From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 28 12:30:05 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:30:05 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?Juan_Cole=3A_Did_the_Muslim_Brotherhood_Thre?= =?iso-8859-1?q?aten_to_Kill_=93All_Jews=94=3F?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111128122934.063c94e8@mail.messagingengine.com> Juan Cole discredits reports now running in the Jerusalem Post that Egyptian Islamists in Cairo quoted a Quranic passage threatening to "kill all Jews." No such passage exists. The report was a fabrication of one, Eldad Beck, as Juan Cole explains in his column below. Did the Muslim Brotherhood Threaten to Kill ?All Jews?? Posted on 11/27/2011 by Juan Cole The Muslim Brotherhood and other religious parties in Egypt (including the Salafis and the Gama?a al-Islamiya) held a rally at al-Husayn Square in Cairo last Friday to which a few thousand people came. The big rally was at Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo and was dominated by secular forces. This is an Arabic news article about the Muslim religious rally, clearly written by a reporter on the scene. It does not say anything about the speakers or the crowd threatening to kill all Jews, and I don?t believe any such threat was made. The allegation was made by Eldad Beck, who complained of ?Arab hate? at the rally. Beck, who clearly does not know what he is talking about, said that the crowd repeatedly quoted a verse in the Qur?an that spoke of killing all Jews. There is no such verse in the Islamic holy book. The Jewish revelation from God to Abraham and Moses is retold in the Qur?an, which has positive stories of the Children of Israel. The castigation of the Children of Israel in the Qur?an is of the same sort you see in the Hebrew Bible, and often put in the mouth of Moses or another Jewish prophet. That Beck?s shoddy and wholly inaccurate reporting has been relayed by the Jerusalem Post and a host of other news outlets without question is shameful. If Beck had simply said that the Muslim Brotherhood crowds want Jerusalem back for Islamdom and evinced hostility toward Israelis, he would have been right. But his breathless exaggeration slides over into Islamophobia. The background to Beck?s reporting and to one of the concerns of the al-Husayn rally is the illegal Israeli annexation of all of Jerusalem, the addition to the Israeli district of Jerusalem of substantial parts of the Palestinian West Bank, the expulsion of East Jerusalem Palestinians from their homes, the settlement of Israelis in and around East Jerusalem, and the threats made by small Jewish fundamentalist groups such as Revava to destroy the Muslim holy sites atop the Temple Mount. Jewish fundamentalists believe that the original Jewish temple was atop the mount, and that it can only be rebuilt there if the Muslim mosque and shrine are torn down. This policy is not that of the Israeli government, which considers the ultra-Orthodox extremists a pain in the neck. But Revava and similar groups have thrown a scare into the Muslim world about the safety of its shrines under Israeli control. Arson at mosques and grabby Israeli policies toward shared shrines have added oil to that flame. Jerusalem has never been awarded to Israel by any international body. There were hardly any practitioners of the Judaic religion in Palestine between 1000 AD and 1800, since Jews had adopted the other religions. Instead, for some 1300 years Jerusalem was an Islamicly-ruled city, and the Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount makes it the third holiest city for Muslims after Mecca and Medina. Radical Jewish nationalists often attempt to deconstruct the Muslim attachment to Jerusalem as recent or shallow, and as a mere form of anti-Zionist politics. Actually, the history of Muslim pilgrimage to shrines in geographical Palestine is quite long, and the history of the religion?s intertwining with this region deep. And, the Jewish predominance in what is now Israel and most of its national myths are also recent in respect to the past millennium. But in any case, most contemporary Muslims do indeed consider Jerusalem their third holiest city, and there are 1.5 billion of them, and they are likely to be a third of humankind by 2100, so get used to it. This Orientalist business of Westerners getting to tell them what they believe is very 19th century. The Israelis conquered Jerusalem in 1967 and many of them consider the whole of it theirs, appealing to romantic nationalist themes to insist that it is the indivisible capital of Israel. This extremist Jewish nationalism and disregard for international law or any negotiated peace process is common also among American Jews and even congressional leaders such as Eric Cantor. It is to the extent in the US that simply pointing out that Jerusalem is a final status issue for negotiation, that Israel?s might does not make right, that Palestinian East Jerusalemites should have civil and human rights, and that Jews haven?t even ruled the city for most of its history is considered beyond the pale in public American discourse. In fact, I will be attacked as having ?defended? the horrible things the Muslim Brotherhood crowds said (I haven?t), just because I tried to explain where they were coming from. But no one is attacked for actually supporting Gush Emunim policies in Israel, as Eric Cantor, Daniel Pipes and a host of others do. In international law as of 1945-1949, territory occupied by military force cannot be unilaterally annexed. Jerusalem?s Arab inhabitants cannot be expropriated or expelled, and the occupying authority is not permitted to alter the way of life of the occupied population. Contrary to international law, Israel is in fact making the lives of East Jerusalem Palestinians miserable and gradually trying to expel them and bring in Israeli settlers (many of them Americans) instead. So one of the themes of the Muslim Brotherhood rally last Friday was ?Jerusalem is ours.? It is an obnoxious theme, since Jerusalem ought to be an international city and shared (the way Chandigarh is shared as a provincial capital by provinces in north India). But that was the theme. Muslim fundamentalists are just as vehement on this issue as Eric Cantor from his side. Sheikh Mukhtar al-Mahdi was sent to represent the Rector of Al-Azhar Seminary, a key center of learning and authority for the Sunni Muslim world. He said that Jerusalem is a ?red line,? and that the time is ripe to defend it, now that Egypt has been liberated by the martyrs of Tahrir Square (i.e. from the Mubarak dictatorship, which was in the back pocket of Israel and the United States). The crowd appears to have shouted that Muslims should raise their children to fight (muqatalah) the Israelis (in colloquial Arabic, Israelis are referred to as ?al-Yahud,? ?the Jews.?). The word to ?kill? (qatala) is from the same root as the word for ?fight? (muqatalah). So presumably Beck heard the former and mistranslated it by the latter. Note that the sheikh did not say this, but some people shouted it from the crowd, according to journalist Amira Salim. We don?t know who those people were. To phrase it that ?the Muslim Brotherhood said? it would be bad journalism. You could argue that what the crowd actually said is just as bad as what Beck alleged. But connotation and context matter. Saying that ?Jerusalem is ours, the Israelis have captured it and are altering its character and gradually chasing out its Muslims and endangering its Islamic shrines, and that we will fight them for it? is not exactly the same thing as saying ?let?s kill all the Jews.? Then Abdul Rahman al-Birr spoke. He is a professor in the school of jurisprudence at al-Azhar and on the board of the Muslim Brotherhood. He said he wanted to underline how important Jerusalem is for the Muslim Brotherhood, and for Muslims and Arabs generally. He said that if Jewish nationalists (Zionists) imagine that the disarray in the Arab world at the moment might give them an opening to demolish the al-Aqsa Mosque, they are sorely mistaken. Salim says that people shouted slogans such as that Jerusalem is a prisoner and is calling to us, and if we do not return it who will? And, ?We are the youth of [Jan.] 25 [i.e. the Egyptian Revolution]? we will never sell you out, Palestine!? Among the things some shouted was ?Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud, Jaysh Muhammad saya?ud? (?Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, the Army of Muhammad shall return.? This is not a verse of the Qur?an. It is just a morally juvenile chant of fanatical Muslim or Palestinian nationalists who reject Israeli dominance. It refers to the Jewish village of Khaybar in Arabia the time of the Prophet Muhammad, which was viewed as treacherous by the Muslims who were being attacked by the Meccan pagans. They subjected Khaybar to a harsh punishment for allegedly siding against the Muslims (adult males were executed). It is a mean-spirited chant and not in accord with the spirit of Islam, which recognizes Jews and Christians as people of the Scripture and makes a place for them in Muslim society (in contrast to European Christianity, which often disallowed Jews and Muslims after 1300). Bad Muslim relations with some particular tribe of Jews in the early period says nothing about the attitude of Islam to Jews. The Israel-Palestine issue has politicized religion in the Levant. This chant is not ?Islamic? or from the Qur?an. Lots of Jews rose high in Muslim society and politics in the old days before the colonial project of the British and their Jewish nationalist allies in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood is a kind of Muslim-Arab nationalism, and it has most of the same flaws as hard line Jewish nationalism or Zionism. As we saw in the horrible 20th century, nationalists can start wars over territory that end up slaughtering millions of people. I don?t approve of nationalism, whether Zionism or the Muslim Brotherhood. I don?t approve of what the crowd shouted at the Muslim Brotherhood rally. But these sentiments do have a context as a response to Greater Israel expansionism. If the Israelis had followed through on the Oslo peace process, withdrawn from the West Bank, allowed a Palestinian state, and shared Jerusalem with the Palestinians, then the Muslim Brotherhood wouldn?t have an issue here. You can?t judge the Muslim Brotherhood by what hotheads in a crowd shout out. You have to judge it by its own officials? pronouncements and actions. The Brotherhood says that if the Egyptian people, which is sovereign, want to keep the Camp David Peace Treaty with Israel, it will. (A large majority of Egyptians wants to keep the peace treaty). So the party may be lying, but in its public pronouncements at least, it isn?t acting like wild men. The Qur?an doesn?t call for all Jews to be killed, and neither did the Muslim Brotherhood last Friday. It is silly to fight over territory. Tel Aviv is only 20 meters above sea level, and global warming will almost certainly produce a sea level rise of greater than that within two or three centuries, so I wouldn?t get too attached to that territory if I were the Israelis and Palestinians. If we lose a sixth to a third of the world?s land mass to rising oceans, a lot of people are going to be refugees and a lot of land around which myths and tribalism were constructed isn?t going to be there any more. For better or worse, Jerusalem is pretty elevated, so it is going to be around to fight over if a formula for peaceful sharing isn?t found. http://www.juancole.com/ From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 28 12:31:19 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:31:19 +0100 Subject: [THS] New report suggests Israel linked to Irangate scandal Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111128123055.063c9258@mail.messagingengine.com> The story below was featured prominently on antiwar.com New report suggests Israel linked to Irangate scandal New revelations published on 25th anniversary of Iran-Contra affair say Israel played secondary part in the scandal which rocked DC in 1986. 'Washing the transaction through Israel wouldn't make it legal,' President Reagan was told Yitzhak Benhorin WASHINGTON ? New documents regarding the Iran?Contra affair revealed a possible Israeli link to the political scandal that rocked Washington in 1986. The report was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the National Security Archive, on the 25th anniversary of the affair, which saw accusations that the Reagan Administration secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran ? the subject of an arms embargo under the US Arms Export Control Act (AECA). The report notes that several top officials in the Reagan Administration believed that the administration's failure to alert Congress that some of its covert operations were in violation of the AECA were illegal and prosecutable. Minutes from a meeting held in December 1985 recorded then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger as telling President Ronald Reagan that "washing the transaction through Israel wouldn't make it legal." Still, associate independent counsel in the case, Christian Mixter, concluded two decades ago that neither Reagan nor his vice president, George H.W. Bush, were criminally liable in the case. In his final report, dated 1991, Mixter determined that even though Reagan was briefed in advance about every weapons shipment sold to Iran in the arms-for-hostages deals in 1985-86, it would be difficult to prosecute him for violating the Arms Export Control Act, which mandates congressional notification of arms transfers through a third country ? Israel in this case. Part of the deal also entailed CIA usage of funds to finance the rebels in Nicaragua ? a move also deemed illegal by the Congress. Mixter's report details an outline of then-Vice President Bush's involvement in the Iran-Contra operations, including what he called Bush's "meeting with a high Israeli official on the sales of arms to Iran in July 1986."* Notations made by Secretary Weinberger in December 1985, state that "The disastrous November HAWK shipment prompted US officials to take direct control of the arms deals with Iran. Until then, Israel had been responsible for making the deliveries, for which the US agreed to replenish their stocks of American weapons." Mixter determined no charges could be filed against Reagan because then-Attorney General Meese had informed him that the 1947 National Security Act could be invoked to supersede the AECA. Providing the public with half-truths and partial lies "is not a crime," Mixter ruled. *Shimon Peres was Prime Minister of Israel in 1986. Yitzhak Rabin served as Minister of Defense from 1984-1990. Ariel Sharon was Minister for Trade and Industry from 1984-1990. George H. W. Bush may have met with Peres, Rabin and/or Sharon - now clearly defining his operational role in the Iran-Contra scandal for the first time. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4153240,00.html From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 28 12:35:34 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:35:34 +0100 Subject: [THS] The indefinite detention of American citizens without charges Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111128123513.06578cd0@mail.messagingengine.com> The indefinite detention of American citizens without charges Way back in 2009, President Obama gave a speech in which he called for the power to detain individuals indefinitely and without charges. He stated his intention to create a new 'legal regime' to make indefinite detention legal. Of course, in his speech he cites Al Qaeda and foriegn terrorists. However, now that the Senate is about to vote TODAY on a bill that would give the President the powers he was asking for, the ACLU and others are claiming that the bill CAN and WILL be used on American citizens here at home. This is kind of a red alert... Video: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/5840.html - Brasscheck P.S. Please share Brasscheck TV e-mails and videos with friends and colleagues. From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 28 13:27:05 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:27:05 +0100 Subject: [THS] Military Detention Versus We the People Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111128132647.044dbdd0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.truth-out.org/military-detention-vs-we-people/1322380800 Military Detention Versus We the People Sunday 27 November 2011 by: Shahid Buttar, Truthout | News Analysis An Army spokesman in one of the detainee areas in Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on June 9, 2010. (Photo: Richard Perry / The New York Times) Congress has a deserved reputation for cluelessness. Our leaders have a habit of ignoring real crises like housing, education, mass incarceration, and climate change, while contriving distractions like the budget debate that essentially froze Washington, DC for the past year. In 2010, the Tea Party rejected the legitimacy of the DC debate, paving the way for the Occupy movement to do the same in 2011. And while those contrasting movements may compete on many issues, they share in common a rejection of Washington?s political establishment. On Monday, the Senate will grapple with Congress? latest bipartisan foolishness, the National Defense Authorization Act. Ironically opposed by both the White House and the Pentagon, it would expand preventive and arbitrary detention beyond Guant?namo Bay and the CIA?s shuttered black sites, importing it into the domestic United States. The Senate Armed Services Committee, led by Senators Carl Levin (D-Michigan) and John McCain (R-Arizona), approved the bill despite its provisions for military detention of any suspect (even those apprehended within the United States) accused (not proven) of involvement in any terror-related offense. Presumably, military detention would include those accused of offenses as innocuous as "lying to a federal agent," unrelated to actual terrorism yet classified as terror-related. The most glaring problem with the committee's legislation is its violation of our nation?s most fundamental values shared across our political spectrum. First, the committee?s proposal accepts prosecutors as the arbiters of guilt. We have courts in America to check executive power. Impartial judges limit over whom the state may exercise its coercive power to deny freedom. We don?t trust prosecutors to make those decisions, because we presume innocence. Being considered "innocent until proven guilty" is a bedrock constitutional norm, a cornerstone in the edifice our Founders constructed to defend freedom from the potential tyranny that Levin & McCain casually invite. On the one hand, racial and ethnic profiling in the wars on drugs, immigrants, and terror have already shredded the presumption of innocence. Millions of Americans routinely treated as presumptively guilty due to their race or ethnicity have been subjected to illegitimate prison sentences or deportation. But at least those cases involve a judicial process of some kind. A separate fundamental principle restrains the military from operating domestically. Levin and McCain invite domestic military deployment. Beyond its blatant violation of fundamental American principles, Levin and McCain also play loose with the system. Their bill passed the Armed Services Committee essentially in secret, without even a single hearing on their radical and seemingly Soviet-inspired proposal. Moreover, their committee overstepped its jurisdiction, invading the spheres of the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California), who chair those committees, raised their voices in protest--and Senator Mark Udall (D-Utah) introduced an amendment that would reverse Levin-McCain?s detention provisions. Even within a single, insular, tone deaf political party, the left and right hands actively work at cross purposes. Republican complicity in Sino-Chinese inspired security policies, like the Patriot Act, is by now well established. The support from some Democrats for this proposal, however, reflects what is wrong with Washington--beyond policy. In every election cycle since 1998, the electorate has loudly demanded to "throw the bums out." In 2008, We the People rejected the Bush administration's War on Terror to choose a candidate who, inspired by our Founders, pledged instead to "reject the false choice between liberty and security." Congressional Democrats doubling down on Bush era abuses betray their own supporters. We live in a nation where, apparently, we enjoy no electoral alternative to human rights abuses. Will the real Americans please stand up? Even worse than the betrayal of Democrats, however, is the betrayal of Congress--by itself. Our Founders dedicated the Constitution?s first Article to Congress, to reflect its primacy after our revolution against a unilateral monarchy. The central theme of the Constitution is its system of checks & balances to limit executive power and prevent tyranny. But rather than resist executive power, today?s congressional leaders actively expand it. Over the past decade, Congress has granted presidents from both political parties every power they have sought: the power to eavesdrop en masse on every American household without individualized suspicion, the power to ignore the Nuremberg principle and torture with impunity, the power to initiate unilateral war, and more. Levin-McCain is substantively, procedurally, and structurally even worse: It actively outflanks the executive, granting powers that neither the White House nor the Pentagon want, and have even pledged to resist. Madison and Jefferson would each roll in their graves at Congress betrayal of their legacy. The one positive aspect to Levin-McCain?s essentially Soviet proposal is the hope it offers to inspire unity among Americans. There may yet remain principles, even if merely as meager as the right to trial, on which we all can agree. Torn between the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street movement and alienated moderates, much of America shares a rejection of Washington's habitual foolishness. And with these competing movements having already organized and mobilized so many diverse Americans, there has been no better time to come together. From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 28 13:30:39 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:30:39 +0100 Subject: [THS] Senators Demand the Military Lock Up American Citizens... Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111128132856.042fe9b0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/senators-demand-military-lock-american-citizens-battlefield-they-define-being Senators Demand the Military Lock Up American Citizens in a ?Battlefield? They Define as Being Right Outside Your Window While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield ? even people in the United States itself. Senators need to hear from you, on whether you think your front yard is part of a ?battlefield? and if any president can send the military anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial. The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president?and every future president ? the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night?s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself. The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday.The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing. I know it sounds incredible. New powers to use the military worldwide, even within the United States? Hasn?t anyone told the Senate that Osama bin Laden is dead, that the president is pulling all of the combat troops out of Iraq and trying to figure out how to get combat troops out of Afghanistan too? And American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now? The answer on why now is nothing more than election season politics. The White House, the Secretary of Defense, and the Attorney General have all said that the indefinite detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act are harmful and counterproductive. The White House has even threatened a veto. But Senate politics has propelled this bad legislation to the Senate floor. But there is a way to stop this dangerous legislation. Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is offering the Udall Amendment that will delete the harmful provisions and replace them with a requirement for an orderly Congressional review of detention power. The Udall Amendment will make sure that the bill matches up with American values. In support of this harmful bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained that the bill will ?basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield? and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial ?American citizen or not.? Another supporter, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) also declared that the bill is needed because ?America is part of the battlefield.? The solution is the Udall Amendment; a way for the Senate to say no to indefinite detention without charge or trial anywhere in the world where any president decides to use the military. Instead of simply going along with a bill that was drafted in secret and is being jammed through the Senate, the Udall Amendment deletes the provisions and sets up an orderly review of detention power. It tries to take the politics out and put American values back in. In response to proponents of the indefinite detention legislation who contend that the bill ?applies to American citizens and designates the world as the battlefield,? and that the ?heart of the issue is whether or not the United States is part of the battlefield,? Sen. Udall disagrees, and says that we can win this fight without worldwide war and worldwide indefinite detention. The senators pushing the indefinite detention proposal have made their goals very clear that they want an okay for a worldwide military battlefield, that even extends to your hometown. That is an extreme position that will forever change our country. Now is the time to stop this bad idea. Please urge your senators to vote YES on the Udall Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 28 13:32:43 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:32:43 +0100 Subject: [THS] If a million students pledge to withhold their debt payments from the banks Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111128133137.044dbb40@mail.messagingengine.com> What this country needs?and what the Occupation has made possible?is a national campaign to cancel student debt. And we can make this happen, if a million students pledge to withhold their debt payments from the banks. MCM From Bertell Ollman: This original and potentially very important action that requires your immediate action. It involves circulating a PLEDGE to those who already owe or will soon owe student debts NOT TO PAY THEM AS SOON AS ONE MILLION PEOPLE ALSO SIGN THE SAME PLEDGE. Please note that no one is being asked to stop paying their debt now, so no one who simply makes the pledge is risking any punishment. What happens later... well, obviously that will all depend on many things starting with how many people sign it and how far they are willing to go in carrying it out, since individuals who sign can always opt out. As the number of signers grow, the possible effects range from - at a minimum - making student debt a major public issue with banks as well as politicians (esp. in this election year) mixing their threats with offers of debt refrom, to - at a maximum - .... well, given the interrelatedness of all our social and economic problems, I won't deny you the pleasure of giving free rein to your imaginations on this one. Bertell The pledge?which you can sign if you're a student, whether debtor or non-debtor, or if you're on a university or college faculty?is here: www.occupystudentdebtcampaign.org OCCUPY STUDENT DEBT CAMPAIGN OUR PRINCIPLES DEBTORS? PLEDGE FACULTY NON-DEBTORS RESOURCES FAQ Welcome Welcome to the Occupy Student Debt Campaign. This campaign is a response to the student debt crisis and the dependency of U.S. higher education on debt-financing from the people it is supposed to serve. There is no justice in a system that openly invites profiteering on the part of lenders. Education is a right and a public good, and it should be properly funded as such. __________________________ General Information : Occupy Student Debt! National Campaign Launch On Monday, November 21, Occupy Student Debt is launching a national campaign of student debt refusal. This campaign is a response to the student debt crisis and the dependency of U.S. higher education on debt-financing from the people it is supposed to serve. There is no justice in a system that openly invites profiteering on the part of lenders. Education is a right and a public good, and it should be properly funded as such. The campaign will consist of three pledges: -A debtor's pledge to refuse loan payments.The pledge will take effect after a million debtors have signed. -A faculty pledge of support for the refusers -A non-debtors' pledge of support for parents and other public sympathizers The pledges come out of our commitment to four fundamental principles: - Education is not a consumer good and therefore student loans should not be treated like consumer loans. If they are to exist, student loans should be interest-free. - Tuition at all public colleges and universities should be federally funded. - Private and for-profit colleges and universities should open their books. - The current debt burden should be written off, ending the bondage of two generations of student debtors. The launch will take place 1:30 at Zuccotti Park, followed by CUNY/Baruch at Madison Square Park at 3pm. Given the strength of national sentiment around this issue, we expect campuses around the country will join us in staging events to launch the campaign. The campaign is the work of the student debt subcommittee of the OWS Empowerment and Education working group. ****** The pledges are on this website? www.occupystudentdebtcampaign.org FB facebook.com/pages/OccupyStudentDebtCampaignorg/217129071692202?sk=wall# From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 28 13:35:18 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:35:18 +0100 Subject: [THS] Big Tanks in Small Towns... and .50 cal machine guns Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111128133405.04300df0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/tanks-in-small-towns/248975/ Tanks in Small Towns By James Fallows Thanks to many, many people who have written in about the ongoing militarization of the police, and the ramifications of police over-reaction to the Occupy movement in Davis, Berkeley, and elsewhere. Will format* and share some of these tonight or tomorrow. For the moment, here is just one, from a U.S. Army veteran: If you liked the wheeled APC in Galax Virginia, you're gonna love the M113 with a cupola mounted .50 cal machine gun that Richland County SC picked up [ a few years ago]. Note the SWAT team posing around the vehicle with submachineguns. Lovely. SOuthCarolinaTank.jpg As a former US Army Cavalry soldier, I have to say I am astonished and horrified that anybody in law enforcement would think that an M2 .50 cal machine gun has any place at all in a police force. It is a weapon made to destroy vehicles (like light tanks, APC's and helicopters) and unreinforced buildings. A single round can literally tear a person in half if hits him in the abdomen. It will go through your house and the house after that and then continue blithely along for another mile or more until it hits something else. While I'm at it, here is one more -- about the way the militarization of the police perversely ignores the way the real military is evolving: Reading about the militarization of local police forces made me think about the strategic shift to counter-insurgency operations in Iraq under the leadership of GEN Petraeus. As commander of the 101st Airborne, GEN Petraeus saw combat for the first time during the division's drive up the Euphrates Valley, with sharp firefights in Najaf, Karbala and Hilla. But it was during the division's subsequent occupation of Mosul and northern Iraq that he won widespread acclaim by resurrecting the local economy, restoring services and preserving order with strategic force. Posters in the division bivouacs read: "What have you done to win Iraqi hearts and minds today?" The famous "surge" in Iraq was successful because of many reasons (including financial support to western tribes) and one was a fundamental shift in strategy from operating out of heavily fortified, centralized compounds with periodic patrols, to dispersing soldiers to smaller, more numerous locations in order to "win Iraqi hearts and minds." An unverified account of the orders GEN Petraeus gave upon initiating the surge: - "Secure and serve the population. - Live among the people. Promote reconciliation. - Move mounted, work dismounted; situational awareness can only be achieved by operating face-to-face, not separated by ballistic glass. - Walk." A good theme for our police leaders to keep in mind. * This is a surprisingly tedious chore with our blogging software. As the world goes, not a big problem, but it's not a simple matter of cutting and pasting from messages. Just for the record. From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 28 13:37:20 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:37:20 +0100 Subject: [THS] Avant-garde artist denies Homeland Security child porn charges Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111128133650.044db620@mail.messagingengine.com> For more?and to done to this man's defense fund?go to http://www.lawrencebroselegaldefensefund.com/. MCM The Martyrdom of Lawrence Brose Avant-garde artist denies Homeland Security child porn charges Published: Wednesday, November 23, 2011 6:10 PM CST BY DOUG IRELAND http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2011/11/23/gay_city_news/news/doc4ecd876a7139d408835502.txt The entire weight of the US Department of Homeland Security, set up to protect us from terrorists, is being used to crush an avant-garde queer filmmaker and visual artist who has created more than 30 experimental films since 1983 that deal largely with homosexuality, homophobia, AIDS, and related topics ?? yet there has been hardly a word written about this case in the LGBT press and nary a squeak of protest from treasury-rich national gay institutions. Lawrence Brose, now 60 years old, was a well-known member of Western New York?s artistic community, the long-time executive director of Buffalo?s CEPA Gallery ?? a distinguished haven for the visual arts ?? and a noted advocate for public arts funding when he was arrested in November 2009 by agents of the Department?s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division (ICE) and charged with possession of what the federal government claimed was ?child pornography.? ?There is no allegation of Brose creating these images, sending the images on to anyone else, or trying to make contact with minors,? Brose?s attorney, Paul Cambria, said. ?I?m not just saying, ?I?m innocent,?? Brose told Gay City News, ?I am innocent!? I, for one, believe him. Yet if convicted, he faces up to decades in prison and registration for life as a sex offender. One of the few organizations to embrace Brose?s case up until now is the National Center for Reason and Justice, which has declared, ?We believe that the case of Lawrence Brose is an instance of child pornography laws destroying an innocent person?s life without the remotest possibility of protecting any child. Supporting him affords the NCRJ an opportunity to educate the public about the irrationality and injustice written into existing child-pornography law.? * The Homeland Security agents seized Brose?s computer, and the indictment charges him with possessing ?1300 images? of child pornography, some of which were downloaded from a website in Germany, where images illegal here may be legal. ?The complaint says there are a few that were downloaded from a site in Germany and that?s it,? Cambria said. ?There isn?t any suggestion of trafficking or passing on.? The figure of 1,300 illegal images was inflated by including more than 100 images taken from Brose?s best-known film, ?De Profundis,? a surrealist meditation on homosexuality inspired by Oscar Wilde?s famous letter from prison of the same name. Wilde?s semi-autobiographical essay, widely considered a classic and one of the most moving things the playwright ever wrote, is an introspective meditation on the nature of art and the soul as refracted through what history?s best-known queer criminal learned about memory, persecution, bitterness, and forgiveness after he?d been imprisoned for homosexuality. It is considered a defense of ?the love that dares not speak its name,? the phrase that became famous during his trials to describe his same-sex orientation. To understand the horror that has happened to Brose, it is necessary to understand the nature of his art. As his Legal Defense Fund website describes it, Brose ?is working in a well-established tradition of image appropriation, drawing specifically on images of masculinity in home movies, old films, Gay erotica and documentaries. Brose collects found still images, which he then processes and re-processes to find more depth in the picture, producing complex layers of imagery that are highly conceptual and offer a poignant commentary on normative conventions of gender and sexuality. The final product is as abstract as the paintings of Willem de Kooning, and a seizure of source material entirely misrepresents the final outcome.? One of the few major queer voices to come to Brose?s defense is the distinguished novelist, essayist, playwright, and scenarist Sarah Schulman. (See this reporter?s November 2009 review of Schulman?s 14th book, ?Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences.?) On November 18, Schulman moderated a panel on the Brose case at MIX, the Bleecker Street center for experimental queer film she co-founded. Schulman, who believes Brose?s indictment has enormous civil liberties implications, told Gay City News, ?There are a number of different questions raised by this case: First, there have been a number of similar cases that have been thrown out recently based on computer forensics. Apparently because of the way that porn hubs are constructed, most people who have looked at porn online do have links that lead to child pornography on their hard drives, and we know that in Larry?s case it was a shared computer? to which a number of other people had access. ?But,? Schulman added, ?beyond his specific circumstances, much larger questions are raised. In the US, sexual images of minors are the only thing that no one is allowed to look at ?? not consumers, not lawyers, not psychologists or scholars. Murder is illegal, but we watch images of murder, but in this case the state is applying the idea that seeing equals action, and that has never been proven. I am not convinced that someone who looks at sexual images of minors should be incarcerated and labeled a sex offender.? Moreover, noted Schulman, ?the law applies equally to teenagers having sex with each other as it does to children coerced into sex with adults. I had lesbian sex as a minor, and based on that experience this convergence seems cruel and absurd.? Finally, Schulman reminds us that ?100 exhibition prints from Larry?s film ?De Profundis,? which we screened at MIX this past week, were collected by the FBI as evidence about his character. Queer and feminist artists often have their art work used against them and, having just seen the film, it is terrifying that these images could be used against someone in court. Media artists are particularly vulnerable as a video counts as 75 images, according to the FBI. Because MIX, now in its 24th year, is the primary advocacy organization in the world for queer avant-garde artists, we felt it was our responsibility to air these issues in a public forum.? Since neither the public nor the press has been permitted to see the images for which Brose has been indicted, it is impossible for this reporter to judge whether or not they meet the legal definition of ?child pornography? under federal laws, which are altogether too vague. The Brose case will be the subject of an evidentiary hearing on December 12, and his attorneys intend to challenge the evidence against Brose on a number of constitutional grounds, including First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendment rights regarding free expression, criminal searches, and fair and speedy trials. They also intend to present forensic evidence from computer experts which they say is completely exculpatory for Brose. Moreover, as the Buffalo News recently reported, ?Men convicted of looking at child pornography on their computers sometimes get longer prison terms than men convicted in state courts of actually molesting kids. Now, the issue is getting some national attention from the federal judges who hand out the sentences. Many federal judges throughout the nation have asked the US Sentencing Commission to revise the advisory sentencing guidelines for cases of child pornography possession. Western New York?s chief district judge, Richard J. Arcara, is one of them: ?I?m not sure that the guidelines, as they are currently written, assist judges in identifying factors that distinguish a defendant who is a threat to the community and likely to re-offend from one who is not.?? Recent criminal indictments of adolescents for ?sexting? messages they sent to each other point up even more problems in overly broad and ill-defined child pornography laws. But if the Brose case does eventually go to trial, given the recent and entirely justifiable national outrage over the Jerry Sandusky case and its coverup by Penn State authorities -? but despite the lack of any similarities between the two cases ? will Brose be able to get a fair trial? If the very mention of ?child pornography? has been enough to scare gay organizations away from questioning the odiferous indictment of Brose, what effect will just the charge have on juries and on judges who have to face re-election or reappointment? There is no evidence or suggestion that Brose?s sexual tastes run to children. He had three long-term lovers, all adults, who died of AIDS, and his current partner of seven years is the same age as he is. Brose?s original indictment was tossed out by a federal judge who found the evidence wanting, but he was re-indicted by an ambitious federal prosecutor who sneered in the press at Brose defenders? assertion that his collection of Internet images was for ?research.? This betrays an ignorance of the artist?s interest in Wilde?s ?De Profundis,? which is replete with references to children, including his horror at being forbidden to see his own offspring and his statement, "When one comes in contact with the soul it makes one simple as a child, as Christ said one should be." Brose is not a pornographer. He is an experimental artist who turns still images into illustrations of our social ills and hypocrisies, as anyone may judge for themselves by consulting his website. His indictment and defense have left Brose penniless, and he told this reporter his life had been ?shattered? by ?this awful travesty of justice that has come crashing down on me for no reason.? Today, he told me, ?I?m being kept alive by my friends.? Brose gave up his job as director of the CEPA Gallery in order to protect that institution. ?Lawrence resigned in the best interest of CEPA, he wasn?t asked to leave,? the vice president of the gallery?s board, Robert Travers, told the Buffalo News, and the board?s public statements reflect a belief in Brose?s innocence. From what I?ve been able to learn, as a journalist of four decades experience I believe Brose to be the victim of a tragic miscarriage of justice. I feel so strongly about this case and the threat Brose?s indictment poses to civil liberties and artistic freedom, that I intend to donate my modest fee for this article to the Lawrence Brose Legal Defense Fund. I hope readers of this article will likewise donate to his defense. Like many gay men in the age of AIDS, I?m an occasional consumer of Internet pornography ? and who knows what links from porn hubs to illegal images lurk, unbeknownst to me, on my computer. Or on yours? You could be next The Brose Legal Defense Fund is holding an online art auction to help raise money for this brave and valuable artist?s defense. On offer are original art work from ?The Simpsons,? ?The Jetsons,? and a host of artists from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Ken Heyman, Tseng Kwong Chi, and Jeffrey Hoone. You can visit this auction at lawrencebrose.com/sale/index.html. The Lawrence Brose Legal Defense Fund is at tinyurl.com/cmx9hhj. You may see Lawrence Brose?s art work and images from his films on his web site at http://lawrencebrose.com. The text of Wilde?s ?De Profundis? is at upword.com/wilde/de_profundis.html. From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 28 13:43:17 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:43:17 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!! Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111128134120.044db390@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/why-do-liberals-keep-sanitizing-the-obama-story/248890/#.TtFWxdVctud.facebook Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story? NOV 22 2011, 8:12 AM ET Jonathan Chait is the latest to write about the president as if his civil liberties abuses and executive power excesses never happened When I pleaded with liberals to stop ignoring President Obama's failures on civil liberties, foreign policy, and the separation of powers, treating them as if they didn't even merit a mention, the quintessential example of the troubling phenomenon hadn't yet been published. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/11/a-plea-to-liberals-stop-marginalizing-peace-and-civil-liberties/247890/ Now it has. In New York, one of America's premier magazines, Jonathan Chait, a sharp, experienced political writer, has penned a 5,000 word essay purporting to defend the president's first term. It is aimed at liberal critics who, in Chait's telling, naively expected too much. Tellingly, as Chait writes for affluent urban liberals who railed against the Bush Administration's excesses in the War on Terrorism, he neither desires nor feels compelled to grapple with President Obama's approach to foreign policy, national security, or homeland security. The closest he comes in a piece overwhelmingly focused on domestic policy and political maneuvering is the breezy assertion that Obama "has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes -- expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime." Isn't that something? Apparently it isn't even worthy of mention that Obama's actions in Libya violated the War Powers Resolution, the president's own professed standards for what he can do without Congressional permission,and the legal advice provided to him by the Office of Legal Counsel. In Chait's telling, expanded drone strikes in Pakistan are a clear success. Why even grapple with Jane Mayer's meticulously researched article on the risks of an drone war run by the CIA, Glenn Greenwald'spolemics on the innocent civilians being killed, or Jeff Goldberg and Marc Ambinder's reporting on the Pakistani generals who are moving lightly guarded nuclear weapons around the country in civilian trucks as a direct consequence of the cathartic bin Laden raid. Chait mentions the Iraq withdrawal, but doesn't point out that Obama sought to violate his campaign promise, and would've kept American troops in the country beyond 2011 had the Iraqis allowed it; that as it is, he'll leave behind a huge State Department presence with a private security army; and that he's expanding America's presence elsewhere in the Persian Gulf to make up for the troops no longer in Iraq. Is any of that possibly relevant to a liberal's assessment? Perhaps most egregiously, Chait doesn't even allude to Obama's practice of putting American citizens on a secret kill list without any due process, or even consistent, transparent standards. Nor does he grapple with warrantless spying on American citizens, Obama's escalation of the war on whistleblowers, his serial invocation of the state secrets privilege, the Orwellian turn airport security has taken, the record-breaking number of deportations over which Obama presided, or his broken promise to lay off medical marijuana in states where dispensing it is legal. Why is all this ignored? Telling the story of Obama's first term without including any of it is a shocking failure of liberalism. It's akin to conservatism's unforgivable myopia and apologia during the Bush Administration. Are liberals really more discontented with Obama's failure to reverse the Bush tax cuts than the citizen death warrants he is signing? Is his ham-handed handling of the debt-ceiling really more worthy of mention than the illegal war he waged? Is his willingness to sign deficit reduction that cuts entitlement spending more objectionable than the fact that he outsourced drone strikes to a CIA that often didn't even know the namesof the people it was killing? These are the priorities of a perverted liberalism. Chait's essay suggests an ideological movement that finds the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights indispensable, but only when a Republican is in the White House. One that objects to radically expanded executive power, except when the president seems progressive. I want to be reassured that liberalism is better than that. When I last wrote on this subject, I criticized David Remnick for what he left out of a short piece on Obama and the War in Libya; I ought to have added that during his tenure as editor of The New Yorker, and thanks in large part to his priorities, the magazine has paid and published Jane Mayer, Seymour Hersh, David Grann, and other indispensable authors whose work on civil liberties is vital. The same can be said for the editors at The New York Times, who support work like that done by Charlie Savage. Outside of Reason and the Cato Institute, it's almost all left-leaning outlets that have stood up for civil liberties during the War on Terrorism. I'd like to give Chait his due in the same piece where I skewer his latest. I've long appreciated his talent and intellectual honesty. And I'm sure he both appreciates the work of the writers I've praised and has smart things to say about many if not all of the subjects he ignored in his piece. But it won't do for smart writers and prestigious publications to keep writing big think pieces about Obama's tenure that read as if some of its most significant, uncomfortable moments never happened; as if it's reasonable for an informed liberal to vote for him in Election 2012 as happily as in 2008. Civil liberties and executive power and war-making aren't fringe concerns, or peripheral disappointments to lament in the course of leaving them to Charlie Savage and Jane Mayer. They're central to the Obama narrative, and the American narrative, as the president himself would've affirmed back when he was articulating lofty standards that he has repeatedly failed to meet. As have we all. From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 28 13:48:25 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:48:25 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?_=91Black_Friday=92_Champs_Walk_Over_Dying_M?= =?iso-8859-1?q?an_To_Buy_Target_Crap?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111128134459.044db100@mail.messagingengine.com> ?Black Friday? Champs Walk Over Dying Man To Buy Target Crap By WONKETTE JR. 11:33 PM NOVEMBER 26, 2011 25 COMMENTS 414 VIEWS 'God I hate this goddamned job' Pepper spray was a-spraying, knives were a-stabbing, guns were a-shooting, muggers were a-mugging, punchers were a-punching ? it was a ?Black Friday? celebration that truly proved if you?re not a part of worldwide anti-capitalism protests, then you?re actually a very serious part of the problem. But the Gold Medal in Applied Assjerk Consumerism goes to the shoppers at the Target crap box store in South Charleston, West Virginia: These bargain-crazed mouth-breathing waterheads literally walked over a dying 61-year-old man who collapsed in the aisles. Can we please do an ?alternate history swap? and have the Native Americans defeat the Europeans? Please? MSNBC and WSAZ-TV report: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/26/9035999-report-shoppers-unfazed-as-man-dies-at-target Family and friends were stunned by the loss of a West Virginia man who died while shopping on Black Friday as fellow bargain hunters reportedly walked around ? and even over ? the man?s body. Family members told WSAZ-TV that 61-year-old Walter Vance of Logan County, W. Va., had become ill and collapsed while shopping for Christmas decorations inside Target in South Charleston. He later died after being taken to the hospital, family said. Witnesses told the NBC News affiliate in Charleston, W. Wa., that shoppers walked around and even over Vance?s body. But Target couldn?t even win the award for ?most violent chain store of plastic imported garbage? this Thanksgiving Weekend. That dubious honor went to WalMart, as usual, with violence at nine different (identical) WalMart stores around the country. http://www.freep.com/article/20111125/FEATURES13/111125011/Black-Friday-turns-violent-9-U-S-Walmart-stores-least-24-people-injured Violence erupted overnight during Black Friday shopping as at least 24 people were injured in a series of incidents, including nine at Walmart stores in the U.S. The violence included a California shopper who was shot during a failed robbery attempt, a fight over $1.88 towels, a trampled girl in western Michigan, a police officer who used pepper spray to quell a crowd, and a pepper-spraying shopper who injured 20 people in her haste to keep other people away from the merchandise she wanted to buy. Among the incidents: In Fruitport Township, authorities say a teenage girl was trampled at a western Michigan Walmart store and suffered minor injuries after getting caught in a rush to a sale in the electronics department. The Muskegon Chronicle reports the girl was taken to a local hospital this morning. Fruitport Township Supervisor Brian Werschem says the girl was knocked down and stepped on several times in the store near Muskegon. In Los Angeles, authorities said a woman shot pepper spray to keep shoppers from merchandise she wanted during a Black Friday sale, and 20 people suffered minor injuries. The incident occurred shortly after 10:20 p.m. Thursday in a crowded Walmart as shoppers hungry for deals were let inside the store. Police said the suspect shot the pepper spray when the coverings over electronics items she wanted were removed. "Somehow she was trying to use it to gain an upper hand," police Lt. Abel Parga told The Associated Press early today. Parga said police were still looking for the woman. The store remained open and those not affected by the pepper spray continued shopping. In Florence, Ala., a shopper was subdued with a stun gun at a Walmart store as shoppers gathered for Black Friday sales. WAFF-TV reports police said they used a stun gun twice to gain control of 22-year-old Christopher Blake Pyron before arresting him. Police said they made the arrest around 11 p.m. Thursday, about an hour after the Alabama Walmart opened its doors for late-night and early-morning shopping. Authorities said he is charged with public intoxication, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. In Northern California, authorities said a Black Friday shopper is in critical but stable condition after being shot by armed robbers outside a Walmart store. San Leandro police Sgt. Mike Sobek says the victim and his family were walking to their car around 1:45 a.m. when they were confronted by a group of men who demanded their purchases. When the family refused, a fight broke out and one of the robbers shot the man. Sobek says other family members wrestled down one of the suspects, who was taken into police custody. Investigators are reviewing store surveillance video to identify at least three other suspects. Witnesses say the Walmart parking lot was crowded with Black Friday shoppers at the time, and the store was briefly closed as police investigated. In North Carolina, one man was arrested after a holiday shopping scuffle at a Walmart store in Kinston which police quelled with pepper spray. Public Safety Director Bill Johnson says the incident happened early Friday. An off-duty Kinston officer was working a security detail for the store when some customers began trying to get electronic equipment that wasn't yet available for purchase. Johnson says the off-duty officer used a short burst of pepper spray in the air to control the scene. Johnson says no one was sprayed in the face or eyes. One man was arrested, but information on the charges he is facing was not immediately available. Shopper Angel Bunting told WITN-TV that the incident began when a man waiting in line for discounted cell phones fell into a display. In central Florida, a man is behind bars after a fight broke out at a jewelry counter during Black Friday. Kissimmee, Fla., police tell the Orlando Sentinel that two men were fighting at a Walmart store during Friday's early hours. One man resisted when a police officer tried to escort him out of the store. Officers had to force him to the ground to put him in handcuffs. The unidentified man is charged with resisting arrest. No shoppers were hurt. In the Toledo suburb of Oregon, police responded to three separate reports of fighting at a Walmart on Thursday night. One officer told The Blade newspaper that one of the fights was over towels selling for $1.88. In upstate New York, police said two women were injured and a man charged after a fight broke out at a Walmart. In Colorado, a bomb threat today prompted the evacuation of employees and customers of a Woodland Park Walmart for about four hours as police and federal agents checked for explosive devices but found none. Woodland Park police dispatch supervisor Karen Glenn says the threat arrived around 8:30 a.m. CST today during one of the busiest shopping days of the holiday season. Police from Colorado Springs as well as agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Bureau responded. A check of the store that included the use of a bomb sniffing dog found nothing. Glenn said officials declared the store safe around 11:30 a.m. and were planned allow employees back inside around noon. WalMart Stores Inc. officials did not immediately return a message. In non-violent shopping related Walmart news, in northern Ohio, Black Friday shoppers had to leave their bargains behind when a car accident knocked out power, forcing the store to be evacuated. A driver hit a utility pole near the store just before midnight near the town of Port Clinton, along Lake Erie. Authorities from around the area including police, firefighters and agents from the U.S. Customs & Border Patrol were called in to get hundreds of Black Friday shoppers out of the Walmart. The State Highway Patrol says the driver who caused the blackout had been drinking and was arrested. In the Phoenix suburb of Buckeye, police are coming under fire for a video posted online Friday that shows a grandfather unconscious on the floor of a Walmart with a bloody face after police said he was caught trying to shoplift. The video shows 54-year-old Jerald Allen Newman unconscious and covered in blood after a police officer took him to the ground Thursday night. Officers in the video are shown trying to sop up blood as outraged customers yell expletives and say, ?That?s police brutality,? and ?He wasn?t doing anything.? The man?s wife and other witnesses say that Newman was trying to help his young grandson after the boy was trampled by shoppers, and only put a video game in his waistband to free his hands to help the boy. From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 28 13:53:16 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:53:16 +0100 Subject: [THS] Driven By Drug War Incentives, Cops Target Pot Smokers, Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111128135015.0423a988@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/21/drug-war-incentives-police-violent-crime_n_1105701.html [photos etc at url above] Driven By Drug War Incentives, Cops Target Pot Smokers, Brush Off Victims Of Violent Crime First Posted: 11/25/11 11:20 AM ET Updated: 11/25/11 12:38 PM ET CHICAGO -- As Jessica Shaver and I chat at a coffee shop in Chicago's north-side Andersonville neighborhood, a police car pulls into the parking lot across the street. Then another. Two cops get out, lean up against their cars, and appear to gaze across traffic into the store. At times, they seem to be looking directly at us. Shaver, who works as an eyebrow waxer at a nearby spa, appears nervous. "See what I mean? They follow me," says Shaver, 30. During several phone conversations Shaver told me that she thinks a small group of Chicago police officers are trying to intimidate her. These particular cops likely aren't following her; the barista tells me Chicago cops regularly stop in that particular parking lot to chat. But if Shaver is a bit paranoid, it's hard to blame her. A year and a half ago she was beaten by a neighborhood thug outside of a city bar. It took months of do-it-yourself sleuthing, a meeting with a city alderman and a public shaming in a community newspaper before the Chicago Police Department would pay any attention to her. About a year later, Shaver got more attention from cops than she ever could have wanted: A team of Chicago cops took down her door with a battering ram and raided her apartment, searching for drugs. Shaver has no evidence that the two incidents are related, and they likely aren't in any direct way. But they provide a striking example of how the drug war perverts the priorities of America's police departments. Federal anti-drug grants, asset forfeiture policies and a generation of battlefield rhetoric from politicians have made pursuing low-level drug dealers and drug users a top priority for police departments across the country. There's only so much time in the day, and the focus on drugs often comes at the expense of investigating violent crimes with victims like Jessica Shaver. In the span of about a year, she experienced both problems firsthand. THE BATTERY On the night of May 13, 2010, Shaver was smoking a cigarette with her friend Damon outside the Flat Iron bar in Wicker Park. She said she saw a woman walking away from the bar alone when two men began shouting profanities at her. The men then began walking toward the woman. "I made eye contact with her, and she looked like she was in trouble," Shaver said. Shaver shouted at the men to leave the woman alone, at which point she says the the two men turned their attention to her, approached her, and began shouting at her. Damon told the men to leave Shaver alone. They jumped Damon and began to beat him. Shaver said she then tried to pry the men off her friend, and managed to free him long enough for him to get away and call 911. Shaver said she was punched repeatedly, including in the face. She fell, stood up, and was hit in the face again. The men then robbed her and left. When she woke up the next morning with bruises, she went to the hospital. Doctors found a concussion and several contusions. Two weeks later, Shaver still hadn't heard from the detective assigned to her case. When she finally went to the police station in person to get an update on the investigation, she was told there was no record of the incident. She filed another report, but was told it was unlikely police would be able to track down the witnesses again, and that even if they were, the witnesses' memories were likely to have faded. Shaver says she decided to investigate on her own. She went back to the Flat Iron and questioned customers and employees herself. A bartender gave her the men's nicknames: "Cory" and "Sonny," the guy who hit her. Shaver learned that Sonny was also a reputed cocaine dealer. She heard he had a violent streak, and had been banned from a number of neighborhood bars. "I was scared," Shaver said. "I'd heard bad things about this guy, and he knew who I was." Shaver is thoroughly tattooed, which makes her easy to recognize. So she dyed her hair, covered her tattoos with clothing, and kept investigating. She worked her way through social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace until she was able to put actual names to her attackers' faces and nicknames. And yet she still couldn't get anyone at Chicago PD to help her. "I gave them the guy's name and everything," she said. "There were even hip hop videos online with him in them. I told them, 'That's the guy!' They still wouldn't listen to me." In August 2010, three months after the attack, Shaver contacted a reporter for Time Out Chicago, who began asking around about her case. Shaver also met with Chicago Alderman Joe Marino. Shortly before the Time Out article went to press, a detective finally called Shaver down to the police station to identify her attacker. But even with her identification, the police didn't arrest "Sonny." He wasn't charged with the assault until the following month, when he was arrested on an unrelated domestic violence charge. Shortly after she finally identified her attacker at the police station, Shaver said the detective in charge of her case told her, "Now I don't want to hear any more bitching from you." MISPLACED PRIORITIES Arresting people for assaults, beatings and robberies doesn't bring money back to police departments, but drug cases do in a couple of ways. First, police departments across the country compete for a pool of federal anti-drug grants. The more arrests and drug seizures a department can claim, the stronger its application for those grants. "The availability of huge federal anti-drug grants incentivizes departments to pay for SWAT team armor and weapons, and leads our police officers to abandon real crime victims in our communities in favor of ratcheting up their drug arrest stats," said former Los Angeles Deputy Chief of Police Stephen Downing. Downing is now a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an advocacy group of cops and prosecutors who are calling for an end to the drug war. "When our cops are focused on executing large-scale, constitutionally questionable raids at the slightest hint that a small-time pot dealer is at work, real police work preventing and investigating crimes like robberies and rapes falls by the wayside," Downing said. And this problem is on the rise all over the country. Last year, police in New York City arrested around 50,000 people for marijuana possession. Pot has been decriminalized in New York since 1977, but displaying the drug in public is still a crime. So police officers stop people who look "suspicious," frisk them, ask them to empty their pockets, then arrest them if they pull out a joint or a small amount of marijuana. They're tricked into breaking the law. According to a report from Queens College sociologist Harry Levine, there were 33,775 such arrests from 1981 to 1995. Between 1996 and 2010 there were 536,322. Several NYPD officers have alleged that in some precincts, police officers are asked to meet quotas for drug arrests. Former NYPD narcotics detective Stephen Anderson recently testified in court that it's common for cops in the department to plant drugs on innocent people to meet those quotas -- a practice for which Anderson himself was then on trial. At the same time, there's increasing evidence that the NYPD is paying less attention to violent crime. In an explosive Village Voice series last year, current and former NYPD officers told the publication that supervising officers encouraged them to either downgrade or not even bother to file reports for assault, robbery and even sexual assault. The theory is that the department faces political pressure to produce statistics showing that violent crime continues to drop. Since then, other New Yorkers have told the Voice that they have been rebuffed by NYPD when trying to report a crime. The most perverse policy may be asset forfeiture. Under civil asset forfeiture, police can seize property from people merely suspected of drug crimes. So long as police can show even the slightest link of drug activity to a car, some cash, or even a home, they can seize it. In the majority of cases, most or all of the seized cash goes back to the police department. In some cases, the department has taken possession of cars as well, but generally non-cash property is auctioned off, with the proceeds then going back to the department. An innocent person who has property seized must go to court and prove his property was earned legitimately, even if he was never charged with a crime. The process of going to court can often be more expensive than the value of the property itself. Asset forfeiture not only encourages police agencies to use resources and manpower on drug crimes at the expense of violent crimes, it also provides an incentive for police agencies to actually wait until drugs are on the streets before making a bust. In a 1994 study reported in Justice Quarterly, criminologists J. Mitchell Miller and Lance H. Selva watched several police agencies delay busts of suspected drug dealers in order to maximize the cash the department could seize. A stash of illegal drugs isn't of much value to a police department. Letting the dealers sell the drugs first is more lucrative. Earlier this year, Nashville's News 5 ran a report on how police in Tennessee are pulling over suspected drug dealers and seizing their cash along I-40, often without bothering to make an arrest. The station combed through police reports showing that officers spent 10 times as long policing the side of the interstate where a drug runner would be leaving after he sold his supply -- and thus would be flush with sizable amounts of cash -- than on the side where he was likely to be flush with drugs. The police were letting the drugs be sold in order to get their hands on the cash. Back in Illinois, Gov. Pat Quinn (D) recently signed a new law that will require convicted drug dealers to reimburse the police agencies that arrested and prosecuted them. The law will provide even more incentive for departments to devote time and resources to drug crimes -- and that shift comes at the expense of solving more serious crimes. The bill does not require reimbursement from convicted rapists or murderers. Which means battery victims like Shaver can expect even less cooperation from police as more officers are moved to investigations that pay for themselves -- and then some. THE RAID Shaver's next encounter with Chicago police came in April of this year. She and her then-boyfriend were living on the first floor of a three-story graystone in the Edgewood neighborhood. "Nate," a friend of Shaver's boyfriend whom Shaver describes as a "stoner hippie," was between residences, and asked if he could sleep on their couch while he waited for his new apartment to become available. They agreed. "He never had keys," Shaver said. "He'd text us when he was coming home to sleep, and one of us would let him in. He had been here about a week before the raid." The raid came on the night of April 14, 2010, part of a series of drug raids across Chicago that night by the city's Mobile Strike Force and Targeted Response Unit, essentially a SWAT team. Shaver, her then-boyfriend and a roommate were in the apartment with her four dogs when the door flew open with the crash of a battering ram. "I thought we were being robbed," Shaver recalled. "It wasn't clear to us that they were cops at all. I had a flashback to my attack. I was just terrified. I peed myself. I had peed myself, and I was shaking, trying to gather my dogs while they were pointing these guns at me -- these huge guns that could blow me apart. My Vizsla mix ran off, and I was afraid they were going to shoot it. I asked if I could get it, and they said 'We don't give a fuck about your dog.'" According to the search warrant, the police were searching for Nate. Shaver said they looked through Nate's belongings gathered on the couch and found about $900 and a sandwich bag filed with marijuana. They didn't leave a receipt for what they took. "They were going through his mail," she said. "They tried to say he was my brother. They kept looking for some way to say he had always lived here. He had mail here, but it was mail he brought from his old place. It all had his old address on it." Shaver's boyfriend and roommate were handcuffed. Shaver started to panic. She told the police about her prior assault, and asked if she could take some anti-anxiety medication and change her clothes. They refused. "There were 20 to 25 cops in my apartment now. Some of them were in street clothes. Some of them were in SWAT clothes with face masks. They told me I wasn't allowed to move. I wasn't even certain they were police until about two hours later, when a uniformed cop showed up with the warrant," she recalled. Shaver says she heard laughter from her bathroom and bedroom. "They went to my bathroom and started going through all of my medication, laughing about how messed up I was," she said. "I also have a 'lady drawer,' where I keep sex toys and some sex-related gag gifts friends have given me." Shaver said that when the cops finally left, they had left her place a shambles. When she looked in her bedroom, the police had emptied the drawer and laid all of her sex toys out on her bed. The raid ruined the door to Shaver's apartment and she has since been evicted. She filed a complaint with Chicago PD, but never heard back. When she attempted to get a copy of the affidavit for the search warrant to see what probable cause they had for such a violent raid, she was told that since she was not the target of the raid, she is not allowed to see the affidavit. As for "Nate," authorities have yet to issue a warrant for his arrest. Chicago PD and the officer who left Shaver his number after the raid did not return The Huffington Post's requests for comment. FIGHTING CONSENSUAL CRIMES IN A VIOLENT CITY "This case is a perfect example of how the war on drugs distracts police from doing the job we hired them for," Downing said. Chicago is one of the most violent cities in the country, and is home to America's most violent neighborhood. The city is usually left out of annual "Most Dangerous Cities" lists because of disputes between the state of Illinois and the FBI on how crimes are reported, but Chicago has roughly triple the murder rate of New York City, and double that of Los Angeles. Crime has gone down in Chicago over the last 20 years as it has in the rest of the country, but at a slower rate than in cities of similar size. Perhaps more tellingly, the city's clearance rate -- the percentage of homicides solved by police -- was 70 percent in 1991. It dropped to under 40 percent in 2008 and 2009. According to a report (PDF) from the criminal justice reform advocacy group The Sentencing Project, drug offenses made up 4.8 percent of Chicago PD arrests in 1980. In 2003, they made up 28.2 percent. The overall number of drug arrests increased 264 percent over that period. An analysis by the Marijuana Policy Almanac found that from 2002 to 2007 alone, overall pot arrests in Cook County jumped from 25,776 to 32,996. The drug war's financial incentives appear to be having an effect. A drug offender is much more likely to be arrested in Chicago than he was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. But kill someone in Chicago, and you're only about half as likely to be caught as you were in the early 1990s. Last July, more than a year after her attack, Shaver's assailant "Sonny" was finally convicted. He was sentenced to six months of probation. Reflecting back on the last tumultuous two years, Shaver says, "It just doesn't make sense. Repeat violent offenders get to walk while casual pot smokers get terrorized by SWAT teams. I'm pretty disappointed in the justice system." From ths at psalience.org Mon Nov 28 14:07:12 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:07:12 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!!! Naomi Klein: ...Climate Change is Trojan Horse to Abolish Capitalism Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111128140337.063c94e8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/story/153230/to_conservatives%2C_climate_change_is_trojan_horse_to_abolish_capitalism_?page=entire The Nation / By Naomi Klein To Conservatives, Climate Change is Trojan Horse to Abolish Capitalism Deniers have concluded that fighting climate change can only happen by reordering our economic and political systems in ways antithetical to their ?free market? belief system. November 27, 2011 | The following article first appeared on the Web site of the Nation. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for its email newsletters. There is a question from a gentleman in the fourth row. He introduces himself as Richard Rothschild. He tells the crowd that he ran for county commissioner in Maryland?s Carroll County because he had come to the conclusion that policies to combat global warming were actually ?an attack on middle-class American capitalism.? His question for the panelists, gathered in a Washington, DC, Marriott Hotel in late June, is this: ?To what extent is this entire movement simply a green Trojan horse, whose belly is full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine?? Here at the Heartland Institute?s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, the premier gathering for those dedicated to denying the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet, this qualifies as a rhetorical question. Like asking a meeting of German central bankers if Greeks are untrustworthy. Still, the panelists aren?t going to pass up an opportunity to tell the questioner just how right he is. Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who specializes in harassing climate scientists with nuisance lawsuits and Freedom of Information fishing expeditions, angles the table mic over to his mouth. ?You can believe this is about the climate,? he says darkly, ?and many people do, but it?s not a reasonable belief.? Horner, whose prematurely silver hair makes him look like a right-wing Anderson Cooper, likes to invoke Saul Alinsky: ?The issue isn?t the issue.? The issue, apparently, is that ?no free society would do to itself what this agenda requires . The first step to that is to remove these nagging freedoms that keep getting in the way.? Claiming that climate change is a plot to steal American freedom is rather tame by Heartland standards. Over the course of this two-day conference, I will learn that Obama?s campaign promise to support locally owned biofuels refineries was really about ?green communitarianism,? akin to the ?Maoist? scheme to put ?a pig iron furnace in everybody?s backyard? (the Cato Institute?s Patrick Michaels). That climate change is ?a stalking horse for National Socialism? (former Republican senator and retired astronaut Harrison Schmitt). And that environmentalists are like Aztec priests, sacrificing countless people to appease the gods and change the weather (Marc Morano, editor of the denialists? go-to website, ClimateDepot.com). Most of all, however, I will hear versions of the opinion expressed by the county commissioner in the fourth row: that climate change is a Trojan horse designed to abolish capitalism and replace it with some kind of eco-socialism. As conference speaker Larry Bell succinctly puts it in his new book Climate of Corruption, climate change ?has little to do with the state of the environment and much to do with shackling capitalism and transforming the American way of life in the interests of global wealth redistribution.? Yes, sure, there is a pretense that the delegates? rejection of climate science is rooted in serious disagreement about the data. And the organizers go to some lengths to mimic credible scientific conferences, calling the gathering ?Restoring the Scientific Method? and even adopting the organizational acronym ICCC, a mere one letter off from the world?s leading authority on climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But the scientific theories presented here are old and long discredited. And no attempt is made to explain why each speaker seems to contradict the next. (Is there no warming, or is there warming but it?s not a problem? And if there is no warming, then what?s all this talk about sunspots causing temperatures to rise?) In truth, several members of the mostly elderly audience seem to doze off while the temperature graphs are projected. They come to life only when the rock stars of the movement take the stage?not the C-team scientists but the A-team ideological warriors like Morano and Horner. This is the true purpose of the gathering: providing a forum for die-hard denialists to collect the rhetorical baseball bats with which they will club environmentalists and climate scientists in the weeks and months to come. The talking points first tested here will jam the comment sections beneath every article and YouTube video that contains the phrase ?climate change? or ?global warming.? They will also exit the mouths of hundreds of right-wing commentators and politicians?from Republican presidential candidates like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann all the way down to county commissioners like Richard Rothschild. In an interview outside the sessions, Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, proudly takes credit for ?thousands of articles and op-eds and speeches that were informed by or motivated by somebody attending one of these conferences.? The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank devoted to ?promoting free-market solutions,? has been holding these confabs since 2008, sometimes twice a year. And the strategy appears to be working. At the end of day one, Morano?whose claim to fame is having broken the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth story that sank John Kerry?s 2004 presidential campaign?leads the gathering through a series of victory laps. Cap and trade: dead! Obama at the Copenhagen summit: failure! The climate movement: suicidal! He even projects a couple of quotes from climate activists beating up on themselves (as progressives do so well) and exhorts the audience to ?celebrate!? There were no balloons or confetti descending from the rafters, but there may as well have been. * * * When public opinion on the big social and political issues changes, the trends tend to be relatively gradual. Abrupt shifts, when they come, are usually precipitated by dramatic events. Which is why pollsters are so surprised by what has happened to perceptions about climate change over a span of just four years. A 2007 Harris poll found that 71 percent of Americans believed that the continued burning of fossil fuels would cause the climate to change. By 2009 the figure had dropped to 51 percent. In June 2011 the number of Americans who agreed was down to 44 percent?well under half the population. According to Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, this is ?among the largest shifts over a short period of time seen in recent public opinion history.? Even more striking, this shift has occurred almost entirely at one end of the political spectrum. As recently as 2008 (the year Newt Gingrich did a climate change TV spot with Nancy Pelosi) the issue still had a veneer of bipartisan support in the United States. Those days are decidedly over. Today, 70?75 percent of self-identified Democrats and liberals believe humans are changing the climate?a level that has remained stable or risen slightly over the past decade. In sharp contrast, Republicans, particularly Tea Party members, have overwhelmingly chosen to reject the scientific consensus. In some regions, only about 20 percent of self-identified Republicans accept the science. Equally significant has been a shift in emotional intensity. Climate change used to be something most everyone said they cared about?just not all that much. When Americans were asked to rank their political concerns in order of priority, climate change would reliably come in last. But now there is a significant cohort of Republicans who care passionately, even obsessively, about climate change?though what they care about is exposing it as a ?hoax? being perpetrated by liberals to force them to change their light bulbs, live in Soviet-style tenements and surrender their SUVs. For these right-wingers, opposition to climate change has become as central to their worldview as low taxes, gun ownership and opposition to abortion. Many climate scientists report receiving death threats, as do authors of articles on subjects as seemingly innocuous as energy conservation. (As one letter writer put it to Stan Cox, author of a book critical of air-conditioning, ?You can pry my thermostat out of my cold dead hands.?) This culture-war intensity is the worst news of all, because when you challenge a person?s position on an issue core to his or her identity, facts and arguments are seen as little more than further attacks, easily deflected. (The deniers have even found a way to dismiss a new study confirming the reality of global warming that was partially funded by the Koch brothers, and led by a scientist sympathetic to the ?skeptic? position.) The effects of this emotional intensity have been on full display in the race to lead the Republican Party. Days into his presidential campaign, with his home state literally burning up with wildfires, Texas Governor Rick Perry delighted the base by declaring that climate scientists were manipulating data ?so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.? Meanwhile, the only candidate to consistently defend climate science, Jon Huntsman, was dead on arrival. And part of what has rescued Mitt Romney?s campaign has been his flight from earlier statements supporting the scientific consensus on climate change. But the effects of the right-wing climate conspiracies reach far beyond the Republican Party. The Democrats have mostly gone mute on the subject, not wanting to alienate independents. And the media and culture industries have followed suit. Five years ago, celebrities were showing up at the Academy Awards in hybrids, Vanity Fair launched an annual green issue and, in 2007, the three major US networks ran 147 stories on climate change. No longer. In 2010 the networks ran just thirty-two climate change stories; limos are back in style at the Academy Awards; and the ?annual? Vanity Fair green issue hasn?t been seen since 2008. This uneasy silence has persisted through the end of the hottest decade in recorded history and yet another summer of freak natural disasters and record-breaking heat worldwide. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry is rushing to make multibillion-dollar investments in new infrastructure to extract oil, natural gas and coal from some of the dirtiest and highest-risk sources on the continent (the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline being only the highest-profile example). In the Alberta tar sands, in the Beaufort Sea, in the gas fields of Pennsylvania and the coalfields of Wyoming and Montana, the industry is betting big that the climate movement is as good as dead. If the carbon these projects are poised to suck out is released into the atmosphere, the chance of triggering catastrophic climate change will increase dramatically (mining the oil in the Alberta tar sands alone, says NASA?s James Hansen, would be ?essentially game over? for the climate). All of this means that the climate movement needs to have one hell of a comeback. For this to happen, the left is going to have to learn from the right. Denialists gained traction by making climate about economics: action will destroy capitalism, they have claimed, killing jobs and sending prices soaring. But at a time when a growing number of people agree with the protesters at Occupy Wall Street, many of whom argue that capitalism-as-usual is itself the cause of lost jobs and debt slavery, there is a unique opportunity to seize the economic terrain from the right. This would require making a persuasive case that the real solutions to the climate crisis are also our best hope of building a much more enlightened economic system?one that closes deep inequalities, strengthens and transforms the public sphere, generates plentiful, dignified work and radically reins in corporate power. It would also require a shift away from the notion that climate action is just one issue on a laundry list of worthy causes vying for progressive attention. Just as climate denialism has become a core identity issue on the right, utterly entwined with defending current systems of power and wealth, the scientific reality of climate change must, for progressives, occupy a central place in a coherent narrative about the perils of unrestrained greed and the need for real alternatives. Building such a transformative movement may not be as hard as it first appears. Indeed, if you ask the Heartlanders, climate change makes some kind of left-wing revolution virtually inevitable, which is precisely why they are so determined to deny its reality. Perhaps we should listen to their theories more closely?they might just understand something the left still doesn?t get. * * * The deniers did not decide that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy by uncovering some covert socialist plot. They arrived at this analysis by taking a hard look at what it would take to lower global emissions as drastically and as rapidly as climate science demands. They have concluded that this can be done only by radically reordering our economic and political systems in ways antithetical to their ?free market? belief system. As British blogger and Heartland regular James Delingpole has pointed out, ?Modern environmentalism successfully advances many of the causes dear to the left: redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, greater government intervention, regulation.? Heartland?s Bast puts it even more bluntly: For the left, ?Climate change is the perfect thing . It?s the reason why we should do everything [the left] wanted to do anyway.? Here?s my inconvenient truth: they aren?t wrong. Before I go any further, let me be absolutely clear: as 97 percent of the world?s climate scientists attest, the Heartlanders are completely wrong about the science. The heat-trapping gases released into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels are already causing temperatures to increase. If we are not on a radically different energy path by the end of this decade, we are in for a world of pain. But when it comes to the real-world consequences of those scientific findings, specifically the kind of deep changes required not just to our energy consumption but to the underlying logic of our economic system, the crowd gathered at the Marriott Hotel may be in considerably less denial than a lot of professional environmentalists, the ones who paint a picture of global warming Armageddon, then assure us that we can avert catastrophe by buying ?green? products and creating clever markets in pollution. The fact that the earth?s atmosphere cannot safely absorb the amount of carbon we are pumping into it is a symptom of a much larger crisis, one born of the central fiction on which our economic model is based: that nature is limitless, that we will always be able to find more of what we need, and that if something runs out it can be seamlessly replaced by another resource that we can endlessly extract. But it is not just the atmosphere that we have exploited beyond its capacity to recover?we are doing the same to the oceans, to freshwater, to topsoil and to biodiversity. The expansionist, extractive mindset, which has so long governed our relationship to nature, is what the climate crisis calls into question so fundamentally. The abundance of scientific research showing we have pushed nature beyond its limits does not just demand green products and market-based solutions; it demands a new civilizational paradigm, one grounded not in dominance over nature but in respect for natural cycles of renewal?and acutely sensitive to natural limits, including the limits of human intelligence. So in a way, Chris Horner was right when he told his fellow Heartlanders that climate change isn?t ?the issue.? In fact, it isn?t an issue at all. Climate change is a message, one that is telling us that many of our culture?s most cherished ideas are no longer viable. These are profoundly challenging revelations for all of us raised on Enlightenment ideals of progress, unaccustomed to having our ambitions confined by natural boundaries. And this is true for the statist left as well as the neoliberal right. While Heartlanders like to invoke the specter of communism to terrify Americans about climate action (Czech President Vaclav Klaus, a Heartland conference favorite, says that attempts to prevent global warming are akin to ?the ambitions of communist central planners to control the entire society?), the reality is that Soviet-era state socialism was a disaster for the climate. It devoured resources with as much enthusiasm as capitalism, and spewed waste just as recklessly: before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Czechs and Russians had even higher carbon footprints per capita than their counterparts in Britain, Canada and Australia. And while some point to the dizzying expansion of China?s renewable energy programs to argue that only centrally controlled regimes can get the green job done, China?s command-and-control economy continues to be harnessed to wage an all-out war with nature, through massively disruptive mega-dams, superhighways and extraction-based energy projects, particularly coal. It is true that responding to the climate threat requires strong government action at all levels. But real climate solutions are ones that steer these interventions to systematically disperse and devolve power and control to the community level, whether through community-controlled renewable energy, local organic agriculture or transit systems genuinely accountable to their users. Here is where the Heartlanders have good reason to be afraid: arriving at these new systems is going to require shredding the free-market ideology that has dominated the global economy for more than three decades. What follows is a quick-and-dirty look at what a serious climate agenda would mean in the following six arenas: public infrastructure, economic planning, corporate regulation, international trade, consumption and taxation. For hard-right ideologues like those gathered at the Heartland conference, the results are nothing short of intellectually cataclysmic. 1. Reviving and Reinventing the Public Sphere After years of recycling, carbon offsetting and light bulb changing, it is obvious that individual action will never be an adequate response to the climate crisis. Climate change is a collective problem, and it demands collective action. One of the key areas in which this collective action must take place is big-ticket investments designed to reduce our emissions on a mass scale. That means subways, streetcars and light-rail systems that are not only everywhere but affordable to everyone; energy-efficient affordable housing along those transit lines; smart electrical grids carrying renewable energy; and a massive research effort to ensure that we are using the best methods possible. The private sector is ill suited to providing most of these services because they require large up-front investments and, if they are to be genuinely accessible to all, some very well may not be profitable. They are, however, decidedly in the public interest, which is why they should come from the public sector. Traditionally, battles to protect the public sphere are cast as conflicts between irresponsible leftists who want to spend without limit and practical realists who understand that we are living beyond our economic means. But the gravity of the climate crisis cries out for a radically new conception of realism, as well as a very different understanding of limits. Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems. Changing our culture to respect those limits will require all of our collective muscle?to get ourselves off fossil fuels and to shore up communal infrastructure for the coming storms. 2. Remembering How to Plan In addition to reversing the thirty-year privatization trend, a serious response to the climate threat involves recovering an art that has been relentlessly vilified during these decades of market fundamentalism: planning. Lots and lots of planning. And not just at the national and international levels. Every community in the world needs a plan for how it is going to transition away from fossil fuels, what the Transition Town movement calls an ?energy descent action plan.? In the cities and towns that have taken this responsibility seriously, the process has opened rare spaces for participatory democracy, with neighbors packing consultation meetings at city halls to share ideas about how to reorganize their communities to lower emissions and build in resilience for tough times ahead. Climate change demands other forms of planning as well?particularly for workers whose jobs will become obsolete as we wean ourselves off fossil fuels. A few ?green jobs? trainings aren?t enough. These workers need to know that real jobs will be waiting for them on the other side. That means bringing back the idea of planning our economies based on collective priorities rather than corporate profitability?giving laid-off employees of car plants and coal mines the tools and resources to create jobs, for example, with Cleveland?s worker-run green co-ops serving as a model. Agriculture, too, will have to see a revival in planning if we are to address the triple crisis of soil erosion, extreme weather and dependence on fossil fuel inputs. Wes Jackson, the visionary founder of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, has been calling for ?a fifty-year farm bill.? That?s the length of time he and his collaborators Wendell Berry and Fred Kirschenmann estimate it will take to conduct the research and put the infrastructure in place to replace many soil-depleting annual grain crops, grown in monocultures, with perennial crops, grown in polycultures. Since perennials don?t need to be replanted every year, their long roots do a much better job of storing scarce water, holding soil in place and sequestering carbon. Polycultures are also less vulnerable to pests and to being wiped out by extreme weather. Another bonus: this type of farming is much more labor intensive than industrial agriculture, which means that farming can once again be a substantial source of employment. Outside the Heartland conference and like-minded gatherings, the return of planning is nothing to fear. We are not talking about a return to authoritarian socialism, after all, but a turn toward real democracy. The thirty-odd-year experiment in deregulated, Wild West economics is failing the vast majority of people around the world. These systemic failures are precisely why so many are in open revolt against their elites, demanding living wages and an end to corruption. Climate change doesn?t conflict with demands for a new kind of economy. Rather, it adds to them an existential imperative. 3. Reining in Corporations A key piece of the planning we must undertake involves the rapid re-regulation of the corporate sector. Much can be done with incentives: subsidies for renewable energy and responsible land stewardship, for instance. But we are also going to have to get back into the habit of barring outright dangerous and destructive behavior. That means getting in the way of corporations on multiple fronts, from imposing strict caps on the amount of carbon corporations can emit, to banning new coal-fired power plants, to cracking down on industrial feedlots, to shutting down dirty-energy extraction projects like the Alberta tar sands (starting with pipelines like Keystone XL that lock in expansion plans). Only a very small sector of the population sees any restriction on corporate or consumer choice as leading down Hayek?s road to serfdom?and, not coincidentally, it is precisely this sector of the population that is at the forefront of climate change denial. 4. Relocalizing Production If strictly regulating corporations to respond to climate change sounds somewhat radical it?s because, since the beginning of the 1980s, it has been an article of faith that the role of government is to get out of the way of the corporate sector?and nowhere more so than in the realm of international trade. The devastating impacts of free trade on manufacturing, local business and farming are well known. But perhaps the atmosphere has taken the hardest hit of all. The cargo ships, jumbo jets and heavy trucks that haul raw resources and finished products across the globe devour fossil fuels and spew greenhouse gases. And the cheap goods being produced?made to be replaced, almost never fixed?are consuming a huge range of other nonrenewable resources while producing far more waste than can be safely absorbed. This model is so wasteful, in fact, that it cancels out the modest gains that have been made in reducing emissions many times over. For instance, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences recently published a study of the emissions from industrialized countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol. It found that while they had stabilized, that was partly because international trade had allowed these countries to move their dirty production to places like China. The researchers concluded that the rise in emissions from goods produced in developing countries but consumed in industrialized ones was six times greater than the emissions savings of industrialized countries. In an economy organized to respect natural limits, the use of energy-intensive long-haul transport would need to be rationed?reserved for those cases where goods cannot be produced locally or where local production is more carbon-intensive. (For example, growing food in greenhouses in cold parts of the United States is often more energy-intensive than growing it in the South and shipping it by light rail.) Climate change does not demand an end to trade. But it does demand an end to the reckless form of ?free trade? that governs every bilateral trade agreement as well as the World Trade Organization. This is more good news ?for unemployed workers, for farmers unable to compete with cheap imports, for communities that have seen their manufacturers move offshore and their local businesses replaced with big boxes. But the challenge this poses to the capitalist project should not be underestimated: it represents the reversal of the thirty-year trend of removing every possible limit on corporate power. 5. Ending the Cult of Shopping The past three decades of free trade, deregulation and privatization were not only the result of greedy people wanting greater corporate profits. They were also a response to the ?stagflation? of the 1970s, which created intense pressure to find new avenues for rapid economic growth. The threat was real: within our current economic model, a drop in production is by definition a crisis?a recession or, if deep enough, a depression, with all the desperation and hardship that these words imply. This growth imperative is why conventional economists reliably approach the climate crisis by asking the question, How can we reduce emissions while maintaining robust GDP growth? The usual answer is ?decoupling??the idea that renewable energy and greater efficiencies will allow us to sever economic growth from its environmental impact. And ?green growth? advocates like Thomas Friedman tell us that the process of developing new green technologies and installing green infrastructure can provide a huge economic boost, sending GDP soaring and generating the wealth needed to ?make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure.? But here is where things get complicated. There is a growing body of economic research on the conflict between economic growth and sound climate policy, led by ecological economist Herman Daly at the University of Maryland, as well as Peter Victor at York University, Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey and environmental law and policy expert Gus Speth. All raise serious questions about the feasibility of industrialized countries meeting the deep emissions cuts demanded by science (at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050) while continuing to grow their economies at even today?s sluggish rates. As Victor and Jackson argue, greater efficiencies simply cannot keep up with the pace of growth, in part because greater efficiency is almost always accompanied by more consumption, reducing or even canceling out the gains (often called the ?Jevons Paradox?). And so long as the savings resulting from greater energy and material efficiencies are simply plowed back into further exponential expansion of the economy, reduction in total emissions will be thwarted. As Jackson argues in Prosperity Without Growth, ?Those who promote decoupling as an escape route from the dilemma of growth need to take a closer look at the historical evidence?and at the basic arithmetic of growth.? The bottom line is that an ecological crisis that has its roots in the overconsumption of natural resources must be addressed not just by improving the efficiency of our economies but by reducing the amount of material stuff we produce and consume. Yet that idea is anathema to the large corporations that dominate the global economy, which are controlled by footloose investors who demand ever greater profits year after year. We are therefore caught in the untenable bind of, as Jackson puts it, ?trash the system or crash the planet.? The way out is to embrace a managed transition to another economic paradigm, using all the tools of planning discussed above. Growth would be reserved for parts of the world still pulling themselves out of poverty. Meanwhile, in the industrialized world, those sectors that are not governed by the drive for increased yearly profit (the public sector, co-ops, local businesses, nonprofits) would expand their share of overall economic activity, as would those sectors with minimal ecological impacts (such as the caregiving professions). A great many jobs could be created this way. But the role of the corporate sector, with its structural demand for increased sales and profits, would have to contract. So when the Heartlanders react to evidence of human-induced climate change as if capitalism itself were coming under threat, it?s not because they are paranoid. It?s because they are paying attention. 6. Taxing the Rich and Filthy About now a sensible reader would be asking, How on earth are we going to pay for all this? The old answer would have been easy: we?ll grow our way out of it. Indeed, one of the major benefits of a growth-based economy for elites is that it allows them to constantly defer demands for social justice, claiming that if we keep growing the pie, eventually there will be enough for everyone. That was always a lie, as the current inequality crisis reveals, but in a world hitting multiple ecological limits, it is a nonstarter. So the only way to finance a meaningful response to the ecological crisis is to go where the money is. That means taxing carbon, as well as financial speculation. It means increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy, cutting bloated military budgets and eliminating absurd subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. And governments will have to coordinate their responses so that corporations will have nowhere to hide (this kind of robust international regulatory architecture is what Heartlanders mean when they warn that climate change will usher in a sinister ?world government?). Most of all, however, we need to go after the profits of the corporations most responsible for getting us into this mess. The top five oil companies made $900 billion in profits in the past decade; ExxonMobil alone can clear $10 billion in profits in a single quarter. For years, these companies have pledged to use their profits to invest in a shift to renewable energy (BP?s ?Beyond Petroleum? rebranding being the highest-profile example). But according to a study by the Center for American Progress, just 4 percent of the big five?s $100 billion in combined 2008 profits went to ?renewable and alternative energy ventures.? Instead, they continue to pour their profits into shareholder pockets, outrageous executive pay and new technologies designed to extract even dirtier and more dangerous fossil fuels. Plenty of money has also gone to paying lobbyists to beat back every piece of climate legislation that has reared its head, and to fund the denier movement gathered at the Marriott Hotel. Just as tobacco companies have been obliged to pay the costs of helping people to quit smoking, and BP has had to pay for the cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico, it is high time for the ?polluter pays? principle to be applied to climate change. Beyond higher taxes on polluters, governments will have to negotiate much higher royalty rates so that less fossil fuel extraction would raise more public revenue to pay for the shift to our postcarbon future (as well as the steep costs of climate change already upon us). Since corporations can be counted on to resist any new rules that cut into their profits, nationalization?the greatest free-market taboo of all?cannot be off the table. When Heartlanders claim, as they so often do, that climate change is a plot to ?redistribute wealth? and wage class war, these are the types of policies they most fear. They also understand that, once the reality of climate change is recognized, wealth will have to be transferred not just within wealthy countries but also from the rich countries whose emissions created the crisis to poorer ones that are on the front lines of its effects. Indeed, what makes conservatives (and plenty of liberals) so eager to bury the UN climate negotiations is that they have revived a postcolonial courage in parts of the developing world that many thought was gone for good. Armed with irrefutable scientific facts about who is responsible for global warming and who is suffering its effects first and worst, countries like Bolivia and Ecuador are attempting to shed the mantle of ?debtor? thrust upon them by decades of International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans and are declaring themselves creditors?owed not just money and technology to cope with climate change but ?atmospheric space? in which to develop. * * * So let?s summarize. Responding to climate change requires that we break every rule in the free-market playbook and that we do so with great urgency. We will need to rebuild the public sphere, reverse privatizations, relocalize large parts of economies, scale back overconsumption, bring back long-term planning, heavily regulate and tax corporations, maybe even nationalize some of them, cut military spending and recognize our debts to the global South. Of course, none of this has a hope in hell of happening unless it is accompanied by a massive, broad-based effort to radically reduce the influence that corporations have over the political process. That means, at a minimum, publicly funded elections and stripping corporations of their status as ?people? under the law. In short, climate change supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books, binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative. More than that, climate change implies the biggest political ?I told you so? since Keynes predicted German backlash from the Treaty of Versailles. Marx wrote about capitalism?s ?irreparable rift? with ?the natural laws of life itself,? and many on the left have argued that an economic system built on unleashing the voracious appetites of capital would overwhelm the natural systems on which life depends. And of course indigenous peoples were issuing warnings about the dangers of disrespecting ?Mother Earth? long before that. The fact that the airborne waste of industrial capitalism is causing the planet to warm, with potentially cataclysmic results, means that, well, the naysayers were right. And the people who said, ?Hey, let?s get rid of all the rules and watch the magic happen? were disastrously, catastrophically wrong. There is no joy in being right about something so terrifying. But for progressives, there is responsibility in it, because it means that our ideas?informed by indigenous teachings as well as by the failures of industrial state socialism?are more important than ever. It means that a green-left worldview, which rejects mere reformism and challenges the centrality of profit in our economy, offers humanity?s best hope of overcoming these overlapping crises. But imagine, for a moment, how all of this looks to a guy like Heartland president Bast, who studied economics at the University of Chicago and described his personal calling to me as ?freeing people from the tyranny of other people.? It looks like the end of the world. It?s not, of course. But it is, for all intents and purposes, the end of his world. Climate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests. There is simply no way to square a belief system that vilifies collective action and venerates total market freedom with a problem that demands collective action on an unprecedented scale and a dramatic reining in of the market forces that created and are deepening the crisis. * * * At the Heartland conference?where everyone from the Ayn Rand Institute to the Heritage Foundation has a table hawking books and pamphlets?these anxieties are close to the surface. Bast is forthcoming about the fact that Heartland?s campaign against climate science grew out of fear about the policies that the science would require. ?When we look at this issue, we say, This is a recipe for massive increase in government . Before we take this step, let?s take another look at the science. So conservative and libertarian groups, I think, stopped and said, Let?s not simply accept this as an article of faith; let?s actually do our own research.? This is a crucial point to understand: it is not opposition to the scientific facts of climate change that drives denialists but rather opposition to the real-world implications of those facts. What Bast is describing?albeit inadvertently?is a phenomenon receiving a great deal of attention these days from a growing subset of social scientists trying to explain the dramatic shifts in belief about climate change. Researchers with Yale?s Cultural Cognition Project have found that political/cultural worldview explains ?individuals? beliefs about global warming more powerfully than any other individual characteristic.? Those with strong ?egalitarian? and ?communitarian? worldviews (marked by an inclination toward collective action and social justice, concern about inequality and suspicion of corporate power) overwhelmingly accept the scientific consensus on climate change. On the other hand, those with strong ?hierarchical? and ?individualistic? worldviews (marked by opposition to government assistance for the poor and minorities, strong support for industry and a belief that we all get what we deserve) overwhelmingly reject the scientific consensus. For example, among the segment of the US population that displays the strongest ?hierarchical? views, only 11 percent rate climate change as a ?high risk,? compared with 69 percent of the segment displaying the strongest ?egalitarian? views. Yale law professor Dan Kahan, the lead author on this study, attributes this tight correlation between ?worldview? and acceptance of climate science to ?cultural cognition.? This refers to the process by which all of us?regardless of political leanings?filter new information in ways designed to protect our ?preferred vision of the good society.? As Kahan explained in Nature, ?People find it disconcerting to believe that behaviour that they find noble is nevertheless detrimental to society, and behaviour that they find base is beneficial to it. Because accepting such a claim could drive a wedge between them and their peers, they have a strong emotional predisposition to reject it.? In other words, it is always easier to deny reality than to watch your worldview get shattered, a fact that was as true of die-hard Stalinists at the height of the purges as it is of libertarian climate deniers today. When powerful ideologies are challenged by hard evidence from the real world, they rarely die off completely. Rather, they become cultlike and marginal. A few true believers always remain to tell one another that the problem wasn?t with the ideology; it was the weakness of leaders who did not apply the rules with sufficient rigor. We have these types on the Stalinist left, and they exist as well on the neo-Nazi right. By this point in history, free-market fundamentalists should be exiled to a similarly marginal status, left to fondle their copies of Free to Choose and Atlas Shrugged in obscurity. They are saved from this fate only because their ideas about minimal government, no matter how demonstrably at war with reality, remain so profitable to the world?s billionaires that they are kept fed and clothed in think tanks by the likes of Charles and David Koch, and ExxonMobil. This points to the limits of theories like ?cultural cognition.? The deniers are doing more than protecting their cultural worldview?they are protecting powerful interests that stand to gain from muddying the waters of the climate debate. The ties between the deniers and those interests are well known and well documented. Heartland has received more than $1 million from ExxonMobil together with foundations linked to the Koch brothers and Richard Mellon Scaife (possibly much more, but the think tank has stopped publishing its donors? names, claiming the information was distracting from the ?merits of our positions?). And scientists who present at Heartland climate conferences are almost all so steeped in fossil fuel dollars that you can practically smell the fumes. To cite just two examples, the Cato Institute?s Patrick Michaels, who gave the conference keynote, once told CNN that 40 percent of his consulting company?s income comes from oil companies, and who knows how much of the rest comes from coal. A Greenpeace investigation into another one of the conference speakers, astrophysicist Willie Soon, found that since 2002, 100 percent of his new research grants had come from fossil fuel interests. And fossil fuel companies are not the only economic interests strongly motivated to undermine climate science. If solving this crisis requires the kinds of profound changes to the economic order that I have outlined, then every major corporation benefiting from loose regulation, free trade and low taxes has reason to fear. With so much at stake, it should come as little surprise that climate deniers are, on the whole, those most invested in our highly unequal and dysfunctional economic status quo. One of the most interesting findings of the studies on climate perceptions is the clear connection between a refusal to accept the science of climate change and social and economic privilege. Overwhelmingly, climate deniers are not only conservative but also white and male, a group with higher than average incomes. And they are more likely than other adults to be highly confident in their views, no matter how demonstrably false. A much-discussed paper on this topic by Aaron McCright and Riley Dunlap (memorably titled ?Cool Dudes?) found that confident conservative white men, as a group, were almost six times as likely to believe climate change ?will never happen? than the rest of the adults surveyed. McCright and Dunlap offer a simple explanation for this discrepancy: ?Conservative white males have disproportionately occupied positions of power within our economic system. Given the expansive challenge that climate change poses to the industrial capitalist economic system, it should not be surprising that conservative white males? strong system-justifying attitudes would be triggered to deny climate change.? But deniers? relative economic and social privilege doesn?t just give them more to lose from a new economic order; it gives them reason to be more sanguine about the risks of climate change in the first place. This occurred to me as I listened to yet another speaker at the Heartland conference display what can only be described as an utter absence of empathy for the victims of climate change. Larry Bell, whose bio describes him as a ?space architect,? drew plenty of laughs when he told the crowd that a little heat isn?t so bad: ?I moved to Houston intentionally!? (Houston was, at that time, in the midst of what would turn out to be the state?s worst single-year drought on record.) Australian geologist Bob Carter offered that ?the world actually does better from our human perspective in warmer times.? And Patrick Michaels said people worried about climate change should do what the French did after a devastating 2003 heat wave killed 14,000 of their people: ?they discovered Walmart and air-conditioning.? Listening to these zingers as an estimated 13 million people in the Horn of Africa face starvation on parched land was deeply unsettling. What makes this callousness possible is the firm belief that if the deniers are wrong about climate change, a few degrees of warming isn?t something wealthy people in industrialized countries have to worry about. (?When it rains, we find shelter. When it?s hot, we find shade,? Texas Congressman Joe Barton explained at an energy and environment subcommittee hearing.) As for everyone else, well, they should stop looking for handouts and busy themselves getting unpoor. When I asked Michaels whether rich countries have a responsibility to help poor ones pay for costly adaptations to a warmer climate, he scoffed that there is no reason to give money to countries ?because, for some reason, their political system is incapable of adapting.? The real solution, he claimed, was more free trade. * * * This is where the intersection between hard-right ideology and climate denial gets truly dangerous. It?s not simply that these ?cool dudes? deny climate science because it threatens to upend their dominance-based worldview. It is that their dominance-based worldview provides them with the intellectual tools to write off huge swaths of humanity in the developing world. Recognizing the threat posed by this empathy-exterminating mindset is a matter of great urgency, because climate change will test our moral character like little before. The US Chamber of Commerce, in its bid to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon emissions, argued in a petition that in the event of global warming, ?populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.? These adaptations are what I worry about most. How will we adapt to the people made homeless and jobless by increasingly intense and frequent natural disasters? How will we treat the climate refugees who arrive on our shores in leaky boats? Will we open our borders, recognizing that we created the crisis from which they are fleeing? Or will we build ever more high-tech fortresses and adopt ever more draconian antiimmigration laws? How will we deal with resource scarcity? We know the answers already. The corporate quest for scarce resources will become more rapacious, more violent. Arable land in Africa will continue to be grabbed to provide food and fuel to wealthier nations. Drought and famine will continue to be used as a pretext to push genetically modified seeds, driving farmers further into debt. We will attempt to transcend peak oil and gas by using increasingly risky technologies to extract the last drops, turning ever larger swaths of our globe into sacrifice zones. We will fortress our borders and intervene in foreign conflicts over resources, or start those conflicts ourselves. ?Free-market climate solutions,? as they are called, will be a magnet for speculation, fraud and crony capitalism, as we are already seeing with carbon trading and the use of forests as carbon offsets. And as climate change begins to affect not just the poor but the wealthy as well, we will increasingly look for techno-fixes to turn down the temperature, with massive and unknowable risks. As the world warms, the reigning ideology that tells us it?s everyone for themselves, that victims deserve their fate, that we can master nature, will take us to a very cold place indeed. And it will only get colder, as theories of racial superiority, barely under the surface in parts of the denial movement, make a raging comeback. These theories are not optional: they are necessary to justify the hardening of hearts to the largely blameless victims of climate change in the global South, and in predominately African-American cities like New Orleans. In The Shock Doctrine, I explore how the right has systematically used crises?real and trumped up?to push through a brutal ideological agenda designed not to solve the problems that created the crises but rather to enrich elites. As the climate crisis begins to bite, it will be no exception. This is entirely predictable. Finding new ways to privatize the commons and to profit from disaster are what our current system is built to do. The process is already well under way. The only wild card is whether some countervailing popular movement will step up to provide a viable alternative to this grim future. That means not just an alternative set of policy proposals but an alternative worldview to rival the one at the heart of the ecological crisis?this time, embedded in interdependence rather than hyper-individualism, reciprocity rather than dominance and cooperation rather than hierarchy. Shifting cultural values is, admittedly, a tall order. It calls for the kind of ambitious vision that movements used to fight for a century ago, before everything was broken into single ?issues? to be tackled by the appropriate sector of business-minded NGOs. Climate change is, in the words of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, ?the greatest example of market failure we have ever seen.? By all rights, this reality should be filling progressive sails with conviction, breathing new life and urgency into longstanding fights against everything from free trade to financial speculation to industrial agriculture to third-world debt, while elegantly weaving all these struggles into a coherent narrative about how to protect life on earth. But that isn?t happening, at least not so far. It is a painful irony that while the Heartlanders are busily calling climate change a left-wing plot, most leftists have yet to realize that climate science has handed them the most powerful argument against capitalism since William Blake?s ?dark Satanic Mills? (and, of course, those mills were the beginning of climate change). When demonstrators are cursing out the corruption of their governments and corporate elites in Athens, Madrid, Cairo, Madison and New York, climate change is often little more than a footnote, when it should be the coup de gr?ce. Half of the problem is that progressives?their hands full with soaring unemployment and multiple wars?tend to assume that the big green groups have the climate issue covered. The other half is that many of those big green groups have avoided, with phobic precision, any serious debate on the blindingly obvious roots of the climate crisis: globalization, deregulation and contemporary capitalism?s quest for perpetual growth (the same forces that are responsible for the destruction of the rest of the economy). The result is that those taking on the failures of capitalism and those fighting for climate action remain two solitudes, with the small but valiant climate justice movement?drawing the connections between racism, inequality and environmental vulnerability?stringing up a few swaying bridges between them. Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (September 2007); an earlier international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies; and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002). Read more at Naomiklein.org. You can follow her on Twitter @naomiaklein. From ths at psalience.org Tue Nov 29 15:22:46 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:22:46 +0100 Subject: [THS] NY Review of Books - DSK Was Probably Framed Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111129151723.03e13be0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.businessinsider.com/bombshell-investigative-report-reveals-evidence-that-dsk-was-probably-framed-2011-11 [Bombshell? I thought it obvious from day 1 -ths] Bombshell Investigative Report Reveals Evidence That DSK Was Probably Framed Linette Lopez | Nov. 28, 2011, 8:43 AM | 9,770 | 34 While the DSK scandal was rocking the front pages of newspapers and inspiring deep conversation about political entitlement, it was hard to see through all the smoke to get a good picture of what really happened at the Sofitel Hotel on May 14th. Almost 6 months later though, investigative reporter Edward Jay Epstein has published a detailed account of that days events after pouring through court documents and checking out surveillance footage. His piece was published in the New York Review of Books this Saturday. And it makes three points that are making everyone think: He really might have been framed. Let's break it down: 1. DSK's IMF Blackberry is still missing: Where was this in the news? Epstein points out that even before the Sofitel encounter, DSK had been warned that his IMF Blackberry (which he used for a mix of personal and professional communication) had been compromised. A friend told him that Sarkozy's party was somehow in possession of an e-mail he sent to his wife, Ann Sinclair. He was about to have the phone examined for bugs in Paris. This is the Blackberry he lost after his encounter with Sofitel maid Naffest Diallo. She entered his room around 12:06 PM or 12:07 PM. She left around 12:13 PM. He then called his daughter Camille on his personal phone, met her for lunch, and shortly after he left McCormick and Schmicks where he was dining with Camille, he realized his IMF phone was gone. 2. Diallo kept going back to the same hotel suite all day and we still don't know who was staying in it: According to key card swipe records, Diallou visited room 2820 a few times on May 14, including while a guest could have still been there. She also went there immediately after leaving DSK's suite. She did not tell the prosecution about this. 3. The hotel's security company has close ties to Sarkozy: A French company called Accor group owns the Sofitel hotel. And while Diallo was reporting DSK in NYC, their head of security, Ren?-Georges Querry, was attending a soccer game with President Sarkozy. Back in NYC, John Sheehan the director of safety and security at Accor made a mysterious call to an unidentified 646 number while en route to the Sofitel to look into the Diallo issue. There's more: Xavier Graff, the duty officer at the Accor Group in Paris, later sent an e-mail where he lauds "bringing down DSK" (he later said it was a joke), and on May 14th, a security guard and an unidentified man were seen giving each other high fives and celebrating around 1:28 PM. This is the same unidentified man who took Diallo to the security office when she reported being assaulted at 12:52 PM. You can read the full account for yourself below, and see if it doesn't plant any seeds of doubt in your head. http://media.nybooks.com/strauss.html [diagrams of floor plans etc at url] What Really Happened to Strauss-Kahn? December 22, 2011 Edward Jay Epstein Philippe Wojazer/Reuters Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his wife, Anne Sinclair, in the courtyard of their Paris residence, September 2011 May 14, 2011, was a horrendous day for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the International Monetary Fund and leading contender to unseat Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France in the April 2012 elections. Waking up in the presidential suite of the Sofitel New York hotel that morning, he was supposed to be soon enroute to Paris and then to Berlin where he had a meeting the following day with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He could not have known that by late afternoon he would, instead, be imprisoned in New York on a charge of sexual assault. He would then be indicted by a grand jury on seven counts of attempted rape, sexual assault, and unlawful imprisonment, placed under house arrest for over a month, and, two weeks before all the charges were dismissed by the prosecutor on August 23, 2011, sued for sexual abuse by the alleged victim. He knew he had a serious problem with one of his BlackBerry cell phones?which he called his IMF BlackBerry. This was the phone he used to send and receive texts and e-mails?including for both personal and IMF business. According to several sources who are close to DSK, he had received a text message that morning from Paris from a woman friend temporarily working as a researcher at the Paris offices of the UMP, Sarkozy?s center-right political party. She warned DSK, who was then pulling ahead of Sarkozy in the polls, that at least one private e-mail he had recently sent from his BlackBerry to his wife, Anne Sinclair, had been read at the UMP offices in Paris.1 It is unclear how the UMP offices might have received this e-mail, but if it had come from his IMF BlackBerry, he had reason to suspect he might be under electronic surveillance in New York. He had already been warned by a friend in the French diplomatic corps that an effort would be made to embarrass him with a scandal. The warning that his BlackBerry might have been hacked was therefore all the more alarming. Advertisement At 10:07 AM he called his wife in Paris on his IMF BlackBerry, and in a conversation that lasted about six minutes told her he had a big problem. He asked her to contact a friend, St?phane Fouks, who could come to his home on the Place des Vosges and who could arrange to have both his BlackBerry and iPad examined by an expert in such matters. He had no time to do anything about it that morning. He had scheduled an early lunch with his twenty-six-year-old daughter Camille, a graduate student at Columbia, who wanted to introduce him to her new boyfriend. After that, he had to get to JFK Airport in time to catch his 4:40 PM flight to Paris. He had finished packing his suitcase just before noon, according to his own account, and then took a shower in the bathroom, which is connected to the bed in the suite by an interior corridor. According to the hotel?s electronic key records, which were provided to DSK?s lawyers, Nafissatou Diallo, a maid, had entered the presidential suite (room 2806) between 12:06 and 12:07 PM (such records are only accurate to the nearest minute).2 Ordinarily, cleaning personnel do not enter a room to clean when a guest is still in it. According to DSK?s account, his bags were visible in the foyer when he emerged naked from the bathroom into the interior corridor. At this point, according to his account, he encountered the maid in the corridor by the bathroom. (The maid, for her part, says she encountered him coming out of the bedroom.) Phone records show that by 12:13 PM he was speaking to his daughter Camille on his BlackBerry. The call lasted for forty seconds. What took place between DSK and the maid in those six to seven intervening minutes is a matter of dispute. DNA evidence found outside the bathroom door showed her saliva mixed with his semen. The New York prosecutor concluded that a ?hurried sexual encounter? took place and DSK?s lawyers have admitted as much, while claiming that what happened was consensual. The maid has brought a civil suit claiming he used force. It is not clear when she left the room since key card records do not show times of exit. What is known is that DSK called his daughter on his IMF BlackBerry at 12:13 to tell her he would be late. After DSK completed his call, he dressed and put on his light black topcoat. He carried with him only one small overnight bag and a briefcase (which contained his iPad and several spare phones) and took the elevator to the lobby. At 12:28 PM the hotel security cameras show him departing. He had to go eight blocks to the McCormick & Schmick?s restaurant on Sixth Avenue between 51st and 52nd Street. He was delayed by heavy traffic on Sixth Avenue. The restaurant camera shows that he arrived at 12:54. Camille was with her new boyfriend. They had a quick meal, and at 2:15 PM, according to the restaurant?s surveillance cameras, DSK got in another taxi to go to the airport. Almost immediately, he discovered that his IMF BlackBerry was missing. It was the phone he had arranged to have examined for bugs in Paris and it was the phone that contained the earlier text message warning him about the interception of his messages. At 2:16 PM he called Camille, who had also just left the restaurant, on his spare BlackBerry and had her go back to the restaurant to search for it. Camera footage at the restaurant shows her crawling under the table. At 2:28 PM she sent him a text message saying that she could not find it. So DSK continued on to the airport. Back at the Sofitel, meanwhile, Nafissatou Diallo, the maid he had encountered in the presidential suite, had told hotel security that she had been sexually assaulted by a client in that suite. A thirty-two-year-old immigrant from Guinea, she had been working at the Sofitel for three years. At 2:30 PM she was shown a photograph of DSK by the hotel?s security people. According to the official bill of particulars?the statement of the basic facts of the case filed by the prosecutors?the police had apparently not yet fully taken over the case, even though the encounter between DSK and Diallo had occurred over two hours earlier. Epstein-Sofitel-28-122211 Mike King A schematic drawing of the twenty-eighth floor of the Sofitel New York, with the presidential suite, room 2806, that was occupied by Dominique Strauss-Kahn on May 13 and 14. The nearby room 2820 was entered at least three times on May 14 by the Sofitel maid Nafissatou Diallo. Part of the delay in bringing in the police may have been the result of Diallo?s not immediately voicing her complaint. After she had left DSK in the presidential suite around 12:13 PM?the time of his call to Camille?she remained on the VIP floor. The hotel?s electronic key records indicate that at 12:26 PM she entered 2820, another VIP suite on the same floor that she had already entered several times earlier that morning. Then, one to two minutes later, she went back to the now empty presidential suite. A few minutes after that, she encountered another housekeeper, her supervisor, in the corridor. In the course of their conversation, Diallo asked the supervisor what would happen if a hotel guest took advantage of a hotel employee. Initially, Diallo told her that this was only a hypothetical question; but then, when pressed further, she said that she had been assaulted by the guest in the presidential suite. The supervisor then brought her to the head of housekeeping, Renata Markozani, who reentered the presidential suite with Diallo at 12:42, according to the key records, and notified the hotel?s security and management personnel. At 12:52 PM, Diallo is seen arriving at the hotel?s security office on the ground floor, located near the 45th Street entrance. She is wearing a beige uniform, and is accompanied by Renata Markozani, whom she towers over. (She is five feet ten inches tall.) Shortly thereafter the hotel?s own security team was augmented by John Sheehan, a security expert who is identified on LinkedIn as ?director of safety and security? at Accor, a part of the French-based Accor Group, which owns the Sofitel. Sheehan, who was at home in Washingtonville, New York, that morning, received a call from the Sofitel at 1:03 PM. He then rushed to the hotel. While en route, according to his cell phone records, he called a number with a 646 prefix in the United States. But from these records neither the name nor the location of the person he called can be determined. When I called the number a man with a heavy French accent answered and asked whom I wanted to speak with at Accor.3 The man I asked to talk to?and to whom I was not put through?was Ren?-Georges Querry, Sheehan?s ultimate superior at Accor and a well-connected former chief of the French anti-gang brigades, who was now head of security for the Accor Group. Before joining Accor Group in 2003, he had worked closely in the police with Ange Mancini, who is now coordinator for intelligence for President Sarkozy. Querry, at the time that Sheehan was making his call to the 646 number, was arriving at a soccer match in Paris where he would be seated in the box of President Sarkozy. Querry denies receiving any information about the unfolding drama at the Sofitel until after DSK was taken into custody about four hours later. Another person at the Accor Group whom Sheehan might have alerted was Xavier Graff, the duty officer at the Accor Group in Paris. Graff was responsible that weekend for handling emergencies at Accor Group hotels, including the Sofitel in New York. His name only emerged five weeks later when he sent a bizarre e-mail to his friend Colonel Thierry Bourret, the head of an environment and public health agency, claiming credit for ?bringing down? DSK. After the e-mail was leaked to Le Figaro, Graff described it as a joke (it resulted, however, in his suspension as director of emergencies by the Accor Group). Even jokes can have a basis. In this case the joke was made by the person who was directly responsible for passing on information to his superiors, including the head of security at Accor, Ren?-Georges Querry?information that, if acted on by informing the American authorities, could have helped destroy DSK?s career. But like Querry, Graff denied receiving any calls or messages from New York until later that evening, telling a French newspaper that the failure to inform him was an ?incredible miss? (?loup??). By the time Sheehan was called by the hotel at 1:03 PM, Diallo was seated on a bench in the hotel?s ground floor service area, just off the service entrance on 45th Street. Behind her was a ?Dutch door,? with the upper half opened, that led to the hotel?s security office. Surveillance camera footage shows her entering the area with a tall unidentified man at 12:52 PM. She remains there until 2:05 PM. At 12:56, she is joined there by Brian Yearwood, the large, heavy-set man who is the hotel?s chief engineer. Yearwood had just come down from the presidential suite on the twenty-eighth floor, which he had entered at 12:51, according to the key records. Yearwood remained close to Diallo as she spoke to Adrian Branch, the security chief for the hotel, who remained behind the half-shut door of the security office. She can be seen gesturing with her hands for about four minutes, pointing to different parts of her body over and over again, suggesting she was telling and retelling her story. At 1:28, Sheehan, still on the way to the hotel, sent a text message to Yearwood. And then another text message to an unidentified recipient at 1:30. At 1:31?one hour after Diallo had first told a supervisor that she had been assaulted by the client in the presidential suite?Adrian Branch placed a 911 call to the police. Less than two minutes later, the footage from the two surveillance cameras shows Yearwood and an unidentified man walking from the security office to an adjacent area. This is the same unidentified man who had accompanied Diallo to the security office at 12:52 PM. There, the two men high-five each other, clap their hands, and do what looks like an extraordinary dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes. They are then shown standing by the service door leading to 45th Street?apparently waiting for the police to arrive?where they are joined at 2:04 PM by Florian Schutz, the hotel manager. Epstein-Sofitel-GF-122211 Mike King A schematic drawing of the first floor of the Sofitel New York, based on plans registered with the New York City Department of Buildings A minute later, at 2:05 PM, the footage shows two uniformed police officers arriving and then accompanying Diallo to an adjoining office. It is unclear if the police officially took over the case at this time or later. There is so far no explanation for why the security staff had delayed the call to the NYPD that would lead to a scandal involving the possible future president of France. What is clear is that they did so just three minutes after receiving a message from Sheehan. Nor is it clear why the two men were celebrating. The police arrived, according to the hotel?s security camera footage, at 2:05 PM. They then can be seen escorting Diallo to a room across from the security office. There is an unexplained discrepancy here concerning the information in the bill of particulars, which says that at approximately 2:30 PM, ?a photograph of the defendant was shown to the witness [i.e., Diallo] by hotel security without police involvement.? If so, even after leaving the bench (and video surveillance) and going to a room with the police, she remained in the custody of Sofitel security. I asked both Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne and Deputy Inspector Kim Royster why, according to the bill of particulars, the police were not officially involved at this point, but they declined to comment. More than an hour later, at 3:28 PM, the police took her to St. Luke?s Hospital, where she was medically examined and they then formally interviewed her. She described to them a brutal and sustained sexual attack in which DSK locked the suite door, dragged her into the bedroom, and then dragged her down the inner corridor to a spot close to the bathroom door?a distance of about forty feet?and, after attempting to assault her both anally and vaginally, forced her twice to perform fellatio. After that, she fled the suite. As has been seen, according to the electronic key information, and to the record of DSK?s call to his daughter showing him speaking to her at 12:13, we can reasonably conclude that any such actions could have taken place only within a period of six or seven minutes, between 12:06?07 and 12:13, when he called his daughter. At 3:01 PM, as DSK was approaching the airport, he was still attempting to find his missing phone. He attempted to call it from his spare but received no answer. What he did not know was that at 12:51, according to the records of the BlackBerry company, it had been somehow disabled. At 3:29 PM, evidently unaware of what was happening at the Sofitel, he called the hotel from the taxi, saying, according to the police transcript, ?I am Dominique Strauss-Kahn, I was a guest. I left my phone behind.? He then said he was in room ?2806.? He was asked to give a phone number, so that he could be called back, after 2806 was searched for his phone. When he was called back thirteen minutes later, he spoke to a hotel employee who was in the presence of police detective John Mongiello. The hotel employee falsely told him that his phone had been found and asked where it could be delivered. DSK told him that he was at JFK Airport and that ?I have a problem because my flight leaves at 4:26 PM.? He was reassured that someone could bring it to the airport in time. ?OK, I am at the Air France Terminal, Gate 4, Flight 23,? DSK responded. So the police rushed to the airport. At 4:45 PM, police called DSK off the plane and took him into custody. DSK was then jailed and indicted by a grand jury on seven counts, including attempted rape, sexual abuse, and unlawful imprisonment. The court eventually dropped all the charges against him because the prosecutors found that the complainant, Diallo, had proven to be an untruthful witness. They wrote in the motion for dismissal that ?the nature and number of the complainant?s falsehoods leave us unable to credit her version of events beyond a reasonable doubt.? They said that she ?has given irreconcilable accounts of what happened,? and had lied not only to the prosecutors but under oath to the grand jury about her whereabouts after the encounter. She stated that she had hid in the hall after leaving the presidential suite, and entered no other room on the twenty-eighth floor until she told another maid about the attack (which was approximately fifteen minutes later). epstein_2-122211.jpg Bryan Smith/ZUMA Press/Corbis The Sofitel hotel, West 44th Street, New York, May 2011 When asked why she had not used her pass key to go into another room, she said they all had ?Do Not Disturb? signs on the door. After her grand jury testimony, prosecutors discovered that this was false when the hotel belatedly provided them with the electronic key records showing that Diallo had entered room 2820 at 12:26 PM, after her encounter with DSK. The same record also showed that she had also entered room 2820 prior to her encounter with DSK at a time when the occupant had not checked out and may have been in the room. Why she concealed visiting 2820 was ?inexplicable? to the prosecutors, who noted in their motion for dismissal that if she had mentioned her visits to 2820, it would have been declared part of the crime scene and searched by the police. But she did not do so. Nor were DSK?s lawyers able to find an explanation. When they attempted to learn the identity of the occupant of 2820, Sofitel refused to release it on grounds of privacy. Given Diallo?s conflicting accounts, all that we really know about what happened in the nearby room 2820 is that Diallo went there both before and after her encounter with DSK and then omitted the latter visit from her sworn testimony to the grand jury. We still do not know if there was anyone in 2820 when she entered it again following the encounter with DSK or if, prior to the police arriving, anyone influenced her to omit mention of room 2820. The Sofitel electronic key record, which the hotel did not turn over to the prosecutors until the next week, contained another unexplained anomaly. Two individuals, not one, entered DSK?s suite between 12:05 and 12:06 PM while he was showering. Each used a different key card entry. The key card used at 12:06 belonged to Diallo; the key card used at 12:05 belonged to Syed Haque, a room service employee who, according to his account, came to pick up the breakfast dishes. If he did so, he would have turned left and gone to the dining room. But Haque has refused to be interviewed by DSK?s lawyers, so his precise movements have not been made public. Since the key cards do not register the time of exit, it cannot be determined from them if both parties were in the room at the same time or, for that matter, at the time of Diallo?s encounter with DSK. DSK?s BlackBerry, with its messages, is still missing. Investigations by both the police and private investigators retained by DSK?s lawyers failed to find it. While DSK believed he had left it in the Sofitel, the records obtained from BlackBerry show that the missing phone?s GPS circuitry was disabled at 12:51. This stopped the phone from sending out signals identifying its location. Apart from the possibility of an accident, for a phone to be disabled in this way, according to a forensic expert, required technical knowledge about how the BlackBerry worked. From electronic information that became available to investigators in November 2011, it appears the phone never left the Sofitel. If it was innocently lost, whoever found it never used it, raising the question of by whom and why it was disabled at 12:51. In any case, its absence made it impossible for DSK to check?as he had planned to do?to see if it had been compromised. Nor was it possible to verify from the phone itself the report he received on May 14 that his messages were being intercepted. So we cannot confirm the warning to DSK that he was under surveillance on that disastrous day. One vexing mystery concerns the one-hour time gap in reporting the alleged attack on Diallo. After she said that she had been the victim of a brutal and sustained sexual assault, it is hard to understand how the security staff would have ruled out that she might require immediate medical attention. But as has been seen, until 1:31, several minutes after receiving a message from Sheehan, the security staff did not make the 911 call. She did not arrive at St. Luke?s Hospital until 3:57 PM, nearly four hours after the alleged attack. We do not know what decisions were made during that one-hour interval or how they influenced what was to later unfold with such dramatic impact. By the time the 911 call was finally made, the hotel?s management was presumably aware of the political explosion and scandal DSK?s arrest would cause. DSK could no longer be a challenger to Sarkozy. Such considerations, and the opportunities they presented, may have had no part whatever in the hotel?s handling of the situation, but without knowing the content of any messages between the hotel managers in New York and the security staffs in New York or Paris, among others, we cannot be sure. Meanwhile, several mysteries remain. Was there anyone in room 2820 besides Diallo during and after the encounter with DSK? If so, who were they and what were they doing there; and why, in any case, did Diallo deny that she?d gone to the room? Because she denied it, the police, according to the prosecutor?s recommendation for dismissal, did not search 2820 or declare it a crime scene. And where, if it still exists, is the BlackBerry that DSK lost and feared was hacked? All we know for sure is that someone, or possibly an accident, abruptly disabled it from signaling its location at 12:51 PM. DSK himself has not explained why he was so concerned about the possible interception of his messages on this BlackBerry and its disappearance. According to stories in Lib?ration and other French journals on November 11, 2011, DSK sent text messages on a borrowed cell phone to at least one person named in the still-unfolding affair involving the Carlton Hotel in Lille, a scandal in which corporations allegedly provided high-class escort women to government officials. (DSK denies that he was connected to the prostitution ring.) If DSK sent these messages, may he also have received embarrassing messages back on his own BlackBerry that could have been damaging to his reputation and political ambitions? Or his concern could also have proceeded from other matters, such as the sensitive negotiations he was conducting for the IMF to stave off the euro crises. Whatever happened to his phone, and the content on it, his political prospects were effectively ended by the events of that day. 1 These statements, along with others in this article, were confirmed by sources who prefer to remain anonymous but are known to the author, who has shared his information with the editors. ? 2 For this article, along with court and other legal documents, I had access to Sofitel electronic key swipe records, time-stamped security camera videotapes, and records for a cell phone used on the day of May 14 by John Sheehan, a security employee of Accor, the company that owns the Sofitel hotel. ? 3 I had access to the record of only one cell phone used by the Accor Group's security man, John Sheehan. Neither Sheehan nor the hotel's security director, Adrian Branch, returned my calls. Through an assistant Brian Yearwood, the hotel's chief engineer, said he had no comment. ? 1. 1 These statements, along with others in this article, were confirmed by sources who prefer to remain anonymous but are known to the author, who has shared his information with the editors. ? 2. 2 For this article, along with court and other legal documents, I had access to Sofitel electronic key swipe records, time-stamped security camera videotapes, and records for a cell phone used on the day of May 14 by John Sheehan, a security employee of Accor, the company that owns the Sofitel hotel. ? 3. 3 I had access to the record of only one cell phone used by the Accor Group's security man, John Sheehan. Neither Sheehan nor the hotel's security director, Adrian Branch, returned my calls. Through an assistant Brian Yearwood, the hotel's chief engineer, said he had no comment. ? From ths at psalience.org Tue Nov 29 15:26:00 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:26:00 +0100 Subject: [THS] How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111129152440.0663fa08@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-29/how-henry-paulson-gave-hedge-funds-advance-word-of-2008-fannie-mae-rescue.html How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word By Richard Teitelbaum - Bloomberg Markets Magazine Former U.S. treasury secretary Henry Paulson. Photographer: Jerome Favre/Bloomberg Paulson Speaks at Dartmouth College Aug. 11 Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson speaks about the actions taken to address the financial crisis in 2008 and the Standard & Poor's downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. Paulson participated in a discussion at Dartmouth College on Aug. 11 with former Republican U.S. Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. (This report is an excerpt from Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart." Source: Bloomberg) Paulson 2008 Meeting Not Surprising, Cohan Says Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- William Cohan, author of "Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World" and a Bloomberg View Columnist, talks about a meeting former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson held in July 2008 with hedge fund managers and Wall Street executives. According to a fund manager who attended, Paulson hinted of a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rescue, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue. Cohan speaks with Erik Schatzker on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." (Cohan is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. Source: Bloomberg) Attachment: TIMELINE OF FANNIE, FREDDIE TAKEOVER Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself for just $10 a share to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Now, amid tumbling home prices and near-record foreclosures, attention was focused on a new source of contagion: Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac, which together had more than $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and other debt outstanding, Bloomberg Markets reports in its January issue. Paulson had been pushing a plan in Congress to open lines of credit to the two struggling firms and to grant authority for the Treasury Department to buy equity in them. Yet he had told reporters on July 13 that the firms must remain shareholder owned and had testified at a Senate hearing two days later that giving the government new power to intervene made actual intervention improbable. ?If you have a bazooka, and people know you have it, you?re not likely to take it out,? he said. On the morning of July 21, before the Eton Park meeting, Paulson had spoken to New York Times reporters and editors, according to his Treasury Department schedule. A Times article the next day said the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were inspecting Fannie and Freddie?s books and cited Paulson as saying he expected their examination would give a signal of confidence to the markets. A Different Message At the Eton Park meeting, he sent a different message, according to a fund manager who attended. Over sandwiches and pasta salad, he delivered that information to a group of men capable of profiting from any disclosure. Around the conference room table were a dozen or so hedge- fund managers and other Wall Street executives -- at least five of them alumni of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from 1999 to 2006. In addition to Eton Park founder Eric Mindich, they included such boldface names as Lone Pine Capital LLC founder Stephen Mandel, Dinakar Singh of TPG-Axon Capital Management LP and Daniel Och of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC. After a perfunctory discussion of the market turmoil, the fund manager says, the discussion turned to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Paulson said he had erred by not punishing Bear Stearns shareholders more severely. The secretary, then 62, went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into ?conservatorship? -- a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets. Stock Wipeout Paulson explained that under this scenario, the common stock of the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, would be effectively wiped out. So too would the various classes of preferred stock, he said. The fund manager says he was shocked that Paulson would furnish such specific information -- to his mind, leaving little doubt that the Treasury Department would carry out the plan. The managers attending the meeting were thus given a choice opportunity to trade on that information. There?s no evidence that they did so after the meeting; tracking firm-specific short stock sales isn?t possible using public documents. And law professors say that Paulson himself broke no law by disclosing what amounted to inside information. Rampant Rumors At the time, rumors about Fannie and Freddie were tearing through the markets. The government-chartered firms? mandate, which continues today, is to buy mortgages from banks and repackage them into securities either for their own portfolios or to sell to others. The banks can then use the proceeds from those transactions to write new mortgages. By mid-2008, delinquencies and foreclosures were soaring, and the GSEs set aside billions of dollars against future losses. In the first six months of 2008, they racked up net losses of $5.46 billion as they slashed dividends and marked down the values of their huge inventories of mortgage-backed securities. On Wall Street, confusion reigned. UBS AG analyst Eric Wasserstrom on July 10 cut his share price target on Freddie to $10 from $28. The next day, Citigroup Inc. (C) analyst Bradley Ball reiterated a ?buy? recommendation on the two GSEs. On July 12, the Times of London, without citing a source, reported that Paulson was contemplating a $15 billion capital injection into the firms. Shares Rally At the time Paulson privately addressed the fund managers at Eton Park, he had given the market some positive signals -- and the GSEs? shares were rallying, with Fannie Mae?s nearly doubling in four days. William Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, can?t understand why Paulson felt impelled to share the Treasury Department?s plan with the fund managers. ?You just never ever do that as a government regulator -- transmit nonpublic market information to market participants,? says Black, who?s a former general counsel at the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. ?There were no legitimate reasons for those disclosures.? Janet Tavakoli, founder of Chicago-based financial consulting firm Tavakoli Structured Finance Inc., says the meeting fits a pattern. ?What is this but crony capitalism?? she asks. ?Most people have had their fill of it.? A Lawyer?s Advice The fund manager who described the meeting left after coffee and called his lawyer. The attorney?s quick conclusion: Paulson?s talk was material nonpublic information, and his client should immediately stop trading the shares of Washington- based Fannie and McLean, Virginia-based Freddie. Seven weeks later, the boards of the two firms voted to go into conservatorship under the newly created Federal Housing Finance Agency. The takeover was effective Sept. 6, a Saturday, and the companies? stock prices dropped below $1 the following Monday, from $14.13 for Fannie Mae and $8.75 for Freddie Mac (FMCC) on the day of the meeting. Various classes of preferred shares lost upwards of 85 percent of their value. A complete list of those at the Eton Park meeting isn?t publicly available. A Treasury Department roster of those expected to attend, obtained by Bloomberg News under the Freedom of Information Act, includes Ripplewood Holdings LLC CEO Timothy Collins, who says, through a spokesman, that he didn?t participate. Storied Investors At least one fund manager who wasn?t listed in the FOIA document, Daniel Stern of Reservoir Capital Group, did attend, says the manager who described the meeting. The gathering comprised some of Wall Street?s most storied investors. Mindich, a former chief strategy officer of New York- based Goldman Sachs, started Eton Park in 2004 with $3.5 billion, at the time one of the biggest hedge-fund launches ever. Singh, a former head of Goldman?s proprietary-trading desk, also began his fund in 2004, in partnership with private- equity firm Texas Pacific Group Ltd. Lone Pine?s Mandel worked as a retail analyst at Goldman before joining Julian Robertson?s Tiger Management LLC, one of the most successful hedge funds of the 1980s and 1990s. He started his own firm in 1997. Och was co-head of U.S. equity trading at Goldman before founding Och-Ziff in 1994. The publicly listed firm managed $28.9 billion in November. Goldman Alums One other Goldman Sachs alumnus was at the meeting: Frank Brosens, founder and principal of Taconic Capital Advisors LP, who worked at Goldman as an arbitrageur and who was a protege of Robert Rubin, who went on to become Treasury secretary. Non-Goldman Sachs alumni who attended included short seller James Chanos of Kynikos Associates Ltd., who helped uncover the Enron Corp. accounting fraud; GSO Capital Partners LP co-founder Bennett Goodman, who sold his firm to Blackstone Group LP (BX) in early 2008; Roger Altman, chairman and founder of New York investment bank Evercore Partners Inc. (EVR); and Steven Rattner, a co-founder of private-equity firm Quadrangle Group LLC, who went on to serve as head of the U.S. government?s Automotive Task Force. Another person in attendance: Michele Davis, then-assistant secretary for public affairs at the Treasury Department, who now represents Paulson as a managing partner at public relations firm Brunswick Group Inc. In an e-mail response to Bloomberg Markets, she referred all questions to Paulson?s book on the financial crisis, ?On the Brink? (Business Plus, 2010), which makes no mention of the Eton Park meeting. Paulson Thinktank Paulson is now a distinguished senior fellow at the University of Chicago, where he?s starting the Paulson Institute, a think tank focused on U.S.-Chinese relations. Eton Park?s Mindich, Lone Pine?s Mandel, TPG-Axon?s Singh and Och-Ziff (OZM)?s Och all declined to comment through spokesmen. Reservoir?s Stern didn?t return phone calls. Altman, through a spokesman, confirmed his attendance and declined to comment further. Brosens and Rattner both confirmed in e-mails that they had attended and said they couldn?t recall details. They didn?t respond when asked whether they traded in Fannie Mae- or Freddie Mac-related instruments after the meeting. Chanos declined to comment. A Blackstone spokesman confirmed in an e-mail that GSO?s Goodman attended the meeting. Blackstone doesn?t believe market- sensitive information was discussed, and in any event Blackstone didn?t take any positions in Fannie or Freddie between the luncheon and Sept. 6, he wrote. Strong Short Interest Records show that many investors were betting against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at the time. According to Data Explorers Ltd., a London-based research firm, short interest in Fannie Mae shares rose sharply in July, to 163 million shares on July 14 from 86.3 million shares on July 9. Short Interest continued to rise, to 240 million shares, on the day of the Eton Park meeting; it hit 262 million on July 24, its high for the year. Freddie Mac?s short interest showed a similar trajectory. Revelations about the meeting come at a sensitive time. ?The optics are awful; there?s no doubt about it,? says professor Larry Ribstein of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign. ?Everyone knows that insider trading is a huge issue.? Rajat Gupta, the former head of McKinsey & Co. who was a member of Goldman?s board, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Oct. 26 for disclosing nonpublic information on Goldman and other companies to Raj Rajaratnam, a hedge-fund manager who earlier in October was sentenced to 11 years in prison for profiting from inside information provided by a web of industry insiders, including Gupta. Gupta has pleaded not guilty. LightSquared Probe Several U.S. agencies face increased scrutiny in Congress for possible improper disclosures or ties to hedge funds. Senators are looking into whether the U.S. Department of Education divulged nonpublic details about new rules being considered to regulate for-profit educational institutions to outsiders, including Steven Eisman, former managing director of FrontPoint Partners LLC, who held short positions in the sector. Education Department spokesman Justin Hamilton denies any impropriety. Eisman hasn?t been accused of any wrongdoing. In October, Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa asked hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone for copies of all communications between his Harbinger Capital Partners and the Department of Commerce, the Federal Communications Commission and the White House. Grassley is looking into whether Falcone improperly sought to influence regulators and the White House while seeking approvals for LightSquared Inc., the company constructing a broadband wireless network his fund is bankrolling. ?Government Information? Robin Roger, general counsel for the fund?s management firm, says any assertion that the fund or LightSquared tried to improperly influence regulators is unfounded. For government officials, the leaking of market-sensitive information, even if inadvertent, represents an ethical minefield. ?There?s a lot of government information out there, and the hedge funds are trying to get it,? says Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who advised the Bush administration on Paulson?s sale of his Goldman stock when he became Treasury secretary. ?It?s a huge problem that has to be addressed.? The rules for what can or cannot be disclosed by government officials are often either unclear or nonexistent. Tipping Hands ?The bottom line is that senior-level people in Washington, in the name of keeping in touch with their stakeholders, are tipping their hands,? says Adam Zagorin, a senior fellow at the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington watchdog group. ?You can?t prosecute them for insider trading if they didn?t trade the shares. You may not be able to even reprimand them. What the hell are the rules?? An official such as Paulson has no legal obligation to keep material nonpublic information to himself, says Phillip Kaplan, partner for litigation at Manatt Phelps & Phillips LLP, where he specializes in securities and class-action cases. ?I don?t think a government person is liable,? he says. ?He didn?t profit from the information or trade on it.? In the rapidly evolving world of insider-trading prosecutions, that could change, says the University of Illinois?s Ribstein, adding that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a broader view of what constitutes insider trading. SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami, who can bring only civil cases, and the Justice Department, which can mount criminal prosecutions, have cast their net wide, Ribstein says. Small Players Sued In addition to going after big names like Rajaratnam and Gupta, the authorities are suing and indicting smaller players who might not have been prosecuted in the past, like accountants and analysts at so-called expert networks, who sell their expertise to hedge funds. The University of Missouri?s Black says there?s no question that the plan to take over Fannie and Freddie -- however uncertain -- was material nonpublic information that could not be lawfully traded on. ?What Paulson said put those managers in an untenable position,? he says. ?They were exposed to all kinds of liabilities.? The situation also generates some sympathy for Paulson. ?It seems to me, you?ve got to cut the guy some slack, even if he tipped his hand,? says William Poole, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. ?How do you prepare the market for the fact that policy has changed without triggering the very crisis that you?re trying to avoid? What is he supposed to say without misleading these people?? Market Insights Poole says government officials need to communicate with industry participants in order to gain insights into market conditions and gauge likely reaction to interventions. Black says the Eton Park meeting was the wrong way to communicate to the markets. ?Wink, wink, nod, nod is no way to approach sensitive information,? he says. Paulson often contacted Wall Street participants throughout his tenure, according to his calendar. On that July trip to New York alone, he talked to Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. CEO Richard Fuld, Washington Mutual Inc. CEO Kerry Killinger and Citigroup senior adviser Rubin. Morgan Stanley and BlackRock Inc. both helped the Federal Reserve and OCC prepare the reports on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that Paulson told the New York Times would instill confidence the morning of the Eton Park meeting. ?Unsafe and Unsound? Paulson learned by mid-August that the Federal Reserve had found the GSEs ?unsafe and unsound,? he told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which was appointed by President Barack Obama and Congress to probe the causes of the financial collapse. ?We?d been prepared for bad news, but the extent of the problems was startling,? he wrote in ?On the Brink.? On Sept. 6, when the GSEs? boards agreed to have their companies placed in conservatorship, full-year 2008 losses were projected to reach as much as $50 billion for Fannie Mae and $32 billion for Freddie Mac. In October 2011, the FHFA estimated the cost to taxpayers of rescuing the firms at $124 billion through 2014. The manager who described the Eton Park meeting says he also discussed it with an investigator from the FCIC. The discussion was confirmed by a former FCIC employee. That manager says he ended up profiting from his Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac positions because he was already short the stocks. On his lawyer?s advice, he stopped covering his short positions and rode Fannie and Freddie shares all the way to the bottom. To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Teitelbaum in New York at rteitelbaum1 at bloomberg.net. From ths at psalience.org Tue Nov 29 15:46:23 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:46:23 +0100 Subject: [THS] Full-Spectrum Dominance and the Regime-Change Project Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111129153306.04a63870@mail.messagingengine.com> A Message from THS newsletter: Richard K Moore, author of the following and also 2 recent posts to THS - those shown below - has answered an email I sent him about climate change: "Sorry, but I can't go along with you on climate meltdown. In fact, we're beginning an era of rapid cooling. It turns out that Co2 [sic] has no noticeable effect on climate. It's quite obvious if you look at long-term temperature records: http://rkmdocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/climate-science-observations-vs-models.html Nobody's perfect, but on climate change there really aren't any more climate change sceptics other than those bought by the petroleum lobby et al., and the ignorant. I'm afraid we have to have some suspicion about RKM's research and possible agenda. -THS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Full-Spectrum Dominance and the Regime-Change Project This article is Part 3 of a series. Part 1: The Elite Plan for a New World Social Order http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27188 Part 2: The Great Carbon Credit Deception http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/the-great-carbon-credit-deception ___ "Give me control over a nation's currency, and I care not who makes the laws." ? Baron Mayor Amschel Rothschild Pax Americana & Bretton Woods: a regime-change precedent For more nearly five 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 institutions (UN, IMF, World Bank, ...), the dissolution of separate European empires, and 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 makes 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. "We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order." ? David Rockefeller The post-capitalist regime-change project 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. As described in the first article of this series, 'The Elite Plan for a New World Social Order', the new global system is to be based on a centralized world government, managed by already-established bureaucracies, including the UN, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). These bureaucracies will be accountable to the cabal, with no real kind of democratic input. 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-Enlightenment ancien r?gime. As with the postwar regime, the new regime will have a PR mythology, quite different from the reality. We already have many clues about the nature of the new mythology, and the first article outlines what that mythology will probably be like. As described in the second article of this series, 'The Great Carbon Credit Deception', the new economic paradigm will be based on centrally-micromanaged resource allocations, and this is beginning already with carbon credits. On our finite planet, a resource-based economy makes a great deal of sense, but not one that is centrally managed for the purpose of controlling the people of the world. The general destruction wreaked by World War 2 'cleared the building site' so that the new postwar world order could be constructed. The cabal is now systematically clearing the building site once again, to enable the construction of the post-capitalist world order. "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. It is important that those of us in the 99% under-class realize we're under systematic attack. And it's important that we realize that the core principle of modern warfare is full-spectrum dominance: pro-active control over every domain of engagement. We need to be aware of the many ways in which we're being attacked. We've seen the principle of full-spectrum dominance in Iraq for example, where first the air-defenses are taken out, then the communications infrastructure, then transport, and so on, each domain of engagement being dominated in its turn. In such military engagements, domestic public opinion is also a domain of engagement, and dominance there has been pursued via embedded journalism, media propaganda, and lies by officials. In the regime-change project ? the class war ? there are many domains of engagement over which dominance must be achieved and maintained. Russia and China Russia and China are a very special case. They are cooperating closely in pursuing their national interests in opposition to the cabal's plans, while at the same time gaining as much advantage as possible from the existing global marketplace. They are seeking a stable multi-polar world order, and have formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the BRICS alliance. Because of their size, wealth, and military clout, Russia and China pose the only serious geopolitical obstacle to the establishment of the cabal's centralized global regime. Full-spectrum dominance is being pursued against Russia and China in several different domains. One of these is the domain of destabilization, particularly in the case of Russia. Russia took a major hit , for example, with the breakup of the Soviet Union ? which was facilitated, according to Brzezinski, by the CIA-sponsored war between the Soviets and Afghanistan, which fatally over-stretched the Soviet economy and brought Yeltsin to power, an agent of the West, who did all he could to destroy what was left of the Russian economy. Subsequently we've had the CIA-sponsored 'Colored Revolutions', aimed at aligning Russia's neighbors with the West. In the military domain the US has been encircling Asia with military bases and anti-missile systems, while meanwhile developing and deploying space-based and other hi-tech weapons systems. All of this adds up to a first-strike capacity, enabling the US to initiate a hi-tech assault while inhibiting an effective response. China, in order to support its growing economy, needs access to oil and other resources. To ensure that access, China has been making investments and long-term trade deals, particularly in Africa. In response the US has set up AFRICOM, with the mission of nullifying those investments and trade deals via regime-change projects, as we've seen recently in Libya. Such actions represent direct attacks on Chinese strategic interests. The AFRICOM initiatives and the encirclement programs are preliminary acts of war, and Russia and China are well aware of this. Russia and China will either need to yield sovereignty over their national destiny, or else military force will be used to neutralize them as competing powers. This is how the building site is being cleared for regime change, one way or the other, in the case of Russia and China. The Third World As John Perkins explains in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the Third World has long been under attack by an aggressive campaign of debt entrapment. As a condition of receiving IMF refinancing packages, nations must submit to restructuring agreements, which open up the nation's assets to privatization, and essentially bring the nations under direct cabal management, via the IMF. In those cases where this approach does not succeed, regime-change projects are being pursued, as we've seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, and most recently Libya. Syria, Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea are on the list for future regime-change initiatives, whenever the Pentagon judges the timing to be right. Various pretexts are being used in order to achieve acceptance of these regime-change projects in the domain of Western public opinion. With Iraq, we had phony claims about weapons of mass destruction; with Libya, we had phony reports that Gaddafi was bombing civilians; with Iran, we have phony reports that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons capability. And always with such regime-change projects, the claim of 'humanitarian intervention' is used. This is how the building site is being cleared for regime change , in the case of the Third World. Western nations Western governments were long ago corrupted and seduced into joining the neoliberal globalization bandwagon, which has systematically undermined the vitality of Western economies, and whose 'free-trade' laws have taken away regulatory sovereignty. In this way the West's manufacturing capacity has been decimated, and Western nations have become dependent on the global economy for their very survival. Meanwhile, the cabal has used the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group to indoctrinate Western leaders into the cabal agenda. We've gotten to the point, as with Sarkosy and Merkel, where candidates are selected at Bilderberger meetings, and then promoted into power by well-funded political campaigns. All of this set the stage for the orchestrated economic collapse of September 2008. Instead of doing the sensible thing, which would have been to put the failed banks into receivership ala Iceland, the indoctrinated leaders accepted the absurd doctrine of 'too big to fail', and committed themselves to bailing out the banks. While the public was told the collapse was only a liquidity crisis, insiders knew that in fact the whole banking system was insolvent. There was no way the nations could afford those bailouts. Thus the insolvency of the banks was transformed into the insolvency of Western treasuries. Once this was achieved, the cabal began incrementally bringing Western nations under the direct management of cabal agents, first Ireland, and more recently Greece, Italy and Spain. By means of the bailout scam the economic-hitman strategy crossed the Rubicon from the Third World to the West, bringing with it draconian austerity and wholesale privatization. Germany has been the most resistant to these destabilization programs, retaining a strong economy and a robust manufacturing sector, and enjoying a highly profitable export trade. At the same time, German banks are heavily invested in the failed banks and in the bonds of the bankrupt European nations, and as the global economy continues to collapse, Germany will be gradually but inevitably pulled down with the rest of Europe. The US seems to be standing outside this scenario, with the dollar continuing as a de facto global reserve currency. But in fact the US is totally bankrupt, with astronomical budget and trade deficits. In order to keep operating, the Federal Reserve is simply printing money, and it is getting by with it because of the dollar's reserve currency status. The rug can be pulled out from under the US economy any time the cabal so chooses. In this regard, it is important to understand exactly how the the collapse of 2008 was brought about. The vulnerabilities, in terms of over-extended banks and toxic-derivative holdings, had been present for some time. But the vulnerabilities were hidden because the banks were permitted to pretend on their books that the toxic assets were sound assets. Rockefeller's Bank of International Settlements in Basel Switzerland then pulled the plug: it announced the 'mark-to-market' rule ? the toxic assets must be put on the books at their actual market value. Thus the whole house of cards came down all at once. Similarly, there is now another house of cards that can be brought down at any time. There are $600 trillion of paper wealth tied up in derivatives and credit-default swaps. Whenever the cabal chooses, the plug can be pulled. It is only necessary to tighten the rules, and force banks and investors to start settling their derivative accounts. When this happens, there is nowhere that those $600 trillion can be found, as the world's total annual GDP is only $65 trillion. The final and total collapse of the global economy will come all at once, bringing the US down with it. This is how the building site is being cleared for regime change , in the case of the Western nations. Western public opinion Although the cabal is quite willing to use whatever force is necessary to achieve its objectives, up to and including orchestrating major wars, it never relies exclusively on force. A way is always sought to bring Western public opinion into alignment with those objectives. Thus military interventions are portrayed as 'humanitarian', bailouts are portrayed as 'unfortunately necessary', and austerity is portrayed as a 'path to growth recovery'. Such false portrayals are sold to the public by propaganda from the cabal-controlled mass media, and by the lies of government officials. Such measures have succeeded, for the most part, in getting Western populations to grudgingly accept the orchestrated collapse process. However, as the impact of the collapse is beginning to affect more and more people directly, public opinion is becoming increasingly angry and frustrated with the state of affairs. Media propaganda and official lies are failing to neutralize this growing anger. One is tempted to conclude that the cabal is losing its touch, that it is failing in this case to successfully manage public opinion. Such a conclusion, however, would be mistaken. We need to keep in mind that the agenda of the cabal is quite different this time around. In the past, the cabal, by means of media propaganda and government lies, was always seeking to maintain support for the system they control: capitalism and Western governments. This time around, the agenda of the cabal is to discard capitalism and national governments, and replace them with the new centralized, non-growth system. Public anger and frustration feeds directly into this agenda ? provided it is channeled appropriately. The formula is an old one, known as 'problem, reaction, solution'. That's how the Federal Reserve was brought into existence back in 1913. First cabal-agent JP Morgan manufactured the problem (a run on the banks), then the cabal waited for the expected reaction (a public outcry that 'something be done'), and finally they offered their 'solution' (the cabal-owned Federal Reserve). By the time people started realizing that the solution was worse than the problem, it was too late. With the regime-change project, the manufactured 'problem' includes not just the economic crisis itself, but also the fact that banks are responsible for the crisis, and governments are failing to do anything to alleviate the crisis. The desired 'reaction' is not just that people cry out for 'something be done' about the collapse, but that they also cry out for something be done about corrupt and incompetent governments, and that something be done about the power of banks and corporations. That is to say, the desired reaction is that people cry out for regime change. In order to achieve this desired reaction, the cabal is employing sophisticated mind-control techniques ? called psy-ops in the trade ? involving the Internet and grassroots movements. The first clear example I saw of this was 'Zeitgeist', a viral YouTube video that was soon followed by the 'Zeitgeist Addendum', and a Zeitgeist Movement. At first I too was taken in by Zeitgeist, because the initial video gives one of the smoothest and most comprehensive descriptions of the evils of our age that I had ever seen. It is very professionally presented, and it pulls no punches about false-flag operations, the power of the banks, and the corruption of governments. I thought to myself, ?Wow, this is a wake-up call that can really make a difference". However my illusions were soon shattered, when the Addendum came out. While Zeitgeist is an example of 'stating the problem', the Addendum is an example of 'appropriately channeling' the resulting reaction. The Addendum is based on Jasque Fresco's Venus Project, which envisions a sci-fi technocratic future, with shiny meg-lev trains, futuristic cities that operate like beehives, and where the entire globe is organized into a monoculture with society's decisions to be made by a centralized group of elitist engineering technocrats. Indeed, Fresco suggests that global decisions should eventually be made by computers. The Addendum doesn't mention the Soviet-style attitude-adjustment centers that would be needed to deal with those who couldn't stomach such a regimented society. Nor does it say anything about how the technocrats would be selected, or how their priorities would be determined. It's an unrealistic and frightening vision, but many of those who were captured by the initial Zeitgeist video have been successfully channeled into embracing that vision. Subsequently the Zeitgeist Movement has distanced itself from the Venus Project, however the Zeitgeist Mission Statement continues along the same lines: This "Resource-Based Economic Model" is about taking a direct technical approach to social management as opposed to a Monetary or even Political one. It is about updating the workings of society to the most advanced and proven methods Science has to offer, leaving behind the damaging consequences and limiting inhibitions which are generated by our current system of monetary exchange, profits, corporations and other structural and motivational components. The Zeitgeist Movement is alive and well, with chapters in all 50 US states, and in 48 nations around the world. We see here a perfect example of the 'problem, reaction, solution' paradigm in action. Those who have bought into the Movement are eager to abandon the current system, and they can be expected to readily accept the cabal's new world order ? as long as it is sold to them with appropriate propaganda spin. A more recent Internet psy-op is the 'Anonymous Movement'. This is designed to appeal to those with more anarchistic tendencies, who would be unlikely resonate with visions of a regimented beehive future. As with the Zeitgeist Movement, Anonymous is based on a total rejection of the existing system: "ANONYMOUS declares war on the system! JOIN THE RESISTANCE!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET4Ki5Tr_CQ&feature=related Anonymous describes itself as a leaderless, spontaneous, unorganized, grassroots movement. How anyone can believe this is beyond me, given the professional quality of the videos, the consistency of the style and content of the videos, and the sophisticated branding techniques, such as the 'V for Vendetta' masks. The words in the videos are spoken by computer software, giving the impression that the authors are successfully hiding their identities from the authorities. One needs to be incredibly naive to think the authors couldn't be tracked down, and the videos taken down, if the authorities actually felt threatened by Anonymous. The credibility of Anonymous is somewhat enhanced by various successful hacker attacks that have been attributed to it. But again, only the naive could believe the authorities couldn't put a stop to this, if the perpetrators really were grassroots activists trying to take down the system. In fact, the hacker attacks, as well as Anonymous itself, are undoubtedly false-flag operations of the Pentagon's new Cyber Warfare division, carrying out its part in the class war against we the people. Apart from propagating an anti-system message, and channeling the attention of some number of naive people, it is not clear what the real purpose of Anonymous is. My best guess at this point is that a really outrageous and unpopular hacker attack will come along, Anonymous will claim credit, and that will be used as an excuse to seriously crack down on the use of the Internet by genuine activists. The Internet would then be politically sterilized, giving Internet psy-ops a clear field. Let us now turn our attention to the rapidly growing Occupy Movement, which has captured the imagination and energy of activists, and a great many ordinary citizens, around the world. The home page of the Zeitgeist Movement, as of this writing, prominently displays support for the Occupy Movement. As with Zeitgeist and Anonymous, Occupy is based on a radical critique of the existing system, as we can read on the Occupy Together website: Global civil society is being threatened by a system based on power and not on human values. Day after day it represses basic freedoms and consistently favors the greed of the few over the needs of the many. This power finances wars, food and pharmaceutical monopolies, it sponsors dictatorial regimes across the globe, destroying environments, manipulating and censoring information flow and transparency. The movement was inspired by the Arab Spring movements, particularly Egypt's Tahir Square Movement. Occupy burst on the scene all at once in mid September, following a call to action from Adbusters magazine, which has ties to George Soros. It rapidly became the dominant global protest movement. According to the Occupy Together website, the movement now has a visible presence in over 2,000 towns and cities worldwide. The movement manifests as encampments, as in Tahir Square, where people stand around holding signs demanding an end to this and that abuse by the system. The movement has a specific decision-making process, based on General Assemblies, using an awkward consensus process. This pattern was established at the original Wall Street encampment, by a leadership clique that knew exactly how they wanted things to operate, and the pattern has been faithfully adopted by subsequent encampments as the movement grew. The main agenda of the movement seems to be managing its own encampments. It has no specific manifesto of demands, no vision of any particular system to replace the current one, and no strategy for actually bringing about change. In essence, it amounts to a global Tahir Square gathering ? a mass of people waiting around for someone to announce a regime change. As in Egypt, the people will get a regime change, and as in Egypt, it won't be a regime they will be happy with. This is how the building site is being cleared for regime change, in the case of the Western public opinion. Managing the Transition Just as the old world system is being systematically dismantled, so is the transition process to the new regime being systematically managed. Indeed, with the globalist bureaucracies established and operating, the carbon-credit system launched, the IMF managing many of the world's national economies, and top Western leaders indoctrinated by the cabal's forums (Bilderberger Group, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations), the transition process is already well underway. The UN will of course need to be 'reformed' as part of the transition. The General Assembly is far too democratic to suit the purposes of the cabal, and the Security Council is plagued by that pesky veto process. Already the US is pushing for reform, seeking for power to be centralized in the UN's Secretary General. With Russia and China out of the picture, it will be easy for the cabal to push through whatever reforms they deem appropriate, so as to enable the cabal to dictate policy, free of constraint. The US has long been under the control of the cabal, with the cabal-owned Federal Reserve managing monetary policy, and the political system totally corrupted. JFK made a valiant attempt to restore genuine sovereignty, and after eliminating him the cabal tightened its grip still further. The US, and particularly the Pentagon and the CIA, have served as essential tools of the cabal as they have been pursuing their plans for global domination. The EU was a cabal project from the very beginning, and its founding charter, the Maastricht Treaty, was drawn up by cabal-controlled finance ministers, not heads of state. The purpose of the EU has been to help manage the transition of Europe into the new world system, by incrementally undermining national sovereignty and bringing Europe under the bureaucratic control of the cabal-dominated Brussels regime. As the economic collapse dramatically worsens, civil unrest will dramatically increase. Harsh suppression of Western populations will be necessary in order to get through the transition process. The various false-flag 'terrorist' events, such as 9/11 and the London tube bombings, have provided the excuse to implement the police-state infrastructures that will enable the necessary suppression. The same false-flag events have also provided excuses for the various military interventions that have been necessary in order to 'clear the building site' in the third world. Is another future possible? Time is running very short, if we the people hope to do anything to change this course of events. Our collective activist energy has certainly been aroused, as evidenced by the Arab Spring uprisings, the Occupy Movement, and the various protests we've seen in Europe. But we will need to find new ways of organizing our energies if we want to be effective. It is the responsibility of us in the West to create a different future, if there is to be one. For as long as the West, with its dominant military power, is under the control of the cabal, there is little hope the rest of the world can make a difference. The purpose of this series of articles has been to help us understand the magnitude of the task that faces us, if we do want a different future. In particular, we need to understand that protesting, regardless of the scale, is not going to help. Those in power don't care and aren't listening. And whatever we do, it must be based on non-violence, as the authorities are very well prepared to suppress any kind of violent uprising. It is beyond the scope of this article to go much further with suggestions for overcoming cabal power. If these articles have enhanced your understanding of the problems, I hope they also encourage you to think afresh of how we might pursue overcoming them. My own thinking has led me to the conclusion that our organizing, and our vision for the future, both need to be based on localism and inclusiveness. Globalism and mass media are the natural province of elites. Community and face-to-face communication are the natural province of we the people. Let me leave you with the thought that we are all in this together: left and right are illusions foisted on us to keep us divided. ________ RICHARD K 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 bookEscaping 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, and his website is http://cyberjournal.org. Richard can be contacted via email atrkm at quaylargo.com. From ths at psalience.org Tue Nov 29 15:56:09 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:56:09 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?OWS=3A_A_pack_of_louts=2C_thieves=2C_and_rap?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ists__Wake_up=2C_pond_scum=2C_America_is_at_war_against_a_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ruthless_enemy?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111129155446.06acf250@mail.messagingengine.com> How Hollywood went Cryptofascist "American cinema cryptofascist? Perhaps it's more accurate to say the following: whatever mainstream Hollywood cinema is now, Frank Miller is part of it. And Frank Miller has done Occupy Wall Street a service by reminding us that our allegedly democratic political system, which increases inequality and decreases class mobility, which is mostly interested in keeping the disenfranchised where they are, requires a mindless, propagandistic (or "cryptofascist") storytelling medium to distract its citizenry. We should be grateful for the reminder. And we might repay the favor by avoiding purchase of tickets to Miller's films." Frank Miller and the rise of cryptofascist Hollywood Fans were shocked when Batman writer Frank Miller furiously attacked the Occupy movement. They shouldn't have been, says Rick Moody ? he was just voicing Hollywood's unspoken values guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 November 2011 23.00 GMT 300 film still and writer frank miller 'A mindless, propagandistic storytelling medium' The film 300, left, and its writer Frank Miller. Photographs: Allstar/AP A sturdy corollary emerges in the wake of the graphic artist Frank Miller's recent diatribe against the Occupy Wall Street movement ("A pack of louts, thieves, and rapists Wake up, pond scum, America is at war against a ruthless enemy"), available for perusal at frankmillerink.com). That corollary, of which we should be reminded from time to time, is this: popular entertainment from Hollywood is ? to greater or lesser extent ? propaganda. And Miller has his part in that, thanks to films such as 300and Sin City. Perhaps you have had this thought before. Perhaps you have had it often. I can remember politics dawning on me while watching a Steven Seagal vehicle, Under Siege, in 1992. I was in my early 30s. The film was without redeeming merit ? there's no other way to put it ? and it was about a "ruthless enemy" and the reimposition of the American social order through violence and rugged individualism. Why had I paid hard-earned money for it? Good question. Before Under Siege, I had a tendency to think action films were funny. I had a sort of Brechtian relationship to their awfulness. And I was amused when films themselves recognised the level to which they stooped, as Under Siege assuredly did. The moment of revelation could have come at any time. It could have come earlier, and it did among my more astute friends. Had I watched any of the later Rocky pictures, for example, or had I watched Rambo, I might have registered that there was little depicted in these frames but feel-good, reactionary message-deployment. But there were, apparently, films too embarrassing for me to see, Rocky IV and Rambo among them. I remember thinking True Lies, the abominable 1994 James Cameron film (featuring Republican governor-to-be Arnold Schwarzenegger), with its big, concluding nuclear blast ? the nuclear blast we were meant to want to see ? was, well, more than suspect. (I could never again watch a Cameron film without disgust. And that includes the racist, New Age blather of Avatar.) Or what about the expensive and aesthetically pretentious Gladiator (2000), which I still contend is an allegory about George W Bush's candidacy for president, despite the fact that director and principal actor were not US citizens. Is it possible to think of a film such as Gladiator outside of its political subtext? Are Ridley Scott's falling petals, which he seems to like so much that he puts them in his films over and over again, anything more than a way to gussy up the triumph of oligarchy, corporate capital and globalisation? The types of men (almost always men) who have historically favoured the action film genre, it's safe to say, are often, if not always, politically conservative: Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Mel Gibson, even Clint Eastwood (former Republican mayor of Carmel, California), all proud defenders of a conservative agenda, and/or justifiers of vigilantism. With some of these celebrities, the kneejerk qualities of their politics are self-evident, and in other cases (Eastwood), the reactionary part of their world view is more nuanced. But the brand of politics is the same. And yet with action films, the moral and political ideas in play are surpassingly easy to spot. What about the entertainment films that came later, during the era of CGI ? the big-budget films primarily generated from more imaginary fare, such as the apparently numberless comic book franchises of Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Captain America, et al? In these cases, the moral framework of the product is just as simplistic as in action films, if not more so, and the triumph of the social order is just as violent, and just as relentless, though the films are couched in a sugary glaze of graphics and "wow" moments that distract from ideological branding. The CGI sheen is seductive enough that it's sometimes difficult to divine the message at first. You are too busy being bludgeoned by the sounds and lights. Nevertheless, the message is there. Might is right, the global economy will be restored, America is exceptional, homely people deserve political disenfranchisement, and so on. It bears mentioning that these are films that are in many cases being marketed to children. When I was a kid, you could not gain admission to a film such as Dirty Harry or The French Connection. But an American adolescent can now see Batman inThe Dark Knight, rated PG-13, without much difficulty. The film 300, directed by Zack Snyder, based on a Frank Miller graphic novel of the same name, is just what you would expect from the heavily freighted right-wing filmic propaganda of the post-9/11 period: the Greeks, from which our own putative democracies are descended, must fight to the death against a vast but incompetent army of Persians (those hordes of the Middle East), who are considered here unworthy of characterisation ? in fact, every character in the film is unworthy of characterisation ? and the noble Spartans (the Greeks in question) achieve heroism despite their glorious deaths on the field at Thermopylae, by virtue of the moral superiority of their belief system and their unmatched courage. Ruthless enemy! From the Middle East! Heroic, rugged individualists! A big, sentimental score! Lots and lots of blue-screen! Endless amounts of body parts spewing theatrical blood! It's a barely watchable film, but what from Hollywood these days is not similarly unwatchable, when so many high-profile releases are based on a medium, the comic book, made expressly to engage the attentions of pre- and just post-pubescent boys. At least comic books themselves are so politically dim-witted, so pie-in-the-sky idealistic as to be hard to take seriously. But in the films of this era, the Marvel and DC era of Hollywood, even when the work is not self-evidently shilling for large corporations (with product placement) or militating for a libertarian and oligarchical political status quo (which makes a fine environment for large, multinational corporations), the work is doing nothing at all to oppose these things. Paying your $12.50, these days, is not unlike doing a few lines of cocaine and pretending you don't know about the headless bodies in Juarez. With this in mind, an honest recognition of cinematic propaganda, we shouldn't be shocked by Frank Miller's comments about Occupy Wall Street. It is naive to be shocked by them. But let's evaluate the particulars of his remarks just the same. Miller tries to repel the OWS message ("Maybe, between bouts of self-pity and all the other tasty titbits of narcissism you've been served up in your sheltered, comfy little worlds, you've heard terms like al-Qaeda and Islamicism") by reminding us that we are at war. This despite the fact that OWS is focused primarily on income inequality, and thus mainly taken up with domestic politics, such that OWS doesn't really take a position on the "ruthless enemy" and doesn't need to. Miller's particular approach, the warmongering approach, is self-evidently reminiscent of the Bush/Cheney years, in which any domestic reversal was followed by an elevated level on the colour-coded risk-assessment wheel. But in this post-Iraq war moment ? when the most aggravated conspiracies we seem to have in New York City involve, for example, a lone Dominican guy who advertises his hatred of the government on Facebook and who may have been entrapped by local police ? our "ruthless enemy" just doesn't seem quite as numerous as Miller's Persian hordes. Beyond Bush-Cheney fear-mongering, Miller's further complaint seems to be that people who camped outdoors in Zuccotti Park for two months were not terribly clean. (The Spartans were no doubt tidier in Thermopylae.) But if the crowd of 32,000 who turned up to march in NYC last Thursday ? after the "pond scum" had been ejected from the park ? are any indication, this hygiene issue is no longer a reliable talking point for Miller (or for Newt Gingrich, the rightwing posterboy of the late 80s who has now entered the race for the Republican presidential noimination). The 32,000 included some professional types, at least one retired police officer and lots of elderly people, many of whom had recently showered. Same thing at UC Davis, and at Berkeley. Those college kids usually have showers in their dorms. Miller also accuses the OWS protesters of being too technologically savvy. For example, he accuses them of playing Lords of Warcraft. Now, I admit it, I know nothing of multiplayer online role-playing games, nor do I own an iPhone nor an iPad. Nevertheless, I maintain I am correct in imagining that what Miller actually means here is World of Warcraft. This superficial mistake (suggests what should be plain: that Miller wrote his jeremiad quickly, perhaps late at night, when a lack of restraint is often linked with the onset of unconsciousness. He didn't bother to reread it. He therefore overlooks at least one obvious point. Namely, no one is more likely to play World of Warcraft than the kind of adolescent boy who also thinks 300 is quality cinematic product. Miller's hard-right, pro-military point of view is not only accounted for in his own work, but in the larger project of mainstream Hollywood cinema. American movies, in the main, often agree with Frank Miller, that endless war against a ruthless enemy is good, and military service is good, that killing makes you a man, that capitalism must prevail, that if you would just get a job (preferably a corporate job, for all honest work is corporate) you would quit complaining. American movies say these things, but they are more polite about it, lest they should offend. The kind of comic-book-oriented cinema that has afflicted Hollywood for 10 years now, since Spider-Man, has degraded the cinematic art, and has varnished over what was once a humanist form, so Hollywood can do little but repeat the platitudes of the 1%. And yet Hollywood tries still not to offend. Does that make American cinema cryptofascist? Is "cryptofascist" a word that you can use in an essay like this? I keep trying to find a space somewhere between "propagandistic" and "cryptofascist" to describe my feelings about Miller's screed. But perhaps it's more accurate to say the following: whatever mainstream Hollywood cinema is now, Frank Miller is part of it. And Frank Miller has done Occupy Wall Street a service by reminding us that our allegedly democratic political system, which increases inequality and decreases class mobility, which is mostly interested in keeping the disenfranchised where they are, requires a mindless, propagandistic (or "cryptofascist") storytelling medium to distract its citizenry. We should be grateful for the reminder. And we might repay the favor by avoiding purchase of tickets to Miller's films. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/nov/24/frank-miller-hollywood-fascism From ths at psalience.org Tue Nov 29 16:10:35 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:10:35 +0100 Subject: [THS] Suggestions of nuclear facility sabotage as explosion hits Iran city Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111129161024.049d91b8@mail.messagingengine.com> Suggestions of nuclear facility sabotage as explosion hits Iran city A large explosion has been reported in the Iranian city of Isfahan as the regime issued conflicting reports apparently designed to deny suggestions of a sabotage attack on its nuclear facilities. By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent 6:55PM GMT 28 Nov 2011 CommentsComment Officials gave varying accounts of a "huge explosion" in the ancient city, which hosts one of Iran's main facilities for refining uranium in its nuclear programme. While some sources told news agencies there had been a blast on military facilities, others said there had been a fireball at a petrol station. Residents of the city were independently telling relatives and friends overseas that the city had been shaken by a massive blast in the early afternoon. Security experts speculated that Iran had suffered another damaging blow to its programme to build nuclear capable missiles. Isfahan is home to Iran's largest facility for research and development of ballistic missiles. Multiple reports said the blast did not emanate from the nuclear facility. Alireza Zakeri, the provincial governor of Isfahan, was quoted as saying that the blast took place during military exercises at a military airbase. "An explosion has happened in Isfahan relates to a military exercise in one part of the city and is not particularly any problem," he said. "The exercise has been in the 8th Airbase and around the airport in north east of Isfahan but the authorities had not informed us about it in advance so that we could have let the public know about it happening" Gholamreza Ansari, the head of the judiciary in the province, also confirmed there was a blast. The Mehr news agency however reported that the blast was at a fuel facility. There were no reports of casualties. Confusion was compounded by the withdrawal of the original report on Fars, a news outfit linked to the Revolutionary Guards, which first reported the blast. The incident comes just two weeks after the head of Iran's ballistic missile development programme, was killed in a massive blast 25 miles south of Tehran. In contrast to previously unexplained attacks on key scientists, Iran said that incident was an accident that occurred in routine manoeuvres. Military analysts however said the intensity of the explosion suggested a targeted attempt at sabotaging Iran's nuclear-related missile development programme, most probably carried out by Mossad. Separately William Hague, the foreign secretary, warned Iran that it would face an international backlash if it expelled Britain's ambassador to Tehran after the Islamic regime ratified legislation to downgrade UK ties. Mr Hague said the expulsion of Dominick Chilcott, who has been in Tehran just one month, would damage its ties with Europe and other Western states. "If the Iranian government confirms its intention to act on this, we shall respond robustly in consultation with our international partners," Mr Hague said. The bill ? passed by an overwhelming majority yesterday ? requires both Iran and Britain to withdraw their ambassadors from the other country and reduce representation to the level of charge d'affaires. It also calls for trade between the two countries to be reduced to "minimum levels". The EU is due to consider an oil embargo on Iranian experts as well as the imposition of targeted sanctions on 180 Iranian officials in response to a report from UN weapons inspectors confirming Iran has undertaken work to build a nuclear bomb. However diplomats said the French-backed proposal to impose an oil embargo would not receive Europe-wide support. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/8921617/Suggestions-of-nuclear-facility-sabotage-as-explosion-hits-Iran-city.html From ths at psalience.org Tue Nov 29 16:12:26 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:12:26 +0100 Subject: [THS] Republicans are saying they'll attack Iran for Israel's sake Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111129161211.0443b670@mail.messagingengine.com> Published 11:56 28.11.11 Latest update 11:56 28.11.11 Republicans and Israel: Too much love can kill you Republicans are saying they'll attack Iran for Israel's sake - this might not only prove to be 'bad for the Jews' in the long run, but could also come back to haunt the Republicans themselves. By Chemi Shalev In the first Gulf War in 1991 and once again in the war against Iraq in 2003, Israel was asked by the U.S. administration to maintain a ?low profile," in order to avoid the perception that America was fighting with Israel, or on its behalf. Both George Bushes, senior and junior, considered it prudent to relegate Israel to the sidelines ? even when it was under direct attack, as was the case in 1991 - in order to help establish international coalitions and to maintain public support for the war, especially in the Muslim world. In both cases, Israel complied. Of course, such precautions won?t be relevant if a Republican-led U.S. administration should ever contemplate attacking Iran in order to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons. After all, the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination - with the glaring exception of the neo-isolationist Ron Paul - are on record as saying that if America attacks Iran, it will be, first and foremost, in order to ?save Israel," as Texas Governor Rick Perry framed it. Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer can already add a brief appendix to their highly-controversial 2007 book ?The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy? that will contain a transcript of last week?s CNN Republican foreign policy debate, followed by the letters QED ? ?which was to be demonstrated.? Herman Cain said the U.S. would ?join Israel? in attacking Iran, as long as the Israelis came up with a credible plan; Newt Gingrich said the U.S. would bomb Tehran only as a ?last recourse? but would be happy to team up with Israel in a ?conventional? attack; Michele Bachmann has already indicated that the Pentagon should present ?war plans? in order to rescue ?millions of Israelis who are on the precipice of losing their lives?; Rick Perry said ?if we're going to be serious about saving Israel, we better get serious about Syria and Iran?; Rick Santorum made up for lost time in the debate by declaring later, ?I?d be working with Israel and be very clear with Iran that we are preparing a military strike"; Mitt Romney thinks that the answer to Iran is to go to Israel ?to show the world we care about that country and that region?; and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, usually the most cautious Republican debater on matters of foreign policy, said ?our interest is to ensure that Israel - that Iran does not go nuclear. Our interest in the Middle East is Israel.? Not Saudi Arabia. Not the Gulf emirates. Not the Maghreb. Not the Horn of Africa. Not a stable Iraq. Not a moderate Egypt. Not the free flow of oil. Not containment of China and Russia. Not Islamic moderation, not even the fight against jihadist terrorism. Just Israel. Of course, one can well understand why many Jews and Israelis might kvell - Yiddish for beam with joy - at such blanket, unequivocal expressions of love and support for Israel, especially at a time when the saying ?the whole world is against us? has become a widely-accepted axiom and President Obama is perceived by many as being indifferent to Israeli interests, at best, if not actually hostile, at worst. But ?too much love will kill you?, as Queen?s Brian May once wrote, and these protestations of absolute devotion may come back one day to haunt not only Jews and Israel, but also the Republicans themselves. As the flurry of anti-Israeli tweets following last week?s CNN debate showed, many Americans were taken aback at what could easily be portrayed as the subornation of American foreign policy to Israeli interests, and the predominance of the Israel-Iran issue over such ?minor? foreign policy issues as China, the Arab Spring or the Eurozone debt crisis, which weren?t even mentioned. And even though polls show that a solid majority of Americans support Israel ? especially when compared to the Palestinians ? it is highly doubtful whether such support stretches to include a conflict that might plunge America and the rest of the world into a political and economic crisis of unprecedented proportions. Of course, the main reason for the current Republican lovefest with Israel isn?t so much the Jewish lobby, the Jewish vote or even Jewish campaign contributions, but rather the intense courtship of the Israel-adoring Christian Evangelical vote, which is likely to play a pivotal role in the upcoming Republican primaries. These voters view oaths of loyalty to Israel as a qualifying benchmark for all aspiring candidates and they are hardly likely to be deterred by the possibility of conflagration in the Middle East which is, after all, but a necessary dispensationalist end-of-days landmark ?on the Road to Armageddon? as Timothy Weber?s 2004 book explains. But for many, less ?Israelocentric? Americans, as well as for the hundreds of millions of people throughout the world who are closely monitoring the Republican race, the unabashed and unqualified Republican embrace of Israel at the expense of other, no-less-critical issues for America?s well-being might very well be seen as confirming the delusional conspiratorial descriptions of rabid Jew-baiters. This might not only prove to be ?bad for the Jews? in the long run, but could also come back to haunt the Republicans themselves should the issue of Iran still be on the table if and when one of them is sworn into office on January 20, 2013 (or January 21, as the 20th is a Sunday). A Republican president, no less than President Obama, would have to contend with widespread opposition among America?s top military brass and its economic and business leaders to a war that could ignite a region-wide conflagration, precipitate a dramatic rise in the price of oil, bring about a sharp increase in the U.S. budget deficit and, potentially, push the economies of both the U.S. and Europe over the edge and into the abyss. Which of the two potential presidents would be more inclined and more capable of weathering such a confrontation is certainly a matter of opinion and debate. But a Republican president - unlike Obama ? would be handicapped from the outset by the inverted ?Nixon to China? principle, which makes it harder for right-wing presidents to mobilize public opinion to go to war , and then doubly encumbered by the Bush legacy, internally and in the international arena, where memories of what was widely perceived as the former president?s go-it-alone, devil-may-care cowboyish foreign policy that left America virtually isolated on the world stage haven?t been as thoroughly erased as they appear to have been among America?s conservatives. And even though there is a compelling argument to be made for U.S. military intervention against Iran in order to safeguard a wide range of vital American interests - including Israel - a Republican president would automatically be judged by his own Israeli-inspired declarations of love and war. The Iranian propaganda ministry, one can rest assured, has already archived the videotape of the Republican debates as a public relations weapon to be drawn just when the time is right. And while Saudi Arabia and the Gulf oil countries would be sure to lend Washington discreet tactical as well as financial support under any and all circumstances, the volatile Arab ?street?, once maligned as insignificant but now the critical element in determining the future of many Arab regimes, would easily fall prey to anti-Isra eli incitement, as would left-leaning public opinion throughout Muslim World and Western Europe. This would be true in any case, of course, but doubly so if a Republican president was at the helm. One can argue what true intentions lay behind Obama?s statement in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that ?those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war? ? but there should be no doubt that it is Obama who would stand a far better chance than any Republican of mustering international support, of enlisting coalition partners and of minimizing Arab rage in case America goes to war against Iran. In fact, in a twist of irony that is surely bitter for Obama-bashers, it is the president?s perceived distance from Israel and his portrayal as being ?even-handed? that places him in a superior position to advance what is indeed, when all is said and done, a critical Israel interest that is still best served by maintaining a judicious low profile rather than by engaging in short-sighted, politically-motivated saber-rattling. Perhaps that is another reason for Israel to strike now, while Obama is still in power, rather than later, when a Republican president might find that he has tied his own hands in primary-time electioneering. http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/republicans-and-israel-too-much-love-can-kill-you-1.398258 From ths at psalience.org Tue Nov 29 18:46:32 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:46:32 +0100 Subject: [THS] Sirhan Sirhan: Lawyers For Convicted Robert F. Kennedy Assassin Argue Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111129184307.0450dad0@mail.messagingengine.com> Sirhan Sirhan: Lawyers For Convicted Robert F. Kennedy Assassin Argue That New Forensic Details Show Client Is Innocent First Posted: 11/28/11 09:03 PM ET Updated: 11/29/11 11:52 AM ET LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Lawyers representing convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan argue in newly filed court documents that a bullet was switched in evidence at his trial and new forensic details show he is innocent of the 1968 killing of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. In the latest of many appeals filed on behalf of Sirhan, the attorneys are seeking to overturn his conviction. They repeated a previous assertion and presented reports from experts who said Sirhan was programmed through hypnosis to fire shots as a diversion for the real killer. Prosecutors had no comment, said Lynda Gledhill, a spokeswoman for the California attorney general's office, which is handling the appeal. The lawyers, William F. Pepper and Laurie Dusek, also said sophisticated audio tests recently conducted on recordings from the assassination night show 13 shots from multiple guns were fired ? five more than Sirhan could have fired from his small pistol. Authorities have claimed eight bullets were fired, with three hitting Kennedy and the rest flying wildly around the kitchen and striking five other victims who survived. Paul Schrade, who was struck by gunfire, refused to comment on the new filing, saying he is working on his own new analysis of the assassination. Pepper and Dusek argue that before Sirhan's trial, someone switched a bullet before it was placed in evidence because the bullet taken from Kennedy's neck did not match Sirhan's gun. The lawyers suggest a second gun was involved in the assassination, but they do not know who fired it. Pepper said the new evidence outlined in a 62-page federal court brief filed in Los Angeles is sufficient to prove Sirhan is innocent under the law. "They put fabricated evidence into court before the judge and jury" Pepper told The Associated Press. "We are satisfied that for the first time in 43 years of this case we think we have the evidence to set this conviction aside," The motion was filed last week in federal court in Los Angeles Whether it has any chance of success is questionable, said leading appellate lawyer Dennis Fischer of Santa Monica. "It's a longshot in the longest way," he said, "but they certainly are raising intriguing questions." He said the passage of time weighs against defense appeals, with courts tending to ask what took so long to raise the issues. However, he said federal courts frequently are willing to take a closer look at cases in which governmental misconduct is alleged, even if it is long after the fact. "The current thinking by the U.S. Supreme Court is these things need to end," said Fischer. But he added in a case with such historical importance, "No one will ever be satisfied." Sirhan, now 67, a Palestinian immigrant, was denied parole after a hearing last March where he denied any memory of shooting Kennedy on June 5, 1968, moments after he claimed victory in the California presidential primary. Parole officials said he doesn't understand the enormity of his crime that changed U.S. history. Pepper and Dusek are the latest attorneys to take up Sirhan's case after his conviction and argue on his behalf before parole boards and courts.. All of his appeals have been turned down. Pepper, who has taken on other unpopular cases including that of Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray, stepped in after Sirhan's previous lawyer died. At trial, Sirhan took the witness stand and said he had killed Kennedy "with 20 years of malice aforethought." He later recanted the confession. Prosecutors introduced in evidence handwritten diaries in which he wrote: "RFK must die." The latest filing by Pepper and Dusek relies heavily on a report by audio analyst Philip Van Praag who did tests on an audio recording made by a news reporter during the shooting. The expert concluded that 13 shots were fired and that none of the sounds on the recording were echoes or other anomalies. The report also claims that the sounds of gunfire were not isolated to one spot in the room but came from different directions. The lawyers also contend that Sirhan did not have adequate assistance of counsel at trial, noting that his chief attorney, Grant Cooper, decided Sirhan was guilty at the outset and never pursued available defenses. The Sirhan defense team settled on a claim of diminished capacity and never denied that Sirhan was the shooter of Kennedy, the brief noted. "Defense counsel did not pursue the issue of a possible substitution of another bullet," the brief said. Acknowledging "the difficulty of retrying a case of this vintage," the lawyers asked that the sentence be set aside and Sirhan set free. "Petitioner fully understands that he is likely to be deported to Jordan where he would hope to quietly live out the rest of his life with family and friends, but at long last he would, at least, have received long delayed justice," the filing states. As an alternative, they asked that the judge set an evidentiary hearing to reexamine the case. From ths at psalience.org Tue Nov 29 18:51:34 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:51:34 +0100 Subject: [THS] Paul Craig Roberts: Bankers have seized Europe: Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111129184815.04562e70@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27872 Bankers have seized Europe: Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over by Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, November 26, 2011 On November 25, two days after a failed German government bond auction in which Germany was unable to sell 35% of its offerings of 10-year bonds, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Germany might retreat from its demands that the private banks that hold the troubled sovereign debt from Greece, Italy, and Spain must accept part of the cost of their bailout by writing off some of the debt. The private banks want to avoid any losses either by forcing the Greek, Italian, and Spanish governments to make good on the bonds by imposing extreme austerity on their citizens, or by having the European Central Bank print euros with which to buy the sovereign debt from the private banks. Printing money to make good on debt is contrary to the ECB?s charter and especially frightens Germans, because of the Weimar experience with hyperinflation. Obviously, the German government got the message from the orchestrated failed bond auction. As I wrote at the time, there is no reason for Germany, with its relatively low debt to GDP ratio compared to the troubled countries, not to be able to sell its bonds. If Germany?s creditworthiness is in doubt, how can Germany be expected to bail out other countries? Evidence that Germany?s failed bond auction was orchestrated is provided by troubled Italy?s successful bond auction two days later. Strange, isn?t it. Italy, the largest EU country that requires a bailout of its debt, can still sell its bonds, but Germany, which requires no bailout and which is expected to bear a disproportionate cost of Italy?s, Greece?s and Spain?s bailout, could not sell its bonds. In my opinion, the failed German bond auction was orchestrated by the US Treasury, by the European Central Bank and EU authorities, and by the private banks that own the troubled sovereign debt. My opinion is based on the following facts. Goldman Sachs and US banks have guaranteed perhaps one trillion dollars or more of European sovereign debt by selling swaps or insurance against which they have not reserved. The fees the US banks received for guaranteeing the values of European sovereign debt instruments simply went into profits and executive bonuses. This, of course, is what ruined the American insurance giant, AIG, leading to the TARP bailout at US taxpayer expense and Goldman Sachs? enormous profits. If any of the European sovereign debt fails, US financial institutions that issued swaps or unfunded guarantees against the debt are on the hook for large sums that they do not have. The reputation of the US financial system probably could not survive its default on the swaps it has issued. Therefore, the failure of European sovereign debt would renew the financial crisis in the US, requiring a new round of bailouts and/or a new round of Federal Reserve ?quantitative easing,? that is, the printing of money in order to make good on irresponsible financial instruments, the issue of which enriched a tiny number of executives. Certainly, President Obama does not want to go into an election year facing this prospect of high profile US financial failure. So, without any doubt, the US Treasury wants Germany out of the way of a European bailout. The private French, German, and Dutch banks, which appear to hold most of the troubled sovereign debt, don?t want any losses. Either their balance sheets, already ruined by Wall Street?s fraudulent derivatives, cannot stand further losses or they fear the drop in their share prices from lowered earnings due to write-downs of bad sovereign debts. In other words, for these banks big money is involved, which provides an enormous incentive to get the German government out of the way of their profit statements. The European Central Bank does not like being a lesser entity than the US Federal Reserve and the UK?s Bank of England. The ECB wants the power to be able to undertake ?quantitative easing? on its own. The ECB is frustrated by the restrictions put on its powers by the conditions that Germany required in order to give up its own currency and the German central bank?s control over the country?s money supply. The EU authorities want more ?unity,? by which is meant less sovereignty of the member countries of the EU. Germany, being the most powerful member of the EU, is in the way of the power that the EU authorities desire to wield. Thus, the Germans bond auction failure, an orchestrated event to punish Germany and to warn the German government not to obstruct ?unity? or loss of individual country sovereignty. Germany, which has been browbeat since its defeat in World War II, has been made constitutionally incapable of strong leadership. Any sign of German leadership is quickly quelled by dredging up remembrances of the Third Reich. As a consequence, Germany has been pushed into an European Union that intends to destroy the political sovereignty of the member governments, just as Abe Lincoln destroyed the sovereignty of the American states. Who will rule the New Europe? Obviously, the private European banks and Goldman Sachs. The new president of the European Central Bank is Mario Draghi. This person was Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs International and a member of Goldman Sachs? Management Committee. Draghi was also Italian Executive Director of the World Bank, Governor of the Bank of Italy, a member of the governing council of the European Central Bank, a member of the board of directors of the Bank for International Settlements, and a member of the boards of governors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Asian Development Bank, and Chairman of the Financial Stability Board. Obviously, Draghi is going to protect the power of bankers. Italy?s new prime minister, who was appointed not elected, was a member of Goldman Sachs Board of International Advisers. Mario Monti was appointed to the European Commission, one of the governing organizations of the EU. Monti is European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, a US organization that advances American hegemony over the world. Monti is a member of the Bilderberg group and a founding member of the Spinelli group, an organization created in September 2010 to facilitate integration within the EU. Just as an unelected banker was installed as prime minister of Italy, an unelected banker was installed as prime minister of Greece. Obviously, they are intended to produce the bankers? solution to the sovereign debt crisis. Greece?s new appointed prime minister, Lucas Papademos, was Governor of the Bank of Greece. From 2002-2010. He was Vice President of the European Central Bank. He, also, is a member of America?s Trilateral Commission. Jacques Delors, a founder of the European Union, promised the British Trade Union Congress in 1988 that the European Commission would require governments to introduce pro-labor legislation. Instead, we find the banker-controlled European Commission demanding that European labor bail out the private banks by accepting lower pay, fewer social services, and a later retirement. The European Union, just like everything else, is merely another scheme to concentrate wealth in a few hands at the expense of European citizens, who are destined, like Americans, to be the serfs of the 21st century. From ths at psalience.org Tue Nov 29 18:53:12 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:53:12 +0100 Subject: [THS] Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111129185207.04514a38@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.unelected.org/audit-of-the-federal-reserve-reveals-16-trillion-in-secret-bailouts Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts Posted by AD on July 21st, 2011 The first ever GAO(Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke(pictured to the left), Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve?s nearly 100 year history were posted on Senator Sander?s webpage earlier this morning: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3 What was revealed in the audit was startling: $16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world?s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious ? the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs. To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is ?only? $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress and the Senate is ?only? $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16,000,000,000,000 would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world. In late 2008, the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received 814 billion dollars. As is turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion. ?This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you?re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.? ? Bernie Sanders(I-VT) When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint(R-SC) and Ron Paul(R-TX) as well as self identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right versus Left. When you have every single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity onto itself, which has no oversight and no accountability. Americans should be swelled with anger and outrage at the abysmal state of affairs when an unelected group of bankers can create money out of thin air and give it out to megabanks and supercorporations like Halloween candy. If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses will eventually plunder the world economy. The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 131 of the GAO Audit and are as follows.. Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000) Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000) Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000) Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000) Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000) Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000) Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000) Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000) JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000) Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000) UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000) Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000) Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000) Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000) BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000) and many many more including banks in Belgium of all places View the 266-page GAO audit of the Federal Reserve(July 21st, 2011): http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/GAO-Fed-Investigation Source: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-696 FULL PDF on GAO server: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf Senator Sander?s Article: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3 From ths at psalience.org Wed Nov 30 00:55:05 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:55:05 +0100 Subject: [THS] Glenn Greenwald: Obama Fulfilling the Neocon Dream? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111130005445.07030bd0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29836.htm Obama Fulfilling the Neocon Dream? Mass Regime Change in Muslim World? Glenn Greenwald November 28, 2011 "Democracy Now!" --- Political blogger Glenn Greenwald recently wrote about retired General Wesley Clark?s recollection of an officer telling him in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks that the then U.S. Secretary of Defense had issued a memo outlining a plan for regime change within five years in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. We play an excerpt of Clark?s comments and ask Greenwald to respond. ?What struck me in listening to that video ... is that if you go down that list of seven countries that he said the neocons had planned to basically change the governments of, you pretty much see that that vision, despite the perception that we have a Democratic president and therefore the neo-conservative movement is powerless, is pretty much being fulfilled,? Greenwald says. Transcript AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, in your latest piece, you wrote about the Project for New American Century or PNAC, and started talking about neocon, neoconservative, foreign policy as it relates to the Obama administration. Explain. GLENN GREENWALD: There was this speech that General Wesley Clark gave in 2007 to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in which he recounted meetings that he had at the Pentagon with people with whom he had close relationships ? meetings he had at the Pentagon with people with whom he had close relationships in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and he talked about how, as he had done before, that he was told within a week or two after 9/11 that the Pentagon intended to attack Iraq even though no one thought that they were involved in the 9/11 attack. And he described an incident where he went back to the Pentagon a few weeks after he was told this, in October and November of 2001, and he asked his source, well, it looks like we?re going to attack Afghanistan, you told me we were going to attack Iraq. Are we still going to attack Iraq? And the source told him, oh, General, it?s actually much worse than this. AMY GOODMAN: We?re going to play the clip of Wesley Clark. GLENN GREENWALD: OK, good. WESLEY CLARK: What happened in 9/11, IS we didn?t have a strategy, we didn?t have bipartisan agreement, we didn?t have American understanding of it. And we had, instead, a policy coup in this country, a coup, a policy coup. Some hard-nosed people took over the direction of American policy and they never bothered to inform the rest of us. I went through the Pentagon 10 days after 9/11. I couldn?t stay away from mother army. I went back there to see Don Rumsfeld. I had worked for him as a white house fellow in the 1970?s. All this is in the book. I said, am I doing OK on CNN? He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, fine. He said, I?m thinking about?-I read your book. And he said?-this is the book that talks about the Kosovo campaign?-and he said, I just want to tell you, he said, nobody?s going to tell us where or when we can bomb, nobody. He said, I?m thinking of calling this a floating coalition. What do you think about that? I said, well sir, thanks for reading my book, and well... He said, thanks, that is all the time I have got. Really. I went downstairs leaving the Pentagon and an officer from the Joint Staff called me into the office and said, I want you to know, sir, we?re going to attack Iraq. I said, why? He said, we don?t know. I said, well did they tie Saddam to 9/11? He said, no, he said, but I guess they do not know what to do about terrorism and so the?-but they can attack states and they want to look strong. So, I guess they think if they take down a state it will intimidate the terrorists. It?s like that old saying, he said, that if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem has to be a nail. Well, I walked out of there pretty upset, and then we attacked Afghanistan. I was pretty happy about that. We should have. And then I came back to the Pentagon about six weeks later. I saw the same officer. I said, why haven?t we attacked Iraq? We still going to attack Iraq? He said, oh, sir, it?s worse than that. He pulled up a piece of paper off his desk. He said, I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense?s office, says we?re going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years. We?re going to start with Iraq and then we?re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. AMY GOODMAN: That was General Wesley Clark. Glenn Greenwald, the significance of what he said? GLENN GREENWALD: So, that seems like a fairly radical plan, and he?s talking about, what he calls, this neocon cabal that had implemented this extremist militaristic vision justified on the basis of 9/11. He actually goes on to describe how Paul Wolfowitz, ten years earlier, was talking about these things well before 9/11. But, what struck me in listening to that video just a couple of days ago is that if you go down that list of Seven countries that he said the neocons had planned to basically change the governments of, you pretty much see that vision, despite the perception that we have a Democratic president and therefore the neoconservative movement is powerless, is pretty much being fulfilled. I mean, the governments of Iraq and Libya and Lebanon, three of those countries, have been changed, including Libya this year by military force. You then look at Somalia and Sudan where the Obama administration in Somalia has, according to The Washington Post just this weekend, massively escalated it?s proxy fighting and drone attacks, we?re involved in trying to subvert and control Somalia in all sorts of ways. We have a modest deployment to the south part of Sudan. But, that?s another country where we?re now militarily active and trying to control. And then the most important countries on that list, Iran and Syria, are clearly the target of all sorts of covert regime change efforts on the part of the United States and Israel. That is clearly the goal the U.S. government has adopted for itself, is to get rid of the Iranian laws and the Assad regime in Syria. And so, if you look at what Clark described in a way that he intended to be very frightening an extremist, that the neocons wanted to do in these seven countries, it seems pretty clear to me that although we may not be doing it with as much of an overt war as the neocons would like, it?s just a slightly more subtle and different means of achieving the same end. AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of the drone strikes and fitting it in with the Project for a New American Century, what?s happened Pakistan now, Pakistan saying the U.S. has to clear out of a base that is believed to be being used by the United States to launch drone strikes, but drone strikes not only in Pakistan? GLENN GREENWALD: Well, this is what?s so amazing to me. If you look back at what the Congress did in the wake of 9/11 when it enacted the authorization to use military force, if you look at that authorization, it?s incredibly narrow, as it turns out. If you go and actually read it, it says the President is authorized to use military force against those who perpetrated the 9/11 attack and those countries who harbored those individuals. That?s it, that?s the only authorized use of military force. Well, here we are more than a decade later, and there was an article in The Washington Post from a week ago where U.S. officials anonymously are saying that, in essence, Al Qaeda, the group that perpetrated the 9/11 attack according to the government, is now dead. There?s only two leaders left they say in that entire region. It already rendered "effectively inoperable". There is no more Al Qaeda left in Afghanistan or Pakistan according to the U.S. government. The group that perpetrated 9/11, according to it is no longer even existing. And yet, here we are engaged in extraordinarily broad military efforts, constantly escalating in numerous parts of the world. There?s six different countries in which the U.S. is actively using drones; in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and Yemen, against groups that didn?t even exist at the time that 9/11 was perpetrated. And constantly, what you find is we are killing all sorts of civilians. There was just a story, a horrible story from four days ago where a U.S. air-strike in Afghanistan slaughtered an entire family of children, six children between the ages of 4 and 12. What we?re doing in essence is not only going way beyond what we were supposed to be doing when the Congress authorized military force, but what we?re really doing is we?re constantly manufacturing the causes of our war. Everywhere we go, every time we kill Pakistani troops or kill children in Yemen or in Afghanistan, we?re generating more and more anti-American sentiment and violence, and therefore, guaranteeing we will always have more people to fight. AMY GOODMAN: We?re talking to Glenn Greenwald. Constitutional law attorney, political blogger for Salon.com. Wes Clark and the Neocon Dream By Glenn Greenwald November 26, 2011 "Salon" --- In October, 2007, Gen. Wesley Clark gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco (seven-minute excerpt in the video below) in which he denounced what he called ?a policy coup? engineered by neocons in the wake of 9/11. After recounting how a Pentagon source had told him weeks after 9/11 of the Pentagon?s plan to attack Iraq notwithstanding its non-involvement in 9/11, this is how Clark described the aspirations of the ?coup? being plotted by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and what he called ?a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for the New American Century?: Six weeks later, I saw the same officer, and asked: ?Why haven?t we attacked Iraq? Are we still going to attack Iraq?? He said: ?Sir, it?s worse than that. He said ? he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk ? he said: ?I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense?s office. It says we?re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years ? we?re going to start with Iraq, and then we?re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.? Clark said the aim of this plot was this: ?They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.? He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz ? back in 1991 ? in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: ?But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region ? in the Middle East ? and the Soviets won?t stop us. And we?ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes ? Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq ? before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.? Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz?s desires because, as Clark put it: ?the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It?s not to deter conflicts?? The current turmoil in the Middle East is driven largely by popular revolts, not by neocon shenanigans. Still, in the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya (the latter leading to this and this), with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military deployment to South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six ? count ?em: six ? different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions (it?s worth remembering that neocons specialized in dressing up their wars in humanitarian packaging: Saddam?s rape rooms! Gassed his own people!). As Jonathan Schwarz (or, as he would be called by establishment newspapers: ?a person familiar with Jon Schwarz?s thinking on the subject who asked not to be identified?) put it about the supposedly contentious national security factions: As far as I can tell, there?s barely any difference in goals within the foreign policy establishment. They just disagree on the best methods to achieve the goals. My guess is that everyone agrees we have to continue defending the mideast from outside interference (I love that Hillary line), and the [Democrats] just think that best path is four overt wars and three covert actions, while the neocons want to jump straight to seven wars. The difference between seven and four overt wars isn?t non-existent or unimportant, of course, but it?s a question of means. The neocon end as Clark reported them ? regime change in those seven countries ? seems as vibrant as ever. It?s just striking to listen to Clark describe those 7 countries in which the neocons plotted to have regime change back in 2001, and then compare that to what the U.S. Government did and continues to do since then with regard to those precise countries. From ths at psalience.org Wed Nov 30 13:57:28 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:57:28 +0100 Subject: [THS] ZEITGEIST Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111130135213.04c50168@mail.messagingengine.com> The complete DVD of the film ZEITGEIST. With multiple-language subtitle tracks. Test your grip on reality, and your faith in many things. a 6-part .rar file set - after downloading all parts, use WinRAR or 7-zip to decompress it to a DVD file-set. Other archiving softwares shd also do the trick. http://www.multiupload.com/36XYEFP10K http://www.multiupload.com/6NGAIA7FZ3 http://www.multiupload.com/CO6IZAWS7I http://www.multiupload.com/GXJTWOGG1D http://www.multiupload.com/ED2OU1L6QF http://www.multiupload.com/LDT4M15W4W From ths at psalience.org Wed Nov 30 17:55:34 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:55:34 +0100 Subject: [THS] Iran and the I.A.E.A. Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111130175510.0678a268@mail.messagingengine.com> Iran and the I.A.E.A. By Seymour M. Hersh The new report, therefore, leaves us where we've been since 2002, - with lots of belligerent talk but no definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons program. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29768.htm Ex-Inspector Rejects IAEA Iran Bomb Test Chamber Claim By Gareth Porter A former inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repudiated its major new claim that Iran built an explosives chamber to test components of a nuclear weapon and carry out a simulated nuclear explosion. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29773.htm 'Washington Rules' and our Path to Permanent War By Eric Black The United States maintains 300,000 troops abroad at 761 sites in 39 foreign countries. Who else could aspire to such an arrangement without being perceived by Washington as an existential threat to world peace? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29771.htm From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 1 00:18:04 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:18:04 +0100 Subject: [THS] Anti-Piracy Bills Enrage Web Freedom Groups, Divide Congress Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111201001304.06536520@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.truth-out.org/sopa-scoop-anti-piracy-bills-enrage-web-freedom-groups-divide-congress/1322581585 [Almost anyone who has a website is breaking copyright law to some extent. What better way to shut down individuals, groups, who express heretical ideas -ths] The SOPA Scoop: Anti-Piracy Bills Enrage Web Freedom Groups, Divide Congress Wednesday 30 November 2011 by: Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report (Photo: Ciccio Pizzettaro) Misuse of copyrighted content is a fact of life on the Internet. Everyday, YouTube users upload homemade videos with copyrighted songs and peers share files that could have originated from a torrent site like Pirate Bay. Now, imagine that the US government granted itself sweeping legal authority to shut down alleged pirate sites and intervene when web sites host any kind of content that infringes a copyright. Imagine web users facing felony charges for streaming copyrighted content without permission. Two bills aimed at fighting Internet piracy are currently making their way through Congress and would give the Justice Department such authority. The bill's proponents say the legislation could save the US economy billions of dollars and protect consumers from fraudulent products like fake prescription medicine. A growing movement of opponents, including members of Congress from both parties, claim the bill is an Internet job killer that would open a Pandora's box of legal actions that could cripple online innovation and entrepreneurship while putting anyone connected to pirated content under threat of legal action. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate have reopened the fierce debate over the government's role in regulating the Internet, and both bills could be up for a vote within months. A movement to stop the bills has gone viral online. Web companies like Mozilla, Google, AOL and Facebook have come out against the legislation. Both bills would allow the Justice Department to take down sites deemed to be "dedicated to infringing activities" and both the department and copyright owners would be allowed to sue alleged infringers. The bills also allow the Justice Department to demand that search engines, payment processors like PayPal, social media sites and service providers remove links and block access to targeted sites. In addition, SOPA would make the unauthorized web streaming of copyrighted content a felony carrying a sentence of up to five years in prison, a measure that prompted the American Censorship coalition to claim "singing a pop song on Facebook could be a felony." Broad language in both bills targets web pirates, but because many pirating sites operate outside the US and copyrighted content is mixed in with user generated media, a wide range of third-party search engines and sites would be forced into the legal process. Under SOPA, private companies could ask the Justice Department to force search engines and providers to remove links to infringing sites and demand social networking sites police and censor users. The authors of the bills claim that third-party sites could challenge court orders and would not have to police pirating beyond what is technically feasible, but opponents say big media and entertainment companies would be granted new legal tools to tie up smaller competitors in expensive legal battles and squash up-and-coming social media sites like Soundcloud and Tumblr. "SOPA and [Protect IP] would place a major burden on all sorts of sites that accept user generated content, but it's heaviest for innovators and smaller organizations that don't have large legal teams," said Parker Higgins, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Under SOPA or [Protect IP], these sites may never be able to get off the ground." Censoring user-generated media could drive consumers toward more conventional sources, and it turns out the entertainment industry is a big supporter of the legislation. Comcast, Viacom, NBC Universal and industry groups like the Recording Industry Association of America have all joined the US Chamber in Commerce in supporting SOPA. Together, these groups have contributed more than $3.9 million to top members of Congress. Sen. Patrick Leahy's (D-Vermont) introduced the Protect IP Act, and the television, movie and music industries are his second-biggest campaign donor group, donating a total of $371,806 since 2007, according to OpenSecrets.org. The entertainment industry is top SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith's (R-Texas) biggest donor with a total of $59,300 in contributions since 2011. But some lawmakers are wary of regulating the Internet in tough economic times, and bipartisan opposition to both bills is building in Congress, with leaders like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) coming out against the legislation in recent weeks. (Pelosi took a side via Twitter.) Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) recently told members of the House Judiciary Committee that their legislation is a threat to the Internet as Americans know it. "In other words, the wrong approach to combating infringement could fundamentally change the Internet as we know it, moving us towards a world where transactions are less secure, ideas are less accessible and starting a website wouldn't be an option for anyone who couldn't afford a lawyer," Wyden said. SOPA is expected to receive markups on December 15 in the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate could vote on Protect IP by the end of the year or in early 2012. From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 1 00:22:59 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:22:59 +0100 Subject: [THS] Senate Amendment Calls for a Return to Bush-Era Torture Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111201002008.06536208@mail.messagingengine.com> William Rivers Pitt | A Gut-Check Moment for Mr. Obama http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=GOlgIPr2itL6bug72D4aXkGXZlDpQdeJ William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "Mr. Obama has threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act legislation if it comes to his desk with these provisions intact ... threatened, in fact, in the strongest possible terms ... Applying this military custody requirement to individuals inside the United States, as some members of Congress have suggested is their intention, would raise serious and unsettled legal questions and would be inconsistent with the fundamental American principle that our military does not patrol our streets ... So there it is. If this bill finishes wending its way through the Senate and passes, it will be greeted by the warm embrace of the Republican majority in the House, and will then be on its way to Mr. Obama's desk, where his veto threat will be waiting for it. Whether or not he follows through on his threat and slaps this dreck down is the question now before us all. One way or another, we will soon learn a very large truth about the man in the Oval Office, and whether he has the integrity to do what is right and follow through on his word. We shall see." Senate Amendment Calls for a Return to Bush-Era Torture http://org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=5T3c2qZuF9sjJm4B3knzMkGXZlDpQdeJ Jeffrey Kaye, Truthout: "An amendment by Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire) to the current Defense Authorization Bill (SA 1068) now before Congress would roll back the 2009 Obama executive order against torture by re-establishing a secret 'classified' set of interrogation techniques and then attaching them to the current 'Army Field Manual' on human intelligence collection. But whether the amendment passes or not, the existence of certain interrogation techniques as used currently by the US military and intelligence services in the 'Manual' do not comply with international norms, such as the Geneva Conventions." From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 1 00:28:31 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:28:31 +0100 Subject: [THS] "Protect IP Act" would give corporate copyright holders the authority... Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111201002511.041acd38@mail.messagingengine.com> You want a free and open Internet? STOP the "Protect IP Act" Click here for a sample script and the number to call: http://act.credoaction.com/call?tg=FSNY_1.FSNY_2&cp_id=175&id=31317-902389-MPdK0nx&t=7 The only way we can stop this outright attack on the free Internet is to have more senators commit to vote against the legislation. Take action now! Learn more about this campaign CREDO Action | more than a Stop Internet censorship! Dear Mark, By the end of this week, the Senate may vote on a bill that would end the Internet as we know it. If it passes, the "Protect IP Act" would give corporate copyright holders the authority to demand that the government shut down any website without a court order. All they would need is to allege that the website contains copyrighted material. This bill has been rushed through Congress because big corporate interests like Comcast, Pfizer, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have spent millions of dollars lobbying for this censoring legislation.1 Call Sens. Schumer and Gillibrand and tell them to protect our free and open Internet and oppose the Protect IP Act. Click here for a sample script and the number to call. This bill is an outright attack on our free Internet. If it passes, the government could shut down a website like YouTube if a member does something like post a video of themselves singing a copyrighted song. This gives corporations and the government the ability to determine what information you can consume on the Internet ? a dangerous practice which, when committed by the Chinese and Iranian governments, is denounced by the American people and almost all of our elected representatives. Internet companies including Google, Mozilla, Facebook, and Twitter, say that "the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of web sites."2 Call Sens. Schumer and Gillibrand and tell them to protect our free and open Internet and oppose the Protect IP Act. Click here for a sample script and the number to call. Right now, only a small number of Democratic senators are standing up to corporate interests and voicing opposition to the bill. And the only way we can stop this outright attack on the free Internet is to have more senators commit to vote against the legislation. No matter whether your senators are Republicans or Democrats, it is important that you urge them to take a stand for Internet freedom. We need Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand to come out in opposition to this bill and vote against Internet censorship. Call Sens. Schumer and Gillibrand and tell them to protect our free and open Internet and oppose the Protect IP Act. Click here for a sample script and the number to call. Thank you for speaking out to protect our free and open internet. Ali Rozell, Campaign Manager CREDO Action from Working Assets 1."Five things to know about SOPA," The Washington Post, 11-16-2011. 2. "Mozilla Fights for the Internet's Future," Mozilla Blog, 11-15-2011. From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 1 12:05:17 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:05:17 +0100 Subject: [THS] Banishing consciousness: the mystery of anaesthesia Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111201120450.06c0ac30@mail.messagingengine.com> Banishing consciousness: the mystery of anaesthesia 29 November 2011 by Linda Geddes NEW SCIENTIST I WALK into the operating theatre feeling vulnerable in a draughty gown and surgical stockings. Two anaesthetists in green scrubs tell me to stash my belongings under the trolley and lie down. "Can we get you something to drink from the bar?" they joke, as one deftly slides a needle into my left hand. I smile weakly and ask for a gin and tonic. None appears, of course, but I begin to feel light-headed, as if I really had just knocked back a stiff drink. I glance at the clock, which reads 10.10 am, and notice my hand is feeling cold. Then, nothing. I have had two operations under general anaesthetic this year. On both occasions I awoke with no memory of what had passed between the feeling of mild wooziness and waking up in a different room. Both times I was told that the anaesthetic would make me feel drowsy, I would go to sleep, and when I woke up it would all be over. What they didn't tell me was how the drugs would send me into the realms of oblivion. They couldn't. The truth is, no one knows. The development of general anaesthesia has transformed surgery from a horrific ordeal into a gentle slumber. It is one of the commonest medical procedures in the world, yet we still don't know how the drugs work. Perhaps this isn't surprising: we still don't understand consciousness, so how can we comprehend its disappearance? That is starting to change, however, with the development of new techniques for imaging the brain or recording its electrical activity during anaesthesia. "In the past five years there has been an explosion of studies, both in terms of consciousness, but also how anaesthetics might interrupt consciousness and what they teach us about it," says George Mashour, an anaesthetist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "We're at the dawn of a golden era." Consciousness has long been one of the great mysteries of life, the universe and everything. It is something experienced by every one of us, yet we cannot even agree on how to define it. How does the small sac of jelly that is our brain take raw data about the world and transform it into the wondrous sensation of being alive? Even our increasingly sophisticated technology for peering inside the brain has, disappointingly, failed to reveal a structure that could be the seat of consciousness. Altered consciousness doesn't only happen under a general anaesthetic of course - it occurs whenever we drop off to sleep, or if we are unlucky enough to be whacked on the head. But anaesthetics do allow neuroscientists to manipulate our consciousness safely, reversibly and with exquisite precision. It was a Japanese surgeon who performed the first known surgery under anaesthetic, in 1804, using a mixture of potent herbs. In the west, the first operation under general anaesthetic took place at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846. A flask of sulphuric ether was held close to the patient's face until he fell unconscious. Since then a slew of chemicals have been co-opted to serve as anaesthetics, some inhaled, like ether, and some injected. The people who gained expertise in administering these agents developed into their own medical specialty. Although long overshadowed by the surgeons who patch you up, the humble "gas man" does just as important a job, holding you in the twilight between life and death. Consciousness may often be thought of as an all-or-nothing quality - either you're awake or you're not - but as I experienced, there are different levels of anaesthesia (see diagram). "The process of going into and out of general anaesthesia isn't like flipping a light switch," says Mashour. "It's more akin to a dimmer switch." A typical subject first experiences a state similar to drunkenness, which they may or may not be able to recall later, before falling unconscious, which is usually defined as failing to move in response to commands. As they progress deeper into the twilight zone, they now fail to respond to even the penetration of a scalpel - which is the point of the exercise, after all - and at the deepest levels may need artificial help with breathing. These days anaesthesia is usually started off with injection of a drug called propofol, which gives a rapid and smooth transition to unconsciousness, as happened with me. (This is also what Michael Jackson was allegedly using as a sleeping aid, with such unfortunate consequences.) Unless the operation is only meant to take a few minutes, an inhaled anaesthetic, such as isoflurane, is then usually added to give better minute-by-minute control of the depth of anaesthesia. Lock and key So what do we know about how anaesthetics work? Since they were first discovered, one of the big mysteries has been how the members of such a diverse group of chemicals can all result in the loss of consciousness. Other drugs work by binding to receptor molecules in the body, usually proteins, in a way that relies on the drug and receptor fitting snugly together like a key in a lock. Yet the long list of anaesthetic agents ranges from large complex molecules such as barbiturates or steroids, to the inert gas xenon, which exists as mere atoms. How could they all fit the same lock? For a long time there was great interest in the fact that the potency of anaesthetics correlates strikingly with how well they dissolve in olive oil. The popular "lipid theory" said that instead of binding to specific protein receptors, the anaesthetic physically disrupted the fatty membranes of nerve cells, causing them to malfunction. In the 1980s, though, experiments in test tubes showed that anaesthetics could bind to proteins in the absence of cell membranes. Since then, protein receptors have been found for many anaesthetics. Propofol, for instance, binds to receptors on nerve cells that normally respond to a chemical messenger called GABA. Presumably the solubility of anaesthetics in oil affects how easily they reach the receptors bound in the fatty membrane. But that solves only a small part of the mystery. We still don't know how this binding affects nerve cells, and which neural networks they feed into. "If you look at the brain under both xenon and propofol anaesthesia, there are striking similarities," says Nick Franks of Imperial College London, who overturned the lipid theory in the 1980s. "They must be triggering some common neuronal change and that's the big mystery." Many anaesthetics are thought to work by making it harder for neurons to fire, but this can have different effects on brain function, depending on which neurons are being blocked. So brain-imaging techniques such as functional MRI scanning, which tracks changes in blood flow to different areas of the brain, are being used to see which regions of the brain are affected by anaesthetics. Such studies have been successful in revealing several areas that are deactivated by most anaesthetics. Unfortunately, so many regions have been implicated it is hard to know which, if any, are the root cause of loss of consciousness. But is it even realistic to expect to find a discrete site or sites acting as the mind's "light switch"? Not according to a leading theory of consciousness that has gained ground in the past decade, which states that consciousness is a more widely distributed phenomenon. In this "global workspace" theory, incoming sensory information is first processed locally in separate brain regions without us being aware of it. We only become conscious of the experience if these signals are broadcast to a network of neurons spread through the brain, which then start firing in synchrony. The idea has recently gained support from recordings of the brain's electrical activity using electroencephalograph (EEG) sensors on the scalp, as people are given anaesthesia. This has shown that as consciousness fades there is a loss of synchrony between different areas of the cortex - the outermost layer of the brain important in attention, awareness, thought and memory (Science, vol 322, p 876). This process has also been visualised using fMRI scans. Steven Laureys, who leads the Coma Science Group at the University of Li?ge in Wallonia, Belgium, looked at what happens during propofol anaesthesia when patients descend from wakefulness, through mild sedation, to the point at which they fail to respond to commands. He found that while small "islands" of the cortex lit up in response to external stimuli when people were unconscious, there was no spread of activity to other areas, as there was during wakefulness or mild sedation (Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, vol 4, p 160). A team led by Andreas Engel at the University Medical Center in Hamburg, Germany, have been investigating this process in still more detail by watching the transition to unconsciousness in slow motion. Normally it takes about 10 seconds to fall asleep after a propofol injection. Engel has slowed it down to many minutes by starting with just a small dose, then increasing it in seven stages. At each stage he gives a mild electric shock to the volunteer's wrist and takes EEG readings. We know that upon entering the brain, sensory stimuli first activate a region called the primary sensory cortex, which runs like a headband from ear to ear. Then further networks are activated, including frontal regions involved in controlling behaviour, and temporal regions towards the base of the brain that are important for memory storage. Engel found that at the deepest levels of anaesthesia, the primary sensory cortex was the only region to respond to the electric shock. "Long-distance communication seems to be blocked, so the brain cannot build the global workspace," says Engel, who presented the work at last year's Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego. "It's like the message is reaching the mailbox, but no one is picking it up." What could be causing the blockage? Engel has unpublished EEG data suggesting that propofol interferes with communication between the primary sensory cortex and other brain regions by causing abnormally strong synchrony between them. "It's not just shutting things down. The communication has changed," he says. "If too many neurons fire in a strongly synchronised rhythm, there is no room for exchange of specific messages." The communication between the different regions of the cortex is not just one way; there is both forward and backward signalling between the different areas. EEG studies on anaesthetised animals suggest it is the backwards signal between these areas that is lost when they are knocked out. Last month, Mashour's group published EEG work showing this to be important in people too. Both propofol and the inhaled anaesthetic sevoflurane inhibited the transmission of feedback signals from the frontal cortex in anaesthetised surgical patients. The backwards signals recovered at the same time as consciousness returned (PLoS One, DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0025155). "The hypothesis is whether the preferential inhibition of feedback connectivity is what initially makes us unconscious," he says. Similar findings are coming in from studies of people in a coma or persistent vegetative state (PVS), who may open their eyes in a sleep-wake cycle, although remain unresponsive. Laureys, for example, has seen a similar breakdown in communication between different cortical areas in people in a coma. "Anaesthesia is a pharmacologically induced coma," he says. "That same breakdown in global neuronal workspace is occurring." Many believe that studying anaesthesia will shed light on disorders of consciousness such as coma. "Anaesthesia studies are probably the best tools we have for understanding consciousness in health and disease," says Adrian Owen of the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. Owen and others have previously shown that people in a PVS respond to speech with electrical activity in their brain. More recently he did the same experiment in people progressively anaesthetised with propofol. Even when heavily sedated, their brains responded to speech. But closer inspection revealed that those parts of the brain that decode the meaning of speech had indeed switched off, prompting a rethink of what was happening in people with PVS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 104, p 16032). "For years we had been looking at vegetative and coma patients whose brains were responding to speech and getting terribly seduced by these images, thinking that they were conscious," says Owen. "This told us that they are not conscious." As for my own journey back from the void, the first I remember is a different clock telling me that it is 10.45 am. Thirty-five minutes have elapsed since my last memory - time that I can't remember, and probably never will. "Welcome back," says a nurse sitting by my bed. I drift in and out of awareness for a further undefined period, then another nurse wheels me back to the ward, and offers me a cup of tea. As the shroud of darkness begins to lift, I contemplate what has just happened. While I have been asleep, a team of people have rolled me over, cut me open, and rummaged about inside my body - and I don't remember any of it. For a brief period of time "I" had simply ceased to be. My experience leaves me with a renewed sense of awe for what anaesthetists do as a matter of routine. Without really understanding how, they guide hundreds of millions of people a year as close to the brink of nothingness as it is possible to go without dying. Then they bring them safely back home again. Linda Geddes is a reporter at New Scientist Source: NewScientist http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228402.300-banishing-consciousness-the-mystery-of-anaesthesia.html From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 1 12:12:16 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:12:16 +0100 Subject: [THS] Top officials willfully concealed the true extent of the 2008-09 bailouts from Congress Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111201120730.06c70e90@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/story/153274/6_shocking_revelations_about_wall_street%27s_secret_government?page=entire [Secret Government? Just paranoia?? I've said before, Paranoia remains a psychiatric diagnosis until the moment you get proof! well... -ths] AlterNet / By Les Leopold 6 Shocking Revelations About Wall Street's "Secret Government" Top officials willfully concealed the true extent of the 2008-'09 bailouts from Congress and the public. November 30, 2011 | We now have concrete evidence that Wall Street and Washington are running a secret government far removed from the democratic process. Through a freedom of information request by Bloomberg News, the public now has access to over 29,000 pages of Fed documents and 21,000 additional Fed transactions that were deliberately hidden, and for good reason. (See here and here.) These documents show how top government officials willfully concealed from Congress and the public the true extent of the 2008-'09 bailouts that enriched the few and enhanced the interests of giant Wall Streets firms. Here?s what we now know: * The secret Wall Street bailouts totaled $7.77 trillion, 10 times more than the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) passed by Congress in 2008. * Knowledge of the secret bailout funds was not shared with Congress even while it was drafting and debating legislation to break up the big banks. * The secret funding, provided at below-market rates, gave Wall Street banks an additional $13 billion in profits. (That?s enough money to hire more than 325,000 entry level teachers.) * The secret loans financed bank mergers so that the largest banks could grow even larger. The money also allowed banks to step up their lobbying efforts. * While Henry Paulson (Bush?s Secretary of the Treasury) was informing Congress and the public that only minor reforms were needed to protect Fannie and Freddie from collapse, he met secretly with leading Wall Street hedge fund managers -- among them his former colleagues at Goldman Sachs -- to alert them that he was about to nationalize the giant mortgage companies ? a move that would eradicate nearly all the stock value of the companies. This information was enormously valuable because it allowed these hedge funds to short Fannie and Freddie and thereby make a fortune. * While Timothy Geithner was head of the NY Federal Reserve, he argued against legislative efforts by Senator Ted Kaufman, D-Delaware, to limit the size of banks because the issue was ?too complex for Congress and that people who know the markets should handle these decisions,? Kaufman recalls. Meanwhile, Geithner was fully aware of the enormous secret loans while Senator Kaufman was kept in the dark. Barney Frank, who was authoring key bank reform legislation was also not informed of the secret loans. No one in Congress was told. So what does this all mean? 1. The big banks and hedge funds were in much more trouble than we were led to believe. [bull... it was all part of the show, folks. biggest scam yet seen on the planet -ths] As many of us suspected, all the big banks were on their knees begging for help ? secretly ? while telling their investors, the public and Congress that all was well. They had gambled and lost. Under the rules of ideal capitalism, they should have suffered some ?creative destruction,? and seen their shareholder value eliminated through bankruptcy, and their managers replaced. The entire banking system should have been reorganized from top to bottom as well. Instead, these colossal failures were secretly rewarded. 2. Wall Street?s secret government made sure the largest banks would grow even larger, aided by the secret funding. While Congress was debating legislation to break up the large banks and reinstitute Glass Steagall (to separate risky investment banking from insured commercial banking,) the secret government was using public funds to grow even larger through mergers and acquisitions. Because Congress and the public were unaware of the secret funding and ill-health of all the banks, the legislation was easily defeated. As the chart below makes painfully clear, too-big-to-fail banks grew even bigger. 3. The bigger Wall Street becomes, the more government it can buy. This part isn?t secret. As the top six banks grew larger, they spent more funds lobbying to make sure that they wouldn?t suffer any unprofitable impacts from banking reform legislation. So after the biggest banks received hundreds of billions in secret loans, they upped their lobbying funds to maintain their size and power. Read ?em and weep: 4. Wall Street?s secret government protects its own. At first, it?s not easy to understand how Treasury Secretary Paulson, the former head of Goldman Sachs, could risk attending a secret meeting with giant hedge fund managers, many of whom used to work at Goldman Sachs. How could the nation?s highest ranking financial official dare to tip off these hedge fund elites about the imminent government takeover of Fannie and Freddie before Congress and the public were informed? Well, one answer is that Paulson felt obliged to warn his old comrades of the impeding nationalization. Maybe, he wanted to get them out of harm?s way just in case they were heavily involved in those markets. Or maybe he also wanted to give them a very valuable tip to profit by. But the deeper explanation, I believe, is that Wall Street?s key government officials ? Paulson, Summers, Geithner, Orszag (the former Obama OMB chief who now makes millions working for CitiGroup), etc. truly believe the following: * Wall Street banks are the best in the world and are the cutting-edge of the American economy. They are our future. * Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers are enormously smarter and sharper than the rest of us. They deserve our admiration. * Helping Wall Street to grow and prosper is precisely the same thing as helping all Americans and the entire economy. They deserve our support. * Secret meetings to provide insider information are normal on Wall Street. There?s nothing wrong with warning your friends about upcoming policy decisions that might impact their profits. * There?s also absolutely nothing wrong with providing trillions of dollars of secret loans to the best and the brightest and not telling Congress about it. It?s all a closed loop of self-justification and self-deception: Wall Street is brilliant. What Wall Street does is for the good of the country. Helping Wall Street profit is good for the country. Hiding the truth from democratically elected leaders is also for the good of the country because Wall Street is brilliant and knows better. And all this is deeply believed by Wall Street and its secret government, even though Wall Street, and Wall Street alone, took down the economy and killed 8 million jobs in a matter of months. Simply brilliant! 5. Wall Street is a clear and present danger to democracy. Usually, I am not an alarmist. In fact, I often argue against facile conspiracy theories. I want to believe that our democracy still has promise. But, the Wall Street-induced crash and the government?s response to it has me very worried. The Bloomberg News revelations suggest that Wall Street?s secret government has enormous disdain for what remains of our democracy. The financial elites obviously believe that Congress cannot be trusted to do the right thing even when it is bought and paid for by the very banks it supposedly regulates. As for the rest of us? We?re just a financially illiterate mass to be manipulated through the mass media. Our minds too can be bought and sold through careful marketing. This financial arrogance and corruption is enormously corrosive to our democratic values. Already, many Americans, and for good reason, no longer trust their government. Already, many Americans, and for good reason, no longer vote. Already, many Americans, and for good reason, believe that democracy as we know it is a sham. Wall Street couldn?t have written a better script to maintain its domination. 6. Occupy Wall Street is fundamentally correct, but we need more. The occupiers dramatically attacked Wall Street elites and captured the country?s imagination with their 1 percent, 99 percent framework. And the idea is sticking and spreading. But that?s only the start. To reclaim our country from Wall Street?s secret government we will need to develop an enormous movement among the 99 percent. Although we hope it just happens spontaneously through Twitter and Facebook, we all know it will require hardcore organizing involving millions of us. At the moment, no one knows what form it will take. But we do know this: great concentrations of power and wealth do not give up their power and wealth without an enormous fight. Wall Street?s secret government is more than ready to protect itself, even if it means subverting democracy. Our occupiers have shown great courage in helping us reclaim our democratic rights. Let?s hope it spreads and soon. Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and Public Health Institute in New York, and author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity?and What We Can Do About It (Chelsea Green, 2009). From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 1 12:16:16 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:16:16 +0100 Subject: [THS] Study: Legalizing Medical Pot Reduces Fatal Car Crashes Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111201121403.067a1e20@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/story/153264/study%3A_legalizing_medical_pot_reduces_fatal_car_crashes?page=entire Raw Story / By Stephen C. Webster Study: Legalizing Medical Pot Reduces Fatal Car Crashes Far from marijuana acting as a ?gateway? to more dangerous drugs, as authorities often claim, researchers found that it?s more commonly used as a substitute for alcohol. November 30, 2011 | States that have passed initiatives to legalize medical marijuana have also seen a decline in traffic fatalities, according to a new study out this week by the Institute for the Study of Labor. Opponents of medical marijuana often focus on the social detriment to making America?s most valuable cash crop available to those approved by doctors, arguing that medical marijuana legalization makes it easier for teens to buy pot and that they?ll soon move to more dangerous drugs. They also suggest that legalization would increase the number of vehicle accidents ? and that very argument was one of the main reasons why California voters did not approve full legalization in 2010. But far from marijuana acting as a ?gateway? to more dangerous drugs, as authorities often claim, researchers found that it?s more commonly used as a substitute for alcohol, which is often more harmful and inebriating than marijuana. Studying data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, researchers also found that legalizing medical marijuana did, in fact, drive up usage among adults. But contrary to medical marijuana critics? claims, they were unable to find evidence of it growing the number of minors on the drug. A further analysis of data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, spanning from 1990 to 2009, revealed that states which legalized medical marijuana saw a decline in alcohol consumption. A decline in traffic fatalities was a direct side effect of that. Traffic fatalities are the leading cause of death for Americans age 35 and under. ?Specifically, we find that traffic fatalities fall by nearly 9 percent after the legalization of medical marijuana,? researchers wrote. They also found that legalization has an even more pronounced impact on the overall instances of alcohol playing a role in traffic deaths, suggesting that its reductive effect on the number of drunk drivers is even stronger than its overall effect on fatalities. ?Every objective study on marijuana has concluded that it is far safer than alcohol for the user and society,? explained Mason Tvert, director of SAFER, a group which advocates for legalization in Colorado. ?It should come as little surprise that when we allow adults to make the safer choice to use marijuana it results in less drinking and fewer alcohol-related problems.? So far, just 16 states have legalized medical marijuana, even though polling showseight in 10 voters, from both political parties, favor allowing marijuana use if recommended by a doctor. According to the polling firm Gallup, a full 50 percent of Americans even favor outright legalization and regulation, which would see marijuana treated similarly to alcohol. Despite the White House?s recent admission that parts of the marijuana plant may have ?some? medical value, President Barack Obama adamantly opposes legalization. Similarly, his administration?s Justice Department has continued the policy of cracking down on the sales of medical marijuana in states that allow it. From ths at psalience.org Fri Dec 2 11:56:15 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:56:15 +0100 Subject: [THS] It's True: The Banks Got Bailed Out, and We Got Sold Out Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111202115514.065aa590@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/741640/it%27s_true%3A_the_banks_got_bailed_out%2C_and_we_got_sold_out/#paragraph2 It's True: The Banks Got Bailed Out, and We Got Sold Out We all know the story to one degree or another. The financial sector set up a system that encouraged mortgage initiators to prefer subprime loans to prime loans. They stopped asking for any documentation proving an ability to pay back home loans. They sought out unsavvy borrowers and steered them to riskier loans because they got bigger bonuses that way. The garbage loans were packaged up into derivatives and given deceptively high credit ratings. Then those derivatives were sold to unwitting customers who lost tons of money when they went bad. Meanwhile, the big banks bet against their own financial products even as they marketed them as safe investments. When the house of cards fell, the government had no choice but to save the banks because our economy can't function without a banking system. Then the bankers took the money and paid themselves big bonuses while millions lost their jobs, their homes, and their retirement security. There are a few bankers who are honest about what happened. As a regional vice president for Chase Home Finance in southern Florida, [James] Theckston shoveled money at home borrowers. In 2007, his team wrote $2 billion in mortgages, he says. Sometimes those were ?no documentation? mortgages. ?On the application, you don?t put down a job; you don?t show income; you don?t show assets,? he said. ?But you still got a nod.? ?If you had some old bag lady walking down the street and she had a decent credit score, she got a loan,? he added. Theckston says that borrowers made harebrained decisions and exaggerated their resources but that bankers were far more culpable ? and that all this was driven by pressure from the top. ?You?ve got somebody making $20,000 buying a $500,000 home, thinking that she?d flip it,? he said. ?That was crazy, but the banks put programs together to make those kinds of loans.? Especially when mortgages were securitized and sold off to investors, he said, senior bankers turned a blind eye to shortcuts. ?The bigwigs of the corporations knew this, but they figured we?re going to make billions out of it, so who cares? The government is going to bail us out. And the problem loans will be out of here, maybe even overseas.? One memory particularly troubles Theckston. He says that some account executives earned a commission seven times higher from subprime loans, rather than prime mortgages. So they looked for less savvy borrowers ? those with less education, without previous mortgage experience, or without fluent English ? and nudged them toward subprime loans. These less savvy borrowers were disproportionately blacks and Latinos, he said, and they ended up paying a higher rate so that they were more likely to lose their homes. Senior executives seemed aware of this racial mismatch, he recalled, and frantically tried to cover it up. Theckston, who has a shelf full of awards that he won from Chase, such as ?sales manager of the year,? showed me his 2006 performance review. It indicates that 60 percent of his evaluation depended on him increasing high-risk loans. In late 2008, when the mortgage market collapsed, Theckston and most of his colleagues were laid off. He says he bears no animus toward Chase, but he does think it is profoundly unfair that troubled banks have been rescued while troubled homeowners have been evicted. I kind of regret that I didn't spend most of the last decade living in a series of multi-hundred thousand dollar homes. I did sell two homes, making a great return both times. That's the only reason I was ever able to become a blogger. But that was just an accident, or good fortune. It wasn't an investment. It was life unfolding in a fortuitous way. I never lied about my income to get a mortgage. And I was never stupid enough to get suckered into lousy terms. When it came time to save the system, the Fed wound up giving the banks the equivalent of $25,000 for every American citizen. I wonder what would have happened if they had just given the people that $25,000 instead. I suppose we would have all descended into some kind Mad Max war of all-against-all. Most of us would have died and become food for those who survived. Believe me, I understand that the too-big-to-fail concept isn't some kind of joke. The banks had to be saved. But I don't see any reason why the people cannot exact their revenge now, at their leisure. Of course, it's not too late to send us our checks. By BooMan | Sourced from Booman Tribune Posted at December 1, 2011, 5:58 am From ths at psalience.org Fri Dec 2 11:56:22 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:56:22 +0100 Subject: [THS] Student Protester Surprises NYPD Commissioner With Police Brutality Slideshow Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111202115145.065aa968@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/741641/student_protester_surprises_nypd_commissioner_with_police_brutality_slideshow%2C_calls_on_him_to_resign/#paragraph5 Student Protester Surprises NYPD Commissioner With Police Brutality Slideshow, Calls on Him to Resign A college student had an uncomfortable surprise for NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly during his Tuesday night visit to Columbia University. Kelly was visiting a class taught by former New York Mayor David Dinkins when a student-protester (who said he was from NYU) whipped out a projector loaded with a film showing images of police brutality against protesters, which he projected on the wall behind Kelly. As Columbia's Bwog reported, it was an "awkward moment": People started shifting awkwardly in their chairs, then shifting much more awkwardly when the student turned the projector around so that the film was facing Kelly as he continued to speak. Kelly ignored the film, finished answering his question and called on another student, who was interrupted by a young man reading a textbook about military history. This student stood up and called for Kelly?s resignation. ?Are you serious, Kelly?? he asked. ?Resign now.? Professor Dinkins sprung up from his chair and instructed the young man to ?take it easy.? Several students asked if he was even registered for the course. ?No, I go to NYU,? he said. A groan went up and students began asking him to leave. ?Well, this is very intimidating,? Kelly said, grinning. The NYU student stood up, got his coat and textbook, told the class he?d been arrested three times for ?freedom of speech on this land,? and walked out the door. A few minutes later, another student asked Kelly why most people who are arrested are incarcerated for ?drug crimes.? Dinkins said he didn?t understand the question, and things got confrontational between the student, Kelly, and Dinkins pretty quickly. Kelly ended up leaving the class half an hour early. Amazing! By Lauren Kelley | Sourced from AlterNet Posted at December 1, 2011, 6:25 am From ths at psalience.org Fri Dec 2 12:11:44 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:11:44 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!! Eliot Spitzer: 5 Ways to Make Banks Pay Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111202120138.06586308@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/story/153291/eliot_spitzer%3A_5_ways_to_make_banks_pay_for_their_secret_%247_trillion_free_ride?page=entire Slate / By Eliot Spitzer Eliot Spitzer is the former governor of the state of New York. Eliot Spitzer: 5 Ways to Make Banks Pay for Their Secret $7 Trillion Free Ride The CEOs of major banks maintained they were in good financial shape. Meanwhile, they secretly borrowed massive amounts from the government to stay afloat. December 1, 2011 | Imagine you walked into a bank, applied for a personal line of credit, and filled out all the paperwork claiming to have no debts and an income of $200,000 per year. The bank, based on these representations, extended you the line of credit. Then, three years later, after fighting disclosure all the way, you were forced by a court to tell the truth: At the time you made the statements to the bank, you actually were unemployed, you had a $1 million mortgage on your house on which you had failed to make payments for six months, and you hadn?t paid even the minimum on your credit-card bills for three months. Do you think the bank would just say: Never mind, don?t worry about it? Of course not. Whether or not you had paid back the personal line of credit, three FBI agents would be at your door within hours. Yet this is exactly what the major American banks have done to the public. During the deepest, darkest period of the financial cataclysm, the CEOs of major banks maintained in statements to the public, to the market at large, and to their own shareholders that the banks were in good financial shape, didn?t want to take TARP funds, and that the regulatory framework governing our banking system should not be altered. Trust us, they said. Yet, unknown to the public and the Congress, these same banks had been borrowing massive amounts from the government to remain afloat. The total numbers are staggering: $7.7 trillion of credit?one-half of the GDP of the entire nation. $460 billion was lent to J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley alone?without anybody other than a few select officials at the Fed and the Treasury knowing. This was perhaps the single most massive allocation of capital from public to private hands in our history, and nobody was told. This was not TARP: This was secret Fed lending. And although it has since been repaid, it is clear why the banks didn?t want us to know about it: They didn?t want to admit the magnitude of their financial distress. The banks? claims of financial stability and solvency appear at a minimum to have been misleading?and may have been worse. Misleading statements and deception of this sort would ordinarily put a small-market player or borrower on the wrong end of a criminal investigation. So where are the inquiries into the false statements made by the bank CEOs? And where are the inquiries about the Fed and Treasury officials who stood by silently as bank representatives made claims that were false, misleading, or worse? Only now, because of superb analysis done by Bloomberg reporters?who litigated against the Fed and the banks for years to get the information?are we getting a full picture of the Fed and Treasury lending. The reporters also calculated that recipient banks and other borrowers benefited by approximately $13 billion simply by taking advantage of the ?spread? between their cost of capital in these almost interest-free loans and their ability to lend the capital. In addition to the secrecy, what is appalling is that these loans were made with no strings attached, no conditions, and no negotiation to achieve any broader public purpose. Even if one accepts the notion that the stability of the financial system could not be sacrificed, those who dispensed trillions of dollars to private parties made no apparent effort to impose even minimal obligations to condition the loans on the structural reforms needed to prevent another crisis, made no effort to require that those responsible for creating the crisis be relieved of their jobs, took zero steps towards the genuine mortgage-reform that is so necessary to begin a process of economic renewal. The dollars lent were simply a free bridge loan so the banks could push onto others the responsibility for the banks? own risk-taking. If ever there was an event to justify the darkest, most conspiratorial view held by many that the alliance of big money on Wall Street and big government produces nothing but secret deals that profit insiders?this is it. So what to do? The revelations of the secret loan program may provide the opportunity for Occupy Wall Street to suggest a few concrete steps that would be difficult to oppose. First: Demand a hearing where the bank executives have to answer questions?under oath?about the actual negotiations, or lack thereof, that led to these loans; about the actual condition of each of the borrowing banks and whether that condition differed from the public statements made by the banks at the time. Second: Require the recipient banks to use this previously undisclosed gift?the profit they made by investing this almost interest-free money?to write down the value of mortgages of those who are underwater. The loans to the banks were meant to solve a short-term liquidity problem, not be a source of profits to fund bonuses. Take back the profits and put them to a public use. Third: Require the government officials responsible for authorizing these loans to explain why there was no effort made to condition these loans on changes in policy that would protect the public going forward. Fourth: Ask congress to examine every filing and statement made to Congress by the banks about their financial condition and their indebtedness to see if any misrepresentations were made in an effort to hide these trillions of dollars of loans. Misleading Congress can be a felony, and willful deception of the Congress to hide the magnitude of the public bailouts should not go unprosecuted. Finally: Demand that politicians return all contributions made by the institutions that got hidden loans. Pressure the politicians who continue to feed from the trough of Wall Street, even as they know all too well how the banks and others have gamed the system and the public. From ths at psalience.org Fri Dec 2 12:26:33 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:26:33 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!!! Was There a Coordinated Federal Crackdown on Occupy Wall Street? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111202121316.0659b7a0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/story/153296/naomi_wolf_versus_joshua_holland%3A_was_there_a_coordinated_federal_crackdown_on_occupy_wall_street?page=entire [go to this url for embedded links to the referenced items] AlterNet / By Naomi Wolf comments_image - Naomi Wolf Versus Joshua Holland: Was There a Coordinated Federal Crackdown on Occupy Wall Street? Naomi Wolf responds to Joshua Holland's criticisms of her piece alleging a coordinated federal crackdown on Occupy Wall Street. December 1, 2011 | Protesters at "Occupy Wall Street" camp, Liberty Square Photo Credit: Sarah Jaffe Editor's note: The following is a response to Joshua Holland's piece, "Naomi Wolf?s ?Shocking Truth? About the ?Occupy Crackdowns? Offers Anything but the Truth." Holland will be responding to this article later today. What a firestorm my Comment is Free blog post in the Guardian, "The Shocking News Behind the Crackdown on Occupy", has unleashed: some have praised, while others have attacked. Josh Holland's criticisms of my piece, in a blog post, "Naomi Wolf's Shocking Truth about Occupy is Anything But", was picked up the most widely of the critics' attacks. But the criticisms Holland poses are poorly grounded. Holland's main premise is that I am part of a "flurry of speculation" that is without basis in fact, and that there was no federal involvement in the crackdown. I cited evidence that DHS was on the 18-member conference call of mayors, which Oakland Mayor Jean Quan alluded to in an interview with the BBC on 15 November, and my source was Wonkette on 15 November. Holland argues that his assertion to contrary has been qualified, and I am happy to adjust the citation accordingly. But Holland is seriously mistaken in reaching his premature conclusion that there is no evidence of DHS or federal participation in the crackdown, and for attacking me for having asserted the connection: "Mayors in a handful of cities," he concludes, "responding to local political pressures, decided to break up their local occupations ? decisions that were announced to the press well in advance ? and were advised as to how best to do so." He is wrong on many counts. My evidence for federal coordination with local police exceeds the Wonkette citation, which was not, in fact, the basis of my confidence in writing about this coordination in the crackdown. I relied, rather, on many other sources of evidence. Among them, I was relying on what NYPD told me itself. I am certain that NYPD coordinates with federal authorities in OWS-related arrests because an NYPD official informed me that they did so through the bars of my cell, as part of his formal warning to me before my release, apparently to deter me from activities that might result in my rearrest. As I reported in the Guardian on 19 October 2011, part of the seventh precinct sergeant's caution to me about what could happen to me if I was arrested again, if I "rejoined [my] friends the protesters", was a threat based on his assertion of federal coordination with the arrests. He told me that in a second arrest, I would be photographed and fingerprinted, and the data fed into a federal database, to follow me forever. My partner, Avram Ludwig, confirmed that he was given the same warning about his data being fed into a federal database in the event of a future arrest. Holland is more dangerously wrong in insisting on his conclusion of merely local police response ? without reporting on what DHS is doing right now in response to the FOIA requests by many organisations about its possible involvement in the OWS crackdown. Holland should be aware that DHS, as of this writing, is not denying all involvement in response to the FOIA requests. Rather, the agency is on record as taking a legal position that appears to reflect some possible participation, at least at staff levels below the senior one: as Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the DC Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, wrote to me yesterday: "We have filed FOIA demands with multiple federal agencies seeking public release of information related to coordination of the Occupy Crackdown. It is not credible for the federal agencies to suggest that they have no involvement in (and are somehow not paying attention to) law enforcement response to the Occupy movement both on a tactical and political level. "Our constitutional rights litigation on behalf of demonstrators over the years has uncovered time and again federal agency involvement in what were initially claimed to be local police actions." (The link here is to background about the FOIA, and gives a pdf of one of the FOIAs.) Verheyden-Hilliard continues: "[The] DHS has just contacted us asking that we narrow the request to information in the possession of 'senior staff'. They said that others were agreeing to do so. We are not. I believe what they may wish to do is conduct a limited search (with everyone's consent) and announce their exonerating results on their website as a PR effort to claim they have no involvement. I can forward you my correspondence with them about that today if you would like to see it." Later that day, she sent me her letter to DHS, which reflects the phone conversation about narrowing the scope of the FOIA request: "Dear Ms Busch, "I am writing in response to your request that we limit our request for information regarding federal agency coordination or involvement in the response to Occupy encampments, to only that in possession of senior staff at DHS. You stated that you were making this request to media requestors and that all the other requestors had agreed and that we were the last one you were calling. You also stated that the DHS was intending to put the response to all the media FOIA requests on this topic, of which you believed there were 5 or 6 including ours, up on the web. "As I raised in our discussion, I do not know the substance of the other requests that were made, and whether they contained any similar specificity of ours so I cannot comment on them. You did indicate that at this time they were being treated without differentiation as to specifics of the request. "As I stated, we would certainly understand the agency prioritizing its search efforts to where it understands is the most likely location of responsive information. I would not assume that responsive information is solely contained among senior staff and think it likely that mid-level staff would carry out day to day responsibilities that would involve inter-agency coordination and work as liaisons with local law enforcement agencies and other federal agencies. "It is premature for us, as requestors, to narrow our search request and forgo our entitlement to receive and review materials responsive to our request as originally formulated. As you know, the public interest in this subject matter is substantial [ ]. "I understand from our phone conversation that this initial search is not being limited to the DHS Headquarters but includes DHS component agencies [ ]. "Because we do not know what information will be derived in response, we cannot agree to "narrow" or change our request to senior staff only. We cannot suggest or agree that whatever the outcome of that search, it could be considered fully responsive or sufficient, and thus request that when the DHS publicly announces its response on its website, it will not state or assume that the responses are categorically complete or satisfy all the FOIA requests on this matter. "We are happy to work with you to determine the most efficacious and efficient search for responsive records to be made available to the public and look forward to your initial search responses." So it appears from this document, and from Ms Verheyden-Hilliard's summary of her conversation to which it refers, that DHS is actively negotiating with at least one of the organisations that submitted the FOIA request, to narrow the scope of what the FOIA will compel the agency to reveal. This letter appears to confirm that DHS is arguing to limit the reach of the entities' FOIA request: DHS is asking that the request only apply to "senior staff", which would allow DHS to conceal the involvement of any number of officials and agents below senior levels. They are taking this position rather than simply turning over the initially requested documents. If Mr Holland were right, that DHS had no involvement in the crackdown, they would have no disincentive to do so. For Holland not to have made any such an enquiry ? and then to conclude that the crackdowns were merely a result of local policing and local politics ? is, in my view, seriously inadequate reporting. And Truthout.org journalist Jason Leopold sent me, on 1 December, this update about his own investigation, which, fascinatingly, gives a second-source confirmation to the evidence presented above that FOIA requesters are being asked by DHS to "narrow" their document search requests to "senior staff" only. His last paragraph also confirms that though LAPD denies all coordination with DHS, the LAPD has also acknowledged to him giving information about the protests to DHS: "I was curious as to whether the federal government was monitoring the activities of Occupy Wall Street or played a role in what appeared to be a coordinated crackdown of the encampments by local law over the past several weeks, so I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security on 31 October, seeking a wide range of internal documents from both agencies about discussions officials may have had about Occupy Wall Street. Much to my surprise, because I usually wait an average of six months, the FBI responded to my FOIA two weeks later, on 15 November, stating in a letter that the agency conducted a search of its Central Records System and could not locate a single document about Occupy Wall Street. I found the 'no records' response to be remarkable [ ] As I noted in an report I wrote about the FBI's response to my FOIA, 'Jordan T Lloyd, a member of the FBI's cybersecurity team in New York, received dozens of emails about Occupy Wall Street' from a man 'who identified himself as a conservative computer security expert' who [had] 'gained access to the group's listserv' [ ] "Because I don't believe the FBI conducted a thorough and comprehensive search, I filed an appeal with the agency on Monday [ ] "DHS, on the other hand, appears to have located some documents responsive to my FOIA. I was contacted by an FOIA analyst a couple of weeks ago regarding my request and asked to "narrow" the search for responsive documents to "senior DHS officials" only due to the fact that there were multiple requests DHS received from others for similar documents and the staff, I was told, was 'overwhelmed'. I agreed to do this in the interest of receiving documents sooner rather than later. I requested DHS expedite my FOIA and the agency agreed to do so. "Early Wednesday morning, as LAPD began to move in on the encampment at Los Angeles City Hall, I saw two DHS 'federal response' team SUVs parked in front of a building about a block away from the encampment, and DHS personnel who appeared to take over for several LAPD officers [ ] I phoned the police department to get additional information about DHS's presence and was told that the federal building was located just one block from the encampment and that DHS has an office in there, which is 'where they process immigrants'. LAPD told me there was 'absolutely no coordination or involvement by Department of Homeland Security' in any of the 'law enforcement activities' that took place early Wednesday morning, although local DHS officials were briefed by LAPD, the police spokesperson told me." (Indeed DHS is already active in other ways in municipal security in LA.) Holland's conclusion that I have no evidence of DHS or federal coordination with municipal police on protest surveillance and management also flies in the face of reporting that goes back nearly a decade, documenting in detail the creation by DHS of "security zones" that do just this. It also neglects to address a series of press conferences in which Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has confirmed to the New York Times and others close DHS-NYPD cooperation in the creation of DHS-managed surveillance zones where public protest is federally tracked. A 2009 study by Jeremy Nemeth, PhD, in the publication Cityfutures, details DHS coordination with municipal leaders and police forces in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, that turned whole sections of these cities into DHS-managed "security zones" (see maps in the link below). In "The Closed City: Downtown Security Zones and the Loss of Public Space" (pdf), published before the Occupy movement came to be, Dr Nemeth and his team confirmed in detail how the embedded partnership between DHS and municipalities in controlling public space in "security zones", such as that around Zuccotti Park, would be used by municipalities to crack down on public assembly and dissent and to federally compile detailed surveillance of protesters. He wrote: "I demonstrate how the post-9/11 security apparatus operating in US cities challenges physical, social and representational 'rights to the city' by limiting access to physical space, sorting and segregating users while reducing opportunities for social learning and active engagement, and carrying with it a broader anti-terrorism rhetoric that is employed at will to restrict political expression, assembly and a spirit of civic representation. The results of this study and the omnipresence of security zones should encourage planners and policy makers to consider them a new and increasingly pernicious land use type." Nemeth is not a polemicist; he is an urban design critic. But he points out how DHS has "militarised" ? his word ? the "downtown security zone" of the financial district, where the Zuccotti Park clearances took place. He also notes that Civic Center in NYC, as well as areas in the other two cities, have become DHS "security zones" in which the very fabric of urban design is directed by DHS guidelines, in close collaboration with municipalities and municipal police, to contain an extensive system of surveillance and data retrieval about citizens, geared to manage and surveil public assembly. Dr Nemeth cites the DHS term "Downtown Security Zones" in his title. The day after the clearing of Zuccotti Park, I was observing the protest site, which was ringed with unmarked white vans, which is no evidence, of course, of anything. But I also witnessed a white vehicle parked ? illegally, suggesting that NYPD was leaving it alone ? on the northwest edge of the square, on East side of the street, at about 11.30am. It was identified with blue lettering as "Downtown Security". There is no business in New York City listed under that name. There is, though, a region of lower Manhattan, in which Zuccotti Park lies, as you can see on the maps in the Nemeth article, that Homeland Security has repeatedly, publicly and legally identified as the DHS "Downtown Security Zone". There are other DHS "security zones" as well). Is this sighting proof of DHS surveillance of the protests that day, over and above the DHS surveillance of public protest that Nemeth documents, that has been coordinated since 2002? No. Does it merit further investigation? I believe so. Mr Holland also seems unaware of the billions that DHS has pumped into domestic police forces, integrated in such a way that it is na?ve, in a sense, for him and for me to even be debating whether federal forces "coordinate" with municipal ones because now they are often financially merged into one entity. The amount of money flowing from DHS to NYPD is stunning, as El Diario reports: "The New York City Police Department plans to spend about $24m in federal homeland security grants to pay for overtime. The NYPD budget lists an estimated $180m in counter-terrorism and intelligence spending for the upcoming year, with one half covered with federal grants. [ ] A study by the academic journal Environment and Planning estimated that nearly 40% of public space in downtown Manhattan is a 'security zone'." In other words, this 2011 report indicates that DHS is paying NYPD three and a half times NYPD's overtime budget annually: $180m of DHS money is spent on "intelligence gathering"; so $90m of NYPD's budget, in one year alone, is from DHS. Thus, Holland and I are foolish to debate over whether there is "coordination" between NYPD and DHS. If you look at the numbers, financially, NYPD is, to some extent, DHS. Look at the Nemeth maps: geopolitically, lower Manhattan is, within certain boundaries, the province of DHS. This is true of Zuccotti Park, where NYPD received $25m to surveil and track license plates. So Holland's criticism that it is invention on my part to reference federal and municipal coordination in protest crackdowns on dissent is not only oblivious to the funding and geopolitical jurisdictional issues cited above, but is also seriously ahistorical. Tom Hayden's piece in the Nation is far more accurate, in that he chides me, on his part, for not going far enough in reminding readers of how common such federal-municipal coordination has been in suppressing US dissent and that such crackdowns are old news: "Since the 1999 Seattle protests, the involvement of the FBI with local police has followed a repeated pattern. First, an FBI counter-terrorism task force warns local officials, media and the public that thousands of masked "anarchists" will be invading their cities to break the law, fight the police, break windows and destroy property. They then advise that all protests be literally fenced into protest cages. To sweeten the coordination, tens of thousands of federal dollars are offered to local police forces for "security" [acquisition of the latest in gas grenades, launchers, surveillance cameras, even paper shredders in one case]. Young people and their convergence centers are targeted for prior detention, with the assistance of informants and provocateurs. "The list of cities where this has occurred is a long one, starting with Seattle: Los Angeles (2000 convention), Washington DC (2000, 2002), Genoa (2001), Quebec City (2001), Oakland (2003), Miami (2003), New York (2004, 2008), Minneapolis-St Paul (2008), Denver/Boulder (2008), to list only the most dramatic and recent." Hayden is exactly right in looking at the economic "sweetener" for this federal-municipal crackdown on dissent. DnaInfo.com, Manhattan local news, reported that for the proposed Chinatown DHS armed "security zone", suggested when it seemed as if terrorist trials would be held in NYC, "The city has estimated that the security measures will cost $215m in the first year and $200m the following year ? a chunk of the costs will go to officers working overtime during the trials. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Senator Charles Schumer and several local politicians are calling for the federal government to cover the city's costs during the pending trials." These collaborations are so lucrative that yet another DHS security zone was proposed ? the midtown security zone: 34th to 59th ? as The New York Times reported: "The Police Department has requested $21m in federal grant money to pay for the first phase, said Mr. Kelly, who added that the cost could reach $58m. He conceded, under questioning from Peter F Vallone Jr, the committee chairman, that the plan was dependent on federal funds." Given these numbers, it is absurd to ask where, in Manhattan at least, municipal police are collaborating with DHS in managing public assembly. It is more reasonable to ask, where is it not? But why stop with Midtown? The new World Trade Center area will be yet another new "security zone" ? with plans to give Ray Kelly jurisdiction, and with an extraordinary number of police ? 600 NYPD cops, a veritable battalion ? at the World Trade Center unit. Mr Holland further objects, for instance, to the fact that I wrote that lobbyists were vying for an $850,000 contract to undermine Occupy. The "smear" proposal is written to the American Banking Association by former employees of House speaker John Boehner (Republican, Ohio). In other words, it was written by sophisticated and connected political insiders. "The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC's clients, the American Bankers Association," as "Up with Chris Hayes" reported: "CLGC's memo (pdf) proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct 'opposition research' on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct 'negative narratives' about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead [ ] Two of the memo's authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Geduldig joined CLGC before Boehner became speaker; Cranford joined CLGC this year after serving as the speaker's assistant for policy. A third partner, Steve Clark, is reportedly 'tight' with Boehner, according to a story by Roll Call that CLGC features on its website. "Jeff Sigmund, an ABA spokesperson, confirmed that the association got the memo. 'Our Government Relations staff did receive the proposal ? it was unsolicited and we chose not to act on it in any way,' he said in a statement to 'Up'." Holland is journalistically careless here: he writes, about my concern about this memo, in concert with similar TV soundbites, being possible evidence of high-level message efforts: "This is just sad. The memo Hayes unearthed was drafted on 24 November, more than a week after the evictions of camps in Zuccotti Park, Oakland, Denver, Salt Lake City and Portland. There was no 'message coordination' of any kind ? it was a proposal that was reportedly rejected. It wasn't produced by or sent to any organ of government ? it was a memo by scummy lobbyists looking for a pay-check from the banking lobby." First, I was referring to the "message coordination" that I was witnessing as rightwing commentators on television shows were using similar soundbites, as well as to the memo in question. Second, Holland's conclusion that "there was no 'message coordination' of any kind" ? a summary for which he offers no additional evidence ? and his assumption that, because a self-interested ABA spokesperson said the memo was rejected, therefore it was rejected ? is jaw-droppingly credulous. Holland also argues that since the proposal was made a week after the Occupy clearances, it is irrelevant; this also seems to me specious reasoning, as the Occupy movement's impact, as the proposal itself notes in the goals for the future that it identifies, is directed at the future. Sophisticated political insiders would not, in my view, put an unsolicited proposal of this kind in writing to the ABA, since doing so could burn the recipient: it could be leaked ? as, indeed, it was. The fact that such a proposal was put in writing ? with a dollar amount specified ? suggests strongly to me that not-in-writing discussions (which is how business is done at that level) preceded it along the decision-making chain. But neither Holland nor I can be sure of our conflicting conclusions until there is more investigation. Holland also complains that AlterNet was not my source for the PERF (a policing organisation) mention in a separate blogpost about the NYPD police. But Holland seems to be complaining about my having mischaracterised an AlterNet story, which I, in fact, never saw: rather, my source for the blogpost was this; and indeed, AlterNet was the source link for it. AlterNet, in turn, cited the San Francisco Bay Guardian as its source. So, while AlterNet editor Don Hazen did email me to tell me that AlterNet was not the source of my PERF blog mention, and I promised to check on it, I did not immediately change the citation ? since, in fact, the other AlterNet piece, which does warn about the influence of PERF, was my source. Critics generally have attacked my argument as a "conspiracy theory" ? that I am referring to a "shadowy elite" that wishes to suppress dissent. I am doing no such thing. I am referring to the elite in the light of day. There is nothing mysterious, opaque or even new about the nature of the self-interest I am describing; nor is my argument new. I first made the case that a small group of military contractors benefited financially from a hyped "war on terror" and the suppression of liberties in the US, in 2007, in my book The End of America, and backed it up with hundreds of footnotes: the argument, which spent five months on the New York Times bestseller list, has never been debunked. My recent blog merely updates the argument to address the "cui bono?" post Citizens United, in suppressing dissent ? a "cui bono?" that may well now include Congress itself. What evidence do I have that congresspeople overseeing and funding DHS would be influenced by the wishes of their colleagues regarding their own financial benefits and freedom from oversight of their own financial transactions? I am frankly astounded that critics would find this assertion surprising; but less surprised that many of these critics are writing from outside the Beltway. I have not just covered politics as a journalist, but also participated in it as a political consultant, both formal and informal, to two presidential campaigns. (For Gore 2000, I was a formal campaign adviser: contrary to RNC mythology, my brief was not "wardrobe", but rather policy on women's issues, and messaging. I was also married to a Clinton speechwriter, and observed the message decision-making process from the perspective of a spouse.) As a professional courtesy, and also because I signed a nondisclosure agreement, I have not previously written about my campaign experience. But the general lessons I learned from it about how the system works on the Hill are disclosable. Holland thinks it risible that I am certain that congresspeople overseeing an executive branch agency would affect it, and be affected by their own colleagues' interests. But Holland is mistaken when he objects to my analysis, saying: "DHS is a cabinet-level executive branch agency. It does not 'report' to Homeland Security Chair Peter King in some kind of chain-of-command ? in fact, it doesn't 'report' to Congress at all except for a handful of official reports required by law. King can hold hearings and call DHS officials to testify before his committee, but he has nothing to do with the day-to-day operations of the agency." This is entirely misleading since congressional subcommittees don't just hold hearings, they also draft legislation: "Subcommittees hold hearings, take testimony, and prepare the initial draft of legislation before submitting the bill for approval, revision, or rejection by the full committee." Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security website itself, as you can see in the link, proudly shows day-to-day and, indeed, hour-by-hour congressional involvement with DHS intelligence reports, messaging and draft legislation. Holland may find it hard to believe, but from the experience of 14 months I spent in total as a formal and informal political adviser, it is unquestionable to me that Representative Peter King and others on the subcommittee overseeing DHS would be influenced by their own, and by their colleagues', wishes for avoiding the financial transparency posed by OWS demands. It is also obvious to me that the White House would be influenced by Congress' wishes on these issues, even though DHS is, indeed, part of the executive branch. This network of influence is simply how the system works. I saw firsthand, day after day, how, for a president or a vice president or members of their senior staff or campaign staff, every idea about policy, governing or even messaging is filtered through this decision-making tree: 1) How does it poll? 2) How do the polls play out geographically? 3) What does this do for individual, high net-worth donors? 4) What does this do for this candidate's special interests? But always, No 5 is part of every decision: 5) How does this proposed idea, policy, decision or message affect the interlocking network around the leader that is made up of individual congresspeople's own electoral needs; their own individual, high net-worth donor networks; their own special interest networks; their own financially-benefiting, revolving-door, former aides' networks; and their own, or their relatives' own, future work as lobbyists? (A distant, final "6" in the decision-making equation is some faint, remembered, youthfully idealistic impulse to good governance, or to actual problem-solving, which can be called upon if issues one through five have been addressed). Every decision, whether or not it is made in the formal organisational chart that my critics are pointing to, is filtered through a calculus of future reprisals, or future alliance-related benefits, from other members of Congress, both inside and outside the leader's own political party. Calculations of how individual congresspeople around the leader in question would react to any given decision or even phrase in a speech, were constant, inexorable and a continually shifting form of chess. If money were not part of the equation, there would be nothing wrong with this consideration on the part of every leader of how individual congresspeople will react to a decision. The chess of influence on the Hill is how our system was originally set up to work. The corrupting element is the money now involved. Can I offer formal documentation that this is how business is also done in relation to congressional decision-making about DHS, and then about DHS's own decision-making? Um ? duh!? no. Obviously, I have no such documentation of this role of congressional self-interest. These favors and calculations are not generally put in writing; nor are they presented to journalists in press releases. But is it crazy to address this role of influence and expectation on those on the DHS subcommittee, or for that matter on any subcommittee? As anyone who has actually worked on the Hill knows, it would be crazy not to. I wrote in the Guardian piece that a possible congressional motivator for cracking down on OWS is that when the people of OWS get their hands on the books, a great deal of fraud is likely to be exposed. Some critics called this wild speculation. One of the issues that came up often in my informal survey of OWS is the goal of auditing the Federal Reserve. An audit has revealed $16tn in unaccountable disbursements. Another point to consider in terms of the potential threat posed to Congress by OWS demands about Glass-Steagall is that nine of the 12 members of the congressional supercommittee had voted to repeal that legislation (for Senate, see here; for House of Representatives, see here). Are these facts themselves evidence that Congress may be motivated by benefitting from a crackdown against the potential financial transparency demanded by OWS? No. Do they bear additional investigation? Assuredly. Because of a miscommunication on my part in the editing process, there are, indeed, two errors in my posted Guardian piece: "kale derivatives", ridiculously enough, was a typo: it should have read "fake derivatives". And I wrote that the Committee to Protect Journalists had issued a FOIA requests. This is incorrect. It was the National Lawyers' Guild, among others. I have corrected accordingly. But as far as my central argument goes, I stand my ground. I have here presented additional evidence that NYPD and federal authorities coordinate efforts in the surveillance and arrests of OWS supporters. I have presented what appears to be DHS's own non-denial, as of this writing, of potential lower level staff involvement. The oversight role of DHS by specific congressmen, as specified clearly on DHS's own website, is clear. I argue still that congressmen and women have a confirmed financial interest in the status quo, which individual Occupy members' first 100 answers to me about their agenda would directly threaten. The headline of my piece ? which writers do not select ? is "The Shocking Truth Behind the Crackdown at Occupy". What I believe I wrote, rather, is an account of some shocking confirmed truths ? and a call to raise some additional questions. I am glad to have corrected the errors in the posted piece, as well as added additional information about the sources of my confirmed evidence of federal/municipal coordination. But would I put that same essential call out to the public again, about the potential interests at stake that may be influencing the violence of the crackdown? Absolutely. My analysis about the various forms of collaboration between DHS and local law enforcement is "on firm footing," confirms Verheyden-Hilliard, "and the record will speak for itself as it comes out. The whole last decade has been about the integration of law enforcement on a vertical level." There is a house on fire, and it is ours. Naomi Wolf is the author of Give Me Liberty (Simon and Schuster, 2008), the sequel to the New York Times best-seller The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot (Chelsea Green, 2007). From ths at psalience.org Fri Dec 2 16:20:56 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:20:56 +0100 Subject: [THS] Tom Engelhardt: Lessons From the Dead in a No-Learning-Curve World Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111202161829.0467e910@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175474/tomgram%3A_engelha Tomgram: Engelhardt, Into the Whirlwind Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 9:19am, December 1, 2011. [Note for TomDispatch Readers: My new book, The United States of Fear, is now available at Amazon.com and soon should be in local bookstores. Buy a copy yourself or for a friend you?d like to introduce to this website, and tell all your friends and colleagues that they should get copies, too! Many thanks to those of you who so generously took me up on the offer of a personalized, signed copy of the new book in return for a contribution of $75 or more. (For $140, I?ll sign and send you that book and my previous one, The American Way of War.) Both offers remain open. And believe it or not, your contributions really do help keep us going. Those of you who still want to check out the offer, just click here and go to the TD donation page for a look. Tom] He was 22... She was 12... Lessons From the Dead in a No-Learning-Curve World By Tom Engelhardt He was 22, a corporal in the Marines from Preston, Iowa, a ?city? incorporated in 1890 with a present population of 949. He died in a hospital in Germany of ?wounds received from an explosive device while on patrol in Helmand province [Afghanistan].? Of him, his high school principal said, ?He was a good kid.? He is survived by his parents. He was 20, a private in the 10th Mountain Division from Boyne City, population 3,735 souls, which bills itself as ?the fastest growing city in Northern Michigan.? He died of ?wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with small-arms fire? and is survived by his parents. These were the last two of the 10 Americans whose deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq were announced by the Pentagon Thanksgiving week. The other eight came from Apache Junction, Arizona; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Greensboro, North Carolina; Navarre, Florida; Witchita, Kansas; San Jose, California; Moline, Illinois; and Danville, California. Six of them died from improvised explosive devices (roadside bombs), assumedly without ever seeing the Afghan enemies who killed them. One died of ?indirect fire? and another ?while conducting combat operations.? On such things, Defense Department press releases are relatively tight-lipped, as was the Army, for instance, when it released news that same week of 17 ?potential suicides? among active-duty soldiers in October. These days, the names of the dead dribble directly onto the inside pages of newspapers, or simply into the ether, in a war now opposed by 63% of Americans, according to the latest CNN/ORC opinion poll, but in truth barely remembered by anyone in this country. It?s a reality made easier by the fact that the dead of America?s All-Volunteer Army tend to come from forgettable places -- small towns, obscure suburbs, third or fourth-rank cities -- and a military that ever fewer Americans have any connection with. Aside from those who love them, who pays much attention anymore to the deaths of American troops in distant lands? These deaths are, after all, largely dwarfed by local fatality counts like the 16 Americans who died in accidents on Ohio?s highways over the long Thanksgiving weekend of 2010 or the 32,788 Americans who died in road fatalities that same year? So who, that same week, was going to pay the slightest attention to the fate of 50 year-old Mohammad Rahim, a farmer from Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan? Four of his children -- two sons and two daughters, all between four and 12 years old -- were killed in a ?NATO? (undoubtedly American) airstrike, while working in their fields. In addition, an eight-year-old daughter of his was ?badly wounded.? Whether Rahim himself was killed is unclear from the modest reports we have of the ?incident.? In all, seven civilians and possibly two fleeing insurgents died. Rahim?s uncle Abdul Samad, however, is quoted as saying, ?There were no Taliban in the field; this is a baseless allegation that the Taliban were planting mines. I have been to the scene and haven?t found a single bit of evidence of bombs or any other weapons. The Americans did a serious crime against innocent children, they will never be forgiven.? As in all such cases, NATO has opened an ?investigation? into what happened. The results of such investigations seldom become known. Similarly, on Thanksgiving weekend, 24 to 28 Pakistani soldiers, including two officers, were killed in a set of ?NATO? helicopter and fighter-jet attacks on two outposts across the Afghan border in Pakistan. One post, according to Pakistani sources, was attacked twice. More soldiers were wounded. Outraged Pakistani officials promptly denounced the attack, closed key border crossings to U.S. vehicles supplying the war in Afghanistan, and demanded that the U.S. leave a key airbase used for the CIA?s drone war in the Pakistani tribal areas. In response, American officials, military and civilian, offered condolences and yet pleaded ?self-defense,? while offering promises of a thorough investigation of the circumstances surrounding the ?friendly fire incident.? Amid these relatively modest death counts, don?t forget one staggering figure that came to light that same Thanksgiving week: the estimate that, in Iraq, 900,000 wives have lost their husbands since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. Not surprisingly, many of these widows are in a state of desperation and reportedly getting next to no help from either the Iraqi or the American governments. Though their 900,000 husbands undoubtedly died in various ways, warlike, civil-war-like, and peaceable, the figure does offer a crude indicator of the levels of carnage the U.S. invasion loosed on that country over the last eight and a half years. Creative Destruction in the Greater Middle East Think of all this as just a partial one-week's scorecard of American-style war. While you?re at it, remember Washington's high hopes only a decade ago for what America?s ?lite,? ?shock and awe? military would do, for the way it would singlehandedly crush enemies, reorganize the Middle East, create a new order on Earth, set the oil flowing, privatize and rebuild whole nations, and usher in a global peace, especially in the Greater Middle East, on terms pleasing to the planet?s sole superpower. That such sky-high ?hopes? were then the coin of the realm in Washington is a measure of the way delusional thinking passed for the strategic variety and a reminder of how, for a time, pundits of every sort dealt with those hopes as if they represented reality itself. And yet, it should have come as no shock that a military-first ?foreign policy? and a military force with staggering technological powers at its command would prove incapable of building anything. No one should have been surprised that such a force was good only for what it was built for: death and destruction. A case might be made that the U.S. military?s version of ?creative destruction,? driven directly into the oil heartlands of the planet, did prepare the way, however inadvertently, for the Arab Spring to come, in part by unifying the region in misery and visceral dislike. In the meantime, the ?mistakes,? the ?incidents,? the ?collateral damage,? the slaughtered wedding parties and bombed funerals, the ?mishaps,? and ?miscommunications? continued to pile up -- as did dead Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, and Americans, so many from places you?ve never heard of if you weren?t born there. None of this should have surprised anyone. Perhaps at least marginally more surprising was the inability of the U.S. military to wield its destructive power to win anything whatsoever. Since the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, there have been so many proclamations of "success," of ?mission accomplished,? of corners turned and tipping points reached, of ?progress? made, and so very, very little to show. Amid the destruction, destabilization, and disaster, the high hopes quietly evaporated. Now, of course, ?shock and awe? is long gone. Those triumphant ?surges? are history. Counterinsurgency, or COIN -- for a while the hottest thing around -- has been swept back into the dustbin of history from which General (now CIA Director) David Petraeus rescued it not so many years ago. After a decade in Afghanistan in which the U.S. military has battled a minority insurgency, perhaps as unpopular as any ?popular? movement could be, the war there is now almost universally considered ?unwinnable? or a ?stalemate.? Of course, what a stalemate means when the planet's most powerful military takes on a bunch of backcountry guerrillas, some armed with weapons that deserve to be in museums, is at best an open question. Meanwhile, after almost nine years of war and occupation, the U.S. military is shutting down its multi-billion-dollar mega-bases in Iraq and withdrawing its troops. Though it leaves behind a monster State Department mission guarded by a 5,000-man army of mercenaries, a militarized budget of $6.5 billion for 2012, and more than 700 mostly hire-a-gun trainers, Iraq is visibly a loss for Washington. In Pakistan, the American drone war combined with the latest ?incident? on the Pakistani border, evidently involving U.S. special forces operatives, has further destabilized that country and the U.S. alliance there. A major Pakistani presidential candidate is already calling for the end of that alliance, while anti-Americanism grows by leaps and bounds. None of this should startle either. After all, what exactly could an obdurately military-first foreign policy bring with it but the whirlwind (and not just to foreign lands either)? As the Occupy Wall Street protests and their repression remind us, American police forces, too, were heavily militarized. Meanwhile, our wars and national security spending have drained the U.S. of trillions of dollars in national treasure, leaving behind a country in political gridlock, its economy in something close to a shock-and-awe state, its infrastructure crumbling, and vast majorities of its angry citizens convinced that their land is not only ?on the wrong track,? but ?in decline.? Into the Whirlwind A decade later, perhaps the only thing that should truly cause surprise is how little has been learned in Washington. The military-first policy of choice that rang in the century -- there were, of course, other options available -- has become the only option left in Washington?s impoverished arsenal. After all, the country's economic power is in tatters (which is why the Europeans are looking to China for help in the Euro crisis), its ?soft power? has gone down the tubes, and its diplomatic corps has either been militarized or was long ago relegated to the back of the bus of state. What couldn?t be stranger, though, is that from the whirlwind of policy disaster, the Obama administration has drawn the least likely conclusion: that more of what has so visibly failed us is in order -- from Pakistan to Uganda, Afghanistan to Somalia, the Persian Gulf to China. Yes, COIN is out and drones as well as special operations forces are in, but the essential policy remains the same. The evidence of the last decade clearly indicates that nothing of significance is likely to be built from the rubble of such a global policy -- most obviously in relations with China, America?s greatest creditor. However, there, too, as President Obama signaled (however feebly) with his recent announcement of a symbolic permanent deployment of U.S. Marines to Darwin, Australia, the military path remains the path of least resistance. As Michael Klare put it recently in the Nation magazine, ?It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the White House has decided to counter China?s spectacular economic growth with a military riposte.? As Barry Lando, former 60 Minutes producer, points out, China, not the U.S., is already ?one of the largest oil beneficiaries of the Iraq War.? In fact, our military build-up throughout the Persian Gulf region is, in essence, guarding Chinese commerce. ?Just as American troops and bases have spread along the Gulf,? Lando writes, ?so have China?s businessmen, eager to exploit the vital resources that the U.S. military is thoughtfully protecting... A strange symbiosis: American bases and Chinese markets.? In other words, the single most monstrous mistake of the Bush years -- the confusion of military with economic power -- has been set in stone. Washington continues to lead with its drones and ask questions or offer condolences or launch investigations later. This is, of course, a path guaranteed to bring destruction and blowback in its wake. None of it is likely to benefit us in the long run, least of all in relation to China. When history, that most unpredictable of subjects, becomes predictable, watch out. In what should be a think-outside-the-box moment, the sole lesson Washington seems capable of absorbing is that its failed policy is the only possible policy. Among other things, this means more ?incidents,? more ?mistakes,? more ?accidents,? more dead, more embittered people vowing vengeance, more investigations, more pleas of self-defense, more condolences, more money draining out of the U.S. treasury, and more destabilization. As it has been since September 12, 2001, Washington remains engaged in a fierce and costly losing battle with ghosts in which, unfortunately, perfectly real people die, and perfectly real women are widowed. He was 22 years old... She was 12... Those are lines you will read again and again in our no-learning-curve world and no condolences will be enough. Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush?s Wars Became Obama?s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books), has just been published. Copyright 2011 Tom Engelhardt From ths at psalience.org Fri Dec 2 16:27:55 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:27:55 +0100 Subject: [THS] F. William Engdahl: Why Moscow does not Trust Washington on Missile Defense Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111202162325.041264b8@mail.messagingengine.com> Why Moscow does not Trust Washington on Missile Defense By F. William Engdahl URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27987 Global Research, December 2, 2011 Most in the civilized world are blissfully unaware that we are marching ineluctably towards an increasingly likely pre-emptive nuclear war. No, it's not at all about Iran and Israel. It's about the decision of Washington and the Pentagon to push Moscow up against the wall with what is euphemistically called Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD). On November 23, a normally low-keyed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the world in clear terms that Russia was prepared to deploy its missiles on the border to the EU between Poland and Lithuania, and possibly in the south near Georgia and NATO member Turkey to counter the advanced construction process of the US ballistic missile defense shield: "The Russian Federation will deploy in the west and the south of the country modern weapons systems that could be used to destroy the European component of the US missile defense," he announced on Russian television. "One of these steps could be the deployment of the Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad."1 Those would be theatre ballistic missile systems. The latest version of Iskander, the Iskander-K, whose details remain top secret, reportedly has a range up to 2000 km and carries cruise missiles and a target accuracy to 7 meters or less. Medvedev declared he has ordered the Russian defense ministry to "immediately" put radar systems in Kaliningrad that warn of incoming missile attacks on a state of combat readiness. He called for extending the targeting range of Russia's strategic nuclear missile forces and re-equipping Russia's nuclear arsenal with new warheads capable of piercing the US/NATO defense shield due to become operational in six years, by 2018. Medvedev also threatened to pull Russia out of the New START missile reduction treaty if the United States moves as announced. Medvedev then correctly pointed to the inevitable link between ?defensive? missiles and ?offensive? missiles: ?Given the intrinsic link between strategic offensive and defensive arms, conditions for our withdrawal from the New Start treaty could also arise,? he said.2 The Russian President didn?t mince words: ?I have ordered the armed forces to develop measures to ensure, if necessary, that we can destroy the command and control systems? of the US shield, Medvedev said. ?These measures are appropriate, effective and low-cost.? Russia has repeatedly warned that the US BMD global shield is designed to destabilize the nuclear balance and risks provoking a new arms race. The Russian President said that rather than take the Russian concerns seriously, Washington has instead been ?accelerating? its BMD development.3 It was not the first time Medvedev threatened to take countermeasures to the increasing Pentagon military encirclement pressure on Russia. Back in November 2008 as the US BMD threat was first made known to the world, Medvedev made a televised address to the Russian people in which he declared, ?I would add something about what we have had to face in recent years: what is it? It is the construction of a global missile defense system, the installation of military bases around Russia, the unbridled expansion of NATO and other similar ?presents? for Russia ? we therefore have every reason to believe that they are simply testing our strength.? 4 That threat was dropped some months later when the Obama Administration offered the now-clearly deceptive olive branch of reversing the BMD decision to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia is threatening to deploy its Iskander anti-BMD missiles in Kaliningrad This time around Washington lost no time signaling it was in the developing game of thermonuclear chicken to stay. No more pretty words about ?reset? in US-Russia relations. A spokesman for the Obama National Security Council declared, ?we will not in any way limit or change our deployment plans for Europe." The US Administration continues to insist on the implausible argument that the missile defense installations are aimed at a threat from a possible Iranian nuclear launch, something hardly credible. The real risk of Iranian nuclear missile attack on Europe given the reality of the global US as well as Israeli BMD installations and the reality of Iran's nuclear delivery capabilities, is by best impartial accounts, near zero. Two days earlier on November 21, Washington had thrown a small carrot to Moscow. US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher said that Washington was ready to provide information about the missile's speed after it uses up all of its fuel. This information, referred to as burnout velocity (VBO), helps to determine how to target it.5 That clearly was not seen as a serious concession by Moscow, which demands a full hands-on partnership with the US/NATO missile deployment to insure it will never be used against Russia. After all, given Washington's track record of lies and broken promises, there is no guarantee the speeds would even be true. After the early October Brussels NATO defense ministers meeting, NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in regard to the nominally NATO European Missile Defense Program, ?We would expect it to be fully operational in 2018." Spain just announced it plans to join the US-controlled missile program, joining Romania, Poland, the Netherlands and Turkey, which have already agreed to deploy key components of the future missile defense network on their territories.6 The concerns of Russia are caused by the dramatic improvement of an entire system of missile defense by Washington, which is taking the form of a global BMD system encircling Russia on all sides. Full Spectrum Dominance... The last time Washington's Missile Defense "Shield" made headlines was in September 2009 early in the Obama Administration when the US President offered to downgrade the provocative stationing of US special radar and anti-missile missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic. That was a clear tactic to prepare the way for what Hillary Clinton ludicrously called the "reset" in US-Russian relations from the tense Bush-Putin days. However the strategic goal of encircling the one nuclear potential opponent in the world with credible missile defense remained US strategy. Barack Obama announced back then that the US was altering Bush Administration plans to station US anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and sophisticated radar in the Czech Republic. The news was greeted in Moscow as an important concession.7 Subsequent developments clearly show that far from ditching its plans for a missile shield that could cripple any potential Russian nuclear launch, the US was merely opting for a more effective global system, whose feasibility had been proven in the meantime. To assuage the Poles, the Obama Administration also agreed to provide Poland with US Patriot missiles. Poland?s Foreign Minister then and now is Radek Sikorski. From 2002 to 2005 he was in Washington as a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a noted neo-conservative hawkish think-tank, and executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative, a project to bring as many former communist countries of eastern Europe into NATO as possible. Little wonder Moscow did not view US missiles in Poland as friendly, nor does it today. In May 2011 the Obama Administration announced that the missiles it would now give Poland consisted of new Raytheon (RTN) SM-3 missile defense systems at the Redzikowo military base in Poland (see map), roughly 50 miles from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, a unique piece of Russian real estate not connected to mainland Russia, but adjacent to the Baltic Sea and Lithuania. That puts US missiles closer to Russia than during the 1961 Cuba Missile Crisis when Washington placed ICBM?s at sites in Turkey aimed at key Soviet nuclear sites. 8 The new Raytheon SM-3 missile is part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System that will be aimed at intercepting short to intermediate range ballistic missiles. The SM-3 Kinetic Warhead intercepts incoming ballistic missiles outside the earth's atmosphere. Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems and Sensors developed the Aegis BMD Weapon System. The SM-3 comes from Raytheon Missile Systems. The Polish SM-3 missile deployment is but one part of a global web encircling Russia?s nuclear capacities. One should not forget that official Pentagon military strategy is called Full Spectrum Dominance?control of pretty much the entire universe. This past September the US and Romania, another new NATO member, signed an agreement to deploy a US-controlled Missile Defense System on the Deveselu Air Base in Romania using the SM-3 missiles. As well Washington has signed an agreement with NATO member Turkey to place a sophisticated missile tracking radar atop a high mountain in the Kuluncak district of Malatya province in south-eastern Turkey. Though the Pentagon insists its radar is pointed at Iran, a look at a map reveals how easily the focal direction could cover key Russian nuclear sites such as Stevastopol where the bulk of the Russian Navy?s Black Sea Fleet is stationed or to the vital Russian Krasnodar radar installation.9 The Malataya radar will send data to US ships equipped with the Aegis combat system that will intercept ?Iranian? ballistic missiles. According to Russian military experts, one of the main aims of that radar, which targets at a range up to 2000 kilometers, will also be the surveillance and control of the air space of the South Caucasus, part of Central Asia as well as the south of Russia, in particular tracking the experimental launches of the Russian missiles at their test ranges.10 Further, the US-controlled BMD deployment now also includes sea-based ?Aegis? systems in the Black Sea near Russia?s Sevastopol Naval Base, as well as possible deployment of intermediate range missiles in Black Sea and Caspian region.11 But the European BMS deployments of the US Pentagon are but a part of a huge global web. At the Fort Greeley Alaska Missile Field the US has installed BMD ground-based missile interceptors, as well as at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And the Pentagon just opened two missile sites at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii. To add to it, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has joined formally with the US Missile Defense Agency to develop a system of so-called Aegis BMD deploying the SM-3 Raytheon missiles on Japanese naval ships.12 That gives the US a Pacific platform from which it can hit both China and Russia?s Far East as well as the Korean Peninsula. These are all a pretty long and curious way to reach any Iranian threat. Origins of US Missile Defense The US program to build a global network of ?defense? against possible enemy ballistic missile attacks began back in March 23, 1983 when then-President Ronald Reagan proposed the program popularly known as Star Wars, formally called then the Strategic Defense Initiative. In 1994 at a private dinner discussion with this author in Moscow, the former head of economic studies for the Soviet Union?s Institute of World Economy & International Relations, IMEMO, declared that it had been the huge financial demands required by Russia to keep pace with the multi-billion dollar US Star Wars effort that finally led to the economic collapse of the Warsaw Pact and to German reunification in 1990. With a losing war in Afghanistan, collapsing oil revenues caused by a 1986 US policy of flooding the world market with Saudi oil, the military economy of the USSR was unable to keep pace, short of risking massive civilian unrest across the Warsaw Pact nations.13 This time around the US BMD deployment is designed to bring Russia to her knees as well, only in the context of a US creation of what military strategists call ?Nuclear Primacy.? Nuclear Primacy: Thinking the Unthinkable While the Soviet era armed forces have undergone a drastic shrinking down since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Russia has tenaciously held on to the core of its strategic nuclear deterrent. That is something that gives Washington pause when considering how to deal with Russia. The potential for Russia to deepen its military and economic cooperation with its Central Asian partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, above all with China, is something Washington has gone to great lengths to frustrate. Such a strategic cooperation is becoming increasingly a matter of life-or-death for both China and Russia. China?s nuclear arsenal is not yet strategic as is Russia?s. What the Pentagon is going for is what it has dreamed of since the Soviets developed intercontinental ballistic missiles during the 1950?s. Weapons professionals term it Nuclear Primacy. Translated into layman?s language, Nuclear Primacy means that if one of two evenly-matched nuclear foes is able to deploy even a crude anti-ballistic missile defense system that can seriously damage the nuclear strike capacity of the other, while he launches a full-scale nuclear barrage against that foe, he has won the nuclear war. The darker side of that military-strategic Nuclear Primacy coin is that the side without adequate offsetting BMD anti-missile defenses, as he watches his national security vanish with each new BMD missile and radar installation, is under growing pressure to launch a pre-emptive nuclear or other devastating strike before the window closes. That in simple words means that far from being ?defensive? as Washington claims, BMD is offensive and destabilizing in the extreme. Moreover, those nations blissfully deluding themselves that by granting the Pentagon rights to install BMS infrastructure, that they are buying the security umbrella of the mighty United States Armed Forces, find that they have allowed their territory to become a potential nuclear field of battle in an ever more likely confrontation between Washington and Moscow. Dr. Robert Bowman, a retired Lieutenant Colonel of the US Air Force and former head of President Reagan?s BMD effort of the 1980?s, then dubbed derisively ?Star Wars,? noted the true nature of Washington?s current ballistic missile ?defense? under what is today called the Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency: Under Reagan and Bush I, it was the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). Under Clinton, it became the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). Now Bush II has made it the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and given it the freedom from oversight and audit previously enjoyed only by the black programs. If Congress doesn't act soon, this new independent agency may take their essentially unlimited budget and spend it outside of public and Congressional scrutiny on weapons that we won't know anything about until they're in space. In theory, then, the space warriors would rule the world, able to destroy any target on earth without warning. Will these new super weapons bring the American people security? Hardly.14 During the Cold War, the ability of both sides?the Warsaw Pact and NATO?to mutually annihilate one another, had led to a nuclear stalemate dubbed by military strategists, MAD?Mutually Assured Destruction. It was scary but, in a bizarre sense, more stable than what Washington now pursues relentlessly with its Ballistic Missile Defense in Europe, Asia and globally in unilateral pursuit of US nuclear primacy. MAD was based on the prospect of mutual nuclear annihilation with no decisive advantage for either side; it led to a world in which nuclear war had been ?unthinkable.? Now, the US was pursuing the possibility of nuclear war as ?thinkable.? Lt. Colonel Bowman, in a telephone interview with this author called missile defense, ?the missing link to a First Strike.? 15 The fact is that Washington hides behind a NATO facade with its deployment of the European BMD, while keeping absolute US control over it. Russia's NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin recently called the European portion of the US BMD a fig leaf for "a missile defense umbrella that says 'Made in USA. European NATO members will have neither a button to push nor a finger to push it with.? 16 That?s clearly why Russia continues to insist on guarantees - from the United States - that the shield is not directed against Russia. Worryingly enough, to date Washington has categorically refused that. Could it be that the dear souls in Washington entrusted with maintaining world peace have gone bonkers? In any case the fact that Washington continues to tear up solemn international arms treaties and illegally proceed to install its global missile shield is basis enough for those in Moscow, Beijing or elsewhere to regard US promises, even treaties as not worth the paper they were written on. F. William Engdahl may be contacted through his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. His newest book on oil geopolitics, titled Myths, Lies and Oil Wars is due out by spring of 2012. Notes 1 David M. Herszenhorn, Russia Elevates Warning About U.S. Missile-Defense Plan in Europe, The New York Times, November 23, 2011. 2. Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Misha, Medvedev: Russia will Deploy Iskanders in Kaliningrad to Neutralize New US Missile Threat, Misha?s Russian Blog, December 30, 2008, accessed in http://mishasrussiablog.blogspot.com/2008/11/medevev-russia-will-deploy-iskanders-in.html. 5 RIA Novosti, US ready to provide Russia with missile shield details, Moscow, November 21, 2011, accessed in http://en.rian.ru/russia/20111121/168883920.html. 6 RIA Novosti, NATO's missile defense program to be fully operational in 2018 ? Rasmussen, 5 October, 2011, accessed in http://en.rian.ru/world/20111005/167417252.html. 7 CNN, U.S. scraps missile defense shield plans, September 17, 2009, accessed in http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/09/17/united.states.missile.shield/index.html 8 Kenneth Repoza, Obama's Cold War? Raytheon Missiles On Russia's Border By 2018, Forbes, September 15, 2011, accessed in http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/09/15/obamas-cold-war-raytheon-missiles-on-russias-border-by-2018/ 9 Missile Defense Agency, News and Resources various press releases and program descriptions, accessed in http://www.mda.mil/news/news.html 10 Sergey Sargsyan, Turkey in the US Missile Defense System: Primary Assessment and Possible Prospects, 13 October, 2011, Center for Political Studies, ?Noravank? Foundation, accessed in http://noravank.am/eng/articles/detail.php?ELEMENT_ID=6051 11 Ibid. 12 Missile Defense Agency, op. cit. 13 F. William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, Wiesbaden, 2010, edition.engdahl, p. 145. 14 Robert Bowman, cited in F. William Engdahl, op.cit., p. 161. 15 Ibid., p. 162 16 RIA Novosti, Nato Is Figleaf, November 1, 2011. Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. Your endorsement is greatly appreciated Subscribe to the Global Research e-newsletter Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article. To become a Member of Global Research The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor at yahoo.com www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner. For media inquiries: crgeditor at yahoo.com ? Copyright F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 2011 The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27987 ? Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia ? Copyright 2005-2007 From ths at psalience.org Fri Dec 2 16:33:44 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:33:44 +0100 Subject: [THS] Former Mossad chief: Israeli attack on Iran must be stopped to avert catastrophe Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111202163332.0401aae0@mail.messagingengine.com> Published 22:31 01.12.11 Latest update 22:31 01.12.11 Former Mossad chief: Israeli attack on Iran must be stopped to avert catastrophe Meir Dagan speaks out against military offensive on Iran, expresses concern that Defense Minister Barak believes Israel only has less than a year to carry out an attack. By Amos Harel Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan warned Thursday against an Israeli attack on Iran, saying such a move would likely lead to a regional war involving Hezbollah, Hamas, and Syria. "I'm concerned about possible mistakes and I prefer to speak out before there is a catastrophe," Dagan said in an interview on the Israeli television program ?Uvda." "I think that engaging, with open eyes, in a regional war is warranted only when we are under attack or when the sword is already cutting against our live flesh. It is not an alternative that should be chosen lightly." Dagan stressed that though he cannot predict how many casualties an attack on Iran would yield, he said, "I have to assume that the level of destruction, paralysis of every-day life, and Israeli death toll would be high." He said that he has no interest in hiding his fervent opposition to an Israeli attack on Iran from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Dagan said he was worried about Barak's past comments on Iran, saying Barak believes Israel has less than a year to carry out an military strike. "I am very concerned," he said. "My understanding of Barak's comments is that Israel must act within this timeframe, but I don't believe this is accurate." Earlier Thursday, Barak responded to comments by U.S. Joints Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, who said that he did not know whether Israel would alert the United States ahead of time if it decided to take military action against Iran. Barak said Israel isn't looking for war with Iran and said that he would be pleased if diplomatic moves and sanctions sway Tehran away from its contentious nuclear program. Barak's comments came after Israeli intelligence sources told the Times of London on Wednesday that a recent explosion in the western Iranian city of Ishafan was not an accident, as Iranian officials had claimed, and that the local uranium conversion plant had been damaged in the blast. The intelligence officials told the Times that updated satellite images showed smoke billowing from the direction of the conversion plant. According to the Israeli sources, there was "no doubt" that the blast had damaged the nuclear facility, and that the explosion was not an "accident." "This caused damage to the facilities in Isfahan, particularly to the elements we believe were involved in storage of raw materials," one source told the Times. http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/former-mossad-chief-israeli-attack-on-iran-must-be-stopped-to-avert-catastrophe-1.399046 From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 12:55:16 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 12:55:16 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!!!! Michael Hudson: Debt and Democracy - Has the Link Been Broken? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203123722.04c3f550@mail.messagingengine.com> Michael Hudson: Debt and Democracy - Has the Link Been Broken? Posted: 02 Dec 2011 02:24 AM PST By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College A longer version of this article in German was published in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung on December 5, 2011 [the FAZ provided this anachronistic note]. Book V of Aristotle's Politics describes the eternal transition of oligarchies making themselves into hereditary aristocracies - which end up being overthrown by tyrants or develop internal rivalries as some families decide to 'the multitude into their camp' and usher in democracy, within which an oligarchy emerges once again, followed by aristocracy, democracy, and so on throughout history. Debt has been the main dynamic driving these shifts - always with new twists and turns. It polarizes wealth to create a creditor class, whose oligarchic rule is ended as new leaders ('tyrants' to Aristotle) win popular support by canceling the debts and redistributing property or taking its usufruct for the state. Since the Renaissance, however, bankers have shifted their political support to democracies. This did not reflect egalitarian or liberal political convictions as such, but rather a desire for better security for their loans. As James Steuart explained in 1767, royal borrowings remained private affairs rather than truly public debts. For a sovereign's debts to become binding upon the entire nation, elected representatives had to enact the taxes to pay their interest charges. By giving taxpayers this voice in government, the Dutch and British democracies provided creditors with much safer claims for payment than did kings and princes whose debts died with them. But the recent debt protests from Iceland to Greece and Spain suggest that creditors are shifting their support away from democracies. They are demanding fiscal austerity and even privatization sell-offs. This is turning international finance into a new mode of warfare. Its objective is the same as military conquest in times past: to appropriate land and mineral resources, communal infrastructure and extract tribute. In response, democracies are demanding referendums over whether to pay creditors by selling off the public domain and raising taxes to impose unemployment, falling wages and economic depression. The alternative is to write down debts or even annul them, and to re-assert regulatory control over the financial sector. Near Eastern Rulers Proclaimed Clean Slates to Preserve Economic Balance Charging interest on advances of goods or money was not originally intended to polarize economies. First administered early in the third millennium BC as a contractual arrangement by Sumer's temples and palaces with merchants and entrepreneurs who typically worked in the royal bureaucracy, interest at 20% (doubling the principal in five years) was supposed to approximate a fair share of the returns from long-distance trade or leasing land and other public assets such as workshops, boats and ale houses. As the practice was privatized by royal collectors of user fees and rents, 'divine kingship' protected agrarian debtors. Hammurabi's laws (c. 1750 BC) cancelled their debts in times of flood or drought. All the rulers of his Babylonian dynasty began their first full year on the throne by canceling agrarian debts so as to clear out payment arrears by proclaiming a clean slate. Bondservants, land or crop rights and other pledges were returned to the debtors to 'restore order' in an idealized 'original' condition of balance. This practice survived in the Jubilee Year of Mosaic Law in Leviticus 25. The logic was clear enough. Ancient societies needed to field armies to defend their land, and this required liberating indebted citizens from bondage. Hammurabi's laws protected charioteers and other fighters from being reduced to debt bondage, and blocked creditors from taking the crops of tenants on royal and other public lands and on communal land that owed manpower and military service to the palace. In Egypt, the pharaoh Bakenranef (c. 720-715 BC, 'Bocchoris' in Greek) proclaimed a debt amnesty and abolished debt-servitude when faced with a military threat from Ethiopia. According to Diodorus of Sicily (I, 79, writing in 40-30 BC), he ruled that if a debtor contested the claim, the debt was nullified if the creditor could not back up his claim by producing a written contract. (It seems that creditors always have been prone to exaggerate the balances due.) The pharaoh reasoned that 'the bodies of citizens should belong to the state, to the end that it might avail itself of the services which its citizens owed it, in times of both war and peace. For he felt that it would be absurd for a soldier to be haled to prison by his creditor for an unpaid loan, and that the greed of private citizens should in this way endanger the safety of all.' The fact that the main Near Eastern creditors were the palace, temples and their collectors made it politically easy to cancel the debts. It always is easy to annul debts owed to oneself. Even Roman emperors burned the tax records to prevent a crisis. But it was much harder to cancel debts owed to private creditors as the practice of charging interest spread westward to Mediterranean chiefdoms after about 750 BC. Instead of enabling families to bridge gaps between income and outgo, debt became the major lever of land expropriation, polarizing communities between creditor oligarchies and indebted clients. In Judah, the prophet Isaiah (5:8-9) decried foreclosing creditors who 'add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land.' Creditor power and stable growth rarely have gone together. Most personal debts in this classical period were the product of small amounts of money lent to individuals living on the edge of subsistence and who could not make ends meet. Forfeiture of land and assets - and personal liberty - forced debtors into bondage that became irreversible. By the 7thh century BC, 'tyrants'(popular leaders) emerged to overthrow the aristocracies in Corinth and other wealthy Greek cities, gaining support by canceling the debts. In a less tyrannical manner, Solon founded the Athenian democracy in 594 BC by banning debt bondage. But oligarchies re-emerged and called in Rome when Sparta's kings Agis, Cleomenes and their successor Nabis sought to cancel debts late in the third century BC. They were killed and their supporters driven out. It has been a political constant of history since antiquity that creditor interests opposed both popular democracy and royal power able to limit the financial conquest of society and an almost autonomous dynamic turning the economic surplus into interest-bearing debt claims for payment. When the Gracchi brothers and their followers tried to reform the credit laws in 133 BC, the dominant Senatorial class acted with violence, killing them and inaugurating a century of Social War, resolved by the ascension of Augustus as emperor in 29 BC. Rome's Creditor Oligarchy Wins the Social War, Enserfs the Population and Brings on a Dark Age Matters were more bloody abroad. Aristotle did not mention empire building as part of his political schema, but foreign conquest always has been a major factor in imposing debts, and war debts have been the major cause of public debt in modern times. Antiquity's harshest debt levy was by Rome, whose creditors spread out to plague Asia Minor, its most prosperous province. The rule of law all but disappeared when publican creditors arrived. Mithridates of Pontus led three popular revolts, and local populations in Ephesus and other cities rose up and killed a reported 80,000 Romans in 88 BC. The Roman army retaliated, and Sulla imposed war tribute of 20,000 talents in 84 BC. Charges for back interest multiplied this sum six-fold by 70 BC. Among Rome's leading historians, Livy, Plutarch and Diodorus blamed the fall of the Republic on creditor intransigence in waging the century-long Social War marked by political murder from 133 to 29 BC. Populist leaders sought to gain a following by advocating debt cancellations (e.g., the Catiline conspiracy in 63-62 BC). They were killed. By the second century AD about a quarter of the population was reduced to bondage. By the fifth century Rome's economy collapsed, stripped of money. Subsistence life reverted to the countryside as a Dark Age descended. Creditors Find a Legalistic Reason to Support Parliamentary Democracy When banking recovered after the Crusades looted Byzantium and infused silver and gold to review Western European commerce, Christian opposition to charging interest was overcome by the combination of prestigious lenders (the Knights Templars and Hospitaliers providing credit during the Crusades) and their major clients - kings, at first to pay the Church and increasingly to wage war. But royal debts went bad when kings died. The Bardi and Peruzzi went bankrupt in 1345 when Edward III repudiated his war debts. Banking families lost more on loans to the Habsburg and Bourbon despots on the thrones of Spain, Austria and France. Matters changed with the Dutch democracy, seeking to win and secure its liberty from Habsburg Spain. The fact that their parliament was to contract permanent public debts on behalf of the state enabled the Low Countries to raise loans to employ mercenaries in an epoch when money and credit were the sinews of war. Access to credit 'was accordingly their most powerful weapon in the struggle for their freedom,' notes Ehrenberg: 'Anyone who gave credit to a prince knew that the repayment of the debt depended only on his debtor's capacity and will to pay. The case was very different for the cities, which had power as overlords, but were also corporations, associations of individuals held in common bond. According to the generally accepted law each individual burgher was liable for the debts of the city both with his person and his property.' The financial achievement of parliamentary government was thus to establish debts that were not merely the personal obligations of princes, but were truly public and binding regardless of who occupied the throne. This is why the first two democratic nations, the Netherlands and Britain after its 1688 revolution, developed the most active capital markets and proceeded to become leading military powers. What is ironic is that it was the need for war financing that promoted democracy, forming a symbiotic trinity between war making, credit and parliamentary democracy in an epoch when money was still the sinews of war. At this time 'the legal position of the King qua borrower was obscure, and it was still doubtful whether his creditors had any remedy against him in case of default. 'The more despotic Spain, Austria and France became, the greater the difficulty they found in financing their military adventures. By the end of the eighteenth century Austria was left 'without credit, and consequently without much debt' the least credit-worthy and worst armed country in Europe (as Steuart 1767:373 noted), fully dependent on British subsidies and loan guarantees by the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Finance Accommodates Itself to Democracy, but Then Pushes for Oligarchy While the nineteenth century's democratic reforms reduced the power of landed aristocracies to control parliaments, bankers moved flexibly to achieve a symbiotic relationship with nearly every form of government. In France, followers of Saint-Simon promoted the idea of banks acting like mutual funds, extending credit against equity shares in profit. The German state made an alliance with large banking and heavy industry. Marx wrote optimistically about how socialism would make finance productive rather than parasitic. In the United States, regulation of public utilities went hand in hand with guaranteed returns. In China, Sun-Yat-Sen wrote in 1922: 'I intend to make all the national industries of China into a Great Trust owned by the Chinese people, and financed with international capital for mutual benefit.' World War I saw the United States replace Britain as the major creditor nation, and by the end of World War II it had cornered some 80 percent of the world's monetary gold. Its diplomats shaped the IMF and World Bank along creditor-oriented lines that financed trade dependency, mainly on the United States. Loans to finance trade and payments deficits were subject to 'conditionalities' that shifted economic planning to client oligarchies and military dictatorships. The democratic response to resulting austerity plans squeezing out debt service was unable to go much beyond 'IMF riots, 'until Argentina rejected its foreign debt. A similar creditor-oriented austerity is now being imposed on Europe by the European Central Bank (ECB) and EU bureaucracy. Ostensibly social democratic governments have been directed to save the banks rather than reviving economic growth and employment. Losses on bad bank loans and speculations are taken onto the public balance sheet while scaling back public spending and even selling off infrastructure. The response of taxpayers stuck with the resulting debt has been to mount popular protests starting in Iceland and Latvia in January 2009, and more widespread demonstrations in Greece and Spain this autumn to protest their governments' refusal to hold referendums on these fateful bailouts of foreign bondholders. Shifting Planning Away From Elected Public Representatives To Bankers Every economy is planned. This traditionally has been the function of government. Relinquishing this role under the slogan of 'free markets' leaves it in the hands of banks. Yet the planning privilege of credit creation and allocation turns out to be even more centralized than that of elected public officials. And to make matters worse, the financial time frame is short-term hit-and-run, ending up as asset stripping. By seeking their own gains, the banks tend to destroy the economy. The surplus ends up being consumed by interest and other financial charges, leaving no revenue for new capital investment or basic social spending. This is why relinquishing policy control to a creditor class rarely has gone together with economic growth and rising living standards. The tendency for debts to grow faster than the population's ability to pay has been a basic constant throughout all recorded history. Debts mount up exponentially, absorbing the surplus and reducing much of the population to the equivalent of debt peonage. To restore economic balance, antiquity's cry for debt cancellation sought what the Bronze Age Near East achieved by royal fiat: to cancel the overgrowth of debts. In more modern times, democracies have urged a strong state to tax rentier income and wealth, and when called for, to write down debts. This is done most readily when the state itself creates money and credit. It is done least easily when banks translate their gains into political power. When banks are permitted to be self-regulating and given veto power over government regulators, the economy is distorted to permit creditors to indulge in the speculative gambles and outright fraud that have marked the past decade. The fall of the Roman Empire demonstrates what happens when creditor demands are unchecked. Under these conditions the alternative to government planning and regulation of the financial sector becomes a road to debt peonage. Finance vs. Government; Oligarchy vs. Democracy Democracy involves subordinating financial dynamics to serve economic balance and growth - and taxing rentier income or keeping basic monoopolies in the public domain. Untaxing or privatizing property income 'frees' it to be pledged to the banks, to be capitalized into larger loans. Financed by debt leveraging, asset-price inflation increases rentier wealth while indebting the economy at large. The economy shrinks, falling into negative equity. The financial sector has gained sufficient influence to use such emergencies as an opportunity to convince governments that that the economy will collapse if they do not 'save the banks.' In practice this means consolidating their control over policy, which they use in ways that further polarize economies. The basic model is what occurred in ancient Rome, moving from democracy to oligarchy. In fact, giving priority to bankers and leaving economic planning to be dictated by the EU, ECB and IMF threatens to strip the nation-state of the power to coin or print money and levy taxes. The resulting conflict is pitting financial interests against national self-determination. The idea of an independent central bank being 'the hallmark of democracy' is a euphemism for relinquishing the most important policy decision - the ability to create money and credit - to the financial sector. Rather than leaving the policy choice to popular referendums, the rescue of banks organized by the EU and ECB now represents the largest category of rising national debt. The private bank debts taken onto government balance sheets in Ireland and Greece have been turned into taxpayer obligations. The same is true for America's $13 trillion added since September 2008 (including $5.3 trillion in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bad mortgages taken onto the government's balance sheet, and $2 trillion of Federal Reserve 'cash-for-trash' swaps). This is being dictated by financial proxies euphemized as technocrats. Designated by creditor lobbyists, their role is to calculate just how much unemployment and depression is needed to squeeze out a surplus to pay creditors for debts now on the books. What makes this calculation self-defeating is the fact that economic shrinkage - debt deflation - makes the debt burden even more unpayable. Neither banks nor public authorities (or mainstream academics, for that matter) calculated the economy's realistic ability to pay : that is, to pay without shrinking the economy. Through their media and think tanks, they have convinced populations that the way to get rich most rapidly is to borrow money to buy real estate, stocks and bonds rising in price - being inflated by bank credit - and to reverse the past century's progressive taxation of wealth. To put matters bluntly, the result has been junk economics. Its aim is to disable public checks and balances, shifting planning power into the hands of high finance on the claim that this is more efficient than public regulation. Government planning and taxation is accused of being 'the road to serfdom,' as if 'free markets' controlled by bankers given leeway to act recklessly is not planned by special interests in ways that are oligarchic, not democratic. Governments are told to pay bailout debts taken on not to defend countries in military warfare as in times past, but to benefit the wealthiest layer of the population by shifting its losses onto taxpayers. The failure to take the wishes of voters into consideration leaves the resulting national debts on shaky ground politically and even legally. Debts imposed by fiat, by governments or foreign financial agencies in the face of strong popular opposition may be as tenuous as those of the Habsburgs and other despots in past epochs. Lacking popular validation, they may die with the regime that contracted them. New governments may act democratically to subordinate the banking and financial sector to serve the economy, not the other way around. At the very least, they may seek to pay by re-introducing progressive taxation of wealth and income, shifting the fiscal burden onto rentier wealth and property. Re-regulation of banking and providing a public option for credit and banking services would renew the social democratic program that seemed well underway a century ago. Iceland and Argentina are most recent examples, but one may look back to the moratorium on Inter-Ally arms debts and German reparations in 1931. A basic mathematical as well as political principle is at work: Debts that can't be paid, won't be. Notes: 1.James Steuart, Principles of Political Oeconomy (1767), p. 353. 2. Richard Ehrenberg, Capital and Finance in the Age of the Renaissance (1928):44f., 33. 3. Charles Wilson, England's Apprenticeship: 1603-1763 (London: 1965):89. 4. Sun Yat-Sen, The International Development of China (1922):231ff. From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 13:25:34 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:25:34 +0100 Subject: [THS] Paul Craig Roberts: Congress is Repealing the Constitution Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203132211.062ce928@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29874.htm Paul Craig Roberts: Congress is Repealing the Constitution From: RTAmerica [video at url above There is a bill in the Senate that is attempting to keep torture alive as an interrogation technique. The National Defense Authorization Act is being debated in Congress and if passed, American citizens could be detained without a court hearing anywhere in the world. President Obama stated he will veto the bill if it should pass. Is Senate Bill 1867 threatening the US constitution? Paul Craig Roberts, former Reagan administration official and columnist, gives us his take on the proposed bill. Posted December 02, 2011 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Senate Votes to Allow Indefinite Detention of Americans By Josh Gerstein December 02, 2011 "Politico" -- The Senate on Thursday evening essentially blessed the indefinite detention of American citizens who join up with Al Qaeda. By a 45-55 vote, senators rejected an amendment from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would have excluded U.S. citizens from the detention authority created by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed just after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Feinstein's amendment would have inserted language excluding Americans into the detainee provisions of the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act. During floor debate on Feinstein's proposal, some senators argued that Supreme Court decisions make clear that American citizens can be detained under the law of war. They point to a 1942 decision upholding the trial of an American-born saboteur before a military commission and a 2004 decision in which four justices endorsed an opinion that found the government has the right to detain a U.S. citizen who joins with enemy forces. However, other senators said the facts of those cases don't squarely endorse the open-ended detention of a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil. The Senate later adopted, by a 99-1 vote, a compromise amendment clarifying that nothing in the NDAA is intended to alter the government's current legal authority to detain prisoners captured in the war on terror. An earlier Feinstein amendment seeking to limit new detention-related rules to prisoners captured outside the U.S. also failed, on a 45-55 vote. U.S. Senate Adopts Vast Military Spending Bill Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON December 02, 2011 - -The US Senate on Thursday approved a vast military spending bill that tied strings to military aid to Pakistan and aimed to stem the spread of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles from Libya">Libya. The $662 billion annual Defense Authorization legislation also included a murky compromise on the issue of whether the US government may hold suspected terrorists, including American citizens, indefinitely without trial. The bill, which sailed to passage by a lopsided 93-7 margin, included tough new sanctions aimed at cutting off Iran?s central bank from the global financial system in a bid to force Tehran to halt its alleged nuclear program. Lawmakers feuded for much of the week on the legislation?s affirmation of past judicial opinions that US citizens who sign on with Al-Qaeda or affiliated groups may be held indefinitely without trial. Senators repeatedly rejected efforts to exempt Americans from that fate, but ultimately voted 99-1 to embrace a face-saving compromise that left the volatile issue to the US Supreme Court. ?The Supreme Court will ultimately decide who can, and cannot, be detained indefinitely without trial,? said number-two Democratic Senator Dick Durbin. ?The United States Senate will not.? Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin insisted that the high court had already ruled ?there is no bar to this nation holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant? but acknowledged deep divisions on that issue. ?If that law is there allowing it, it remains. If, as some argue, the law does not allow that, then it continues that way,? said Levin, a Democrat, highlighting the compromise?s deliberate vagueness. The White House, which previously had issued a vague threat to veto the bill over the detainee provisions, had no immediate comment, but Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International urged him to stand firm. The legislation did exempt US citizens from a requirement that Al-Qaeda fighters who plot or carry out attacks on US targets be held in military, not civilian, custody, subject to a presidential national security waiver. Critics expressed worries that tough new standards for transferring detainees to other countries -- notably a requirement that top US officials formally declare them no longer a threat -- could hamper the American exit from Afghanistan, where US forces hold thousands of prisoners. The legislation included a provision by Democratic Senator Bob Casey aimed at blocking counterinsurgency aid to Pakistan until Islamabad takes aggressive steps to curb the use of roadside bombs blamed for the deaths of US soldiers in neighboring Afghanistan. It also included an amendment from Republican Senator Susan Collins that calls for US-Libya" cooperation to secure slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi?s stockpile of 20,000 portable anti-aircraft missiles. US officials fear terrorists could get their hands on such weapons in the chaotic aftermath of Kadhafi?s ouster. And it included Republican Senator John McCain?s amendment calling for closer military ties with Georgia, including the sale of weapons he said would help the country, which fought a brief war with Russia in 2008, defend itself. The bill also contained Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley?s call for an assessment of the feasibility of accelerating the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, where combat operations are due to end come 2014. And it included Republican Senator Roger Wicker?s amendment stating that US military chaplains are not required to perform gay marriage. Senate approval touched off negotiations with the House of Representatives to resolve differences between both chambers? versions and send a compromise to President Barack Obama" See Also - Senate Moves to Limit Right to Trial: According to the Act, the military is allowed to hold any person suspected of aiding al-Qaeda, the Taliban or an associated force without trial until the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force, enacted just after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are declared over. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Obama Lawyers: Citizens Targeted If At War With US By MATT APUZZO Associated Press December 02, 2011 --WASHINGTON, (AP) -- U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday. The lawyers were asked at a national security conference about the CIA killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and leading al-Qaida figure. He died in a Sept. 30 U.S. drone strike in the mountains of Yemen. The government lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson, did not directly address the al-Awlaki case. But they said U.S. citizens don't have immunity when they're at war with the United States. Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy. The courts in habeas cases, such as those involving whether a detainee should be released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, make the determination of who can be considered an enemy combatant. Late last year, a judge threw out a lawsuit filed by al-Awlaki's father, saying that the courts do not have the authority to review military decisions by the president aimed at protecting the country from terrorists. The cleric's father, Nasser al-Awlaki of Yemen, was suing to prevent the U.S. from targeting his son. Administration Officials say Obama has Sole Power to Declare Citizen?s Enemies By Matt Lacy December 02, 2011 -"Greeley Gazette" - A pair of lawyers for the Obama administration said the president has sole discretion to define who is an enemy and that U.S. citizens with that designation are legitimate military targets. Government lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson, were asked at a national security press conference about the CIA killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was also a member of al-Qaida. Following al-Awlaki?s killing by a drone aircraft; the administration has faced criticism from both the left and right. Critics have said it is one thing to die in a firefight with troops, but the aerial attack amounted to a targeted assassination. Last year, a lawsuit by al-Awlaki?s father was thrown out by a judge who said courts do not have the authority to review military decisions made by the commander in chief that are intended to protect to country from terrorists. While not directly addressing the al-Awlaki case, the lawyers said any U.S. citizen who takes up arms with al-Qaida is a legitimate military target. They went on to say that when it came to deciding who is an enemy, the executive branch, not the courts had sole authority to make that distinction. While a recent defense authorization bill has come under criticism by those who say it could grant the military powers to detain U.S. citizens here in America, the bill has not yet been signed into law. Today?s statements show that regardless of what the bill contains, the President believes he has full power to declare a U.S. citizen an enemy and order his termination. Brian Britton with the Greeley 9/12 Project called the statement by the administration ?frightening.? ?For any president, regardless of his political party to have the power to act as judge jury and executioner of any American citizen based simply on his say so is frightening,? Britton said ?Members of Congress and even the Department of Homeland Security have said that everyday citizens can be terrorists if they support Ron Paul for president, are in favor of lower taxes or love the Constitution. Based on those statements, every tea party member is a possible military target.? During this Summers debate over the debt limit, Republican members of Congress and the tea party were called terrorists by several Democratic lawmakers. On Aug. 1, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) speaking about members of the tea party caucus, reportedly said ?We have negotiated with terrorists. This small group of terrorists has made it impossible to spend any money.? Vice-President Joe Biden supposedly echoed the sentiment saying ?They have acted like terrorists.? Biden has denied making the remark. A few days before Doyle?s comments, former Ted Kennedy staffer William Yeomans wrote, ?It has become commonplace to call the tea party faction in the House ?hostage takers?, but now they have become full-blown terrorists.? Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) said ?tea party extremists really held this country hostage. Another Florida Democrat Rep. Alcee Hastings said ?What we have witnessed in the past several weeks was hardly a negotiation, but rather the Republicans recklessly holding the full faith and credit of the United States hostage until they got everything they wanted and then some.? In 2009 the Department of Homeland Security issued a memo warning law-enforcement about terrorist groups. The memo's list of terrorist indicators included returning vets, people who support state authority over federal authority and those who are dedicated to a single issue such as abortion or immigration. The memo also listed Christians who believe in ?end time prophecies? such as the "Rapture" as portrayed in the Left Behind series of books and movies. DHS Secretary, Janet Napolitano, issued a statement saying she stood by the report. Critics have said the memo's description of terrorist also applies to many tea party members. The Missouri Highway Patrol was given a similar report by the Missouri Information Analysis Center that linked conservative groups with terrorists. The report said terrorist indicators included support for third-party candidates such as Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin. Other characteristics included opposition to illegal immigration, abortion and federal income taxes. The Missouri Highway Patrol disavowed the report after news of it had been made public. Soldiers taking the Department of Defense?s Annual Level I Antiterrorism Awareness Training, in 2009, were asked the question ?which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?? The choices were attacking the pentagon, IEDs, hate crimes against racial groups, and protests. To answer the question correctly on the knowledge check, the examinee had to select the answer ?Protests.? Following the complaint, the DOD withdrew the question from the training manual. From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 13:27:46 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:27:46 +0100 Subject: [THS] George Galloway: Nato May Reap What They Sow in Pakistan Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203132710.062cbaf0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29873.htm Nato May Reap What They Sow in Pakistan By George Galloway December02, 2011 "Daily Record"-----EVEN by the usual standards of American "friendly fire" incidents, the attack on Pakistani troops by US Apache helicopter gunships on Friday was potentially world changing. This was no misguided drone attack, nor a missile misfiring. It was the mass murder of 24 Pakistani soldiers. That the deaths came so soon after the killings by Nato of five Afghan children in the city of Kandahar goes to show there are no blunders too great for our occupation force. Our forces, we're told, were aiming at "terrorists" and the rest is just collateral damage. But what damage. For the Pakistani community, this was a crime. Think-tanks and working parties wonder why Muslims are being "radicalised". All that's needed for such radicalisation is the ability to switch on the TV news. Pakistan, a nuclear-armed power, is being abandoned to its fate - its government endlessly traduced, its institutions trashed. And now it is being bombed although it is an ally of those doing the bombing. I have been involved with Pakistan since the Seventies, when I joined the campaign to save the life of its greatest leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, eventually hanged by military dictator General Zia. Zia turned the country into a base camp for the so-called Holy Warriors, then at war with Red Afghanistan and now at war with us. Now, the radicalisation of Pakistan, its "Talibanisation" in think-tank speak, is being fuelled by every drop of blood spilled in incidents like this. The slowly enraging populace are cut to the quick by every unauthorised military operation on their territory. These operations won't, and can't, even work. There are millions of Pakistanis. For every "terrorist" sympathiser cut down, 100 will take his place. And we shall surely reap the whirlwind. A lesson you'd think we, the British, would have learned from our own history trying to subjugate an empire so huge that the sun never set on it. When I was a teenager Scottish regiments, under tabloid hero Colonel "Mad" Mitch Mitchell, were rampaging through the Crater District of Aden in the Yemen, shooting all that moved. We were encouraged to believe murdering the natives was necessary to keep "our" possessions "East of Suez". It failed, we failed. And the brave people of Yemen are showing every day, by overthrowing the dictatorship we helped to fashion, that no good can come of this endless killing. As Burns would have put it, the natives are merely nursing their wrath, to keep it warm. From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 13:38:28 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:38:28 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?Jonathan_Cook=3A_Israel=92s_grand_hypocrisy?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203133811.06802cd8@mail.messagingengine.com> Israel?s grand hypocrisy Netanyahu slams ?anti-liberal? Arab Spring By Jonathan Cook URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27973 Global Research, December 1, 2011 As protests raged again across the Middle East, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel?s prime minister, offered his assessment of the Arab Spring last week. It was, he said, an ?Islamic, anti-western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli, undemocratic wave?, adding that Israel?s Arab neighbours were ?moving not forwards, but backwards?. It takes some chutzpah ? or, at least, epic self-delusion ? for Israel?s prime minister to be lecturing the Arab world on liberalism and democracy at this moment. In recent weeks, a spate of anti-democratic measures have won support from Netanyahu?s rightwing government, justified by a new security doctrine: see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil of Israel. If the legislative proposals pass, the Israeli courts, Israel?s human rights groups and media, and the international community will be transformed into the proverbial three monkeys. Israel?s vigilant human rights community has been the chief target of this assault. Yesterday Netanyahu?s Likud faction and the Yisrael Beiteinu party of his far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, proposed a new law that would snuff out much of the human rights community in Israel. The bill effectively divides non-governmental organisations (NGOs) into two kinds: those defined by the right as pro-Israel and those seen as ?political?, or anti-Israel. The favoured ones, such as ambulance services and universities, will continue to be lavishly funded from foreign sources, chiefly wealthy private Jewish donors from the United States and Europe. The ?political? ones ? meaning those that criticise government policies, especially relating to the occupation ? will be banned from receiving funds from foreign governments, their main source of income. Donations from private sources, whether Israeli or foreign, will be subject to a crippling 45 per cent tax. The grounds for being defined as a ?political? NGO are suitably vague: denying Israel?s right to exist or its Jewish and democratic character; inciting racism; supporting violence against Israel; supporting politicians or soldiers being put on trial in international courts; or backing boycotts of the state. One human rights group warned that all groups assisting the UN's 2009 report report by Judge Richard Goldstone into war crimes committed during Israel?s attack on Gaza in winter 2008 would be vulnerable to such a law. Other organisations like Breaking the Silence, which publishes the testimonies of Israeli soldiers who have committed or witnessed war crimes, will be silenced themselves. And an Israeli Arab NGO said it feared that its work demanding equality for all Israeli citizens, including the fifth who are Palestinian, and an end to Jewish privilege would count as denying Israel?s Jewish character. At the same time Netanyahu wants the Israeli media emasculated. Last week his government threw its weight behind a new defamation law that will leave few but milionaires in a position to criticise politicians and officials. Mr Netanyahu observed: ?It may be called the Defamation Law, but I call it the ?publication of truth law?.? The media and human rights groups fear the worst. This monkey must speak no evil. Another bill, backed by the justice minister, Yaacov Neeman, is designed to skew the make-up of a panel selecting judges for Israel?s supreme court. Several judicial posts are about to fall vacant, and the government hopes to stuff the court with apppointees who share its ideological worldview and will not rescind its anti-democratic legislation, including its latest attack on the human rights community. Neeman?s favoured candidate is a settler who has a history of ruling against human rights organisations. Senior legislators from Mr Netanyahu?s party are pushing another bill that would make it nigh impossible for human rights organisations to petition the supreme court against government actions. The judicial monkey should see no evil. At one level, these and a host of other measures ? including increasing government intimidation of the Israeli media and academia, a crackdown on whistleblowers and the recently passed boycott law, which exposes critics of the settlements to expensive court actions for damages ? are designed to strengthen the occupation by disarming its critics inside Israel. But there is another, even more valued goal: making sure that in future the plentiful horror stories from the Palestinian territories ? monitored by human rights organisations, reported by the media and heard in the courts ? never reach the ears of the international community. The third monkey is supposed to hear no evil. The crackdown is justified in the Israeli right?s view on the grounds that criticism of the occupation represents not domestic concerns but unwelcome foreign interference in Israel?s affairs. The promotion of human rights ? whether in Israel, the occupied territories or the Arab world ? is considered by Netanyahu and his allies as inherently un-Israeli and anti-Israeli. The hypocrisy is hard to stomach. Israel has long claimed special dispensation to interfere in the affairs of both the EU and the United States. Jewish Agency staff proselytise among European and American Jews to persuade them to emigrate to Israel. Uniquely, Israel?s security agencies are given free rein at airports around the world to harass and invade the privacy of non-Jews flying to Tel Aviv. And Israel?s political proxies abroad ? sophisticated lobby groups like AIPAC in the US ? act as foreign agents while not registering as such. Of course, Israel?s qualms against foreign meddling are selective. No restrictions are planned for rightwing Jews from abroad, such as US casino magnate Irving Moskowitz, who have pumped enormous sums into propping up illegal Jewish settlements built on Palestinian land. There is a faulty logic too to Israel?s argument. As human rights activists point out, the areas where they do most of their work are located not in Israel but in the Palestinian territories, which Israel is occupying in violation of international law. Privately, European embassies have been trying to drive home this point. The EU gives Israel preferential trading status, worth billions of dollars annually to the Israeli economy, on condition that it respects human rights in the occupied territories. Europe argues it is, therefore, entitled to fund the monitoring of Israel?s treatment of the Palestinians. More?s the pity that Europe fails to act on the information it receives. Given the right?s strengthening hand, it can be expected to devise ever more creative ways to silence the human rights community and Israeli media and emasculate the courts as way to end the bad press. Israelis are obssessed with their country?s image abroad and what they regard as a ?delegitimisation? campaign that threatens not only the occupation?s continuation but also Israel?s long-term survival as an ethnic state. The leadership has been incensed by regular surveys of global opinion showing Israel ranked among the most unpopular countries in the world. The Palestinians? recent decision to turn to the international community for recognition of statehood has only amplified such grievances. Israel has no intention of altering its policies, or of pursuing peace. Rather, Netanyahu?s government has been oscillating between a desperate desire to pass yet more anti-democratic legislation to stifle criticism and a modicum of restraint motivated by fear of the international backlash. A cabinet debate last month on legislation against human rights groups focused barely at all on the proposal?s merits. Instead the head of the National Security Council, Yaakov Amidror, was called before ministers to explain whether Israel stood to lose more from passing such bills or from allowing human rights groups to carry on monitoring the occupation. Deluded as it may seem, Netanyahu?s ultimate goal is to turn the clock back 40 years, to a ?golden age? when foreign correspondents and western governments could refer, without blushing, to the occupation of the Palestinians as ?benign?. Donald Neff, Jerusalem correspondent for Time magazine in the 1970s, admitted years later that his and his colleagues? performance was so feeble at the time in large part because there was little critical information available on the occupation. When he witnessed first-hand what was taking place, his editors in the US refused to believe him and he was eventually moved on. Now, however, the genie is out the bottle. The international community understands full well ? thanks to human rights activists ? both that the occupation is brutal and that Israel has been peace-making in bad faith. If Israel continues on its current course, another myth long accepted by western countries ? that Israel is ?the only democracy in the Middle East? ? may finally be shattered. Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are ?Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East? (Pluto Press) and ?Disappearing Palestine: Israel?s Experiments in Human Despair? (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net. A version of this story was first published in the National, Abu Dhabi Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. Your endorsement is greatly appreciated Subscribe to the Global Research e-newsletter From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 13:52:37 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:52:37 +0100 Subject: [THS] Radiation From Cell Phones and WiFi Are Making People Sick Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203134224.0629edf0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/story/153299/radiation_from_cell_phones_and_wifi_are_making_people_sick_--_are_we_all_at_risk?page=entire Earth Island Journal / By Christopher Ketcham Radiation From Cell Phones and WiFi Are Making People Sick -- Are We All at Risk? We are now exposed to electromagnetic radio frequencies 24 hours a day. Welcome to the largest human experiment ever. December 2, 2011 | Consider this story: It's January 1990, during the pioneer build-out of mobile phone service. A cell tower goes up 800 feet from the house of Alison Rall, in Mansfield, Ohio, where she and her husband run a 160-acre dairy farm. The first thing the Rall family notices is that the ducks on their land lay eggs that don't hatch. That spring there are no ducklings. By the fall of 1990, the cattle herd that pastures near the tower is sick. The animals are thin, their ribs are showing, their coats growing rough, and their behavior is weird -- they're agitated, nervous. Soon the cows are miscarrying, and so are the goats. Many of the animals that gestate are born deformed. There are goats with webbed necks, goats with front legs shorter than their rear legs. One calf in the womb has a tumor the size of a basketball, another carries a tumor three feet in diameter, big enough that he won't pass through the birth canal. Rall and the local veterinarian finally cut open the mother to get the creature out alive. The vet records the nightmare in her log: "I've never seen anything like this in my entire practice... All of [this] I feel was a result of the cellular tower." Within six months, Rall's three young children begin suffering bizarre skin rashes, raised red "hot spots." The kids are hit with waves of hyperactivity; the youngest child sometimes spins in circles, whirling madly. The girls lose hair. Rall is soon pregnant with a fourth child, but she can't gain weight. Her son is born with birth defects -- brittle bones, neurological problems -- that fit no specific syndrome. Her other children, conceived prior to the arrival of the tower, had been born healthy. Desperate to understand what is happening to her family and her farm, Rall contacts the Environmental Protection Agency. She ends up talking to an EPA scientist named Carl Blackman, an expert on the biological effects of radiation from electromagnetic fields (EMFs) -- the kind of radiofrequency EMFs (RF-EMFs) by which all wireless technology operates, including not just cell towers and cell phones but wi-fi hubs and wi-fi-capable computers, "smart" utility meters, and even cordless home phones. "With my government cap on, I'm supposed to tell you you're perfectly safe," Blackman tells her. "With my civilian cap on, I have to tell you to consider leaving." Blackman's warning casts a pall on the family. When Rall contacts the cell phone company operating the tower, they tell her there is "no possibility whatsoever" that the tower is the source of her ills. "You're probably in the safest place in America," the company representative tells her. The Ralls abandoned the farm on Christmas Day of 1992 and never re-sold it, unwilling to subject others to the horrors they had experienced. Within weeks of fleeing to land they owned in Michigan, the children recovered their health, and so did the herd. Not a single one of the half-dozen scientists I spoke to could explain what had happened on the Rall farm. Why the sickened animals? Why the skin rashes, the hyperactivity? Why the birth defects? If the radiofrequency radiation from the cell tower was the cause, then what was the mechanism? And why today, with millions of cell towers dotting the planet and billions of cell phones placed next to billions of heads every day, aren't we all getting sick? In fact, the great majority of us appear to be just fine. We all live in range of cell towers now, and we are all wireless operators. More than wireless operators, we're nuts about the technology. Who doesn't keep at their side at all times the electro-plastic appendage for the suckling of information? The mobile phone as a technology was developed in the 1970s, commercialized in the mid-80s, miniaturized in the '90s. When the first mobile phone companies launched in the United Kingdom in 1985, the expectation was that perhaps 10,000 phones would sell. Worldwide shipments of mobile phones topped the one billion mark in 2006. As of October 2010 there were 5.2 billion cell phones operating on the planet. "Penetration," in the marketing-speak of the companies, often tops 100 percent in many countries, meaning there is more than one connection per person. The mobile phone in its various manifestations -- the iPhone, the Android, the Blackberry -- has been called the "most prolific consumer device" ever proffered. I don't have an Internet connection at my home in Brooklyn, and, like a dinosaur, I still keep a landline. But if I stand on my roof, I see a hundred feet away, attached to the bricks of the neighboring parking garage, a panel of cell phone antennae -- pointed straight at me. They produce wonderful reception on my cell phone. My neighbors in the apartment below have a wireless fidelity connection -- better known as wi-fi -- which I tap into when I have to argue with magazine editors. This is very convenient. I use it. I abuse it. Yet even though I have, in a fashion, opted out, here I am, on a rooftop in Brooklyn, standing bathed in the radiation from the cell phone panels on the parking garage next door. I am also bathed in the radiation from the neighbors' wi-fi downstairs. The waves are everywhere, from public libraries to Amtrak trains to restaurants and bars and even public squares like Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan, where the Wall Street occupiers relentlessly tweet. We now live in a wireless-saturated normality that has never existed in the history of the human race. It is unprecedented because of the complexity of the modulated frequencies that carry the increasingly complex information we transmit on our cell phones, smart phones and wi-fi systems. These EMFs are largely untested in their effects on human beings. Swedish neuroscientist Olle Johansson, who teaches at the world-renowned Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, tells me the mass saturation in electromagnetic fields raises terrible questions. Humanity, he says, has embarked on the equivalent of "the largest full-scale experiment ever. What happens when, 24 hours around the clock, we allow ourselves and our children to be whole-body-irradiated by new, man-made electromagnetic fields for the entirety of our lives?" We have a few answers. Last May, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, a branch of the World Health Organization), in Lyon, France, issued a statement that the electromagnetic frequencies from cell phones would henceforth be classified as "possibly carcinogenic to humans." The determination was based in part on data from a 13-country study, called Interphone, which reported in 2008 that after a decade of cell phone use, the risk of getting a brain tumor -- specifically on the side of the head where the phone is placed -- goes up as much as 40 percent for adults. Israeli researchers, using study methods similar to the Interphone investigation, have found that heavy cell phone users were more likely to suffer malignant tumors of the salivary gland in the cheek, while an independent study by scientists in Sweden concluded that people who started using a cell phone before the age of 20 were five times as likely to develop a brain tumor. According to a study published in the International Journal of Cancer Prevention, people living for more than a decade within 350 meters of a cell phone tower experience a four-fold increase in cancer rates. The IARC decision followed in the wake of multiple warnings, mostly from European regulators, about the possible health risks of RF-EMFs. In September 2007, Europe's top environmental watchdog, the EU's European Environment Agency, suggested that the mass unregulated exposure of human beings to widespread radiofrequency radiation "could lead to a health crisis similar to those caused by asbestos, smoking and lead in petrol." That same year, Germany's environmental ministry singled out the dangers of RF-EMFs used in wi-fi systems, noting that people should keep wi-fi exposure "as low as possible" and instead choose "conventional wired connections." In 2008, France issued a generalized national cell phone health warning against excessive cell phone use, and then, a year later, announced a ban on cell phone advertising for children under the age of 12. In 2009, following a meeting in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, more than 50 concerned scientists from 16 countries -- public health officials, biologists, neuroscientists, medical doctors -- signed what became known as the Porto Alegre Resolution. The signatories described it as an "urgent call" for more research based on "the body of evidence that indicates that exposure to electromagnetic fields interferes with basic human biology." That evidence is mounting. "Radiofrequency radiation has a number of biological effects which can be reproducibly found in animals and cellular systems," says David O. Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the State University of New York (SUNY). "We really cannot say for certain what the adverse effects are in humans," Carpenter tells me. "But the indications are that there may be -- and I use the words 'may be' -- very serious effects in humans." He notes that in exposure tests with animal and human cells, RF-EMF radiation causes genes to be activated. "We also know that RF-EMF causes generation of free radicals, increases production of things called heat shock proteins, and alters calcium ion regulation. These are all common mechanisms behind many kinds of tissue damage." Double-strand breaks in DNA -- one of the undisputed causes of cancer -- have been reported in similar tests with animal cells. Swedish neuro-oncologist Leif Salford, chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at Lund University, has found that cell phone radiation damages neurons in rats, particularly those cells associated with memory and learning. The damage occurred after an exposure of just two hours. Salford also found that cell phone EMFs cause holes to appear in the barrier between the circulatory system and the brain in rats. Punching holes in the blood-brain-barrier is not a good thing. It allows toxic molecules from the blood to leach into the ultra-stable environment of the brain. One of the potential outcomes, Salford notes, is dementia. Other effects from cell phone radiofrequencies have been reported using human subjects. At Loughborough University in England, sleep specialists in 2008 found that after 30 minutes of cell phone use, their subjects required twice the time to fall asleep as they did when the phone was avoided before bedtime. EEGs (electroencephalograms) showed a disturbance of the brain waves that regulate sleep. Neuroscientists at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia discovered in 2009 a "power boost" in brain waves when volunteers were exposed to cell phone radiofrequencies. Researchers strapped Nokia phones to their subjects' heads, then turned the phones on and off. On: brain went into defense mode. Off: brain settled. The brain, one of the lead researchers speculated, was "concentrating to overcome the electrical interference." Yet for all this, there is no scientific consensus on the risks of RF-EMFs to human beings. The major public-health watchdogs, in the US and worldwide, have dismissed concerns about it. "Current evidence," the World Health Organization (WHO) says, "does not confirm the existence of any health consequences from exposure to low level electromagnetic fields." (The WHO thus contradicts the findings of one of its own research units.) The US Federal Communications Commission has made similar statements. The American Cancer Society reports that "most studies published so far have not found a link between cell phone use and the development of tumors." The cell phone industry's lobbying organization, CTIA-The Wireless Association, assures the public that cell phone radiation is safe, citing studies -- many of them funded by the telecom industry -- that show no risk. Published meta-reviews of hundreds of such studies suggest that industry funding tends to skew results. According to a survey by Henry Lai, a research professor at University of Washington, only 28 percent of studies funded by the wireless industry showed some type of biological effect from cell phone radiation. Meanwhile, independently funded studies produce an altogether different set of data: 67 percent of those studies showed a bioeffect. The Safe Wireless Initiative, a research group in Washington, DC that has since closed down, unpacked the data in hundreds of studies on wireless health risks, arraying them in terms of funding source. "Our data show that mobile phone industry funded/influenced work is six times more likely to find 'no problem' than independently funded work," the group noted. "The industry thus has significantly contaminated the scientific evidence pool." The evidence about the long-term public health risks of exposure to RF-EMFs may be contradictory. Yet it is clear that some people are getting sick when heavily exposed to the new radiofrequencies. And we are not listening to their complaints. Take the story of Michele Hertz. When a local utility company installed a wireless digital meter -- better known as a "smart" meter -- on her house in upstate New York in the summer of 2009, Hertz thought little of it. Then she began to feel odd. She was a practiced sculptor, but now she could not sculpt. "I couldn't concentrate, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't even finish sentences," she told me. Hertz experienced "incredible memory loss," and, at the age of 51, feared she had come down with Alzheimer's. One night during a snowstorm in 2010 her house lost power, and when it came back on her head exploded with a ringing sound -- "a terrible piercing." A buzzing in her head persisted. She took to sleeping on the floor of her kitchen that winter, where the refrigerator drowned out the keening. There were other symptoms: headaches and nausea and dizziness, persistent and always worsening. "Sometimes I'd wake up with my heart pounding uncontrollably," she told me. "I thought I would have a heart attack. I had nightmares that people were killing me." Roughly one year after the installation of the wireless meters, with the help of an electrician, Hertz thought she had figured out the source of the trouble: It had to be something electrical in the house. On a hunch, she told the utility company, Con Edison of New York, to remove the wireless meter. She told them: "I will die if you do not install an analog meter." Within days, the worst symptoms disappeared. "People look at me like I'm crazy when I talk about this," Hertz says. Her exposure to the meters has super-sensitized Hertz to all kinds of other EMF sources. "The smart meters threw me over the electronic edge," she says. A cell phone switched on in the same room now gives her a headache. Stepping into a house with wi-fi is intolerable. Passing a cell tower on the street hurts. "Sometimes if the radiation is very strong my fingers curl up," she says. "I can now hear cell phones ringing on silent. Life," she says, "has dramatically changed." Hertz soon discovered there were other people like her: "Electrosensitives," they call themselves. To be sure, they comprise a tortured minority, often misunderstood and isolated. They share their stories at online forums like Smartmeters.org, the EMF Safety Network, and the Electrosensitive Society. "Some are getting sick from cell phones, some from smart meters, some from cell towers," Hertz tells me. "Some can no longer work and have had to flee their homes. Some are losing their eyesight, some can't stop shaking, most cannot sleep." In recent years, I've gotten to know dozens of electrosensitives. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, I met a woman who had taken to wearing an aluminum foil hat. (This works -- wrap a cell phone in foil and it will kill the signal.) I met a former world record-holding marathoner, a 54-year-old woman who had lived out of her car for eight years before settling down at a house ringed by mountains that she said protected the place from cell frequencies. I met people who said they no longer wanted to live because of their condition. Many of the people I talked to were accomplished professionals -- writers, television producers, entrepreneurs. I met a scientist from Los Alamos National Laboratories named Bill Bruno whose employer had tried to fire him after he asked for protection from EMFs at the lab. I met a local librarian named Rebekah Azen who quit her job after being sickened by a newly installed wi-fi system at the library. I met a brilliant activist named Arthur Firstenberg, who had for several years published a newsletter, "No Place to Hide," but who was now homeless, living out of the back of his car, sleeping in wilderness outside the city where he could escape the signals. In New York City, I got to know a longtime member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) who said he was electrosensitive. I'll call him Jake, because he is embarrassed by his condition and he doesn't want to jeopardize his job or his membership in the IEEE (which happens to have for its purpose the promulgation of electrical technology, including cell phones). Jake told me how one day, a few years ago, he started to get sick whenever he went into the bedroom of his apartment to sleep. He had headaches, suffered fatigue and nausea, nightsweats and heart palpitations, had blurred vision and difficulty breathing and was blasted by a ringing in the ears -- the typical symptoms of the electrosensitive. He discovered that his neighbor in the apartment building kept a wi-fi transmitter next door, on the other side of the wall to his bedroom. When Jake asked the neighbor to shut it down, his symptoms disappeared. The government of Sweden reports that the disorder known as electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS, afflicts an estimated 3 percent of the population. A study by the California Department of Health found that, based on self-reports, as many as 770,000 Californians, or 3 percent of the state's population, would ascribe some form of illness to EMFs. A study in Switzerland recently found a 5 percent prevalence of electrosensitivity. In Germany, there is reportedly a 6 percent prevalence. Even the former prime minister of Norway, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, until 2003 the director general of the World Health Organization, has admitted that she suffers headaches and "strong discomfort" when exposed to cell phones. "My hypersensitivity," she told a Norwegian newspaper in 2002, "has gone so far that I react to mobile phones closer to me than about four meters." She added in the same interview: "People have been in my office with their mobile hidden in their pocket or bag. Without knowing if it was on or off, we have tested my reactions. I have always reacted when the phone has been on -- never when it's off." Yet the World Health Organization -- the same agency that Brundtland once headed -- reports "there is no scientific basis to link EHS symptoms to EMF exposure." WHO's findings are corroborated by a 2008 study at the University of Bern in Switzerland which found "no evidence that EHS individuals could detect [the] presence or absence" of frequencies that allegedly make them sick. A study conducted in 2006 at the Mobile Phone Research Unit at King's College in London came to a similar conclusion. "No evidence was found to indicate that people with self-reported sensitivity to mobile phone signals are able to detect such signals or that they react to them with increased symptom severity," the report said. "As sham exposure was sufficient to trigger severe symptoms in some participants, psychological factors may have an important role in causing this condition." The King's College researchers in 2010 concluded it was a "medically unexplained illness." "The scientific data so far just doesn't help the electrosensitives," says Louis Slesin, editor and publisher of Microwave News, a newsletter and website that covers the potential impacts of RF-EMFs. "The design of some of these studies, however, is questionable." He adds: "Frankly, I'd be surprised if the condition did not exist. We're electromagnetic beings. You wouldn't have a thought in your head without electromagnetic signals. There is electrical signaling going on in your body all the time, and the idea that external electromagnetic fields can't affect us just doesn't make sense. We're biological and chemical beings too, and we know that we can develop allergies to certain biological and chemical compounds. Why wouldn't we also find there are allergies to EM fields? Shouldn't every chemical be tested for its effects on human beings? Well, the same could be said for each frequency of RF radiation." Dr. David Carpenter of SUNY, who has also looked into electrosensitivity, tells me he's "not totally convinced that electrosensitivity is real." Still, he says, "there are just too many people with reports of illness when chronically near to EMF devices, with their symptoms being relieved when they are away from them. Like multiple chemical sensitivity and Gulf War Syndrome, there is something here, but we just don't understand it all yet." Science reporter B. Blake Levitt, author of Electromagnetic Fields: A Consumer's Guide to the Issues, says the studies she has reviewed on EHS are "contradictory and nowhere near definitive." Flaws in test design stand out, she says. Many with EHS may be simply "too sensitized," she believes, to endure research exposure protocols, possibly skewing results from the start by inadvertently studying a less sensitive group. Levitt recently compiled some of the most damning studies of the health effects from cell towers in a report for the International Commission on Electromagnetic Safety in Italy. "Some populations are reacting poorly when living or working within 1,500 feet of a cell tower," Levitt tells me. Several studies she cited found an increase in headaches, rashes, tremors, sleep disturbances, dizziness, concentration problems, and memory changes. "EHS may be one of those problems that can never be well defined -- we may just have to believe what people report," Levitt says. "And people are reporting these symptoms all over the globe now when new technologies are introduced or infrastructure like cell towers go into neighborhoods. It's not likely a transcultural mass hallucination. The immune system is an exquisite warning mechanism. These are our canaries in the coal mine." Swedish neuroscientist Olle Johansson was one of the first researchers to take the claims of electrosensitivity seriously. He found, for example, that persons with EHS had changes in skin mast cells -- markers of allergic reaction -- when exposed to specific EM fields. Other studies have found that radiofrequency EMFs can increase serum histamine levels -- the hallmark of an allergic reaction. Johansson has hypothesized that electrosensitivity arises exactly as any common allergy would arise -- due to excessive exposure, as the immune system fails. And just as only some people develop allergies to cats or pollen or dust, only some of us fall prey to EM fields. Johansson admits that his hypothesis has yet to be proven in laboratory study. One afternoon not long ago, a nurse named Maria Gonzalez, who lives in Queens, New York, took me to see the cell phone masts that irradiate her daughter's school. The masts were the usual flat-paneled, alien-looking things nested together, festooned with wires, high on a rooftop across from Public School 122 in Astoria. They emitted a fine signal -- five bars on my phone. The operator of the masts, Sprint-Nextel, had built a wall of fake brick to hide them from view, but Maria was unimpressed with the subterfuge. She was terrified of the masts. When, in 2005, the panels went up, soon to be turned on, she was working at the intensive care unit at St. Vincent's Hospital. She'd heard bizarre stories about cell phones from her cancer-ward colleagues. Some of the doctors at St. Vincent's told her they had doubts about the safety of their own cellphones and pagers. This was disturbing enough. She went online, culling studies. When she read a report published in 2002 about children in Spain who developed leukemia shortly after a cell phone tower was erected next to their school, she went into a quiet panic. Sprint-Nextel was unsympathetic when she telephoned the company in the summer of 2005 to express her concerns. The company granted her a single meeting that autumn, with a Sprint-Nextel technician, an attorney, and a self-described "radiation expert" under contract with the company. "They kept saying, 'we're one hundred percent sure the antennas are safe,'" Maria told me as we stared at the masts. "'One hundred percent sure! These are children! We would never hurt children.'" She called the office of Hillary Clinton and pestered the senator once a week for six months -- but got nowhere. A year later, Gonzalez sued the US government, charging that the Federal Communications Commission had failed to fully evaluate the risks from cell phone frequencies. The suit was thrown out. The judge concluded that if regulators for the government said the radiation was safe, then it was safe. The message, as Gonzalez puts it, was that she was "crazy ... and making a big to-do about nothing." I'd venture, rather, that she was applying a commonsense principle in environmental science: the precautionary principle, which states that when an action or policy -- or technology -- cannot be proven with certainty to be safe, then it should be assumed to be harmful. In a society thrilled with the magic of digital wireless, we have junked this principle. And we try to dismiss as fools those who uphold it -- people like Gonzalez. We have accepted without question that we will have wi-fi hotspots in our homes, and at libraries, and in cafes and bookstores; that we will have wireless alarm systems and wireless baby monitors and wireless utility meters and wireless video games that children play; that we will carry on our persons wireless iPads and iPods and smart phones. We are mesmerized by the efficiency and convenience of the infotainment appendage, the words and sounds and pictures it carries. We are, in other words, thoughtless in our embrace of the technology. Because of our thoughtlessness, we have not demanded to know the full consequences of this technology. Perhaps the gadgets are slowly killing us -- we do not know. Perhaps they are perfectly safe -- we do not know. Perhaps they are making us sick in ways we barely understand -- we do not know. What we do know, without a doubt, is that the electromagnetic fields are all around us, and that to live in modern civilization implies always and everywhere that we cannot escape their touch. Christopher Ketcham has contributed to ORION, Harper?s, and GQ, where portions of this reporting appeared previously. Find more of his work at ChristopherKetcham.com. submit to reddit We are now exposed to electromagnetic radio frequencies 24 hours a day. Welcome to the largest human experiment ever. Share From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 13:57:07 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:57:07 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!!! LAPD Threw Me in Jail: People Locked in Tiny Cages, Crying in Pain Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203135352.04220ee8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/story/153303/people_locked_in_tiny_cages%2C_crying_in_pain%3A_what_i_saw_and_heard_when_the_lapd_threw_me_in_jail_for_exercising_my_right_to_protest_the_oligarchy?page=entire eXiled Online / By Yasha Levine People Locked in Tiny Cages, Crying in Pain: What I Saw and Heard When the LAPD Threw Me in Jail for Exercising My Right to Protest the Oligarchy Don't believe the PR. There was nothing peaceful or professional about the LAPD's attack on Occupy LA -- or the way detainees were later treated. December 2, 2011 | Editor's note: Yasha Levine, editor of the Exhiled.com, spent a . Here's his account of the crackdown on Occupy LA. I finally got home Thursday afternoon after spending two nights in jail, and have had a hard time getting my bearings. On top of severe dehydration and sleep deprivation, I?ve got one hell of pounding migraine. So I?ll have to keep this brief for now. But I wanted to write down a few things that I witnessed and heard while locked up by LA?s finest First off, don?t believe the PR bullshit. There was nothing peaceful or professional about the LAPD?s attack on Occupy LA?not unless you think that people peacefully protesting against the power of the financial oligarchy deserve to be treated the way I saw Russian cops treating the protesters in Moscow and St. Petersburg who were demonstrating against the oligarchy under Putin and Yeltsin, before we at The eXiled all got tossed out in 2008. Back then, everyone in the West protested and criticized the way the Russian cops brutally snuffed out dissent, myself included. Now I?m in America, at a demonstration, watching exactly the same brutal crackdown While people are now beginning to learn that the police attack on Occupy LA was much more violent than previously reported, few actually realize that much?if not most?of the abuse happened while the protesters were in police custody, completely outside the range of the press and news media. And the disgraceful truth is that a lot of the abuse was police sadism, pure and simple: * I heard from two different sources that at least one busload of protesters (around 40 people) was forced to spend seven excruciating hours locked in tiny cages on a Los Angeles County Sheriff?s Dept. prison bus, denied food, water and access to bathroom facilities. Both men and women were forced to urinate in their seats. Meanwhile, the cops in charge of the bus took an extended Starbucks coffee break. * The bus that I was shoved into didn?t move for at least an hour. The whole time we listened to the screams and crying from a young woman whom the cops locked into a tiny cage at the front of the bus. She was in agony, begging and pleading for one of the policemen to loosen her plastic handcuffs. A police officer sat a couple of feet away the entire time that she screamed?but wouldn?t lift a finger. * Everyone on my bus felt her pain?literally felt it. That?s because the zip-tie handcuffs they use?like the ones you see on Iraq prisoners in Abu Ghraib?cut off your circulation and wedge deep through your skin, where they can do some serious nerve damage, if that?s the point. And it did seem to be the point. A couple of guys around me were writhing in agony in their hard plastic seats, hands handcuffed behind their back. * The 100 protesters in my detainee group were kept handcuffed with their hands behind their backs for 7 hours, denied food and water and forced to sit/sleep on a concrete floor. Some were so tired they passed out face down on the cold and dirty concrete, hands tied behind their back. As a result of the tight cuffs, I wound up losing sensation in my left palm/thumb and still haven?t recovered it now, a day and a half after they finally took them off. * One seriously injured protester, who had been shot with a shotgun beanbag round and had an oozing bloody welt the size of a grapefruit just above his elbow, was denied medical attention for five hours. Another young guy, who complained that he thought his arm had been broken, was not given medical attention for at least as long. Instead, he spent the entire pre-booking procedure handcuffed to a wall, completely spaced out and staring blankly into space like he was in shock. * An Occupy LA demonstrator in his 50s who was in my cell block in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center told us all about when a police officer forced him to take a shit with his hands handcuffed behind his back, which made pulling down his pants and sitting down on the toilet extremely difficult and awkward. And he had to do this in sight of female police officers, all of which made him feel extremely ashamed, to say the least. * There were two vegetarians and one vegan in my cell. When I left jail around 1:30 pm, they still had not been given food, despite the fact that they were constantly being promised that it would come. * There were 292 people arrested at Occupy LA. About 75 of them have been released or have gotten out on bail, according the National Lawyers Guild. Most are still inside, slapped with $5,000 to $10,000 bail. According to a bail bondsman I know, this is unprecedented. Misdemeanors are almost always released on their own recognizance, which means that they don?t pay any bail at all. Or at most it?s a $100. * That means the harsh, long detentions are meant to be are a purely punitive measure against Occupy LA protesters?an order that had to come from the very top. Yasha Levine is editor of the eXiled.com From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 14:01:05 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 14:01:05 +0100 Subject: [THS] Eurozone Catastrophe: How Saving the Euro Could Mean Blood on the Streets Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203135933.04220c58@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/story/153297/eurozone_catastrophe%3A_how_saving_the_euro_could_mean_blood_on_the_streets?page=2 AlterNet / By Marshall Auerback Eurozone Catastrophe: How Saving the Euro Could Mean Blood on the Streets The whole future shape of Europe must be resolved in a week or so. It?s a high-stakes game of poker that the Germans are determined to win--at the expense of misery for many. December 2, 2011 | The eurozone story is changing by the hour. Here's what you need to know to understand developments that will impact the entire global economy and potentially cause major social upheaval. The eurozone is facing two distinct, but related, problems: Problem #1 is a national solvency issue, which only the European Central Bank (ECB) can solve. Problem #2 is deficient "aggregate demand" (a fancy term for the spending power of consumers), which calls for a stronger fiscal policy response to offset declining investment and purchases in the private sector. As it stands, the ECB is the only show in town to save the eurozone from a very drawn out and damaging recession. Why is that? Well, because the individual member states in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) cannot spend without taxation revenue or debt-issuance, because they are users of their currency, rather than issuers. This is a key distinction, and one often missed in media coverage. Their position is in sharp contrast to, say, the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia, all of which are issuers of their own currency and therefore not subject to the same kind of solvency risk because they are in control of their own money supply. The only institution in the EMU that can spend without recourse to prior funding is the ECB. That is the consequence of the flawed design of the monetary system that the neo-liberal conservatives in Europe forced upon the member states at the inception of the common currency. As the issuer of the euro, only the European Central Bank is in the position of backstopping the eurozone nation?s bond markets, which allows these countries to fund themselves without paying the usurious rates of interest now being demanded for countries such as Greece. The problem is that the ECB is only willing to do so for countries willing to submit themselves to harsh austerity measures as a quid pro quo. This strategy might well save the euro, as it will diminish the markets? concerns about national solvency. But the cost is likely to be yet even more depressed economic activity, higher unemployment, lower tax revenues, higher social welfare expenditures and, consequently, even higher public deficits. And isn?t that precisely what the Germans in particular most fear? That gives you problem #2. If you have a continent full of consumers who have no money to spend and lack of competitiveness in the ?PIIGS? countries (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain), then you'll consequently have years of sub-par economic growth. And unless the EMU's architecture moves in a much more pro-growth direction, then the continent will be afflicted with years of high unemployment and mounting social strains. Unfortunately, the EMU is captive to the same kind of thinking as the Germans, who continue to view this crisis as one which has been caused by fiscal profligacy in the periphery countries, rather than seeing it for what it is: a crisis of the euro?s institutional design itself. For those nations unwilling or unable to subject themselves to the rigors of so-called Teutonic discipline, there might well be an exit from this newly-reconfigured eurozone ? in effect creating a two-tier or multi-tier Europe, with a smaller eurozone and a host of competing national currencies for the ?outs.? On the one hand, there would be a ?hard currency? bloc led by Germany and the so-called ?Benelux? countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg), all of which have largely converged with Germany?s economy. Then you'd have a ?soft currency bloc," which could devalue its way back to prosperity through exporting cheap goods. The problems here are that there are no real mechanisms in place to do this in an orderly way, so there would be a risk of a complete breakdown in the existing payments system. Additionally, countries such as France would likely get hurt if they were to join the hard currency bloc. Even though France likes to think of itself as a disciplined Teutonic style country, the reality is that its industrial/manufacturing/social profile is much more like a Mediterranean country such as Italy. Were France to join arms with Germany in a smaller currency bloc, it could face huge competitive threats from Italian industry (which would presumably not be part of this new German economic bloc). It is also questionable whether the French populace as a whole would withstand the kinds of restraints to living standards which the Germans themselves accepted in the wake of their country?s reunification in the 1990s. Would Germany itself benefit from the introduction of a two-tier Europe? That's highly questionable. Germany could well suffer from a huge trade shock, as a result of the likely appreciation of the new currency, let's call it the ?neuro.? A new system might also affect the living standards of the average Germans as well, as German multinationals might simply move manufacturing facilities to the new, low cost regions of Europe to preserve market share and cost advantage or, at the very least, use the threat of moving to extort cuts in wages and benefits to German works as a quid pro quo for remaining at home. If you go for the two-speed Europe, ultimately countries like Italy can devalue their way back to prosperity as their goods become vastly more competitive against German exports. Clearly, if a newly reconfigured Italian lira (or the introduction of some other soft currency) were substantially lower in value against a much stronger "neuro," this provides Italian manufacturers with a chance to sell their goods at substantially lower prices than their German competitors. But wait! Germany?s large manufacturers originally bought into the currency union because they felt it would prevent the likes of chronic currency devaluers to use this expedient to grab a higher share of world trade at Germany?s expense. In fact, it is doubly ironic that Germany chastises its neighbors for their ?profligacy? but relies on their ?living beyond their means? to produce a trade surplus that allow its government to run smaller budget deficits. The truth is that Germany is structurally reliant on indebtedness and borrowing in other parts of the eurozone in order to grow at all. Over-spending of southern states is the only thing that has allowed Germany?s economy to prosper. It is mindless for Germans to be advocating harsh austerity for the southern states and hacking into their spending potential and not think that it won?t reverberate back onto Germany. In the end, a "United States of Germany" under the guise of a United States of Europe, actually better suits German aspirations to dominate Europe politically and economically. Now, of course, German Chancellor Angela Merkel may not consciously know all of these things. But it's clear to me that the political quid pro quo for greater ECB involvement in dealing with Europe's national solvency crisis is German control over the overall fiscal conduct of countries like Greece, Italy, etc. ECB head Mario Draghi is Italian, but he is playing a German game of chicken: he is embracing exactly the strategy that Angela Merkel's political director, Klaus Schuler, laid out to me two weeks ago: holding out for fiscal union commitments from the weaker "Med" countries, in return for turning the ECB into a lender of last resort. It's high stakes poker, and questions that affect the whole future shape of Europe need to be resolved in a week or so. Obviously this is one reason the Germans felt so comfortable in naming an Italian to the ECB. Trojan horses apparently don?t just come in Greek form these days. A Europe where countries such as Italy and Greece become client states provides a very effective outcome for Germany. My base view remains that Europe is headed to a blood in the streets outcome. There is no plan B. The game is to just keep raising taxes and cutting spending even as those actions work to cause deficits to go higher rather than lower. So while the solvency and funding issue is likely to be resolved, the relief rally won't last long as the funding will continue to be conditional to ongoing austerity and negative growth. And the austerity looks likely to not only continue but also to intensify, even as the eurozone has already slipped into recession. From what I can see, there's no chance that the ECB would fund and at the same time mandate the higher deficts needed for a recovery, because the Germans will never allow it. In which case the only thing that will end the austerity is blood on the streets in sufficient quantity to trigger chaos and a change in governance. From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 14:23:13 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2011 14:23:13 +0100 Subject: [THS] Saving the Euro Could Mean Blood on the Streets In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203135933.04220c58@mail.messagingengine.com> References: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203135933.04220c58@mail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: Peter, this stuff is typical Yankee, of people who think printing money will prevent 'blood' on the street. They forget that USA printing press works at the speed of light, one of the factors to have impoverished US workers and middle class very seriously. Italy is only one /16th of germany's export market and to say that Germany can only survive of these poor countries endebt themselves is some bullshit. http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/germany/export-import.html Primary exports partners: France (10.2 percent of total exports), US (6.7 percent), Netherlands (6.7 percent), UK (6.6 percent), Italy (6.3 percent), Austria (6 percent), China (4.5 percent). I agree that saving the euro is bad for everybody in the street, but not for the reasons mentioned here/ pc On Dec 3, 2011, at 2:01 PM, Peter Webster wrote: > http://www.alternet.org/story/153297/eurozone_catastrophe%3A_how_saving_the_euro_could_mean_blood_on_the_streets?page=2 > > > AlterNet / By Marshall Auerback > > Eurozone Catastrophe: How Saving the Euro Could Mean Blood on the Streets > The whole future shape of Europe must be resolved in a week or so. It?s a high-stakes game of poker that the Germans are determined to win--at the expense of misery for many. > > December 2, 2011 | > > The eurozone story is changing by the hour. Here's what you need to know to understand developments that will impact the entire global economy and potentially cause major social upheaval. > > The eurozone is facing two distinct, but related, problems: Problem #1 is a national solvency issue, which only the European Central Bank (ECB) can solve. Problem #2 is deficient "aggregate demand" (a fancy term for the spending power of consumers), which calls for a stronger fiscal policy response to offset declining investment and purchases in the private sector. > > As it stands, the ECB is the only show in town to save the eurozone from a very drawn out and damaging recession. Why is that? Well, because the individual member states in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) cannot spend without taxation revenue or debt-issuance, because they are users of their currency, rather than issuers. This is a key distinction, and one often missed in media coverage. Their position is in sharp contrast to, say, the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia, all of which are issuers of their own currency and therefore not subject to the same kind of solvency risk because they are in control of their own money supply. The only institution in the EMU that can spend without recourse to prior funding is the ECB. That is the consequence of the flawed design of the monetary system that the neo-liberal conservatives in Europe forced upon the member states at the inception of the common currency. > > As the issuer of the euro, only the European Central Bank is in the position of backstopping the eurozone nation?s bond markets, which allows these countries to fund themselves without paying the usurious rates of interest now being demanded for countries such as Greece. The problem is that the ECB is only willing to do so for countries willing to submit themselves to harsh austerity measures as a quid pro quo. This strategy might well save the euro, as it will diminish the markets? concerns about national solvency. But the cost is likely to be yet even more depressed economic activity, higher unemployment, lower tax revenues, higher social welfare expenditures and, consequently, even higher public deficits. And isn?t that precisely what the Germans in particular most fear? > > That gives you problem #2. If you have a continent full of consumers who have no money to spend and lack of competitiveness in the ?PIIGS? countries (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain), then you'll consequently have years of sub-par economic growth. And unless the EMU's architecture moves in a much more pro-growth direction, then the continent will be afflicted with years of high unemployment and mounting social strains. Unfortunately, the EMU is captive to the same kind of thinking as the Germans, who continue to view this crisis as one which has been caused by fiscal profligacy in the periphery countries, rather than seeing it for what it is: a crisis of the euro?s institutional design itself. > > For those nations unwilling or unable to subject themselves to the rigors of so-called Teutonic discipline, there might well be an exit from this newly-reconfigured eurozone ? in effect creating a two-tier or multi-tier Europe, with a smaller eurozone and a host of competing national currencies for the ?outs.? On the one hand, there would be a ?hard currency? bloc led by Germany and the so-called ?Benelux? countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg), all of which have largely converged with Germany?s economy. Then you'd have a ?soft currency bloc," which could devalue its way back to prosperity through exporting cheap goods. > > The problems here are that there are no real mechanisms in place to do this in an orderly way, so there would be a risk of a complete breakdown in the existing payments system. Additionally, countries such as France would likely get hurt if they were to join the hard currency bloc. Even though France likes to think of itself as a disciplined Teutonic style country, the reality is that its industrial/manufacturing/social profile is much more like a Mediterranean country such as Italy. Were France to join arms with Germany in a smaller currency bloc, it could face huge competitive threats from Italian industry (which would presumably not be part of this new German economic bloc). It is also questionable whether the French populace as a whole would withstand the kinds of restraints to living standards which the Germans themselves accepted in the wake of their country?s reunification in the 1990s. > > Would Germany itself benefit from the introduction of a two-tier Europe? That's highly questionable. Germany could well suffer from a huge trade shock, as a result of the likely appreciation of the new currency, let's call it the ?neuro.? A new system might also affect the living standards of the average Germans as well, as German multinationals might simply move manufacturing facilities to the new, low cost regions of Europe to preserve market share and cost advantage or, at the very least, use the threat of moving to extort cuts in wages and benefits to German works as a quid pro quo for remaining at home. If you go for the two-speed Europe, ultimately countries like Italy can devalue their way back to prosperity as their goods become vastly more competitive against German exports. Clearly, if a newly reconfigured Italian lira (or the introduction of some other soft currency) were substantially lower in value against a much stronger "neuro," this provides Italian manufacturers with a chance to sell their goods at substantially lower prices than their German competitors. > > But wait! Germany?s large manufacturers originally bought into the currency union because they felt it would prevent the likes of chronic currency devaluers to use this expedient to grab a higher share of world trade at Germany?s expense. In fact, it is doubly ironic that Germany chastises its neighbors for their ?profligacy? but relies on their ?living beyond their means? to produce a trade surplus that allow its government to run smaller budget deficits. The truth is that Germany is structurally reliant on indebtedness and borrowing in other parts of the eurozone in order to grow at all. Over-spending of southern states is the only thing that has allowed Germany?s economy to prosper. It is mindless for Germans to be advocating harsh austerity for the southern states and hacking into their spending potential and not think that it won?t reverberate back onto Germany. > > In the end, a "United States of Germany" under the guise of a United States of Europe, actually better suits German aspirations to dominate Europe politically and economically. > > Now, of course, German Chancellor Angela Merkel may not consciously know all of these things. But it's clear to me that the political quid pro quo for greater ECB involvement in dealing with Europe's national solvency crisis is German control over the overall fiscal conduct of countries like Greece, Italy, etc. ECB head Mario Draghi is Italian, but he is playing a German game of chicken: he is embracing exactly the strategy that Angela Merkel's political director, Klaus Schuler, laid out to me two weeks ago: holding out for fiscal union commitments from the weaker "Med" countries, in return for turning the ECB into a lender of last resort. It's high stakes poker, and questions that affect the whole future shape of Europe need to be resolved in a week or so. Obviously this is one reason the Germans felt so comfortable in naming an Italian to the ECB. Trojan horses apparently don?t just come in Greek form these days. A Europe where countries such as Italy and Greece become client states provides a very effective outcome for Germany. > > My base view remains that Europe is headed to a blood in the streets outcome. There is no plan B. The game is to just keep raising taxes and cutting spending even as those actions work to cause deficits to go higher rather than lower. So while the solvency and funding issue is likely to be resolved, the relief rally won't last long as the funding will continue to be conditional to ongoing austerity and negative growth. And the austerity looks likely to not only continue but also to intensify, even as the eurozone has already slipped into recession. > > From what I can see, there's no chance that the ECB would fund and at the same time mandate the higher deficts needed for a recovery, because the Germans will never allow it. In which case the only thing that will end the austerity is blood on the streets in sufficient quantity to trigger chaos and a change in governance. > From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 15:00:25 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 15:00:25 +0100 Subject: [THS] 9 Huge Blows to the Catastrophic War on Drugs Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203145546.0424a040@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/story/153298/9_huge_blows_to_the_catastrophic_war_on_drugs_--_will_we_have_sane_drug_policy_some_day?page=entire AlterNet / By Tony Newman 9 Huge Blows to the Catastrophic War on Drugs -- Will We Have Sane Drug Policy Some Day? 2011 has been a watershed year for the movement working to end our county?s disastrous war on drugs. December 2, 2011 | 2011 has been a watershed year for the movement working to end our county?s disastrous war on drugs. Below are the top stories of the year that exemplify the momentum and give us hope that we can find alternatives to drug war madness. #1. World Leaders Make International News by Calling for Marijuana Legalization and End to Drug War This summer, the Global Commission on Drug Policy made worldwide news in more than 3,000 outlets when they released a report calling for a paradigm shift in global drug policy -- including not just alternatives to incarceration and greater emphasis on public health approaches to drug use, but also decriminalization and experiments in legal regulation. The Commission is comprised of former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan; Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group; four former presidents, including the commission's chairman, Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil; George P. Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State; Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve; and several other distinguished world leaders. #2. 40-Year Anniversary of Nixon?s Launch of Drug War Met with Nationwide Protests June 17 marked forty years since President Richard Nixon, citing drug abuse as ?public enemy No. 1?, declared a "war on drugs." A trillion dollars and millions of ruined lives later, a political consensus is emerging that the war on drugs is a counterproductive failure. The Drug Policy Alliance led advocates all across the country in marking the auspicious date with a day of action to raise awareness about the catastrophic failure of drug prohibition and to call for an exit strategy from the failed war on drugs. More than 50 events on the anniversary generated hundreds of local and national stories. #3. Gallop Poll Shows Historic Support: 50% of Americans Favor Ending Marijuana Prohibition For the first time a Gallup poll has found that 50% of Americans support making marijuana legal. Public support for making marijuana legal has shifted dramatically in the last two decades, particularly in the last few years. Gallup has been asking Americans since 1970, ?Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal, or not?? Forty years ago support registered at 12%, rose to 28% percent by the late ?70s, dipped slightly during the 1980s, and then rose gradually to 36% in 2005. The past six years, however, have witnessed a dramatic jump in support, with important implications for state and national marijuana policy. Majorities of men, liberals, 18-29 year-olds, moderates, Independents, Democrats, 30-49 year-olds, and voters in Western, Midwestern and Eastern states now support legalizing cannabis. #4. NYPD Commissioner Directs Police to Stop Improper Marijuana Arrests In 2010, the New York City Police Department arrested 50,383 people for low-level marijuana offenses. Arrests for low-level marijuana possession offenses are the number one arrest in New York City, making up 15 percent of all arrests. What makes these record number of arrests even more outrageous is that under 7/8 of an ounce of marijuana is supposed to be decriminalized in New York and a non-arrestable offense. The only reason people should be arrested with under an ounce is if they are smoking it in public or it is in plain view. The NYPD has been stopping and frisking 100,000?s of black and Latino youth and then tricking them to emptying out their pockets. Once the person pulls out the joint or small bag of marijuana, the NYPD says it is ?in public view? and arrests them. A campaign led by the Drug Policy Alliance, the Institute for Juvenile Justice Reform and Alternatives, and VOCAL pounded away at Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD for the racist enforcement of marijuana arrests ? and in October, NYPD Commission Ray Kelly issued an internal order commanding officers to follow existing New York State law by ending arrests for possession of small amounts of marijuana ? as long as the marijuana was never in public view. #5. Thousands in Mexico Take to Street to Protest Drug War This summer tens of thousands marched across Mexico to protest the drug war and the 50,000 drug prohibition related deaths since President Calderon launched his ?surge? against the drug cartels five years ago . The protests were led by journalist and poet Javier Sicilia, whose son was killed in drug prohibition-related violence. Sicilia has galvanized Mexican society and stirred up international debate. Former President Vincente Fox has been passionately calling for an to drug prohibition as the only way to reduce the carnage in Mexico ? and even President Calderon has acknowledged that we need to consider legalization. #6. Colorado and Washington to Vote on Legalizing Marijuana in 2012 In 2010, Californians voted on Proposition 19, the initiative to control and tax marijuana in California. Prop. 19 both elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy. More people knew about Prop. 19 than any other measure on the ballot this year -- not just in California, but nationwide. In the end, Prop. 19 received more than 46% of the vote, more votes than Republican candidates for governor and U.S. Senate, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina. Next year the issue will again be brought to the voters in Colorado and Washington State. Demographics, economics and principle all favor the ultimate demise of marijuana prohibition. Now, the debate is shifting from whether marijuana should be legalized to how. #7 Portugal Celebrates 10-Year Anniversary of Decriminalizing Drugs Ten years ago Portugal went where no country has gone before and decriminalized not just marijuana, but all drugs including heroin, cocaine and meth. Having small amounts of drugs is no longer a criminal offense. It?s a civil offense ? like a ticket. Portugal continues to punish sales and trafficking of illicit substances. Ten years later the results are in: decreased youth drug use, falling overdose and HIV/AIDS rates, less crime, reduced criminal justice expenditures, greater access to drug treatment, and safer and healthier communities. The horror scenarios that opponents of drug policy reform predicted never came to be and Portugal is a real life example of what can happen when a country treats substance abuse as a health issue instead of a criminal problem. #8 Drug War Critique is All Over TV and Popular Culture The failures of prohibition and the serious debate around marijuana policy have seeped into mainstream, popular culture. Every week HBO viewers can view the failures of alcohol Prohibition by tuning in to Boardwalk Empire. In October Ken Burns and PBS teamed up for a critically acclaimed series called Prohibition that also showed the utter futility of the 18th amendment to ban the sales of alcohol. This week two new national shows will highlight the medical marijuana issue and trade. The Discovery Channel is doing a reality TV like show on Harborside, the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the country. National Geographic Investigates is also airing a documentary called Marijuana Gold Rush. From movies, to TV, to music, there has been an increasingly more sophisticated approach to this issue. #9 New and Powerful Voices Join Movement to End Failed Drug War The movement to end the drug war is becoming a bigger and bigger tent that is becoming more diverse in all senses of the word. In November more than 1,200 people attended the Drug Policy Alliance?s International Reform Conference. The gathering encompassed people across the political spectrum. Gavin Newsom, the former Democratic Mayor of San Francisco and current Liutenent Governor of California shared the stage with the libertarian former Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson. Dozens of people who have spent years behind bars for a nonviolent drug offense participated in conversations and panels with dozens of police officers who saw the futility of the drug war and are speaking out against drug prohibition. Students who are just beginning their activism appeared alongside veterans of the movement who have worked for decades against drug war hysteria. The conference was made up of people who love drugs, people who hate drugs and people who don't care about drugs. There are people who enjoy marijuana or other drugs and don't consider themselves criminals just because they like to unwind with a joint instead of a cocktail. There are also people who have seen the horrors of drugs and addiction. Their substance abuse may have led to them going to jail or maybe they lost a loved one to an overdose. There are also people who have never tried illicit drugs, but are outraged at the money and lives wasted due to drug war. What unites all of these people is the belief the war on drugs causes more harm than good. For all of the progress in 2011, the war on drugs is as vicious as ever. The worst drug war policies remain entrenched, as more than three-quarters of a million people are arrested for marijuana possession every year, and more than half a million people are still behind bars today for nothing more than a drug law violation. The bloodbath in Mexico has taken 50,000 lives in the last five years and shows no signs of slowing down. There is a little-noticed overdose crisis in this country, even though overdose deaths have more than doubled in the last decade. The Obama administration is reversing their past commitments to stop the federal government from interfering with states that have passed medical marijuana laws. We are at a paradoxical moment in our country. We are clearly moving in the right direction, toward a more rational drug policy based on science, compassion, health and human rights. But we need to step up our efforts, grow our numbers, and continue to win hearts and minds because the casualties from the war continue to mount every day. Please join the movement to the end the war on drugs. If the people lead, the leaders will follow. Tony Newman is communications director for the Drug Policy Alliance. From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 18:23:27 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:23:27 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!!! Cautionary Tale - Not a Tall One (left) Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203182157.062afcf0@mail.messagingengine.com> [Reading the following I could not help but see our own modern problems as a thousand-fold example of the very same problems and tendencies described here, the "normal human affairs" which sacrifice the future for the present. And what likelihood our entire planet will submit to the same fate, thanks to our identically shortsighted policies? It looks as good as inevitable from here. -ths] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16992 New York Review of Books Volume 51, Number 5 ? March 25, 2004 Twilight at Easter By Jared Diamond The Enigmas of Easter Island by John Flenley and Paul Bahn Oxford University Press, 256 pp., $28.00 Among Stone Giants: The Life of Katherine Routledge and Her Remarkable Expedition to Easter Island by Jo Anne Van Tilburg Scribner, 351 pp., $27.00 1. No other site that I have visited made such a ghostly impression on me as did Rano Raraku, the quarry on Easter Island where its famous gigantic stone statues were carved. To begin with, the island is the world's most remote habitable scrap of land, lying far out in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, 2,300 miles west of the coast of Chile and 1,300 miles east of Pitcairn Island. Rano Raraku itself is a volcanic crater six hundred yards in diameter, which I entered by a trail rising steeply up to the crater rim from the plain outside, and then dropping steeply down again toward the marshy lake on the crater floor. No one lives in the vicinity today. Scattered over the crater's walls are 397 stone statues, each representing in a stylized way a long-eared legless human male torso, most of them 15 to 20 feet tall, the largest of them 70 feet tall (taller than the average modern five-story building), and weighing from 10 to 270 tons. The remains of a transport road can be discerned passing out of the crater through a notch cut into a low point in its rim, from which three more roads radiate north, south, and west for up to nine miles toward Easter's coasts. Scattered along the roads are ninety-seven more statues, as if abandoned in transport from the quarry. Along the coast are 113 stone platforms that formerly supported or were associated with 393 more statues, all of which (until the recent re-erection of a few) were no longer standing but had been thrown down, many of them toppled and deliberately broken at the neck. Yet Easter Island's Polynesian population had possessed no cranes, wheels, machines, metal tools, draft animals, or means other than human muscle power to move the statues. Statues remaining at the quarry are in all stages of completion. Some are still attached to the bedrock out of which they were carved, roughed out but with details of the ears or hands missing. Others are finished, detached, and lying on the crater slopes below, and still others had been erected in the crater. Littering the ground everywhere at the quarry are the stone picks, drills, and hammers with which the statues were being carved. The scene gave me the sense of a factory all of whose workers had suddenly quit for mysterious reasons, thrown down their tools, and stomped out, leaving each statue in whatever stage it happened to be at the moment. Who carved the statues, how did the carvers move such huge stone masses, and why did they eventually throw them all down? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Easter's mysteries were already apparent to its European discoverer, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who spotted the island on Easter Day (April 5, 1722), hence the name that he bestowed and that has stuck. Like all subsequent visitors, Roggeveen was puzzled, not understanding how the islanders had transported and erected their statues. No matter what had been their exact method, they would have needed heavy timber and strong ropes made from big trees, as Roggeveen realized. Yet the Easter Island that he viewed was a wasteland with not a single tree or bush over ten feet tall. What had happened to all the trees that must have stood there? All those mysteries have spawned volumes of speculation for almost three centuries. Many Europeans were incredulous that Polynesians, "mere savages," could have constructed the statues or the beautiful stone platforms. The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's famous Kon-Tiki expedition and his other raft voyages aimed to prove the feasibility of transoceanic connections between Egypt's pyramids, the giant stone architecture of South America's Inca Empire, and Easter Island's statues. Going further, the Swiss writer Erich von D?niken claimed that the statues were the work of intelligent extraterrestrials who had ultramodern tools, became stranded on Easter, and were finally rescued. But the explanation that has now emerged attributes statue carving to the picks and other tools littering Rano Raraku rather than to hypothetical space implements, and to Easter's known Polynesian inhabitants rather than to Incas, Egyptians, or Martians. This story is as romantic and exciting as were postulated visits by Kon-Tiki rafts or extraterrestrials?and much more relevant to events now going on in the modern world. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Easter's history has recently been recounted in two excellent but very different books, both by the authors of the two previous standard books about the island. The geographer and botanist John Flenley, who uncovered the evidence for Easter Island's vanished forest and extinct giant palm trees, has collaborated with the well-known archaeologist Paul Bahn to bring the Easter Island story up to date with the discoveries of the last decade. They thereby offer us clear summaries of Easter's settlement and subsequent history, its statues, the frightening collapse of its society, and its broader significance in our world beset with similar environmental problems. The archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg, the leading authority on the statues themselves, has used her understanding of Easter Island history and statues in her biography of the remarkable self-trained archaeologist and ethnographer Katherine Routledge, who spent seventeen months on the island in 1914?1915, and whose unpublished handwritten field notes Van Tilburg deciphered. The information in those notes is of lasting value, because Routledge was an excellent interviewer, and some of her older informants had participated in the island's last traditional ceremonies (the so-called Orongo birdman rites). Those informants told Routledge masses of information about traditional Easter Island society that would otherwise be lost to us. Van Tilburg has really given us three books in one: a history of a unique society, a Gothic novel, and a powerfully moving biography. The variously furious, passive-aggressive, inept, and effective relations of Routledge and her husband with each other, with other expedition members, with islanders, and with the island priestess Angata, who gained spiritual power over Routledge?all that makes a fascinating story. Routledge wrote of herself in 1891, "It was my misfortune to be born a woman with the feelings of a man." Her tragic biography traces how a rich heiress with a family history of mental illness mastered her inner problems sufficiently to become one of the earliest women graduates of Oxford University, then to make her own way through a man's world, and to contribute to our understanding of Easter Island, only to succumb at last to paranoia and to die in the mental asylum to which her husband and brother finally committed her.[*] 2. From Flenley and Bahn's and from Van Tilburg's accounts, it becomes clear how both Heyerdahl and von D?niken brushed aside overwhelming evidence that the Easter Islanders were indeed typical Polynesians, speaking a Polynesian language and making stone tools in the usual Polynesian styles. Around AD 900 they colonized Easter Island from Polynesian islands to the west and built up a population that peaked at around 15,000 people. At the time of the European arrival they were subsisting mainly as farmers, growing yams, taro, bananas, sugar cane, and sweet potatoes, as well as raising chickens, their sole domestic animal. While Easter Island was divided into about eleven territories, each belonging to one clan under its own chief and competing with other clans, the island was also loosely integrated religiously, economically, and politically under the leadership of one paramount chief. On other Polynesian islands, competition between chiefs for prestige could take the form of inter-island efforts such as trading and raiding, but Easter's extreme isolation from other islands precluded that possibility. Instead, the excellent quality of Rano Raraku volcanic stone for carving eventually resulted in chiefs competing by erecting statues representing their high-ranking ancestors on rectangular stone platforms (termed ahu). Each of the island's eleven territories contained between one and five large ahu up to 13 feet high, many extended by lateral wings to a width of up to 500 feet. Today the ahu are a dingy dark gray, but originally they must have been a colorful white, yellow, and red: the facing slabs were encrusted with white coral, the stone of a freshly cut statue was yellow, and the statue's crown and a horizontal band of stone coursing on the front wall of some ahu were red. The ahu-building period seems to have begun around AD 1000 or 1100, within a few centuries of the island's settlement. An increase in statue size with time suggests competition between rival chiefs commissioning statues to outdo each other. (In case that strikes you as weird, try imagining what a dispassionate observer would say about the increasingly lavish cars, mansions, and jewelry by which modern American "chiefs" compete.) The strong possibility of such competition also seems evident from an apparently late feature called a pukao: a cylinder of red volcanic stone, weighing up to twelve tons, mounted as a separate piece to rest on top of a statue's flat head, and possibly representing a chief's headdress or hat of red feathers. (See photograph on the cover.) All pukao are from a single quarry, Puna Pao, where (just as with the statues themselves in Rano Raraku quarry) I saw unfinished pukao, plus finished ones awaiting transport. We know of only about sixty pukao, reserved for statues on the biggest and richest ahu. I cannot resist the thought that they were produced as a show of one-upmanship. They seem to proclaim: "All right, so you can erect a statue 32 feet high, but look at me: I can lift this 12-ton pukao on top of my statue; you try to top that, you wimp!" How did the islanders succeed in erecting and transporting those statues? Of course we don't know for sure, because no European ever saw it being done to write about it. But we can make informed guesses from the oral traditions of the islanders themselves, and from recent experimental tests of different transport methods described by Flenley and Bahn, and carried out and described by Van Tilburg. The still-visible transport roads on which statues were moved from Rano Raraku quarry follow contour lines to avoid the extra work of carrying statues up and down hills, and are up to nine miles long for the ahu furthest from the quarry. While the task may strike us as daunting, we know that many other prehistoric peoples transported very heavy stones at Stonehenge, Egypt's pyramids, and Inca and Olmec centers, and something can be deduced of the methods in each case. The method most convincing to me is Van Tilburg's suggestion that Easter Islanders modified the so-called canoe ladders widespread on Pacific islands for transporting heavy wooden logs, which had to be cut in the forest, shaped into canoes, and then transported to the coast. The "ladders," which I have seen on islands near New Guinea, consist of a pair of parallel wooden rails joined by fixed wooden crosspieces over which the log is dragged. We know that some of the biggest canoes that the Hawaiians moved over such horizontal ladders weighed more than an average-sized Easter Island statue, so the pro- posed method is plausible. Van Tilburg persuaded modern Easter Islanders to put her theory to a test by building such a canoe ladder, mounting a statue prone on a wooden sled, attaching ropes to the sled, and hauling it over the ladder. She found that between fifty and seventy people, working five hours per day and dragging the sled five yards at each pull, could transport an average-sized twelve-ton statue nine miles in a week. By extrapolation, transport of even the biggest statues could have been accomplished by a team of five hundred adults, which would have been just within the manpower capacities of an Easter Island clan. Islanders told Thor Heyerdahl how their ancestors had erected statues on an ahu; they were indignant that archaeologists had never deigned to ask them, and erected a statue for him without a crane to prove their point. They began by building a gently sloping ramp of stones up to the top of the platform, and pulling the prone statue with its base end forward up the ramp. Once the base had reached the platform, they levered the statue's head an inch or two upward with logs, slipped stones under the head to support it in the new position, and continued to lever up the head and thereby tilt the statue increasingly toward the vertical. However, we have glossed over a problem. Transporting and erecting statues required lots of thick long ropes (made in Polynesia from fibrous tree bark) to drag the sleds and heavy statues, and also many big strong trees to obtain all the timber needed for the sleds, canoe ladders, and levers. But the Easter Island seen by Roggeveen and subsequent European visitors had very few trees, all of them slight and short: it is the most nearly treeless island in Polynesia. Where were the trees that provided the required rope and timber? 3. Botanical surveys of plants living on Easter Island within the twentieth century have identified only forty-eight native species, even the biggest of them hardly worthy of being called a tree (just seven feet tall), and the rest of them low ferns, grasses, sedges, and shrubs. However, beginning especially with John Flenley's and Sarah King's studies in 1984, several methods for recovering and identifying pollen and wood charcoal from vanished plants have shown that, long before human arrival and still during the early days of human settlement, Easter was not a barren wasteland but supported a subtropical tall forest. As Flenley and his colleagues recognized, the most interesting of those extinct trees was what used to be the world's largest palm tree, related to but dwarfing the largest existing palm, the Chilean wine palm, which grows up to 65 feet tall and 3 feet in diameter. Chileans prize their palm today for several reasons, and Easter Islanders would have done so as well. As the name implies, the trunk yields a sweet sap that can be fermented to make wine or boiled down to make honey or sugar. The nuts' oily kernels are a delicacy. The fronds are ideal for fabricating into house thatching, baskets, mats, and boat sails. And of course the stout trunks would have served to transport and erect statues, and to make rafts. Many of the twenty-one other vanished plant species besides the palm would also have been valuable to the Easter Islanders. Two of them are tall trees used elsewhere in Polynesia for making canoes. The bark of one of them is used by Polynesians to make rope, and that was presumably how Easter Islanders dragged their statues. Still others variously yielded bark cloth, edible fruits, firewood, or hard wood good for carving, construction, and making harpoons. Studies of vertebrate bones from middens?mounds of shells, bones, and other refuse?at the probable site of the first human settlement prove that Easter, which today supports not a single species of native land bird, was formerly home to at least six of them, including one species of heron, two chicken-like rails, two parrots, and a barn owl. More impressive was Easter's prodigious total of at least twenty-five nesting sea bird species, making it formerly the richest breeding site in Polynesia and probably in the whole Pacific. They must have been attracted by Easter's remote location and lack of predators, which made it a safe haven as a breeding site?until humans arrived. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The excavations that yielded those bones tell us much about the diet and lifestyle of Easter's early human settlers. The most frequent bones, accounting for more than one third of the total, belong to the largest animal available to Easter Islanders: the common dolphin, weighing up to 165 pounds. That's astonishing: nowhere else in Polynesia do dolphins account for even as much as one percent of the bones in middens. The dolphin generally lives out to sea, hence it could not have been hunted by line-fishing or spear-fishing from shore. Instead, it must have been harpooned far off shore, in big seaworthy canoes built from the now-extinct tall trees. Fish bones and shellfish occur in the middens but in only modest quantities, because Easter's rugged coastline and the steep drop-off of the ocean bottom provide few places to catch fish or shellfish in shallow water. To compensate, there were those abundant sea birds plus the land birds. Comparison of early garbage deposits with late prehistoric ones or with conditions on modern Easter Island reveals big changes in those initially bountiful food sources. Porpoises, and open-ocean fish like tuna, virtually disappeared from the islanders' diet. The fish that continued to be caught were mainly inshore species. Land birds disappeared completely from the diet, for the simple reason that every species became extinct from some combination of overhunting, deforestation, and predation by rats introduced accidentally as stowaways in the colonists' canoes. This was the worst catastrophe to befall Pacific island birds, surpassing even the record on New Zealand and Hawaii, where, to be sure, the moas and most flightless geese became extinct, but many other species managed to survive. No Pacific island other than Easter ended up without any native land birds. Of the twenty-five or more formerly breeding sea bird populations, overharvesting and rat predation brought the result that only one now breeds on Easter itself. Even shellfish were overexploited, so that shell sizes in the middens decreased with time because of preferential overharvesting of larger individuals. The giant palm and all the other now-extinct trees disappeared for half a dozen reasons that we can document or infer. Identified tree charcoal fragments from ovens prove directly that trees were being burned for firewood. Trees were being cleared for gardens, because most of Easter's land surface ended up being used to grow crops. From the early midden abundance of bones of open-ocean porpoises and tuna, we infer that big trees were being felled to make seaworthy canoes; the frail, leaky little watercraft seen by early European visitors would not have served for harpooning platforms or venturing far out to sea. Trees furnished the timber and rope not only for transporting and erecting statues, but undoubtedly for a multitude of other purposes. The introduced rats "used" the palm tree and doubtless other trees for their own purposes: every Easter palm nut that has been recovered shows tooth marks from rats gnawing on it and would have been incapable of germinating. From several types of archaeological evidence, we deduce that the clearing of forests began soon after human arrival, reached its peak around 1400, and was virtually complete by dates that varied locally between the early 1400s and the 1600s. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The overall picture for Easter is the most extreme example of forest destruction in the Pacific, and among the most extreme in the world: the whole forest gone, and all of its tree species extinct. Immediate consequences for the islanders were losses of raw materials, losses of wild-caught foods, and decreased crop yields. Raw materials lost or else available only in greatly decreased amounts consisted of everything made from native plants and birds, including wood, rope, bark to manufacture bark cloth, and feathers. Lack of large timber and rope brought an end to the transport and erection of statues, stopped the construction of seagoing canoes, and left people without wood for fires to keep themselves warm during Easter's winter nights of wind and driving rain at a temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Instead, after 1650 the islanders were reduced to burning herbs, grasses, and crop wastes for fuel. There would have been fierce competition for the remaining woody shrubs, among people trying to obtain thatching and small pieces of wood for houses, implements, and bark cloth. Most sources of wild food were lost. Without seagoing canoes, the bones of porpoises, tuna, and pelagic fish vanished from middens by 1500. The numbers of fishhooks and fish bones in general also declined, leaving mainly just fish species that could be caught in shallow water or from the shore. Land birds and wild fruits vanished from the list, sea birds were reduced to relict populations, and the shellfish consumed became fewer and smaller. The only wild food source whose availability remained unchanged was rats. In addition to those drastic decreases in wild food sources, crop yields also decreased, for several reasons. Deforestation led locally to soil erosion by rain and wind, as shown by huge increases in the quantities of soil-derived metal ions carried into Flenley's swamp sediment cores. Other damages to soil that resulted from deforestation and caused lower crop yields included desiccation, nutrient leaching, and reduced rainfall. Farmers found themselves without most of the wild plant leaves, fruit, and twigs that they had been using as compost. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Those were the immediate consequences of deforestation and other human environmental impacts. The further consequences were starvation, a population crash, and a descent into cannibalism. Surviving islanders' accounts of hunger are graphically confirmed by the proliferation of little statues called moai kavakava, depicting starving people with hollow cheeks and protruding ribs. Captain Cook in 1774 described the islanders as "small, lean, timid, and miserable." Numbers of house sites in the coastal lowlands, where almost everybody lived, declined drastically in the 1700s from peak values between approximately 1400 and 1600, suggesting a corresponding decline in numbers of people. In place of their former sources of wild meat, islanders turned to the largest hitherto unused source available to them: humans, whose bones became common not only in proper burials but also (cracked to extract the marrow) in late Easter Island garbage heaps. Oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with cannibalism; the most inflammatory taunt that could be snarled at an enemy was "The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth." Easter Island's chiefs and priests had previously justified their elite status by claiming relationship to the gods, and by promising to deliver prosperity and bountiful harvests. They buttressed that ideology by monumental architecture and ceremonies designed to impress the masses, and made possible by food surpluses extracted from the masses. As their promises were being proved increasingly hollow, the chiefs and priests were overthrown around 1680 by military leaders called matatoa, and Easter's former complexly integrated society collapsed in an epidemic of civil war. The obsidian spear-points from that era of fighting still littered Easter in modern times. For safety, many people turned to living in caves whose entrances were partly sealed to create a narrow tunnel for easier defense. What had failed, in the twilight of Easter's Polynesian society, was not only the old political ideology but also the old religion, which became discarded along with the chiefs' power. Oral traditions record that the last ahu and statues were erected around 1620. Around 1680, at the time of the military coup, rival clans switched from erecting increasingly large statues to throwing down each others' statues by toppling them onto a slab placed so that the statue's neck would fall on the slab and break. The last observation of an erect statue was in 1838. Ahu themselves were desecrated by pulling out some of the fine slabs in order to construct garden walls or burial chambers. As a result, today the ahu that have not been restored (i.e., most of them) look like mere boulder heaps. When I drove around Easter, I saw ahu after ahu as a rubble pile with its broken statues. I reflected on the enormous effort that had been devoted for centuries to constructing them, and then remembered that it was the islanders themselves who had destroyed their own ancestors' work. I was filled with an overwhelming sense of tragedy. Easter Islanders' toppling of their ancestors' statues reminds me of Russians and Romanians toppling the statues of Stalin and Ceaus?escu when the Communist governments of those countries collapsed. The islanders must have been filled with pent-up anger at their leaders for a long time, as we know that Russians and Romanians were. 4. Why were Easter Islanders so foolish as to cut down all their trees, when the consequences would have been so obvious to them? This is a key question that nags everyone who wonders about self-inflicted environmental damage. I have often asked myself, "What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?" Like modern loggers, did he shout "Jobs, not trees!"? Or: "Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood"? Or: "We need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature"? Similar questions arise for every society that has inadvertently damaged its environment, including ours today. It turns out that there is a series of reasons why people in any society? whether Easter Islanders, Maya, or ourselves?may make fatal mistakes that will look foolish to their successors. They may not anticipate a problem, because of the problem being unprecedented in their experience: e.g., today's overharvesting of the ocean's seemingly inexhaustible fisheries, for the first time in human history. They may fail to perceive the problem when it does arrive: e.g., global warming today, initially difficult to distinguish from just the usual year-to-year fluctuations in temperature. Conflicts of interest may prevent them from addressing a perceived problem: e.g., dumping toxic wastes into rivers is bad for people living downstream but saves money for the company doing the dumping. Some problems just prove too difficult to solve with current abilities: e.g., no one has figured out how to eliminate the Dutch elm disease that reached North America. Probably all of those kinds of explanations apply to deforestation on Easter Island, but the most important reason there may be conflicts of interest. A chief's status depended on his statues: any chief who failed to cut trees to transport and erect statues would have found himself out of a job. The Easter Islanders' isolation probably also explains why their collapse, more, perhaps, than the collapse of any other pre-industrial society, haunts readers and visitors today. The parallels between Easter Island and the modern world are chillingly obvious. Thanks to globalization, international trade, jet planes, and the Internet, all countries on Earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter's eleven clans. Polynesian Easter Island was as isolated in the Pacific Ocean as the Earth is today in space. When the Easter Islanders got into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, or to which they could turn for help; nor shall we modern Earthlings have recourse elsewhere if our troubles increase. Those are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island society as a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our own future. Of the two new accounts of Easter Island's message that Flenley and Bahn and Van Tilburg have now given us, which would I recommend to readers? Both books are so interesting but so dissimilar that those of us attracted to history, exploration, and exotic societies will enjoy reading both. Those interested in none of those things but looking for a florid Gothic novel can read Van Tilburg's book and try to forget that it happens to be a true story. Notes [*] Another recent book?Easter Island: Scientific Exploration into the World's Environmental Problems in Microcosm, edited by John Loret and John T. Tancredi (Kluwer Academic/ Plenum, 2003)?consists of thirteen chapters by different contributors describing results of three recent expeditions to the island. For instance, Chapter 6 offers a solution to the long-standing problem of how to date the statues and platforms, given that stone itself cannot be used for radiocarbon dating. Instead, that chapter's authors radiocarbon-dated the coral used for the statues' eyes and the white algae used to decorate the plazas, thereby obtaining dates of AD 1100?1600, which support previous less-direct dating methods. From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 18:26:27 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:26:27 +0100 Subject: [THS] Greg Palast: Romney's Billionaire Threatens BBC Investigative Reporter Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203182540.045390d8@mail.messagingengine.com> Romney's Billionaire Threatens BBC Investigative Reporter "We have a file on Greg Palast" by Greg Palast for Truthout/Buzzflash Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: in Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores. See Palast live on stage in New York, DC and other cities.. Last Monday, a call came in to BBC Television Centre, London, from the office of Mitt Romney's billionaire backer and "advisor" Paul Singer. Singer, top donor to the Republican Senate Campaign Committee had a message for the news chiefs at the prestigious broadcaster: "We have a file on Greg Palast." I bet they do. The purpose of the Singer call was clear: to smear the reporter whose broadcasts from Africa for BBC Newsnight, The Guardian and Democracy Now! had identified Singer as a "Vulture," a speculator profiteering from misery, mayhem, corruption and civil war. Apparently, the Republican Presidential front-runner would prefer his sugar-daddies be known as "job creators," not predators. And the Vulture really, really, doesn't like his starring role in my new book, Vultures' Picnic. I bet he doesn't. Is BBC going to let Palast continue to investigate? The Romney money man added an unsubtle threat, "Palast has been sued before." Neither BBC nor The Guardian are backing down, bless'm. What is in the file Mitt's billionaire has on Greg Palast? I'll show it to you myself, right here, if you have a little patience. But it's not what's in Singer's file on me that's important ? it's what's in my file about him. You need to know: BBC has identified Singer as the Number One donor of the Republican Party in New York. His fundraising, in coordination with the Koch Brothers through a strange little group of far-right billionaires, is the cash-locomotive of the GOP. How Singer "The Vulture" got his feathers, got that money that fuels the Romney and Republican causes is not a minor matter. Romney and the whole crew from Newt to Cain are selling us the line that Occupy Wall Street has it all wrong: calling for taxing or controlling the One Percent is a misguided attack on "job creators." Indeed, one of Romney's demands is that I change the name of my book from Vultures' Picnic to Job-Creators' Picnic. [OK, I made that up.] Let's begin with how Singer got his feathers. I didn't give Singer the name "Vulture." His own banker buddies did?with admiration in their voices. Like any vulture, he feasts when victims die. Literally. For example, Singer made a pile buying an asbestos company, Owens Corning, out of bankruptcy. Owens had knowingly allowed thousands of its workers to get deadly asbestosis, then concealed it. You don't want to die of asbestosis. Your lungs turn to mush and you drown inside yourself. Singer, the Job Creator, used his political muscle to screw down the compensation workers would get. Offered them peanuts. And dying, they took it. With the asbestos workers buried or bought, the asbestos death factories were now worth a fortune ...and Singer made his first "killing." Then it was on to Peru where Singer had, through a brilliant financial-legal maneuver too questionable for others to attempt, grabbed control of the entire financial system of Peru. Most important, he seized the President's jet. When the scamp of a President, Alberto Fujimori, decided it was a good idea to flee his country (ahead of his arrest on murder charges), Singer, Peru's lawyer told me, let Fujimori escape in return for the Murderer-in-Chief ordering Peru's treasury to pay Singer $58 million. But that's nothing. What really sent Mitt's man up a wall was my report from the Congos (there are two nations in Africa called 'Congo') where there's a cholera epidemic due to lack of clean water. Singer paid we're told about $10 million for some "debt" supposedly incurred by the Republic of Congo. Congo would pay the $10 million, but Singer had begun seizing about $400 million in the poor nation's assets. The former Deputy Secretary of the UN said about the vultures, "you are causing babies to die." It's legal, it's sick, it's Singer. Well, not legal in most of the civilized world. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said about Singer and his fellow crew, "I deplore the activities of so-called Vulture Funds, [they] are nothing short of scandalous." Britain has outlawed Singer's re-po man seizures (after all, it's ultimately the aid money we give Africa). In the UK, and in much of Europe, Singer is a finance outlaw. But in the USA, he's a "job creator." Look, I've only scratched the surface from BBC's four-year investigation of Singer who says he'll talk with us, "Never, ever." * * * You want to get the whole story?and you damn well should?then read the book. Don't want to pay for it? Alright, I'm putting up most of the Singer material online. Though I don't mean to pick on Singer alone. The whole book is an investigation of the One Percenters, including Singer's sicker buddies in the Vulture club. (Yes, they do have a club.) * * * Warning 1: Singer's mouthpiece says that Vultures' Picnic is "chock full of errors." He's refused every opportunity to meet with us. Even the character leaving the threat on the phone won't talk with us. OK, then send me the list of errors. If I'm wrong, I'll change it. And I want to give you an opportunity, Mr. Singer, to make your case. I am giving a talk in Manhattan, on Monday not far from your penthouse at 7pm. You be there, and I'll share the stage with you. Maybe we'll share a beer and some carrion afterward. Warning 2: Yes, they have a file on me. It's in Vultures' Picnic. Yes, I was caught going "undercover" on an investigation with a comely young politician to get information. (Got the story ...and my photo on the front page of the Mirror.) There. Read it all and see the photos in Chapter 9. Now you have it. Now I've taken away their favorite bullet: character assassination. Turkey vultures living in trees defend themselves by vomiting on their attackers. Apparently, so do the Vultures living in penthouses. ****** Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Carnivores, released in the US and Canada by Penguin. You can read Vultures' Picnic, "Chapter 1: Goldfinger," or download it, at no charge: click here. Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts. From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 18:51:28 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 18:51:28 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!!!! William Blum: Some thoughts that OCCUPY my mind Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203183035.067e6258@mail.messagingengine.com> http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer100.html The Anti-Empire Report December 2nd, 2011 by William Blum www.killinghope.org Some thoughts that OCCUPY my mind When the Vietnam War became history, and the protest signs and the bullhorns were put away, so too was the serious side of most protestors' alienation and hostility toward the government. They returned, with minimal resistance, to the restless pursuit of success, and the belief that the choice facing the world was either "capitalist democracy" or "communist dictatorship". The war had been an aberration, was the implicit verdict, a blemish on an otherwise humane American record. The fear felt by the powers-that-be that society's fabric was unraveling and that the Republic was hanging by a thread turned out to be little more than media hype; it had been great copy. I mention this to explain why I've been reluctant to jump with both feet on the Occupy bandwagon. I first thought that if nothing else the approaching winter would do them in; if not, it would be the demands of their lives ? they have to make some money at some point, attend classes somewhere, lovers and friends and family they have to cater to somewhere; lately I've been thinking it's the police that will do them in, writing finis to their marvelous movement adventure ? if you hold the system up to a mirror the system can go crazy. But now I don't know. Those young people, and the old ones as well, keep surprising me, with their dedication and energy, their camaraderie and courage, their optimism and innovation, their non-violence and their keen awareness of the danger of being co-opted their focusing on the economic institutions more than on the politicians or political parties. There is also their splendid signs and slogans, walking from New York to Washington, and not falling apart following the despicable police destruction of the Occupy Wall Street encampment. They've given a million young people other ideas about how to spend the rest of their lives, and commandeered a remarkable amount of media space. The Washington Post on several occasions has devoted full page or near-full page sympathetic coverage. Occupy is being taken increasingly seriously by virtually all media. Yet, the 1960s and 70s were also a marvelous movement adventure ? for me as much as for anyone ? but nothing actually changed in US foreign policy as a result of our endless protests, many of which were also innovative. American imperialism has continued to add to its brutal record right up to this very moment. We can't even claim Vietnam as a victory. Most people believe that the US lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, by poisoning the earth, the water, the air, and the gene pool for generations, Washington in fact achieved its primary purpose: preventing the rise of what might have been a good development option for Asia, an alternative to the capitalist model. It has greatly helped Occupy's growth and survival that they have seldom mentioned foreign policy. That's much more sensitive ground than corporate abuse. Foreign policy gets into flag-waving, "our brave boys" risking their lives, American exceptionalism, nationalism, patriotism, loyalty, treason, terrorism, "anti-American", "conspiracy theorist" ... all those emotional icons that mainstream America uses to separate a Good American from one who ain't really one of us. Foreign policy cannot be ignored permanently of course, if for no other reason than that the nation's wealth that's wasted on war could be used to pay for anything Occupy calls for ... or anything anyone calls for. The education which Occupy has caused to be thrust upon the citizenry ? about corporate abuse and criminality, political corruption, inequality, poverty, etc., virtually all unprosecuted ? would be highly significant if America were a democracy. But as it is, more and more people can learn more and more about these matters, and get more and more angry, but have nowhere to turn to, to effectuate meaningful change. Money must be removed from the political process. Completely. It is my favorite Latin expression: sine qua non ? "without which, nothing". USrael and Iran There's no letup, is there? The preparation of the American mind, the world mind, for the next gala performance of D&D ? Death and Destruction. The Bunker Buster bombs are now 30,000 pounds each one, six times as heavy as the previous delightful model.. But the Masters of War still want to be loved; they need for you to believe them when they say they have no choice, that Iran is the latest threat to life as we know it, no time to waste. The preparation of minds was just as fervent before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. And when it turned out that Iraq did not have any kind of arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) ... well, our power elite found other justifications for the invasion, and didn't look back. Some berated Iraq: "Why didn't they tell us that? Did they want us to bomb them?" In actuality, before the US invasion high Iraqi officials had stated clearly on repeated occasions that they had no such weapons. In August 2002, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told American newscaster Dan Rather on CBS: "We do not possess any nuclear or biological or chemical weapons."1 In December, Aziz stated to Ted Koppel on ABC: "The fact is that we don't have weapons of mass destruction. We don't have chemical, biological, or nuclear weaponry."2 Hussein himself told Rather in February 2003: "These missiles have been destroyed. There are no missiles that are contrary to the prescription of the United Nations [as to range] in Iraq. They are no longer there."3 Moreover, Gen. Hussein Kamel, former head of Iraq's secret weapons program, and a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, told the UN in 1995 that Iraq had destroyed its banned missiles and chemical and biological weapons soon after the Persian Gulf War of 1991.4 There are yet other examples of Iraqi officials telling the world that the WMD were non-existent. And if there were still any uncertainty remaining, last year Hans Blix, former chief United Nations weapons inspector, who led a doomed hunt for WMD in Iraq, told a British inquiry into the 2003 invasion that those who were "100 percent certain there were weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq turned out to have "less than zero percent knowledge" of where the purported hidden caches might be. He testified that he had warned British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a February 2003 meeting ? as well as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in separate talks ? that Hussein might have no weapons of mass destruction.5 Those of who you don't already have serious doubts about the American mainstream media's knowledge and understanding of US foreign policy, should consider this: Despite the two revelations on Dan Rather's CBS programs, and the other revelations noted above, in January 2008 we find CBS reporter Scott Pelley interviewing FBI agent George Piro, who had interviewed Saddam Hussein before he was executed: PELLEY: And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed? PIRO: He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s, and those that hadn't been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq. PELLEY: He had ordered them destroyed? PIRO: Yes. PELLEY: So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk? Why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?6 The United States and Israel are preparing to attack Iran because of their alleged development of nuclear weapons, which Iran has denied on many occasions. Of the Iraqis who warned the United States that it was mistaken about the WMD ? Saddam Hussein was executed, Tariq Aziz is awaiting execution. Which Iranian officials is USrael going to hang after their country is laid to waste? Would it have mattered if the Bush administration had fully believed Iraq when it said it had no WMD? Probably not. There is ample evidence that Bush knew this to be the case, or at a minimum should have seriously suspected it; the same applies to Tony Blair. Saddam Hussein did not sufficiently appreciate just how psychopathic his two adversaries were. Bush was determined to vanquish Iraq, for the sake of Israel, for control of oil, and for expanding the empire with new bases, though in the end most of this didn't work out as the empire expected; for some odd reason, it seems that the Iraqi people resented being bombed, invaded, occupied, demolished, and tortured. But if Iran is in fact building nuclear weapons, we have to ask: Is there some international law that says that the US, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not? If the United States had known that the Japanese had deliverable atomic bombs, would Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been destroyed? Israeli military historian, Martin van Creveld, has written: "The world has witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy."7 It can not be repeated too often: The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington's policies fades away. Examine a map: Iran sits directly between two of the United States' great obsessions ? Iraq and Afghanistan ... directly between two of the world's greatest oil regions ? the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea areas ... it's part of the encirclement of the two leading potential threats to American world domination ? Russia and China ... Tehran will never be a client state or obedient poodle to Washington. How could any good, self-respecting Washington imperialist resist such a target? Bombs Away! American exceptionalism ? A survey The leaders of imperial powers have traditionally told themselves and their citizens that their country was exceptional and that their subjugation of a particular foreign land should be seen as a "civilizing mission", a "liberation", "God's will", and of course bringing "freedom and democracy" to the benighted and downtrodden. It is difficult to kill large numbers of people without a claim to virtue. I wonder if this sense of exceptionalism has been embedded anywhere more deeply than in the United States, where it is drilled into every cell and ganglion of American consciousness from kindergarten on. If we measure the degree of indoctrination (I'll resist the temptation to use the word "brainwashing") of a population as the gap between what the people believe their government has done in the world and what the actual (very sordid) facts are, the American people are clearly the most indoctrinated people on the planet. The role of the American media is of course indispensable to this process ? Try naming a single American daily newspaper or TV network that was unequivocally against the US attacks on Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Grenada, and Vietnam. Or even against any two of them. How about one? Which of the mainstream media expressed real skepticism of The War on Terror in its early years? Overloaded with a sense of America's moral superiority, each year the State Department judges the world, issuing reports evaluating the behavior of all other nations, often accompanied by sanctions of one kind or another. There are different reports rating how each lesser nation has performed in the previous year in the areas of religious freedom, human rights, the war on drugs, trafficking in persons, and counterterrorism, as well as maintaining a list of international "terrorist" groups. The criteria used in these reports are mainly political, wherever applicable; Cuba, for example, is always listed as a supporter of terrorism whereas anti-Castro exile groups in Florida, which have committed literally hundreds of terrorist acts, are not listed as terrorist groups. * "The causes of the malady are not entirely clear but its recurrence is one of the uniformities of history: power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations ? to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image." ? Former US Senator William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (1966) * "We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people ?? the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world. ... God has predestined, mankind expects, great things from our race; and great things we feel in our souls." ? Herman Melville, White-Jacket (1850) * "God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America's Middle Eastern policy and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist." ? John le Carr?, London Times, January 15, 2003 * "Neoconservatism ... traded upon the historic American myths of innocence, exceptionalism, triumphalism and Manifest Destiny. It offered a vision of what the United States should do with its unrivaled global power. In its most rhetorically-seductive messianic versions, it conflated the expansion of American power with the dream of universal democracy. In all of this, it proclaimed that the maximal use of American power was good for both America and the world." ? Columbia University Professor Gary Dorrien, The Christian Century magazine, January 22, 2007 * "To most of its citizens, America is exceptional, and it's only natural that it should take exception to certain international standards." ? Michael Ignatieff, Washington Post columnist, Legal Affairs, May-June, 2002 * Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, US Army War College, 1997: "Our country is a force for good without precedent". Thomas Barnett, US Naval War College: "The US military is a force for global good that ... has no equal." ? The Guardian (London), December 27, 2005 * John Bolton, future US ambassador to the United Nations, writing in 2000: Because of its unique status, the United States could not be "legally bound" or constrained in any way by its international treaty obligations. The U.S. needed to "be unashamed, unapologetic, uncompromising American constitutional hegemonists," so that their "senior decision makers" could be free to use force unilaterally. Condoleezza Rice, future US Secretary of State, writing in 2000, was equally contemptuous of international law. She claimed that in the pursuit of its national security the United States no longer needed to be guided by "notions of international law and norms" or "institutions like the United Nations" because it was "on the right side of history." ? Z Magazine, July/August 2004 * "The president [George W. Bush] said he didn't want other countries dictating terms or conditions for the war on terrorism. 'At some point, we may be the only ones left. That's okay with me. We are America'." ? Washington Post, January 31, 2002 * "Reinhold Niebuhr got it right a half-century ago: What persists ? and promises no end of grief ? is our conviction that Providence has summoned America to tutor all of humankind on its pilgrimage to perfection." ? Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relations, Boston University * In commenting on Woodrow Wilson's moral lecturing of his European colleagues at the Versailles peace table following the First World War, Winston Churchill remarked that he found it hard to believe that the European emigrants, who brought to America the virtues of the lands from which they sprang, had left behind all their vices. ? The World Crisis, Vol. V, The Aftermath, 1929 * "Behold a republic, gradually but surely becoming the supreme moral factor to the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the world's disputes." ? William Jennings Bryan, US Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, In His Image (1922) * Newsweek editor Michael Hirsch: "U.S. allies must accept that some U.S. unilateralism is inevitable, even desirable. This mainly involves accepting the reality of America's supreme might ? and truthfully, appreciating how historically lucky they are to be protected by such a relatively benign power." ? Foreign Affairs, November, 2002 * Colin Powell speaking before the Republican National Convention, August 13, 1996: The United States is "a country that exists by the grace of a divine providence." * "The US media always has an underlying acceptance of the mythology of American exceptionalism, that the US, in everything it does, is the last best hope of humanity." ? Rahul Mahajan, author of: The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism, and Full Spectrum Dominance * "The fundamental problem is that the Americans do not respect anybody except themselves," said Col. Mir Jan, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry. "They say, 'We are the God of the world,' and they don't consult us." ?Washington Post, August 3, 2002 * "If we have to use force, it is because we are America! We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future." ? Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State, 1998 People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like. To my dear readers in the United States and around the world ? In the spirit of the season, I wish each of you your choice of the following: * Merry Christmas * Happy Chanukah * Joyous Eid * Festive Kwanza * Happy New Year * Gleeful Occupy * Erotic Pagan Rite * Internet Virtual Holiday * Heartwarming Satanic Sacrifice * Devout Atheist Season's Greetings * Possessed Laying-on-of-Hands Ceremony * Really Neat Reincarnation with Auras and Crystals And may your name never appear on a Homeland Security "No-fly list". May you not vex a marginally literate high school graduate with a badge, a gun, and a can of pepper spray. May your abuses at the hands of authority be only cruel, degrading and inhuman, nothing that Mr. Obama or Mr. Cheney would call torture. May you or your country never experience a NATO or US humanitarian intervention, liberation, or involuntary suicide. May neither your labor movement nor your elections be supported by the National Endowment for Democracy. May the depleted uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, and napalm which fall upon your land be as precisely guided and harmless as the State Department says they are. May you receive for Christmas a copy of "An arsonist's guide to the homes of Pentagon officials." May you not fall sick in the United States without health insurance, nor desire to go to an American university while being less than wealthy. May you re-discover what the poor in 18th century France discovered, that rich people's heads can be mechanically separated from their shoulders if they refuse to listen to reason. May you be given the choice of euthanasia instead of having to watch Republican primary debates. Notes 1. CBS Evening News, August 20, 2002 ? 2. ABC Nightline, December 4, 2002 ? 3. 60 Minutes II, February 26, 2003 ? 4. Washington Post, March 1, 2003 ? 5. Associated Press, July 28, 2010 ? 6. 60 Minutes, January 27, 2008. See also: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [FAIR] Action Alert, February 1, 2008 ? 7. New York Times, August 21, 2004? ? William Blum is the author of: * Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 * Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower * West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir * Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website. To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area. (Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.) Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned. From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 19:21:00 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 19:21:00 +0100 Subject: [THS] Corporate Wolf Eats Grandmother Alive Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203191844.062d0918@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/corporate_wolf_eats_grandmother_alive_20111201/ Corporate Wolf Eats Grandmother Alive Posted on Dec 1, 2011 By Kelly Johnson ?Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit From the Nest Eggs of American Workers? A book by Ellen E. Schultz Hey, Occupy Wall Street. Here?s a book to rally around. Looking for a study of the wealth disparity that?s sent you to the streets? Ellen E. Schultz offers a guide. ?Retirement Heist? is a concise and alarming look at how?in the span of a generation?the 1 percent has looted the futures of the 99 percent. Schultz wields expertise from years of investigative reporting on the retirement crisis for The Wall Street Journal. Time was, she writes, when pension funds had ?such massive surpluses that the companies could have fully paid their current and future retirees? pensions, even if all of them lived to be ninety-nine and the companies never contributed another dime.? Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers By Ellen E. Schultz Portfolio Hardcover, 256 pages With slick accounting tricks, Schultz writes, corporate America has funneled billions of dollars out of pension funds. Many companies used the money to pay for downsizing?covering early-retirement buyouts, which are considered voluntary, instead of imposing a layoff and cash severance. Some funds were simply terminated, and the money was used to offset operating expenses. And so, company by company, a great surplus dwindled. To replenish the pension funds, companies cut benefits, Schultz writes. Their gains were immediate: Earnings got a boost. The companies? obligations were cut. Their bottom lines were bolstered. It took much longer for workers? losses to register: In many of the cases Schultz cites, workers realized the damage only once they were old and sick and had little in the way of resources to embark on a protracted legal battle. It?s utterly depressing, and that?s just the start. Having plundered the pensions, companies exploited 401(k) plans to borrow money cheaply. With pensions underfunded or frozen, they dug into retiree health plans. The trend of tying executive pay to performance only made matters worse, Schultz explains, leading, for instance, to the death-benefit bamboozle, whereby companies take out life insurance policies on their employees. When a worker dies, even if he?s long since found other work or retired, the company cashes in on the death benefit, tax-free. In many of these cases, the payout to the company dwarfs whatever benefit might go to the next of kin. Schultz provides an anatomy of every abomination and shows how it unfolded in individual lives. The aggrieved were engineers and miners, pro football players and pilots. Distressingly, they appeared powerless to stop this bilking or defend themselves against it. If the retirement industry isn?t reined in, she concludes, we?ll be right back where we were in the 1930s, and ?society?and taxpayers?will be paying for services to support the millions of elderly, formerly middle-class Americans.? To see long excerpts from ?Retirement Heist? at Google Books, click here. Kelly Johnson can be reached at johnsonkl(at) washpost.com. ? 2011, Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 22:16:56 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 22:16:56 +0100 Subject: [THS] The Federal Reserve's 'breathtaking' $7.7 trillion bank bailout Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203221059.0482f158@mail.messagingengine.com> The Federal Reserve's 'breathtaking' $7.7 trillion bank bailout http://theweek.com/article/index/221883/the-federal-reserves-breathtaking-77-trillion-bank-bailout A new report on the 2008 financial crisis reveals some shocking numbers that dramatically exceed the $700 billion TARP bailout POSTED ON NOVEMBER 28, 2011, AT 6:02 PM Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says that newly revealed details about the Fed's bank bailout were kept secret to prevent a stigma against banks that took part.Photo: Alex Wong/Getty ImagesSEE ALL 25 PHOTOS A new report by Bloomberg Markets Magazine details trillions of dollars in secret federal loans made to the big banks during the 2008 financial crisis, a process that helped them rake in billions of dollars in undisclosed profits. Here, some key numbers that illuminate the Federal Reserve's "breathtaking"$7.7 trillion bank bailout: 29,000 Pages of federal documents, courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act, and central bank records that Bloomberg combed through to reveal a "fresh narrative of the financial crisis" More than 21,000 Number of transactions detailed in those pages $7.7 trillion Amount in undisclosed loans the Federal Reserve made to struggling financial institutions, according to the new Bloomberg report. That "dwarf[s] the Treasury Department's better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP]," say Bob Ivry, Bradley Keoun, and Phil Kuntz at Bloomberg $13 billion Estimated amount in previously undisclosed profits the six largest banks ? JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs Group, and Morgan Stanley ? took in, thanks to those loans and the Fed's below-market rates. Unlike the TARP funds, "the loans came with virtually no strings attached for the banks," says Travis Waldron at Think Progress $160 billion Amount in TARP funds the big six received As much as $460 billion Amount the big six borrowed from the Fed, as calculated by Bloomberg and measured by peak daily debt $1.2 trillion Amount that banks referenced in the new report required on Dec. 5, 2008, "their single neediest day." The Federal Reserve didn't reveal to anyone which banks were in such dire need, say Ivry, Keoun, and Kuntz, and "bankers didn't mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy." $86 billion Amount that Bank of America Corp. owed the central bank when then-CEO Kenneth D. Lewis wrote shareholders saying that he was at the helm of "one of the strongest and most stable banks in the world" on Nov. 26, 2008 $107 billion Amount in secret loans that Morgan Stanley took in a single month, in September 2008 1 out of 10 Share of the country's delinquent mortgages that amount could have paid off $6.8 trillion Total assets held by the big six on Sept. 30, 2006 $9.5 trillion Total held on Sept. 20, 2011. Rather than help curb the practice that caused the financial crisis, "the Fed and its secret financing helped America's biggest financial firms get bigger and go on to pay employees as much as they did at the height of the housing bubble," say Ivry, Keoun, and Kuntz Sources: Bloomberg, Business Insider, Think Progress From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 22:20:56 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 22:20:56 +0100 Subject: [THS] 100s of OccupyLA Arrestees Still Held Without Charges Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203222038.04834c68@mail.messagingengine.com> 100s of OccupyLA Arrestees Still Held Without Charges in Deplorable Conditions on $500 Bail, Rights Withheld LAPD Officer Seen on Camera Pointing Weapon at Journalist During Raid on OccupyLA 'Green News Report': Newt Makes Stuff Up About EPA MUCH MORE BRAD BLOG ALERT December 2, 2011 Twitter: @TheBradBlog Facebook: Group page PLEASE SUPPORT THE BRAD BLOG BEFORE ELECTION 2012! Get a signed copy of Richard Averett's new political (and election fraud) thriller, ImaginePolitik: American Democracy - Politics in Crisis, in which "Brad Friedman" even appears as a fictional character! CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS! AND THANKS! Hundreds of OccupyLA Demonstrators Still Held Without Charges on $5,000 Bail in Often Deplorable, Illegal and Unconstitutional Conditions Arrestees kept on buses for hours, forced to urinate self, deprived of water, medical aid or legal assistance... Much of the good will and plaudits earned by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck for their "minimal use of force" tactics employed to clear OccupyLA demonstrators from City Hall Park earlier this week has been quickly squandered in the hours and days since. The BRAD BLOG has learned that hundreds of peaceful arrestees were kept in often deplorable conditions in the hours following their apprehension. According to new interviews with some of the arrestees following their release, men and women alike were held without charges for hours on end, forced to urinate in their seats on a holding bus while handcuffed, cut off from attorneys, medical supplies and drinking water, and locked away with punitively high bails while being deprived of both humane and Constitutional rights. At this hour, almost three full days since their arrest at the OccupyLA encampment in front of Los Angeles City Hall, more than 200 of the peaceful demonstrators detained by LAPD in the evening on Tuesday and early morning hours on Wednesday --- many of them who were not even participating in the Occupation --- are still being held in jail pending $5,000 bail for their misdemeanor detentions, as detailed by radio station KPCC. Approximately fifty people have been released, some after posting bail, others for medical reasons. KPCC went on to report that on Thursday, only 19 of those people had yet to be charged. The City Attorney's office said that, depending on the charge, some would face bail as high as $20,000. This morning, Los Angeles Times reported that most of the 19 who were allowed to appear in L.A. County Superior Court Thursday, were released without bail, but on the "condition that they not return to the City Hall area, where the protesters had camped." The Times went on to note that most of those still held without being charged have no criminal record... FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8967 LAPD Officer Captured on Video Pointing Gun at Citizen Journalist 'OakFoShow' at OccupyLA Raid Journo takes officer to task, identifies him for web-stream as peaceful crowd chants 'Guns down!'... "Escamilla is pointing his gun at protesters," Spencer Mills, citizen journalist and popular live video-streamer known as "OakFoShow", is heard saying on the video during his coverage of the LAPD raid at City Hall on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. The officer then points the gun towards the sky, and then lowers it briefly straight at the camera as the journalist's video-camera records the moment for posterity. "That's not necessary! You just pointed your weapon right at me!," Mills shouts to the cop. "That's not necessary!...It's against procedure and it's against code and you're not supposed to do it! Take your finger off the trigger, please. Thank you! Don't point your weapon at me. It's against procedure and its against code. I'm a journalist! I'm allowed to be here!" The crowd follows up Mills by chanting, "Guns down! Guns down! Guns down!" "Again, his name is Escamilla," Mills says near the end of the clip, before spelling out his name. "E-S-C-A-M-I-L-L-A. I believe he just broke procedure" FULL STORY, VIDEO: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8969 Green News Report' - December 1, 2011 With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen... From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 22:23:40 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 22:23:40 +0100 Subject: [THS] MA Attorney General Files Suit Against Bank of America, Citigroup, et al. Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203222319.048349d8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8965 By Brad Friedman on 12/1/2011 9:18am BREAKING: MA Attorney General Files Suit Against Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Ally Financial, MERS For Illegal Foreclosures Just breaking from Reuters... The Massachusetts attorney general has filed a lawsuit against five large U.S. banks accusing them of deceptive foreclosure practices, such as robo-signing. Attorney General Martha Coakley said on Thursday the lawsuit was filed in state court in Boston against Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co Inc, Citigroup Inc, Wells Fargo & Co and Ally Financial. Coakley's office said the lawsuit was filed after more than a year of negotiations with the banks involving all 50 states. By the way, while I realize that corporations are "people," I wonder how many actual people, after committing massive felonies, are allowed "more than a year" to "negotiate" with law enforcement over whether they will be indicted for those felony crimes or not. * * * UPDATE: A few more details now from Boston Globe... Coakley said she will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. today to detail the suit against Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citi, and Ally Financial. The suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, also names the private company Mortgage Electronic Registration System Inc. and its parent, MERSCORP Inc., as defendants, according to the attorney general?s office. ?The AG?s lawsuit seeks accountability for the banks? unlawful and deceptive conduct in the foreclosure process, including unlawful foreclosures, false documentation and robo-signing, MERS, and deceptive practices related to loan modifications,?? the news release from Coakley?s office said. And while we're waiting for more info on the above, let's not forget the woman who was arrested by New York City police for daring to close her Citibank account, as seen on video tape. The NYPD is not being sued by the AG (although they should). She did not receive a year to negotiate with the plain-clothed cops who physically picked her up and dragged her back into the Citibank branch just moments after she had the temerity to close her own personal account at the bank. Rather, it's been left to the woman herself to file a lawsuit against the cops and NYC that were both doing the bidding of Citibank on the tax-payers' dime, as Ernest Canning detailed yesterday. I can't imagine what those Occupy Wall Street folks are calling for. Gosh and golly, just what are their demands?! It's all so confusing. From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 22:26:54 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 22:26:54 +0100 Subject: [THS] How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203222626.04834748@mail.messagingengine.com> http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/republicans-being-taught-talk-occupy-wall-street-133707949.html How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street By Chris Moody | The Ticket ? Thu, Dec 1, 2011 Protesters form a wall of signs at the Occupy Portland camp in downtown Portland, Oregon. (AP) ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Republican Governors Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to rejuvenate, strategize and team-build. But during a plenary session on Wednesday, one question kept coming up: How can Republicans do a better job of talking about Occupy Wall Street? "I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death," said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation's foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. "They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism." Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about "income inequality" and "paying your fair share." Yahoo News sat in on the session, and counted 10 do's and don'ts from Luntz covering how Republicans should fight back by changing the way they discuss the movement. 1. Don't say 'capitalism.' "I'm trying to get that word removed and we're replacing it with either 'economic freedom' or 'free market,' " Luntz said. "The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we're seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we've got a problem." 2. Don't say that the government 'taxes the rich.' Instead, tell them that the government 'takes from the rich.' "If you talk about raising taxes on the rich," the public responds favorably, Luntz cautioned. But "if you talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans, the public says no.Taxing, the public will say yes." 3. Republicans should forget about winning the battle over the 'middle class.' Call them 'hardworking taxpayers.' "They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers. We can say we defend the 'middle class' and the public will say, I'm not sure about that. But defending 'hardworking taxpayers' and Republicans have the advantage." 4. Don't talk about 'jobs.' Talk about 'careers.' "Everyone in this room talks about 'jobs,'" Luntz said. "Watch this." He then asked everyone to raise their hand if they want a "job." Few hands went up. Then he asked who wants a "career." Almost every hand was raised. "So why are we talking about jobs?" 5. Don't say 'government spending.' Call it 'waste.' "It's not about 'government spending.' It's about 'waste.' That's what makes people angry." 6. Don't ever say you're willing to 'compromise.' "If you talk about 'compromise,' they'll say you're selling out. Your side doesn't want you to 'compromise.' What you use in that to replace it with is 'cooperation.' It means the same thing. But cooperation means you stick to your principles but still get the job done. Compromise says that you're selling out those principles." 7. The three most important words you can say to an Occupier: 'I get it.' "First off, here are three words for you all: 'I get it.' . . . 'I get that you're angry. I get that you've seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system." Then, he instructed, offer Republican solutions to the problem. 8. Out: 'Entrepreneur.' In: 'Job creator.' Use the phrases "small business owners" and "job creators" instead of "entrepreneurs" and "innovators." 9. Don't ever ask anyone to 'sacrifice.' "There isn't an American today in November of 2011 who doesn't think they've already sacrificed. If you tell them you want them to 'sacrifice,' they're going to be be pretty angry at you. You talk about how 'we're all in this together.' We either succeed together or we fail together." 10. Always blame Washington. Tell them, "You shouldn't be occupying Wall Street, you should be occupying Washington. You should occupy the White House because it's the policies over the past few years that have created this problem." BONUS: Don't say 'bonus!' Luntz advised that if they give their employees an income boost during the holiday season, they should never refer to it as a "bonus." "If you give out a bonus at a time of financial hardship, you're going to make people angry. It's 'pay for performance.'" From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 22:35:37 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 22:35:37 +0100 Subject: [THS] John Pilger: Once Again, War Is Prime Time and Journalism's Role Is Taboo Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203223406.04673f20@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.truth-out.org/once-again-war-prime-time-and-journalisms-role-taboo/1322771585 Once Again, War Is Prime Time and Journalism's Role Is Taboo Friday 2 December 2011 by: John Pilger, Truthout | News Analysis On 22 May, 2007, The Guardian UK's front page announced: "Iran's secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq." The writer, Simon Tisdall, claimed that Iran had secret plans to defeat American troops in Iraq, which included "forging ties with al-Qaida elements." The coming "showdown" was an Iranian plot to influence a vote in the US Congress. Based entirely on briefings by anonymous US officials, Tisdall's "exclusive" rippled with lurid tales of Iran's "murder cells" and "daily acts of war against US and British forces." His 1,200 words included just 20 for Iran's flat denial. It was a load of rubbish: in effect a Pentagon press release presented as journalism and reminiscent of the notorious fiction that justified the bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003. Among Tisdall's sources were "senior advisers" to Gen. David Petraeus, the US military commander, who, in 2006, described his strategy of waging a "war of perceptions ... conducted continuously through the news media." The media war against Iran began in 1979 when the West's placeman Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, a tyrant, was overthrown in a popular Islamic revolution. The "loss" of Iran, which under the shah was regarded as the "fourth pillar" of Western control of the Middle East, has never been forgiven in Washington and London. Last month, The Guardian UK's front page carried another "exclusive": "MoD [Ministry of Defence] prepares to take part in US strikes against Iran." Again, anonymous officials were quoted. This time the theme was the "threat" posed by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon. The latest "evidence" was warmed-over documents obtained from a laptop in 2004 by US intelligence and passed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Numerous authorities have cast doubt on these suspected forgeries, including a former IAEA chief weapons inspector. A US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks describes the new head of the IAEA, Yukiuya Amano, as "solidly in the US court" and "ready for prime time." The Guardian UK's 3 November "exclusive" and the speed with which its propaganda spread across the media were also prime time. This is known as "information dominance" by the media trainers at the Ministry of Defence's psyops (psychological warfare) establishment at Chicksands, Bedforshire, who share premises with the instructors of the interrogation methods that have led to a public inquiry into British military torture in Iraq. Disinformation and the barbarity of colonial warfare have historically had much in common. Having beckoned a criminal assault on Iran, The Guardian UK opined that this "would of course be madness." Similar arse-covering was deployed when Tony Blair, once a "mystical" hero in polite liberal circles, plotted with George W. Bush and caused a bloodbath in Iraq. With Libya recently dealt with ("It worked," said The Guardian UK), Iran is next, it seems. The role of respectable journalism in Western state crimes - from Iraq to Iran, Afghanistan to Libya - remains taboo. It is currently deflected by the media theater of the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking, which Daily Telegraph's Benedict Brogan describes as "a useful stress test." Blame Rupert Murdoch and the tabloids for everything and business can continue as usual. As disturbing as the stories are from Lord Leveson's witness stand, they do not compare with the suffering of the countless victims of journalism's warmongering. The lawyer Phil Shiner, who has forced a public inquiry into British military's criminal behavior in Iraq, says that embedded journalism provides the cover for the killing of "the hundreds of civilians killed by British forces when they had custody of them, [often subjecting them] to the most extraordinary, brutal things, involving sexual acts ... embedded journalism is never ever going to get close to hearing their story." It is hardly surprising that the Ministry of Defence, in a 2,000-page document leaked to WikiLeaks, describes investigative journalists - journalists who do their job - as a "threat" greater than terrorism. In the week The Guardian UK published its "exclusive" about Ministry of Defence planning for an attack on Iran, Gen. Sir David Richards, Britain's military chief, went on a secret visit to Israel, which is a genuine nuclear weapons outlaw and exempt from media opprobrium. Richards is a highly political general who, like Petraeus, has worked the media to considerable advantage. No journalist in Britain revealed that he went to Israel to discuss an attack on Iran. Honorable exceptions aside - such as the tenacious work of The Guardian UK's Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor - our increasingly militarized society is reflected in much of our media culture. Two of Blair's most important functionaries in his mendacious, blood-drenched adventure in Iraq, Alistair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, enjoy a cozy relationship with the liberal media, their opinions sought on worthy subjects while the blood in Iraq never dries. For their vicarious admirers, as Harold Pinter put it, the appalling consequences of their actions "never happened." On 24 November, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the feminist scholars Cynthia Cockburn and Ann Oakley, attacked what they called "certain widespread masculine traits and behaviours." They demanded that the "culture of masculinity should be addressed as a policy issue." Testosterone was the problem. They made no mention of a system of rampant state violence that has rehabilitated empire, creating 740,000 widows in Iraq and threatening whole societies, from Iran to China. Is this not a "culture," too? Their limited though not untypical indignation says much about how media-friendly identity and issues politics distract from the systemic exploitation and war that remain the primary source of violence against both women and men. From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 3 23:01:01 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 23:01:01 +0100 Subject: [THS] Preaching to the Choir? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111203225828.042f7220@mail.messagingengine.com> Preaching to the Choir? Well maybe, but Sometimes there's a youngster in there who can really sing, And goes on to become a star, Changing the lives of many with his talent. From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 4 12:08:22 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:08:22 +0100 Subject: [THS] RT: The Western Plan to Dismantle Syria Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111204120624.04565ad0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29877.htm The Western Plan to Dismantle Syria ?Syria Solution: Federation Without Assad?? By RT December 03, 2011 "RT" -- The Western plan to dismantle Syria would mean a terrible civil war, so Bashar Assad should sacrifice his presidency to protect the country from splitting up, believes Professor Johan Galtung, rector of the Transcend Peace University in Switzerland. [video] ?Redesigning the region and rewriting its map ? that is the Western agenda in the Middle East, insists Galtung, specifying that ?above all of that ? protection of expansionist Israel.? ?It is difficult to tell what the line up really is, but everything is set toward a major civil war, which could be terrible, with NATO siding with one of the parties, so the long-term consequences would be much worse,? he said. ?The Western intent is a complete split of Syria from the Iranian connection,? Johan Galtung claimed. ?Quite obviously what should happen would be for [President Bashar] Assad to step down and some sort of a coalition government to be formed,? said the professor, adding that Syria needs decentralization. ?Not splitting into four or five countries, which would be what the Western powers want, but in other words a decentralized federation,? he argued. The professor speculated that in case of foreign interference in Syria, ?In the beginning NATO will win and then the real war starts, like it probably will in Libya and like it is probably envisaged for Syria.? ?I do not think that that is a solution at all,? he emphasized. The so-called Free Syrian Army is openly fighting against government troops, but it has been said that international community chooses to ignore armed militia groups operating in Syria, agreed the professor. Johan Galtung believes the reason Western media focuses so much on the problematic situation in Syria and totally ignores the similar state of Bahrain is ?which group the big Western boys are siding with? ? in Syria they support the opposition while in Bahrain they support the regime in power. Professor Galtung called on to the international community to send 1,000 mediators in to Syria to talk to all the parties and trying to get them together and ?trying to persuade Assad to dedicate himself to his profession as a doctor.? Syria is an artificial country and it has problems typical of a former Western colony, he said. ?In such countries you have endless amount of frontlines and contradictions,? explained Galtung, naming, among others, Muslim Sunni and Shiah, Kurds and Arabs, and the Alawi related to Sunni and Christians. ?The minorities [in Syria] are very much afraid of a Sunni [armed opposition] victory. The Alawis, i.e. Shia, have hailed a kind of protective hand over them,? he said. The UN call for urgent action to protect civilians in Syria echoes the Libyan scenario, shared Galtung. ?We?ve heard that tune before.? The UN Human Rights Council has passed a resolution condemning ?gross violations? in Syria. The decision is based on a recent report detailing abuses during the government crackdown on protesters and urges the broader UN to take appropriate action. A special investigator has also been appointed to monitor how the government copes with the unrest in the country. Russia and China were among those who voted against the resolution. Moscow says the UN report which led to the vote, was not fully objective and the international community is hearing only biased accounts of what is happening in the country. It is quite relevant that the UN Human Rights Council's resolution could provide an incentive for the UN Security Council to respond, but Johan Galtung doubted that they will succeed. The Russian naval base in Syria?s port of Tartus also affects the situation and on top of that ? the play of China, which is siding with Iran as its primary source of oil, Galtung added. All these factors make the Syrian stalemate solvable only through negotiations, he said. From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 4 12:05:40 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:05:40 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?RT=3A_West=92s_Policy_on_Syria_Could_Ignite_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?WWIII=92?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111204120111.04565988@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29878.htm [RT = Russia Today - by far the best TV News Channel existing. Broadcast on many satellite and cable services, highly recommended. Tune in for The Kaiser Report and get an anlysis of the financial crisis the likes of which you won't see elsewhere! -ths] ?West?s Policy on Syria Could Ignite WWIII? By RT December 03, 2011 "RT" -- The situation in Syria is just a warm-up before a real confrontation, which will draw Russia and China into action, believes Lawrence Freeman from the Executive Intelligence Review magazine. [video] ?Russia and China are rightly worried about what is behind the policy of the US and its allies in Syria and Iran, Freeman told RT. ?President Obama is acting on a British geopolitical plan to force a confrontation with Russia and China, a military confrontation of which Syrian and Iran would nearly be the ignition point,? Freeman explained. ?But the real goal is a war to stop the progress that Russia and China are engulfed in.? Lawrence Freeman says that the International Criminal Court is being used as an instrument to carry out regime change with a smoke screen of human rights protection. ?The Russians and the Chinese are seeing this played out again and they are beginning to respond,? he said. ?Especially the Russians, they are responding militarily by sending the Kuznetsov aircraft carrier to the Syrian borders.? It is a risky game, Freeman admits, but he thinks that Russians are aware of the danger of what could happen if they do not do it. ?This could result ? and I think the Russians and the Chinese are aware of this ? this could result in World War III,? he said. ?So this is extremely dangerous, and measures have to be taken now to stop these policies by President Obama and the British.? Political analyst Marcus Papadopoulos agrees that Russia will not allow the situation in Syria to end up as it did in Libya. ?The difference between Syria and Libya is the Russian factor,? he told RT. ?Russia has made it very clear that what happened Libya will not happen in Syria and they?ve already vetoed a resolution at this Security Council, so of course there?s going to be a lot more talk by the UN of what can be done but I think the Russian factor will prove to be a critical one?. He also voiced his opinion on how to resolve the present crisis. ?What needs to happen is that the international community needs to act as a mediator between the Syrian government and the opposition parties,? he said. ?And unfortunately it?s not helping ? how the American, British and French governments are demonizing President Assad and they?re taking the side of the Syrian opposition.? From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 4 12:15:50 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:15:50 +0100 Subject: [THS] Madison Ruppert: The Deception of Media Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111204121136.045656f8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29881.htm A Disturbing Truth The Deception of Media By Madison Ruppert Why is the American establishment media sanitizing reality? Posted December 03, 2011 The December 5th, 2011 cover of Time Magazine represents a disturbing truth: the American corporate-controlled establishment media presents a picture of the world that is meant to placate and pacify the people of the United States in favor of presenting reality as it is. While the covers of the European, Asian, and South Pacific editions have an image of chaos in the streets in Egypt with ?Revolution Redux? in bold white letters in the center, the American edition is a cartoon with the headline ?Why Anxiety is Good for You.? Is this just a meaningless marketing tactic or does it exemplify the greater trend in how the American corporate media presents the world to the people of the United States? I tend towards the latter, given the fact that this is something that is inescapable when consuming media marketed to people in the United States. When I have the unfortunate pleasure of turning on the radio and listening to National Public Radio, I never cease to be amazed by the topics they choose to cover. While much of the economies of the world are in shambles, uprisings both real and manufactured are occurring around the globe, brutal police crackdowns are taking place in the United States and the federal government is attempting to legalize indefinite military detention of civilians, even American citizens, without trial or charge, they opt for fluff stories with little-to-no meaning whatsoever. This is the unfortunate nature of the ?infotainment? industry that appeals to the lowest common denominator instead of attempting to inform and educate their audience. The debatable aspect of this grim fact is if it is simply a result of sacrificing information and content in favor of ratings or if it is a calculated agenda to dumb down the American people. I tend to fall into the camp of people who believe that this has been too pervasive and relentless to be the product of just doing whatever it takes to get ratings. Take, for instance, the recent study that found that viewers of Rupert Murdoch?s Fox News were actually less informed about current events than people who watched no news at all. While this probably seems like a somewhat obvious conclusion to anyone who has sat down and watched Fox News, the fact that it was actually shown in a study is quite surprising. Then again, when their own hosts don?t watch the entire clips they are covering and supposed legal experts claim that pepper spray is a food product while proving they are wholly ignorant of California legal precedent, one can?t expect much. The poll was conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University and utilized 612 New Jersey natives. Fans of Fox News failed questions about Syria and Egypt, even when compared with people who said they didn?t watch the news. The New York Daily News wrote, ?Fox News fans flunked questions about Egypt and Syria when compared with people who don?t watch the news. Fox viewers were 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians toppled their government and 6 points less likely to be aware that Syrians have not yet overthrown theirs.? That being said, I might point out that the Egyptians did not in fact ?topple their government? instead they ousted Mubarak and replaced him with an arguably even more brutal military junta. Dan Cassino, a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson and an analyst for the poll said that since they controlled for partisanship, this was not a question of Republicans or other groups being more prone to watch Fox News. The results actually found, ?there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions that those (sic) who don?t watch any news at all.? How can this happen? Is it just that they are seeking to entertain and not really inform? Or are news outlets like Murdoch?s Fox News actually there to make the American people perpetually ignorant? The mainstream media presents such a limited spectrum of the information out there, especially when it comes to broadcast television, that it is hard to believe that it could simply be a natural result of the push for ratings over all else. The world view presented by the establishment media is so consistent and carefully crafted that it would be quite surprising if they all happened to decide to present such a version of reality completely independently. This outlook claims that the economy recovered when the government said the recession was officially over, that the government told us the whole truth about the attacks of September 11th, 2001, and that we are never deceived about the true intentions behind conflicts abroad. However, reality continues to smash through this false paradigm presented to us by the establishment media and with every passing week another crippling blow slams into the false narrative. Despite the efforts of Time to present a cartoon and a light-hearted cover story as the most important news, much of America is realizing that there is truly important information out there that is just waiting for them. The most fatal flaw of the establishment media is the Orwellian doublethink that is used on a disturbingly common basis. One of the most glaring examples in recent history is the case of Libya where al Qaeda-affiliated and rabidly racist rebels who are comprised mostly of fighters belonging to designated terrorist organizations became freedom fighters and pro-democracy protesters. While we are supposed to praise and laud these murderers according to the corporate media, we are still supposed to believe that the al Qaeda bogeymen are around every corner hoping to blow us up. A slightly more obscure example from September of this year came up when Fox News was covering the usage of weather modification, also known as geoengineering, to combat a drought in Texas. While weather modification is an irrefutable fact, it is still nonsensically treated as a conspiracy theory in some circles. When they speak about it on the mainstream media it is a normal and acceptable solution to environmental problems, but if you speak about it you?re labeled a conspiracy theorist. Unfortunately this type of blatant doublethink and outright deception is becoming more prevalent and the upcoming Time cover is a great example of how the events of the world are shaped and spun in the American mainstream media to keep the people of the United States from becoming agitated or asking too many questions. Thankfully, there is the alternative media which is growing independent of traditional news organizations and funding sources thanks to readers and business owners who are willing to support the new wave in journalism. We will continue to present the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, while the establishment media continues to present dumbed-down nonsense which will only serve to drive their viewers to sources of real information. Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie - Questions, comments, or corrections - admin at EndtheLie.com From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 4 12:19:07 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:19:07 +0100 Subject: [THS] Arundhati Roy: 'The people who created the crisis will not be the ones that come up with a solution' Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111204121814.045653e0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29884.htm Arundhati Roy: 'The people who created the crisis will not be the ones that come up with a solution' The prize-winning author of The God of Small Things talks about why she is drawn to the Occupy movement and the need to reclaim language and meaning By Arun Gupta December 03, 2011 "The Guardian" November 30, 2011 - - Sitting in a car parked at a gas station on the outskirts of Houston, Texas, my colleague Michelle holds an audio recorder to my cellphone. At the other end of the line is Arundhati Roy, author of the Booker Prize-winning The God of Small Things, who is some 2,000 miles away, driving to Boston. "This is uniquely American," I remark to Roy about interviewing her while both in cars but thousands of miles apart. Having driven some 7,000 miles and visited 23 cities (and counting) in reporting on the Occupy movement, it's become apparent that the US is essentially an oil-based economy in which we shuttle goods we no longer make around a continental land mass, creating poverty-level dead-end jobs in the service sector. This is the secret behind the Occupy Wall Street movement that Roy visited before the police crackdowns started. Sure, ending pervasive corporate control of the political system is on the lips of almost every occupier we meet. But this is nothing new. What's different is most Americans now live in poverty, on the edge, or fear a descent into the abyss. It's why a majority (at least of those who have an opinion) still support Occupy Wall Street even after weeks of disinformation and repression. In this exclusive interview for the Guardian, Roy offers her thoughts on Occupy Wall Street, the role of the imagination, reclaiming language, and what is next for a movement that has reshaped America's political discourse and seized the world's attention. AG: Why did you want to visit Occupy Wall Street and what are your impressions of it? AR: How could I not want to visit? Given what I've been doing for so many years, it seems to me, intellectually and theoretically, quite predictable this was going to happen here at some point. But still I cannot deny myself the surprise and delight that it has happened. And I wanted to, obviously, see for myself the extent and size and texture and nature of it. So the first time I went there, because all those tents were up, it seemed more like a squat than a protest to me, but it began to reveal itself in a while. Some people were holding the ground and it was the hub for other people to organise, to think through things. As I said when I spoke at the People's University, it seems to me to be introducing a new political language into the United States, a language that would be considered blasphemous only a while ago. AG: Do you think that the Occupy movement should be defined by occupying one particular space or by occupying spaces? AR: I don't think the whole protest is only about occupying physical territory, but about reigniting a new political imagination. I don't think the state will allow people to occupy a particular space unless it feels that allowing that will end up in a kind of complacency, and the effectiveness and urgency of the protest will be lost. The fact that in New York and other places where people are being beaten and evicted suggests nervousness and confusion in the ruling establishment. I think the movement will, or at least should, become a protean movement of ideas, as well as action, where the element of surprise remains with the protesters. We need to preserve the element of an intellectual ambush and a physical manifestation that takes the government and the police by surprise. It has to keep re-imagining itself, because holding territory may not be something the movement will be allowed to do in a state as powerful and violent as the United States. AG: At the same, occupying public spaces did capture the public imagination. Why do you think that is? AR: I think you had a whole subcutaneous discontent that these movements suddenly began to epitomise. The Occupy movement found places where people who were feeling that anger could come and share it ? and that is, as we all know, extremely important in any political movement. The Occupy sites became a way you could gauge the levels of anger and discontent. AG: You mentioned that they are under attack. Dozens of occupations have been shut down, evicted, at least temporarily, in the last week. What do you see as the next phase for this movement? AR: I don't know whether I'm qualified to answer that, because I'm not somebody who spends a lot of time here in the United States, but I suspect that it will keep reassembling in different ways and the anger created by the repression will, in fact, expand the movement. But eventually, the greater danger to the movement is that it may dovetail into the presidential election campaign that's coming up. I've seen that happen before in the antiwar movement here, and I see it happening all the time in India. Eventually, all the energy goes into trying to campaign for the "better guy", in this case Barack Obama, who's actually expanding wars all over the world. Election campaigns seem to siphon away political anger and even basic political intelligence into this great vaudeville, after which we all end up in exactly the same place. AG: Your essays, such as "The Greater Common Good" and "Walking with the Comrades", concern corporations, the military and state violently occupying other people's lands in India. How do those occupations and resistances relate to the Occupy Wall Street movement? AR: I hope that that the people in the Occupy movement are politically aware enough to know that their being excluded from the obscene amassing of wealth of US corporations is part of the same system of the exclusion and war that is being waged by these corporations in places like India, Africa and the Middle East. Ever since the Great Depression, we know that one of the key ways in which the US economy has stimulated growth is by manufacturing weapons and exporting war to other countries. So, whether this movement is a movement for justice for the excluded in the United States, or whether it is a movement against an international system of global finance that is manufacturing levels of hunger and poverty on an unimaginable scale, remains to be seen. AG: You've written about the need for a different imagination than that of capitalism. Can you talk about that? AR: We often confuse or loosely use the ideas of crony capitalism or neoliberalism to actually avoid using the word "capitalism", but once you've actually seen, let's say, what's happening in India and the United States ? that this model of US economics packaged in a carton that says "democracy" is being forced on countries all over the world, militarily if necessary, has in the United States itself resulted in 400 of the richest people owning wealth equivalent [to that] of half of the population. Thousands are losing their jobs and homes, while corporations are being bailed out with billions of dollars. In India, 100 of the richest people own assets worth 25% of the gross domestic product. There's something terribly wrong. No individual and no corporation should be allowed to amass that kind of unlimited wealth, including bestselling writers like myself, who are showered with royalties. Money need not be our only reward. Corporations that are turning over these huge profits can own everything: the media, the universities, the mines, the weapons industry, insurance hospitals, drug companies, non-governmental organisations. They can buy judges, journalists, politicians, publishing houses, television stations, bookshops and even activists. This kind of monopoly, this cross-ownership of businesses, has to stop. The whole privatisation of health and education, of natural resources and essential infrastructure ? all of this is so twisted and so antithetical to anything that would place the interests of human beings or the environment at the center of what ought to be a government concern ? should stop. The amassing of unfettered wealth of individuals and corporations should stop. The inheritance of rich people's wealth by their children should stop. The expropriators should have their wealth expropriated and redistributed. AG: What would the different imagination look like? AR: The home minister of India has said that he wants 70% of the Indian population in the cities, which means moving something like 500 million people off their land. That cannot be done without India turning into a military state. But in the forests of central India and in many, many rural areas, a huge battle is being waged. Millions of people are being driven off their lands by mining companies, by dams, by infrastructure companies, and a huge battle is being waged. These are not people who have been co-opted into consumer culture, into the western notions of civilisation and progress. They are fighting for their lands and their livelihoods, refusing to be looted so that someone somewhere far away may "progress" at their cost. India has millions of internally displaced people. And now, they are putting their bodies on the line and fighting back. They are being killed and imprisoned in their thousands. Theirs is a battle of the imagination, a battle for the redefinition of the meaning of civilisation, of the meaning of happiness, of the meaning of fulfilment. And this battle demands that the world see that, at some stage, as the water tables are dropping and the minerals that remain in the mountains are being taken out, we are going to confront a crisis from which we cannot return. The people who created the crisis in the first place will not be the ones that come up with a solution. That is why we must pay close attention to those with another imagination: an imagination outside of capitalism, as well as communism. We will soon have to admit that those people, like the millions of indigenous people fighting to prevent the takeover of their lands and the destruction of their environment ? the people who still know the secrets of sustainable living ? are not relics of the past, but the guides to our future. AG: In the United States, as I'm sure you're aware, political discourse is obsessed with the middle class, but the Occupy movement has made the poor and homeless visible for the first time in decades in the public discourse. Could you comment on that? AR: It's so much a reversal of what you see in India. In India, the poverty is so vast that the state cannot control it. It can beat people, but it can't prevent the poor from flooding the roads, the cities, the parks and railway station platforms. Whereas, here, the poor have been invisibilised, because obviously this model of success that has been held out to the world must not show the poor, it must not show the condition of black people. It can only the successful ones, basketball players, musicians, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell. But I think the time will come when the movement will have to somehow formulate something more than just anger. AG: As a writer, what do you make of the term "occupation", which has now somehow been reclaimed as a positive term when it's always been one of the most heinous terms in political language? AR: As a writer, I've often said that, among the other things that we need to reclaim, other than the obscene wealth of billionaires, is language. Language has been deployed to mean the exact opposite of what it really means when they talk about democracy or freedom. So I think that turning the word "occupation" on its head would be a good thing, though I would say that it needs a little more work. We ought to say, "Occupy Wall Street, not Iraq," "Occupy Wall Street, not Afghanistan," "Occupy Wall Street, not Palestine." The two need to be put together. Otherwise people might not read the signs. AG: As a novelist, you write a lot in terms of motivations and how characters interpret reality. Around the country, many occupiers we've talked to seem unable to reconcile their desires about Obama with what Obama really represents. When I talk to them about Obama's record, they say, "Oh, his hands are tied; the Republicans are to blame, it's not his fault." Why do you think people react like this, even at the occupations? AR: Even in India, we have the same problem. We have a right wing that is so vicious and so openly wicked, which is the Baratiya Janata party (BJP), and then we have the Congress party, which does almost worse things, but does it by night. And people feel that the only choices they have are to vote for this or for that. And my point is that, whoever you vote for, it doesn't have to consume all the oxygen in the political debate. It's just an artificial theatre, which in a way is designed to subsume the anger and to make you feel that this is all that you're supposed to think about and talk about, when, in fact, you're trapped between two kinds of washing powder that are owned by the same company. Democracy no longer means what it was meant to. It has been taken back into the workshop. Each of its institutions has been hollowed out, and it has been returned to us as a vehicle for the free market, of the corporations. For the corporations, by the corporations. Even if we do vote, we should just spend less time and intellectual energy on our choices and keep our eye on the ball. AG: So it's also a failure of the imagination? AR: It's walking into a pretty elaborate trap. But it happens everywhere, and it will continue to happen. Even I know that if I go back to India, and tomorrow the BJP comes to power, personally I'll be in a lot more trouble than with the Congress [party] in power. But systemically, in terms of what is being done, there's no difference, because they collaborate completely, all the time. So I'm not going to waste even three minutes of my time, if I have to speak, asking people to vote for this one or for that one. AG: One question that a lot of people have asked me: when is your next novel coming out? AR: I have no answer to that question I really don't know. Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things. And here we are with our crash helmets on, with concertina wire all around us. AG: So this inspires you, as a novelist, the movement? AR: Well, it comforts me, let's just say. I feel in so many ways rewarded for having done what I did, along with hundreds of other people, even the times when it seemed futile. ? Michelle Fawcett contributed to this article. She and Arun Gupta are covering the Occupy movement nationwide for Salon, Alternet and other outlets. Their work is available at occupyusatoday.com From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 4 12:29:06 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:29:06 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!! Robert Reich: What kind of society do modern Republicans want? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111204122356.04565150@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29885.htm The Rebirth of Social Darwinism By Robert Reich December 03, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- What kind of society, exactly, do modern Republicans want? I?ve been listening to Republican candidates in an effort to discern an overall philosophy, a broadly-shared vision, an ideal picture of America. They say they want a smaller government but that can?t be it. Most seek a larger national defense and more muscular homeland security. Almost all want to widen the government?s powers of search and surveillance inside the United States ? eradicating possible terrorists, expunging undocumented immigrants, ?securing? the nation?s borders. They want stiffer criminal sentences, including broader application of the death penalty. Many also want government to intrude on the most intimate aspects of private life. They call themselves conservatives but that?s not it, either. They don?t want to conserve what we now have. They?d rather take the country backwards ? before the 1960s and 1970s, and the Environmental Protection Act, Medicare, and Medicaid; before the New Deal, and its provision for Social Security, unemployment insurance, the forty-hour workweek, laws against child labor, and official recognition of trade unions; even before the Progressive Era, and the first national income tax, antitrust laws, and Federal Reserve. They?re not conservatives. They?re regressives. And the America they seek is the one we had in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. It was an era when the nation was mesmerized by the doctrine of free enterprise, but few Americans actually enjoyed much freedom. Robber barons like the financier Jay Gould, the railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, controlled much of American industry; the gap between rich and poor had turned into a chasm; urban slums festered; children worked long hours in factories; women couldn?t vote and black Americans were subject to Jim Crow; and the lackeys of rich literally deposited sacks of money on desks of pliant legislators. Most tellingly, it was a time when the ideas of William Graham Sumner, a professor of political and social science at Yale, dominated American social thought. Sumner brought Charles Darwin to America and twisted him into a theory to fit the times. Few Americans living today have read any of Sumner?s writings but they had an electrifying effect on America during the last three decades of the 19th century. To Sumner and his followers, life was a competitive struggle in which only the fittest could survive ? and through this struggle societies became stronger over time. A correlate of this principle was that government should do little or nothing to help those in need because that would interfere with natural selection. Listen to today?s Republican debates and you hear a continuous regurgitation of Sumner. ?Civilization has a simple choice,? Sumner wrote in the 1880s. It?s either ?liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest,? or ?not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members.? Sound familiar? Newt Gingrich not only echoes Sumner?s thoughts but mimics Sumner?s reputed arrogance. Gingrich says we must reward ?entrepreneurs? (by which he means anyone who has made a pile of money) and warns us not to ?coddle? people in need. He calls laws against child labor ?truly stupid,? and says poor kids should serve as janitors in their schools. He opposes extending unemployment insurance because, he says, ?I?m opposed to giving people money for doing nothing.? Sumner, likewise, warned against handouts to people he termed ?negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and imprudent.? Mitt Romney doesn?t want the government to do much of anything about unemployment. And he?s dead set against raising taxes on millionaires, relying on the standard Republican rationale millionaires create jobs. Here?s Sumner, more than a century ago: ?Millionaires are the product of natural selection, acting on the whole body of men to pick out those who can meet the requirement of certain work to be done It is because they are thus selected that wealth aggregates under their hands ? both their own and that intrusted to them They may fairly be regarded as the naturally selected agents of society.? Although they live in luxury, ?the bargain is a good one for society.? Other Republican hopefuls also fit Sumner?s mold. Ron Paul, who favors repeal of Obama?s healthcare plan, was asked at a Republican debate in September what medical response he?d recommend if a young man who had decided not to buy health insurance were to go into a coma. Paul?s response: ?That?s what freedom is all about: taking your own risks.? The Republican crowd cheered. In other words, if the young man died for lack of health insurance, he was responsible. Survival of the fittest. Social Darwinism offered a moral justification for the wild inequities and social cruelties of the late nineteenth century. It allowed John D. Rockefeller, for example, to claim the fortune he accumulated through his giant Standard Oil Trust was ?merely a survival of the fittest.? It was, he insisted ?the working out of a law of nature and of God.? Social Darwinism also undermined all efforts at the time to build a nation of broadly-based prosperity and rescue our democracy from the tight grip of a very few at the top. It was used by the privileged and powerful to convince everyone else that government shouldn?t do much of anything. Not until the twentieth century did America reject Social Darwinism. We created the large middle class that became the core of our economy and democracy. We built safety nets to catch Americans who fell downward through no fault of their own. We designed regulations to protect against the inevitable excesses of free-market greed. We taxed the rich and invested in public goods ? public schools, public universities, public transportation, public parks, public health ? that made us all better off. In short, we rejected the notion that each of us is on his or her own in a competitive contest for survival. But make no mistake: If one of the current crop of Republican hopefuls becomes president, and if regressive Republicans take over the House or Senate, or both, Social Darwinism is back. Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. www.robertreich.org From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 4 12:34:38 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:34:38 +0100 Subject: [THS] War Stories Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111204123322.04564d70@mail.messagingengine.com> Hard News 25 killed in Syria, most in battle between army deserters and Syrian forces: The pre-dawn clashes between regime forces and defectors killed seven soldiers and policemen, as well as five defectors and three civilians, according to a British-based group of Syrian activists called the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights http://wapo.st/uYeMy3 Engineering Consent For Attack On Syria: Why There Will Be a No-Fly Zone in Syria Erdogan, in his push for a no-fly zone, needed an Arab State to join him. He found it in Jordan, scared of a dragged-out crisis on its doorstep. France takes the lead for Europe, after the boost of its victory in Libya, and a president who wants to show his population that he is willing to fight for freedom in the Middle East. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-miller/why-there-will-be-a-nofly_b_1124904.html Done deal: Russia supplies cruise missiles to Syria: The missile system will "enable Syria to protect its entire coast from a possible seaborne attack." http://rt.com/politics/russia-syria-missiles-contract-crisis-865/ Arab League gives Syria deadline on observers: The Qatari prime minister, announced the new deadline for Syria to avoid sanctions after a meeting in Doha to discuss the measures decided against Damascus over its crackdown on eight months of protests. http://bit.ly/v7JJmw Preparing the Battlefield: France withdraws embassy staff from Iran: France is repatriating a number of diplomats and their families from Iran following an attack on the British embassy in Tehran.French officials said the move was a temporary security measure. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16018000 Three NATO occupation force soldiers killed in Afghanistan bombing: A roadside bombing killed three NATO service members Saturday in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S.-led coalition said. http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20111203/API/1112030970 Pakistani soldiers cleared to retaliate without orders: The Army hardened its stance by permitting the rank and file to respond to any attack without awaiting directions from the command. http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article2681711.ece Pakistan: Countrywide protests continue against Nato attack: Khateebs in Friday sermons condemned the blatant Nato aggression while leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami and other religious parties addressed protest rallies and called for a resolute stand against the aggressor. http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=10730&Cat=13 More deaths in Yemen violence: At least two killed in shelling in the city of Taiz following protests, taking the death toll in violence there to 17. http://bit.ly/sXb4Nz One Killed as rival militias wage turf war near Tripoli: One local official was killed and a militia base reduced to ruins in a clash between rival armed groups near the Libyan capital, the latest flare-up of tension between militias that is destabilising the new Libya. http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=212863 Libyan fighters ordered away from Tunisia border: Libyan fighters who led the uprising that toppled Moamer Kadhafi were ordered on Saturday to steer clear of the border with Tunisia after complaints that Tunisians had come under attack. http://news.yahoo.com/libyan-fighters-ordered-away-tunisia-border-161513857.html Former Tripoli Brigade leader Mahdi al-Harati outed as US asset: al-Harati, who has been a Dublin resident employed as an Arabic teacher for 20 years, claimed, when contacted by police, that the stolen cash was "given to him by an American intelligence agency." http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/liby-d03.shtml Iraqi PM says bombing was an assassination attempt against him: Iraq's prime minister said Saturday that a bombing earlier this week inside Baghdad's Green Zone was an assassination attempt against him, but he defended the nation's armed forces and said the breach did not signal a deterioration in security. http://bit.ly/u9daNU From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 4 12:39:57 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2011 12:39:57 +0100 Subject: [THS] 85-year-old Woman Strip Searched at JFK Airport Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111204123834.04564ae0@mail.messagingengine.com> 85-year-old Woman Strip Searched at JFK Airport By Nicholas Hirshon "I walk with a walker - I really look like a terrorist," she said sarcastically. "I'm tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29887.htm 13-year-old handcuffed and arrested for burping in class: A 13-year-old was handcuffed and hauled off to a juvenile detention for burping in class, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed against an Albuquerque public school principal, a teacher and a city police officer. The suit was filed on Wednesday, the same day the district in New Mexico was also sued by the family of a seven-year-old autistic boy who was handcuffed to a chair. http://bit.ly/ug2ukp From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 4 18:40:21 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2011 18:40:21 +0100 Subject: [THS] 85-year-old Woman Strip Searched at JFK Airport In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20111204123834.04564ae0@mail.messagingengine.com> References: <6.2.3.4.2.20111204123834.04564ae0@mail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <24AFC6D8-A342-4B1C-BC3C-E92A73FD1B48@pcohen.nl> Right! Morality has to be taught. pc On Dec 4, 2011, at 12:39 PM, Peter Webster wrote: > > 13-year-old handcuffed and arrested for burping in class: > >