccountable oligarchy in Lower Manhattan that absolutely will not sanction any innovations in banking or debt forgiveness or anything else that might lessen its predatory influence. And here's one more thing I was wrong about: I originally was very uncomfortable with the way the protesters were focusing on the NYPD as symbols of the system. After all, I thought, these are just working-class guys from the Bronx and Staten Island who have never seen the inside of a Wall Street investment firm, much less had anything to do with the corruption of our financial system. But I was wrong. The police in their own way are symbols of the problem. All over the country, thousands of armed cops have been deployed to stand around and surveil and even assault the polite crowds of Occupy protesters. This deployment of law-enforcement resources already dwarfs the amount of money and manpower that the government "committed" to fighting crime and corruption during the financial crisis. One OWS protester steps in the wrong place, and she immediately has police roping her off like wayward cattle. But in the skyscrapers above the protests, anything goes. This is a profound statement about who law enforcement works for in this country. What happened on Wall Street over the past decade was an unparalleled crime wave. Yet at most, maybe 1,500 federal agents were policing that beat ? and that little group of financial cops barely made any cases at all. Yet when thousands of ordinary people hit the streets with the express purpose of obeying the law and demonstrating their patriotism through peaceful protest, the police response is immediate and massive. There have already been hundreds of arrests, which is hundreds more than we ever saw during the years when Wall Street bankers were stealing billions of dollars from retirees and mutual-fund holders and carpenters unions through the mass sales of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities. It's not that the cops outside the protests are doing wrong, per se, by patrolling the parks and sidewalks. It's that they should be somewhere else. They should be heading up into those skyscrapers and going through the file cabinets to figure out who stole what, and from whom. They should be helping people get their money back. Instead, they're out on the street, helping the Blankfeins of the world avoid having to answer to the people they ripped off. People want out of this fiendish system, rigged to inexorably circumvent every hope we have for a more balanced world. They want major changes. I think I understand now that this is what the Occupy movement is all about. It's about dropping out, if only for a moment, and trying something new, the same way that the civil rights movement of the 1960s strived to create a "beloved community" free of racial segregation. Eventually the Occupy movement will need to be specific about how it wants to change the world. But for right now, it just needs to grow. And if it wants to sleep on the streets for a while and not structure itself into a traditional campaign of grassroots organizing, it should. It doesn't need to tell the world what it wants. It is succeeding, for now, just by being something different. Related ? Photos: Occupy Wall Street ? Photos: Rock Occupies Wall Street ? Photos: Occupy Wall Street Timeline ? Obama, Occupy Wall Street and the Rebirth of the Left ? Matt Taibbi's Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters This story is from the November 24, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. From ths at psalience.org Sun Nov 13 13:21:23 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 13:21:23 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!!! Richard K Moore: The Great Carbon Credit Deception Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111113131204.043e7c80@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/the-great-carbon-credit-deception [as I have stated previously, quote from below: "Depopulation has long been a stated goal in elite circles, and the Rockefeller dynasty has frequently been involved in eugenics projects of various kinds over the past century. Genocide through imposed poverty is already a model being pursued successfully in Africa, and biofuels are systematically expanding that program." -ths] The Great Carbon Credit Deception October 13, 2011 By davidjones By Richard K Moore In an era of economic growth, the dynamics of competition, innovation, and entrepreneurial investment were important elements of the game. In a non-growth era, the game will be based on entirely different dynamics. The mechanisms of production will become relatively static. Instead of corporations competing to innovate, we?ll have production bureaucracies. They?ll be semi-state, semi-private cartels, concerned about budgets and quotas rather than growth, somewhat along the lines of the Soviet model. We can already see steps being taken to shift the corporate model towards the bureaucratic model, through increased government intervention in economic affairs. In the US for example, with the Wall Street bailouts, the forced restructuring of General Motors, the call for centralised regulation of banking and industry, and the mandating of health insurance coverage, the government is saying that the market is to be superseded by government directives. Not that we should bemoan the demise of exploitive capitalism, but before celebrating we need to understand what it is being replaced with. In the era of capitalism and growth, the focus of the game was on the production side of the economy. The game was aimed at controlling the means of growth: access to capital. In an era of non-growth, the focus of the game will be on the consumption side of the economy. The game will be aimed at controlling the necessities of life: access to food and energy. Carbon limits and carbon trading provide the mechanisms that will enable the banksters to micromanage the necessities of life on a global scale. For more information on this see my full length article ?The Elite Plan for a New World Social Order? in New Dawn 128. http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27188 As regards financial budgets, the IMF is doing the micromanaging, using the leverage of debt. For carbon budgets, it will be the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that will do the micromanaging, using the excuse of global warming. How this will work is explained by the Herald Sun, 10 July 2011, discussing Australia?s new carbon legislation: ?An emissions trading scheme is where the government sets a cap on the total amount of pollution [CO2] that can be released each year. Businesses compete for permits and can trade permits, within that cap. The price can vary but the amount of pollution is fixed. Each year the Government could lower the cap ? meaning Australia?s emissions will fall.? In terms of propaganda, this carbon-credit regime is being sold as a solution to global warming and peak oil. The propaganda campaign has been very successful, and the whole environmental movement has been captured by it. In Copenhagen, demonstrators confronted the police, carrying signs in support of carbon taxes and carbon credits. But in fact the carbon regime has nothing to do with climate or with sustainability. It is all about micromanaging every aspect of our lives, as well as every aspect of the economy. If the folks who are running things actually cared about sustainability, they?d be investing in efficient mass transit, and they?d be shifting agriculture from petroleum-intensive, water-intensive methods to sustainable methods. Instead they are mandating biofuels and selling us electric cars, which are no more sustainable than standard cars. As the new global regime is consolidated, the IPCC will dole out a mandatory annual carbon cap to each nation. Each government will then budget out its allocation in some way, as Australia is doing. With smart meters, energy use can be micromanaged all the way down to the number of minutes people spend in showers, or at what temperature people choose to do their laundry. Whether these kinds of measures will significantly reduce CO2 levels is open to considerable doubt. Creating a tree plantation in the third world can be ?traded? for continued emissions, even if a rain forest is cut down to make room for the plantation ? and this overall transaction actually increases global CO2 levels. And there will surely be special cases, such as favoured industries, or government and military applications, where exceptions to the cap will be permitted. And in general, enforcement of industrial regulations tends to be notoriously lax. Although reduction of CO2 levels may be in doubt, there is one thing that is not in doubt: carbon caps will limit access to the necessities of life and will greatly increase the cost of those necessities. Every industry that burns fossil fuels will have an additional cost added: the cost of obtaining carbon permits ? by being the highest bidder. Those costs, plus profit margins, will be passed on to the consumer. Fossil alternatives, such as wind power and biofuels, will be only marginally lower in price: it is IPCC-imposed fossil fuel scarcity that will set the price in each market segment, as we already see with world grain prices. All of this will encourage speculative investment in futures markets, which will increase prices still further ? and this is already happening with global food prices. With food prices linked to energy prices, and agriculture land being converted from food production to fuel production, the result can only be a massive increase in third world starvation. Depopulation has long been a stated goal in elite circles, and the Rockefeller dynasty has frequently been involved in eugenics projects of various kinds over the past century. Genocide through imposed poverty is already a model being pursued successfully in Africa, and biofuels are systematically expanding that program. (Note: In October Australia officially passed carbon tax legislation. You can read more about the true implications of this tax by reading Richard Moore?s full length article ?The Elite Plan for a New World Social Order? in New Dawn 128. This article warns that the real aim of carbon tax laws is the micromanaging of every aspect of citizen?s lives and the economy.) RICHARD MOORE, an expatriate from Silicon Valley, retired and moved to Ireland in 1994 to begin his ?real work? ? trying to understand how the world works, and how we can make it better. Many years of researching and writing culminated in his widely acclaimed book Escaping the Matrix: How We the People Can Change the World (The Cyberjournal Project, 2005). His cyberjournal email list has been going since 1994 (cyberjournal.org). The book?s website is http://escapingthematrix.org, while his website http://quaylargo.com/rkm/ contains an extensive biography plus list of his articles. Richard can be contacted via email at rkm at quaylargo.com. The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 128 (September-October 2011). From ths at psalience.org Sun Nov 13 13:28:27 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 13:28:27 +0100 Subject: [THS] Richard K Moore: Full-Spectrum Dominance and the Regime-Change Project Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111113132712.043e91c0@mail.messagingengine.com> rkm website: http://cyberjournal.org ___________________________________ Greetings, I'm eager to get your comments on this next article. I want it to be up to the standard of the first article, and I also want to finish it quickly to meet New Dawn's deadline. Below, the first section is in draft form, the next two are in outline form, and I'm still outlining the remaining sections. hoping to hear from you, rkm _________________ Full-Spectrum Dominance and the Regime-Change Project ( draft sketch - comments invited ) This article is Part 2 of a series. Part 1a: The Elite Plan for a New World Social Order http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/the-elite-plan-for-a-new-world-social-order Part 1b: The Great Carbon Credit Deception http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/the-great-carbon-credit-deception Pax Americana & Bretton Woods: a regime-change precedent For nearly six centuries, ever since European expansionism began c. 1492, the world order could be described as competitive imperialism: European powers competing over colonial and economic territories. The various wars between European powers were one expression of this competition. Wars would arise periodically, when one power felt it could expand its imperial realms at the expense of another. A radically different world order was established after Word War 2, based on the Bretton Woods agreements, the dissolution of separate European empires, and on Pax Americana. This new world system can be described as collective imperialism, with the Pentagon acting as imperial enforcer in the 'Free World' on behalf of Western capital generally. This new global regime opened the way for the greatest growth period in history, while at the same time removing the motivation for wars among European powers. This paradigm shift in systems did not just happen: it was the outcome of a project. The new postwar paradigm was designed and planned in a series of meetings, by a handful of people selected from the Council on Foreign Relations, at the invitation of President Roosevelt. The CFR is a policy research & development organization, in service to the central banking cabal: the postwar world order was designed specifically to serve the interests of those central bankers. The new regime came with a PR mythology: imperialism was dying; the nations of the world were being liberated; democracy was spreading; economic development would raise everyone's standard of living. The reality was different: imperialism was being pursued more efficiently and systematically; nations were freed of colonial rule, but were still subject to destabilization and intervention if they didn't cooperate with Western corporate interests; democracy was the exception rather than the rule in the newly independent nations; widespread economic exploitation and poverty continued, much as under colonialism. This postwar growth era became a victim of its own success in pursuing economic development. It was so effective, and so global in its reach, that it finally began to run into hard environmental constraints. By the 1970s it became clear that the postwar growth machine was running out of steam. Not that growth couldn't continue for some time, but the overall return on investments was beginning to decline. Cycles of boom and bust have always occurred in the history of capitalism. The banking cabal make money from investments and loans during a growth phase, they engage in looting and short-selling as the growth declines, and they extend their hard-asset ownership portfolios at bargain prices during the bust phase. The postwar growth cycle peaked in the 1970s, neoliberal looting began in the 1980s, and we're now well into the bust phase, with hard assets being grabbed at bargain prices via IMF-mandated privatization. Always before the bust was temporary. There were always 'new worlds to conquer', some way to launch a new and grander growth cycle. This time, with hard environmental limits being encountered, a new and grander growth cycle just isn't possible. No one has been more aware of this final end to the growth-cycle paradigm than the banking cabal. David Rockefeller himself was the principal founder of the Club of Rome, which published its Limits to Growth already in 1972. Ever since then, and even before, plans and preparations have been in the works for a successor global regime, not based on growth, but still under the thumb of the bankster cabal. The general destruction wreaked by World War 2 'cleared the building site' so that a new postwar world order could be constructed. Similarly, the current global economic collapse is clearing the building site for the construction of a new post-capitalist world order. The nature of this new order is not difficult to discover. Much of it has already been implemented, and the cabal has not been particularly secretive about its basic plans. "For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicised incidents such as my encounter with Castro, to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and over economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as "internationalists" and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure ? one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." ? David Rockefeller, Memoirs, Random House, New York, 2002, page 405 "Let me issue and control a nations money and I care not who writes the laws." ? Amshall Rothschild The post-capitalist regime-change project The Part 1 articles describe the basic nature of the regime change project: - The financial system is being systematically collapsed in order to 'clear the building site'. - The collapse is being engineered in such a way that governments end up in debt bondage to the banking cabal. - Economic sovereignty ? the heart of sovereignty ? is thereby taken over by the cabal's IMF. - Collapse will lead to mass desperation, people will embrace any 'solution' offered, and thus official political sovereignty will be yielded to the cabal as well. - Governance will be means of already-established centralized bureaucracies: the WTO, IMF, World Bank, WHO, IPCC, IAEA, (a 'reformed') UN, etc ? bureaucracies accountable directly or indirectly to the cabal. - The new order can be characterized as the whole world becoming the private fiefdom of the banking cabal clique, who become the equivalent of an extended global royal family. It's essentially a return to a pre-Enligtenment ancien r?gime. - The new economic paradigm will be based on centrally-micromanaged resource allocations, and this is beginning already with carbon credits. - In the name of fighting terrorism: - Infrastructures have been created to deal with mass civil unrest during transition. - Military interventions are being used to manage the geopolitical transition. - As with the postwar regime, the new order will have a PR mythology, and a quite different reality. "Of course there is a class war, but it's my class, the rich class, that is waging the war, and we're winning." ? Warren Buffet Full-Spectrum Dominance - As Warren Buffet quips, we are in a class war ? and the regime-change project is the cabal's war plan to win a total and lasting victory over the rest of humanity. - The core principal of modern warfare is full-spectrum dominance: pro-active control over every dimension and every theater of engagement. - We've seen these principles in Iraq for example, where first the air-defenses are taken out, then the communications infrastructure, etc, each dimension of engagement being dominated in its turn. - In such military engagements, domestic public opinion is also a 'theater of engagement', and dominance here has been pursued via embedded journalism, media propaganda, lies by officials, etc. - In the regime-change project ? the class war ? there are many dimensions and theaters of engagement over which dominance must be achieved and maintained. - In the geopolitical arena, for example, Russia and China are a serious obstacle, not at all willing to abandon their sovereignty. - In the realm of Western public opinion, there will be difficulties with the regime change, as it involves abandoning national sovereignty, and abandoning the long-honored principles of the Enlightenment, with its individual liberties, representative government, rule of law, etc. The regime-change project is systematically pursuing full-spectrum dominance as it unfolds. The remainder of this article will be reviewing the principle theaters of engagement, and pointing out how full-spectrum dominance is being applied in each and every case. ___________ From ths at psalience.org Sun Nov 13 23:20:04 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:20:04 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?Robert_Parry=3A_Richard_Nixon=92s_Darkest__S?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ecret?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111113231947.06cca528@mail.messagingengine.com> http://consortiumnews.com/2011/11/11/richard-nixons-darkest-secret/ Richard Nixon?s Darkest Secret November 12, 2011 Exclusive: In just-released Watergate grand jury testimony from 1975, ex-President Richard Nixon complained that his 1968 campaign was bugged by the Johnson administration. But there was little curiosity then ? or now ? as to why that surveillance was justified, reports Robert Parry. By Robert Parry Thirty-six years ago, as former President Richard M. Nixon dodged grand jury questions about his illegal wiretapping of political enemies, he briefly referenced a dark secret about his 1968 campaign?s sabotaging of Vietnam War peace talks, actions which President Lyndon Johnson at the time privately labeled ?treason.? Without providing that historical context, Nixon complained that he and his 1968 campaign had been victims of surveillance and wiretapping, too, as he tried to persuade Watergate prosecutors and the grand jury that bugging opponents was just part of hardball politics. http://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/PARRY-NIXO President Richard Nixon (Art work by Robbie Conal at Robbieconal.com) ?In 1968, for example, we learned that not only was Vice President [-ial nominee Spiro] Agnew?s plane under surveillance, and he himself was under surveillance by the FBI, but that the FBI was at one point directed to bug my plane,? Nixon said, according to secret grand jury transcripts released by the National Archives on Thursday. During that testimony on June 23, 1975, the prosecutors failed to follow up on his reference to the 1968 bugging, such as why it would be ordered. And after the transcripts were released this week, the major U.S. news media also missed the comment?s significance. The evidence of Nixon?s sabotage of the 1968 Vietnam peace talks is now overwhelming ? including diplomatic cable traffic and contemporaneous audiotapes of Johnson discussing the Republican promises to South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu of a better deal if he boycotted negotiations in Paris. But the American press corps has never given this shocking scandal much attention. So, when the newly released transcripts revealed Nixon veering off topic into his complaint that the FBI had been involved in bugging his 1968 campaign, the strange diversion was noted by the New York Times near the end of its article but not explained. Yet, in citing the 1968 case during that 1975 testimony, Nixon was reviving a complaint he had raised in a White House meeting on July 1, 1972, just two weeks after his ?plumbers? had been arrested bugging the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate building in Washington. According to Nixon?s White House tapes, his aide Charles Colson touched off Nixon?s musings by noting that a newspaper column claimed that the Democrats had bugged the telephones of Anna Chennault, a right-wing Chinese-American activist who in 1968 had served as Nixon?s intermediary to Thieu. ?Oh,? Nixon responded, ?in ?68, they bugged our phones too.? Colson: ?And that this was ordered by Johnson.? Nixon: ?That?s right? Colson: ?And done through the FBI. My God, if we ever did anything like that you?d have the ? Nixon: ?Yes. For example, why didn?t we bug [the Democrats? 1972 presidential nominee George] McGovern, because after all he?s affecting the peace negotiations?? Colson: ?Sure.? Nixon: ?That would be exactly the same thing.? A Dangerous Game Nixon wanted to use his 1968 bugging complaint to create a backfire against the Watergate investigation, even though possible disclosure of the fact that Nixon?s campaign had blocked a peace settlement to the bloody Vietnam War would presumably have carried considerable political risk for him. On Jan. 8, 1973, Nixon urged Haldeman to plant a story about the 1968 bugging in the Washington Star. ?You don?t really have to have hard evidence, Bob,? Nixon told Haldeman. ?You?re not trying to take this to court. All you have to do is to have it out, just put it out as authority, and the press will write the Goddamn story, and the Star will run it now.? Haldeman, however, insisted on checking the facts. In The Haldeman Diaries, published in 1994, Haldeman included an entry dated Jan. 12, 1973, which contains his book?s only deletion for national security reasons. ?I talked to [former Attorney General John] Mitchell on the phone,? Haldeman wrote, ?and he said [FBI official Cartha] DeLoach had told him he was up to date on the thing. A Star reporter was making an inquiry in the last week or so, and LBJ got very hot and called Deke [DeLoach's nickname], and said to him that if the Nixon people are going to play with this, that he would release [deleted material -- national security], saying that our side was asking that certain things be done. ?DeLoach took this as a direct threat from Johnson,? Haldeman wrote. ?As he [DeLoach] recalls it, bugging was requested on the [Nixon campaign] planes, but was turned down, and all they did was check the phone calls, and put a tap on the Dragon Lady [Anna Chennault].? In other words, Nixon?s threat to raise the 1968 bugging was countered by Johnson, who threatened to reveal that Nixon?s campaign had sabotaged a peace settlement to the Vietnam War when a half million U.S. soldiers were in the combat zone. However, the two retaliatory disclosures never occurred. On Jan. 22, 1973, ten days after Haldeman?s diary entry, Johnson died of a heart attack. Haldeman also apparently thought better of publicizing Nixon?s 1968 bugging complaint. [For more details, see Robert Parry?s Secrecy & Privilege.] Turning a Blind Eye Over the past several decades, the Nixon?s sabotage story has spilled out in bits and pieces, but the shocking story never was played up by the major U.S. news media, perhaps because it risked devastating public faith in the political system. The news media?s pattern of looking the other way continued in December 2008 when the National Archives released audiotapes of President Johnson?s official phone conversations from 1968. Though the conversations revealed Johnson talking about Nixon?s Vietnam machinations, the American press corps again ignored this sordid story. Beginning in late October 1968, as Nixon was running neck-and-neck with Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey and the Paris peace talks appeared on the verge of achieving a settlement of the Vietnam conflict, Johnson can be heard on the tapes complaining about the Republican gambit to sabotage negotiations. Johnson?s frustration builds as he learns more from intercepts about the back-channel contacts between Nixon?s operatives and South Vietnamese officials who had tentatively agreed to take part in the Paris meetings. The apparent Republican goal was to sink Johnson?s peace deal and thus deny Humphrey a last-minute bump that could have cost Nixon the election. On Nov. 2, 1968 ? just three days before the election ? Thieu recanted on meeting with the Viet Cong in Paris, pushing the peace talks toward collapse. On the same day, an angry Johnson telephoned Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen to lay out the evidence of sabotage and get Dirksen to intervene with Nixon. ?The agent [Chennault] says she?s just talked to the boss in New Mexico and that he said that you must hold out, just hold on until after the election,? Johnson said in an apparent reference to a Nixon campaign plane that carried some of his top aides, including Agnew, to New Mexico. ?We know what Thieu is saying to them out there. We?re pretty well informed at both ends.? Johnson then made a thinly veiled threat about going public with the information. ?I don?t want to get this in the campaign,? Johnson said, adding: ?They oughtn?t be doing this. This is treason.? Dirksen responded, ?I know.? Johnson continued: ?I think it would shock America if a principal candidate was playing with a source like this on a matter of this importance. I don?t want to do that [go public]. They ought to know that we know what they?re doing. I know who they?re talking to. I know what they?re saying.? The President also stressed the stakes involved, noting that the movement toward negotiations in Paris had contributed to a lull in the violence. ?We?ve had 24 hours of relative peace,? Johnson said. ?If Nixon keeps the South Vietnamese away from the [peace] conference, well, that?s going to be his responsibility. Up to this point, that?s why they?re not there. I had them signed onboard until this happened.? Dirksen: ?I better get in touch with him, I think.? ?They?re contacting a foreign power in the middle of a war,? Johnson said. ?It?s a damn bad mistake. And I don?t want to say so. You just tell them that their people are messing around in this thing, and if they don?t want it on the front pages, they better quit it.? Nixon?s Denial The next day, Nixon spoke directly to Johnson and professed his innocence. ?I didn?t say with your knowledge,? Johnson responded. ?I hope it wasn?t.? ?Huh, no,? Nixon responded. ?My God, I would never do anything to encourage Saigon not to come to the table. Good God, we want them over to Paris, we got to get them to Paris or you can?t have a peace.? Nixon also insisted that he would do whatever President Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk wanted. ?I?m not trying to interfere with your conduct of it. I?ll only do what you and Rusk want me to do. We?ve got to get this goddamn war off the plate,? Nixon said, recognizing how tantalizingly close Johnson was to a peace deal. ?The war apparently now is about where it could be brought to an end,? Nixon said. ?The quicker the better. To hell with the political credit, believe me.? However, the South Vietnamese boycott continued, and Johnson concluded that Nixon was playing a double game. Johnson also became aware that Christian Science Monitor reporter Saville Davis had gotten wind of the story. The President was tempted to confirm it. Before doing so, however, Johnson consulted with Rusk and Defense Secretary Clark Clifford on Nov. 4, 1968. Both these pillars of the Washington Establishment advised against going public out of fear that the scandalous information might reflect badly on the U.S. government. ?Some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I?m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected,? Clifford said in a conference call. ?It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country?s interests.? Instead of helping Davis confirm his information, Clifford and Rusk argued that the Johnson administration should make no comment, advice that Johnson accepted. He maintained his public silence on what Nixon was doing. The next day, with Johnson unable to cite any clear progress toward ending the war, Nixon narrowly prevailed over Humphrey by about 500,000 votes or less than one percent of the ballots cast. Johnson?s Pleadings In the aftermath of the election, Johnson continued to privately confront Nixon with the evidence of Republican treachery, trying to get him to pressure the South Vietnamese leaders to reverse themselves and join the Paris peace talks. On Nov. 8, Johnson recounted the evidence to Nixon and described the Republican motivation to disrupt the talks, speaking of himself in the third person. ?Johnson was going to have a bombing pause to try to elect Humphrey. They [the South Vietnamese] ought to hold out because Nixon will not sell you out like the Democrats sold out China,? Johnson said. ?I think they?ve been talking to [Vice President-elect Spiro] Agnew,? Johnson continued. ?They?ve been quoting you [Nixon] indirectly, that the thing they ought to do is to just not show up at any [peace] conference and wait until you come into office. ?Now they?ve started that [boycott] and that?s bad. They?re killing Americans every day. I have that [story of the sabotage] documented. There?s not any question but that?s happening. That?s the story, Dick, and it?s a sordid story. I don?t want to say that to the country, because that?s not good.? Faced with Johnson?s implied threat, Nixon promised to tell the South Vietnamese officials to reverse themselves and join the peace talks. However, the deal was done. There was no turning back because Thieu could then expose the secret arrangement with Nixon?s people. Nixon had to understand that it was more likely that Johnson would stay silent than that Thieu would. Nixon bet right. Johnson failed to achieve the peace breakthrough he had hoped for before leaving office, but remained silent about Nixon?s treachery as he went into retirement. The U.S. participation in the Vietnam War continued for more than four years at a horrendous cost to both the United States and the people of Vietnam. Nixon kept searching for violent new ways to get Thieu the better deal that had been promised, including the invasion of Cambodia and heavier bombing of targets in North Vietnam. Before the conflict was finally brought to an end, a million more Vietnamese were estimated to have died along with an additional 20,763 U.S. dead and 111,230 wounded. The war also divided the United States, turning parents against their own children. As the Democrats stayed mum, Nixon apparently concluded that they were more concerned about the information of his Vietnam War ?treason? coming out than he was. So, after the ?plumbers? got arrested in June 1972, he viewed the 1968 events as something of a blackmail card to play against Johnson to get help squelching the Watergate investigation. Nixon discussed the 1968 bugging in his Oval Office meetings with his subordinates and even ordered Haldeman to leak at least that part of the story to the press ? although one might reasonably expect that the press would finally start focusing on why the bugging was justified. Given the horrors of the Vietnam War from 1969 to 1972, Nixon presumably would have more to lose by a full disclosure of his ?treason? than the Democrats would by disclosure of their eavedropping to find out about it. But Nixon seems to have been confident that the Washington Establishment would always steer away from that precipice. So, during his 1975 grand jury testimony, Nixon returned to his bugging complaint, telling prosecutors: ?There are differing versions as to whether they did or did not do it. [FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover once told me that they did. But others have indicated that this was not carried out. ?I raised the problem of the bugging here because I knew that it was a common practice by the other side and they were experts at it, even my plane possibly, at least ordered to be bugged this time by a government agency, not by a campaign committee in 1968.? Nixon?s confidence in surfacing his bugging complaint without expecting that its full context would be exposed may have extended far beyond his death on April 22, 1994. In the just-released grand jury transcripts, there is a curious remark by the former president who suggests that the full story behind the tit-for-tat bugging is so shocking that it must never be made public. Nixon said ?only if there is an absolute guarantee that there will not be disclosure of what I say, I will reveal for the first time information with respect to why wiretaps were proposed, information which, if it is made public, will be terribly damaging to the United States.? Whatever that secret might be, it does not appear in the released transcripts. However, Nixon?s brief reference to the 1968 bugging reminds us of this chilling reality ? that for some politicians, acquisition of power in the United States is so alluring and so valuable that it trumps not only the democratic process, but the lives of American soldiers overseas. [For more on related topics, see Robert Parry?s Lost History, Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep, now available in a three-book set for the discount price of only $29. For details, click here.] Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ?Project Truth? are also available there. From ths at psalience.org Sun Nov 13 23:22:32 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 23:22:32 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?Iceland=92s_New_Bank_Disaster?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111113232220.06cca210@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/iceland%E2%80%99s-new-bank-disaster.html FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2011 Iceland?s New Bank Disaster This is the last day of Naked Capitalism fundraising week. Don?t miss the chance to participate. So far, over 835 donors have already invested in our efforts to shed light on the dark and seamy corners of finance. Join us and participate via our Tip Jar or read about why we?re doing this fundraiser and other ways to donate, such as by check or another credit card portal, on our kickoff post and one discussing our current target. By Olafur Arnarson, an author and columnist at Pressan.is, Michael Hudson, a Professor of Economics at University of Missouri- Kansas City, and Gunnar Tomasson, a retired IMF advisor The problem of bank loans gone bad, especially those with government-guarantees such as U.S. student loans and Fannie Mae mortgages, has thrown into question just what should be a ?fair value? for these debt obligations. Should ?fair value? reflect what debtors can pay ? that is, pay without going bankrupt? Or is it fair for banks and even vulture funds to get whatever they can squeeze out of debtors? The answer will depend largely on the degree to which governments back the claims of creditors. The legal definition of how much can be squeezed out is becoming a political issue pulling national governments, the IMF, ECB and other financial agencies into a conflict pitting banks, vulture funds and debt-strapped populations against each other. This polarizing issue has now broken out especially in Iceland. The country is now suffering a second round of economic and financial distress stemming from the collapse of its banking systemin October 2008. That crisis caused a huge loss of savings not only for domestic citizens but also for international creditors such as Deutsche Bank, Barclay?s and their institutional clients. Stuck with bad loans and bonds from bankrupt issuers, foreign investors in the old banks sold their bonds and other claims for pennies on the dollar to buyers whose web sites described themselves as ?specializing in distressed assets,? commonly known as vulture funds. (Persistent rumors suggest that some of these are working with the previous owners of the failed Icelandic banks, operating out of offshore banking and tax havens and currently under investigation by a Special Prosecutor.) At the time when those bonds were sold in the market, Iceland?s government owned 100% of all three new banks. Representing the national interest, it intended for the banks to pass on to the debtors the write-downs at which they discounted the assets they bought from the old banks. This was supposed to be what ?fair value? meant: the low market valuation at that time. It was supposed to take account of the reasonable ability of households and businesses to pay back loans that had become unpayable as the currency had collapsed and import prices had risen accordingly. The IMF entered the picture in November 2008, advising the government to reconstruct the banking system in a way that ?includes measures to ensure fair valuation of assets [and] maximize asset recovery.? The government created three ?good? new banks from the ruins of its failed banks, transferring loans from the old to the new banks at a discount of up to 70 percent to reflect their fair value, based on independent third party valuation. The vultures became owners of two out of three new Icelandic banks. On IMF advice the government negotiated an agreement so loose as to give them a hunting license on Icelandic households and businesses. The new banks acted much as U.S. collection agencies do when they buy bad credit-card debts, bank loans or unpaid bills from retailers at 30% of face value and then hound the debtors to squeeze out as much as they can, by hook or by crook. These scavengers of the financial system are the bane of many states. But there is now a danger of their rising to the top of the international legal pyramid, to a point where they are in a position to oppress entire national economies. Iceland?s case has a special twist. By law Icelandic mortgages and many other consumer loans are linked to the country?s soaring consumer price index. Owners of these loans not only can demand 100% of face value, but also can add on the increase in debt principal from the indexing. Thousands of households face poverty and loss of property because of loans that, in some cases, have more than doubled as a result of the currency crash and subsequent price inflation. But the IMF and Iceland?s Government and Supreme Court have affirmed the price-indexation of loan principal and usurious interest rates, lest the restructured banking system come to grief. This is not what was expected. In 2009 the incoming ?leftist? government negotiated an agreement with creditors to relate loan payments to the discounted transfer value. On IMF advice, the government handed over controlling interest in the new banks to creditors of the old banks. The aim was to minimize the cost of refinancing the banking system ? but not to destroy the economy. Loans that were transferred from the old banks to the new after the 2008 crash at a discount of up to 70% to reflect their depreciated market value. This discount was to be passed on to borrowers (households and small businesses) faced with ballooning principal and payments due to CPI indexing of loans. But the economy?s survival is not of paramount interest to the aggressive hedge funds that have replaced the established banks that originally lent to the Icelandic banks. Instead of passing on the debt write-downs to households and other debtors, the new banks are revaluing these loan principals upward. Their demands are keeping the economy in a straight jacket. Instead of debt restructuring taking place as originally hoped for, the scene is being set for a new banking crisis. Something has to give. But so far it is Iceland?s economy, not the vulture funds. With the IMF insisting that the government abstain from intervention, the government?s approval rating has plunged to just 10% of Icelanders for floundering so badly while the new owners call the shots. The New Banks have written off claims on major corporate debtors, whose continued operations have ensured their role as cash cows for the banks? new vulture owners. But household debts acquired at 30 to 50 percent of face value have been re-valued at up to 100 percent. The value of owners? share equity has soared. The Government has not intervened, accepting the banks? assertion that they lack the resources to grant meaningful debt relief to households. So unpayably high debts are kept on the books, at transfer prices that afford a windfall to financial predators, dooming debtors to a decade or more of negative equity. With the preparatory work done, the time has come for the Vultures to cash in through re-sale of New Bank equity shares by yearend. The New Banks have kept their corporate cash cows afloat while window-dressing owners? equity with unrealistic valuations of consumer debts that cannot be paid, except at the cost of bankrupting the economy. There is a feeling that Iceland?s government has been disabled from acting as an honest broker, as bank lobbyists have worked with Althing insiders ? now backed by the IMF ? to provide a windfall for creditors. The problem becoming a global one. Many European countries and the United States face collapsed banks and derailed banking systems. How are the IMF and ECB to respond? Will they prescribe the Icelandic-type model of collaboration between Government and hedge funds? Or should the government be given power to resist drive by vulture funds to profiteer on an international scale, backed by international sanctions against their prey? The policy danger now facing Europe An economic crisis is the financial equivalent of military conquest. It is an opportunity for financial elites to make their property grab as Foreclosure Time arrives. It also becomes a political grab to make real the financial claims that had become uncollectible and hence largely fictitious ?mark-to-model? accounting. Populist rhetoric is crafted to mobilize the widespread financial distress and general discontent as an opportunity to turn losers against each other rather than at the creditors. This is the point at which all the years of financial propaganda pay off. Neoliberals have persuaded the public to believe that banks are needed to ?oil the wheels of commerce? ? that is, provide the credit bloodstream that brings nourishment to the economy?s moving parts. Only under such crisis conditions can banks collect what has become a fictitious buildup of debt claims. The overgrowth of mortgage debt, corporate debt, student loans, credit-card debt and other debts are fictitious because under normal circumstances there is no way for them to be paid. Foreclosure Time is not sufficient, because much property has fallen into negative equity ? about a quarter of U.S. real estate. And for Ireland, market value of real estate covers only about 30% of the face value of mortgages. So Bailout Time becomes necessary. The banks turn over their bad loans to the government in exchange for government debt. The Federal Reserve has arranged over $2 trillion of such bank-friendly swaps. Banks receive government bonds or central bank deposits in exchange for their bad debts, accepted at face value rather than at ?mark-to-market? prices. At least in the United States and Britain, the central bank can print as much domestic currency as is necessary to pay interest and keep these government bonds liquid. Public agencies then take on the position of creditor vis-?-vis debtors that can?t pay. These public agencies then have a choice. They may seek to collect the full amount (or at least, as much as they can get), as in the case of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the United States. Or, the government may sell the bad debts to vulture funds, for a fraction of their face value. After the September 2008 crash, Iceland?s government took over the old, collapsed, banks and created new ones in their place. Original bondholders of the old banks off-loaded the Icelandic bank bonds in the market for pennies on the dollar. The buyers were vulture funds. These bondholders became the owners of the old banks, as all shareholders were wiped out. In October, the government?s monetary authority appointed new boards to control the banks. Three new banks were set up, and all the deposits, mortgages and other bank loans were transferred to these new, healthier banks ? at a steep discount. These new banks received 80 percent of the assets, the old banks 20 percent. Then, owners of the old banks were given control over two of the new banks (87% and 95% respectively). The owners of these new banks were called vultures not only because of the steep discount at which the financial assets and claims of the old banks were transferred, but mainly because they already had bought control of the old banks at pennies on the dollar. The result is that instead of the government keeping the banks and simply wiping them out in bankruptcy, the government kept aside and let vulture investors reap a giant windfall ? that now threatens to plunge Iceland?s economy into chronic financial austerity. In retrospect, none of this was necessary. The question is, what can the government do to clean up the mess that it has created by so gullibly taking bad IMF advice? In the United States, banks receiving TARP bailout money were supposed to negotiate with mortgage debtors to write down the debts to market prices and/or the ability to pay. This was not done. Likewise in Iceland, the vulture funds that bought the bad ?old bank? loans were supposed to pass on the debt write-downs to the debtors. This was not done either. In fact, the loan principals continued to be revalued upward in keeping with Iceland?s unique indexing designed to save banks from taking a loss ? that is, to make sure that the economy as a whole suffers, even suffering a fatal austerity attack, so that bankers will be ?made whole.? This means making a windfall fortune for the vultures who buy bad loans on the cheap. Is this the future of Europe as well? If so, the present financial crisis will become the great windfall for vulture banks, and for banks in general. Whereas the past few centuries have seen financial crashes wipe out the savings and creditor claims (bonds, bank loans, etc.) that are the counterpart to bad debts, today we are seeing the bad debts kept on the books, but the banks and bondholders that provided the bad loans being made whole at taxpayer expense. This is not how economic democracy was expected to work during the 19th-century drive for Parliamentary reform. And by the early 20th century, social democratic and labor parties were supposed to take the lead in moving banking and credit along with other basic infrastructure into the public domain. But today, from Greece to Iceland, governments are acting as enforcers or even as collection agents on behalf of the financial sector ? as the Occupy Wall Street movement expresses it, the top ?1%,? not the bottom 99%. Iceland stands as a dress rehearsal for this power grab. The IMF and Iceland?s government held a conference in Reykjavik on October 27 to celebrate the ostensible success in their reconstruction of Iceland?s economy and banking system. In the United States, the crisis that Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel celebrated as ?too good to let go to waste? will be capped by scaling back Social Security and Medicare as soon as the autumn Doomsday Clock runs down and the Congressional Super-Committee of 12 (with President Obama holding the 13th vote in case of a tie) gets to agree to make the working population pay Wall Street for its bad loans. The Greek austerity plan thus serves as a dress rehearsal for the U.S. ? with the Democratic Party playing the role as counterparts to Greece?s Socialist Party that is sponsoring austerity, and expelling labor union leaders from its ranks if they object to the grand double-cross. Topics: Banana republic, Banking industry, Credit markets, Free markets and their discontents, Guest Post, Legal, Politics, Social values