From ths at psalience.org Mon Dec 12 12:38:54 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:38:54 +0100 Subject: [THS] The Most Important News Story of the Day/Millennium Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111212123707.06bb9448@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29942.htm The Most Important News Story of the Day/Millennium By Bill McKibben December 10, 2011 "DailyKos" -- The most important piece of news yesterday, this week, this month, and this year was a new set of statistics released yesterday by the Global Carbon Project. It showed that carbon emissions from our planet had increased 5.9 percent between 2009 and 2010. In fact, it was arguably among the most important pieces of data in the last, oh, three centuries, since according to the New York Times it represented ?almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution.? What it means, in climate terms, is that we?ve all but lost the battle to reduce the damage from global warming. The planet has already warmed about a degree Celsius; it?s clearly going to go well past two degrees. It means, in political terms, that the fossil fuel industry has delayed effective action for the 12 years since the Kyoto treaty was signed. It means, in diplomatic terms, that the endless talks underway in Durban should be more important than ever--they should be the focus of a planetary population desperate to figure out how it?s going to survive the century. But instead, almost no one is paying attention to the proceedings, at least on this continent. One of our political parties has decided that global warming is a hoax--it?s two leading candidates are busily apologizing for anything they said in the past that might possibly have been construed as backing, you know, science. President Obama hasn?t yet spoken on the Durban talks, and informed international observers like Joss Garman are beginning to despair that he ever will. Who are the 99%? In this country, they?re those of us who aren?t making any of these deadly decisions. In this world, they?re the vast majority of people who didn?t contribute to those soaring emissions. In this biosphere they?re every other species now living on a disorienting earth. You think OWS is radical? You think 350.org was radical for helping organize mass civil disobedience in DC in August against the Keystone Pipeline? We?re not radical. Radicals work for oil companies. The CEO of Exxon gets up every morning and goes to work changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere. No one has ever done anything as radical as that, not in all of human history. And he and his ilk spend heavily on campaigns to make sure no one stops them--the US Chamber of Commerce gave more money than the DNC and the RNC last cycle, and 94% of it went to climate deniers. Corporate power has occupied the atmosphere. 2011 showed we could fight back. 2012 would be a good year to step up the pressure. Because this time next year the Global Carbon Project will release another number. And I?m betting it will be grim. Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and co-founder of www.350.org From ths at psalience.org Mon Dec 12 12:46:00 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:46:00 +0100 Subject: [THS] Glenn Greenwald: The Real Definition of Terrorism Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111212124007.06bb91b8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29948.htm The Real Definition of Terrorism By Glenn Greenwald December 11, 2011 "Salon" -- The FBI yesterday announced it has secured an indictment against Faruq Khalil Muhammad ?Isa, a 38-year-old citizen of Iraq currently in Canada, from which the U.S. is seeking his extradition. The headline on the FBI?s Press Release tells the basic story: ?Alleged Terrorist Indicted in New York for the Murder of Five American Soldiers.? The criminal complaint previously filed under seal provides the details: ?Isa is charged with ?providing material support to a terrorist conspiracy? because he allegedly supported a 2008 attack on a U.S. military base in Mosul that killed 5 American soldiers. In other words, if the U.S. invades and occupies your country, and you respond by fighting back against the invading army ? the ultimate definition of a ?military, not civilian target? ? then you are a . . . Terrorist. Here is how the complaint, in the first paragraph, summarizes the Terrorism charge against ?Isa: [see url above] By ?outside of the United States,? the Government means: inside Iraq, ?Isa?s country. The bulk of the complaint details conversations ?Isa allegedly had over the Internet, while he was in Canada, with several Tunisians who wanted to engage in suicide attacks aimed at American troops in Iraq; he is not alleged to have organized the Mosul attack but merely to have provided political and religious encouragement (the network of which he was allegedly a part also carried out a suicide attack on an Iraqi police station, though ?Isa?s alleged involvement is confined to the attack on the U.S. military base that killed the 5 soldiers along with several Iraqis, and the Terrorism indictment is based solely on the deaths of the U.S. soldiers). In an effort to depict him as a crazed, Terrorist fanatic, the complaint includes this description of conversations he had while being monitored: Is that not exactly the mindset that more or less anyone in the world would have: if a foreign army invades your country and proceeds to brutally occupy it for the next eight years, then it?s your solemn duty to fight them? Indeed, isn?t that exactly the mentality that caused some young Americans to enlist after the 9/11 attack and be hailed as heroes: they attacked us on our soil, and so now I want to fight them? Yet when it?s the U.S. that is doing the invading and attacking, then we?re all supposed to look upon this very common reaction with mockery, horror, and disgust? look at these primitive religious fanatic Terrorists who have no regard for human life ? because the only healthy, normal, civilized reaction someone should have to the U.S. invading, occupying, and destroying their country is gratitude, or at least passive acquiescence. Anything else, by definition, makes you a Terrorist. That?s because it is an inherent American right to invade or occupy whomever it wants and only a Terrorist would resist (to see one vivid (and darkly humorous) expression of this pathological, imperial entitlement, see this casual speculation from a neocon law professor at Cornell that Iran may have committed an ?act of war? if it brought down the American drone that entered its airspace and hovered over its soil without permission: ?if it is true, as the Iranians claim, that the drone did not fall by accident but was brought down by Iranian electronic means, then isn?t that already an act of war??). It?s one thing to condemn ?Isa?s actions on moral or ethical grounds: one could argue, I suppose, that the solemn duty of every Iraqi was to respectfully treat the American invaders as honored (albeit uninvited) guests, or at least to cede to invading American troops the monopoly on violence. But it?s another thing entirely to label someone who does choose to fight back as a ?Terrorist? and prosecute them as such under charges that entail life in prison (by contrast: an Israeli soldier yesterday killed a Palestinian protester in a small West Bank village that has had much of its land appropriated by Israeli settlers, by shooting him in the face at relatively close range with a tear gas cannister, while an Israeli plane attacked a civilian home in Gaza and killed a father and his young son while injuring several other children; acts like that, or the countless acts of reckless or even deliberate slaughter of civilians by Americans, must never be deemed Terrorism). Few things better illustrate the utter meaninglessness of the word Terrorism than applying it to a citizen of an invaded country for fighting back against the invading army and aiming at purely military targets (this is far from the first time that Iraqis and others who were accused of fighting back against the invading U.S. military have been formally deemed to be Terrorists for having done so). To the extent the word means anything operationally, it is: he who effectively opposes the will of the U.S. and its allies. This topic is so vital because this meaningless, definition-free word ? Terrorism ? drives so many of our political debates and policies. Virtually every debate in which I ever participate quickly and prominently includes defenders of government policy invoking the word as some sort of debate-ending, magical elixir: of course President Obama has to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process: they?re Terrorists; of course we have to stay in Afghanistan: we have to stop The Terrorists; President Obama is not only right to kill people (including civilians) using drones, but is justified in boasting and even joking about it, because they?re Terrorists; of course some people should be held in prison without charges: they?re Terrorists, etc. etc. It?s a word that simultaneously means nothing and justifies everything. * * * * * Here are two videos relating somewhat to this: (1) Sen. Carl Levin claimed as part of the debate over the detention bill he sponsored with John McCain that it was the Obama White House that demanded the removal of language that would have exempted U.S. citizens from military detention without charges: (2) Last month, I sat for an hour-long interview with Berkeley?s Harry Kreisler as part of that university?s Conversations With History series. Although the event was nominally part of my book tour, Kreisler was a very good interviewer who asked a lot of probing questions unrelated to the book which I?m not generally asked ? about my background, intellectual influences and foundations, motives ? and so some may find this discussion worthwhile: From ths at psalience.org Mon Dec 12 12:53:29 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:53:29 +0100 Subject: [THS] Bailout Total: $29.616 Trillion Dollars Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111212125300.065d6ce0@mail.messagingengine.com> The Big Picture - http://www.ritholtz.com/blog Bailout Total: $29.616 Trillion Dollars Posted By Barry Ritholtz On December 9, 2011 @ 6:20 am In Bailouts,Economy,Federal Reserve There is a fascinating new study coming out of the Levy Economics Institute [1] of Bard College. Its titled ?$29,000,000,000,000: A Detailed Look at the Fed?s Bail-out by Funding Facility and Recipient? by James Felkerson. The study looks at the lending, guarantees, facilities and spending of the Federal Reserve. The researchers took all of the individual transactions across all facilities created to deal with the crisis, to figure out how much the Fed committed as a response to the crisis. This includes direct lending, asset purchases and all other assistance. (It does not include indirect costs such as rising price of goods due to inflation, weak dollar, etc.) The net total? As of November 10, 2011, it was $29,616.4 billion dollars ? (or 29 and a half trillion, if you prefer that nomenclature). Three facilities?CBLS, PDCF, and TAF? are responsible for the lion?s share ? 71.1% of all Federal Reserve assistance ($22,826.8 billion). One comment about some of the folks pushing back against this massive total: Yes, there is a big difference between a $100 lent for 3 days, and a $100 lent overnight rolled over 2 more times. And there is an enormous difference when temporary overnight lending lasts for three years. Overnight lending, by its definition, is temporary, short term, lower risk, modest impact. It exists to allow slightly over-extended banks to meet their reserve requirements. But rolling overnight lending repeatedly for 3 years is none of those things. And it makes a mockery of these same reserve requirements, and the protective purposes they are supposed to serve. The amount of overnight lending reflects how broken our financial system really is. A well capitalized, moderately leverage system does not require this massive liquidity from a central bank ? interbank lending should be sufficient. What the data reveals is that the financial sector remains dangerously under-capitalized and overleveraged. To pretend these were merely minor overnight loans, rolled over once or twice, is foolish, dangerous nonsense. ~~~ Cumulative facility totals, in billions Source: Federal Reserve Facility Total Percent of total Term Auction Facility $3,818.41 12.89% Central Bank Liquidity Swaps 10,057.4(1.96) 33.96 Single Tranche Open Market Operation 855 2.89 Terms Securities Lending Facility and Term Options Program 2,005.7 6.77 Bear Stearns Bridge Loan 12.9 0.04 Maiden Lane I 28.82(12.98) 0.10 Primary Dealer Credit Facility 8,950.99 30.22 Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility 217.45 0.73 Commercial Paper Funding Facility 737.07 2.49 Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility 71.09(.794) 0.24 Agency Mortgage-Backed Security Purchase Program 1,850.14(849.26) 6.25 AIG Revolving Credit Facility 140.316 0.47 AIG Securities Borrowing Facility 802.316 2.71 Maiden Lane II 19.5(9.33) 0.07 Maiden Lane III 24.3(18.15) 0.08 AIA/ ALICO 25 0.08 Totals $29,616.4 100.0% > Source: BERNANKE?S OBFUSCATION CONTINUES: THE FED?S $29 TRILLION BAIL-OUT OF WALL STREET [2] L. Randall Wray Economonitor, December 9th, 2011 http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2011/12/09/bernanke?s-obfuscation-continues-the-fed?s-29-trillion-bail-out-of-wall-street/ Article printed from The Big Picture: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog From ths at psalience.org Mon Dec 12 12:58:15 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 12:58:15 +0100 Subject: [THS] Glenn Greenwald: Hillary Clinton and Internet Freedom Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111212125631.06bb8de0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.salon.com/2011/12/09/hillary_clinton_and_internet_freedom/singleton/ Hillary Clinton and Internet Freedom There are many people who can credibly claim to defend Internet Freedom; Obama officials are not among them By Glenn Greenwald Hillary Clinton speaks at The Hague on December 8, 2011 (Credit: AP) Hypocrisy from the U.S. Government ? having U.S. officials self-righteously impose standards on other countries which they routinely violate ? is so common and continuous that the vast majority of examples do not even merit notice. But sometimes, it is so egregious and shameless ? and sufficiently consequential ? that it should not go unobserved. Such is the case with the speech delivered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday at a Conference on Internet Freedom held at the Hague, a conference devoted to making ?a stand for freedom of expression on the internet, especially on behalf of cyber dissidents and bloggers.? Clinton has been flamboyantly parading around for awhile now as the planet?s leading protector of Internet freedom; yesterday she condemned multiple countries for assaulting this freedom and along the way actually managed to keep a straight face as she said things like this: [T]he right to express one?s views, practice one?s faith, peacefully assemble with others to pursue political or social change ? these are all rights to which all human beings are entitled, whether they choose to exercise them in a city square or an internet chat room. . . . This is an urgent task. It is most urgent, of course, for those around the world whose words are now censored, who are imprisoned because of what they or others have written online, who are blocked from accessing entire categories of internet content, or who are being tracked by governments seeking to keep them from connecting with one another. . . . [T]he more people that are online and contributing ideas, the more valuable the entire network becomes to all the other users. In this way, all users, through the billions of individual choices we make about what information to seek or share, fuel innovation, enliven public debates, quench a thirst for knowledge, and connect people in ways that distance and cost made impossible just a generation ago. But when ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled, and people constrained in their choices, the internet is diminished for all of us. What we do today to preserve fundamental freedoms online will have a profound effect on the next generation of users. . . . The United States wants the internet to remain a space where economic, political, and social exchanges flourish. To do that, we need to protect people who exercise their rights online, and we also need to protect the internet itself from plans that would undermine its fundamental characteristics. ~~~~~~~~~~ She astutely observed that ?those who push these plans often do so in the name of security.? She added that ?the first challenge is for the private sector to embrace its role in protecting internet freedom,? which ? she lamented ? has not always happened: ?A few years ago, the headlines were about companies turning over sensitive information about political dissidents. Earlier this year, they were about a company shutting down the social networking accounts of activists in the midst of a political debate.? She concluded with a real flourish: ?Our government will continue to work very hard to get around every barrier that repressive governments put up? even though such governments will try to maintain those barriers ?by resorting to greater oppression.? What Hillary Clinton is condemning here is exactly that which not only the administration in which she serves, but also she herself, has done in one of the most important Internet freedom cases of the last decade: WikiLeaks. And beyond that case, both Clinton specifically and the Obama administration generally have waged a multi-front war on Internet freedom. First, let us recall that many of WikiLeaks? disclosures over the last 18 months have directly involved improprieties, bad acts and even illegalities on the part of Clinton?s own State Department. As part of WikiLeaks? disclosures, she was caught ordering her diplomats at the U.N. to engage in extensive espionage on other diplomats and U.N. officials; in a classified memo, she demanded ?forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications? as well as ?credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers? for a whole slew of diplomats, actions previously condemned by the U.S. as illegal. WikiLeaks also revealed that the State Department ? very early on in the Obama administration ? oversaw a joint effort between its diplomats and GOP officials to pressure and coerce Spain to block independent judicial investigations into the torture policies of Bush officials: a direct violation of then-candidate Obama?s pledge to allow investigations to proceed as well being at odds with the White House?s dismissal of questions about the Spanish investigation as merely ?hypothetical.? WikiLeaks disclosures also revealed that public denials from Clinton?s State Department about the U.S. role in Yemen were at best deeply misleading. And, of course, those disclosures revealed a litany of other truly bad acts by the U.S. Government generally. What has the U.S. Government done in response to these newsworthy Internet revelations? It launched what The Sydney Morning Herald this week ? citing classified Australian diplomatic cables ? described as ?an ?unprecedented? US government criminal investigation?: ??unprecedented both in its scale and nature.? It has convened a Grand Jury to criminally investigate WikiLeaks ? for nothing more than doing what newspapers routinely do: publishing newsworthy classified information received from sources. It stood passively by ? if it did not actively participate in ? highly sophisticated cyberattacks that prevented WikiLeaks from being hosted any longer on a U.S. site. It secretly sought from Twitter a slew of records showing the online activities of WikiLeaks supporters, including a sitting member of Icleand?s Parliament. It has serially harassed American supporters of WikiLeaks by repeatedly detaining them at the airport and seizing their electronic goods such as their laptops, all without any warrants. And Senate Democrats demanded Julian Assange?s prosecution for espionage while bullying private corporations to cut off all of WikiLeaks? funding sources. Meanwhile, Clinton?s State Department warned international relations students that they had better not discuss, link to or even read the cables ? which were making news all over the world ? or else they would be jeopardizing their ability to work in government. The White House warned government employees not to even look at those documents online ? even though the world?s largest newspapers were publishing them ? and threatened that they would be breaking the law if they did. The State Department instructed its employees that all of those documents, published all over the world, must still be treated as secret. The Obama administration then blocked Internet access to those documents for hundreds of thousands of federal employees, even having the Library of Congress ? one of the world?s largest libraries ? install blocks to ensure that nobody could use library computers to read those documents. Those are the acts of a government and a State Department seeking to block access to and discussion of evidence of their own wrongdoing and to punish as criminals those who reported it. Beyond WikiLeaks, the Obama administration (following in the footsteps of Saudi Arabia) is seeking ?a new federal law forcing Internet e-mail, instant-messaging, and other communication providers offering encryption to build in backdoors for law enforcement surveillance.? The Obama DOJ has insisted that it has the right to read opened emails with no warrants from a court. The Chairwoman of the Democratic Party, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, is sponsoring a bill under which ?Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers? activities for one year.? The Washington Post?s Dana Priest and William Arkin reported in their ?Top Secret America? series last year: ?Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications.? Perhaps worst of all, many of the administration?s key allies in the Senate are now pushing a bill ? in the name of stopping online piracy (SOPA) ? that would vest the U.S. government and the largest corporations with draconian powers literally to shut down or otherwise disable Internet sites without due process. Hillary Clinton personally ?taciticly endorsed that bill,? enabling the bill?s key Democratic Congressional supporters to tout State Department support for it. As EFF?s Trevor Timm recently wrote: ?Ironically, we know from the WikiLeaks cables that the State Department has also aggressively lobbied many other countries for strict new laws similar to SOPA. They have even offered to fund enforcement and literally draft the laws that sacrifice free speech for greater copyright protection for Hollywood.? So let?s review Secretary Clinton?s list of grave threats to Internet freedom and see how it applies to her actions and those of the Obama administration. ?Those around the world whose words are now censored . . . who are blocked from accessing entire categories of internet content? ? check. Attempting to undermine the Internet?s ability to ?enliven public debates, quench a thirst for knowledge? ? check. ?Ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled, and people constrained in their choices? ? check. ?Companies turning over sensitive information about political dissidents? and ?a company shutting down the social networking accounts of activists in the midst of a political debate? ? check. ?Those who push these plans often do so in the name of security? ? big check. Internet freedom ? preventing government and corporate control of the Internet ? is indeed one of the most vital political fights of this generation, perhaps the most vital. There are many people in a position credibly to lead and support that fight. Hillary Clinton and the government in which she serves is most definitely not among them; more often than not, they are among the enemies of those freedoms. * * * * * From ths at psalience.org Mon Dec 12 14:28:01 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:28:01 +0100 Subject: [THS] Three-Quarters of Climate Change Is Man-Made Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111212142459.043a9e40@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=three-quarters-of-climate Three-Quarters of Climate Change Is Man-Made An independent study quantifies the human and natural contributions, with solar radiation contributing only minimally By Quirin Schiermeier and Nature magazine | Monday, December 5, 2011 | 113 A power plant just south of Lansing, Iowa. Image: Flickr/DTWpuck Natural climate variability is extremely unlikely to have contributed more than about one-quarter of the temperature rise observed in the past 60 years, reports a pair of Swiss climate modelers in a paper published online December 4. Most of the observed warming?at least 74 percent?is almost certainly due to human activity, they write in Nature Geoscience. Since 1950, the average global surface air temperature has increased by more than 0.5 degree Celsius. To separate human and natural causes of warming, the researchers analyzed changes in the balance of heat energy entering and leaving Earth?a new "attribution" method for understanding the physical causes of climate change. Their findings, which are strikingly similar to results produced by other attribution methods, provide an alternative line of evidence that greenhouse gases, and in particular carbon dioxide, are by far the main culprit of recent global warming. The massive increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations since pre-industrial times would, in fact, have caused substantially more surface warming were it not for the cooling effects of atmospheric aerosols such as black carbon, they report. Previous attempts to disentangle anthropogenic and natural warming used a statistically complex technique called optimal fingerprinting to compare observed patterns of surface air temperature over time with the modeled climate response to greenhouse gases, solar radiation and aerosols from volcanoes and other sources. "Optimal fingerprinting is a powerful technique, but to most people it?s a black box," says Reto Knutti, a climate scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, one of the authors of the report. A balanced view Knutti and his co-author Markus Huber, also at ETH Zurich, took a different approach. They utilized a much simpler model of Earth?s total energy budget and ran the model many thousands of times, using different combinations of a few crucial parameters that contribute to the energy budget. These included global values for incoming shortwave radiation from the Sun, solar energy leaving Earth, heat absorbed by the oceans and climate-feedback effects (such as reduced snow cover, which amplifies warming by exposing darker surfaces that absorb more heat). By using the combinations that best matched the observed surface warming and ocean heat uptake, the authors then ran the so-constrained model with each energy parameter individually. This enabled them to estimate the contribution of CO2 and other climate-change agents to the observed temperature change. Their study was greatly assisted by a 2009 analysis of observed changes since 1950 in Earth?s energy balance, says Knutti. Knutti and Huber found that greenhouse gases contributed 0.6?1.1 degrees C to the warming observed since the mid-twentieth century, with the most statistically likely value being a contribution of about 0.85 degree C. Around half of that contribution from greenhouse gases?0.45 degree C?was offset by the cooling effects of aerosols. These directly influence Earth's climate by scattering light; they also have indirect climate effects through their interactions with clouds. The authors calculated a net warming value of around 0.5 degree C since the 1950s, which is very close to the actual temperature rise of 0.55 degree C observed over that period. Changes in solar radiation?a hypothesis for global warming proffered by many climate skeptics?contributed no more than around 0.07 degree C to the recent warming, the study finds. To test whether recent warming might just be down to a random swing in Earth?s unstable climate?another theory favored by skeptics?Knutti and Huber conducted a series of control runs of different climate models without including the effects of the energy-budget parameters. But even if climate variability were three times greater than that estimated by state-of-the-art models, it is extremely unlikely to have produced a warming trend as pronounced as that observed in the real world, they found. "This tightens estimates of past responses," says Gabriele Hegerl, a climate scientist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, "And it should also lead to predictions of future climate change that are grounded in the kind of changes already being observed." From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 13 12:06:51 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:06:51 +0100 Subject: [THS] BASQUE GOVERNMENT REGULATES CANNABIS SALE AND USE Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111213120623.06aa1508@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.encod.org/info/BASQUE-GOVERNMENT-REGULATES.html BASQUE GOVERNMENT REGULATES CANNABIS SALE AND USE Published on Tuesday 13 December 2011 10:15, by encod . Modified on Tuesday 13 December 2011 10:14 All the versions of this article: [English] [Espa?ol] Source: Ansa 12 december 2011 (ANSAmed) - MADRID, DECEMBER 12 - The Basque Parliament will approve a law bill in the first few months of 2012 on drug addiction, which will regulate "the growing, sale and consumption of cannabis". This is according to the second in command at the region?s health authority, Jesus Maria Fernandez, who was quoted by the EFE agency. "It is better to regulate than to ban," said Fernandez, who called the consumption of cannabis "a practice that is already consolidated". His words were echoed by the leading health official, Rafael Bengoa, who said: "We do not want to be prohibitionists". The consumption and possession of cannabis are regulated by the penal code and by the law on citizen security. For the new ruling, for which "technical and legal studies have been undertaken", the regional government wants to "open a debate" with associations in favour of consumption and to "shape their rights". The law bill on drug addiction also features prevention and treatment for gambling addictions, which affect 2% of the Basque population, and for addiction to new technology. (ANSAmed). From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 13 12:11:07 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:11:07 +0100 Subject: [THS] Sibel Edmonds: US Troops Begin Operations on the Jordan-Syria Border Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111213120953.06ac1478@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29960.htm US Troops Begin Operations on the Jordan-Syria Border By Sibel Edmonds December 12, 2011 ---- According to first-hand accounts and reports provided to Boiling Frogs Post by several sources in Jordan, during the last few hours foreign military groups, estimated at hundreds of individuals, began to spread near the villages of the north-Jordan city of "Al-Mafraq", which is adjacent to the Jordanian and Syrian border. [video report] According to one Jordanian military officer who asked to remain anonymous, hundreds of soldiers who speak languages ?other than Arabic were seen during the past two days in those areas moving back and forth in military vehicles between the King Hussein Air Base of al-Mafraq (10 km from the Syrian border), and the vicinity of Jordanian villages adjacent to the Syrian border, such as village Albaej (5 km from the border), the area around the dam of Sarhan, the villages of Zubaydiah and al-Nahdah adjacent to the Syrian border. - Faux Syria Coverage by Western Media?s Illegitimate Child By Sibel Edmonds Yesterday we broke the developing story of US-NATO troop deployment on the Jordanian-Syrian Border. I?ve been monitoring the media for any relevant coverage. So far I have found ?none.? Then, today I found a very twisted, one-sided, and completely West-Driven video report on some developments along the Syrian-Jordanian border. The report comes from the long-bought and independent-imposter news agency Al-Jazeera, you know the one who heavily beat the war drums during the Libya development? Okay, please watch the following Faux Video Report by the Al-Jazeera Drummer Boys and Girls, and let me know all the things you find wrong, missing, and ?influenced? within it: [video] Allow me to go first: no comments asked or requested from the Syrian government. No mentioning of the recent developments in Jordan I think these pretenders have some gene-pool connection to the US media. Maybe a distant cousin? An illegitimate child? Now your turn http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/12/11/bfp-exclusive-developing-story-hundreds-of-us-nato-soldiers-arrive-begin-operations-on-the-jordan-syria-border/ From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 13 12:18:41 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:18:41 +0100 Subject: [THS] !!! Matt Taibbi: Indefinite Detention of American Citizens Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111213121313.06ac11e8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29955.htm Indefinite Detention of American Citizens: Coming Soon to Battlefield U.S.A. By Matt Taibbi December 12, 2011 "Rolling Stone" -- There?s some disturbing rhetoric flying around in the debate over the National Defense Authorization Act, which among other things contains passages that a) officially codify the already-accepted practice of indefinite detention of "terrorist" suspects, and b) transfer the responsibility for such detentions exclusively to the military. The fact that there?s been only some muted public uproar about this provision (which, disturbingly enough, is the creature of Wall Street anti-corruption good guy Carl Levin, along with John McCain) is mildly surprising, given what?s been going on with the Occupy movement. Protesters in fact should be keenly interested in the potential applications of this provision, which essentially gives the executive branch unlimited powers to indefinitely detain terror suspects without trial. The really galling thing is that this act specifically envisions American citizens falling under the authority of the bill. One of its supporters, the dependably-unlikeable Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, bragged that the law "basically says for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield" and that people can be jailed without trial, be they "American citizen or not." New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte reiterated that "America is part of the battlefield." Officially speaking, of course, the bill only pertains to: "... a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners." As Glenn Greenwald notes, the key passages here are "substantially supported" and "associated forces." The Obama administration and various courts have already expanded their definition of terrorism to include groups with no connection to 9/11 (i.e. certain belligerents in Yemen and Somalia) and to individuals who are not members of the target terror groups, but merely provided "substantial support." The definitions, then, are, for the authorities, conveniently fungible. They may use indefinite detention against anyone who "substantially supports" terror against the United States, and it looks an awful lot like they have leeway in defining not only what constitutes "substantial" and "support," but even what "terror" is. Is a terrorist under this law necessarily a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban? Or is it merely someone who is "engaged in hostilities against the United States"? Here?s where I think we?re in very dangerous territory. We have two very different but similarly large protest movements going on right now in the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement. What if one of them is linked to a violent act? What if a bomb goes off in a police station in Oakland, or an IRS office in Texas? What if the FBI then linked those acts to Occupy or the Tea Party? You can see where this is going. When protesters on the left first started flipping out about George Bush?s indefinite detention and rendition policies, most people thought the idea that these practices might someday be used against ordinary Americans was merely an academic concern, something theoretical. But it?s real now. If these laws are passed, we would be forced to rely upon the discretion of a demonstrably corrupt and consistently idiotic government to not use these awful powers to strike back at legitimate domestic unrest. Right now, the Senate is openly taking aim at the rights of American citizens under the guise of an argument that anyone who supports al-Qaeda has no rights. But if you pay close attention, you?ll notice the law?s supporters here and there conveniently leaving out those caveats about "anyone who supports al-Qaeda." For instance, here?s Lindsey Graham again: "If you?re an American citizen and you betray your country, you?re not going to be given a lawyer ... I believe our military should be deeply involved in fighting these guys at home or abroad." As Greenwald points out, this idea ? that an American who commits treason can be detained without due process ? is in direct defiance of Article III, Section III of the Constitution, which reads: "No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court." This effort to eat away at the rights of the accused was originally gradual, but to me it looks like that process is accelerating. It began in the Bush years with a nebulous description of terrorist sedition that may or may not have included links to Sunni extremist groups in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. But words like "associated" and "substantial" and "betray" have crept into the discussion, and now it feels like the definition of a terrorist is anyone who crosses some sort of steadily-advancing invisible line in their opposition to the current government. This confusion about the definition of terrorism comes at a time when the economy is terrible, the domestic government is more unpopular than ever, and there is quite a lot of radical and even revolutionary political agitation going on right here at home. There are people out there ? I?ve met some of them, in both the Occupy and Tea Party movements ? who think that the entire American political system needs to be overthrown, or at least reconfigured, in order for progress to be made. It sounds paranoid and nuts to think that those people might be arrested and whisked away to indefinite, lawyerless detention by the military, but remember: This isn?t about what?s logical, it?s about what?s going on in the brains of people like Lindsey Graham and John McCain. At what point do those luminaries start equating al-Qaeda supporters with, say, radical anti-capitalists in the Occupy movement? What exactly is the difference between such groups in the minds (excuse me, in what passes for the minds) of the people who run this country? That difference seems to be getting smaller and smaller all the time, and such niceties as American citizenship and the legal tradition of due process seem to be less and less meaningful to the people who run things in America. What does seem real to them is this ?battlefield earth? vision of the world, in which they are behind one set of lines and an increasingly enormous group of other people is on the other side. Here?s another way to ask the question: On which side of the societal fence do you think the McCains and Grahams would put, say, an unemployed American plumber who refused an eviction order from Bank of America and holed up with his family in his Florida house, refusing to move? Would Graham/McCain consider that person to have the same rights as Lloyd Blankfein, or is that plumber closer, in their eyes, to being like the young Muslim who throws a rock at a U.S. embassy in Yemen? A few years ago, that would have sounded like a hysterical question. But it just doesn?t seem that crazy anymore. We?re turning into a kind of sci-fi society in which making it and being a success not only means getting rich, but also means winning the full rights of citizenship. I hope I?m wrong, but I don?t see this ending well. Proof Obama will sign NDAA 1031 Citizen Imprisonment Law in a few days The video below was embedded in this article by ICH and did not appear in the original Rolling Stone item As soon as December 13, the President will sign NDAA Section 1031 into law, permitting citizen imprisonment without evidence or trial. The bill that passed Congress absolutely DOES NOT exempt citizens. The text of Section 1031 reads, "A covered person under this section" includes "any person who has committed a belligerent act". We only have to be ACCUSED, because we don't get a trial. - Confusingly, Obama threatened a veto for 1032, but NOT 1031. 1032 is UNRELATED to imprisoning citizens without a trial. He has never suggested using a veto to stop Section 1031 citizen imprisonment -- in fact, it was requested by the Obama administration. Watch the video for proof. - The Feinstein Amendment 1031(e) is dangerously misleading. Don't be fooled: In the text of 1031(e), "Nothing in this section shall be construed...", the only word that matters is "construed" because the Supreme Court are the only ones with the power to construe the law. The Feinstein Amendment 1031(e) permits citizens to be imprisoned without evidence or a trial forever, if the Supreme Court does not EXPLICITLY repeal 1031. - Any time you hear the words, "requirement for military custody" this refers to 1032 NOT 1031. We MUST not confuse these two sections. In its statements, the Obama administration has actually contributed to the confusion about 1032's "requirement for military custody", which is COMPLETEY UNRELATED to Section 1031 citizen imprisonment without trial. These tricky, misleading words appear even in major news stories. Don't fall for it! If we act urgently to tell our friends, family, and colleagues, we may still be able to prevent this. Here is what we can do: 1) Americans must know about this to stop it. Urgently pass this petiton as widely as possible: http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-ndaa-section-1031-citizen-imprisonment-l... 2) To spread this C-SPAN video evidence, Thumbs Up and comment on this video. People deserve to watch this before he signs it. 3) Congress can still block the law before December 13. Write and call your Representative and Senator telling them to stop NDAA Section 1031 and the dangerously misleading Feinstein Amendment 1031(e). Contact your Representative: http://writerep.house.gov/writerep/ Contact your Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm 4) Write and call the White House to tell the President you won't sit by and watch NDAA Section 1031 and the dangerously misleading Feinstein Amendment 1031(e) become law: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments From ths at psalience.org Tue Dec 13 12:21:45 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:21:45 +0100 Subject: [THS] Paul Krugman: Depression and Democracy Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111213121920.06ac0ed0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29957.htm Depression and Democracy By Paul Krugman December 12, 2011 "New York Times" -- It?s time to start calling the current situation what it is: a depression. True, it?s not a full replay of the Great Depression, but that?s cold comfort. Unemployment in both America and Europe remains disastrously high. Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited. And democratic values are under siege. On that last point, I am not being alarmist. On the political as on the economic front it?s important not to fall into the ?not as bad as? trap. High unemployment isn?t O.K. just because it hasn?t hit 1933 levels; ominous political trends shouldn?t be dismissed just because there?s no Hitler in sight. Let?s talk, in particular, about what?s happening in Europe ? not because all is well with America, but because the gravity of European political developments isn?t widely understood. First of all, the crisis of the euro is killing the European dream. The shared currency, which was supposed to bind nations together, has instead created an atmosphere of bitter acrimony. Specifically, demands for ever-harsher austerity, with no offsetting effort to foster growth, have done double damage. They have failed as economic policy, worsening unemployment without restoring confidence; a Europe-wide recession now looks likely even if the immediate threat of financial crisis is contained. And they have created immense anger, with many Europeans furious at what is perceived, fairly or unfairly (or actually a bit of both), as a heavy-handed exercise of German power. Nobody familiar with Europe?s history can look at this resurgence of hostility without feeling a shiver. Yet there may be worse things happening. Right-wing populists are on the rise from Austria, where the Freedom Party (whose leader used to have neo-Nazi connections) runs neck-and-neck in the polls with established parties, to Finland, where the anti-immigrant True Finns party had a strong electoral showing last April. And these are rich countries whose economies have held up fairly well. Matters look even more ominous in the poorer nations of Central and Eastern Europe. Last month the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development documented a sharp drop in public support for democracy in the ?new E.U.? countries, the nations that joined the European Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not surprisingly, the loss of faith in democracy has been greatest in the countries that suffered the deepest economic slumps. And in at least one nation, Hungary, democratic institutions are being undermined as we speak. One of Hungary?s major parties, Jobbik, is a nightmare out of the 1930s: it?s anti-Roma (Gypsy), it?s anti-Semitic, and it even had a paramilitary arm. But the immediate threat comes from Fidesz, the governing center-right party. Fidesz won an overwhelming Parliamentary majority last year, at least partly for economic reasons; Hungary isn?t on the euro, but it suffered severely because of large-scale borrowing in foreign currencies and also, to be frank, thanks to mismanagement and corruption on the part of the then-governing left-liberal parties. Now Fidesz, which rammed through a new Constitution last spring on a party-line vote, seems bent on establishing a permanent hold on power. The details are complex. Kim Lane Scheppele, who is the director of Princeton?s Law and Public Affairs program ? and has been following the Hungarian situation closely ? tells me that Fidesz is relying on overlapping measures to suppress opposition. A proposed election law creates gerrymandered districts designed to make it almost impossible for other parties to form a government; judicial independence has been compromised, and the courts packed with party loyalists; state-run media have been converted into party organs, and there?s a crackdown on independent media; and a proposed constitutional addendum would effectively criminalize the leading leftist party. Taken together, all this amounts to the re-establishment of authoritarian rule, under a paper-thin veneer of democracy, in the heart of Europe. And it?s a sample of what may happen much more widely if this depression continues. It?s not clear what can be done about Hungary?s authoritarian slide. The U.S. State Department, to its credit, has been very much on the case, but this is essentially a European matter. The European Union missed the chance to head off the power grab at the start ? in part because the new Constitution was rammed through while Hungary held the Union?s rotating presidency. It will be much harder to reverse the slide now. Yet Europe?s leaders had better try, or risk losing everything they stand for. And they also need to rethink their failing economic policies. If they don?t, there will be more backsliding on democracy ? and the breakup of the euro may be the least of their worries. From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 14 14:03:07 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:03:07 +0100 Subject: [THS] Kevin Zeese: The Goal is Not to Occupy it is to End Corporate Rule Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111214140247.0695f678@mail.messagingengine.com> Occupy is Not Just About Occupying: The Goal is Not to Occupy it is to End Corporate Rule By Kevin Zeese URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28146 Global Research, December 11, 2011 With encampments being closed across the country it is important to remember the end goal is not to occupy public space, it is to end corporate rule. We seek to replace the rule of money with the rule of people. Occupying is a tactic but the grand strategy of the Occupy Movement is to weaken the pillars that hold the corporate-government in place by educating, organizing and mobilizing people into an independent political force. The occupations of public space have already done a great deal to lift the veil of lies. People are now more aware than ever that the wealth divide is caused by a rigged economic system of crony capitalism and that we can create a fair economy that works for all Americans. We are also aware that many of our fellow citizens are ready to take action ? extreme action of sleeping outside in the cold in a public park. And, we also now know that we have the power to shift the debate and force the economic and political elites to listen to us. In just a few months we have made a difference. Occupying public space involves a lot of resources and energy that could be spent educating, organizing and mobilizing people in much greater numbers. There is a lot to do to end corporate rule and the challenges of occupying public space can divert our attention and resources from other responsibilities we have as a movement. When we were organizing the Occupation of Washington, DC ? before the occupation of Wall Street began ? we were in conversation with movements around the world. The Spanish Indignados told us that an occupation should last no more than two weeks. After that it becomes a diversion from the political objectives. The occupation begins to spend its time dealing with poverty, homelessness, inadequately treated mental illness and addiction ? this has been experienced by occupies across the country. Occupying for a short time accomplishes many of the objectives of holding public space ? the political dialogue is affected, people are mobilized and all see that fellow citizens can effectively challenge the corporate-state. Staying for a lengthy period continues to deepen these goals but the impacts are more limited and the costs get higher. What to do next? The Occupy Movement needs to bring participatory democracy to communities. Occupiers should develop an aggressive organizing plan for their city. Divide the city and appoint people to be responsible for different areas of the city. Depending on how many people you have make these areas as small as possible. Develop plans for house-to-house campaigns where you knock on doors, provide literature, ask what you can do to make their lives better. Do they need snow removed? Clothes? If so, get the occupy team to fulfill their needs, find used clothes, clean their yard ? whatever you can do to help. This shows community and builds relationships. Plan a march through the different communities in the city. Make it a spectacle. Have a marching band. Don?t have one ? reach out to local school bands. Organize them. Create floats, images and signs. Display yourselves and your message. Hand out literature as you march. Let people know what the occupy stands for they should join us in building a better world for them and their families. Plan public General Assemblies in communities across the city. Teach people the General Assembly process, the hand signals, how to stack speakers, how to listen and reach consensus. Learn the local issues. Solve local problems. Again, build a community that works together to solve problems. Let people know about the National Occupation of Washington DC (NOW DC), the American Spring beginning on March 30th. Organize people to come, share rides, hire buses, walk, ride a bike ? get people to the nation?s capital to show the united force of the people against the rule of money. This will be an opportunity to display our solidarity and demand that the people, not money, rule. How rapidly a movement makes progress is hard to predict. It is never a constant upswing of growth and progress. We may be in for a sprint, or more likely, a marathon with hurdles. If you are hoping for a sprint, note that the deep corruption of the government and the economy has left both weaker than is publicly acknowledged. It may be a hollowed out shell ready to fall. But, this may also take years to accomplish. Take the timeline of the Civil Rights movement: 1955 Rosa Parks sits in the front of the bus, not until five years later in 1960, do the lunch counter sit-ins begin. Not until three years later in 1963 does Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lead a march on Washington for the ?I have a Dream? speech. No doubt the time between Rosa Parks and the lunch counter sit-ins and Civil Rights Act passing in 1964 seemed slow to those involved. Looking back it was rapid, transformational change. In fact, the movement grew in fits and starts and had roots decades of activity before the 1950s. In those times of seeming lull, work was being done, to educate and organize people that led to the big spurts of progress. Older movements, when communication was slower, have taken even longer. The women?s suffrage movement held its first convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, NY. Twenty years later, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1913, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns formed the National Women's Party to work for a constitutional amendment to give women the vote. Finally, in 1919 the federal woman?s suffrage amendment, originally written by Susan B. Anthony and introduced in Congress in 1878, was passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, sent to the states for ratification and signed into law one year later. With mass media, and especially the new democratized media of social networks, the Internet, anonymous leaks and independent media, it is very likely the end of the rule of money will come more quickly. If we focus on our goal, act with intention and use our energy and resources wisely victory will come sooner. Our challenge to corporate power has roots. The Project on Corporations Law and Democracy was founded in 1995. In 1999 the protests against the World Trade Organization occurred in Seattle. In 2000, long-time crusader against corporate power, Ralph Nader, ran his first full presidential campaign and continues to challenge corporatism. This decade has been called the ?Great Turning,? which Joanna Macy has defined as ?the shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization.? ?America Beyond Capitalism? by Gar Alperovitz, just printed its second edition, five years after the first, documenting the evolution of the developing democratized economy. These are some of the foundations on which the Occupy Movement is building as the unfairness and insecurity of corporate capitalism becomes evident to all. Our roots are deeper than the few months of our existence. The elites are foolish to think they will stop this movement by closing occupations. The Occupy Movement will evolve in new and unpredictable ways that will make the elites wish for the days of mere public encampments. The 1% should know they will be held accountable. The people have found their voice and will not be silenced. The era of the rule of money is nearing its end. Kevin Zeese is an organizer of Occupy Washington, DC and co-director of It?s Our Economy. From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 14 14:05:37 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:05:37 +0100 Subject: [THS] James Petras: Confrontation on the Borders with China and Russia Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111214140407.0695f3e8@mail.messagingengine.com> Obama Raises the Military Stakes: Confrontation on the Borders with China and Russia By Prof. James Petras URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28144 Global Research, December 10, 2011 Introduction After suffering major military and political defeats in bloody ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, failing to buttress long-standing clients in Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia and witnessing the disintegration of puppet regimes in Somalia and South Sudan, the Obama regime has learned nothing: Instead he has turned toward greater military confrontation with global powers, namely Russia and China. Obama has adopted a provocative offensive military strategy right on the frontiers of both China and Russia. After going from defeat to defeat on the periphery of world power and not satisfied with running treasury-busting deficits in pursuit of empire building against economically weak countries, Obama has embraced a policy of encirclement and provocations against China, the world?s second largest economy and the US?s most important creditor, and Russia, the European Union?s principle oil and gas provider and the world?s second most powerful nuclear weapons power. This paper addresses the Obama regime?s highly irrational and world-threatening escalation of imperial militarism. We examine the global military, economic and domestic political context that gives rise to these policies. We then examine the multiple points of conflict and intervention in which Washington is engaged, from Pakistan , Iran , Libya , Venezuela , Cuba and beyond. We will then analyze the rationale for military escalation against Russia and China as part of a new offensive moving beyond the Arab world ( Syria , Libya ) and in the face of the declining economic position of the EU and the US in the global economy. We will then outline the strategies of a declining empire, nurtured on perpetual wars, facing global economic decline, domestic discredit and a working population reeling from the long-term, large-scale dismantling of its basic social programs. The Turn from Militarism in the Periphery to Global Military Confrontation November 2011 is a moment of great historical import: Obama declared two major policy positions, both having tremendous strategic consequences affecting competing world powers. Obama pronounced a policy of military encirclement of China based on stationing a maritime and aerial armada facing the Chinese coast ? an overt policy designed to weaken and disrupt China ?s access to raw materials and commercial and financial ties in Asia. Obama?s declaration that Asia is the priority region for US military expansion, base-building and economic alliances was directed against China, challenging Beijing in its own backyard. Obama?s iron fist policy statement, addressed to the Australian Parliament, was crystal clear in defining US imperial goals. ?Our enduring interests in the region [Asia Pacific] demands our enduring presence in this region ... The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay ... As we end today?s wars [i.e. the defeats and retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan]... I have directed my national security team to make our presence and missions in the Asia Pacific a top priority ... As a result, reduction in US defense spending will not ... come at the expense of the Asia Pacific? (CNN.com, Nov. 16, 2011). The precise nature of what Obama called our ?presence and mission? was underlined by the new military agreement with Australia to dispatch warships, warplanes and 2500 marines to the northern most city of Australia ( Darwin ) directed at China . Secretary of State Clinton has spent the better part of 2011 making highly provocative overtures to Asian countries that have maritime border conflicts with China . Clinton has forcibly injected the US into these disputes, encouraging and exacerbating the demands of Vietnam , Philippines , and Brunei in the South China Sea . Even more seriously, Washington is bolstering its military ties and sales with Japan , Taiwan , Singapore and South Korea , as well as increasing the presence of battleships, nuclear submarines and over flights of war planes along China ?s coastal waters. In line with the policy of military encirclement and provocation, the Obama-Clinton regime is promoting Asian multi-lateral trade agreements that exclude China and privilege US multi-national corporations, bankers and exporters, dubbed the ?Trans-Pacific Partnership?. It currently includes mostly smaller countries, but Obama has hopes of enticing Japan and Canada to join ... Obama?s presence at the APEC meeting of East Asian leader and his visit to Indonesia in November 2011 all revolve around efforts to secure US hegemony. Obama-Clinton hope to counter the relative decline of US economic links in the face of the geometrical growth of trade and investment ties between East Asia and China . A most recent example of Obama-Clinton?s delusional, but destructive, efforts to deliberately disrupt China ?s economic ties in Asia, is taking place in Myanmar ( Burma ). Clinton ?s December 2011 visit to Myanmar was preceded by a decision by the Thein Sein regime to suspend a China Power Investment-funded dam project in the north of the country. According to official confidential documents released by WilkiLeaks the ?Burmese NGO?s, which organized and led the campaign against the dam, were heavily funded by the US government?(Financial Times, Dec. 2, 2011, p. 2). This and other provocative activity and Clinton ?s speeches condemning Chinese ?tied aid? pale in comparison with the long-term, large-scale interests which link Myanmar with China . China is Myanmar ?s biggest trading partner and investor, including six other dam projects. Chinese companies are building new highways and rail lines across the country, opening southwestern China up for Burmese products and China is constructing oil pipelines and ports. There is a powerful dynamic of mutual economic interests that will not be disturbed by one dispute (FT, December 2, 2011, p.2). Clinton?s critique of China?s billion-dollar investments in Myanmar?s infrastructure is one of the most bizarre in world history, coming in the aftermath of Washington?s brutal eight-year military presence in Iraq which destroyed $500 billion dollars of Iraqi infrastructure, according to Baghdad official estimates. Only a delusional administration could imagine that rhetorical flourishes, a three day visit and the bankrolling of an NGO is an adequate counter-weight to deep economic ties linking Myanmar to China . The same delusional posture underlies the entire repertoire of policies informing the Obama regime?s efforts to displace China ?s predominant role in Asia . While any one policy adopted by the Obama regime does not, in itself, present an immediate threat to peace, the cumulative impact of all these policy pronouncements and the projections of military power add up to an all out comprehensive effort to isolate, intimidate and degrade China?s rise as a regional and global power. Military encirclement and alliances, exclusion of China in proposed regional economic associations, partisan intervention in regional maritime disputes and positioning technologically advanced warplanes, are all aimed to undermine China ?s competitiveness and to compensate for US economic inferiority via closed political and economic networks. Clearly White House military and economic moves and US Congressional anti-China demagogy are aimed at weakening China ?s trading position and forcing its business-minded leaders into privileging US banking and business interests over and above their own enterprises. Pushed to its limits, Obama?s prioritizing a big military push could lead to a catastrophic rupture in US-Chinese economic relations. This would result in dire consequences, especially but not exclusively, on the US economy and particularly its financial system. China holds over $1.5 trillion dollars in US debt, mainly Treasury Notes, and each year purchases from $200 to $300 billion in new issues, a vital source in financing the US deficit. If Obama provokes a serious threat to China ?s security interests and Beijing is forced to respond, it will not be military but economic retaliation: the sell-off of a few hundred billion dollars in T-notes and the curtailment of new purchases of US debt. The US deficit will skyrocket, its credit ratings will descend to ?junk?, and the financial system will ?tremble onto collapse?. Interest rates to attract new buyers of US debt will approach double digits. Chinese exports to the US will suffer and losses will incur due to the devaluation of the T-notes in Chinese hands. China has been diversifying its markets around the world and its huge domestic market could probably absorb most of what China loses abroad in the course of a pull-back from the US market. While Obama strays across the Pacific to announce his military threats to China and strives to economically isolate China from the rest of Asia, the US economic presence is fast fading in what used to be its ?backyard?: Quoting one Financial Times journalist, ?China is the only show [in town] for Latin America? (Financial Times, Nov. 23, 2011, p.6). China has displaced the US and the EU as Latin America?s principle trading partner; Beijing has poured billions in new investments and provides low interest loans. China?s trade with India , Indonesia , Japan , Pakistan and Vietnam is increasing at a far faster rate than that of the US . The US effort to build an imperial-centered security alliance in Asia is based on fragile economic foundations. Even Australia , the anchor and linchpin of the US military thrust in Asia, is heavily dependent on mineral exports to China . Any military interruption would send the Australian economy into a tailspin. The US economy is in no condition to replace China as a market for Asian or Australian commodity and manufacturing exports. The Asian countries must be acutely aware that there is no future advantage in tying themselves to a declining, highly militarized, empire. Obama and Clinton deceive themselves if they think they can entice Asia into a long-term alliance. The Asian?s are simply using the Obama regime?s friendly overtures as a ?tactical device?, a negotiating ploy, to leverage better terms in securing maritime and territorial boundaries with China . Washington is delusional if it believes that it can convince Asia to break long-term large-scale lucrative economic ties to China in order to join an exclusive economic association with such dubious prospects. Any ?reorientation? of Asia, from China to the US , would require more than the presence of an American naval and airborne armada pointed at China . It would require the total restructuring of the Asian countries? economies, class structure and political and military elite. The most powerful economic entrepreneurial groups in Asia have deep and growing ties with China/Hong Kong, especially among the dynamic transnational Chinese business elites in the region. A turn toward Washington entails a massive counter-revolution, which substitutes colonial ?traders? (compradors) for established entrepreneurs. A turn to the US would require a dictatorial elite willing to cut strategic trading and investment linkages, displacing millions of workers and professionals. As much as some US-trained Asian military officers , economists and former Wall Street financiers and billionaires might seek to ?balance? a US military presence with Chinese economic power, they must realize that ultimately advantage resides in working out an Asian solution. The age of Asian ?comprador capitalists?, willing to sell out national industry and sovereignty in exchange for privileged access to US markets, is ancient history. Whatever the boundless enthusiasm for conspicuous consumerism and Western lifestyles, which Asia and China?s new rich mindlessly celebrate, whatever the embrace of inequalities and savage capitalist exploitation of labor, there is recognition that the past history of US and European dominance precluded the growth and enrichment of an indigenous bourgeoisie and middle class. The speeches and pronouncements of Obama and Clinton reek of nostalgia for a past of neo-colonial overseers and comprador collaborators ? a mindless delusion. Their attempts at political realism, in finally recognizing Asia as the economic pivot of the present world order, takes a bizarre turn in imagining that military posturing and projections of armed force will reduce China to a marginal player in the region. Obama?s Escalation of Confrontation with Russia The Obama regime has launched a major frontal military thrust on Russia ?s borders. The US has moved forward missile sites and Air Force bases in Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Spain, Czech Republic and Bulgaria: Patriot PAC-3 anti-aircraft missile complexes in Poland; advanced radar AN/TPY-2 in Turkey; and several missile (SM-3 IA) loaded warships in Spain are among the prominent weapons encircling Russia, most only minutes away from it strategic heartland. Secondly, the Obama regime has mounted an all-out effort to secure and expand US military bases in Central Asia among former Soviet republics. Thirdly, Washington , via NATO, has launched major economic and military operations against Russia ?s major trading partners in North Africa and the Middle East . The NATO war against Libya , which ousted the Gadhafi regime, has paralyzed or nullified multi-billion dollar Russian oil and gas investments, arms sales and substituted a NATO puppet for the former Russia-friendly regime. The UN-NATO economic sanctions and US-Israeli clandestine terrorist activity aimed at Iran has undermined Russia ?s lucrative billion-dollar nuclear trade and joint oil ventures. NATO, including Turkey , backed by the Gulf monarchical dictatorships, has implemented harsh sanctions and funded terrorist assaults on Syria , Russia ?s last remaining ally in the region and where it has a sole naval facility (Tartus) on the Mediterranean Sea . Russia ?s previous collaboration with NATO in weakening its own economic and security position is a product of the monumental misreading of NATO and especially Obama?s imperial policies. Russian President Medvedev and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov mistakenly assumed (like Gorbachev and Yeltsin before them) that backing US-NATO policies against Russia ?s trading partners would result in some sort of ?reciprocity?: US dismantling its offensive ?missile shield? on its frontiers and support for Russia ?s admission into the World Trade Organization. Medvedev, following his liberal pro-western illusions, fell into line and backed US-Israeli sanctions against Iran , believing the tales of a ?nuclear weapons programs?. Then Lavrov fell for the NATO line of ?no fly zones to protect Libyan civilian lives? and voted in favor, only to feebly ?protest?, much too late, that NATO was ?exceeding its mandate? by bombing Libya into the Middle Ages and installing a pro-NATO puppet regime of rogues and fundamentalists. Finally when the US aimed a cleaver at Russia?s heartland by pushing ahead with an all-out effort to install missile launch sites 5 minutes by air from Moscow while organizing mass and armed assaults on Syria, did the Medvedev-Lavrov duet awake from its stupor and oppose UN sanctions. Medvedev threatened to abandon the nuclear missile reduction treaty (START) and to place medium-range missiles with 5 minute launch-time from Berlin , Paris and London . Medvedev-Lavrov?s policy of consolidation and co-operation based on Obama?s rhetoric of ?resetting relations? invited aggressive empire building: Each capitulation led to a further aggression. As a result, Russia is surrounded by missiles on its western frontier; it has suffered losses among its major trading partners in the Middle East and faces US bases in southwest and Central Asia . Belatedly Russian officials have moved to replace the delusional Medvedev for the realist Putin, as next President. This shift to a political realist has predictably evoked a wave of hostility toward Putin in all the Western media. Obama?s aggressive policy to isolate Russia by undermining independent regimes has, however, not affected Russia ?s status as a nuclear weapons power. It has only heightened tensions in Europe and perhaps ended any future chance of peaceful nuclear weapons reduction or efforts to secure a UN Security Council consensus on issues of peaceful conflict resolution. Washington , under Obama-Clinton, has turned Russia from a pliant client to a major adversary. Putin looks to deepening and expanding ties with the East, namely China , in the face of threats from the West. The combination of Russian advanced weapons technology and energy resources and Chinese dynamic manufacturing and industrial growth are more than a match for crisis-ridden EU-USA economies wallowing in stagnation. Obama?s military confrontation toward Russia will greatly prejudice access to Russian raw materials and definitively foreclose any long-term strategic security agreement, which would be useful in lowering the deficit and reviving the US economy. Between Realism and Delusion: Obama?s Strategic Realignment Obama?s recognition that the present and future center of political and economic power is moving inexorably to Asia , was a flash of political realism. After a lost decade of pouring hundreds of billions of dollars in military adventures on the margins and periphery of world politics, Washington has finally discovered that is not where the fate of nations, especially Great Powers, will be decided, except in a negative sense ? of bleeding resources over lost causes. Obama?s new realism and priorities apparently are now focused on Southeast and Northeast Asia, where dynamic economies flourish, markets are growing at a double digit rate, investors are ploughing tens of billions in productive activity and trade is expanding at three times the rate of the US and the EU. But Obama?s ?New Realism? is blighted by entirely delusional assumptions, which undermine any serious effort to realign US policy. In the first place Obama?s effort to ?enter? into Asia is via a military build-up and not through a sharpening and upgrading of US economic competitiveness. What does the US produce for the Asian countries that will enhance its market share? Apart from arms, airplanes and agriculture, the US has few competitive industries. The US would have to comprehensively re-orient its economy, upgrade skilled labor, and transfer billions from ?security? and militarism to applied innovations. But Obama works within the current military-Zionist-financial complex: He knows no other and is incapable of breaking with it. Secondly, Obama-Clinton operate under the delusion that the US can exclude China or minimize its role in Asia, a policy that is undercut by the huge and growing investment and presence of all the major US multi-national corporations in China , who use it as an export platform to Asia and the rest of the world. The US military build-up and policy of intimidation will only force China to downgrade its role as creditor financing the US debt, a policy China can pursue because the US market, while still important, is declining, as China expands its presence in its domestic, Asian, Latin American and European markets. What once appeared to be New Realism is now revealed to be the recycling of Old Delusions: The notion that the US can return to being the supreme Pacific Power it was after World War Two. The US attempts to return to Pacific dominance under Obama-Clinton with a crippled economy, with the overhang of an over-militarized economy, and with major strategic handicaps: Over the past decade the United States foreign policy has been at the beck and call of Israel ?s fifth column (the Israel ?lobby?). The entire US political class is devoid of common, practical sense and national purpose. They are immersed in troglodyte debates over ?indefinite detentions? and ?mass immigrant expulsions?. Worse, all are on the payrolls of private corporations who sell in the US and invest in China . Why would Obama abjure costly wars in the unprofitable periphery and then promote the same military metaphysics at the dynamic center of the world economic universe? Does Barack Obama and his advisers believe he is the Second Coming of Admiral Commodore Perry, whose 19th century warships and blockades forced Asia open to Western trade? Does he believe that military alliances will be the first stage to a subsequent period of privileged economic entry? Does Obama believe that his regime can blockade China , as Washington did to Japan in the lead up to World War Two? It?s too late. China is much more central to the world economy, too vital even to the financing of the US debt, too bonded up with the Forbes Five Hundred multi-national corporations. To provoke China , to even fantasize about economic ?exclusion? to bring down China , is to pursue policies that will totally disrupt the world economy, first and foremost the US economy! Conclusion Obama?s ?crackpot realism?, his shift from wars in the Muslim world to military confrontation in Asia , has no intrinsic worth and poses extraordinary extrinsic costs. The military methods and economic goals are totally incompatible and beyond the capacity of the US , as it is currently constituted. Washington ?s policies will not ?weaken? Russia or China , even less intimidate them. Instead it will encourage both to adopt more adversarial positions, making it less likely that they lend a hand to Obama?s sequential wars on behalf of Israel . Already Russia has sent warships to its Syrian port, refused to support an arms embargo against Syria and Iran and (in retrospect) criticized the NATO war against Libya . China and Russia have far too many strategic ties with the world economy to suffer any great losses from a series of US military outposts and ?exclusive? alliances. Russia can aim just as many deadly nuclear missiles at the West as the US can mount from its bases in Eastern Europe . In other words, Obama?s military escalation will not change the nuclear balance of power, but will bring Russia and China into a closer and deeper alliance. Gone are the days of Kissinger-Nixon?s ?divide and conquer? strategy pitting US-Chinese trade agreements against Russian arms. Washington has a totally exaggerated significance of the current maritime spats between China and its neighbors. What unites them in economic terms is far more important in the medium and long-run. China ?s Asian economic ties will erode any tenuous military links to the US . Obama?s ?crackpot realism?, views the world market through military lenses. Military arrogance toward Asia has led to a rupture with Pakistan , its most compliant client regime in South Asia . NATO deliberately slaughtered 24 Pakistani soldiers and thumbed their nose at the Pakistani generals, while China and Russia condemned the attack and gained influence. In the end, the military and exclusionary posture to China will fail. Washington will overplay its hand and frighten its business-oriented erstwhile Asian partners, who only want to play-off a US military presence to gain tactical economic advantage. They certainly do not want a new US instigated ?Cold War? dividing and weakening the dynamic intra-Asian trade and investment. Obama and his minions will quickly learn that Asia ?s current leaders do not have permanent allies - only permanent interests. In the final analysis, China figures prominently in configuring a new Asia-centric world economy. Washington may claim to have a ?permanent Pacific presence? but until it demonstrates it can take care of its ?basic business at home?, like arranging its own finances and balancing its current account deficits, the US Naval command may end up renting its naval facilities to Asian exporters and shippers, transporting goods for them, and protecting them by pursuing pirates, contrabandists and narco-traffickers. Come to think about it, Obama might reduce the US trade deficit with Asia by renting out the Seventh Fleet to patrol the Straits, instead of wasting US taxpayer money bullying successful Asian economic powers. 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Copyright 2005-2007 From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 14 18:10:39 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:10:39 +0100 Subject: [THS] David Kristjanson-Gural: Capitalism Is the Enemy of Democracy Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111214180644.0481ee60@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.truth-out.org/capitalism-enemy-democracy/1323789051 [well, coinsidering that CAPITALISM is irremediably FOR everlasting economic growth, competition, exploitation, profits over sustainability, you'd have to agree that CAPITALISM is therefore the enemy of life-on-earth, of GAIA, and WILL sooner or later kill everything in its path. -ths] Capitalism Is the Enemy of Democracy Tuesday 13 December 2011 by: David Kristjanson-Gural, Truthout | Op-Ed Occupy Wall Street, October 21, 2011. (Photo: Tony the Misfit) The most significant accomplishment for Occupy Wall Street (OWS) to date is that the Occupiers have managed to poke a hole in the legitimacy of neoliberal capitalism and its central claim that unregulated markets provide opportunity and freedom. The Occupiers have accomplished this feat in a surprising way, peacefully, with home-made signs, signs that say things like, "If I had a lobbyist, I wouldn't need this sign." OWS has punctured the neoliberal fa?ade simply by having the audacity to gather in public, in bold defiance of the police and to bear witness, by their solidarity and cooperation, to the idea that the Washington Consensus has long denied - that a different world is possible. Phil Rockstroh puts it this way: "the walls of the neoliberal prison are cracking ... We are no longer isolated, enclosed in our alienation, imprisoned by a concretized sense of powerlessness; daylight is beginning to pierce the darkness of our desolate cells." At the core of this neoliberal ideology is a simple assertion - economic exchanges promote freedom because they are voluntary and, thus, they only occur if both parties believe they will benefit. Unregulated market exchanges thus allow individuals to engage with others in complex social arrangements without coercion, without impinging on individual liberty. Government is needed, but only to define and enforce property rights and to create and regulate the currency individuals need to undertake market exchanges. As the world rises up against economic injustice, Truthout brings you the latest news and analysis, free of corporate influence. Help support this work with a tax-deductible donation today. Liberal Keynesians, who argue for expanding government in order to regulate or oversee individual exchange, are denigrated because they seek to interrupt these free and voluntary agreements and they, therefore, undermine individual liberty. Reagan, who ushered in the neoliberal era, said it this way: "Government is not the solution to the problem; Government is the problem." In this extreme libertarian view, capitalism is the champion of democracy, the champion of freedom. The flaw in this neoliberal reasoning is not hard to see. Ownership of wealth obviously confers power; it gives some individuals an upper hand in the "voluntary" exchanges they make with others. Lacking the means otherwise to support ourselves, most of us must hire out our ability to do work in exchange for wages. We might do quite well if we are educated and talented, lucky or white, but even so, we ultimately produce more value than we are paid - that is, after all, the reason we are hired. Wealth ownership, thus, gives an upper hand to employers in these voluntary exchanges with working people. The extra value we create flows steadily into the hands of wealth holders and we don't have a say over what it is used for. This upper hand in these so-called voluntary exchanges provides an ongoing and increasing source of wealth accumulation that is self-reinforcing. Money begets money. That is after all what capital is, money advanced for the purpose of making more money. Excluding people from having a say over what happens to the wealth we create is the first and the most fundamental way that any capitalist system undermines democracy. We are fundamentally disenfranchised in the places we work. Wealth owners control the levers of investment and, thus, the "needs" of capital trump those of workers when it comes to making decisions about what gets produced, how and for whom. Beyond this, neoliberal capitalism goes further - it uses the value you and I create to enforce a virtual dictatorship by wealth in the political sphere. The most obvious manifestation of this dictatorship by wealth is the unlimited corporate financing of our elected representatives. But this financing is only the tip of the iceberg. Not only must candidates pander to corporate interests to successfully raise the funds needed to run for office, once they are in office, they are plied and courted with unrelenting advances designed to ensure that they do not lose their focus and begin to think about something other that promoting a favorable business climate. Even deeper in the subsoil of this treasonous takeover of our democracy is the ownership and influence over the main vehicle of public discourse, the news media. The manufacture of consent is accomplished by narrowing the acceptable range of debate to the question of how best to support economic growth (read profits) and American imperialism (read war). Where do the millions, or billions, that candidates raise end up? Primarily, this money ends up in the coffers of the corporate media - campaign advertising is the single most important source of revenue for the corporate media. So, it is an odd fact of American life that capitalism is equated with democracy while, at the same time, acting as democracy's most corrosive force. But think about it, if capitalism really supported democracy, if it really welcomed open, honest, wide-ranging debate about the values and practices of corporations and their elected representatives, why would they be sending their police in with bats and pepper spray to prevent the free, open exchange of ideas? Why would they not be handing out microphones, providing open access to the airwaves, organizing televised debates? If capitalism really were the champion of democracy, the Occupiers and their many allies would be celebrated. Instead we are disdained. The corporate elites fear and resist any questioning of their core beliefs because their ideas do not hold up to scrutiny and reasoned debate. That's how we all know - capitalism is the enemy of democracy. But is there any alternative? It is tempting to think that if we can only regulate capitalism effectively, we can harness its virtues and contain its vices. In fact, there is some evidence to support this view. The 99 percent were much better served in the post-war era in the United States, and they continue to benefit from efforts to rein in capitalism's excesses in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. But these efforts to regulate are under constant attack and a return to regulations is ultimately a brief inconvenience to the corporate elites. As Richard D. Wolff and others have noted, as long as the value you and I create is credited to the owners of capital, these owners have both the means and, given their distorted values, the incentive to undermine and neutralize any effective regulation and oversight we attempt to impose. Capital will continue to corrode democracy, as certainly as oxygen corrodes iron, as long as a few hold sway over investment and jobs and are committed to using the wealth that we generate to undermine the will of the people. In the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, "You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or you can have democracy; you cannot have both." Fortunately, a proven alternative to corporate capitalism already exists. For over 50 years, it has provided a practical example of how we can extend democracy to the workplace as a means of preserving democracy in our political lives. The basic idea of this experiment is to address the root of the problem, to uncover the means by which capitalism undermines democracy and to provide new institutional rules governing how we organize our economic lives. Over 50 years ago, the Mondragon Cooperatives in northern Spain developed their poverty-stricken regional economy by developing worker-owned and managed cooperatives. Co-ops place the ownership of wealth and the decisions concerning how wealth is invested in the hands of the people who produce the wealth. These institutions recognize that the wealth generated by an enterprise is the result of the collective efforts of all, and that those most affected by the decisions of the enterprise, workers and community members, ought to have the principal say in what happens to the wealth, how it is distributed and the purposes to which it is put. Many people argue that co-ops are impractical, but this simple, democratic principle rests at the heart of this highly successful, internationally competitive, stable and flourishing regional economy. It is an economy based on democratic management, worker ownership and democratic oversight and it faces its own challenges, yes, but has certainly proven the lie that there is no alternative to corporate capitalism. It shows that people, acting together, can use democratic principles to imbue their economic lives and their political lives with agency and meaning. And this effort is spreading to America's heartland. The Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland have successfully applied the principles of the Mondragon experiment to develop a thriving urban development project. As Gar Alperovitz argues, the linking of large anchor institutions with worker-owned enterprises offers a practical economic development strategy that is politically feasible in the context of our current economic crisis. Many people are uncomfortable with the idea that working people can do without their corporate bosses. Quite a bit of time and energy has been spent trying to convince us that the idea that workers can manage themselves is preposterous. OWS has provided the opening for us to consider, debate and discuss what has previously been off the table. Economic democracy is not only possible; it is essential. As Bill McKibben and others have shown us, we cannot afford to continue on the trajectory of neoliberal capitalism. By democratizing the economy, we are taking the first necessary step toward a sustainable future. We are also taking a step toward reclaiming that peculiar American Dream of a government of, by and for the people. So, let's grasp the significance of what OWS is doing. We need to step boldly through the hole they have opened in the shiny fa?ade of our glad-handled, Madison Avenue, faux democracy. We need to take up the challenge of creating a real, substantive democracy, right here and now, in the very heart of America. We need to create an economic and a political democracy as a means of reclaiming our own dignity as working people, our own liberty as citizens and to ensure a livable world for those who come next. David Kristjanson-Gural David Kristjanson-Gural is associate professor of economics and senior fellow of the Social Justice College at Bucknell University. His writing appears in the LA Progressive, Commondreams.org, the Williamsport Guardian and the Daily Item. He is a member of the Spilling Ink Writers' Collective. From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 14 18:27:42 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:27:42 +0100 Subject: [THS] Will Fossil Fuel Companies Face Liability for Climate Change? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111214182632.0481ebd0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.truth-out.org/will-fossil-fuel-companies-face-liability-climate-change/1323803340 Will Fossil Fuel Companies Face Liability for Climate Change? Friday 9 December 2011 by: Christine Shearer, Conducive Chronicle | News Analysis In a recent article in National Journal, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) President Tim Phillips said there is no question that AFP and others like it have been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science: ?We?ve made great headway. What it means for candidates on the Republican side is, if you buy into green energy or you play footsie on this issue, you do so at your political peril.? AFP is a section 501(c)(4) organization, meaning it does not have to disclose its donors, but has been tied to significant funding from the Koch Family Foundations - founded by the billionaire Koch brothers of Koch Industries ? as well as smaller donations from companies like ExxonMobil. Koch Industries and ExxonMobil are among the largest funders of studies questioning climate change science, often drawn upon by conservative politicians to legitimize their view that regulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is not needed because the science is still under debate. These organizations and their supporters say they are just funding their own independent studies of climate change science. Yet these studies almost all go against observable scientific data to question global warming ? so much so that one study funded in part by the Kochs that confirmed a rise in average world land temperature was regarded as an anomaly. Which raises the question: if these studies are largely designed not to shed light on climate change, but to create doubt and confusion to delay greenhouse gas regulations, why is it legal, and do those deliberately spreading misinformation face liability? The first question, as far as I can tell, apparently boils down to: it?s legal because we have yet to make the deliberate manipulation of science illegal. Yet while people and companies enjoy the First Amendment right to free speech, legal scholars have argued that right does not extend to influencing people under false pretenses. According to former tobacco industry lawyer Stephen Susman, when it comes to fossil fuel companies and supporters funding their own research on climate change, if ?they knew the information they were spreading was false and being used to deliberately influence public opinion?that would override their First Amendment rights.? This question may soon be playing out in the courts. Truthout doesn't take corporate funding - this lets us do the brave reporting and analysis that makes us unique. Please support this work by making a tax-deductible donation today - click here to donate. History of the science Research on climate change goes back over a century. Spencer Weart?s The Discovery of Global Warming lays out the long trajectory: from realizing GHGs trap heat and help warm the planet, to identifying them, to tracking GHG emissions into the atmosphere and oceans from the burning of fossil fuels, to measuring the effects. The research was developed enough that a 1965 report to the Johnson administration, Restoring the Quality of Our Environment, discussed the increase in global carbon dioxide emissions and the possible dire effects. In a 1969 memo, President Nixon?s Democratic adviser, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, wrote that it was ?pretty clearly agreed? that carbon dioxide levels were rising fast and would increase the average temperature near the earth?s surface, and that such dangers justified government action. Attempts to water down the implications of the science soon followed. Science historian Naomi Oreskes and others found that, in 1983, a committee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences chaired by physicist William Nierenberg reframed the growing consensus around anthropogenic warming as a ?nonproblem? that would have limited effects humans could adapt to, as with past changes in human history. Nierenberg was cofounder of the conservative George C. Marshall Institute, and ? as documented in Oreskes and Eric Conways?s Merchants of Doubt (2010) ? part of a group of government scientific advisers that went from Cold War warriors supporting nuclear weapons to staunch corporate defenders questioning the science on tobacco smoke, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, and eventually climate change science, among other issues. Yet the science marched on. In 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the U.S. Congress that he believed with 99 percent confidence that substantial global warming was under way, and would rise significantly unless greenhouse gas emissions were reduced. That same year, the United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of about 2,500 international climate scientists who evaluate the research on climate change (which often end up being conservative estimates of likely effects, arguably because of the need for agreement among government representatives). In 1990, IPCC scientists completed their first assessment report for policymakers, stating they were certain human activities were increasing greenhouse gas emissions and warming, with the second report, in 1995, concluding there was a discernible human influence on climate. The stage seemed set for an international treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions. History of the nonscience That?s when fossil fuel companies and their supporters sprang in to fund their own research. In 1988 the coal industry founded the Western Fuels Association (WFA), headed by Fred Palmer, who later became vice president of Peabody Energy, the largest private coal company in the world. As outlined in Ross Gelbspan?s The Heat Is On (1998), the WFA actively sought to refute the growing consensus on climate change, stating in its report that ?when [the climate change] controversy first erupted at the peak of summer in 1988, Western Fuels Association decided it was important to take a stand. [S]cientists were found who are skeptical about the potential for climate change.? A 1998 memo leaked from the National Environmental Trust to the New York Times detailed that a dozen people working for big oil companies, trade associations, and conservative think tanks had been meeting at the American Petroleum Institute?s Washington headquarters to propose a $5 million campaign to convince people that global warming science was riddled with controversy and uncertainty. Industries like oil and large manufacturers created the lobbying group Global Climate Coalition (GCC) in 1989, with the stated purpose of ?cast[ing] doubt on the theory of global warming.? A Freedom of Information Act request unearthed 2001 U.S. State Department documents to the GCC suggesting former President George W. Bush?s decision to pull out of UN international negotiations on climate change had been shaped in part by GCC and Exxon. The George W. Bush Administration not only resisted GHG regulations, but actively edited government reports to question the science of climate change, one time drawing upon research funded in part by ExxonMobil. As documented by Greenpeace and others, ExxonMobil and Koch Industries went on to become major donors of such research, finding a platform in conservative think tanks and media. The result? The U.S. perception of scientific consensus about climate change went down in line with the growth of corporate-funded research, particularly among Republicans, even as the science became more clear and the effects more apparent. While the awareness of a consensus is inching back up (although there is still much more confusion than there arguably should be over whether humans are a factor), the U.S. has yet to regulate greenhouse gases, even as the International Energy Agency warns that we may be five years away from being deadlocked into runaway warming. Social scientists have noted internal barriers to action on climate change ? that even people who acknowledge the science may not necessarily alter how they live to match that knowledge. In other words, accepting the consensus on climate change science might not have been enough for swift, immediate action. Yet the evidence also seems clear that comprehensive understanding of the issue for the nation was muddled, and deliberately so: in 2009, an internal Global Climate Coalition document was leaked to the New York Times ? a primer written in 1995 for coalition members admitting that the ?scientific basis for the greenhouse effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide on climate is well established and cannot be denied.? Yet we are now at the stage where denying climate change, or at least the human factor, is apparently a prerequisite for being the Republican nominee for President, as Phillips has bragged. This stance would be completely unacceptable if not for the studies funded by fossil fuel industries and supporters. And it has been disastrous for creating U.S. policies to address climate change. Liability? In 2008, the small Inupiat nation and city of Kivalina, Alaska, filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil and 23 other fossil fuel companies for federal public nuisance ? the damage of their homeland, which will be uninhabitable within a few decades, as sea ice no longer sufficiently buffers the barrier reef island against erosion from fall storms. Their claim argues that Kivalina has an identifiable, discrete harm, traceable to greenhouse gas emissions, of which the defendant companies are among the world?s largest contributors. They seek damages: their relocation costs. Kivalina also charged a smaller subset of companies with secondary claims of conspiracy and concert of action for creating a false debate about climate change science. In other words, these companies knew they were contributing to harm, but rather than change their practices, they instead funded a false debate about climate change science. The lawsuit was dismissed one year later as a ?political question? ? the district court ruled that climate change was a matter for the executive and legislative branches, not the judicial branch, which is how three prior global warming public nuisance cases had been ruled. The judge also denied Kivalina?s legal standing to bring the suit. The secondary claims involving the misinformation campaigns of defendant companies went unaddressed. Kivalina appealed the decision, with oral arguments heard in November of this year. If the claim is allowed to move forward, it could reach the discovery phase, which may unearth more documents similar to that leaked to the New York Times, suggesting deliberate intent to deceive. Defendant companies argue that climate change is not a matter for the courts ? the problem is too big, and we are all responsible. Yet we have not all embarked on multi-million dollar campaigns to fund our own research and prevent change. It is these secondary claims that could be the crux of establishing whether fossil fuel companies will eventually bear liability for harm from greenhouse gas emissions. As prior cases involving lead, asbestos, and tobacco lawsuits show, people seem to think it is one thing to do your own research, but it is another to deliberately deceive people, contributing to widespread harm primarily to retain profits. From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 14 18:30:40 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:30:40 +0100 Subject: [THS] Under Industry Pressure, USDA Works to Speed Approval of Monsanto's Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111214183012.04437860@mail.messagingengine.com> EXCLUSIVE: Under Industry Pressure, USDA Works to Speed Approval of Monsanto's Genetically Engineered Crops Monday 12 December 2011 by: Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report http://www.truth-out.org/under-industry-pressure-usda-works-speed-approval-monsantos-genetically-engineered-crops/1323453319 Monsanto researchers in Stonington, Illinois, working to develop new soybean varieties that will be tolerant to agricultural herbicide and have greater yields in July 2006. (Photo: Monsanto via The New York Times) For years, biotech agriculture opponents have accused regulators of working too closely with big biotech firms when deregulating genetically engineered (GE) crops. Now, their worst fears could be coming true: under a new two-year pilot program at the USDA, regulators are training the world's biggest biotech firms, including Monsanto, BASF and Syngenta, to conduct environmental reviews of their own transgenic seed products as part of the government's deregulation process. This would eliminate a critical level of oversight for the production of GE crops. Regulators are also testing new cost-sharing agreements that allow biotech firms to help pay private contractors to prepare mandatory environmental statements on GE plants the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is considering deregulating. The USDA launched the pilot project in April and, in November, the USDA announced vague plans to "streamline" the deregulation petition process for GE organisms. A USDA spokesperson said the streamlining effort is not part of the pilot project, but both efforts appear to address a backlog of pending GE crop deregulation petitions that has angered big biotech firms seeking to rollout new products. Documents obtained by Truthout under a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request reveal that biotech companies, lawmakers and industry groups have put mounting pressure on the USDA in recent years to speed up the petition process, limit environmental impact assessments and approve more GE crops. One group went as far as sending USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack a timeline of GE soybean development that reads like a deregulation wish list. [Click here and here to download and read some of the documents released to Truthout.] The pilot program is named the NEPA Pilot Project, after the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), which mandates that agencies prepare statements on the potential environmental impacts of proposed actions by the federal government, such as deregulating transgenic plants. On July 14, USDA officials held a training workshop to help representatives from biotech firms (see a full list here) to understand the NEPA process and prepare Environmental Reports on biotech products they have petitioned the USDA to deregulate. Regulators can now independently review the Environmental Reports and can use them to prepare their own legally mandated reviews, instead of simply reviewing the company's petitions for deregulation. The pilot project aims to speed up the deregulation process by allowing petitioning companies to do some of the legwork and help pay contractors to prepare regulatory documents and, for its part, the USDA has kept the pilot fairly transparent. A list of 22 biotech seeds that could be reviewed under the pilot program includes Monsanto drought-tolerant corn, a "non-browning" apple, freeze tolerant eucalyptus trees and several crops engineered to tolerate the controversial herbicides glyphosate and 2,4 D. Activists say biotech firms like Monsanto are concerned only with profit and routinely supply regulators with one-sided information on the risks their GE seeds - and the pesticides sprayed on and produced by them - pose to consumers, animals and the agricultural environment. (The Natural Society recentlydeclared Monsanto the worst company of 2011.) Bill Freese, a policy expert with the Center for Food Safety (CFS), told Truthout that the NEPA pilot gives already powerful biotech companies too much influence over the review process. "It's the equivalent of letting BP do their own Environmental Assessment of a new rig," Freese said. Monsanto Goes to Court Freese and the Center for Food Safety have been on the frontlines of the battle to reform the USDA's regulatory approval process for GE crops. The group was a plaintiff in recent lawsuits challenging the deregulation - which basically means approval for planting without oversight - of Monsanto's patented alfalfa and sugar beets that are genetically engineered to tolerate glyphosate-based Roundup herbicide. Farmers can spray entire fields of Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" crops with Roundup to kill unwanted weeds while sparing the GE crops, but in recent years, some weeds have developed a tolerance to glyphosate, Roundup's active ingredient. The cases kept the crops out of America's fields for years and prompted biotech companies to put heavy pressure on top USDA officials to streamline and speed up the deregulation process, practically setting the stage for the NEPA pilot underway today. Under NEPA, agencies like the USDA must prepare an Environmental Assessment (EA) to determine if the proposed action, such as deregulating a transgenic organism, would have an impact on the environment. If some type of significant impact is likely, the agency must then prepare a more in-depth Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to explore potential impacts and alternative actions. NEPA requires an EIS for actions "significantly affecting the quality of the human environment." Preparing a full impact statement for a biotech plant implies the government does not think GE crops are safe and the biotech industry has routinely butted heads with environmentalists while attempting to convince regulators and consumers otherwise. In the Monsanto beets and alfalfa cases, the CFS and other plaintiffs argued that the USDA should have prepared an EIS, not just a simple EA, before deregulating both Monsanto crops. Fight corporate influence by keeping independent media strong! Click here to make a tax-deductible contribution to Truthout. In the alfalfa case, the CFS and its co-plaintiffs claimed the crop could have significant impacts by crossbreeding and contaminating conventional and organic alfalfa with transgenes. They also argued the crop would increase the use of herbicides and promote the spread of herbicide-tolerant weeds known as "super weeds." A federal district court agreed and vacated the USDA's original approval, halting plantings across the country. Monsanto challenged the decision and the alfalfa case landed in the Supreme Court in 2010. The high court overturned an injunction preventing farmers from planting the alfalfa, but also ordered the USDA to prepare an EIS and issue another deregulation decision. The sugar beet case ended in similar fashion and the USDA recently released a draft EIS on the crop, which is expected to be deregulated in early 2012. Monsanto won the right to sell its GE alfalfa seed in February 2011, but the lengthy and expensive legal battle captured the attention of food lovers and agriculturalists across the country. Americans debated the potential dangers of GE crops and the merits of the regulatory system that is supposed to protect farmers and consumers. As documents unearthed by a Truthout FOIA request reveal, the biotech industry did not sit idly by as activists challenged the regulatory status quo. Mounting Pressure The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) is a powerful group that represents dozens of biotech companies such as Monsanto, BASF and Bayer, and has spent more than $67 million lobbying Congress since 2000. In April 2010, BIO sent a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack as the Monsanto alfalfa case made its way through the courts. BIO warned Vilsack that the American biotech agriculture industry could be crippled if the legal precedents required the USDA to prepare an EIS for every GE crop up for deregulation: With 19 deregulation petitions pending with more on the way, requiring an EIS for each product would amount to a de facto moratorium on commercialization and would send an unprecedented message that USDA believes that these products do have an environmental impact, when in fact most do not. Any suggestion by USDA that biotechnology plants as a category are likely to cause significant adverse effects on the quality of the human environment (i.e., require an EIS) would make approvals by other trading partners virtually impossible ... BIO claimed that such a policy would be an "over-reaction to the current judicial decisions" and would threaten America's economic dominance in the agricultural biotechnology market. Such a policy, BIO representatives stated, would send a message to European countries that American regulators believe GE crops impact the environment, making approvals of GE crops by the European Union "virtually impossible" and allowing "Brazil and China to surpass the United States as world leaders in biotechnology." BIO also claimed that more rigorous assessments would "undercut" positions consistently take by the Obama and Bush administrations on the safety of biotech agriculture. Vilsack received similar letters requesting the USDA continue relying on EAs instead of EISs to deregulate GE crops from the Americas Soybean Association and the American Seed Trade Association. Both groups worried that an increase in oversight - precipitated by the more in-depth impact evaluation - could back up approvals for years. The soybean association included in its letter a pipeline chart of 25 GE soybean varieties it "expected" to be approved for commercialization within a decade. A policy requiring an EIS for every GE seed is exactly what critics of Monsanto and the rest of the industry have spent years fighting for. Unlike the industry, they believe the herbicides that blanket GE crops and the potential for transgenic contamination are potential threats to the agricultural environment and human health. Vilsack wrote a steady-handed reply to each trade group, reassuring them that the NEPA policy would not change and the USDA would continue preparing an EA for new GE seeds and an EIS only when necessary. Vilsack also wrote that he was "pleased" to recently meet with biotech industry representatives and "discuss improving the efficiency of the biotechnology regulatory process." Such improvements, he wrote, are "directly related" to the USDA's "objective of ensuring the United State leads the world in sustainable crop production and biotech crop exports." He took the opportunity to announce that the USDA would reorganize the Biotechnology Regulatory Services agency and create a new NEPA team "dedicated to creating high quality and defensible documents to better inform our regulatory decisions." This new NEPA team would go on to develop the NEPA Pilot Project and begin streamlining the approval process. To Freese, it appears that Vilsack used to the word "defensible" in reference to legal challenges like the ones his group made to Monsanto alfalfa and sugar beets. "Their whole focus is on 'defensible' Environmental Assessments," Freese said after reading the letters. "From our perspective, that's the wrong goal ... it presumes the crop is going to be approved." Freese said the correspondence between Vilsack and the industry groups highlights the need for a culture change at the USDA. Regulators should be concerned about the safety of new GE products, not ensuring American exports compete with Brazil and China. "It should be all about doing good assessments and making sure the crops that are approved are safe," Freese said. A USDA spokesperson declined to comment when asked if the agency would like to respond to criticisms of the NEPA Pilot Project and said updates on the project will be made available online. Watchdogs like Freese know that regulators already work closely with the industry and the NEPA Pilot Project could simply make their work more efficient. Regulators already rely heavily on data provided by private contractors and by biotech companies to prepare EAs. During the Monsanto alfalfa case, internal emails between regulators and Monsanto officialssurfaced and revealed the company worked closely with regulators to edit its original petition to deregulate the alfalfa. One regulator even accepted Monsanto's help in conducting the USDA's original EA of the GE alfalfa before it was initially approved in 2005. Genetically engineered and modified crops continue to cause controversy across the globe, but in America they are a fact of life. The Obama and Bush administrations have actively promoted biotech agriculture both at home and abroad. Countries like China, Argentina and Brazil have also embraced biotech agriculture. Regulators in European countries - including crucial trade partners like France and Spain - have been much more cautious and, in some cases, even hostile toward the industry. GE crops are banned in Hungary and Peru, and earlier this year officials in Hungary destroyed 1,000 acres of corn containing Monsanto transgenes. The US, however, continues to allow big biotech companies to cultivate considerable power and influence and, as the letters uncovered by FOIA reveal, top regulators are ready to meet their demands. "The USDA regards its own regulatory system as a rubber stamp," Freese said after reading the letters. "At least at the upper levels, there's always been this presumption that [GE crops] must be approved." From ths at psalience.org Wed Dec 14 18:42:58 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:42:58 +0100 Subject: [THS] Naomi Wolf: How Congress Has Signed Its Own Arrest Warrants Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111214183922.04226280@mail.messagingengine.com> http://wp.me/p1B8zG-hY How Congress Has Signed Its Own Arrest Warrants in the NDAA Citizen Arrest Bill by Naomi Wolf I never thought I would have to write this: but?incredibly?Congress has now passed the National Defense Appropriations Act, with Amendment 1031, which allows for the military detention of American citizens. The amendment is so loosely worded that any American citizen could be held without due process. The language of this bill can be read to assure Americans that they can challenge their detention ? but most people do not realize what this means: at Guantanamo and in other military prisons, one?s lawyer?s calls are monitored, witnesses for one?s defense are not allowed to testify, and one can be forced into nudity and isolation. Incredibly, ninety-three Senators voted to support this bill and now most of Congress: a roster of names that will live in infamy in the history of our nation, and never be expunged from the dark column of the history books. They may have supported this bill because?although it's hard to believe?they think the military will only arrest active members of Al Qaida; or maybe, less naively, they believe that ?at most?, low-level dissenting figures, activists, or troublesome protesters might be subjected to military arrest. But they are forgetting something critical: history shows that those who signed this bill will soon be subject to arrest themselves. Our leaders appear to be supporting this bill thinking that they will always be what they are now, in the fading light of a once-great democracy ? those civilian leaders who safely and securely sit in freedom and DIRECT the military. In inhabiting this bubble, which their own actions are about to destroy, they are cocooned by an arrogance of power, placing their own security in jeopardy by their own hands, and ignoring history and its inevitable laws. The moment this bill becomes law, though Congress is accustomed, in a weak democracy, to being the ones who direct and control the military, the power roles will reverse: Congress will no longer be directing and in charge of the military: rather, the military will be directing and in charge of individual Congressional leaders, as well as in charge of everyone else ? as any Parliamentarian in any society who handed this power over to the military can attest. Perhaps Congress assumes that it will always only be ?they??others?who are targeted for arrest and military detention: but sadly, Parliamentary leaders are the first to face pressure, threats, arrest and even violence when the military is empowered to arrest civilians, and hold them in military facilities without due process. There is no exception to this rule. Just as I traveled the country four years ago warning against the introduction of torture and secret prisons ? and confidently offering a hundred thousand dollar reward to anyone who could name a nation that allowed torture of the ?other? that did not eventually turn this abuse on its own citizens ? (confident because I knew there was no such place) ? so today I warn that one cannot name a nation that gave the military the power to make civilian arrests and hold citizens in military detention, that did not almost at once turn that power almost against members of that nation?s own political ruling class. This makes sense ? the obverse sense of a democracy, in which power protects you; political power endangers you in a militarized police state: the more powerful a political leader is, the more can be gained in a militarized police state by pressuring, threatening or even arresting him or her. Mussolini, who created the modern template for fascism, was a duly elected official when he started to direct paramilitary forces against Italian citizens: yes, he sent the Blackshirts to beat up journalists, editors, and union leaders; but where did these militarized groups appear most dramatically and terrifyingly, snapping at last the fragile hold of Italian democracy? In the halls of the Italian Parliament. Whom did they physically attack and intimidate? Mussolini?s former colleagues in Parliament ? as they sat, just as our Congress is doing, peacefully deliberating and debating the laws. Whom did Hitler?s Brownshirts arrest in the first wave of mass arrests in 1933? Yes, journalists, union leaders and editors; but they also targeted local and regional political leaders and dragged them off to secret prisons and to torture that the rest of society had turned a blind eye to when it had been directed at the ?other.? Who was most at risk from assassination or arrest and torture, after show trials, in Stalin?s Russia? Yes, journalists, editors and dissidents: but also physically endangered, and often arrested by militarized police and tortured or worse, were senior members of the Politburo who had fallen out of favor. Is this intimidation and arrest by the military a vestige of the past? Hardly. We forget in America that all over the world there are militarized societies in which shells of democracy are propped up ? in which Parliament meets regularly and elections are held, but the generals are really in charge, just as the Egyptian military is proposing with upcoming elections and the Constitution itself. That is exactly what will take place if Congress gives the power of arrest and detention to the military: and in those societies if a given political leader does not please the generals, he or she is in physical danger or subjected to military arrest. Whom did John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, say he was directed to intimidate and threaten when he worked as a ?jackal?, putting pressure on the leadership in authoritarian countries? Latin American parliamentarians who were in the position to decide the laws that affected the well-being of his corporate clients. Who is under house arrest by the military in Myanmar? The political leader of the opposition to the military junta. Malalai Joya is an Afghani parliamentarian who has run afoul of the military and has to sleep in a different venue every night ? for her own safety. An on, and on, in police states ? that is, countries with military detention of civilians ? that America is about to join. US Congresspeople and Senators may think that their power protects them from the treacherous wording of Amendments 1031 and 1032: but their arrogance is leading them to a blindness that is suicidal. The moment they sign this NDAA into law, history shows that they themselves and their staff are the most physically endangered by it. They will immediately become, not the masters of the great might of the United States military, but its subjects and even, if history is any guide ? and every single outcome of ramping up police state powers, unfortunately, that I have warned for years that history points to, has come to pass ? sadly but inevitably, its very first targets. LINKS: National Defense Appropriations Act Indefinite military detention for U.S. citizens now in the hands of a secretive conference committee December 8, 2011 ? by Donny Shaw http://bit.ly/sxolqr Those who signed the bill don't seem to know what's in it, as this email from Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) makes clear: From Bruce F.: From: Senator Debbie Stabenow [mailto:senator at stabenow.senate.gov] Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 4:48 PM Subject: Re: Indefinite detention of American Citizens December 13, 2011 Dear Bruce, Thank you for contacting me about detainee provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act. I share your support for protecting civil liberties, which is why I believe the government's detainee policy should be codified in law. I strongly believe that the President needs the power to keep Americans safe and that power should be used carefully and in accordance with the Constitution. Currently, the detainee policy is cobbled together from Presidential directives and Supreme Court cases. The policy has been developed ad-hoc since 2001, and is subject to change at the whim of a President. The National Defense Authorization Act only codifies into law what is currently U.S. policy. I voted to ensure that only terrorists who are members of al-Qaeda and who commit an act of war against the United States can be detained. For the first time, detainees now have the right to a hearing before a judge with a defense lawyer present. The bill, which passed the Senate by a vote of 93-7, also protects the right of habeas corpus. In addition, I voted for an amendment, which passed, explicitly stating that nothing in the bill shall be construed to affect existing law related to U.S. citizens, lawful resident aliens, or any other persons who are captured in the U.S. Thank you again for contacting me. As always, please continue to keep me informed about matters of concern to you and your family. Sincerely, Debbie Stabenow United States Senator From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 15 15:38:46 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:38:46 +0100 Subject: [THS] Can GOP sanctions on Europe tank the economy? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111215153637.04495fb0@mail.messagingengine.com> [forwarded comment] Robert Naiman asks whether neocon sanctions on Iran in the Defense Authorization Act will tank the US economy in 2012. Naiman's is a very good question, since the sanctions may prohibit US trade with scores of European banks and corporations - as well as raising the price of crude oil. Naiman asks quite cogently, "But the question remains: Why would Democrats support this? Do they want to lose the election?" ~~~~~~~~ Can GOP sanctions on Europe tank the economy? Sanctioning European countries for buying Iranian oil will hurt the United States, too. Robert Naiman Last Modified: 13 Dec 2011 10:51 Some Republicans want to punish European states that buy oil from Iran, one of the world's biggest exporters [EPA] Remember, "It's the economy, stupid" - the slogan that helped Clinton win in 1992? So how come Democrats in congress - over the objections of the Obama administration - are helping Republicans press sanctions against Europeans who buy oil from Iran - sanctions that would increase unemployment in the US during the 2012 campaign? The National Defence Authorisation Act now contains an amendment by Republican Senator Mark Kirk - supported by many Democrats as well - that would sanction European banks and companies that do business with Iran's Central Bank in order to stop them from buying Iranian oil. This is a big deal, because Iran is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, and blocking Iranian oil exports to Europe would raise the price of oil in Europe and in the United States. Kirk's amendment would hurt the US economy at a time when economic contraction in Europe could push the US back into recession. Does fear of the sanctions' economic blowback in Europe make sense? Many Europeans seem to think so. On Tuesday, Reuters reported: The European Union is becoming skeptical about slapping sanctions on imports of Iranian oil, diplomats and traders say, as awareness grows that the embargo could damage its own economy without doing much to undercut to Iran's oil revenues. [...] "Maybe the aim of sanctions is to help Italy, Spain and Greece to collapse and make the EU a smaller club," one trader joked. The remark reflects the growing unease that EU sanctions would hit hardest some of the continent's weakest economies, because Iranian oil provides the highest share of their needs, not to mention the rest of the bloc. "The likely increase in oil prices that would result from a ban would be felt by all (European) oil refiners, not just those that are big customers for Iranian oil," ratings agency Fitch said last week. An oil industry source in Greece, which mostly relies on Iranian oil, said: "Greece can't be put with its back to the wall." The threat to Iran's oil exports and fears about a possible military strike on its nuclear facilities have helped keep oil prices above $100 a barrel... Raising the price of oil will directly hurt the US economy - and indirectly damage the US economy by causing US exports to Europe to fall. Furthermore, adding to Europe's economic problems now would undermine attempts to contain the eurozone debt crisis, as the trader's joke about sanctions helping Italy, Spain and Greece to collapse suggests. And if efforts to contain Europe's financial crisis fail, we're going to feel that pain in the US, just as Europe felt the 2008 US financial crisis. A neocon-manufactured crisis What's the Republican response to all this? When a US Treasury Department spokesman said, "it is critically important that the steps we take do not destabilise the US and global economy", a senior GOP Senate aide responded by saying, "Treasury should go back and model the cost to the US economy and the world economy of an Israeli strike on Iran". So, according to this Republican argument, we only have two choices: sanctions on Europe that will hurt the US economy, or an Israeli military strike on Iran that will hurt the US economy even more. But that's a false choice, because a lot of people in Israel, including the former head of the Mossad, think the idea of an Israeli attack on Iran is insane. And the US can keep Israel from attacking Iran if it wants, just as the US did during the Bush Administration. Of course, many Republicans claim that Iran's nuclear programme constitutes a national emergency for the United States, so we should be willing to accept higher unemployment in the US in order to block Iran's oil exports to Europe. But the "emergency" claim is extremely dubious, for the following reasons: as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh recently noted in the New Yorker, there is still no definitive evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons programme. Secondly, as former AIPAC staffer MJ Rosenberg recently noted, leading neoconservatives at the American Enterprise Institute (a key cheerleader for war with Iran, as it was a key cheerleader for war with Iraq) are now publicly conceding that the issue for neoconservatives isn't really whether Iran has a nuclear weapon - it's about trying to maintain a balance of power in the region in favour of Israeli military ambitions. It's certainly understandable that some Israeli generals would want to maintain their freedom, as they see it, to invade Lebanon anytime they want, but does supporting this ambition constitute a national emergency for people in the US? As Defence Secretary Leon Panetta recently affirmed, a Western military strike on Iran would at best set back its nuclear programme by two years. Since a military strike can't stop Iran's nuclear programme - and since such a strike would be extremely costly to the US - it's an extremely stupid thing to do, if the goal is to stop Iran's nuclear programme. The only way that military force can stop Iran's nuclear programme is if it is used to overthrow the Iranian government and install a Western client government. But few dare call for this openly, since - thanks to the Iraq and Afghanistan experience - the public is now quite aware of what this programme would cost in blood and treasure, and is also aware that despite that cost, installing a client government could fail anyway. So there is no emergency requiring sanctions that hurt the US economy. There's just another manufactured crisis, designed to force Americans to submit again to the neoconservative agenda. But the question remains: Why would Democrats support this? Do they want to lose the election? http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/2011121111650862881.html From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 15 15:35:38 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:35:38 +0100 Subject: [THS] Robert Scheer: There Goes the Republic Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111215153503.04495fb0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/there_goes_the_republic_20111214/ Robert Scheer's Columns There Goes the Republic Posted on Dec 15, 2011 AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais By Robert Scheer Once again the gods of war have united our Congress like nothing else. Unable to agree on the minimal spending necessary to save our economy, schools, medical system or infrastructure, the cowards who mislead us have retreated to the irrationalities of what George Washington in his farewell address condemned as ?pretended patriotism.? The defense authorization bill that Congress passed and President Obama had threatened to veto will soon become law, a fact that should be met with public outrage. Human Rights Watch President Kenneth Roth, responding to Obama?s craven collapse on the bill?s most controversial provision, said, ?By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.? On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney claimed ?the most recent changes give the president additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented, consistent with our values and the rule of law, which are at the heart of our country?s strength.? What rubbish, coming from a president who taught constitutional law. The point is not to hock our civil liberty to the discretion of the president, but rather to guarantee our freedoms even if a Dick Cheney or Newt Gingrich should attain the highest office. Sadly this flagrant subversion of the constitutionally guaranteed right to due process of law was opposed in the Senate by only seven senators, including libertarian Republican Rand Paul and progressive Independent Bernie Sanders. That onerous provision of the defense budget bill, much discussed on the Internet but far less so in the mass media, assumes a permanent war against terrorism that extends the battlefield to our homeland. It reeks of a militarized state that threatens the foundations of our republican form of government. Advertisement This is not only a disaster in the making for civil liberty but a blow to effective anti-terrorist police work. Recall that it was the FBI that was most effective in interrogating al-Qaida suspects before the military let loose the torturers. Under the newly approved legislation, that bypassing of civilian experts will be codified as a routine option for a president. As The New York Times editorialized, the bill ?would take the most experienced and successful anti-terrorism agencies?the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors?out of the business of interrogating, charging and trying most terrorism cases, and turn the job over to the military.? Not only has FBI Director Robert Mueller III opposed this shift in the law, but so has Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who previously ran the CIA. What?s alarming is not just that one pernicious aspect of the defense spending bill, but the ease with which an otherwise deadlocked Congress that can?t manage minimal funding for job creation and unemployment relief can find the money to fund at Cold War levels a massive sophisticated arsenal to defeat an enemy that no longer exists. Throwing $662 billion, plus hundreds of billions more in non-Pentagon ?security? programs, at what that other great-general-turned-president, Dwight Eisenhower, condemned as the ?military-industrial complex,? with its tentacles in every congressional district, is an act of absurdity in a world bereft of a serious military challenge to the United States. Not even the best-funded terrorists can afford aircraft carriers. There is simply no militarily significant enemy in sight, yet we spend almost as much on our armed forces as the rest of the world combined, and are already ludicrously superior in military might to any rogue power, like Iran, that might threaten us. The hawks who attempt to justify Cold War levels of spending on advanced weaponry by reviving ?Red China? as a formidable enemy are undermined in their argument by China?s sharply limited regional force projection. The real leverage that China exercises over U.S. policy options is not military but rather economic and derives precisely from the fact that we have gone into debt to those same communists in order to fund our irrational military spending. Military spending is rationalized with patriotic froth, but it is driven by the unfortunate fact that it is the most reliable source of government-funded profits and jobs. It is an obviously inefficient use of resources as a means of lifting the overall economy compared with building infrastructure and training workers for the jobs of the future, but don?t count on Congress or the president to change that dynamic anytime soon. The White House?s five-year projection of defense spending aims not at the one-third budget cut initiated by the first President Bush in response to the end of the Cold War, but at a ?flattening? of military expenditures between 2013 and 2017. We had every right to expect President Obama to stick to his word and veto this bill, not as a means of forcing a much needed bigger cut in government waste, but more urgently because its assault on the Constitution?s requirement of due process represents a direct threat to the freedom of the American people every bit as menacing as any we face from foreign enemies. From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 15 15:48:22 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:48:22 +0100 Subject: [THS] The 13 Best Political Films of 2011 Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111215154406.069db5d8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/story/153423/the_13_best_political_films_of_2011?page=entire AlterNet / By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd comments_image - The 13 Best Political Films of 2011 Looking back at the movies that moved us most. December 13, 2011 | This year was defined by anxiety: the economy roiled, the GOP was increasingly hostile, the government careened towards shutdown more than once. And while these things all still seem to loom, 12 months later, there is a landscape of renewed hope and empowerment. The Arab Spring set off revolutions across the Middle East, which first inspired the Western world to rise up into Occupy Wall Street. Now the ripple effect of people power travels further, as we see the germination of the Russian Winter. Culturally, we?re gearing for a seismic shift: In 2012, expect to see the effects of the year manifested in film, music, and art. But in 2011, we felt the tremors, and a clutch of political films and documentaries both presaged and inspired the increasing awareness and resolve we?ve seen smattering across the globe. You?ll see some of these in the Oscar nomination lineup, but all of them are must-see. 1. Margin Call (dir. JC Chandor) As Occupy Wall Street was congealing?and the scrutiny surrounding Wall Street's robbery and subsequent bailout was occupying America's consciousness?an intensely disquieting thriller called Margin Call was released. Set over the course of 24 hours inside an ostensibly fictional Wall Street firm in the hot zone that was 2008, it's an intimate look at the decision-making that precipitated the financial crisis, "inspired" by real events, including the ultimate meltdown of mortgage securities. The all-star ensemble cast is collectively brilliant at portraying the nuance of the morality, and lack of it, that these firms displayed?Zachary Quinto's troubled math genius acts as a compass against the supreme evil embodied in the CEO and other top-level employees, portrayed by Jeremy Irons, Simon Baker, and Demi Moore, whose Machiavellian greed leads them to sacrifice not only company employees, but the American people. Though the technical aspects of the financial crisis can sometimes seem arcane, Margin Call threaded together an idea of how it could happen?as interpreted by writer/director JC Chandor, who'd never made a film before this one?and gave us a clearer view into what exactly we were protesting. Stunning. (Currently in theaters.) 2. We Were Here (dir. David Weissman, Bill Weber) Perhaps this year?s dramatic bigotry against gay works of art dating back or relating to the AIDS crisis seeped into the collective consciousness, because this is one of two important films looking back at AIDS activism in the 1980s and ?90s. (The second, How to Survive a Plague, debuts at Sundance in February.) We Were Here focuses on San Francisco as it began to feel the early effects of what was then-called ?the gay cancer,? tapping into five people who were there and their profound, unfading memories. As frightening and depressing as the documentary is, the incredible community that mobilized to fight both the disease and the perception of those infected is the true story here. It?s activism at one of its most inspiring moments. (Currently playing in Denver, Tulsa, and various cities in Canada; more dates to come) 3. Into the Abyss (dir. Werner Herzog) A Werner Herzog romp is always fun ? resplendent with his pithy, absurdist observations and pleasurable deadpan ? but this film takes him in a more somber, more serious direction, as he examines the case of Michael Perry, a Texas man on death row for the murder of three people, and what it means when a democratic society enacts an eye for an eye. In the wake of Troy Davis, it?s an important, self-searching look at a society gone haywire and questions the nature of humanity with typical Herzog objectivity. He does not judge, only poses questions ? it?s philosophically impactful as a result. (Opened wide in November.) 4. The Adjustment Bureau (dir. George Nolfi) Philip K. Dick left so much work that was dying to be made into film. The Adjustment Bureau, based on his short story, is a perfect example why: when done well, his paranoia (and his prescience) translates thrillingly to the big screen, and in the hands of a great actor like Matt Damon, just gets more electric. It's the tale of an ambitious would-be Senator who's been tracked for the Presidency by a mysterious organization called the Adjustment Bureau, which not only fixes fate for those it works with, but proves to have psychic abilities about them, removing any semblance of free will. Damon's character reluctantly accepts this (mostly out of fear), but once the Adjustment Bureau threatens to come between himself and his potential love (Emily Blunt), he's no longer having it. It's complete romantic sci fi, but through its fantastical lens raises questions about the powerful and often nefarious mechanisms that currently exist in politics, from lobbyists to campaign managers. (Shades of the 2000 election, too.) Plus Damon and Blunt work great together, their chemistry and talent playing off each other. (Currently available for home viewing.) 5. The Ides of March (dir. George Clooney) Speaking of electoral politics, Matt Damon's partner in progress George Clooney shined in this as both actor and director. Focusing on a hotly contested presidential campaign (the screenwriter, Beau Willimon, worked with Howard Dean in 2004), the "ides" refers to the dirty politics that unseat a deputy campaign manager and sully an entire presidential election. Ryan Gosling, as said disgraced employee, imparts a savvy toughness that alludes to a character in his other breakthrough film this year, Drive, but this one inflicts just as many bruises with virtually no physical violence. (Currently in theaters.) 6. Miss Representation (dir. Jennifer Siebel Newsom) A highly critical look at media representations of women that value us solely for our tits and ass and never for our intellect, director Newsom pulls no punches in exposing the most damaging and disgusting comments made toward us through the years. Most importantly, she looks at how young girls are affected by the portrayals, and how their potential is truncated by a sexist landscape ? but can be reawakened by positive representation and women writing our own history. Alternately depressing and inspiring! (Aired on Oprah's OWN Network in October, with screenings across the US currently scheduled.) 7. The Black Power Mixtape, 1967?1975 In the late ?60s, Swedish journalists, fascinated and compelled by the Black Power movement in the United States, began documenting its most famous and outspoken purveyors more diligently than any American media, filming interviews with the likes of Angela Davis, Harry Belafonte, and Stokely Carmichael. Roundly dissed by stateside institutions and propagandist journalists, they nevertheless continued their work for several years, showing the true anguish and dignity that propelled one of the country?s most resolute and beautiful moments ? and hopefully reframing it in the American consciousness from a ?violent? movement to one that sought to empower until it was sabotaged by the government. (Currently in theaters across America.) 8. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (dir. Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky) Similarly to Into the Abyss, Paradise Lost 3 takes a long, hard look at the justice system in America, but this is the third in a trilogy about the West Memphis Three, teenagers who spent almost two decades in prison for the murder of three boys despite evidence to the contrary ? and who were finally cleared after DNA evidence proved their innocence. A story with a strong following, from normal justice activists to the likes of Johnny Depp and Pearl Jam?s Eddie Vedder, the finale offers a denouement to a broken justice system. (Opened in October; will air on HBO beginning January 12.) 9. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (dir. Rupert Wyatt) The ever-canny James Franco stars in this sci fi thriller as a well-meaning scientist, but obviously it's the apes who steal his absurdist shine: led by a super-intelligent super-chimp, a cache of experimented-upon apes revolts against humanity, taking to the streets in protest and, you know, smashing cars in the process. An incredibly fun film to watch, and if you let yourself be distracted from insane special effects, you'll get the union subtext and the limits of science, along with some commentary on how, if we can't co-exist naturally with nature, it will make a concerted effort not to have to co-exist with us. (Out now for home viewing.) 10. If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (dir Michael Curry) How urgent is it to avert environmental disaster, and how far would you go to do it? This intense documentary follows the 2005 prosecution of one operating cell of the ELF under what the government termed America?s ?No. 1 domestic terrorist threat? ? despite the fact that their actions did not physically harm anyone. The ELF?s tactic was to set businesses it deemed environmentally damaging alight, including SUV dealerships and timber companies, which was counteracted by the government?s invocation of corporate personhood. In the interim, riot cops cracked down on protests ? violent ones, the kind we?re seeing a lot of today ? which are painfully and shockingly depicted here. (Aired on PBS in September; DVDs available.) 11. Addiction Incorporated (dir. Charles Evans Jr) The true story of Victor DeNoble, who presented nicotine-free tobacco to Philip Morris after learning that the drug led to both heart disease and addiction ? and who fought them when they opted for more addictive additives. Standing up against the tobacco industry has been documentary fodder before, but this look at one man?s resolve is inspiring. (Airing now in New York; opening wide in January.) 12. The Loving Story (dir. Nancy Biurski) In 1967, Richard and Mildred Loving were arrested for marrying interracially, which was illegal in the state of Virginia. Banned from ever visiting their families together, they eventually sued the state with the help of the ACLU (and at the behest of Robert Kennedy). Their suit eventually made it to the Supreme Court, which overturned all miscegenation laws, stating they were in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. This documentary, complete with incredible archival footage of the Lovings, examines the history ? and the present, including President Obama ? of interracial marriage, but also tells a beautiful tale of love that couldn?t be kept down. (Opened in Nov; HBO will air in February.) 13. Battle for Brooklyn (dir. Michael Galinsky, Suki Hawley) Oscar shortlisted For over six years, residents of downtown Brooklyn battled Bruce Ratner, one of the largest real estate developers in New York, for the heart of the neighborhood. After the state and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, invoking eminent domain, rezoned and seized the area known as Atlantic Yards, Ratner began developing his vision: a huge sports arena for the Brooklyn Nets, several skyscrapers (including mixed-income housing, the ?mixed-income? part of which was eventually scrapped), and area for mass retail which some fretted would attract national chains and dilute the community reliance that?s been a part of downtown Brooklyn for decades. But most devastatingly, the land on which the new development was proposed already held apartment buildings and other living units. Set to be razed, its occupants and neighbors, some of whom had lived in the buildings for decades, embarked on a battle for their lives and principles. This compelling documentary chronicles the fight. (Upcoming screenings all across America, available on DVD soon.) Julianne Escobedo Shepherd is an associate editor at AlterNet and a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor. Formerly the executive editor of The FADER, her work has appeared in VIBE, SPIN, New York Times and various other magazines and websites. From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 15 16:00:30 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:00:30 +0100 Subject: [THS] Jim Hightower: 5 Major Ways Corporate Elites Are Degrading America Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111215155815.044960f8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/story/153437/if_you_are_not_outraged%2C_you_are_not_paying_attention%3A_5_major_ways_corporate_elites_are_degrading_america?page=entire Hightower Lowdown / By Jim Hightower If You Are Not Outraged, You Are Not Paying Attention: 5 Major Ways Corporate Elites Are Degrading America While it can be disheartening to see the smallness of those in power, don't let it get you down, for they want us to become so disheartened that we give up. December 14, 2011 | "We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." What a paragraph! This sparse, 52-word opening of our Constitution did not merely launch a fledgling nation--but a bold experiment in democratic idealism. The rest of the document consists of details, but this carefully considered Preamble set forth our nation's purpose. It declares to all the world that the BIG goal of America--its very reason for existing--is to create a society that embraces and fosters such egalitarian values as justice, tranquility, common effort, the welfare of all, and liberty. As Benjamin Franklin put it at the time, "America's destiny is not power, but light." The light is our historic commitment to the common good, shared prosperity, and a government of, by, and for the People. Whatever happened to that audacious reach, that grand vision, that proud progressive purpose? We know, of course, that our nation has never attained the fullness of this ideal, but over the decades, generation after generation has at least strived to get closer to it--and made impressive progress. But today, some 224 years after the penning of the Preamble, America's corporate-financial-political establishment is fleeing the light, insisting that it's no longer possible or even desirable to pursue those democratic ideals that make our country important--and make it work. What's happened is that, from Wall Street to Washington, we have too many five-watt bulbs sitting in 100-watt sockets. As a result of their dimness, America's uniting and constructive ethic of "We're all in this together" and "Together we can" is being supplanted by a shriveled, dispiriting ethic that exalts plutocratic selfishness and scorns the public interest as intrusive, wasteful, ideologically impure, and morally ruinous. They're pushing us toward a forbidding Kochian jungle in which there is no "we"--money rules, everyone's on their own, and such matters as justice, general welfare, tranquility, and posterity are none of society's damned business. The nation of no-can-do In recent years, acolytes of the far right have contrived yet another litmus test of ideological purity to divide "real Americans" (themselves) from those who obviously hate America (all who do not agree with them). "American exceptionalism," they call it. America has most certainly been exceptional in many ways, thanks to the pluck and democratic determination of grassroots folks. But that's not glorious enough for these extreme nationalists, who insist that ours is a God-ordained exceptionalism. They preach that ours is both a Christian nation and one bathed in the blood of free enterprise, thus God has blessed us with a moral superiority that lifts the USofA ever-sparkling above all nations that ever existed. Never mind that our national morality has a few conspicuous hickies on it (ask a Native American, for example), the believers believe... and that makes it true. They're also demanding that others believe --or be branded un-American. To get right with the rightists, such current seekers of the presidency as Mitt, Newt, Rick, the other Rick, and Michele have bowed to the exceptionalists and are blissfully spreading this new gospel through their campaign speeches and websites. (Really, friends, how credible is America's claim to exceptionalism with those six carrying the flag?) The cruelest irony is that America's genuine exceptionalism (our historic striving for a more egalitarian society) is under relentless assault by the political army of the hokey exceptionalists. These are the holy crusaders of the plutocratic, autocratic, theocratic, and kleptocratic right--an army that includes the laissez-fairyland Koch brothers; the Boehner-Cantor-Ryan triumvirate in the US House; off-the-wall senators like Jim DeMint and Jim Inhofe; the gaggle of goofy governors wreaking havoc in Arizona, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin, and elsewhere; Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, and other slash-and-burn political operatives; corporate front groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Cato Institute; and such ceaseless propaganda pushers as Rupert Murdoch's line-up of Fox TV yakkers. Far from fostering exceptionalism, these heavily financed forces are rumbling throughout the country to crush the union movement, eliminate wage protections, privatize everything from schools to Social Security, kill poverty programs, un-regulate Wall Street, repeal environmental rules, suppress voter turnout, stack the courts, corporatize elections, and de-legitimize the democratic values expressed by the founders in the Preamble. They are dynamiting the underpinnings of the middle class and taking away the public tools that ordinary people must have to do the extraordinary things that truly make America great. So here we are, the wealthiest nation on earth with massive needs and an industrious population eager to get working on those needs, yet our leaders throw up their hands and say: "No can do." The "leaders" have given up on greatness because there's no greatness in them. Most of those at the top of the corporate and political establishment (excuse the redundancy there) are so narcissistic that they no longer see beyond their own good fortunes, equating America's progress, well-being, and greatness to the size of their portfolios. The fact that they could invent phrases like "jobless recovery," "too big to fail," and "the new normal" reveals their spiritual constipation and self-absorption. They've even fabricated a pious ethic of "austerity" to cloak their shameful abandonment of America's common good. Using the ongoing economic collapse, which was caused by them--their Wall Street recklessness, profligate tax giveaways to the super-rich, unbridled corporate greed, and the multitrillion dollar wars put on the national credit card--the people in charge now lecture sternly that America (i.e., you and I) must cut back. Candidate Romney spelled it out: "I think it's time for programs that we like but that we simply can't afford, to be stopped... and I'm going to do that," listing the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities , PBS and NPR, and Amtrak. These are abstemious times, we're told, so workaday people must lower their expectation of having a middle-class existence. And, they scold, stop looking for either corporations or governments to do anything to lift people up or rally the nation to achieve any sort of grand national goals. In twisted language that would cause even George Orwell to gasp in disbelief, they tell us that America's corporate and political leaders must be big enough to be small--and bold enough to see that the only way forward is to go backwards. Apparently the Powers That Be expected to be applauded for imposing this pursed-lip politics of retrenchment. Instead, people are dismayed and disgusted by such a desiccated vision of our nation's possibilities, and there's a rising grassroots fury at the moneyed and political elites who're creating The Incredibly Shrinking America: -- Middle class In a nation that once prided itself on trying to build a more egalitarian society, America's wealthiest people have steadily been siphoning more and more money out of the middle class. In October, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a report on changes during the past 30 years in the share of our nation's income going to the rich. The top one percent enjoyed a stunning 275 percent increase in their take. These privileged few more than doubled the slice of America's income pie that they consume, going from eight percent of the whole to 17 percent. They got that super-sized slice from us--the middle class and the poor, who saw our slices drastically diminish in this period. At the very tip of our country's income pyramid, where multimillionaire CEOs and Wall Street chieftains live, the shift was especially huge. This exclusive zip code is the domain of the richest one one-hundredth of the one-percenters--fewer than 15,000 households. They now gobble up six percent of all US income--the biggest piece ever consumed by America's mega-rich. -- Jobs Unemployment has never been so high for so long after a recession formally ended as we're presently experiencing. Especially damaging (both to individual families and to our country) is long-term unemployment--a record--4.4 million out-of-work Americans today have been jobless for a year or more. Corporate executives (now euphemistically referred to as "job creators" by GOP politicos) are sitting on $2 trillion in cash. But rather than investing that in the actual creation of, you know, jobs, corporations are in Washington lobbying for new, multibillion dollar tax subsidies as the price for even beginning to think about hiring people. Hundreds of corporations are openly saying that even when they do have some jobs to fill, they will not take applications from people who've been out of work for more than six months (the cold assumption is that such unfortunates would have fallen too far behind in skills and contacts to be valuable). At the same time, workers are being told that in the new corporate order they must expect long periods of joblessness. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are demanding major cuts in both job training and unemployment programs. -- Wages Nationwide, for every job opening these days, there are five applicants vying for it (however, jobseekers report a much tougher reality, with openings typically drawing 50 or more applicants for each position). With so many unemployed and underemployed Americans, workers are having to take any pay level they can get, allowing top executives to jack up profits (and executive paychecks) by paying low wages. Indeed, in a July report on major US corporations, a JPMorgan Chase analyst found that about 75 percent of recent increases in profit margins (now at the highest levels since the 1960s) come from knocking down worker pay and benefits. Harold Meyerson, the excellent editor-at-large for American Prospect,reports that "because labor is cheap and workers have no rights," the US "is becoming the new China." European corporate giants are moving jobs to the USA because our political leaders allow them to pay much less and abuse workers, which they're not allowed to do in Germany, Scandinavia, etc. "Slumming in America," Meyerson writes, "is fast becoming a business model for some of Europe's leading companies." -- Education Even robber barons of the 19th century recognized that public access to education was in America's best interest, as well as their own. No more. From corporatists, right-wing ideologues, and even from many Democratic officeholders, the loudest political cries today are for slashing school budgets, eliminating classes and programs, busting the middle-class pay and benefits of teachers, outlawing collective bargaining, jamming more kids into each class, cutting school taxes, and... what the hell, just privatize the whole shebang. As one exasperated school official told the New York Times, "Every year we say: 'What can we cut?' We're starting to eviscerate education." Of course, what's really being eviscerated is opportunity for children, along with upward mobility, potential genius, an informed citizenry, and "domestic Tranquility." Can they even spell s-t-u-p-i-d? Among the worst offenders are not the know-nothings, but high-tech honchos. They whine endlessly that public schools must do a better job of developing skilled workers for their industry. Yet, when they open or expand corporate operations in a community, their first demand is to be exempted from paying taxes to the local school district. -- Community Last month, Stanford University issued a "map of prosperity," based on family income in the various neighborhoods of America's 117 largest urban areas. It confirms the middle-class decline, with nearly a 20-point drop since 1970 in the percentage of our people living middle-class lives (down from 65 percent to only 44 percent today). The significance is not merely the increase in the number of people who've fallen into poverty (up by over 13 million in just the past decade), but that the widening separation between the rich and the rest of us is producing a two-tiered society with a shrinking sense of shared community. The wealthy (including nearly all lawmakers and governors) literally do not live with us, instead flocking together into pockets of affluence. Rising inequality is creating an isolation of the prosperous, who have no real interaction with the middle class and poor and no identity with our wants and needs. Thus, when economic and social policies are considered in our national and state capitals, the likes of Wall Street, Big Oil, and the super-rich are taken care of immediately. Millions of jobless Americans, on the other hand, are told to wait for pie in the sky when they die; the minimum wage is allowed to wither to a sub-poverty level, with less buying power today than at any time since 1956; budgets for public libraries and parks are axed, shutting people out and forcing closures; Head Start, food stamps, and other effective anti-poverty programs are on the chopping block, even as the need for them soars; and even such a screaming need as good health care for all is treated as too much for our society to attempt, much less achieve. Let's do something big Is there no hope, then? Of course there is. There's hope in the great majority of Americans who oppose what the present crop of pathetic leaders are doing and who support doing what those feckless leaders are failing to do. There's hope in the thousands of extraordinary (dare we say exceptional?) local actions that ordinary people are taking--from building green economies to voting overwhelmingly that a corporation is not a person, as 75 percent of Missoula, Montana voters did last month. There's hope in the ongoing Wisconsin rebellion that has already defeated two thuggish state senators and is now going after the imperious Gov. Scott Walker. There's hope in the 61 percent grassroots victory in Ohio on November 8 to throw out the repressive anti-labor law that the ego-bloated, Koch-fueled Gov. John Kasich tried to hang around the people's neck. There's hope in the Occupy protest that is so big and so deeply felt by so many angry/hopeful people that even such forces of autocracy as Mayor Mike Bloomberg cannot make it go away. And there's hope in still more uprisings that are coming--coming from such corners as frustrated jobseekers; tens of thousands of misused war veterans returning from the Mideast to mistreatment at home; hundreds of thousands of homeowners being mercilessly foreclosed on by bailed-out bankers; and others who're simply fed up with the corporados and political flim-flammers who're knocking ordinary Americans down and holding America back. You've probably seen this bumpersticker: "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." I sense that a critical mass of people is now paying attention. I also find that the thing we Americans have the most of is the very thing our failed leaders have the least of: bigness of spirit. Shouldn't we repair and extend our nation's crumbling school buildings, bridges, water systems, and other parts of the essential infrastructure? "Yes!" shout an overwhelming majority of Americans (a 2009 poll even found that 74 percent of Republicans are willing to swallow a tax hike to get going on this). How about a moon-shot style, 10-year national effort to free America from dirty fuels by converting to energy conservation and renewable power sources? "Let's do it!" say the people. High-speed rail connecting our cities? "Yes we can!" Reclaim our democracy by banning corporate money from our elections? "Sign us up," say 84 percent of Americans who support a constitutional amendment to do it. While it can be disheartening to see the smallness of those in power, don't let it get you down, for they want us to become so disheartened that we give up. Better that we turn their failure into our inspiration for more agitation. After all, they're the ones who're wrong--wrong about the can-do power of the people they pretend to lead, wrong about the depth of this nation's historic commitment to egalitarianism and the common good, wrong about what they think they can get away with. Our task is to confront them again and again, shoving back until we shove them out. Confront them in the coming election--demand from every candidate for every office why their idea of what Americans can do is so small. Confront them in the workplace, the media, the pocketbook, the schools, the shareholder meetings, the public forums, the streets... everywhere. There are dozens of effective grassroots groups engaged in this essential democratic shove-back on all kinds of fronts. Join the action--the groups need you, and so does our democracy. To get started, see the Lowdown "Do Something" box for contact information on just a few of those groups. Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer. From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 15 16:05:15 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:05:15 +0100 Subject: [THS] Hardcore Drug Warrior Endorses Obama's Attack on Medical Pot Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111215160345.06aa2d68@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/748315/not_a_good_look%3A_hardcore_drug_warrior_endorses_obama%27s_attack_on_medical_pot/#paragraph4 Not a Good Look: Hardcore Drug Warrior Endorses Obama's Attack on Medical Pot Last month, I questioned an absurd claim from the White House that President Obama has been "clear and consistent" in his approach to medical marijuana. The facts of the matter are so plain that it feels silly to even debate it further, but this quote from anti-marijuana zealot and youth drug testing cheerleader David Evans of the Drug-Free Schools Coalition got my attention: "The Obama administration?s recent crackdown on growers and sellers of medical marijuana is totally justified. The federal government is trying to protect vulnerable people from the use of marijuana as medicine, since the drug is not proved safe or effective." It's really pretty hard for the Obama administration to claim they're not suddenly cracking down on medical marijuana when the president is getting praised by David Evans for protecting patients from themselves and their doctors. This is the guy you don't want complimenting you in public when you're busy trying to convince everyone else that your drug policy isn't a draconian death march. A little heads up to Obama's re-election team: when both sides of the medical marijuana debate are in agreement that you've launched some kind of major crackdown, you do not get to pretend that there was no crackdown. The tough question facing candidate Obama will be why he took no action to prevent egregious violations of his campaign promises on this issue, not whether such events ever occurred. A consensus exists in the press and the public that Obama backed away rather blatantly from his widely-understood assurance that state medical marijuana programs wouldn't face an existential threat from the federal government under his watch. Those threats emerged from numerous agencies this year and have scarcely been acknowledged by the White House, let alone addressed to anyone's satisfaction. Rather than endeavoring to further duck or distract us, the president needs to say something smart about this. He'll have to do better than saying it's a poor use of resources to bust pot patients, because the propriety of arresting sick people and their caregivers is not a question that ought to hinge on the availability of funds with which to do so. It would also be a poor use of resources to kick glaucoma patients down the stairs, but that isn't the reason we don't do it. It's time for the president to admit that medical marijuana is a actually a good thing, that we're lucky to have this helpful option available for those who need it, and that people like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are at odds with80% of Americans when they dare to suggest otherwise. (This article was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.) By Scott Morgan | Sourced from Stop the Drug War Speakeasy Blog Posted at December 14, 2011, 12:10 pm From ths at psalience.org Thu Dec 15 16:06:58 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:06:58 +0100 Subject: [THS] The truth hurts: LHC breaks supersymmetry's beauty Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111215160629.0405db30@mail.messagingengine.com> The truth hurts: LHC breaks supersymmetry's beauty 13 December 2011 by Anil Ananthaswamy Magazine issue 2842. Subscribe and save For similar stories, visit the The Large Hadron Collider Topic Guide http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228421.400-the-truth-hurts-lhc-breaks-supersymmetrys-beauty.html <i>(Image: <a href="http://www.dutchuncle.co.uk/i (Image: Stuart Daly/Dutch Uncle Agency) As the search for the Higgs continues, a no-show at CERN is putting a beautiful theory in doubt ? and pencils are already being sharpened with rival interpretations Editorial: "The Higgs is only half the problem" IN JULY, at a particle physics conference in Grenoble, France, Nobel laureate George Smoot seemed to be channelling the spirit of Thomas Huxley. The scrappy 19th-century champion of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection once spoke of "the great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact". Smoot, a cosmologist who made his name studying the afterglow of the big bang, thinks this is just the drama now playing out in particle physics. Particle physics has a beautiful theory, known as supersymmetry. More than three decades in the making, its elegant mathematical structure was intended to replace the "standard model", the eminently serviceable but sometimes creaky and in parts aesthetically unpleasing theoretical construct that is currently our best description of matter's fundamental workings. Supersymmetry's beauty is now meeting some ugly facts emerging from the Large Hadron Collider, the gargantuan particle accelerator situated at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. Supersymmetry predicts a whole slew of new particles, and by most reckonings the LHC should have started producing some of them already. But it hasn't. That throws up some big questions. Is supersymmetry really the right answer? If not, what is? Supersymmetry - SUSY to its legion of fans - has long been seen as a panacea for the standard model's ills. Back in the early 1960s, one of the theories that went into making the standard model faced an embarrassment. It could not explain how elementary particles, things such as electrons and the quarks that make up protons and neutrons, get their mass. It predicted none of them had any mass at all. Nonsense, clearly. A workaround, arrived at from several angles in 1964, was to postulate that an all-pervading field exists with which elementary particles interact differently, giving each a unique mass. This was the Higgs field, named after one of its progenitors, Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh, UK. The Higgs mechanism was neat, but created its own problem. Experimental clues indicated that the mass of the "quantum" of the Higgs field, the Higgs boson, was between about 114 and 180 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) ? exactly the range in which the LHC is currently feverishly seeking the particle, with as yet only tantalising hints. The theory, though, made it something like a billion billion times bigger. This gigantic discrepancy came to be known as the hierarchy problem. The only way to get rid of it was to jury-rig various crucial numbers that pop up within the standard model; numbers that fix, for example, the strengths of the electromagnetic and strong and weak nuclear forces that the theory describes. Set these numbers in the right way, and you can rein in the Higgs mass. Get it wrong, and the resulting theory has distressing consequences: particle masses, force strengths and the like all start going awry. "It can completely destroy what we think of as the salient features of our universe," says theoretical physicist Raman Sundrum of the University of Maryland in College Park. SUSY promised to clean up that mess. The price was a whole second set of particles, a heavier partner for each already known standard-model particle. Quarks have "squark" partners, the gluons that hold them together have partners called gluinos, and so on. The particle interactions that made the Higgs mass so outrageously large are neatly cancelled by opposing interactions between the Higgs field and these superpartners, elegantly disposing of the hierarchy problem. The simplest, most aesthetically pleasing forms of SUSY, "constrained minimal models", need just a few crucial numbers, or free parameters, to deliver testable predictions. One of these is that squarks have masses below 1000 GeV, or 1 teraelectronvolt (TeV), squarely in the LHC's present-day energy range. Since the accelerator finally got going in March 2010 after a false start in September 2008, it has been operating at only half its design energy. Nevertheless, each head-on proton smash delivers 7 TeV of energy to be converted into new particles, so squarks should be produced in copious numbers. That led to a common presumption about supersymmetric particles among physicists working on the LHC: "If SUSY exists, then when we turn on our detectors, they'll light up like Christmas trees," as Vyacheslav Rychkov of the ?cole Normale Sup?rieure in Paris, France, puts it. They didn't. No Christmas lights; not so much as a firefly flicker. What has gone wrong? The no-show invites one of two conclusions. It could be that SUSY's previously flawless countenance has some unexpected blemishes. That answer is favoured by many researchers, including CERN physicist Sanjay Padhi, a member of the LHC's Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS)collaboration. He points out that searches for supersymmetric particles at the LHC so far have concentrated on finding the "stop", the squark equivalent of the standard model's top quark. Although the top quark is the heaviest one in the standard model, in most versions of SUSY, the stop is the lightest squark. Indeed, a stop mass of well below 1 TeV is in most cases a precondition for SUSY solving the hierarchy problem. In "plain vanilla" constrained minimal SUSY, the other squarks are not much heavier. All of them should be produced at the LHC, with the heavier ones decaying into the stop, resulting in a stop deluge that would be hard to overlook - exactly what hasn't been seen. That suggests a way forward to Padhi. "We should try to get away from traditional constrained models," he says. SUSY doesn't just come in vanilla but chocolate, pistachio, even chilli and garlic flavours: more complex, and perhaps less palatable variants that need more assumptions and free parameters to make them work. Some of these deliver higher values of squark and gluino masses in regions the LHC has not yet tested, while still giving a stop mass that is below 1 TeV. If these models are right, the LHC would have produced far fewer heavier squarks, or perhaps none at all. So, says Padhi, we just need to refine the stop search - looking, for example, for it being produced directly, rather than as a decay product of something heavier. Radical colour If only things were that simple, says Matthias Neubert, a theorist at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, in Germany. For a start, "we will have to explain why the stop is much lighter than the other SUSY quarks, and that's not so easy," he says. Suddenly, the talk is of fine-tuning a welter of free parameters in supersymmetric models to get the right results - just the fudge SUSY was designed to avoid. "If you start making superpartners heavier, then SUSY starts looking more and more like the standard model," says Rychkov. "It's clear you are doing something that is anathema to the original motivation." That invites a second, more radical conclusion. A makeover won't do it: nothing can save SUSY. Already, some physicists are dusting off two old, largely discounted models that they think might just replace it. The first is the brainchild of Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas, Austin, who won a share of a Nobel prize in 1979 for his work on the unification of the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces, which was a crucial step towards the standard model. In the year of his award, working withLeonard Susskind of Stanford University, he suggested a radical way of getting round the hierarchy problem: you just get rid of the Higgs boson. Weinberg and Susskind's starting point was the humdrum proton. The proton is made of quarks bound together by gluons, which mediate the strong nuclear force, yet most of its mass comes not from the quarks but from the energy contained in the bonds between them. These "colour interactions" are the expression of the strong nuclear force at the low energies of today's universe. If a similar mechanism had been at work at much higher energies in the early universe, Weinberg and Susskind reasoned, that could explain why elementary particles such as quarks themselves have mass, without ever mentioning the Higgs. It was a bright new prospect they dubbed "technicolor". But it soon became clear that technicolor's mathematics was so intractable as to make it extremely difficult to extract testable predictions from it. What's more, the few it did make did not tally well with experimental results from the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP), CERN's principal accelerator until 2001. Tweaks to the theory allayed some of those problems, but technicolor's lustre soon faded. A different alternative was needed. In the late 1990s Sundrum, together with Lisa Randall of Harvard University, suggested one. The hierarchy problem has to do with the ballooning of the Higgs mass way beyond the masses of the other known particles, but it can be restated in another way: why is gravity, which is not covered by the standard model, so much weaker than the other forces? It is, for example, nearly 1034times punier than the electromagnetic force. If gravity were stronger, then particles that acquire their masses through the Higgs mechanism would be far weightier, and the hierarchy problem would melt away. Conversely, find a theory with an in-built explanation for why gravity is as weak as it is, and the problem dissolves. Randall and Sundrum's mathematics suggested a novel way to bring about the desired weakness: an unseen fifth dimension besides the four of our space and time. In this picture, we are rather like ants living on the two-dimensional surface of a piece of paper. They scuttle around unaware that their world also has an infinitesimally small third dimension, the paper's thickness. Randall-Sundrum models suggested that the particles mediating gravity, gravitons, prefer to populate one side of a 5D universe - one side of a sheet of paper, if you will. Higgs bosons, meanwhile, hang out on "our" side. This limits the interaction of gravitons with particles such as electrons and quarks that get their mass through the Higgs mechanism, and so gravity appears weak in our 4D approximation of space-time. In a full 5D view, meanwhile, it is just as strong as all the rest of the forces. Quite apart from the complication of an extra dimension, it soon became clear that Randall-Sundrum models also had other difficulties that made them hardly viable. Like supersymmetry, the models predict that known particles have heavier counterparts - "resonances" from the higher dimension - but these would be at lower masses already ruled out by earlier colliders such as the LEP. And so for want of any strong rival, supersymmetry has reigned supreme. Now, though, it's in trouble. Hence the latest suggestion for a replacement: technicolor and Randall-Sundrum models together. How so? It all goes back to the "AdS/CFT correspondence", a mathematical trick derived from string theory by physicist Juan Maldacena of The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1997. It showed how an intractable theory of strong interactions in a four-dimensional space-time such as our own can be made a lot more tractable by adding an extra dimension. Randall and Sundrum saw that this could form a bridge between their theory and technicolor. "We were first to sense that there might be some connection, but I don't think we knew what we were talking about in the slightest detail," says Sundrum. Soon after, Maldacena himself suggested a connection between the two theories, and others began eagerly to work out the details. By 2001, they had largely been established. The most promising technicolor-like theory that hasn't yet been ruled out by the data does not get rid of the Higgs entirely, but says it is not an elementary particle. Instead, it is a composite of other, new elementary particles, a "bound state" rather as a proton is really a bound bunch of quarks and gluons. This theory is still unwieldly in its conventional, four-dimensional form. Malcadena's correspondence provides a Randall-Sundrum analogue that is easier to deal with, but invokes a fifth dimension. Neubert thinks the mathematical link makes this less of a problem. "When people talk about these Randall-Sundrum models and say, 'do you really believe there is a fifth dimension?' you can get two different answers," he says. "Yes, you can have a fifth dimension. But you can also say that it's a mathematical tool to describe technicolor theories. It's one and the same thing." You can see the attraction. After a year of smashing protons, the LHC has created neither supersymmetric particles nor much of a sign of a conventional Higgs boson. A workable theory such as technicolor that does without either suddenly becomes alluring. And whether you take its four or five-dimensional variant, it makes predictions that the LHC should be able to test. The composite Higgs particle predicted by some technicolor-like models is thought to have a mass of between 115 and 145 GeV, within the LHC's reach. It should be just a case of skewing the search to look for their decay products, rather than those of the conventional Higgs. The extra-dimensional models themselves predict heavier resonances of known particles with masses greater than 1 TeV. Finding any of these particles would be a big boost for such ideas. Not that anything is a foregone conclusion. Fine-tuning will still be necessary to make any theory fit the data. And as Padhi points out, SUSY could make a comeback if the LHC finds a stop squark with a mass of less than 1 TeV, produced directly and not as a decay product of heavier squarks. "From an experimental point of view, whatever happens to fine-tuning, who cares," says Padhi. "We have to make sure that we don't miss something, whether the theory agrees or not." Smoot thinks so too: the lesson is that researchers at the LHC need to cast their nets wider. "We are led by theorists who, when they have no data... lock into a beautiful model because it's beautiful," he said in Grenoble. The hope and expectation is that in the next year or so, CERN's behemoth should find something - anything - that points the way towards a newer and bigger theory of matter. Every irregularity, every incongruity is eagerly pored over. Discoveries such as that last month of an unexpectedly large imbalance in particle decay rates at one LHC experiment, LHCb, have theorists sharpening their pencils with rival interpretations (New Scientist, 26 November, p 6). Is it SUSY? Or something else? With SUSY losing its claim to beauty, few certainties exist, and Huxley's words might never have rung truer. Sundrum for one shrugs his shoulders. Whatever the LHC finds, he says, "I ask only let it be interesting". Anil Ananthaswamy is a consultant for New Scientist Issue 2842 of New Scientist magazine From issue 2842 of New Scientist magazine, page 42-45. From ths at psalience.org Fri Dec 16 14:46:58 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:46:58 +0100 Subject: [THS] Big climate change could happen fast - and soon Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111216142512.062dcd58@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.tgdaily.com/sustainability-features/60111-big-climate-change-could-happen-fast-and-soon Big climate change could happen fast - and soon Posted on December 9, 2011 - 05:18 by Kate Taylor New research from NASA into the Earth's paleoclimate history indicates we could be facing rapid climate change this century, including sea level rises of many meters. And while international leaders have suggested a goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times, Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James E Hansen says that even this would lead to drastic changes. The Earth's average global surface temperature has already risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880, says Hansen, and is now increasing by more than 0.1 degree Celsius every decade. At the current rate of fossil fuel burning, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have doubled from pre-industrial times by the middle of this century, causing an eventual warming of several degrees, he says. Hansen and his colleague Makiko Sato compared the climate of today, the Holocene, with previous similar interglacial epochs. By studying cores from both ice sheets and deep ocean sediments, they found that global mean temperatures during the Eemian period, which began about 130,000 years ago and lasted about 15,000 years, were less than one degree Celsius warmer than today. If temperatures were to rise two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times, global mean temperature would far exceed that of the Eemian, when sea level was four to six meters higher than today, says Hansen. "The paleoclimate record reveals a more sensitive climate than thought, even as of a few years ago. Limiting human-caused warming to two degrees is not sufficient," he says. "It would be a prescription for disaster." Two degrees Celsius of warming would make Earth much warmer than during the Eemian - indeed, similar to Pliocene-like conditions, when sea level was about 25 meters higher than today, says Hansen. However, that sea level increase due to ice sheet loss would be expected to occur over centuries, and large uncertainties remain in predicting it accurately. "We don?t have a substantial cushion between today's climate and dangerous warming. Earth is poised to experience strong amplifying feedbacks in response to moderate additional global warming," says Hansen. "Humans have overwhelmed the natural, slow changes that occur on geologic timescales." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/inpress_Hansen_Sato.pdf Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change James E. Hansen and Makiko Sato NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, New York ABSTRACT Paleoclimate data help us assess climate sensitivity and potential human-made climate effects. We conclude that Earth in the warmest interglacial periods of the past million years was less than 1?C warmer than in the Holocene. Polar warmth in these interglacials and in the Pliocene does not imply that a substantial cushion remains between today's climate and dangerous warming, but rather that Earth is poised to experience strong amplifying polar feedbacks in response to moderate global warming. Thus goals to limit human-made warming to 2?C are not sufficient ? they are prescriptions for disaster. Ice sheet disintegration is nonlinear, spurred by amplifying feedbacks. We suggest that ice sheet mass loss, if warming continues unabated, will be characterized better by a doubling time for mass loss rate than by a linear trend. Satellite gravity data, though too brief to be conclusive, are consistent with a doubling time of 10 years or less, implying the possibility of multi-meter sea level rise this century. Observed accelerating ice sheet mass loss supports our conclusion that Earth's temperature now exceeds the mean Holocene value. Rapid reduction of fossil fuel emissions is required for humanity to succeed in preserving a planet resembling the one on which civilization developed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.opednews.com/articles/Oops-We-re-Doomed-by-Michael-Collins-111215-68.html December 15, 2011 Oops! We're Doomed By Michael Collins Time is running out to fix global warming according to newly announced research and emerging dangers on the Russian Arctic shelf. What are our rulers doing? Everything they can to make things worse. Oops, we're doomed! :::::::: By Michael Collins We don't have a substantial cushion between today's climate and dangerous warming. James E. Hanson The head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James E. Hansen, announced the results of break through global warming research last week. The earth's temperature is rising at a much quicker pace than previously anticipated according to research by the nation's preeminent climate scientist. We have little time to reverse the trend. (Image) An example of the dangerous pace of change is emerging on Russia's Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf. Long-frozen permafrost is beginning to melt due to global warming. This threat was identified years ago due to the potential for highly toxic releases of heat-trapping methane gas. Recent changes are both a surprise and a cause for alarm. There is more methane gas released from the Russian cauldron "than the CH4 emissions estimate for the entire world ocean." Methane is a "far more potent GHG [greenhouse gas] than CO2" with a greater potential to cause "abrupt climate change." At the same time, researchers at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich developed a more efficient analysis of contributors to global warming. They found man-made causes can now be linked with at least 75% of global warming. Hansen's warning is brought to life by the methane gas event starting in the Arctic. We are in the danger zone. By the time we know it's too late, it won't matter. Without prompt, concerted action through readily available technologies and programs, we face increasing calamities through midcentury. After that, the displacement, destruction, and death assume unthinkable proportions. As these evidence-based warnings were issued, the military effort to seize effective control of oil and natural gas regions of the Middle East and Central Asia continued unabated. Ironically, as our rulers engage in endless military conflicts to secure access to oil, they are delivering a weapon of mass destruction, an oil-based economy that will create massive disasters and dislocations that plunge the world into chaos. Domestic policies have the same anti life outcome. The Keystone XL pipeline to accommodate tar sands oil production ensures continued CO2 pollution resulting in a collapsing world social and economic structure. We are headed for a new world disorder of epic proportions. Past performance indicates that the current power structure is unable to handle disasters on a much smaller scale. The August 2003 heat wave in Europe killed 35,000, devastated crops, and sparked massive forest fires. It had never occurred to these nations to plan for or even consider the impact of heat waves. The failed response to the New Orleans disaster in 2005 offers a sneak preview of one hapless response after another to tragedies of ever increasing magnitude. How will we plan for consequences we can't predict? What will the rulers do when entire agricultural regions disappear due to accelerating global warming? How will the planet offset these losses as the world climate system becomes more hostile to agricultural output even in those areas where growing can be sustained? What will the people do when drinking water becomes scarce due to the evaporation of runoff and water sources? What happens when the glaciers melt down and cease to store fresh water? How will the world economy function as the flawed the assumption of endless growth becomes painfully apparent? These were all questions that we were told were a generation or two away. That is no longer the case according to the new evidence, analytic and empirical. An Example of the New World Disorder Florida, the coastline of China, the Netherlands, and the entire nation of Bangladesh will be acutely affected by sea level changes should the world slip into Dr. Hansen's danger zone. With just a 2 meter rise in sea level around 530 million people around the world will need to find new homes because theirs will be gone. (United States Geological Survey) The impact on Florida is evident in the image. There will be 3.5 million people in need of new homes. The time between now and midcentury will be marked by ever-increasing devastation and displacement for human beings in coastal areas. About 40% of the earth's population lives within 60 miles of a coastal area. Where will the millions left homeless in Florida go? What's the response when tens of millions in Bangladesh have no place to go? What will China do with tens of millions seeking shelter? It won't happen all at once. Incremental changes will produce a spectacle of suffering on a daily basis. The debate on global warming as a factor in all of this should be over as well. Man-made influence and effects account for about 75% of the increases in the earth's temperature. The mantra of the coming death cycle will be the blinded effort to produce more and more of the very toxins that allow fewer to live. The Pathetic Response of Those in Charge If we were grading the current crop of world leaders on any aspect of their records, the result would surely be F, with a recommendation to drop the course of study. The laws required to prevent industry from harming citizens are virtually nonexistent. If U.S. courts took corporate personhood seriously, we'd all have massive law suits and the corporate leaders would be charged with assault with intent to maim and kill. One hundred and ninety one nations joined the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The goal of the effort was to avoid global catastrophe through a coordinated effort. Hansen and others tell us that the protocol will have no real effect given the acceleration of changes. But even Kyoto's inadequate goal was not suitable for the world's largest polluter, the U.S. Both the Bush and Obama administrations failed to endorse the now-known-to-be-inadequate target. A follow-up conference on Kyoto was held in Durban South Africa recently. It amounted to nothing more than fiddling while Rome burns. As citizens of the planet, we and our children have the right to expect a rational response by those controlling the levers of power. What is government for, if not for this? Can't the powers that be stop their triumphal spread of democracy at the barrel of a gun long enough to fix the greatest threat ever to the people of the world? The earth will survive but we may not. The logical path would be a working group of highly competent engineers and climate scientists tasked to outline a solution, one that could be put in place soon. Instead, morally and criminally negligent inaction is the rule under the cover of nicely named programs of no account with the additional excuse provided by a wink and a nod in the direction of unimaginably cynical or ignorant climate change deniers. Do these world leaders live on the same planet as the rest of us? Do they care about their friends and families? Don't they worry that there might be a final judgment after their final acts ensuring mass destruction? Lead or get out of the way should be our message to these authors of our current troubles. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas Russian research team astonished after finding 'fountains' of methane bubbling to surface Steve Connor Steve Connor is The Independent's Science Editor. More Tuesday 13 December 2011 Latest in Climate Change: Blogger's computer seized in 'Climategate' police raid Canada abandons Kyoto Protocol Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas 11th-hour agreement in Durban sees Big Three legally bound to reduce carbon emissions Durban deal clinched by two strong women, a united EU and a compromise 'Modest' gains as UN climate deal struck Paul Vallely: Climate change - what's your excuse? Hopes rise of breakthrough at crucial climate summit 'Time running out' on climate deal Climate talks in extra time after row over draft deal Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane ? a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide ? have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region. The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years. In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed. "Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them." Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change. Dr Semiletov's team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were about eight million tonnes a year, but the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the phenomenon. In late summer, the Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted an extensive survey of about 10,000 square miles of sea off the East Siberian coast. Scientists deployed four highly sensitive instruments, both seismic and acoustic, to monitor the "fountains" or plumes of methane bubbles rising to the sea surface from beneath the seabed. "In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed," Dr Semiletov said. "We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale ? I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere ? the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal." Dr Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1327.html Nature Geoscience | Letter Anthropogenic and natural warming inferred from changes in Earth?s energy balance * Markus Huber1 * Reto Knutti1 Journal name: Nature Geoscience Year published: (2011) Received 21 June 2011 Accepted 21 October 2011 Published online 04 December 2011 The Earth?s energy balance is key to understanding climate and climate variations that are caused by natural and anthropogenic changes in the atmospheric composition. Despite abundant observational evidence for changes in the energy balance over the past decades1, 2, 3, the formal detection of climate warming and its attribution to human influence has so far relied mostly on the difference between spatio-temporal warming patterns of natural and anthropogenic origin4, 5, 6. Here we present an alternative attribution method that relies on the principle of conservation of energy, without assumptions about spatial warming patterns. Based on a massive ensemble of simulations with an intermediate-complexity climate model we demonstrate that known changes in the global energy balance and in radiative forcing tightly constrain the magnitude of anthropogenic warming. We find that since the mid-twentieth century, greenhouse gases contributed 0.85??C of warming (5?95% uncertainty: 0.6?1.1??C), about half of which was offset by the cooling effects of aerosols, with a total observed change in global temperature of about 0.56??C. The observed trends are extremely unlikely (<5%) to be caused by internal variability, even if current models were found to strongly underestimate it. Our method is complementary to optimal fingerprinting attribution and produces fully consistent results, thus suggesting an even higher confidence that human-induced causes dominate the observed warming. Figures at a glance [see url for figures] 1. Figure 1: Radiative forcings and observed and simulated warming using observationally constrained model parameters. a, Radiative forcings from historical reconstructions and the SRES A2 scenario for different forcing agents. b,c, Emulation of observed global-mean temperature (b) and observed ocean heat uptake to 700?m (c; ref. 27) with the Bern2.5D climate model. The grey shading denotes the 5?95% uncertainty range. 2. Figure 2: Probabilistic estimates of the historical and future cumulative radiative forcing and the Earth?s energy budget. a,b, Composition of the cumulative forcing energy (a) and the Earth?s energy budget (b), given by eq. (1), during the years 1850?2100 for historical forcing and the SRES A2 scenario. c,d, Comparison of the simulated results with observations (circles2) for 1950?2004. The error bars denote the 5?95% uncertainty range of the probabilistic estimates. 3. Figure 3: Contributions of different forcing agents to the total observed temperature change. a, Time series of anthropogenic and natural forcings contributions to total simulated and observed global temperature change. The coloured shadings denote the 5-95% uncertainty range. b?d, Contributions of individual forcing agents to the total decadal temperature change for three time periods. Error bars denote the 5?95% uncertainty range. The grey shading shows the estimated 5?95% range for internal variability based on the CMIP3 climate models. Observations are shown as dashed lines. 4. Figure 4: Comparison of observed changes in global mean temperature and energy content with model estimates of internal variability. a,b, Distribution of linear trends for surface temperature and total energy content from unforced control simulations (grey bars) and observations (red lines) during 1956?2007. c,d, Upper 95% percentile as in a,b estimated for each CMIP3 model (grey lines). Observations are shown in red. b,d, Observations of the ocean heat uptake to 700?m are compared with the net radiation imbalance of the CMIP3 models. The total energy content of the Earth is difficult to measure but is about 40% higher than the 700?m heat uptake, which is indicated in b,d as dashed lines. From ths at psalience.org Fri Dec 16 15:04:13 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:04:13 +0100 Subject: [THS] Future Riot Shields Will Suffocate Protestors Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111216150211.043e6440@mail.messagingengine.com> Future Riot Shields Will Suffocate Protestors with Low Frequency Speakers Gizmodo, December 14, 2011 It's not the first crowd control tool to use sound waves, but Raytheon's patent for a new type of riot shield that produces low frequency sound waves to disrupt the respiratory tract and hinder breathing, sounds a little scary. Crowd control tools like the LRAD Sound Cannon emit bursts of loud and annoying sounds that can induce headaches and nausea. But Raytheon's non-lethal pressure shield creates a pulsed pressure wave that resonates the upper respiratory tract of a human, hindering breathing and eventually incapacitating the target. The patent points out that the sound waves being generated are actually not that powerful, so while protestors might collapse from a lack of oxygen reaching their brains, their eardrums won't be damaged in the process. ... And like Roman soldiers joining their shields to form a large impenetrable wall, these new riot shields can actually be networked together to form a larger acoustical horn, vastly improving their range, power, and effectiveness. There's no word on what the long-term medical implications might be if you find yourself on the wrong side of one of these shields. ... From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 17 00:23:39 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:23:39 +0100 Subject: [THS] David Rosen: Eugenics in America Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111217002320.065e8f60@mail.messagingengine.com> Weekend Edition December 16-18, 2011 State Crime and Villainy Eugenics in America by David Rosen On December 10, 2011, the New York Times ran a front-page article exposing the painful legacy of one of America's hidden social crimes, forced sterilization. The article examines how the policy played out in one state, North Carolina, and the on-going effort to address the suffering of the approximately 3,000 still-living victims of the state's eugenics program. The program was in effect for over four decades, from 1933 to 1977, and some 7,600 people suffered sterilization at the hands of the state. In 2002, and after decades of grassroots organizing, NC's Governor Bev Purdue issued a formal apology to those who had been victims of the program. The Times article focuses on the current campaign to offer compensation (i.e., reparations) to the still-living victims so as to bring this ugly phase of state history to an end. Today, the notion of race purification is associated with Nazi Germany. However, the theory of race improvement was originally put forth in 1893 by the noted British scientist Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, as the science of "eugenics." Galton argued: "Eugenics is the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, whether physically or mentally." From the turn-of-the-20th century until the late-70s, eugenics found a welcoming home in the good-old U.S. of A. Eugenics is an ideology of the Gilded Age and its aftermath. This was a period when the American elite championed a belief in Social Darwinism, a self-serving misreading of Darwin's biological "survival of the fittest" hypothesis onto social relations, hierarchy. They believed that biology was destiny and that the white race sat atop the thrown of human evolution, civilization. Not surprisingly, many of the Gilded Age elite also believed that those least "developed" were doomed by heredity to be not merely biological inferior but socially unfit. Eugenics was espoused as the science of breeding (Galton wanted it to be a religion), of race improvement for the betterment of civilization. An estimated 60,000 people were sterilized as biologically inferior humans in the seven decades that eugenics was in vogue in the U.S. Steven Jay Gould noted: "Sterilization could be imposed upon those judged insane, idiotic, imbecilic, or moronic, and upon convicted rapists or criminals when recommended by a board of experts." He fails to mention the feeble-minded, the promiscuous woman and the homosexual. Sterilization was most often imposed on youths, the poor, women and African-Americans. Now, as America succumbs to a second Gilded Age, the call for new forms of eugenics can be heard. Some racist and anti-immigrant groups raise the specter of the end of "white America." Other, more serious medical professionals, like Dr. Christopher Hook of the Mayo Clinic, warn, "Eugenics is back in America." He and other physicians are concerned about the increased use of pre-natal testing and genetic engineering. These tests allow doctors, insurance companies and prospective parents to determine whether the fetus in the womb is likely to born so-called "normal and healthy," thus which baby is likely to be born with a disability like Down syndrome or Autism Spectrum Disorder. They warn that this is leading to growing incidents of fetal abortions. * * * The first legal state-sanctioned sterilization took place in Indiana in 1907. NC began sterilizations in 1933; other states started earlier. In 1924, Virginia passed its sterilization law and, in 1927, Carrie Buck, a 17 year old, became the state's first person to be sterilized. She was judged by a state-appointed authority that had the power to determine the feeble-minded, an imbecile or an epileptic. In 1927, the Supreme Court decided that state-sanctioned sterilization was legal. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled against Carrie Buck, writing most memorably: It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind Three generations of imbeciles are enough. The new law of the land led to the increased use of sterilization throughout the country. Obviously, the definitions of imbecile and feeble-minded were essentially arbitrary, thus meaningless. The increased use of sterilization is illustrated in Utah. It was the 23rd state to legalized state sterilization in 1925. The rate of sterilization between 1930 and 1935 was 6 per year. However, the annual rate grew significantly after the opening of the Utah State Training School in 1935. Between 1935 and the early-`50s, about 33 persons (more than 2 a month) were sterilized annually. Sterilization ended in Utah in 1960 and a total of 772 people were sterilized, more than half of them (54%) women. The "science" of eugenics was founded on the shared belief among the socially elite that human evolution culminated in the Anglo-Saxon "race." All other races lacked the spiritual, mental and physical capabilities of the white man! This belief system and worldview was shared by the "leading" people of the day, whether politician, industrialist, minister, college professor, scientist, journalist or social activist. An often-stated corollary assumption that was equally shared by these esteemed citizens was that more "primitive" races were inferior mentally, physically and socially. Most remarkable, both church and science concurred. Protestant adherents of the Social Gospel saw the eugenics movement as a scientific method that would help usher in the Kingdom of God on earth. To appreciate just how deformed was the mindset of those advocating eugenics a century ago, it's useful to cite one of their leading theorists on race purification. In 1911, Dr. Charles Benedict Davenport authored the then-influential book, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. Shocked by the massive influx of Eastern and Southern Europeans to cities, Davenport warned: [T]he population of the United States will, on account of the great influx of blood from South-eastern Europe, rapidly become darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial, more attached to music and art, [and] more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape and sex-immorality. Most telling, he predicted, "the ratio of insanity in the population will rapidly increase." His analysis does not include the African-Americans, Jews, Asians, Middle Easterners and Native-Americans who likely only further polluted the race pool. Eugenics was an ideology backed most enthusiastically by both the local and national gentry. As the Times points out, the NC campaign was led by such notables as James Hanes, the hosiery magnet, and Dr. Charles Gamble, heir to the P&G fortune. It also notes the strong support among notable progressives like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Margaret Sanger; Sanger had opened America's first birth control clinic for Brooklyn immigrants in October 1916. With backing from the Carnegie, Rockefeller and Harriman fortunes, eugenics was legitimized and used to justify the draconian Immigration Restriction Acts of 1921 and 1924. Their efforts culminated in the 1927 Supreme Court decision approving forced sterilization. * * * The eugenics movement was as much a symptom of Gilded Age ruling-class arrogance as the real threats they perceived from a nation undergoing profound change. Between 1890 and 1920, America was transformed. The population nearly doubled, jumping to 106 million from 62 million, reshaping the nation's demographic character. Some 23 million European immigrants, many of them Catholics and Jews, joined 2 million migrating southern African Americans and whites to recast the cities of the North and West. Black migration culminated in the legendary Harlem Renaissance. However, migration was driven, in part, by punitive Jim Crow laws, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and a series of lynchings, race riots and other violence that swept the nation in the years preceding and following the Great War. This was also the era of "Scopes monkey trial" immortalized in Stanley Kramer's classic 1960 movie, "Inherit the Wind," and the rise of the "new woman" who earned a wage, wore a shorter skirt, put on lipstick and, with the passage of 19th Amendment in 1921, secured the vote. Today, the U.S. is again in the midst of a great transformation. Globalization is restructuring the national economy; immigration is recasting the nation's demographic makeup; and the widespread, popular demands for abortion rights, gay marriage and sex education are fueling a new round of culture wars. As the political climate heats up in anticipation of the 2012 election, Americans need to guard against the emergence of a new eugenics movement. This one may likely seek new justifications for anti-immigrant policies, basing them on an alleged "scientific proof" of the collective inferiority of immigrants. Similarly, the policing of sex "predators" may involve the discovery of a new predator gene that both expands the category of those classified as predators and increases the number of those suffering indeterminate prison sentences. And who knows, perhaps other, more old-fashioned, Social Darwinian efforts will be proposed by Republican presidential candidates to control sexual excess; why not the forceful sterilization of teen girls who get pregnant? Moral rectitude knows no limit. David Rosen is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at drosennyc at .... http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/16/eugenics-in-america/ From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 17 00:35:11 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:35:11 +0100 Subject: [THS] Christopher Hitchens: Reason in Revolt Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111217002542.0472b4b8@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/christopher_hitchens_reason_in_revolt_20111216/ [He sure missed the boat on 911, or maybe it was a flight] Christopher Hitchens: Reason in Revolt Posted on Dec 16, 2011 Illustration from an AP photo by Chad Rachman By Robert Scheer Hitch is dead. Not, obviously, his brilliant body of work, or the stunning examples of a grand and unfettered intellect that will forever survive him, as will the indelible record of his immense wit and passion. But, sadly, a life force that I had assumed as an indissoluble part of our political and literary landscape, as well as my own close circle of friends, has ended, and with it an indispensable element of our collective moral code. Christopher Hitchens could be wrong; we had harsh public debates about the Iraq War, but I never doubted that, even then, he was coming from a good place of humane concern. In that instance, he allowed his great compassion for the Kurds and his justifiable loathing of Saddam Hussein to overwhelm a lifetime of opposition to the arrogant assumptions of America?s neocolonialism. Despite the vehemence of our debates, both public and personal, he and his saving grace and wife, Carol Blue, held a gathering at their home to discuss a book I wrote on the subject. This was a man unafraid of intellectual challenge and committed to pursuing the heart of the matter. That was his driving force, a seeker of truth to the end, and a deservedly legendary witness against the hypocrisy of the ever-sanctimonious establishment. What zeal this man had to eviscerate the conceits of the powerful, whether their authority derived from wealth, the state or a claim to the ear of the divine. Hitch was the opposite of the opportunistic pundits who competed with him for public space. He took immense risks, not the least in offering himself for waterboarding before concluding it was unmistakably torture, or challenging the greatness of God, knowing full well that he was exposing himself as an object of wildly irrational hate. So it ever was with the Hitch I knew for decades, going back to the young ex-Trotskyite challenging ex-Communist and fellow Brit writer Jessica (Decca) Mitford through nights of lively debate about everything, and then joining that equally grand and kindred spirit in several drunken and rousingly heartfelt renditions of ?The Internationale.? Much like Mitford, Hitchens became world famous and well rewarded and, like her, Hitch was to the end singing that worker?s anthem on behalf of the deluded and abused masses with whom, for all of his personal success, he most profoundly identified. He was a great man, perfect in his intellectual courage, but I am reminded more of the writer, profoundly dedicated to his craft and committed, for all of his sparkle and bouts of excess, to a prodigious workaday effort at making this a better world. In his memory I offer these lyrics from ?The Internationale,? as I recall his somewhat inebriated and ever bemused, but no less heartfelt, rendering of these verses: Arise ye workers from your slumbers Arise ye prisoners of want For reason in revolt now thunders And at last ends the age of cant Away with all your superstitions Servile masses arise, arise We?ll change henceforth the old tradition And spurn the dust to win the prize. That was him. A slayer of superstitions, thundering reason in revolt. Lift a glass to comrade Hitch. From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 17 00:41:05 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:41:05 +0100 Subject: [THS] Christopher Hitchens: A decade after 9/11, it remains the best description... Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111217003624.04323708@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/09/simply_evil.single.html Simply Evil A decade after 9/11, it remains the best description and most essential fact about al-Qaida. By Christopher Hitchens|Updated Monday, Sept. 5, 2011, at 10:12 AM ET Smoke pours from the twin towers of the World Trade Center after they were hit by two hijacked airliners in a terrorist attack September 11, 2001 in New York City. Click image to expand. The World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001 The proper task of the "public intellectual" might be conceived as the responsibility to introduce complexity into the argument: the reminder that things are very infrequently as simple as they can be made to seem. But what I learned in a highly indelible manner from the events and arguments of September 2001 was this: Never, ever ignore the obvious either. To the government and most of the people of the United States, it seemed that the country on 9/11 had been attacked in a particularly odious way (air piracy used to maximize civilian casualties) by a particularly odious group (a secretive and homicidal gang: part multinational corporation, part crime family) that was sworn to a medieval cult of death, a racist hatred of Jews, a religious frenzy against Hindus, Christians, Shia Muslims, and "unbelievers," and the restoration of a long-vanished and despotic empire. To me, this remains the main point about al-Qaida and its surrogates. I do not believe, by stipulating it as the main point, that I try to oversimplify matters. I feel no need to show off or to think of something novel to say. Moreover, many of the attempts to introduce "complexity" into the picture strike me as half-baked obfuscations or distractions. These range from the irredeemably paranoid and contemptible efforts to pin responsibility for the attacks onto the Bush administration or the Jews, to the sometimes wearisome but not necessarily untrue insistence that Islamic peoples have suffered oppression. (Even when formally true, the latter must simply not be used as nonsequitur special pleading for the use of random violence by self-appointed Muslims.) Advertisement Underlying these and other attempts to change the subject there was, and still is, a perverse desire to say that the 9/11 atrocities were in some way deserved, or made historically more explicable, by the many crimes of past American foreign policy. Either that, or?to recall the contemporary comments of the "Reverends" Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson?a punishment from heaven for American sinfulness. (The two ways of thinking, one of them ostensibly "left" and the other "right," are in fact more or less identical.) That this was an assault upon our society, whatever its ostensible capitalist and militarist "targets," was again thought too obvious a point for a clever person to make. It became increasingly obvious, though, with every successive nihilistic attack on London, Madrid, Istanbul, Baghdad, and Bali. There was always some "intellectual," however, to argue in each case that the policy of Tony Blair, or George Bush, or the Spanish government, was the "root cause" of the broad-daylight slaughter of civilians. Responsibility, somehow, never lay squarely with the perpetrators. So, although the official tone of this month's pious commemorations will stress the victims and their families (to the pathetically masochistic extent of continuing to forbid much of the graphic footage of the actual atrocities, lest "feelings" and susceptibilities be wounded), it is quite probable that those who accept the conventional "narrative" are, at least globally, in a minority. It is not only in the Muslim world that it is commonplace to hear that the events of 9/11 were part of a Jewish or U.S. government plot. And it is not only on the demented fringe that such fantasies circulate in "the West." A book alleging that the Pentagon rocketed the Pentagon with a cruise missile?somehow managing to dispose of the craft and crew and passengers of the still-missing Flight 77, including my slight friend Barbara Olson?was a best-seller in France, while another book about another 9/11 conspiracy theory was published in the United States by the publishing arm of the Nation magazine. Westminster John Knox Press, a respected house long associated with American Presbyterianism, published Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, which asserted that the events of that day were planned in order to furnish a pretext for intervention in the Middle East. More explicitly on the Left, my old publishing house Verso?offshoot of the New Left Review?published an anthology of Osama Bin Laden's sermonizing rants in which the editors compared the leader of al-Qaida explicitly, and in the context not unfavorably, to Che Guevara. So, for me at any rate, the experience of engaging in the 9/11 politico-cultural wars was a vertiginous one in at least two ways. To begin with, I found myself for the first time in my life sharing the outlook of soldiers and cops, or at least of those soldiers and cops who had not (like George Tenet and most of the CIA) left us defenseless under open skies while well-known "no fly" names were allowed to pay cash for one-way tickets after having done perfunctory training at flight schools. My sympathies were wholeheartedly and unironically (and, I claim, rationally) with the forces of law and order. Second, I became heavily involved in defending my adopted country from an amazing campaign of defamation, in which large numbers of the intellectual class seemed determined at least to minimize the gravity of what had occurred, or to translate it into innocuous terms (poverty is the cause of political violence) that would leave their worldview undisturbed. How much easier to maintain, as many did, that it was all an excuse to build a pipeline across Afghanistan (an option bizarrely neglected by American imperialism after the fall of communism in Kabul, when the wretched country could have been ours for the taking!). My solidarity with soldiers, cops, and other "responders" didn't make me a full convert to the police mentality. I was a named plaintiff in the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the National Security Agency, for its practice of warrantless wiretapping. I found a way of having myself "waterboarded" by former professionals, in order to satisfy my readers that the process does indeed constitute torture. I have visited Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, those two grotesque hellholes of American panic-reaction, and written very critically from both. And I was and remain unreconciled to the stupid, wasteful, oppressive collective punishment of Americans who try to use our civil aviation, or who want to be able to get into their own offices without showing ID to a guard who has no database against which to check it. But I had also seen Abu Ghraib shortly after it was first broken open in 2003, and could have no truck with the moral defectives who talked glibly as if that mini-Auschwitz and mass grave was no worse. When Amnesty International described Guantanamo as "the Gulag of our time," I felt a collapse of seriousness that I have felt many times since. One reason for opposing excesses and stupidities on "our" side (actually, why do I defensively lob in those quotation marks? Please consider them as optional) was my conviction that the defeat of Bin-Ladenism was ultimately certain. Al-Qaida demands the impossible?worldwide application of the most fanatical interpretation of sharia?and to forward the demand employs the most hysterically irrational means. (This combination, by the way, would make a reasonable definition of "terrorism.") It follows that the resort to panicky or degrading tactics in order to combat terrorism is, as well as immoral, self-defeating. Ten years ago I wrote to a despairing friend that a time would come when al-Qaida had been penetrated, when its own paranoia would devour it, when it had tried every tactic and failed to repeat its 9/11 coup, when it would fall victim to its own deluded worldview and?because it has no means of generating self-criticism?would begin to implode. The trove recovered from Bin Laden's rather dismal Abbottabad hideaway appears to confirm that this fate has indeed, with much labor on the part of unsung heroes, begun to engulf al-Qaida. I take this as a part vindication of the superiority of "our" civilization, which is at least so constituted as to be able to learn from past mistakes, rather than remain a prisoner of "faith." The battle against casuistry and bad faith has also been worth fighting. So have many other struggles to assert the obvious. Contrary to the peddlers of shallow anti-Western self-hatred, the Muslim world did not adopt Bin-Ladenism as its shield against reality. Very much to the contrary, there turned out to be many millions of Arabs who have heretically and robustly preferred life over death. In many societies, al-Qaida defeated itself as well as underwent defeat. In these cases, then, the problems did turn out to be more complicated than any "simple" solution the theocratic fanatics could propose. But, and against the tendencies of euphemism and evasion, some stout simplicities deservedly remain. Among them: Holocaust denial is in fact a surreptitious form of Holocaust affirmation. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie was a direct and lethal challenge to free expression, not a clash between traditional faith and "free speech fundamentalism." The mass murder in Bosnia-Herzegovina was not the random product of "ancient hatreds" but a deliberate plan to erase the Muslim population. The regimes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fully deserve to be called "evil." And, 10 years ago in Manhattan and Washington and Shanksville, Pa., there was a direct confrontation with the totalitarian idea, expressed in its most vicious and unvarnished form. Let this and other struggles temper and strengthen us for future battles where it will be necessary to repudiate the big lie. Slate Slide Shows * Amazing Photos from the Battle of the Bulge * The University in the Shopping Mall * Tinker Tailor Soldier Spectacles * * * * Tweet * * * * * Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) was a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author, most recently, of Arguably, a collection of essays. Photo by Robert Giroux/Getty Images. From ths at psalience.org Sat Dec 17 00:41:00 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:41:00 +0100 Subject: [THS] Christopher Hitchens: The lies of Michael Moore. Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111217004029.065e8cd0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.single.html Unfairenheit 9/11 The lies of Michael Moore. By Christopher Hitchens|Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 3:26 PM ET Michael Moore Moore: Trying to have it three ways One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight. Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl. Advertisement To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery. In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something?I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now?has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion. Still from Fahrenheit 9/11 Recruiters in Michigan Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order: 1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group. 2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States. 3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests. 4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape. 5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American. 6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.) It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all?the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002?or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar?an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building?is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left?like the parties of the Iraqi secular left?are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal. He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that?as you might expect?Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies." A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off. The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say?that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box. But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then?wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeerawould, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.) That this?his pro-American moment?was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna * and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled?Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more?the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported?and the David Kay report had established?that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.) Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings." The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings?not exactly an original point?the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So?he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again?simply not serious. Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist. I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft?the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think?as he seems to suggest?that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer. Still from Fahrenheit 9/11 Trying to talk congressmen into sending their sons to war Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes?we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything. Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Timesof June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation. However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers?get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of. Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this ( ), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage. Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following: The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history. If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed. Correction, June 22, 2004: This piece originally referred to terrorist attacks by Abu Nidal's group on the Munich and Rome airports. The 1985 attacks occurred at the Rome and Vienna airports. ( Return to the corrected sentence.) From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 18 00:36:58 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:36:58 +0100 Subject: [THS] =?iso-8859-1?q?Euro_Crisis=3A_Britain=92s_Financial_Arsonis?= =?iso-8859-1?q?t__Returns_to_the_Scene_of_the_Crime?= Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111218003628.06989db8@mail.messagingengine.com> Euro Crisis: Britain?s Financial Arsonist Returns to the Scene of the Crime By Finian Cunningham URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28204 Global Research, December 14, 2011 The incendiary finance capitalism unleashed by Britain 25 years ago is at the heart of Europe?s raging debt woes You either have to admire British Prime Minister David Cameron?s brass neck, or wince at his arrogant stupidity. The smart money is probably on the latter option. For here you had the British leader heading to the European Union summit convened last week to ?salvage? the EU from its the terminal debt crisis ? a crisis that is threatening the survival of the Euro single currency, the political future of the European Union and may even be sounding the death knell for the faltering capitalist world economy. Yet, given the stakes involved, all Cameron wanted to do was exploit the crisis in order to claw further concessions for the City of London?s stock exchange. Such self-serving opportunism was rebuffed by his German and French counterparts, whereupon Cameron stomped his feet and declared that Britain would exercise its veto over EU plans for tighter fiscal controls on member states. The British veto may now hamper the EU?s ability to assuage the financial markets, which are daily extracting pounds of flesh with exorbitant rates of borrowing on government bonds. Not that the leaders of the other 26 EU states are acting as noble knights in shining armour, vying to protect their populaces from further economic suffering. The revised EU treaty they have in mind will only deepen that suffering by expanding austerity and cutbacks for the majority of people across Europe. The fiscal and economic policies of member states will henceforth be dictated by the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. That is, national sovereignty supposedly serving the people, according to their votes, is to be replaced by the rule of unelected bankers and technocrats. In a very real way, the debt crisis of Europe is serving to usher in a dictatorship of finance capitalism. As Paul Craig Roberts noted recently on Global Research with regard to the EU ? ?the banks have taken over? [1]. Ironically, it is German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her French collaborator, Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who are foremost in marching mainland Europe into the arms of this dictatorship. However, Cameron?s one-man crusade at the EU summit was no act of Churchillian defiance to defend the rights of the people in the face of financial fascism. Britain under this present Conservative leader has been bludgeoned with one of the most draconian austerity budgets inflicted anywhere across Europe, wielded without mercy against workers and aimed deliberately at placating first and foremost the finance markets. Indeed, Cameron?s government is one of the main advocates of deeper social spending cuts for the rest of Europe. So the notion that the British leader was in some way making a fight-them-on-the-beaches kind-of stand towards other European leaders/quislings of finance capital is risible. And what is even more risible is that the sole objective of Cameron and his foreign secretary William Hague was to secure concessions for the City of London. Many people in Europe have good reason to believe that it is the City of London and its brand of finance capitalism that has created and provoked the debt crisis in the first place. It was Cameron?s much-admired predecessor Margaret Thatcher who oversaw the systematic deregulation of the London Stock Exchange, starting in 1986 with what became known as the ?Big Bang? ? the wholesale removal of controls on financial transactions. From then on, the British economy went from one based on manufacture and production to one hallmarked by financial speculation. London became the money capital of the world, outflanking New York. The financialisation of other economies would follow the British slash-and-burn economic path, as the new culture of predatory financiers and investors used speculative profiteering to gut manufacturing bases. The deregulation of financial markets was a showpiece policy of subsequent British governments, whether Conservative or Labour. It spawned a plethora of ?financial innovations? such as hostile takeovers, downsizing, short selling and derivative trading, whereby money and debt were recycled and multiplied fictitiously ? with inevitable catastrophic consequences. This of course is the ineluctable, historic dynamic of late capitalism. The system tends to mount up massive poverty and thereby becomes incapable of producing goods and services because the conventional profit system becomes exhausted. That is why late capitalism has more and more turned into a form of debt-ridden financial arson in order to recklessly eke out the last reserves of profit. In previous centuries, it was England that innovated industrial capitalism. At the end of the 20th Century it was the British (and their Anglo-American culprits) who have the dubious honour of unleashing finance capitalism on the rest of the world. The new brand of capitalism can be traced directly to the collapse of banks and institutions, such as Barings, Lehman Brothers and Long-Term Capital Management, and to the collapse of pension funds and property assets dragging millions of people into debt. And now this particular British innovation of incendiary capitalism can be traced to the collapse of entire countries. The spectacle of bankrupt David Cameron swaggering over to Europe to ask equally bankrupt European governments for more deregulatory concessions for the City of London is about as stupefying as an arsonist returning to the scene of the crime ? and asking for more gasoline. Finian Cunningham is Global Research?s Middle East and East Africa correspondent cunninghamfin at yahoo.com Notes [1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27872 Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 18 00:47:41 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:47:41 +0100 Subject: [THS] Monsanto's Micro-Monster Could Kill Us All Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111218004601.06467578@mail.messagingengine.com> http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/alert/?alertid=58601501 Monsanto's Micro-Monster Could Kill Us All Tell Sec. Vilsack to Heed Dr. Huber's Warning! Monsanto has unleashed a micro-monster that could kill us all. That's according to Dr. Don Huber, an agricultural scientist and expert in microbial ecology, who's convinced that Monsanto's genetically engineered "RoundUp Ready" crops are responsible for a new micro-monster that's causing an outbreak of new plant, animal and human diseases. Please read [article below] or watch (part1 & part 2) Dr. Mercola's interview with Dr. Huber and then write USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, as Dr. Huber has, and urge him to place a moratorium on Monsanto's RoundUp Ready crops until scientists learn more about this deadly micro-monster. ~~~~~~~~~ A One on One Interview with Dr. Don Huber Part 1 (Hour 1) By Dr. Mercola DM: Dr. Joseph Mercola HR: Dr. Don Huber Introduction: DM: Hi! This is Dr. Mercola. Today I.m joined by Dr. Don Huber, who is an expert in an area of science that relates to GMOs. He.s going to help us understand some of the nasty insider tricks of what.s going on with this GMO issue. He.s actually gotten quite a bit of notoriety for his expertise in these areas. So welcome and thank you for joining us. HR: Thank you, Dr. Mercola. DM: I.m wondering if you can tell our viewers what your specific training is, and how you came to attain this knowledge and information on this very specific area of GMO toxicity. HR: My area of training is soil-borne diseases, microbial ecology, and host-parasite relationships. In realizing that agriculture is a system and not just a bunch of little blocks that fit together, you have to understand how that system works. Realize that anytime we change one part of that system, we really change the interaction of all the other components as they work together. So each time we have a change, whether it.s crop rotation, fertility (two different fertility programs), or herbicide interactions, we see those changes as they affect those components in the system. My research over the last 55 years has been devoted to looking at those changes, how we can change them, and manage that system for more effective crop production, better disease control, improved nutrition, and safety of our food crops. When we look at such a major change you have in a genetic disruption from a genetically engineered process ? as we understand it in our limited knowledge now ? we see that there are opportunities and actual changes in all of those components. They fit in to the agricultural system, from the plant, the physical environment, the dynamics of the biological environment, and of course, pests and diseases as they interact together. Those have been the areas of my research over time that brought me to this point. DM: Let.s just go back a little bit to your background. You.re currently living in Idaho. Were you raised in Idaho? HR: I moved to Idaho in high school with my family. We moved the dairy up from Arizona. DM: So your parents were dairy farmers? HR: My parents were dairy farmers. I was raised on a dairy farm. I was at the University of Idaho as a professor for eight years, before going to Purdue University. I worked there on staff as a professor for 35 years. DM: What do you teach at Purdue? HR: Plant pathology, soil microbiology, those micro-ecological interactions as they relate to plant disease. DM: I.ll just review my understanding and you can modify that as we go along. I suspect your expertise in this area is related to the fact that one of the major modifications that.s done in GMO crops ? by Monsanto primarily ?is an herbicide resistance against the pesticide. The most common pesticide used in the U.S. and I suspect the whole world, which is Roundup, and which is also glyphosate pesticide, I believe. As a result of that, they are able to essentially kill the weeds, more efficiently or cost-effectively produce crops, and supposedly at a lower price. That.s the working premise. That.s a whole other issue, whether that.s true or not. But what I like you to comment on is how the introduction of that resistance, which allows and displays massive amounts of this very toxic glyphosate pesticide into the environment, how that impacts the soil microbes. One wouldn.t think that it would affect it necessarily, because it.s an herbicide, which are directed toward plants ? not necessarily animals or even bacteria ? but apparently it does. We.d like you to elaborate on that, because you have found some really interesting observations. HR: What you have to do is realize what an herbicide is, or a pesticide. They are metal chelators, in other words they are able to immobilize specific nutrients. That.s how they perform their function as a pesticide, by immobilizing an essential nutrient that is required or kind of keyed for a specific enzyme. DM: Do they work on a variety of different mineral chelators, or there.s one or more that they target specifically? HR: Most of our pesticides or our herbicides are quite specific. For instance, if you look at a phenoxyprop or Tordon, those will be copper chelators, in other words they.re specific for particular copper relationship. By chelator, we mean it.s a compound that can grab onto another element and change either its solubility or its availability for that critical function that it has physiologically. We have those herbicides and pesticides that are quite specific just for a particular essential micronutrient like copper, zinc, iron, or manganese. Glyphosate is very unique and was first patented as a chelator by Stauffer Chemical Co. in 1964, because it could bind with any positively charged cation. If you look at the essential minerals for plants, you see calcium, magnesium, potassium, copper, iron, manganese, zinc, and all of those other critical transition elements as well as structural components for some of them. But you see that there are all cations. They all have an ion that is associated with them. But it.s the micronutrient that.s a cation that is a transition element or that element that really is critical for a particular enzyme function. If you can chelate and, in that chelation process, essentially immobilize that essential nutrient, you have provided an opportunity to either kill a weed or damage and kill an organism. Any organism, any weed, or plant that would have that particular requirement for that physiologic pathway with glyphosate or the shikimate pathway, then you have an opportunity to have a very effective herbicide. You have to realize all that mode of action is immobilizing a critical essential nutrient. Those nutrients aren.t just required by the weed, but they.re required by microorganisms. They.re required by us for our own physiologic functions. So if it.s immobilized, it may be present if we do a regular test. But it.s not necessarily physiologically available in the same efficiency that would have been if it wasn.t chelated with that glyphosate or other chemical chelator. DM: For those who aren.t familiar with a chelator, chelator just means it.s complex. When it.s complex to these essential minerals, it essentially forms a barrier around it, which prevents whatever life form is seeking to utilize that element from utilizing it properly. I.m wondering if it.s a side effect of glyphosate to affect the bacterial organisms in the soil that you.re an expert at, because it seems to me it wasn.t designed to be a part of it. It.s sort of a side effect that they haven.t anticipated. Does that seem to be the case? HR: Again, any organism that has the same physiologic pathways is going to be impacted the same. What you need to remember, though, in a genetic engineering process there.s nothing in the technology that does anything to the chemical it supplied. All it does is ascertain other gene that make it possible for you to apply that chemical directly to the plant without damaging that particular plant. The glyphosate ? even in that herbicide tolerant plant, that Roundup-ready plant ? still has an impact on 25 or 26 other enzymes, because it.s also chelating or immobilizing critical micronutrients. Those cations that are required as the keys to turn on those physiologic engines that make that organism or plant really function. In our genetic engineering technology, we do nothing to reduce the chelating ability. We only provide an alternative pathway for that plant to survive the application of this toxic chemical being applied to it. DM: Would it be fair to assume that because that plant doesn.t have access to those critical nutrients that other metabolic pathways are impaired, the result is not going to be able to provide that same of nutrition to the end consumer who is consuming that plant? [----- 10:00 -----] HR: Well, it is well documented that the nutritional efficiency ? just having that foreign gene inserted ? reduces the capability of that plant to take up nutrients and to translocate nutrients. Then when you apply the chemical, you have a further compounding effect in reducing the efficiency of the plants at rates is low as a half-pound per acre ?12 grams per acre. DM: [Laughs] HR: It.s been demonstrated that you reduce the uptake and efficiency of iron by 50 percent of manganese that.s critical for liver function and immune response by 80 percent. But then if you look at the translocation from roots to shoot, you also have a reduction in zinc and all three of those critical elements of 80 to 90 percent. Greatly compromised is the nutritional efficiency, as well as the ability of that plant to accumulate and to store those nutrients not only for its own use, but also for us and for our animal.s nutrition in that process. DM: Thank you for pointing that out, because my impression is that most people who are even moderately familiar with GMOs tend not to fully appreciate what you just said. It.s a really important concept. Somehow they think that when it.s a genetically modified food, it.s magically more efficient. They don.t understand that this application to pesticide has a complication on the plant itself, which just impairs its own nutrition, but doesn.t magically disappear. That pesticide is still loaded in the plant. Not only are you getting a compromised plant from a nutritional quality perspective, but you are also getting toxic residues of the very herbicide that was used to provide a supposedly more efficient and more cost-effective plant. You.re compromising your own health. There.s this whole other component that you.re getting genetic modification itself, which is inserted into the gene and which has been shown in a number of animal studies to have complications such as decreased fertility. It.s just panoply of problems. HR: Glyphosate, of course, is very unique and it.s systemic in the plant, so it accumulates in most growth points. DM: Oh, so it.s not just on the surface? HR: No. That.s going to be within the plant. DM: And you can.t wash it off? HR: No. It.s going to be in your root tips, your shoot tips, your legume nodules, and in the food that we eat. Because it.s in those reproductive structures, that.s where it accumulates. The later it supplied, now that they.re using glyphosate ? as ripening agents to kill a plant to kind of speed up its harvest process ? the only place that it can go is right into the seed. About 20 percent of it moves out of the roots, so it moves down out into the soil where it has the same effect on many of the beneficial soil microorganisms that it has on weeds, because they have that same critical, essential metabolic pathway. But our residue levels are increasing every time we have a new Roundup-ready crop approved. We also see an increase in tolerance levels in the crop. DM: We could end the interview here now, because I think you.ve just given us enough information to be more excited of the process of becoming an activist to eliminate this threat to our food supply. You.ve got a lot more information. But what I.d like you to comment on now ?which where you have your area of expertise ? is how a pesticide or an herbicide influences microbial organisms within the soil. You certainly understand this at a very deep level, and I think many people do, but many don.t. The quality of the food is almost always related to the quality of the soil. The most foundational, vital, critical components of the soil are the microorganisms that are thriving there, rather than the necessary nutrients, because it.s the microorganisms that allow the plants to utilize those nutrients. So I.m wondering if you can comment on that. HR: The plant can only utilize certain forms of all the nutrients. For instance with manganese, most iron has been in reduced form. The way that it becomes reduced in the soil is through those beneficial microorganisms. We also have those microorganisms for legumes like soybeans, alfalfa, peas, or any of the other legumes that can fix up to 75 percent of their actual nitrogen for protein in amino acid synthesis that actually comes from the air through the microorganisms in the soil. Glyphosate is extremely toxic to all of those organisms. What we see with our continued use and abuse of this powerful pesticide, this powerful weed killer is it is also totally eliminating many of those organisms from the soil. We no longer have the same balance that we used to have. Consequently, we see an increase of over 40 new diseases or 40 diseases that we used to have managed under fairly effective control, but all of a sudden are another serious problem for us. DM: These are plant diseases? HR: These are plant diseases. The other thing we see is that the normal biological control organisms, even in the animal, are very sensitive to the residual glyphosate levels. I was just reviewing a paper ? as I flew out here yesterday ? on chronic botulism or toxic botulism type problem. This is where you have the Clostridium botulinum in the intestinal tract. It.s a common soil organism everywhere. But all of a sudden we.re seeing cases now, especially in dairy and other situations, where the animals are dying and becoming impaired from the botulism toxin from the Clostridium in the intestinal tract, and rumen in the stomach. That normally didn.t occur before, because you have all of those organisms that provided the natural biological control. In this paper, what they show is that residues of glyphosate that are permitted in our feed and food products are high enough to kill those normal biological control organisms ? your Lactobacillus, your Alcaligenes. The numbers of those organisms are very effective in preventing the toxin production by Clostridium that those organisms are eliminated by glyphosate levels that can be in our food and feed supply. Then the animals suffer the same effects as with giving them treatment of this very intense biological warfare chemical that is produced naturally in the intestine, without that balance again. Again, agricultural system, as well as our own ecology, is really a balance. It.s a system, not just a bunch of silver bullets that are stacked in a chamber of a revolver. It.s how that ecological system is modified and changed that brings us a new level of diseases and problems with sustainability of our agriculture, our own health, and well-being. DM: That.s fascinating. Can you outline the major crops that are affected by glyphosate now and the new ones that are in the pipeline that might hit the market soon? HR: Those that have been genetically engineered for herbicide tolerance, of course, are the major crops. You have corn, soybeans, canola, alfalfas DM: Does corn have resistance to glyphosate? I thought it was the ? Oh, it was the cotton that had the BT toxin. HR: Yeah. Well, you have cotton and corn that are both BT and Roundup-ready. DM: Oh, I didn.t realize that. HR: Also several other herbicides that they.re now putting genes into. DM: So, it.s in cotton and soy? I mean cotton, corn, and soy. HR: Right. DM: All the major ones? HR: All the big ones there. We.ve just approved ? our USDA just deregulated alfalfa. So here you have a crop, a perennial crop. A legume, you put glyphosate on it. You do two things. One is you take out your nitrogen fixing efficiency. Because it.s very toxic to the radio rhizobium and rhizobium that fix the atmosphere at nitrogen, those organisms that are critical for that process. [----- 20:00 -----] Again, as a systemic chelator for nutrients, it chelates the nickel required as a co-factor for that enzyme process, so it just turns it off. You may have a nodule. You may have even some bacteria present, even though at greatly reduced numbers. But you don.t have the functional capability because all of that system has been disrupted. Alfalfas are fourth most important economic crop, by far the most nutritional feed for our herbivores. They all of a sudden can definitely be threatened not only because of the direct effect of glyphosate on those microorganisms, but also because it predisposes and can make that plant very susceptible to some common diseases that are very effectively controlled. We can see this one on corn. We haven.t seen it on alfalfa, because we don.t have the Roundup-ready out long enough. But we certainly see it on corn where we have the sister organism with the Goss.s wilt, a bacterial disease. In that situation, we find that when we put the glyphosate on, it nullifies all the genetic resistance such as in the past made that disease of almost no consequence to us, very limited situation, very sporadic, and any severity. Now we find it from coast to coast, East to West, from Mexico to Canada. For four years now, we have a major epidemic in a major food production area in the Midwest. Just from that disease, that is a direct result of our genetic engineering process that reduces the genetic resistance and the application of the herbicide that it was designed to tolerate. DM: Now I.m wondering if this glyphosate is fat-soluble, because if it is, it.s bad enough that we.re eating these pesticide-contaminated crops and then consuming these genetically modified cells in our body. If it.s, in fact, the number one crop for the herbivores, alfalfa, and it.s contaminated with this herbicide, I.m wondering if the herbivores that eat it, do it bio-accumulate in their systems, so that you get levels and concentrations that are much higher than the plants that they are eating, because of the bioaccumulation effect? HR: I think from Dr. Hannah Mather.s research at Ohio State University with perennial crops, she had shown that the crops will continue to accumulate it for 68 years. That.s the length of her studies. DM: So the crops are accumulating? HR: The crop is accumulating. DM: Is it accumulating from the soil or just repetitive applications? HR: It can do it either way, but from application, certainly it accumulates it. We generally think of glyphosate being such a powerful chelator that it will also be detoxified as it generally gets into the soil with a little bit of time. It will combine with the calcium, magnesium, iron, manganese, and other nutrients in the soil. So it.s not necessarily degraded, but it.s detoxified. Later on then, it can also be reactivated just through the application of phosphorous fertilizers. Again, for subsonic crops, it can be a very active chemical or plant toxin in the release and uptake by the plant. Again, it doesn.t take very much. You look at a half ounce per acre from acre studies, and that from just the 140th of the normal application rate, which should be an extremely low drift rate. We.re talking more of what we.re starting to see in our air and water anymore. Those extremely low rates, you have a very powerful effect on reducing the nutrient efficiency and nutrient quality of the plant as well as for its health and our own health. Because of its effect on those intestinal organisms or normal biological organisms that are in the environment for us I think that.s the importance of this paper that will be coming out. I saw the presentation when I was in Germany two weeks ago in one of the meetings. I had the opportunity to (I mentioned flying over here to visit you) to review that paper. I saw again that there.s enough residual glyphosate potential in our feed and food to all of a sudden make an extremely benign organism fatal or lethal in that process. We have recognized the potentials of those organisms with infant botulism, where they don.t have that full intestinal microflora and one of the reasons why we probably don.t recommend feeding a lot of our basic foods to our infants until they can develop that natural biological ecology to control many of those organisms. Certainly, the potential.s there, but for our dairy farmers and parts of the world, that.s not a potential. That.s a real life situation that they have to face and address right now. DM: So the individual who.s consuming non-organic food, which is virtually the majority, almost everyone in the United States, to some extent or another ? when they.re consuming this glyphosate-contaminated food, does it interfere with our own good ecology, the way it does with the plants? Is the mineral chelator activated and disturb our own good ecology? HR: I think two things are involved here. One is that the research hasn.t been done, but should have been done probably 15 or 20 years ago. The other thing is the reduction in mineral contents through chelation by the glyphosate makes an individual much more susceptible. As Dr. Jeffrey Seaford at the University of Minnesota, a veteran toxicologist, reported this year and studying malfarmed animals and also the increase in disease and silvers. He found that in 100 percent of the cases they.re deficient in manganese. You have to ask why because 15 years ago, the nutritionists were saying that we.re probably a little high and we have to cut back, not realizing at the same time that we introduced Roundup-ready crops that can have as much as 50 percent less manganese available in the plant that we.re feeding to those animals. So the intake is down, and ours also. You have that effect from a nutritional standpoint, but then you also have the direct toxicity of the glyphosate to those beneficial organisms that have been demonstrated in animals. I don.t think there.s any reason to assume that they.re not going to have the same effects on our own microbial ecology in our intestine, as they would on animals, because they are similar organisms. DM: So the studies that have been done with animals show that it does impair the good ecology. And to your knowledge, these haven.t been performed on humans yet, no one.s looked? HR: I think people haven.t even thought or even looked at it, because the advertising says it.s such a safe product. Why do we even do the research? DM: It.s so shockingly tragic. I think part of it is related to the fact that very few physicians really fully appreciate the impact of our gut flora on our health. I mean there.s a small contingency to do. But in my perspective that is probably the single most important physical factors to our health ? to optimize our gut flora. Many of the dietary changes we recommend, such as avoiding sugar and eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, they work primarily by optimizing our gut flora. [Laughs] If they continue consuming foods that are damaging to them, it.s obvious that it will have an enormously detrimental impact. I.m still curious, though. When the cows primarily and the other herbivores are fed with these contaminated alfalfa crops with the glyphosate, does it bioaccumulate into their tissues that when you eat non-organic meats that have been fed these contaminated crops, are there higher levels of glyphosate than when you.re eating the plants? HR: We don.t know. That.s one of the questions. DM: We don.t know! [Laughs] HR: That.s one of the reasons why I wrote a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture! DM: Okay. [Laughs] HR: That was, let.s do the research before we jump off the cliff! [----- 30:00 -----] DM: [Laughs] Oh, I think we jumped already. We.re falling and we haven.t hit the ground yet. HR: That research hasn.t been done. It.s being done on animals. DM: What.s your guess? You have been a scientist for decades ? for many decades. What would you It seems that it would. HR: Oh I don.t think there.s any question that when you consume that, it.s going to have the same effects on those organisms. It.s in the 1988 review on glyphosate. It mentioned that it.s a very powerful herbicide and a very potent biocide, very effective against certain organisms at extremely low concentrations. Those low concentrations are all permitted in our food and feed approvals. DM: Is this fat-soluble? I don.t know, is it? HR: I don.t know. DM: Okay, we don.t even know. HR: Certainly, it.s water-soluble. DM: It.s absolutely water-soluble. Because if it was fat-soluble, I think it.s no question it would bioaccumulate. If it.s not then it may be less of an issue, because it.s excreted in the kidneys. HR: We know that it moves through the animals. There.s a slight degradation, but most of it moves because we can find it in the manure. We do find a certain percentage of it that will be to the first degradation product of glyphosate that is the (ANPA 31:29), which is even more toxic than glyphosate is. You can have partial degradation, but we.re finding very high levels of glyphosate even in the manure when you consider how much is going into the animal. We don.t know how much is accumulating because much of that research hasn.t been done. DM: You.ve mentioned you wrote a letter to the Department of Agriculture or the USDA. The secretary of that is Tom Vilsack. Maybe you can review the relationship that he has with Monsanto. He wasn.t directly employed, but he was certainly a proponent of working with them when he was a governor of a state not too far from here. I.m wondering if you could comment on that relationship first and then we.ll go to the other issues. HR: I really don.t know what that relationship it.s been. I hear about it, but I really don.t have any direct information. I wrote the letter as a very private letter to learning to the fact that what we.re seeing now in agriculture isn.t normal. We have some very serious concerns that are raised for crop production, for animal production, as well as for human health, that need to be addressed. My request in that letter was kind of four-fold, but it was to learning those increased plant diseases that we were seeing and reduced nutritional value of our feed and food. Also to a new entity that was causing reproductive failure. The request is assistance and the resources of the USDA in obtaining that information before deregulation of Roundup-ready alfalfas, so that we could do the research rather than suffer the consequences. DM: Have you had any response from the secretary yet? HR: Yes. I wrote the letter on the 17th of January. I received the response from Dr. Parham, head of the USDA-APHIS, who would be then the natural person to respond to that letter. I got a letter in response on May 2nd, assuring me that all of the decisions that the USDA makes are based on peer-reviewed science and so I responded to that letter. I have had an opportunity with some other scientists to visit with those people, top administrators. We tried to work out a cooperative and working relationship rather than an adversary one. But I did respond to that letter and pointed out 130 published peer-reviewed articles that documented the concerns that I have. Then I asked if they could provide me a peer-reviewed scientific study that would justify the regulation of those products. I.m still waiting for that. I haven.t found anyone that can produce that type of document. Certainly, when we looked at the Gallagher study ? as commissioned by the Indian Supreme Court to evaluate data that are submitted to a governmental agency for deregulation of a genetically modified crop ? you find certainly in that situation, as they summarize, that data doesn.t meet international standards for that type of study. Certainly, you wouldn.t justify the health and safety risks that are indicated by the limited data that was available for their analysis. We just haven.t done the research. We have assumed safety based primarily on marketing potential rather than based on science in those decisions. DM: I.m curious about your dialogue with the chief scientist over at the USDA about this topic. It sounds that they were able to meet with you. You exchanged, that you wrote this letter expressing that you have yet at this point (which is right by Thanksgiving that we.re doing this interview) received a response. But it seemed from your perspective that they were open to dialogue ? or do they just take this information because they were doing the job and sweep the data under the carpet? HR: I think we had a good dialogue with them. It.s not much a dialogue, but an opportunity for those of us that took the question that concerns them. It was an opportunity to share our concerns. We had very excellent discussion in that process of what research was needed, where the holes are in the understanding, and what.s happening. They indicated they would do some background investigation in that process. I hope that they would do it as a result of the initial letter. I did receive a call from Risk Management about two weeks after writing the letter, asking if I could provide details, because there wasn.t anything in the letter. The letter was written to a politician. I didn.t want to disclose names of scientists or details because of the retaliatory effect that we see with anyone researching this area ? they can be either fired from their job or their program shut down. That.s a real fact. DM: Wow. That.s a pretty amazing statement you just made. I.m wondering if you could expound on that. If you.d be willing to, because there.s a suggestion that the industry is really funding the research in academic circles that are doing the peer-reviewed studies that we can use to either document the safety or the lack of safety of it. It appears that someone.s voice could dissent from this position that they.re squelched. I.m wondering if you could expound on that. HR: I think that.s fairly well-documented. All you have to do is look at the statement of what the 26 North Central entomologists wrote. This is where the scientists who were set up as a regional project to determine the biosafety of genetically engineered crops. As a point of frustration perhaps, they wanted to notify the EPA, which they did. That public document that they sent in, they asked that their names be withheld because all 26 of them said that their funding is dependent on industry support. But in that statement they learned that the EPA, the fact that they really denied access to the materials they were appointed to determine safety of. If they did the research, they were prohibited from publishing it. So the consequence was that the EPA had no objective science to base a regulatory decision on, because that science isn.t either available or accessible to them, or the research hasn.t been conducted on it because of the proprietary products that they.re prohibited to evaluate. DM: So because of the patent, they would be breaking the law if they did a research on that? HR: That.s right. DM: How did they ? is this through political lobbying? They created this structure, this crazy legal system that makes it illegal to evaluate something for human food safety? HR: If you even read the technology agreement that the farmer has to sign, he can.t even do research on his own farm to compare whether this crop or this product is better than another one without violating the terms of that technology agreement. [----- 40:00 -----] It.s essentially a closed system to guarantee success. DM: I.m getting so angry. I want to get the baseball bat and start swinging. From your view, from your perspective as a veteran research scientist, as an insider in this industry, if this is a risqu? system and there really is no way around this because of the control, that primarily Monsanto and other industry leaders have been able to manipulate the system to essentially make it illegal to do a research with a funding to do? They have essentially monopolized the whole regulatory process. From my perspective, it seems that way. This is an important issue. If we can.t do it the way it was designed to be done, we have to do a workaround. So what.s your take on it? HR: Certainly, a group of us that are working together on the new entity causing reproductive failure, also some of these crop disease problems, and some new situations. As we try to look at that, we have even obtained private funding, taking it to the experts in the areas of specific diseases, and tried to encourage them to work on it. In the past year, they have been prohibited from working on it by their universities or department heads. DM: Even though they had private funding? HR: Even though there was outside funding for us. That.s one of the reasons why we needed that contact with the USDA officials, in hopes that we could share the problems that concern them, that they would recognize the serious nature of this, and that we could obtain their support and use their resources for funding of individuals and specialists. So that we could overcome that barrier that seems to be there for anyone working on genetically engineered crops that might indicate that they.re quite not everything that they were cut out to be. It.s almost as though you have to belong to that religion, if you.re going to do any research or publish your research. DM: Which is obviously highly biased and prejudiced, which is not going to produce objective truth. HR: We.re hoping that they promise that they all seriously consider grant proposals. Those are being written now to address the issues. We.re hoping that the indication that they gave us, they will be more than willing to consider that financial support for those who plan to research. We.re hoping that in a cooperative role, we can work together in the process. It.s certainly very critical for the new entity, as well as for just the mushrooming type of an effect that we.re seeing on crop and animal production. When you look at the tremendous increase in human diseases that can have a potential tirade directly back to either the chemical or the engineering process, it.s critical for that research to be done as quickly as possible. We need that resource to do it. The private funds, again, aren.t going to do everything because there.s just too much to be done. DM: It.s not only the funding, but also the prohibition by most of the senators that actually have the resources to do it. Even if you have a billion-dollar grant to do it, you.re not going to be able to do it, because the research will kick you out. I guess you can start your own lab, but that.s not very likely. I.m wondering if you can comment on these novel organisms that are having impact on the crop failures or the entities. HR: We.re not sure what it is. It was first identified by veterinarians who were confronted with very high reproductive failure in animals. This was probably in 1998 or 2000. It was a sporadic, kind of a limited situation. We initially thought that it might just be one of those bubbles that happen and never be able to really explain it, but it.s continues to become increased in severity. We received a call, Monday for instance, from a county extension educator, indicating that he has a dairy that has 70 percent abortions. You put that on top of 10 to 15 percent of infertility to start with, and you.re not going to have a dairy very long. In fact, a lot of our veterinarians are now becoming very concerned at the (48:07) for being able to have replacement animals. DM: Quick question on the timing of this observation in the veterinary medicine. Was it prior to the introduction of the genetically modified alfalfa, which should seem to make this problem probably even worse? HR: We introduced our first genetically engineered crop in the States, 1995 or 1996 period. It was 1996 when the Roundup-ready soybeans really took off. Two to three years after that you started seeing it ? there.s typically a lag period for a lot of those things, so that would fit. It continued to increase and attracts fairly well with what we see with the increase usage of our genetically modified crops, especially with the Roundup-ready or the BT traits in them. DM: Do you expected to see more in the livestock from the introduction the foods that they were primarily eating with the alfalfa as opposed to the soy or the corn or do they still feed them corn? HR: They.re feeding the soy and corn. DM: Oh, okay. HR: Roundup-ready alfalfa was just deregulated here this year. Now, deregulated in 2005, 2006, and then held off the market through a lawsuit. Then it was deregulated here again this year. DM: But do the livestock eat more of the alfalfa or more of the soy and corn? HR: They.re having this problem through the soy and corn. DM: Okay. But what do they eat more of? What I.m trying to tell is if they eat more of the alfalfa, it.s going to be a larger problem. HR: Yeah. All that would do is exacerbate the problem. DM: Right. HR: If we see the same thing in it that we see in corn and soybeans. With corn, they also get it in the silage. With the veterinarians, they have completed the Cope.s postulates, so they have established the cause-effect relationship with this new entity. [----- 50:00 -----] DM: And they publish this? HR: They haven.t published. DM: Okay. HR: The reason is we don.t know what it is. DM: [Laughs] HR: It.s not a fungus. It.s not bacteria. It.s not a mycoplasma or a virus ? about the same size of a small virus. You have to magnify it from 38 to 40,000 times. DM: They have pictures of it? HR: They have pictures of it? Oh yes. You can see the interactions with it. They can now culture it. It.s self-replicating and cultured. It doesn.t grow very well by itself. Like most of our very fastidious organisms, it tends to die out three or four sub-culturing, but grows very well with other organisms. If you have yeast, bacteria, or a fungus in the culture, this entity goes very well. We.re waiting on getting enough material, pure material, for DNA analysis, but also looking at some other possibilities. We haven.t published. Until you can put a name on it, all it does is create a great deal of speculations. That.s one of the reasons why the letter was sent as a very private letter. The other reason was it could have a tremendous potential and impact on our exports, because where we find high populations of this ? or in our soybeans, in our corns DM: This novel entity? HR: It.s a novel entity ? new to science. DM: But it.s actually in the feed? It.s in the corn. HR: Oh yeah. DM: Okay. Is it a virus, because most viruses don.t they ? HR: Well, it.s not a virus. DM: Okay, I.m sorry. We don.t know what it is. I.m sorry. I just made an assumption. It has yet to be identified. HR: But we know a lot about it. We know what it is, but we don.t know what it is. DM: [Laughs] HR: Because it appears to be common in nature, but new to science. It.s novel to our knowledge, that.s why it has been a little slow to get all the information, because we.re working with something from scratch. DM: Do you have any guesses as to how this organism came about? Is it because of the chelating effect of the glyphosate created in the environment that sort of bred this new entity from the soil? HR: One of the possibilities is it.s boiling down to one or three potentials. None of the three are happy considerations. So rather than speculate on them, we felt like it.s better to have that knowledge so then we.ll know how to address or how to respond, because the response will be a little different for all of them. But what we do know is that it causes reproductive failure, infertility, as well as miscarriage for cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, and poultry. We can anticipate with that broad spectrum of animal species, which is extremely unusual, that it will also be with humans. We see an increasing frequency of miscarriage and a dramatic increase in infertility in human populations in just the last eight to 10 years. DM: Has this been documented, this increase in the infertility of human populations? HR: Yes. DM: Okay. HR: You look at the numbers of fertility clinics that have sprung up. One area where they had one in the past, they have 14 now. I had a woman call me and said, ?Well, let me tell you what my situation is. My five-year old came home from kindergarten and said, ?Mom, why don.t I have any brothers and sisters??. She said, ?You do. You.ve got an older brother and a younger sister.? And he said, ?No. I don.t have any brothers and sisters. Everybody else in school has a brother or a sister.? What he was referring to was they had a twin or a triplet. This woman said that when she checked around with the other parents, the only way they get to have children is through in vitro fertilization. DM: Multiple inseminations. HR: If you look at where this entity is ? again, with the veterinarians when they have identified it and the American Cattlemen.s Association testified to it before Congress in 2002 ? there were two conditions that were threatening the industry. One was this reproductive failure ? as many as 40 to 50 percent of the pregnant animals losing their offspring. The other one was premature aging. A research in Iowa three years ago DM: Premature aging of the animals? HR: Of the animals. DM: It was accelerated by what rate? HR: When they take an animal ? a two or two and a half year old animal.s prime beef ? to market, it.s downgraded to that of a 10-year old cow. DM: Holy [Laughs] HR: There are studies three years ago in Iowa with non-GMO and GMO feed. I can show you some pictures of what that tallow looks like around the stomach lining. It.s yellow and not that pretty white collar. Again, it.s premature aging. The other entity was this infertility. We see dairies with 30 and 40 percent ? as I mentioned, they called Monday that they wanted some help. I got them the veterinarians so that they can verify that this is the entity. They have ruled out all the other known causes. So we can rule out the (56:30) virus, the botox, the mycotoxins, and all of the other known causes. But this is a situation. When the veterinarians wanted to find the source for this entity, they went to the feed. The first place where they found high concentrations was in the soybean mill. Since then we find it in the corn. We find it in silage. Primarily in high concentrations only where we have a genetically engineered crop that has glyphosate applied to it. Those are the crops that we also see high Goss.s wilt, high SDS. They are all correlated together in that relationship. The other place you see it, though, is where they have used the manure that has a high glyphosate residue level in it. The manure also has very high concentrations, if the chickens or the animals that have been fed these feeds with high concentrations. We see it when that manure is applied to pastures and cattle graze on it. We also see high infertility rates there. It occurs in the placenta, in the fetus, in the sperm and inseminators. Stating that it takes twice as much semen now to get a conception and as many as four to eight inseminations rather than the typical 1.2 to 1.5 for a dairy because of that reduced fertility. I was on a plane with that bull breeder who commented that 40 percent of his bulls had to be pulled out of service, because they can.t get conception anymore. If you look at the decrease in human sperm, it.s less than half of what it was 20 years ago. That is, again, attributable to the endocrine hormone-disrupting chemicals we.ve had. After zein, we.ve had a number of others. Glyphosates are a very potent endocrine disruptor. It.s a half part per million. You see an inhibition for amytase and other functions in the endocrine hormone systems not just for reproduction, but for thyroid function, pituitary function, any of those other levels, because all of those entities require critical micronutrients in that process as keys for those enzyme engines that drive those processes. When you have a very potent chelator, then it disrupts all kinds of systems, not just the EPSPs system that we find in certain microorganisms and plants, but also all of the other systems involved in liver function, blood function, and hormonal function. They all go right back to that basic nutrient process that keeps all systems functional. [END Part 1; hour 1] From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 18 13:12:06 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:12:06 +0100 Subject: [THS] Gareth Porter: How Maliki and Iran Outsmarted the U.S. on Troop Withdrawal Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111218130807.04ac3778@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30017.htm How Maliki and Iran Outsmarted the U.S. on Troop Withdrawal By Gareth Porter December 17, 2011 "Information Clearing House" - - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta?s suggestion that the end of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq is part of a U.S. military success story ignores the fact that the George W. Bush administration and the U.S. military had planned to maintain a semi-permanent military presence in Iraq. The real story behind the U.S. withdrawal is how a clever strategy of deception and diplomacy adopted by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in cooperation with Iran outmaneuvered Bush and the U.S. military leadership and got the United States to sign the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement. A central element of the Maliki-Iran strategy was the common interest that Maliki, Iran and anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr shared in ending the U.S. occupation, despite their differences over other issues. Maliki needed Sadr?s support, which was initially based on Maliki?s commitment to obtain a time schedule for U.S. troops? withdrawal from Iraq. In early June 2006, a draft national reconciliation plan that circulated among Iraqi political groups included agreement on "a time schedule to pull out the troops from Iraq" along with the build-up of Iraqi military forces. But after a quick trip to Baghdad, Bush rejected the idea of a withdrawal timetable. Maliki?s national security adviser Mowaffak Al-Rubaei revealed in a Washington Post op-ed that Maliki wanted foreign troops reduced by more than 30,000 to under 100,000 by the end of 2006 and withdrawal of "most of the remaining troops" by end of the 2007. When the full text of the reconciliation plan was published Jun. 25, 2006, however, the commitment to a withdrawal timetable was missing. In June 2007, senior Bush administration officials began leaking to reporters plans for maintaining what The New York Times described as "a near-permanent presence" in Iraq, which would involve control of four major bases. Maliki immediately sent Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari to Washington to dangle the bait of an agreement on troops before then Vice President Dick Cheney. As recounted in Linda Robinson?s "Tell Me How This Ends", Zebari urged Cheney to begin negotiating the U.S. military presence in order to reduce the odds of an abrupt withdrawal that would play into the hands of the Iranians. In a meeting with then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in September 2007, National Security Adviser Rubaie said Maliki wanted a "Status of Forces Agreement" (SOFA) that would allow U.S. forces to remain but would "eliminate the irritants that are apparent violations of Iraqi sovereignty", according Bob Woodward?s "The War Within". Maliki?s national security adviser was also seeking to protect the Mahdi Army from U.S. military plans to target it for major attacks. Meeting Bush?s coordinator for the Iraq War, Douglas Lute, Rubaie said it was better for Iraqi security forces to take on Sadr?s militias than for U.S. Special Forces to do so. He explained to the Baker-Hamilton Commission that Sadr?s use of military force was not a problem for Maliki, because Sadr was still part of the government. Publicly, the Maliki government continued to assure the Bush administration it could count on a long-term military presence. Asked by NBC?s Richard Engel on Jan. 24, 2008 if the agreement would provide long-term U.S. bases in Iraq, Zebari said, "This is an agreement of enduring military support. The soldiers are going to have to stay someplace. They can?t stay in the air." Confident that it was going to get a South Korea-style SOFA, the Bush administration gave the Iraqi government a draft on Mar. 7, 2008 that provided for no limit on the number of U.S. troops or the duration of their presence. Nor did it give Iraq any control over U.S. military operations. But Maliki had a surprise in store for Washington. A series of dramatic moves by Maliki and Iran over the next few months showed that there had been an explicit understanding between the two governments to prevent the U.S. military from launching major operations against the Mahdi Army and to reach an agreement with Sadr on ending the Mahdi Army?s role in return for assurances that Maliki would demand the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. In mid-March 2007, Maliki ignored pressure from a personal visit by Cheney to cooperate in taking down the Mahdi Army and instead abruptly vetoed U.S. military plans for a major operation against the Mahdi Army in Basra. Maliki ordered an Iraqi army assault on the dug-in Sadrist forces. Predictably, the operation ran into trouble, and within days, Iraqi officials had asked General Suleimani to intervene and negotiate a cease fire with Sadr, who agreed, although his troops were far from defeated. A few weeks later, Maliki again prevented the United States from launching its biggest campaign yet against the Mahdi Army in Sadr City. And again, Suleimani was brought in to work out a deal with Sadr allowing government troops to patrol in the former Mahdi Army stronghold. There was subtext to Suleimani?s interventions. Just as Suleimani was negotiating the Basra cease fire with Sadr, a website associated with former IRGC Commander Mohsen Rezai said Iran opposed actions by "hard-line clans" that "only weaken the government and people of Iraq and give a pretext to its occupiers". In the days that followed that agreement, Iranian state news media portrayed the Iraqi crackdown in Basra as being against illegal and "criminal" forces. The timing of each political diplomatic move by Maliki appears to have been determined in discussions between Maliki and top Iranian officials. Just two days after returning from a visit to Tehran in June 2008, Maliki complained publicly about U.S. demands for indefinite access to military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and immunity from prosecution for U.S. troops and private contractors. In July, he revealed that his government was demanding the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops on a timetable. The Bush administration was in a state of shock. From July to October, it pretended that it could simply refuse to accept the withdrawal demand, while trying vainly to pressure Maliki to back down. In the end, however, Bush administration officials realized that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who was then far ahead of Republican John McCain in polls, would accept the same or an even faster timetable for withdrawal. In October, Bush decided to sign the draft agreement pledging withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of 2011. The ambitious plans of the U.S. military to use Iraq to dominate the Middle East militarily and politically had been foiled by the very regime the United States had installed, and the officials behind the U.S. scheme, had been clueless about what was happening until it was too late. This article was first published at ipsnews.net (FIN/2011) From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 18 13:14:59 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:14:59 +0100 Subject: [THS] US Court Claims Iranian 9/11 Link Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111218131325.06ab6358@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30022.htm Engineering Consent For Attack On Iran US Court Claims Iranian 9/11 Link By RT December 17, 2011 -- A US court has won a default judgement that Iranian officials, including its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, provided help to the 9/11 hijackers behind the worst terror attack on American soil. The lawsuit was filed by the families of the atrocity's victims. There was no Iranian representation in court. RT talks to Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Center for Research on Globalization. [video] Iran Accused Of 9/11 Role By Fox News May 20, 2011 "Fox News" -- NEW YORK: Two defectors from Iran's intelligence service have testified that Iranian officials knew in advance about the attacks of September 11, 2001, says a US court filing that seeks damages for Iran's ''direct support for, and sponsorship of, the most deadly act of terrorism in American history''. One of the defectors also claimed that Iran was involved in designing the attacks, the filing said. The defectors' identities and testimony were not revealed in the filing but were being submitted to a judge under seal, said lawyers who brought the original suit against Iran on behalf of families of dozens of September 11 victims. The suit says Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group with close ties to Tehran, helped al-Qaeda with planning the attacks and with the hijackers' training and travel. After the attacks, the suit says, Iran and Hezbollah helped al-Qaeda operatives and their families to escape, in some cases providing them with a safe haven in Iran. The question of an Iranian connection to the attacks was raised by the national September 11 commission and has long been debated. Al-Qaeda, which adheres to a radical Sunni theology, routinely denounces the Shiite branch of Islam that holds power in Iran, and the terrorist network's branch in Iraq has often made Shiites targets of bombings. But intelligence officials have long believed there has been limited, wary co-operation between al-Qaeda and Iran against the US as a common enemy. The lawsuit also names as defendants Iranian officials and ministries, as well as Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the Taliban, among others. The families' lawyers have asked for a default judgment against the defendants, which have not responded to the suit. Even if there were such a judgment, legal experts say it would not be easy to collect monetary damages. In their court papers, the lawyers assert that Imad Mugniyah, as the military chief of Hezbollah, was a terrorist agent for Iran, and that he travelled to Saudi Arabia in 2000 to help with preparations for the September 11 attacks. Mugniyah, killed in 2008, had been accused by US officials of planning a series of terrorist attacks and kidnappings, including the bombings of the US embassy and marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983. The September 11 commission report said there was ''strong evidence Iran facilitated the transit of al-Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before [the attacks], and that some of these were future [September 11] hijackers''. But the commission said it had ''found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became'' the September 11 attacks and that the ''topic requires further investigation by the US government''. From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 18 13:53:31 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:53:31 +0100 Subject: [THS] The Fall of the "Liberal Elite" Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111218134953.04c23698@mail.messagingengine.com> http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175480/tomgram%3A_barbara Tomgram: Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich, The Fall of the "Liberal Elite" Posted by Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich at 9:30am, December 15, 2011. You might almost think the news was good. The Europeans, so headlines tell us, have at least a ?partial solution? to the Euro-zone crisis (until, of course, the next round of panic is upon us); the stock market has sort of rebounded (until the next precipitous plunge); the unemployment rate ?dropped sharply? to 8.6% in November, the lowest it?s been in more than two years (thanks in part to the strangest category around -- the 315,000 people who grew too discouraged last month to look for work and so were no longer considered unemployed but out of the labor force); and talk of a double-dip recession seems on holiday. So why pay attention to the modest-sized Associated Press story you were likely to find, if at all, deep inside your newspaper (as on page 21 of last Friday's Washington Post)? It was headlined ?Household wealth down in 3rd quarter,? with the telling subhead, ?Corporate cash continues to grow, Fed report says.? Still, if you wanted to sum up the growing gap between the 1% and the 99%, you couldn?t ask for better. In fact, household wealth wasn?t just ?down? 4%, it was the ?biggest loss of wealth? for Americans ?in more than two years,? and those corporate cash stockpiles didn?t simply continue to grow, they reached ?record levels? at $2.1 trillion. Since American wealth is deeply linked to homeownership, the fact that ?most economists expect home prices to keep falling? wasn?t exactly good news, nor when it came to pensions and retirement was the July-to-September 12% drop in ?the average balance in 401(k) plans managed by Fidelity Investments, the largest workplace savings plan provider.? In sum, the average American household managed to lose $21,000 dollars in those three months, a total loss in household wealth of $2.4 trillion. You might think that would make front pages nationwide, but we?re evidently too busy dealing with complex subjects like whether the $10,000 bet offered by Mitt Romney, the $202 million man, during Saturday?s Republican debate meant he was ?out of touch? with normal Americans. In the meantime, TomDispatch regular Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich unerringly home in on a fast-changing American reality first brought to national attention by Occupy Wall Street: that, as the middle class goes down the chute, we're left in a world in which 99% "R" Us. This is a joint TomDispatch/Nation article and will appear in print in the latest issue of that magazine. Tom The Making of the American 99% And the Collapse of the Middle Class By Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich ?Class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.? -- E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class The ?other men? (and of course women) in the current American class alignment are those in the top 1% of the wealth distribution -- the bankers, hedge-fund managers, and CEOs targeted by the Occupy Wall Street movement. They have been around for a long time in one form or another, but they only began to emerge as a distinct and visible group, informally called the ?super-rich,? in recent years. Extravagant levels of consumption helped draw attention to them: private jets, multiple 50,000 square-foot mansions, $25,000 chocolate desserts embellished with gold dust. But as long as the middle class could still muster the credit for college tuition and occasional home improvements, it seemed churlish to complain. Then came the financial crash of 2007-2008, followed by the Great Recession, and the 1% to whom we had entrusted our pensions, our economy, and our political system stood revealed as a band of feckless, greedy narcissists, and possibly sociopaths. Still, until a few months ago, the 99% was hardly a group capable of (as Thompson says) articulating ?the identity of their interests.? It contained, and still contains, most ?ordinary? rich people, along with middle-class professionals, factory workers, truck drivers, and miners, as well as the much poorer people who clean the houses, manicure the fingernails, and maintain the lawns of the affluent. It was divided not only by these class differences, but most visibly by race and ethnicity -- a division that has actually deepened since 2008. African-Americans and Latinos of all income levels disproportionately lost their homes to foreclosure in 2007 and 2008, and then disproportionately lost their jobs in the wave of layoffs that followed. On the eve of the Occupy movement, the black middle class had been devastated. In fact, the only political movements to have come out of the 99% before Occupy emerged were the Tea Party movement and, on the other side of the political spectrum, the resistance to restrictions on collective bargaining in Wisconsin. But Occupy could not have happened if large swaths of the 99% had not begun to discover some common interests, or at least to put aside some of the divisions among themselves. For decades, the most stridently promoted division within the 99% was the one between what the right calls the ?liberal elite? -- composed of academics, journalists, media figures, etc. -- and pretty much everyone else. As Harper?s Magazine columnist Tom Frank has brilliantly explained, the right earned its spurious claim to populism by targeting that ?liberal elite,? which supposedly favors reckless government spending that requires oppressive levels of taxes, supports ?redistributive? social policies and programs that reduce opportunity for the white middle class, creates ever more regulations (to, for instance, protect the environment) that reduce jobs for the working class, and promotes kinky countercultural innovations like gay marriage. The liberal elite, insisted conservative intellectuals, looked down on ?ordinary? middle- and working-class Americans, finding them tasteless and politically incorrect. The ?elite? was the enemy, while the super-rich were just like everyone else, only more ?focused? and perhaps a bit better connected. Of course, the ?liberal elite? never made any sociological sense. Not all academics or media figures are liberal (Newt Gingrich, George Will, Rupert Murdoch). Many well-educated middle managers and highly trained engineers may favor latte over Red Bull, but they were never targets of the right. And how could trial lawyers be members of the nefarious elite, while their spouses in corporate law firms were not? A Greased Chute, Not a Safety Net ?Liberal elite? was always a political category masquerading as a sociological one. What gave the idea of a liberal elite some traction, though, at least for a while, was that the great majority of us have never knowingly encountered a member of the actual elite, the 1% who are, for the most part, sealed off in their own bubble of private planes, gated communities, and walled estates. The authority figures most people are likely to encounter in their daily lives are teachers, doctors, social workers, and professors. These groups (along with middle managers and other white-collar corporate employees) occupy a much lower position in the class hierarchy. They made up what we described in a 1976 essay as the ?professional managerial class.? As we wrote at the time, on the basis of our experience of the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s, there have been real, longstanding resentments between the working-class and middle-class professionals. These resentments, which the populist right cleverly deflected toward ?liberals,? contributed significantly to that previous era of rebellion?s failure to build a lasting progressive movement. As it happened, the idea of the ?liberal elite? could not survive the depredations of the 1% in the late 2000s. For one thing, it was summarily eclipsed by the discovery of the actual Wall Street-based elite and their crimes. Compared to them, professionals and managers, no matter how annoying, were pikers. The doctor or school principal might be overbearing, the professor and the social worker might be condescending, but only the 1% took your house away. There was, as well, another inescapable problem embedded in the right-wing populist strategy: even by 2000, and certainly by 2010, the class of people who might qualify as part of the ?liberal elite? was in increasingly bad repair. Public-sector budget cuts and corporate-inspired reorganizations were decimating the ranks of decently paid academics, who were being replaced by adjunct professors working on bare subsistence incomes. Media firms were shrinking their newsrooms and editorial budgets. Law firms had started outsourcing their more routine tasks to India. Hospitals beamed X-rays to cheap foreign radiologists. Funding had dried up for nonprofit ventures in the arts and public service. Hence the iconic figure of the Occupy movement: the college graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debts and a job paying about $10 a hour, or no job at all. These trends were in place even before the financial crash hit, but it took the crash and its grim economic aftermath to awaken the 99% to a widespread awareness of shared danger. In 2008, ?Joe the Plumber?s? intention to earn a quarter-million dollars a year still had some faint sense of plausibility. A couple of years into the recession, however, sudden downward mobility had become the mainstream American experience, and even some of the most reliably neoliberal media pundits were beginning to announce that something had gone awry with the American dream. Once-affluent people lost their nest eggs as housing prices dropped off cliffs. Laid-off middle-aged managers and professionals were staggered to find that their age made them repulsive to potential employers. Medical debts plunged middle-class households into bankruptcy. The old conservative dictum -- that it was unwise to criticize (or tax) the rich because you might yourself be one of them someday -- gave way to a new realization that the class you were most likely to migrate into wasn?t the rich, but the poor. And here was another thing many in the middle class were discovering: the downward plunge into poverty could occur with dizzying speed. One reason the concept of an economic 99% first took root in America rather than, say, Ireland or Spain is that Americans are particularly vulnerable to economic dislocation. We have little in the way of a welfare state to stop a family or an individual in free-fall. Unemployment benefits do not last more than six months or a year, though in a recession they are sometimes extended by Congress. At present, even with such an extension, they reach only about half the jobless. Welfare was all but abolished 15 years ago, and health insurance has traditionally been linked to employment. In fact, once an American starts to slip downward, a variety of forces kick in to help accelerate the slide. An estimated 60% of American firms now check applicants' credit ratings, and discrimination against the unemployed is widespread enough to have begun to warrant Congressional concern. Even bankruptcy is a prohibitively expensive, often crushingly difficult status to achieve. Failure to pay government-imposed fines or fees can even lead, through a concatenation of unlucky breaks, to an arrest warrant or a criminal record. Where other once-wealthy nations have a safety net, America offers a greased chute, leading down to destitution with alarming speed. Making Sense of the 99% The Occupation encampments that enlivened approximately 1,400 cities this fall provided a vivid template for the 99%?s growing sense of unity. Here were thousands of people -- we may never know the exact numbers -- from all walks of life, living outdoors in the streets and parks, very much as the poorest of the poor have always lived: without electricity, heat, water, or toilets. In the process, they managed to create self-governing communities. General assembly meetings brought together an unprecedented mix of recent college graduates, young professionals, elderly people, laid-off blue-collar workers, and plenty of the chronically homeless for what were, for the most part, constructive and civil exchanges. What started as a diffuse protest against economic injustice became a vast experiment in class building. The 99%, which might have seemed to be a purely aspirational category just a few months ago, began to will itself into existence. Can the unity cultivated in the encampments survive as the Occupy movement evolves into a more decentralized phase? All sorts of class, racial, and cultural divisions persist within that 99%, including distrust between members of the former ?liberal elite? and those less privileged. It would be surprising if they didn?t. The life experience of a young lawyer or a social worker is very different from that of a blue-collar worker whose work may rarely allow for biological necessities like meal or bathroom breaks. Drum circles, consensus decision-making, and masks remain exotic to at least the 90%. ?Middle class? prejudice against the homeless, fanned by decades of right-wing demonization of the poor, retains much of its grip. Sometimes these differences led to conflict in Occupy encampments -- for example, over the role of the chronically homeless in Portland or the use of marijuana in Los Angeles -- but amazingly, despite all the official warnings about health and safety threats, there was no ?Altamont moment?: no major fires and hardly any violence. In fact, the encampments engendered almost unthinkable convergences: people from comfortable backgrounds learning about street survival from the homeless, a distinguished professor of political science discussing horizontal versus vertical decision-making with a postal worker, military men in dress uniforms showing up to defend the occupiers from the police. Class happens, as Thompson said, but it happens most decisively when people are prepared to nourish and build it. If the ?99%? is to become more than a stylish meme, if it?s to become a force to change the world, eventually we will undoubtedly have to confront some of the class and racial divisions that lie within it. But we need to do so patiently, respectfully, and always with an eye to the next big action -- the next march, or building occupation, or foreclosure fight, as the situation demands. Barbara Ehrenreich, TomDispatch regular, is the author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (now in a 10th anniversary edition with a new afterword). John Ehrenreich is professor of psychology at the State University of New York, College at Old Westbury. He wrote The Humanitarian Companion: A Guide for International Aid, Development, and Human Rights Workers. This is a joint TomDispatch/Nation article and appears in print at the Nation magazine. Copyright 2011 Barbara Ehrenreich and John Ehrenreich From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 18 15:06:00 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 15:06:00 +0100 Subject: [THS] Report Indicates 1 of Every 2 Americans in or Near Poverty Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111218150416.045f5218@mail.messagingengine.com> http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13212 Fortune 500 CEOs See Average Pay Rise 36.5% in 2010, While Report Indicates 1 of Every 2 Americans in or Near Poverty Submitted by mark karlin on Sat, 12/17/2011 - 2:03pm. EditorBlog Mark Karlin, Editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout More and more, the American economy appears to be boiling down not so much into the creative power of entrepreneurialism, but rather into who is conniving and ruthless enough to take advantage of institutionalized concentrations of wealth. What does that mean? It means that, perhaps, the majority of the super-rich get richer not by creating jobs or increasing the prosperity of the nation; they enhance their wealth by being the "Mack the Knives" of capitalism. That's why it may be no surprise that CEO pay (adjusted to include other compensation) jumped 36.5 percent last year, according toa report cited in CNN: The average pay hike (36.5%) is for the top executive at each of the Standard & Poor 500 companies, according to GMI, the research group formerly known as the Corporate Library. A broader survey of CEO pay at 3,000 companies posted an average 27% increase. This further represents that the current crisis of capitalism is exemplified by a corporate and financial sector in the US that frequently benefits from job elimination in order to maximize shareholder profits and CEO pay. Further proof that the top tier of the 1 percent are often there through their skills in surviving corporate infighting - not due to their acumen at growing the economy or increasing jobs - is this paragraph from a December 15 Guardian UK article: 2010 was a great year to lose your job as a CEO. Four of the 10 highest paid CEOs were retired or departing executives. Ronald Williams, former head of Aetna, a health insurer, exercised 2.4m options for a profit of $50.4m. Aetna's stock price declined by 70 percent from when Williams assumed the role of CEO in February 2006 until his retirement. At pharmacy chain CVS, Thomas Ryan made a $28m profit on his options. During Ryan's 13-year tenure as CEO, CVS Caremark's stock price decreased almost 54 percent. While the unemployed and the working poor get Scrooge-like lectures about how adversity makes one stronger and builds a financial system that rewards those who succeed, a decaying status quo of big business economically lavishes wealth on those who drive companies into the ground. Meanwhile, on the same day the skyrocketing CEO compensation report became public, CBS news ran an Associated Press (AP) article headlined: "Census data: Half of U.S. poor or low income." "The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor specializing in poverty told the AP. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years." There is a "members only" club for gluttonous wealth in America, and it has little to do with competence. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57343397/census-data-half-of-u.s-poor-or-low-income/?tag=strip Census data: Half of U.S. poor or low income The St. Columbanus Church food pantry in The St. Columbanus Church food pantry in Chicago feeds 500 households a week, but some weeks it struggles to keep up with demand. (CBS) (AP) WASHINGTON - Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans ? nearly 1 in 2 ? have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families. "Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too `rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty. "The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years." Video: New data shows poverty at an all-time high Poverty in America: The faces behind the figures Most U.S. unemployed no longer receive benefits Congressional Republicans and Democrats are sparring over legislation that would renew a Social Security payroll tax cut, part of a year-end political showdown over economic priorities that could also trim unemployment benefits, freeze federal pay and reduce entitlement spending. Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, questioned whether some people classified as poor or low-income actually suffer material hardship. He said that while safety-net programs have helped many Americans, they have gone too far, citing poor people who live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs. "There's no doubt the recession has thrown a lot of people out of work and incomes have fallen," Rector said. "As we come out of recession, it will be important that these programs promote self-sufficiency rather than dependence and encourage people to look for work." CBS News correspondent Byron Pitts told the story in November of the Struble family. They are college educated, career-holding members of America's vast middle class. They had a combined annual income of $85,000. But in November of 2009, Todd lost his job, and hasn't had a steady paycheck since. They now have only an estimated $25 in their savings account, perhaps another $100 in their checking. Click on the player at left to see the full story of America's middle class in decline. Mayors in 29 cities say more than 1 in 4 people needing emergency food assistance did not receive it. Many middle-class Americans are dropping below the low-income threshold ? roughly $45,000 for a family of four ? because of pay cuts, a forced reduction of work hours or a spouse losing a job. Housing and child-care costs are consuming up to half of a family's income. States in the South and West had the highest shares of low-income families, including Arizona, New Mexico and South Carolina, which have scaled back or eliminated aid programs for the needy. By raw numbers, such families were most numerous in California and Texas, each with more than 1 million. The struggling Americans include Zenobia Bechtol, 18, in Austin, Texas, who earns minimum wage as a part-time pizza delivery driver. Bechtol and her 7-month-old baby were recently evicted from their bedbug-infested apartment after her boyfriend, an electrician, lost his job in the sluggish economy. After an 18-month job search, Bechtol's boyfriend now works as a waiter and the family of three is temporarily living with her mother. "We're paying my mom $200 a month for rent, and after diapers and formula and gas for work, we barely have enough money to spend," said Bechtol, a high school graduate who wants to go to college. "If it weren't for food stamps and other government money for families who need help, we wouldn't have been able to survive." Since the housing bubble burst, nearly 4 million American homes have been lost to foreclosure. An estimated 1.6 million children will be homeless at some time during the year - 38 percent more than at the start of the recession. As CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy explains, unemployment has driven some families to the southern California desert, where a barren old WWII training ground in the desert has become a place for many to park their troubled lives. Click on the player at left for the full story of "Slab City". About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category, commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That's up by 4 million from 2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure. The new measure of poverty takes into account medical, commuting and other living costs. Doing that helped push the number of people below 200 percent of the poverty level up from 104 million, or 1 in 3 Americans, that was officially reported in September. Broken down by age, children were most likely to be poor or low-income ? about 57 percent ? followed by seniors over 65. By race and ethnicity, Hispanics topped the list at 73 percent, followed by blacks, Asians and non-Hispanic whites. Even by traditional measures, many working families are hurting. Following the recession that began in late 2007, the share of working families who are low income has risen for three straight years to 31.2 percent, or 10.2 million. That proportion is the highest in at least a decade, up from 27 percent in 2002, according to a new analysis by the Working Poor Families Project and the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research group based in Washington. Among low-income families, about one-third were considered poor while the remainder ? 6.9 million ? earned income just above the poverty line. Many states phase out eligibility for food stamps, Medicaid, tax credit and other government aid programs for low-income Americans as they approach 200 percent of the poverty level. The majority of low-income families ? 62 percent ? spent more than one-third of their earnings on housing, surpassing a common guideline for what is considered affordable. By some census surveys, child-care costs consume close to another one-fifth. Paychecks for low-income families are shrinking. The inflation-adjusted average earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have fallen from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000, and earnings for the next 20 percent have remained flat at $37,000. In contrast, higher-income brackets had significant wage growth since 1979, with earnings for the top 5 percent of families climbing 64 percent to more than $313,000. A survey of 29 cities conducted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors being released Thursday points to a gloomy outlook for those on the lower end of the income scale. Many mayors cited the challenges of meeting increased demands for food assistance, expressing particular concern about possible cuts to federal programs such as food stamps and WIC, which assists low-income pregnant women and mothers. Unemployment led the list of causes of hunger in cities, followed by poverty, low wages and high housing costs. Across the 29 cities, about 27 percent of people needing emergency food aid did not receive it. Kansas City, Mo., Nashville, Tenn., Sacramento, Calif., and Trenton, N.J., were among the cities that pointed to increases in the cost of food and declining food donations, while Mayor Michael McGinn in Seattle cited an unexpected spike in food requests from immigrants and refugees, particularly from Somalia, Burma and Bhutan. Among those requesting emergency food assistance, 51 percent were in families, 26 percent were employed, 19 percent were elderly and 11 percent were homeless. "People who never thought they would need food are in need of help," said Mayor Sly James of Kansas City, Mo., who co-chairs a mayors' task force on hunger and homelessness. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/dec/14/executive-pay-increase-america-ceos Revealed: huge increase in executive pay for America's top bosses Exclusive survey shows America's CEOs enjoyed pay hikes of up to 40% last year ? with one chief executive earning $145m Dominic Rushe in New York John Hammergren, executive pay John Hammergren, CEO of healthcare provider McKesson, earned $145m last year. Photograph: George Nikitin/AP Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. The dramatic bounceback comes as the latest government figures show wages for the majority of Americans are failing to keep up with inflation. America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m. The news comes against the backdrop of an Occupy Wall Street movement that has focused Washington's attention on the pay packages of America's highest paid. The Guardian's exclusive first look at the CEO pay survey from corporate governance group GMI Ratings will further fuel debate about America's widening income gap. The survey, the most extensive in the US, covered 2,647 companies, and offers a comprehensive assessment of all the data now available relating to 2010 pay. Last year's survey, covering 2009, found pay rates were broadly flat following a decline in wages the year before. Base salaries in 2009 showed a median increase of around 2%, and annual cash compensation increased just over 1.5%. The troubled stock markets took their toll, and added together CEO pay declined for the third year, though the decrease was marginal, less than three-tenths of a percent. The decline in the wider economy in 2007, 2008 and 2009 far outstripped the decline in CEO pay. This year's survey shows CEO pay packages have boomed: the top 10 earners took home more than $770m between them in 2010. As stock prices began to recover last year, the increase in CEO pay outstripped the rise in share value. The Russell 3000 measure of US stock prices was up by 16.93% in 2010, but CEO pay went up by 27.19% overall. For S&P 500 CEOs, the largest companies in the sample, total realised compensation ? including perks and pensions and stock awards ? increased by a median of 36.47%. Total pay at midcap companies, which are slightly smaller than the top firms, rose 40.2%. GMI released a preliminary report on 2010 CEO pay earlier this year, before all the data was available. Paul Hodgson, a senior research associate at GMI, said that report had shown a significant bounce but he had expected a wider sample to dampen the effect. "Wages for everybody else have either been in decline or stagnated in this period, and that's for those who are in work," said Hodgson. "I had a feeling that we would see some significant increases this year. But 30-40% was something of a surprise." Bosses won in every area, with dramatic increases in pensions, payoffs and perks ? as well as salary. Still, there are no bankers among this year's big winners. Three of this year's top 10 earners come from the healthcare industry. Top earner John Hammergren at McKesson, the world's largest healthcare firm, made $145,266,91 last year ? most of it from stock options. The rising stock markets were especially good to CEOs, said Hodgson. Stock options were the main area that drove these outsized awards. "They got the options, the market collapsed, then it came back ? and all of a sudden they were in the money again," he said. And there will be more to come. GMI, formerly known as the Corporate Library, is expecting a rash of massive stock option bonuses as many firms awarded their top executives big option deals when the stock markets hit their lows in 2007-2008. "There's still a lot of money just waiting in the market," said Hodgson. He described the upcoming awards as a "bombshell" likely to dwarf this year's figures. 2010 was a great year to lose your job as a CEO. Four of the 10 highest paid CEOs were retired or departing executives. Ronald Williams, former head of Aetna, a health insurer, exercised 2.4m options for a profit of $50.4m. Aetna's stock price declined by 70% from when Williams assumed the role of CEO in February 2006 until his retirement. At pharmacy chain CVS, Thomas Ryan made a $28m profit on his options. During Ryan's 13-year tenure as CEO, CVS Caremark's stock price decreased almost 54%. Omnicare's Joel Gemunder retired last August and received cash severance of $16m, part of a final-year pay package worth $98.28m. Adam Metz, the former boss of General Growth Properties, a real estate company that specialises in shopping malls, walked away with a $46m cash bonus in 2010. GGP executives received nearly $115m in bonuses from the firm as it emerged from bankruptcy. But this year's top earner may have his biggest payday still to come. Hammergren is due a $469m payoff if McKesson changes ownership. "Boards make these decisions, but they don't work out what happens if they stay in the job," said Hodgson. "If they had have done, one hopes, they would have looked at each other and said: 'This is ridiculous.'" From ths at psalience.org Sun Dec 18 15:07:02 2011 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 15:07:02 +0100 Subject: [THS] The scandal of the Alabama poor cut off from water Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20111218150650.045f4f88@mail.messagingengine.com> The scandal of the Alabama poor cut off from water By Brian WheelerBBC News, Alabama http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16037798 Banks stand to lose millions of dollars in debt repayments if the biggest municipal bankruptcy in American history is allowed to proceed. But the real victims of the financial collapse in the US state of Alabama's most populous county are its poorest residents - forced to bathe in bottled water and use portable toilets after being cut off from the mains supply. And there is widespread anger in Jefferson County that swingeing sewerage rate hikes could have been avoided but for the greed, corruption and incompetence of local politicians, government officials and Wall Street financiers. Tammy Lucas is the human face of a financial and political scandal that has brought one of the most deprived communities in America's south to the point of what some local people believe is collapse. She says: "If the sewer bill gets higher, my light might get cut off and if I try to catch up the light, my water might get cut off. So we're in between. We can't make it like this." Mrs Lucas's monthly sewerage rate bills - the amount levied by the county to flush away waste and provide water for baths and showers - has quadrupled in the past 15 years. She says it is currently running at $150 (?97) a month, which leaves little left out of her $600 social security cheque for food and electricity. "We need to keep the water running because we're women," she says. "We need to take baths. I try to pay the sewer bill and the water bill together and then what little I got left I try to put on my lights. I got to have lights." 'Just outrageous' Her neighbour in one of the poorest districts of Jefferson County's largest city, Birmingham, a father of four who asked not to be named, has already made that choice. Resident of Birmingham, AlabamaThe poorest citizens in Birmingham, Alabama, say they can no longer afford running water His modest rented home, next to a busy freight train line, is one of a growing number in the area that now has a blue portable toilet next to it. He says he finds it cheaper to buy drums of water from a petrol station and pay a sanitation company about $14 a month to remove waste from his "porta-potty" than pay the combined sewer and water rate bill, which some months can reach $300. "Most people who live here are on social security," he said. "They can't spend this kind of money on sewerage. It's just outrageous. It's too high. "I pay my sewerage bill, then I'm going to slack on my groceries. Then what am I going to eat?" Sewerage rates and water rates, which are levied on drinkable water, vary widely across the United States. But they are generally rising faster than inflation as cities are forced by federal government to replace worn-out sewerage facilities. The two rates have been combined into a single bill in Jefferson County, which has increased by 329% over the past 15 years, making it among the highest in America, as the county has struggled to service the mountain of debt it took on to pay for a new sewer system. Corruption scandal The facility, which has been under construction since 1996, was meant to cost about $300m. But the bill soared to $3.1bn after construction problems and a series of bond and derivatives deals that went sour in the financial meltdown of 2008. Investment bank JP Morgan Securities and two of its former directors have been fined for offering bribes to Jefferson County workers and politicians to win business financing the sewer upgrade. Six of Jefferson County's former commissioners have been found guilty of corruption for accepting the bribes, along with 15 other officials. New county commissioners, struggling to service the debt they inherited from their crooked predecessors, took the decision to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy last month. But the county's bondholders, who stand to lose about $4.5m a month in repayments if the bankruptcy is allowed to proceed, are contesting it in court. A Birmingham bankruptcy judge, Thomas B Bennett, has yet to make a final ruling. Breaking point Prior to the bankruptcy filing, the county's sewer rates had been due to go up by a further 8.2% a year for the next three years in a deal with the county's creditors, to the dismay of local residents. Now that is more likely to be 10% a year or even, according to the court appointed receiver John S Young, as much as 25%. Sheila Tyson, a community activist in the deprived West End district of Birmingham, says people in the city are reaching breaking point. "These people are going to end up rioting about this," she says. "If they let this stuff happen they are going to get the biggest riot the South has ever seen. Over this sewer business. I can see it coming." She says soaring sewer-rate bills have traditionally hit the poorest parts of the county hardest, as better-off people in the suburbs installed septic tanks at their properties. But the people affected are embarrassed to speak out about living in such unsanitary conditions, she tells BBC News. "This is not even a race issue, if I'm telling the truth," says Ms Tyson. "It's just so happens that it's affecting black people. It's a class issue. They don't give a doo-doo about poor people period." Budget shortfall And she adds: "Somebody from Washington DC needs to come down here and take these sewer bills to where they are affordable for the people in these districts. Injustice - that's all this is. They need to come down here and fix it." To add further to Jefferson County's woes, it faces a budget shortfall next year of $40m after a local tax was declared illegal. The county is appealing to the Alabama state legislature for financial aid, but there are still likely to be cuts to public services. More than 500 county workers were laid off over the summer and are having to get by on unemployment benefit, while their jobs hang in the balance. Tony Petelos, the county manager appointed by the new commissioners to sort the mess out, admits it could take years to get the area back on its feet. "The public has lost confidence in Jefferson County over the last decade and a half, because of the mismanagement, because of the corruption. We have got to rebuild that confidence," he says. He insists there is "light at the end of the tunnel" and that some of residents' worst fears about looming public service cuts are groundless, with most savings likely to be made through efficiencies and property sales. Troubled project But he can offer few assurances to citizens struggling with soaring sewer and water rate bills. The decision is in the hands of the bankruptcy court, he stresses, but even if the judge decides to hand control of sewer rates back to the county - and Mr Petelos has offered to manage the troubled project himself - there is no prospect of the bills being reduced. "When you look at the amount of debt, and you look at the revenue that is produced from the rate payers, there is no way it is going to come down," says Mr Petelos. When he was Republican mayor of Birmingham's neighbouring city of Hoover, Mr Petelos recalls attending a presentation by a Wall Street bank about the same kind of bonds that would later prove to be the downfall of Jefferson County. He says: "I turned to my finance director and said, 'did you understand that?' He said, 'no I didn't'. So I said, 'we had better not buy it then'." Perhaps if Jefferson County's previous commissioners had made the same decision, some of their poorest residents would not be facing daily life without basic sanitation and running water.